The Beth Book
depths on the farther side, where the healthy happy sea-creatures
disported themselves, and seaweeds of wondrous colours waved in
fantastic forms. The water lapped up and up and up the rocks, rising
with a sobbing sound, and bringing fresh airs with it that fanned her
face, and caused her to draw in her breath involuntarily, and inhale
long deep draughts with delight. As the water went out, bright runnels
were left where rivers had been, and miniature bays became sheltered
coves, paved with polished pebbles or purple mussels, and every little
sandy space was ribbed with solid waves where the busy lob-worms soon
began to send up their ropy castings. Beyond the break of the water
the silver sea sloped up to the horizon, and on it, rocking gently,
far out, a few cobles were scattered, with rich red sails all set
ready, waiting for a breeze. It was an exquisite scene, remote from
all wail of human feeling, and strangely tranquillising. Gradually it
gained upon Beth. Her bosom heaved with the heaving water
rhythmically, and she lost herself in contemplation of sea and sky
scape. Before she had been many minutes prone upon the farthest rock,
the vision and the dream were upon her. That other self of hers
unfurled its wings, and she floated off, revelling in an ecstasy of
gentle motion. Beyond the sea-line were palaces with terraced gardens,
white palaces against which grass and trees showed glossy green; and
there she wandered among the flowers, and waited. She was waiting for
something that did not happen, for some one who did not come.
Suddenly she sat up on her rock. The sun was sinking behind her, the
silver sea shone iridescent, the tide had turned. But where were the
boys? She looked about her. Out on the sands beyond the rocks on her
right, a man was wading in the water with a net, shrimping. Close at
hand another was gathering mussels for bait, and a gentleman was
walking towards her over the slippery rocks, balancing himself as
though he found it difficult to keep his feet; but these were the only
people in sight. The gentleman was a stranger. He wore a dark-blue
suit, with a shirt of wonderful whiteness, and Beth could not help
noticing how altogether well-dressed he was--too well-dressed for
climbing on the rocks. She noticed his dress particularly, because
well-dressed men were rare in Rainharbour. He was tall, with glossy
black hair inclining to curl, slight whiskers and moustache, blue
eyes, and a bright complexion. A woman with as much colour would have
been accused of painting; in him it gave to some people the idea of
superabundant health, to others it suggested a phthisical tendency.
Beth looked at him as he approached as she looked at everybody and
everything with interest--nothing escaped her; but he made no great
impression upon her. She thought of him principally as a man with a
watch; and when he was near enough she asked him what time it was. He
told her, looking hard at her, and smiling pleasantly as he returned
his watch to his pocket. She noticed that his teeth were good, but too
far apart, a defect which struck her as unpleasant.
"Why, it is quite late!" she exclaimed, forgetting to thank him in her
surprise.
"Are you all alone here?" he asked.
"I was waiting for some friends," she answered, "but they have not
come. They must have been detained."
She began to walk back as she spoke, and the gentleman turned too
perforce, for the tide was close upon them.
"Let me help you," he said, holding out his hand, which was noticeably
white and well-shaped; "the rocks are rough and slippery."
"I can manage, thank you," Beth answered. "I am accustomed to them."
Beth involuntarily resolved herself into a young lady the moment she
addressed this man, and spoke now with the self-possession of one
accustomed to courtesies. Even at that age her soft cultivated voice
and easy assurance of manner, and above all her laugh, which was not
the silvery laugh of fiction, but the soundless laugh of good society,
marked the class to which she belonged; and as he stumbled along
beside her, her new acquaintance wondered how it happened that she was
at once so well-bred and so shabbily dressed. He began to question her
guardedly.
"Do you know Rainharbour well?" he asked.
"I live here," Beth answered.
"Then I suppose you know every one in the place," he pursued.
"Oh, no," she rejoined. "I know very few people, except my own, of
course."
"Which is considered the principal family here?" he asked.
"The Benyon family is the biggest and the wickedest, I should think,"
she answered casually.
"But I meant the most important," he explained, smiling.
"I don't know," she said. "Uncle James Patten thinks that next to
himself the Benyons are. He married one of them. He's an awful snob."
"And what is his position?"
"I don't know--he's a landowner; that's his estate over there," and
she nodded towards Fairholm.
"Indeed! How far does it extend?"
"From the sea right up to the hills there, and a little way beyond."
They had left the rocks by this time, and were toiling up the steep
road into the town. When they reached the top, Beth exclaimed
abruptly, "I am late! I must fly!" and leaving her companion without
further ceremony, turned down a side street and ran home.
When she got in, she wondered what had become of Alfred and Dicksie,
and she was conscious of a curious sort of suspense, which, however,
did not amount to anxiety. It was as if she were waiting and listening
for something she expected to hear, which would explain in words what
she held already inarticulate in some secret recess of her being--held
in suspense and felt, but had not yet apprehended in the region of
thought. There are people who collect and hold in themselves some
knowledge of contemporary events as the air collects and holds
moisture; it may be that we all do, but only one here and there
becomes aware of the fact. As the impalpable moisture in the air
changes to palpable rain so does this vague cognisance become a
comprehensible revelation by being resolved into a shower of words on
occasion by some process psychically analogous to the condensation of
moisture in the air. It is a natural phenomenon known to babes like
Beth, but ill-observed, and not at all explained, because man has gone
such a little way beyond the bogey of the supernatural in psychical
matters that he is still befogged, and makes up opinions on the
subject like a divine when miracles are in question, instead of
searching for information like an honest philosopher, whose glory it
is, not to prove himself right, but to discover the truth.
Beth did not sleep much that night. She recalled the sigh and sob and
freshness of the sea, and caught her breath again as if the cool water
were still washing up and up and up towards her. She saw the silver
surface, too, stretching on to those shining palaces, where grass and
tree showed vivid green against white walls, and flowers stood still
on airless terraces, shedding strange perfumes. And she also saw her
new acquaintance coming towards her, balancing himself on the
slippery, wrack-grown rocks, in boots and things that were much too
good for the purpose; but Alfred and Dicksie never appeared, and were
not to be found of her imagination. They were nowhere.
She expected to see them in church next day--at least, so she assured
herself, and then was surprised to find that there was no sort of
certainty in herself behind the assurance, although they had always
hitherto been in church. "Something is different, somehow," she
thought, and the phrase became a kind of accompaniment to all her
thoughts.
Dicksie was the first person she saw when she entered the church, but
Alfred was not there, and he did not come. She went up the field-path
after the service, and waited about for Dicksie. When Alfred was
detained himself, Dicksie usually came to explain; but that day he did
not appear, and they were neither of them at the evening service. Beth
could not understand it, but she was more puzzled than perturbed.
She was reading French to her mother next morning by way of a lesson,
when they both happened to look up and see Mrs. Richardson, the
vicar's worn-out wife, passing the window. The next moment there was a
knock at the door.
"Can she be coming here?" Mrs. Caldwell exclaimed.
"What should she come here for?" Beth rejoined, her heart palpitating.
"Oh dear, oh dear! this is just what I expected!" Mrs. Caldwell
declared. "And if only she had come last week, I should have known
nothing about it."
"You don't know much as it is," Beth observed, without, however,
seeing why that should make any difference.
The next moment the vicar's wife was ushered in with a wink by
Harriet. Mrs. Caldwell and Beth both rose to receive her haughtily.
She had entered with assurance, but that left her the moment she faced
them, and she became exceedingly nervous. She was surprised at the
ease and grace of these shabbily-dressed ladies, and the refinement of
their surroundings--the design of the furniture, the colour of
curtains and carpet, the china, the books, the pictures, all of which
bespoke tastes and habits not common in the parish.
"I must apologise for this intrusion," she began nervously. "I have a
most unpleasant task to perform. My husband requested me to come----"
"Why didn't he come himself?" Beth asked blandly. "Why does he make
you do the disagreeable part of his duties?"
The vicar's wife raised her meek eyes and gazed at Beth. She had not
anticipated this sort of reception from poor parishioners, and was
completely nonplussed. She was startled, too, by Beth's last question,
for she belonged to the days of brave unhonoured endurance, when
women, meekly allowing themselves to be classed with children and
idiots, exacted no respect, and received none--no woman, decent or
otherwise, being safe from insult in the public streets; when they
were expected to do difficult and dirty work for their husbands, such
as canvassing at elections, without acknowledgment, their wit and
capacity being traded upon without scruple to obtain from men the
votes which they were not deemed wise and worthy enough to have
themselves; the days when they gave all and received nothing in
return, save doles of bread and contempt, varied by such caresses as a
good dog gets when his master is in the mood. That was the day before
woman began to question the wisdom and goodness of man, his justice
and generosity, his right to make a virtue of wallowing when he chose
to wallow, and his disinterestedness and discretion when he also
arrogated to himself the power to order all things. Mrs. Richardson
had no more thought of questioning the beauty of her husband's
decisions than she had thought of questioning the logic and mercy of
her God, and this first flash of the new spirit of inquiry from Beth's
bright wit came upon her with a shock at first--one of those shocks to
the mind which is as the strength of wine to the exhausted body, that
checks the breath a moment, then rouses and stimulates.
"May I sit down?" she gasped, then dropped into a chair. "He might
have come himself, to be sure," she muttered. "I have more than enough
to do that is disagreeable in my own womanly sphere without being
required to meddle in parish matters."
Yet when her husband had said to her: "It is a very disagreeable
business indeed this. I think I'll get you to go. You'll manage it
with so much more tact than a man," the poor lady, unaccustomed to
compliments, was gratified. Now, however, thanks to Beth, she had been
nearer to making an acute observation than she had ever been in her
life before; she all but perceived that the woman's sphere is never
home exclusively when man can make use of her for his own purposes