The Beth Book
was followed by an interval of comparative quiet, broken by strange,
mysterious sounds, to which Beth listened with strained attention,
unable to account for them. One moment it was as if trailing garments
swept down the narrow stairs, heavy woollen garments that made a soft
sort of muffled sound, but there was no footfall, as of some one
walking. Then there came stifled voices, whisperings, as of people
talking eagerly yet cautiously. Then there were heavy steps, distinct
yet slow, followed, after an interval, by the tramp of shuffling feet,
like those of people carrying an awkward burden, and stumbling under
it. But always, before Beth could think what the noise meant, the gust
came again, racking her nerves, rattling the windows, making the doors
creak; then dying away, to be followed by more mysterious sounds, but
of another character.
"If only there were time--if only they would last long enough, I
should know--I should understand," Beth thought, full of foreboding.
She was not frightened, only greatly excited. Something was coming,
something was going to happen, and these were the warnings, of that
she was certain. It was as if she were sensitive to some atmosphere
that surrounds an event and becomes perceptible to those whom it
concerns if they are of the right temperament to receive the
impression.
When the blast struck the house, blotting out the strange sounds which
puzzled Beth, it released her strained attention, and had the effect
of silence upon her after noise. In one of these pauses, she wondered
if her mother and Bernadine, in the next bed, were asleep.
"Mamma," she said softly, "mamma!" There was no response. The gale
dropped. Then Beth heard some one coughing hard.
"Mamma," she said again, "mamma!"
"What's the matter?" Mrs. Caldwell answered, awaking with a start.
"Aunt Victoria is coughing."
"Well, my dear child, I'm very sorry, but I can't help it; and it is
hardly enough to wake me for," Mrs. Caldwell answered. She settled
herself to sleep again, and the gale raged without; but Beth remained,
resting on her elbow, not listening so much as straining her attention
out into the darkness in an effort to perceive with her further
faculty what was beyond the range of her limited senses.
"Mamma!" she exclaimed once more, "Aunt Victoria is moaning."
"Nonsense, Beth," Mrs. Caldwell rejoined. "You couldn't possibly hear
her if she were."
There was another little interval, then Beth jumped out of bed, crying
as she did so, "Mamma, Aunt Victoria is calling me."
"Beth," Mrs. Caldwell said, rousing herself, and speaking sternly,
"get into bed again directly, and lie down and go to sleep. It is the
gale that is making you so nervous. Put the bed-clothes over your
head, and then you won't hear it."
Beth had been huddling on the first thing she laid hold of in the
dark, a thick woollen dressing-gown of her mother's, while she was
speaking. "I shall go and see for myself," she replied.
"Oh, very well," said Mrs. Caldwell. "It wouldn't be you if you didn't
upset the whole house for your fancies. When you have awakened your
aunt, and spoilt her night for nothing, as you have spoilt mine,
you'll be satisfied."
Beth opened the door, and stepped down into darkness, unrelieved by
the slightest glimmer of light. She had to descend some steps and go
up some others to get to Aunt Victoria's room; and, after the first
step, she felt as if she were floating in some new element, not moving
of her own accord, but borne along confidently, without seeing and
without feeling her way; and, as she went, she found that the long
thick garment she wore was making the same soft muffled sound she had
already heard, and also that there was no footstep audible.
She went into Aunt Victoria's room without knocking. It struck Beth as
being intensely cold. A candle was burning on the little table beside
the bed. The old lady was sitting, propped up uncomfortably with two
thin pillows and a hassock. She was breathing with difficulty, and
showed no surprise when she saw Beth enter. Her lips were moving, and
Beth could see she was mumbling something, but she could distinguish
no word until she went quite close, when she heard her say, "Comfort
ye, comfort ye My people," several times.
"Aunt Victoria, are you ill?" Beth said. The old lady looked at her
with dim eyes, then stretched out her hand to her. Beth clasped it. It
was deadly cold.
"I shall light the fire," Beth said with determination, "and I shall
make you some tea to ease your cough. You won't mind if I take the
candle a moment to go downstairs and get the things?"
Beth was practical enough now. The vision and the dream had passed,
and she was wide awake again, using her eyes, and requiring a candle.
Before she went downstairs she fetched extra pillows from the spare
room, and propped Aunt Victoria up more comfortably. Then she set to
work to light the fire, and soon had the kettle boiling. As the room
began to warm, Aunt Victoria revived a little, and smiled on Beth for
the first time with perfect recognition. Beth had made her some tea,
and was giving it to her in spoonfuls.
"Is that nice?" she said.
"Delicious," the old lady answered.
The gale was all on the other side of the house, so that here in front
it was comparatively quiet; besides, the wind was dying away as the
day approached. Beth put the teacup down when Aunt Victoria had taken
the little she could, and sat on the side of the bed, holding the old
lady's hand, and gazing at her intently; and, as she watched, she saw
a strange change come over her. The darkness was fading from the sky
and the light from Aunt Victoria's face. Beth had seen nothing like
this before, and yet she had no doubt of what was coming. She had
known it for days and days; she seemed to have known it always.
"Shall I go for mamma?" she asked at last.
The old lady shook her head.
Beth felt strangely benumbed. She thought of rousing Harriet to fetch
the doctor, but she could not move. All feeling was suspended except
the sensation of waiting. This lasted awhile, then a lump began to
mount in her throat, and she had to gulp it down several times.
"Poor little girl," Aunt Victoria muttered, looking at her in her
kindly way. Beth melted. "Oh, what shall I do?" she whimpered, "you
have been so very good to me. You've taught me all the good I know,
and I have done nothing for you--nothing but bother you. But I love
you, Aunt Victoria; stay, do stay. I want to do everything you would
like."
The old lady faintly pressed her hand, then made a last great effort
to speak. "Bless you, Beth, my dear child," she managed to say with
great difficulty. "Be comforted; you have helped me more than you
know. In my sore need, I was not left comfortless. Neither will you
be. May the Lord bless you, and keep you always. Amen."
Her head sank upon her breast. She seemed to settle down in the bed as
if her weight had suddenly grown greater.
The sombre dawn had broken by this time, and by its light Beth saw the
shadow of death come creeping over the delicate patient face.
"Aunt Victoria," she gasped breathlessly, like one in haste to deliver
a message before it is too late, "shall I say '_Lift up your heads, O
ye gates?_' That was the first thing you taught me."
The old lady spoke no more, but Beth saw that she understood. The
faint flicker of a smile, a pleased expression, came into her face and
settled there. Beth, feeling the full solemnity of the moment, got
down from the bed, and stood beside it, holding fast still to the kind
old hand that would nevermore caress or help her, as if she could keep
the dear one near her by clinging to her.
"_Who shall ascend into the hill of the Lord? or who shall stand in
His holy place?_" she began, with a strange vibration in her voice.
"_He that hath clean hands, and a pure heart; who hath not lifted up
his soul to vanity; nor sworn deceitfully. He shall receive the
blessing from the Lord, and righteousness from the God of his
salvation. Lift up your heads, O ye gates; and be ye lifted up, ye
everlasting doors, and the King of glory shall come in._" Beth's
voice broke here, but with a great effort she began again fervently:
"_Lift up your heads, O ye gates; even lift them up, ye everlasting
doors----_"
There she stopped, for at the words the dear good kind old lady, with
a gentle sigh, as of relief, passed from the scene of her sufferings,
out of this interval of time, into the measureless eternity.
CHAPTER XXIV
Aunt Victoria Bench died of failure of the heart, the medical man
decided; and, he might have added, if the feelings of the family had
not had to be considered, that the disease was accelerated by
privation and cold.
For days after the event, Beth was not to be roused. She would sit in
the tenantless room by the hour together, with the dear old aunt's
great Bible on her knee open at some favourite passage, thinking of
all that ought to have been done to save her, and suffering the ache
and rage of the helpless who would certainly have done all that could
have been done had they had their way. Again and again her mother
fetched her down to the dining-room where there was a fire, and tried
to reason with her, or scolded her for her persistent grief when
reasoning produced no effect.
"You must begin your lessons again, Beth," she said to her at last one
morning in despair. "Giving you a holiday is doing you no good at
all."
Beth went upstairs without a word, and brought down the old aunt's
French books, and sat at the dining-table with one of them open before
her; but the sight of it recalled the happy summer days in the bright
little parlour looking out on the trees and flowers, and the dear old
lady with her delicate face sitting at the end of the table placidly
knitting while Beth prepared her lesson, and the tears welled up in
her eyes once more, and fell on the yellow pages.
"Beth," said her mother emphatically, "you must not go on like this.
Why are you so selfish? Don't _I_ feel it too? Yet I control myself."
"You don't feel it as I do," Beth answered doggedly. "She was not so
much to you when she was here, how can you miss her so much now she
has gone?"
"But you have others to love," Mrs. Caldwell remonstrated. "She was
not your nearest relation."
"No, but she was the dearest," Beth replied. "I may have others to
love, but she was the one who loved me. She never said I had no
affection for any one; she never said I was selfish and thought of
nothing but my own interests. If she had to find fault with me, she
did it so that she made me want to be better. She was never unkind,
she was never unjust, and now I've lost her, I have no one."
"It is your own fault then," said Mrs. Caldwell, apt as usual to say
the kind of thing with which fatuous parents torment the genius-child.
"You are so determined not to be like other people that nobody can
stand you."
"I am not determined to be unlike other people," Beth exclaimed,
turning crimson with rage and pain. "I want to be like everybody else,
and I _am_ like everybody else. And I am always ready to care for
people too, if they will let me. It isn't my fault if they don't like
me."
"It _is_ your fault," Mrs. Caldwell rejoined. "You have an unhappy
knack of separating yourself from every one. Look at your Uncle James.
He can hardly tolerate you."
"He's a fool, so that doesn't matter," said Beth, who always dealt
summarily with Uncle James. "I can't tolerate him. But you can't say I
separate myself from Aunt Grace Mary. She likes me, and she's kind;
but she's silly, and when I'm with her any time it makes me yawn. Is
_that_ my fault? And did I separate myself from Kitty? Did I separate
myself from papa? Do I separate myself from Count Bartahlinsky? Have I