The Beth Book
self-control; for there was the force in her to resist, had she
thought it right to resist. What she was thinking while her mother
beat her was: "I hope I shall not strike you back."
Harriet had heard the scolding, and when Mrs. Caldwell had gone she
came and peeped in at the door.
"She's bin' thumpin' you again, 'as she?" she said with a grin. "Wot
'a ye bin' doin' now?"
"What business is that of yours?" said Beth defiantly. It was bad
enough to be beaten, but it was much worse to have Harriet peeping in
to gloat over her humiliation. Harriet was not to be snubbed, however.
She went up to the piano and looked at the music.
"It's precious hard, I should think," she remarked.
"It's _not_ hard," Beth answered positively, "if anybody tells you
what you don't know and can't make out for yourself. I always remember
when I'm told or shown how to do it; but what's the use of staring at
a sign you've never seen before? Just you look at that! Can you make
anything out of it?" Harriet approached, and, after staring at the
sign curiously for some time, shook her head. "Of course not," said
Beth, snatching up her music, and throwing it on the floor; "and
neither can anybody else. It isn't fair."
Bernadine had begun her lessons by this time in the next room, and
Mrs. Caldwell suddenly began to scold again. "Oh, that awful voice!"
Beth groaned aloud, her racked nerves betraying her.
"She's catchin' it now!" said Harriet, after listening with interest.
She seemed to derive some sort of gratification from the children's
troubles. "But don't you bother any more, Miss Beth.--Your ma'll 'ave
forgotten all about it by goin'-out time--or she'll pertend she 'as to
save 'erself trouble. Come and 'elp us wi' the beds."
Beth rose slowly from the piano-stool, and followed Harriet upstairs
to the bedroom at the back of the house. She was at once attracted to
the open window by an uproar of voices--"the voices of children in
happy play." There was a girls' day-school next door kept by the
Misses Granger. Miss Granger had called on Mrs. Caldwell as soon as
she was settled in her house, to beg for the honour of being allowed
to educate her three little girls, and Beth had assisted at the
interview with serious attention. It would have been the best thing in
the world for her had she been allowed to romp and learn with that
careless, happy, healthy-minded crew of respectable little plebeians;
but Mrs. Caldwell would never have dreamt of sending any of her own
superior brood to associate with such people, even if she could have
afforded it. She politely explained to Miss Granger that she was
educating her children herself for the present; and it was then, with
a sickening sense of disappointment, that Beth rejected her mother's
social standard, with its "vulgar exclusiveness," once for all.
She hung out of the window now, heedless of Harriet's appeals to be
"'elped wi' the beds," and watched the games going on in the next
garden with pathetic gravity. The girls were playing rounders among
the old fruit-trees on the grass-plot, with a loud accompaniment of
shrieks and shouts of laughter. They tumbled up against the trees
continually, and shook showers of autumn leaves down upon themselves;
and then, tiring of the game, they began to pelt each other with the
leaves, and laughed and shrieked still louder. Some of them looked up
and made faces at Beth, but she did not acknowledge the discourtesy.
She knew that they were not ladies, but did not feel, as her mother
did, that this was a fault for which they should be punished, but a
misfortune, rather, for which she pitied them, and she would have
liked to have made it up to them by knowing them. Suddenly she
remembered that Aunt Victoria was coming back that day, which was
something to look forward to. She took Harriet's duster, and went to
see if the old lady's room was all in order for her, and arranged as
she liked it. Then she returned to the drawing-room, and sat down on
the piano-stool, and rage and rebellion uprose in her heart. The piece
of music still lay on the floor, and she stamped her foot on it. As
she did so, her mother came into the room.
"Do you know your lesson?" she demanded.
"No, I do not," said Beth, and then she doubled her fist, and brought
it down bang on the keyboard.
"How dare you!" Mrs. Caldwell exclaimed, startled by the vehemence of
the blow, and jarred by the discordant cry of the poor piano.
"I felt I _must_--I felt I must make something suffer," said Beth, in
a deep chest-voice and with knitted brows, twisting her fingers and
rising to face her mother as she spoke; "and if I had not struck the
piano, I should have struck _you_."
Mrs. Caldwell could not have been more taken aback if Beth had struck
her. The colour left her face, a chill succeeded the heat of temper,
and her right mind returned as to a drunken man suddenly sobered. She
noticed that Beth's eyes were almost on a level with her own, and once
again she realised that if Beth chose to rebel, she would be powerless
to control her. For some seconds they looked at each other without a
word. Then Beth stooped, picked up the piece of music, smoothed it
out, and put it on the stand; and then she shut up the piano
deliberately, but remained standing in front of it with her back to
her mother. Mrs. Caldwell watched her for a little in silence.
"It's your own fault, Beth," she said at last. "You are so conceited;
you try to play things that are too difficult for you, and then you
get into trouble. It is no pleasure to me to punish you."
Beth remained with her back turned, immovable, and her mother looked
at her helplessly a little longer, and then left the room. When she
had gone, Beth sat down on the piano-stool. Her shabby shoes had holes
in them, her dress was worn thread-bare, and her sleeves were too
short for her. She had no collar or cuffs, and her thin hands and long
wrists looked hideous to her as they lay in her lap. Great tears
gathered in her eyes. So conceited indeed! What had she to be
conceited about? Every one despised her, and she despised herself.
Here the tears overflowed, and Beth began to cry at last, and cried
and cried for a long time very bitterly.
That afternoon, after Aunt Victoria had arrived, Lady Benyon and Aunt
Grace Mary called. Mrs. Caldwell had recovered her good-humour by that
time, and was all smiles to everybody, including Beth, when she came
sauntering in, languid and heavy-eyed, with half a sheet of notepaper
in her hand.
"What have you there, Puck?" said Lady Benyon, catching sight of some
hieroglyph drawn on the paper. Beth gave it to her, and she turned it
this way and that, but could make nothing of it.
"Mamma will tell us what it is," said Beth, taking it to her mother.
Mrs. Caldwell, still smiling, looked at the drawing. "It's an
astronomical sign, surely," she ventured.
"No, it is not," Beth said.
"Then I don't know what it is," her mother rejoined.
"Oh, but you must know, mamma," said Beth. "Look again."
"But I don't know, Beth," Mrs. Caldwell insisted.
"Couldn't you make it out if Aunt Victoria beat you?" Beth suggested.
Mrs. Caldwell changed countenance.
"That is what you expect me to do, at all events," Beth pursued. "Now,
you see, you can't do it yourself; and I ask you, was it fair to
expect me to make out a strange sign by staring at it?" She set her
mouth hard when she had spoken, and looked her mother straight in the
face. Mrs. Caldwell winced.
"What's the difficulty, Puck?" Lady Benyon asked.
"The difficulty is between me and mamma," Beth answered with dignity,
and then she left the room, sauntering out as she had come in, with an
utterly dispirited air.
The next morning she went to practice as usual, but Mrs. Caldwell did
not come to give her her music-lesson. Beth thought she had forgotten
it, and went to remind her.
"No, Beth, I have not forgotten," said Mrs. Caldwell; "but after your
conduct yesterday, I do not know how you can expect me to give you
another music-lesson."
"Are you not going to give me any more?" Beth exclaimed.
"No, certainly not," her mother answered.
Beth's heart sank. She stood for some little time in the doorway
looking at her mother, who sat beside the table sewing, and pointedly
ignored her; then Beth turned, and went back to the drawing-room
slowly, and carefully practised the usual time, with great tears
trickling down her cheeks. It did not seem to make much difference
what happened, whether she was on her best behaviour or her worst, the
tears were bound to come. But Beth had a will of her own, and she
determined to learn music. She said no more on the subject to her
mother, however, but from that day forward she practised regularly and
hard, and studied her instruction books, and listened to other people
playing when she had a chance, and asked to have passages explained to
her, until at last she knew more than her mother could have taught
her.
CHAPTER XIX
But well-springs, mortal and immortal, were beginning to bubble up
brightly in Beth, despite the hard conditions of her life. She
sharpened her wits involuntarily on the people about her, she gathered
knowledge where she listed; her further faculty flashed forth fine
rays at unexpected intervals to cheer her, and her hungry heart also
began to seek satisfaction. For Beth was by nature well-balanced;
there was to be no atrophy of one side of her being in order that the
other might be abnormally developed. Her chest was not to be flattened
because her skull bulged with the big brain beneath. Rather the
contrary. For mind and body acted and reacted on each other
favourably, in so far as the conditions of her life were favourable.
Such congenial intellectual pursuits as she was able to follow, by
tranquillising her, helped the development of her physique, while the
healthy condition of her body stimulated her to renewed intellectual
effort--and it was all a pleasure to her.
At this time she had a new experience, an experience for which she was
totally unprepared, but one which helped her a great deal, and
delighted as much as it surprised her.
There were high oak pews in the little church at the end of the road
which the Caldwells attended on Sunday; in the rows on either side of
the main aisle the pews came together in twos, so that when Beth sat
at the end of theirs, as she always did, the person in the next pew
sat beside her with only the wooden partition between. One Sunday,
when she was on her knees, drowsing through the Litany with her cheek
on her prayer-book, she became aware of a boy in the next pew with his
face turned to her in exactly the same attitude. He had bright fair
hair curling crisply, a ruddy fair fat face, and round blue eyes,
clear as glass marbles. Beth was pleased with him, and smiled
involuntarily. He instantly responded to the smile; and then they both
got very red; and, in their delicious shyness, they turned their heads
on their prayer-books, and looked in opposite directions. This did not
last long, however. The desire for another look seized them
simultaneously, and they turned their faces to each other, and smiled
again the moment their eyes met. All through the service they kept
looking at each other, and looking away again; and Beth felt a strange
glad glow begin in her chest and spread gradually all over her. It
continued with her the whole day; she was conscious of it throughout
the night; and directly she awoke next morning there it was again; and
she could think of nothing but the apple-cheeked boy, with bright blue
eyes and curly fair hair; and as she dwelt upon his image she smiled
to herself, and kept on smiling. There came upon her also a great
desire to please, with sudden energy which made all effort easy to