The Beth Book
Your hands are not nearly so coarse as they used to be, and they would
really be quite nice if you attended to them properly. All your
father's people had good hands and feet. I must see to your gloves and
boots. I don't know what your waist is going to be, but you shall have
some good stays. A fine shape goes a long way. With your prospects you
really ought to make a good match, so do not slouch about any more as
if you had no self-respect at all. You can really do a great deal to
make yourself attractive in appearance. Your Uncle William Caldwell
had a very ugly nose, but he pinched it, and pinched it every day to
get it into shape, until at last he made it quite a good one."
Bernadine came into the room in time to hear this story, and was so
impressed by it that she tried the same experiment on her own nose
without asking if it were ugly or not, and pinched it and rubbed it so
diligently that by the time it was formed she had thickened it and
changed it from a good ordinary nose into something quite original.
This was the kind of thing that happened to ladies in the days when
true womanliness consisted in knowing nothing accurately, and always
taking advice. Efforts to improve themselves in some such way were
common enough among marriageable maidens, and their mothers helped
them to the best of their ability with equally happy hints. Because
small feet were a beauty, therefore feet already in perfect proportion
must be squeezed to reduce their size till they were all deformed; and
because slenderness was considered elegant, therefore naturally
well-formed women must compress their bodies till they looked like
cylinders or hour-glasses, and lace till their noses swelled and their
hair fell out. Never having heard of proportion, all their ambition
was to reduce themselves to something less than they were designed to
be. Those were the days when women had "no nonsense about them, sir, I
tell you," none of those new-fangled ideas about education and that.
It was a new notion to Beth that she could do anything to make herself
attractive, and she took a solemn interest in it. She listened with
absolute faith to all that her mother said on the subject, and
determined to be high-principled and make the most of herself. When
her mother talked to her in this genial friendly way, instead of
carping at her or ignoring her, Beth's heart expanded and she was
ready to do anything to please her. Lessons on the new method went on
without friction. Beth never suspected that her mother was unequal to
the task of educating her in any true sense of the word; her mother
never suspected it, neither did anybody else; and Beth had it all her
own way. If she were idle, her mother excused her; if she brought a
lesson only half-learnt, her mother prompted her all through; if she
asked questions, her mother answered them pleasantly; so that they got
on very well together, and everybody was satisfied--especially Jim,
who was benefiting by Aunt Victoria's bequest to the extent of being
able to keep up with the best of his bar-loafing acquaintances.
CHAPTER XXV
When she did what Aunt Victoria approved, Beth felt that she was
making Aunt Victoria happy. Her dead were never far from her, never
beyond recall. She conquered her pride for Aunt Victoria's sake, and
began to go out again with her mother for the morning walk that winter
unasked; but Mrs. Caldwell seemed indifferent to the attention. She
let Beth walk beside her day after day, but remained absorbed in her
own reflections, and made no effort to talk to Beth and take her out
of herself; so that Beth very soon found the duty intolerably irksome.
It irritated her, too, when she caught her mother smiling to herself,
and on asking what was amusing her, Mrs. Caldwell replied, still
smiling, "Never _you_ mind." With Beth's temperament it was not
possible that the sense of duty would long survive such snubs.
Gradually she began to wander off by herself again, leaving her mother
pacing up and down the particular sheltered terrace overlooking the
sea on which she always walked at that hour, and Bernadine playing
about the cliffs or the desolate shore.
The whole place was desolate and melancholy at that time of the year.
The wind-swept streets were generally deserted, and the few people who
ventured out looked cold and miserable in their winter wraps. When a
gleam of sunshine enlivened the sky, the sailors would stand at the
top of the steps that led down on to the pier, with their hands in
their trousers-pockets, chewing tobacco, and straining their eyes out
seaward as if they were watching for something special; and Beth would
stand there among them, and look out too--out, far beyond the range of
their mental vision, eastwards, to summer lands whence the swallows
came, where the soft air was perfumed with flowers, and there was
brightness and warmth and ease, and the sea itself, so full of
complaint down below there, raged no more, neither lamented, but
sang. And there Aunt Victoria would be, sitting somewhere out of doors
under the trees, with good things, books and work and fruit and
flowers, piled up on a little table beside her, and every wish of her
heart gratified, looking serenely happy, and smiling and nodding and
beckoning to Beth. But following fast upon the vision, Aunt Victoria
would be beside her in the bitter wind, wearing her old brown dress
with white spots that was far too thin, and making believe that she
did not shiver; then they had returned from the morning walk, and Aunt
Victoria was pausing a moment at the bottom of the stairs to look up,
as if measuring her strength and the distance, before she took hold of
the bannister and began to mount wearily, but never once trusting
herself to glance towards Bernadine and the bread, lest something
should be seen in her face which she chose to conceal. From that
vision Beth would fly down the steps to the sands, and escape it in a
healthy race with the turgid waves that came cresting in and broke on
the barren shore.
Then one day, suddenly, as it seemed, a bird sang. The winter was
over, spring was upon the land again, and Beth looked up and smiled.
The old pear-tree in the little garden at the back was a white wonder
of blossom, and, in front, in the orchard opposite, the apple-trees
blushed with a tinge of pink. Beth, seeing them one morning very early
from her bed in Aunt Victoria's room, arose at once, rejoicing, and
threw the window wide open. Beth might have used the same word to
express the good and the beautiful, as the Greeks did, so inseparably
were the two associated in her mind. At this stage of her development
she felt very literally--
"The heavens are telling the glory of God,
The wonder of His works displays the firmament."
"O Lord, how wondrous are Thy works," she chanted to herself softly,
as she gazed, awe-stricken, at the loveliness of the rose-tinged foam
on the fruit-trees, and her whole being was thrilled with gratitude
for the beauty of earth. She took deep draughts of the sweet morning
air, and, like the Indian devotee, she breathed a sacred word with
every breath. But passive ecstasy was not enough for Beth. Her fine
feelings strove for expression always in some fine act, and as she
stood at the window she made good resolutions. Her life should be
ordered to worthy purposes from morning till night. She would in
future begin the day by getting up to greet the dawn in an ecstasy of
devotion. Not a minute later than daybreak would do for her. All
Beth's efforts aimed at an extreme.
She idled most of that day away in contemplation of her project, and
she was as dilatory and troublesome as she could be, doing nothing
she ought to have done, because her mind was so full of all the things
she was going to do. What she feared was that she would never be able
to wake herself in time, and she went to bed at a preposterously early
hour, and sat long in her night-dress, thinking how to manage it. At
last it occurred to her that if she tied her great toe to the bed-post
with a piece of string, it would give her a jerk when she moved, and
so awake her.
The contrivance answered only too well. She could not sleep for a long
time, and when at last she dropped off, she was almost immediately
awakened by a pitiless jerk from the string. She had Aunt Victoria's
old watch under her pillow, and lighted a match to see the time. It
was only twelve. When would the day break? She turned, and tossed, and
fidgeted. The string on her toe was very uncomfortable, but nothing
would have induced her to be so weak as to take it off. One, two,
three, she heard the church-clock strike, but it was still pitch dark.
Then she dozed off again, but in a minute, as it seemed to her, she
was re-aroused by the string. She gave a great weary sigh and opened
her eyes. It was all grey daylight in the room.
Beth was out of bed as soon as she could get the string off her toe.
The water was very cold, and she shivered and yawned and stretched
over it, but washed herself with exaggerated conscientiousness all the
same, then huddled on her clothes, and stood awhile, not knowing quite
what to do next. She had slept with the window open, and now she drew
up the blind. Under the leaden sky the apple-trees showed no tinge of
colour, and it was as if white sheets had been spread out over them
for the night. Beth thought of curl-papers and rooms all covered up
from the dust when Harriet was sweeping, and felt no enthusiasm. She
was on the west side of the house, and could not therefore see the sun
rise; but she must see the sunrise--sunrise--sunrise. She had never
seen the sunrise. The sea was east. It would rise over the sea. The
sea at sunrise! The very thought of it took her breath away. She put
on her things and slipped into the acting-room. Her mother took the
front-door key up to her room with her when she went to bed at night,
so that the only way out was by the acting-room window. Beth swung
herself round the bar, crept cautiously down the tiles to the pump,
jumped to the ground, then ran up the entry, and let herself out by
the back-gate into the street. There she was seized upon by a great
feeling of freedom. She threw up her arms, filled her lungs with a
deep breath, and ran. There was not a soul to be seen. The town was
hers!
She made for a lonely spot on the cliff, where a stream fell in a
cataract on to the sand, and there was a rustic seat with a lovely
view of the bay. Beth dropped on to the seat out of breath and looked
curiously about her. The tide was high. The water, smooth, sullen,
swollen and weary, broke on the shore in waves so small that it seemed
as if the sea, tired of its endless task, were doing dispiritedly as
little as it dared, and murmuring at that. The curving cliffs on the
left looked like white curtains, closely drawn. The low grey sky was
unbroken by cloud or rift except low down on the horizon, where it had
risen like a blind drawn up a little to admit the light. It was a
melancholy prospect, and Beth shivered and sighed in sympathy. Then a
sparrow cheeped somewhere behind her, and another bird in the hedge
softly fluted a little roulade. Beth looked round to see what it was,
and at that moment the light brightened as if it had been suddenly
turned up. She looked at the sea again. The rift in the leaden sky had
lengthened and widened, and the first pale primrose of the dawn showed
beyond. A faint flush followed, and then it seemed as if the night sky
slowly rolled itself up and was put away, leaving a floor of silver,
deepening to lilac, for the first bright beam to disport itself upon.
Then the sea smiled, and the weariness of it, back and forth, back and
forth, passed into animation. Its smooth surface became diapered with