The Beth Book
Colour'd by love in a life which else were grey.
But that isn't you, you know, Sammy. Then when I stopped trying for
something about you, there came such a singing! What was it? It seems
to have gone--and yet it's here, you know, it's all here," she
insisted, with one hand on the top of her head, and the other on her
chest, and her eyes straining; "and yet I can't get it."
"Beth, don't get on like that," Sammy remonstrated. "You make me feel
all horrid."
"Make you feel," Beth cried in a deep voice, clenching her fists and
shaking them at him, exasperated because the verses continued to elude
her. "Don't you know what I'm here for? I'm here to make you feel. If
you don't feel what I feel, then you _shall_ feel horrid, if I have to
kill you."
"Shut up!" said Sammy, beginning to be frightened. "I shall go away if
you don't."
"Go away, then," said Beth. "You're just an idiot boy, and I'm tired
of you."
Sammy's blue eyes filled with tears. He got down from the heap of
sticks, intent on making his escape; but Beth changed her mind when
she felt her audience melting away.
"Where are you going?" she demanded.
"I'm going home," he said deprecatingly. "I can't stay if you go on in
that fool-fashion."
"It isn't a fool-fashion," Beth rejoined vehemently. "It's you that's
a fool. I told you so before."
"If you wasn't a girl, I'd punch your 'ead," said Sammy, half afraid.
"I believe you!" Beth jeered. "But you're not a girl, anyway." She
flew at him as she spoke, caught him by the collar, kicked his shins,
slapped his face, and drubbed him on the back.
Sammy, overwhelmed by the sudden onslaught, made no effort to defend
himself, but just wriggled out of her grasp, and ran home, with great
tears streaming down his round red cheeks, and sobs convulsing him.
Beth's exasperation subsided the moment she was left alone in the
wood-house. She sat down on the sticks, and looked straight before
her, filled with remorse.
"What shall I do? What shall I do?" she kept saying to herself. "Oh
dear! oh dear! Sammy! Sammy! He's gone. I've lost him. _This is the
most dreadful grief I have ever had in my life._"
The moment she had articulated this full-blown phrase, she became
aware of its importance. She repeated it to herself, reflected upon
it, and was so impressed by it, that she got up, and went indoors to
write it down. By the time she had found pencil and paper, she was the
sad central figure of a great romance, full of the most melancholy
incidents; in which troubled atmosphere she sat and suffered for the
rest of the evening; but she did not think of Sammy again till she
went to bed. Then, however, she was seized anew with the dread of
losing him for ever, and cried helplessly until she fell asleep.
For days she mourned for him without daring to go to the window, lest
she should see him pass by on the other side of the road with scorn
and contempt flashing forth from his innocent blue eyes. In the
evening, however, she opened the back-gate, as usual, and waited in
the wood-house; but he never came. And at first she was in despair.
Then she became defiant--she didn't care, not she! Then she grew
determined. He'd have to come back if she chose, she'd make him. But
how? Oh, she knew! She'd just sit still till something came.
She was sitting on a heap of beech branches opposite the doorway,
picking off the bronze buds and biting them. The blanched skeleton of
Sammy's whiting, sad relic of happier moments, grinned up at her from
the earthen floor. Outside, the old pear-tree on the left, leafless
now and motionless, showed distinctly in silhouette against the
night-sky. Its bare branches made black bars on the face of the bright
white moon which was rising behind it. What a strange thing time is!
day and night, day and night, week and month, spring, summer, autumn,
winter, always coming and going again, while we only come once, go,
and return no more. It was getting on for Christmas now. Another year
had nearly gone. The years slip away steadily--day by day--winter,
spring. Winter so cold and wet; March all clouds and dust--comes in
like a lion, goes out like a lamb; then April is bright.
The year slips away steadily; slips round the steady year; days come
and go--no, no! Days dawn and disappear, winters and springs--springs,
rings, sings? No, leave that. Winter with cold and rain--pain? March
storms and clouds and pain, till April once again light with it
brings.
Beth jumped down from the beech boughs, ran round to the old wooden
pump, clambered up by it on to the back-kitchen roof, and made for the
acting-room window. It was open, and she screwed herself in round the
bar and fastened the door. It was quite dark under the sloping roof,
but she found the end of a tallow candle, smuggled up there for the
purpose, lighted it, and stuck it on to the top of the rough deal box
which formed her writing-table. She had a pencil, sundry old envelopes
carefully cut open so as to save as much of the clean space inside as
possible, margins of newspapers, precious but rare half-sheets, and
any other scrap of paper on which she could write, all carefully
concealed in a hole in the roof, from which she tore the whole
treasure now in her haste.
"Winter, summer, Sammy," she kept saying to herself. "Autumn,
autumn-tinted woods--my king--_Ministering Children_--ministering--king.
Moon, noon. Story, glory. Ever, never, endeavour. Oh, I can do it! I
can! I can! Slips round the steady year--"
It took her some days to do it to her satisfaction, but they were days
of delight, for the whole time she felt exactly as she had done when
first she found Sammy. She had the same warm glow in her chest, the
same sort of yearning, half anxious, half pleasant, wholly desirable.
It was late in the evening when she finished, and she had to put her
work away in a hurry, because her mother sent Harriet to tell her she
must go to bed; but all night long she lay only half asleep, and all
the time conscious of joy to come in the morning.
She was up early, but had too much self-restraint to go to the
acting-room till lessons were over. She was afraid of being disturbed
and so having her pleasure spoilt. As soon as she could safely lock
herself up, however, she took her treasure out. It was written on the
precious half-sheets in queer little crabbed characters, very
distinctly:--
Slips round the steady year,
Days dawn and disappear,
Winters and springs;
March storms and clouds and rain,
Till April once again
Light with it brings.
Then comes the summer song,
Birds in the woods prolong
Day into night.
Hot after tepid showers
Beats down this sun of ours,
Upward the radiant flowers
Look their delight.
O summer scents at noon!
O summer nights and moon!
Season of story.
Labour and love for ever
Strengthen each hard endeavour,
Now climb we up or never,
Upward to glory!
Winter and summer past,
Autumn has come at last,
Hope in its keeping.
Beauty of tinted wood,
Beauty of tranquil mood,
Harvest of earned good
Ripe for the reaping.
Thus on a torrid day
Slipped my fond thoughts away,
Book from thy pages.
Seasons of which I sing,
Are they not like, my king,
Thine own life's minist'ring
In all its stages?
First in the spring, I ween,
Were all thy powers foreseen--
Storms sowed renown.
Then came thy summer climb,
Then came thy golden-prime,
Then came thy harvest-time,
Bringing thy crown.
When Beth had read these lines, she doubled the half sheets on which
they were written, and put them in her pocket deliberately. She was
sitting on the acting-room floor at the moment, near the window.
"Now," she exclaimed, folding her delicate nervous hands on her lap,
and looking up at the strip of sky above her, "now I shall be
forgiven!"
It was dark at this time when the boys left school in the evening, and
Beth stood at the back-gate waiting to waylay Sammy. He came trotting
along by himself, and saw her as he approached, but did not attempt to
escape. On the contrary, he stopped, but he had nothing to say; the
relief of finding her friendly again was too great for words. Had she
looked out, she might have seen him any day since the event,
bright-eyed and rosy-cheeked as usual, prowling about, anxious to
obtain a reassuring smile from her on his way to and from school. It
was not likely that he would lose the credit of being Beth Caldwell's
sweetheart if he could help it, just because she beat him. Already he
had suffered somewhat in prestige because he had not been seen with
her so often lately; and he had been quite as miserable in his own
way, under the impression that she meant to cast him off, as she had
in hers.
"Come in, Sammy," she cried, catching hold of his hand. "Come in, I've
something to show you; but it's too cold to sit in the wood-house, and
we can't have a light there either. Come up by the pump to the
acting-room. I've fastened the door inside, and nobody can get in.
Come! I'll show you the way."
Sammy followed her obediently and in silence, although somewhat
suspiciously as usual; but she piloted him safely, and, once in the
acting-room, with the candle lighted, he owned that it was jolly.
"Sammy, I _have_ been sorry," Beth began. "I've been quite miserable
about--you know what. It was horrid of me."
"I told you scratch-cats were horrid," said Sammy solemnly.
"But I've done something to atone," Beth proceeded. "Something came to
me all about you. You shall have it, Sammy, to keep. Just listen, and
I'll read it."
Sammy listened with his mouth and eyes open, but when she had done he
shook his head. "You didn't make that up yourself," he said decidedly.
"O Sammy! yes, I did," Beth protested, taken aback and much pained.
"No, I don't believe you," said Sammy. "You got it out of a book.
You're always trying to stuff me up."
"I'm not stuffing you, Sammy," said Beth, suddenly flaming. "I made it
myself, every word of it. I tell you it came to me. It's my own.
_You've got to believe it._"
Sammy looked about him. There was no escape by the door, because that
led into the house, and Beth was between him and the window, with her
brown hair dishevelled, and her big eyes burning.
"Well," he said, a politic desire to conciliate struggling with an
imperative objection to be stuffed, "of course you made it yourself if
you say so. But it's all rot anyway."
The words slipped out unawares, and the moment he uttered them he
ducked his head: but nothing happened. Then he looked up at Beth, and
found her gazing hard at him, and as she did so the colour gradually
left her cheeks and the light went out of her eyes. Slowly she
gathered up her papers and put them into the hole in the roof. Then
she sat on one of the steps which led down into the room, but she said
nothing.
Sammy sat still in a tremor until the silence became too oppressive to
be borne; then he fidgeted, then he got up, and looked longingly
towards the window.
"I shall be late," he ventured.
Beth made no sign.
"When shall I see you again?" he recommenced, deprecatingly. "Will you
be at the back-gate to-morrow?"
"No," she said shortly. "It's too cold to wait for you."
"Then how shall I see you?" he asked, with a blank expression.