The Beth Book
the sun on the trunk of a tree that had been cut down. She often sat
so under her parasol, and Beth used to watch her, and wonder what it
felt like to be able to look such a long, long way back, and have so
many things to remember.
CHAPTER XXII
Aunt Victoria was surprised herself to find how kindly Beth took to a
regular life, how exact she was in the performance of her little
housekeeping duties, and how punctual in everything; she had never
suspected that Beth's whole leaning was towards law and order, nor
observed that even in her most lawless ways there was a certain
system; that she fished, and poached, and prowled, fought Bernadine,
and helped Harriet, as regularly as she dined, and went to bed.
Habits, good or bad, may be formed in an incredibly short time if they
are congenial; the saints by nature will pray, and the sinners sin,
as soon as the example is set them; and Beth, accordingly, fell into
Aunt Victoria's dainty fastidious ways, which were the ways of a
gentlewoman, at once and without effort; and ever afterwards was only
happy in her domestic life when she could live by the same rule in an
atmosphere of equal refinement--an honest atmosphere where everything
was done thoroughly, and every word spoken was perfectly sincere. Of
course she relapsed many times--it was her nature to experiment, to
wander before she settled, to see for herself; but it was by intimacy
with lower natures that she learned fully to appreciate the higher; by
the effect of bad books upon her that she learned the value of good
ones; by the lowering of her whole tone which came of countenancing
laxity in others, and by the discomfort and degradation which follow
on disorder, that she was eventually confirmed in her principles. The
taste for the higher life, once implanted, is not to be eradicated;
and those who have been uplifted by the glory of it once will strive
to attain to it again, inevitably.
It was through the influence of this time that the most charming
traits in Beth's character were finally developed--traits which, but
for the tender discipline of the dear old aunt, might have remained
latent for ever.
It would be misleading, however, to let it be supposed that Beth's
conduct was altogether satisfactory during this visit. On the
contrary, she gave Miss Victoria many an anxious moment; for although
she did all that the old lady required of her, she did many other
things besides, things required of her by her own temperament only.
She had to climb the great tree at the end of the lawn, for instance,
in order to peep into the nest near the top, and also to see into the
demesne beyond the belt of shrubs, where the red-roofed house stood,
peopled now by friends of her fancy. This would not have been so bad
if she had come down safely; but a branch broke, and she fell and hurt
herself, which alarmed Miss Victoria very much. Then Miss Victoria
used to send her on errands to develop her intelligence; but Beth
invariably lost herself at first; if she only had to turn the corner,
she could not find her way back. Aunt Victoria tried to teach her to
note little landmarks in her own mind as she went along, such as the
red pillar-box at the corner of the street where she was to turn, and
the green shutters on the house where she was to cross; and Beth
noticed these and many more things carefully as she went, and could
describe their position accurately afterwards; but, by the time she
turned, the vision and the dream would be upon her as a rule, and she
would walk in a world of fancy, utterly oblivious of red pillar-boxes,
green shutters, or anything else on earth, until she was brought up
wondering by a lamp-post, tree, or some unoffending person with whom
she had collided in her abstraction; then she would have to ask her
way; but she was slow to find it by direction; and all the time she
was wandering about, Aunt Victoria would be worrying herself with
fears for her safety until she was quite upset.
Beth was rebellious, too, about some things. There was a grocery shop
at one end of the street, kept by a respectable woman, but Beth
refused to go to it because the respectable woman had a fussy little
Pomeranian dog, and allowed it to lick her hands and face all over,
which so disgusted Beth that she could not eat anything the woman
touched. It was in this shop that Beth picked up the moribund black
beetle that kicked out suddenly, and set up the horror of crawling
things from which she ever afterwards suffered. This was another
reason for not going back to the shop, but Aunt Victoria could not
understand it, and insisted on sending her. Beth was firmly naughty in
the matter, however, and would not go, greatly to the old lady's
discomposure.
One means of torture, unconsciously devised by Aunt Victoria, tried
Beth extremely. Aunt Victoria used to send her to church alone on
Sunday afternoons to hear a certain eloquent preacher, and required
her to repeat the text, and tell her what the whole sermon was about
on her return. Beth did her best, but if she managed to remember the
text by repeating it all the time, she could not attend to the sermon,
and if she attended to the sermon, she invariably forgot the text. It
was another instance of the trickishness of her memory; she could have
remembered both the text and sermon without an effort had she not been
afraid of forgetting them.
But the thing that gave her aunt most trouble of mind was Beth's habit
of making acquaintance with all kinds of people. It was vain to warn
her, and worse than vain, for the reasons Aunt Victoria gave her for
not knowing people only excited her interest in them, and she would
wait about, watching, to see for herself, studying their habits with
the patient pertinacity of a naturalist. The drawing-room floor was
let to a lady whose husband was at sea, a Mrs. Crome. She was very
intimate with a gentleman who also lodged in the house, a friend of
her husband's, she said, who had promised to look after her during his
absence. Their bedrooms adjoined, and Beth used to see their boots
outside their doors every morning when she went down to breakfast, and
wonder why they got up so late.
"Out again together nearly all last night," Prentice remarked to Aunt
Victoria one morning; and then they shook their heads, but agreed that
there was nothing to be done. From this and other remarks, however,
Beth gathered that Mrs. Crome was going to perdition; and from that
time she had a horrid fascination for Beth, who would gaze at her
whenever she had an opportunity, with great solemn eyes dilated, as if
she were learning her by heart--as, indeed, she was--involuntarily,
for future reference; for Mrs. Crome was one of a pronounced type, as
Beth learnt eventually, when she knew the world better, an example
which helped her to recognise other specimens of the kind whenever she
met them.
She scraped acquaintance with Mrs. Crome on the stairs, at last, and
was surprised to find her as kind as could be, and was inclined to
argue from this that Prentice and Aunt Victoria must be mistaken about
her. But one evening Mrs. Crome tempted her into the drawing-room. The
gentleman was there, smoking a cigar and drinking whisky-and-water;
and there was something in the whole aspect and atmosphere of the room
that made Beth feel exceedingly uncomfortable, and wish she was out of
it immediately.
"Aren't you very dull with that old lady?" said Mrs. Crome. "I suppose
she never takes you to the theatre or anything."
"No," said Beth; "she does not approve of theatres."
"Then I suppose she doesn't approve of me?" Mrs. Crome observed
good-naturedly.
"No," said Beth solemnly; "she does not."
Mrs. Crome burst out laughing, and so did the gentleman.
"This is rich, really," he said. "What a quaint little person!"
"Oh, but she's sweet!" said Mrs. Crome; and then she kissed Beth, and
Beth noticed that she had been eating onions, and for long afterwards
she associated the smell with theatres, frivolous talk, and a
fair-haired woman smiling fatuously on the brink of perdition.
Aunt Victoria retired early to perform her evening ablutions, and on
this occasion she had gone up just as usual, with a little bell, which
she rang when she was ready for Beth to come. In the midst of the talk
and laughter in the drawing-room the little bell suddenly sounded
emphatically, and Beth fled. She found Aunt Victoria out on the
landing in her petticoat and dressing-jacket, and without her auburn
front, a sign of great perturbation. She had heard Beth's voice in the
drawing-room, and proceeded to admonish her severely. But Beth heard
not a word; for the sight of the old lady's stubbly white hair had
plunged her into a reverie, and already, when the vision and the dream
were upon her, no Indian devotee, absorbed in contemplation, could be
less sensitive to outward impressions than Beth was. Aunt Victoria had
to shake her to rouse her.
"What are you thinking of, child?" she demanded.
"Riding to the rescue," Beth answered dreamily.
"Don't talk nonsense," said Aunt Victoria. Beth gazed at her with a
blank look. She was saving souls just then, and could attend to
nothing else.
Beth's terror of the Judgment never returned; but after she had been
away from home a few weeks she began to have another serious trouble
which disturbed her towards evening in the same way. The first symptom
was a curious lapse of memory which worried her a good deal. She could
not remember how much of the garden was to be seen from her mother's
bedroom window at home, and she longed to fly back and settle the
question. Then she became conscious of being surrounded by the country
on every side, and it oppressed her to think of it. She was a
sea-child, living inland for the first time, and there came upon her a
great yearning for the sight and sound of moving waters. She sniffed
the land-breeze, and found it sweet but insipid in her nostrils after
the tonic freshness of the sea-air. She heard the voice of her beloved
in the sough of the wind among the trees, and it made her
inexpressibly melancholy. Her energy began to ebb. She did not care to
move about much, but would sit silently sewing by the hour together,
outwardly calm, inwardly all an ache to go back to the sea. She used
to wonder whether the tide was coming in or going out; wonder if the
fish were biting, how the sands looked, and who was on the pier. She
devoured every scrap of news that came from home in the hope of
finding something to satisfy her longing. Bernadine wrote her an
elaborate letter in large hand, which Beth thought very wonderful;
Harriet sent her a letter also, chiefly composed of moral sentiments
copied from the _Family Herald_, with a view to producing a favourable
impression on Miss Victoria; and Mrs. Caldwell wrote regularly once a
week, a formal duty-letter, but a joy to Beth, to whom letters of any
kind were a new and surprising experience. She had never expected that
any one would write to her; and in the first flush of her gratitude
she responded with enthusiasm, sending her mother, in particular, long
descriptions of her life and surroundings, which Mrs. Caldwell thought
so good she showed them to everybody. In replying to Beth, however,
she expressed no approval or pleasure; on the contrary, she put Beth
to shame by the way she dwelt on her mistakes in spelling, which
effectually checked the outpourings, and shut Beth up in herself
again, so that she mourned the more. During the day she kept up pretty
well, but towards twilight, always her time of trial, the yearning for
home, for mamma, for Harriet, for Bernadine, began again; the most
gloomy fears of what might be happening to them in her absence
possessed her, and she had great difficulty in keeping back her tears.