The Beth Book
afterwards, and filled her with disgust; so that she could not eat it.
She had a great aversion to bread and butter too for a long time, but
that she got over. It would have been too great an inconvenience to
have a child dislike its staple food, and in all probability she was
forced to conquer her aversion, and afterwards she grew to like bread
and butter; but still, if by any chance the circumstances which caused
her dislike to it recurred to her when she was eating a piece, she was
obliged to stop. The incident which set up the association happened
one evening when her father and mother were out. Beth was alone in the
dining-room eating bread and butter, and Towie, the cat, came into the
room with a mouse in her mouth. The mouse was alive, and Towie let it
run a little way, and then pounced down upon it, then gave it a pat to
make it run again. Beth, lying on her stomach on the floor, watching
these proceedings, naturally also became a cat with a mouse. At last
Towie began to eat her mouse, beginning with its head, which it
crushed. Beth, eating her bread and butter in imitation, saw the white
brains, but felt no disgust at the moment. The next time she had bread
and butter, however, she thought of the mouse's brains and felt sick;
and always afterwards the same association of ideas was liable to
recur to her with the same result.
But even the description of anything horrifying affected her in this
way. One day when she was growing up her mother told her at dinner
that she had been on the pier that morning and had seen the body of a
man, all discoloured and swollen from being in the water a long time,
towed into the harbour by a fishing boat. Beth listened and asked
questions, as she always did on these occasions, with the deepest
interest. She was taking soup strongly flavoured with catsup at the
moment, and the story in no way interfered with her appetite; but the
next time she tried catsup, and ever afterwards, she perceived that
swollen, discoloured corpse, and immediately felt nauseated. It is
curious that all these associations of ideas are disagreeable. She had
not a single pleasant one in connection with food.
CHAPTER III
All of Beth that was not eyes at this time was ears, and her brain was
as busy as a squirrel in the autumn, storing observations and
registering impressions. It does not do to trust to a child's not
understanding. It may not understand at the moment, but it will
remember all the same--all the more, perhaps, because it does not
understand; and its curiosity will help it to solve the problem. Beth
did humorous things at this time, but she had no sense of humour; she
was merely experimenting. Her big eyes looked out of an impassive face
solemnly; no one suspected the phenomenal receptivity which that
stolid mask concealed, and, because the alphabet did not interest her,
they formed a poor opinion of her intellect. The truth was that she
had no use for letters or figures. The books of nature and of life
were spread out before her, and she was conning their contents to more
purpose than any one else could have interpreted them to her in those
days. And as to arithmetic, as soon as her father began to allow her a
penny a week for pocket-money, she discovered that there were two
half-pennies in it, which was all she required to know. She also
mastered the system of debit and credit, for, when she found herself
in receipt of a regular income, and had conquered the first awe of
entering a shop and asking for things, she ran into debt. She received
the penny on Saturday, and promptly spent it in sweets, but by Monday
she wanted more, and the craving was so imperative, that when Miss
Deeble sent her down to the empty kitchen in the afternoon, she could
not blow black-beetles with any enthusiasm, and began to look about
for something else to interest her. It being summer, the window was
open, but it was rather out of her reach. She managed, however, with
the help of her stool, to climb on to the sill, and there, in front of
her, was the sea, and down below was the street--a goodish drop below
if she had stopped to think of it; but Beth dropped first and thought
afterwards, only realising the height when she had come down plump,
and looked up again to see what had happened to her, surprised at the
thud which had jarred her stomach and made her feet sting. She picked
herself up at once, however, and limped away, not heeding the hurt
much, so delightful was it to be out alone without her hat. By the
time she got to Mary Lynch's she was Jane Nettles going on an errand,
an assumption which enabled her to enter the shop at her ease.
"Good-day," she began. "Give me a ha'porth of pear-drops, and a
ha'porth of raspberry-drops, Mary Lynch, please. I'll pay you on
Saturday."
"What are you doing out alone without your hat?" Mary Lynch rejoined,
beaming upon her. "I'm afraid you're a naughty little body."
"No, I'm not," Beth answered. "It's my own money." Mary Lynch laughed,
and helped her liberally, adding some cherries to the sweets; and, to
Beth's credit be it stated, the money was duly paid, and without
regret, she being her mother at the moment, looking much relieved to
be able to settle the debt, which shows that, even by this time, Beth
had somehow become aware of money-troubles, and also that she learned
to read a countenance long before she learned to read a book.
She straggled home with the sweets in her hand, but did not eat them,
for now she was a lady going to give a party, and must await the
arrival of her guests. She did not go in by the front door for obvious
reasons, but up the entry down which the open wooden gutter-spout ran,
at a convenient height, from the house into the street. The wash-house
was covered with delicious white roses, which scented the summer
afternoon. Beth concealed her sweets in the rose-tree, and then leant
against the wall and buried her nose in one of the flowers, loving it.
The maids were in the wash-house; she heard them talking; it was all
about what he said and she said. Presently a torrent of dirty water
came pouring down the spout, mingling its disagreeable soapy smell
with that of the flowers. Beth plucked some petals from the rose she
was smelling, set them on the soapy water, and ran down the passage
beside them, until they disappeared in the drain in the street. This
delight over, she wandered into the garden. She was always on
excellent terms with all animals, and was treated by them with
singular confidence. Towie, the cat, had been missing for some time,
but now, to Beth's great joy, she suddenly appeared from Beth could
not tell where, purring loudly, and rubbing herself against Beth's
bare legs. The sun poured down upon them, and the sensation of the
cat's warm fur above her socks was delicious. Beth tried to lift her
up in her arms, but she wriggled herself out of them, and began to run
backwards and forwards between her and a gap in the hedge, until Beth
understood that she wished her to follow her through it into the next
garden. Beth did so, and the cat led her to a little warm nest where,
to Beth's wild delight, she showed her a tiny black kitten. Beth
picked it up, and carried it, followed by the cat, into the house in a
state of breathless excitement, shrieking out the news as she ran.
Beth was immediately seized upon. What was she doing at home when she
ought to have been at school? and without her hat, too! Beth had no
explanation to offer, and was hustled off to the nursery, and there
shut up for the rest of the day. She stood in the window most of the
time, a captive princess in the witch's palace, waiting for the
fairy-prince to release her, and catching flies.
The sky became overcast, and a big gun was fired. Beth's father had
something to do with the firing of big guns, and she connected this
with the gathering gloom, stories of God striking wicked people down
with thunder and lightning for their sins, and her own naughtiness,
and felt considerably awed. Presently a little boy was carried down
the street on a bed. His face looked yellow against the sheets. He
was lying flat on his back, and had a little black cap on, which was
right out of doors, but wrong in bed. He smiled up at Beth as they
carried him under the window, and she stretched out her arms to him
with infinite pity. She knew he was going to die. They all died, that
family, or had something dreadful happen to them. Jane Nettles said
there was a curse upon them, and Beth never thought of them without a
shudder. That boy's sisters both died, and one had something dreadful
happen to her, for they dug her up again, and when they opened the
coffin the corpse was all in a jelly, and every colour of the rainbow,
according to Jane Nettles. Beth believed she had been present upon the
occasion, in a grass-grown graveyard, by the wall of an old church,
beneath which steps led down into a vault. The stones of the steps
were mossy, and the sun was shining. There was a little group of
people standing round, with pale, set, solemn faces, and presently
something was brought up, and they all pressed forward to look at it.
Beth could not see what it was for the grown-up people, and never knew
whether or not the whole picture had been conjured up by her
imagination; but as there was always a foundation of fact in the
impressions of this period of her life, it is not improbable that she
really was present at the exhumation, with the curious and
indefatigable Jane Nettles.
Opposite the nursery window, on the other side of the road, was the
butcher's shop, in front of which the butcher made his shambles. Late
in the evening he brought out a board and set it on trestles, then he
brought a sheep, lifted it up by its legs and put it on its back on
the board, tied its feet, and cut its throat. Beth watched the
operation with grave interest, but no other feeling. She had been
accustomed to see it all her life.
Presently Beth's father and mother went out together, and then Beth
stole downstairs, and out to the wash-house to find the sweets in the
white rose-tree. Mildred and Jim were doing their lessons in the
dining-room, and she burst in upon them with the sweets; but Mildred
was cross, and said:
"Don't make such a noise, Beth, my head aches."
The next day was Sunday. Beth knew it by the big black bonnet which
played such a large part in her childish recollections. She had a kind
of sensation of having seen herself in it, bobbing along to church, a
sort of Kate Greenaway child, with a head out of all proportion to the
rest of her body, and feeling singularly satisfied--a feeling,
however, which was less a recollection than an experience continually
renewed, for a nice gown or bonnet was always a pleasure to her.
In church she sat in a big square pew on one side of the aisle, and on
the other side was another pew exactly like it, in which sat a young
lady whom Beth believed to be Miss Augusta Noble in the _Fairchild
Family_. Augusta Noble was very vain, and got burnt to death for
standing on tiptoe before the fire to look at herself in a new frock
in the mirror on the mantelpiece. Beth thought it a suitable end for
her, and did not pity her at all--perhaps because she went on coming
to church regularly all the same.
After the service they climbed the Castle Hill; and there was the grey
of stonework against a bright blue sky, and green of grass and trees
against the grey, and mountainous clouds of dazzling white hung over a
molten sea; and because of the beauty of it all, Beth burst into a
passion of tears.
"What is the matter with that child?" her father exclaimed
impatiently. "It's very odd other people can bring up their children
properly, Caroline, but you never seem to be able to manage yours."