The Beth Book
There was an hotel in Rainharbour called the "United Kingdom," where
Jim spent much of his time playing billiards, drinking beer, and
smoking pipes. He had to coax money out of his mother continually for
these pursuits.
"It's the kind of thing a fellow must do, you know, mamma," he said.
"You can't expect him to stick at home like a girl. He must see life,
or he'll be a muff instead of a man of the world. How shall I get on
at Fairholm, when I come in for the property, if I'm not up to
things?"
This was said at breakfast one morning, and Mrs. Caldwell, sitting
opposite the window, raised her worn face and looked up at the sky,
considering what else there was that she could do without.
"Do you learn how to manage estates at the 'United Kingdom'?" Beth put
in innocently.
"Now, look here, Beth, just you shut up," said Jim. "You're always
putting your oar in, and its deuced impertinent of a child like you,
when I'm talking to my mother. _She_ knows what I'm talking about, and
you don't; but you'll be teaching her next, I expect. You're far too
cheeky."
"I only wanted to know," Beth protested.
"That will do," said Mrs. Caldwell impatiently. She was put out by
Jim's demand for money, which she had not got to spare, and found it a
relief to expend some of her irritation on Beth. "Jim is quite right,
and I won't have you hanging about always, listening to things you
don't understand, and rudely interrupting."
"I thought we were at breakfast," Beth exclaimed, furious at being
unjustly accused of hanging about.
"Be good enough to leave the table," said Mrs. Caldwell; "and you
shall have nothing but bread and water for the rest of the day."
"It will be a dinner of herbs with contentment, then, if I have it
alone," said Beth; for which impertinence she was condemned to be
present at every meal.
Having extracted the money from his mother, Jim went off to the
"United Kingdom," and came back in the afternoon, somewhat the worse
for beer; but Mrs. Caldwell did not perceive it. He complained of the
poor dinner, the cooking, and Beth's shabby appearance.
"How can you go out with me like that?" he said. "Why can't you dress
properly? Look at my things! I'm decent."
"So should I be," said Beth, without malice, her eyes shining with
mortification. "So should I be if anybody bought me decent clothes."
She did not think it unfair, however, that she should go shabby so
that Jim might be well dressed. Nor did she feel it wrong, when the
holidays were over, and the boys had gone, that she should be left
idly drumming on the window-pane; that they should have every
advantage while she had none, and no prospect but the uncertain chance
of securing a husband if she held herself well and did as she was
told--a husband whom she would be expected to obey whatever he might
lack in the way of capacity to order. It is suffering which makes
these things plain to a generous woman; but usually by the time she
has suffered enough to be able to blame those whom it has been her
habit to love and respect, and to judge of the wrong they have done
her, it is too late to remedy it. Even if her faculties have not
atrophied for want of use, all that should have been cultivated lies
latent in her; she has nothing to fall back upon, and her life is
spoilt.
Beth stood idly drumming on the window-pane for long hours after the
boys had gone. Then she got her battered old hat, walked out to
Fairholm, and wandered over the ground where she had been wont to
retrieve for Jim. When she came to the warren, the rabbits were out
feeding, and she amused herself by throwing stones at them with her
left hand. She had the use of both hands, and would not have noticed
if her knife had been put where her fork should have been at table;
but she threw stones, bowled, batted, played croquet, and also tennis
in after years, with her left hand by preference, and she always held
out her left hand to be handed from a carriage.
She succeeded in killing a rabbit with a stone, to her own surprise
and delight, and carried it off home, where it formed a welcome
addition to the meagre fare. She skinned and cleaned it herself,
boiled it, carved it carefully so that it might not look like a cat on
the dish, covered it with good onion-sauce, and garnished it with
little rolls of fried bacon, and sent it to table, where the only
other dish was cold beef-bones with very little meat on them.
"Where did it come from?" Mrs. Caldwell asked, looking pleased.
"From Fairholm," Beth answered.
"I must thank your uncle," said Mrs. Caldwell.
"It was not my uncle," Beth answered, laughing; "and you're not to
send any thanks."
"Oh, very well," said Mrs. Caldwell, still more pleased, for she
supposed it was a surreptitious kindness of Aunt Grace Mary's. She ate
the rabbit with appetite, and Beth, as she watched her, determined to
go hunting again, and see what she could get for her. Beth would not
have touched a penny of Uncle James's, but from that time forward she
did not scruple to poach on his estate, and bring home anything she
could catch. She had often prayed to the Lord to show her how to do
something to help her mother in her dire poverty, and when this idea
occurred to her, she accepted it as a direct answer to her prayer.
Mrs. Caldwell and the three girls slept in the largest bedroom in the
house. It was at the back, looking into the little garden, and out to
the east. The early morning sun, making black bars of the window-frame
on the white blind, often awoke Beth, and she would lie and count the
white spaces between the bars, where the window-panes were,--three,
six, nine, twelve; or two, four, six, eight, ten, twelve. One morning
after Jim left she was lying awake counting the window-panes when
Harriet knocked at the door with the hot water. Mildred had not yet
gone back to her aunt, and was sleeping with Beth, Bernadine being
with her mother.
"Come, get up, children," said Mrs. Caldwell, as she got out of bed
herself.
"Mamma, mayn't I have breakfast in bed?" said Bernadine in a wheedling
tone.
"No, no, my little body," Mrs. Caldwell answered.
"But, mamma," whined the little body, "I've got such a headache!" She
very often had when she ought to have been getting up.
"Cry, baby, cry," sang out Beth. "Mamma, give me my stockings."
Mrs. Caldwell picked them up off the floor, and gave them to her. Beth
began to put them on in bed, and diverted herself as she did so by
making diabolical grimaces at the malingering imp opposite.
"Mamma," Bernadine whined again, "Beth's teasing me."
"Beth, how often am I to tell you that I will not allow you to tease
the child?" Mrs. Caldwell exclaimed.
Beth solemnly gartered her stockings. Then she gave Mildred a dig in
the ribs with her heel, and growled, "Get up!"
"Mamma, Beth is teasing _me_, now," said Mildred promptly.
"Well, I don't see why I should be obliged to do all the getting up
for the family," said Beth.
Her mother turned from the looking-glass with her hair-brush in her
hand, and gazed at her sternly. Beth hummed a tune, but kept at a safe
distance until she was dressed, then made her escape, going straight
to the kitchen, where Harriet was cutting bread to toast. "That's all
the bread there is," she said, "and it won't be enough for breakfast
if you eat any."
"All right, then; I haven't any appetite," Beth answered casually.
"What did you dream last night?"
"I dreamt about crocodiles," Harriet averred.
"A crocodile's a reptile," said Beth, "and a reptile is trouble and an
enemy. You always dream nasty things; I expect it's your inside."
"What's that to do wi' it?" said Harriet.
"Everything," said Beth. "Don't you know the stuff that dreams are
made of? Pickles, pork, and plum-cake."
"Dreams is sent for our guidance," Harriet answered portentously,
shaking her head at Beth's flippancy.
"Well, I'm glad of it," said Beth, "for I dreamt I was catching Uncle
James's trout in a most unsportsmanlike way, and I guess the dream was
sent to show me how to do it. When I have that kind of dream, I notice
it nearly always comes true. But where's the 'Dream Book'?"
"'Ook it," said Harriet. "'Ere's your ma."
As the other little bodies had their breakfasts in bed, Beth had to
face her lessons alone that morning, and Mrs. Caldwell was not in an
amiable mood; but she was absent as well as irritable, so Beth did
some old work over again, and as she knew it thoroughly, she got on
well until the music began.
Beth had a great talent as well as a great love for music. When they
were at Fairholm, Aunt Grace Mary gave her Uncle James's "Instruction
Book for Beginners" one wet day to keep her quiet, and she learnt her
notes in the afternoon, and began at once to apply them practically on
the piano. She soon knew all the early exercises and little tunes, and
was only too eager to do more; but her mother hated the music-lesson
more than any of the others, and was so harsh that Beth became
nervous, and only ventured on the simplest things for fear of the
consequences. When her mother went out, however, she tried what she
liked, and, if she had heard the piece before, she could generally
make something satisfactory to herself out of it. One day Aunt
Victoria found her sitting on the music-stool, solemnly pulling at her
fingers, one after the other, as though to stretch them.
"What _are_ you doing, child?" she said.
"O Aunt Victoria," Beth answered in a despairing way, "here's such a
_lovely_ thing, and my head will play it, only my fingers are not long
enough."
Mildred had brought a quantity of new music home with her these
holidays. She promised to play well also, and her aunt was having her
properly taught. Beth listened to her enraptured when she first
arrived, and then, to Mildred's surprise and admiration, tried the
pieces herself, and in a few weeks knew all that it had taken Mildred
six months to learn.
That morning, as ill-luck would have it, when she was waiting at the
piano for her mother to come and give her her lesson, Beth began to
try a piece with a passage in it that she could not play.
"Do show me how to do this," she said when Mrs. Caldwell came.
"Oh, you can't do that," Mrs. Caldwell exclaimed. "It is far too
difficult for you."
"But I do so want to learn it," Beth ventured.
"Oh, very well," her mother answered. "But I warn you!"
Beth began, and got on pretty well till she came to the passage she
did not understand, and there she stumbled.
"What are you doing?" Mrs. Caldwell exclaimed.
Beth tried again nervously.
"That's not right," her mother cried. "What does that sign mean? Now,
what is it? Just think!"
Beth, with a flushed face, was thinking hard, but nothing came of it.
"Will you speak?" her mother said angrily. "You are the most obstinate
child that ever lived. Now, say something."
"It's not a shake," Beth ventured.
"A shake!" her mother exclaimed, giving her a hard thump on the back
with her clenched fist. "Now, no more obstinacy. Tell me what it is at
once."
"I don't know that sign," Beth faltered in desperation.
"Oh, you don't know it!" her mother said, now fairly fuming, and
accompanying every word by a hard thump of her clenched fist. "Then
I'll teach you. I've a great mind to beat you as long as I can stand
over you."
Beth was a piteous little figure, crouched on the piano-stool, her
back bent beneath her mother's blows, and every fibre of her sensitive
frame shrinking from her violence; but she made no resistance, and
Mrs. Caldwell carried out her threat. When she could beat Beth no
longer, she told her to sit there until she knew that sign, and then
she left her. Beth clenched her teeth, and an ugly look came into her
face. There had been dignity in her endurance--the dignity of