The Beth Book
over the wild wide waste of sand when the tide was out, and she would
rhyme to herself the whole time; but she seldom said anything to
Sammy. So long as he was silent he was a source of inspiration--that
is to say, her feeling for him was inspiring; but when she tried to
get anything out of him, they generally squabbled.
Beth lived her own life at this time almost entirely. Since that
startling threat of rebellion, her mother had been afraid to beat her
lest she should strike back; scolding only made her voluble, and Mrs.
Caldwell never thought of trying to manage her in the only way
possible, by reasoning with her and appealing to her better nature.
There was, therefore, but one thing for her mother to do in order to
preserve her own dignity, and that was to ignore Beth. Accordingly,
when the perfunctory lessons were over in the morning, Beth had her
day to herself. She began it generally by practising for at least an
hour by the church-clock, and after that she had a variety of pursuits
which she preferred to follow alone if Sammy were at school, because
then there was no one to interrupt her thoughts. When the larder was
empty, she became Loyal Heart the Trapper, and would wander off to
Fairholm to set snares or catapult anything she could get near. The
gun she had found impracticable, because she was certain to have been
seen out with it; her snares, if they were found, were supposed to
have been set by poachers. She herself was known to every one on the
estate, and was therefore sure of respect, no matter who saw her; even
Uncle James himself would have let her alone had they met, as he was
of her mother's opinion, that it was safer to ignore her than to
attempt to control her. The snares, although of the most primitive
kind, answered the purpose. The great difficulty was how to get the
game home; but that she also managed successfully, generally by
returning after dark. Her mother, concluding that she owed whatever
came to Aunt Grace Mary's surreptitious kindness, said nothing on the
subject except to Beth, whom she supposed to be Aunt Grace Mary's
agent; but she very much enjoyed every addition to her monotonous
diet, especially when Beth did the cooking. In fact, had it not been
for Loyal Heart, the family would have pretty nearly starved that
winter, because of Jim, who had contracted debts like a man, which his
mother had to pay.
With regard to Beth's cooking, it is remarkable that, although Mrs.
Caldwell herself had suffered all through her married life for want of
proper training in household matters, she never attempted to have her
own daughters better taught. On the contrary, she had forbidden Beth
to do servant's work, and objected most strongly to her cooking, until
she found how good it was, and even then she thought it due to her
position only to countenance it under protest. The extraordinary
inefficiency of the good-old-fashioned-womanly woman as a wife on a
small income, the silly pretences which showed her want of proper
self-respect, and the ill-adjusted balance of her undeveloped mind
which betrayed itself in petty inconsistencies, fill us with pity and
surprise us, yet encourage us too by proving how right and wise we
were to try our own experiments. If we had listened to advice and done
as we were told, the woman's-sphere-is-home would have been as ugly
and comfortless a place for us to-day as it used to be when Beth was
forced by the needs of her nature to poach for diversion, cook for
kindness, and clean, and fight, and pray, and lie, and love, in her
brave struggle against the hard and stupid conditions of her
life--conditions which were not only retarding the development, but
threatening utterly to distort, if not actually to destroy, all that
was best, most beautiful, and most wonderful in her character.
Beth rather expected to get into difficulties eventually about the
game, but she calculated that she would have a certain time to run
before her head was snapped off, and during that time her mother would
enjoy her good dinners and be the better for them, and she herself
would enjoy the sport--facts which no amount of anger afterwards could
alter. Since Mrs. Caldwell had washed her hands of Beth, they were
beginning to be quite good friends. Sometimes her mother talked to her
just as she would to anybody else; that is to say, with civility. She
would say, "And what are you going to do to-day, Beth?" quite
pleasantly, as though speaking to another grown-up person; and Beth
would answer politely, and tell the truth if possible, instead of
making some sulky evasion, as she had begun to do when there was no
other way of keeping the peace. She was fearlessly honest by nature,
but as she approached maturity, she lost her nerve for a time, and
during that time she lied, on occasion, to escape a harrowing scene.
She always despised herself for it, however, and therefore, as she
grew stronger, she became her natural straightforward self again,
only, if anything, all the more scrupulously accurate for the
degrading experience. For she soon perceived that there is nothing
that damages the character like the habit of untruth; the man or woman
who makes a false excuse has already begun to deteriorate. If a census
could be taken to establish the grounds upon which people are
considered noble or ignoble, we should find it was in exact proportion
to the amount of confidence that can be placed first of all in their
sincerity, and then in their accuracy. Sincerity claims respect for
character, accuracy estimation for ability; no high-minded person was
ever insincere, and no fool was ever accurate.
When the close season began, Beth left the plantations, and took to
fishing in the sea. She would sit at the end of the pier in fine
weather, baiting her hooks with great fat lob-worms she had dug up out
of the sands at low tide, and watching her lines all by herself; or,
if it were rough, she would fish in the harbour from the steps up
against the wooden jetty, where the sailors hung about all day long
with their hands in their pockets when the boats were in. Some of them
would sit with her, all in a row, fishing too, and they would exchange
bait with her, and give her good advice, while others stood behind
looking on and listening. And as of old in Ireland she had fascinated
the folk, so here again these great simple bearded men listened with
wondering interest to her talk, and never answered at all as if they
were speaking to a child. Beth heard some queer things, sitting down
there by the old wooden jetty, fishing for anything she could catch,
and she said some queer things too when the mood was upon her.
Sometimes, when she wanted to be alone and think, she would go off to
the rocks that appeared at low-water down behind the south pier, and
fish there. She loved this spot; it was near to nature, yet not remote
from the haunts of man. She sat there one afternoon, holding her line,
and dreamily watching the fishing boats streaming across the bay, with
their brown sails set to catch the fitful breeze which she could see
making cat's-paws on the water far out, but could not feel, being
sheltered from it by the old stone pier. The sea was glassy smooth,
and lapped up the rocks, heaving regularly like the breast of a
tranquil sleeper. Beth gazed at it until she was seized with a great
yearning to lie back on its shining surface and be gently borne away
to some bright eternity, where Sammy would be, and all her other
friends. The longing became imperative. She rose from the rock she was
sitting on, she raised her arms, her eyes were fixed. Then it was as
if she had suddenly awakened. The impulse had passed, but she was all
shaken by it, and shivered as if she were cold.
Fortunately the fish were biting well that day. She caught two big
dabs, four whitings, a small plaice, and a fine fat sole. The sole was
a prize, indeed, and mamma and Aunt Victoria should have it for
dinner. As she walked home, carrying the fish on a string, she met
Sammy.
"Where did you get those fish?" he asked.
"Caught them," she answered laconically.
"What! all by yourself? No! I don't believe it."
"I did, all the same," she answered; "and now I'm going to cook
them--some of them at least."
"Yourself? Cook them yourself? No!" he cried in admiration. Cooking
was an accomplishment he honoured.
"If you'll come out after your tea, I'll leave the back-gate ajar, and
you can slip into the wood-house; and I'll bring you a whiting on
toast, all hot and brown."
With such an inducement, Sammy was in good time. Beth found him
sitting contentedly on a heap of sticks, waiting for the feast. She
had brought the whiting out with a cover over it, hot and brown, as
she had promised; and Sammy's mouth watered when he saw it.
"What a jolly girl you are, Beth!" he exclaimed.
But Beth was not so much gratified by the praise as she might have
been. The vision and the dream were upon her that evening, her nerves
were overwrought, and she was yearning for an outlet for ideas that
oppressed her. She stood leaning against the door-post, biting a twig;
restless, dissatisfied; but not knowing what she wanted.
When Sammy had finished the whiting, he remembered Beth, and asked
what she was thinking about.
"I'm not thinking exactly," she answered, frowning intently in the
effort to find expression for what she had in her consciousness.
"Things come into my mind, but I don't think them, and I can't say
them. They don't come in words. It's more like seeing them, you know,
only you don't see them with your eyes, but with something inside
yourself. Do you know what it is when you are fishing off the rocks,
and there is no breaking of waves, only a rising and falling of the
water; and it comes swelling up about you with a sort of sob that
brings with it a whiff of fresh air every time, and makes you take in
your breath with a sort of sob too, every time--and at last you seem
to be the sea, or the sea seems to be you--it's all one; but you don't
think it."
Sammy looked at her in a blank, bewildered way. "I like it best when
you tell stories, Beth," he said, under the impression that all this
incomprehensible stuff was merely a display for his entertainment.
"Come and sit down beside me and tell stories."
"Stories don't come to me to-night," said Beth, with a tragic face.
"Do you remember the last time we were on the sands--oh! I keep
feeling--it was all so--_peaceful_, that was it. I've been wondering
ever since what it was, and that was it--peaceful;
The quiet people,
The old church steeple;
The sandy reaches
Of wreck-strewn beaches--"
"Who made that up?" said Sammy suspiciously.
"I did," Beth answered offhand. "At least I didn't make it up, it just
came to me. When I make it up it'll most likely be quite different.
It's like the stuff for a dress, you know, when you buy it. You get it
made up, and it's the same stuff, and it's quite different, too, in a
way. You've got it put into shape, and it's good for something."
"I don't believe you made it up," said Sammy doggedly. "You're
stuffing me, Beth. You're always trying to stuff me."
Beth, still leaning against the door-post, clasped her hands behind
her head and looked up at the sky. "Things keep coming to me faster
than I can say them to-night," she proceeded, paying no heed to his
remark; "not things about you, though, because nothing goes with Sammy
but jammy, clammy, mammy, and those aren't nice. I want things to
come about you, but they won't. I tried last night in bed, and what do
you think came again and again?
Yes, yes, that was his cry,
While the great clouds went sailing by;
Flashes of crimson on colder sky;
Like the thoughts of a summer's day,