The Beth Book
farther shore to be away from everybody. She wanted to hear what the
little waves were saying to the sand as they rippled over it. It was
another grey day, close and still, and the murmur of the calm sea
threw her at once into a dreamy state, full of pleasurable excitement.
She hid herself in a spot most soothing from its apparent remoteness,
a sandy cove from which, because of the projecting cliffs on either
hand, neither town nor coast could be seen, but only the sea and sky.
Although the grey was uniform enough to make it impossible to tell
where cloud met water on the horizon, it was not dull, but luminous
with the sunshine it enfolded, and full of colour in fine gradations
as Beth beheld it. She sat a long time on the warm dry sand, with her
chin resting on her knees, and her hands clasped round them, not
gazing with seeing eyes nor listening with open ears, but
apprehending through her further faculty the great harmony of Nature
of which she herself was one of the triumphant notes. At that moment
she tasted life at its best and fullest--life all ease and grace and
beauty, without regret or longing--perfect life in that she wanted
nothing more. But she rose at last, and, still gazing at the sea,
slowly unclasped her waistbelt, and let it fall on the sand at her
feet; then she took her hat off, her dress, her boots and stockings,
everything, and stood, ivory-white, with bright brown wavy hair,
against the lilac greyness under the tall dark cliffs. The little
waves had called her, coming up closer and closer, and fascinating
her, until, yielding to their allurements, she went in amongst them,
and floated on them, or lay her length in the shallows, letting them
ripple over her, and make merry about her, the gladdest girl alive,
yet with the wrapt impassive face of a devotee whose ecstasy is apart
from all that acts on mere flesh and makes expression. All through
life Beth had her moments, and they were generally such as this, when
her higher self was near upon release from its fetters, and she arose
an interval towards oneness with the Eternal.
But on this occasion she was surprised in her happy solitude. A troop
of what Mrs. Caldwell called "common girls" came suddenly round the
cliff into her sheltered nook, with shouts of laughter, also bent on
bathing. Beth plunged in deeper to cover herself the moment they
appeared; but they did not expect her to have anything on, and her
modesty was lost upon them.
"How's the water?" they shouted.
"Delicious," she answered, glad to find them friendly.
They undressed as they came along, and were very soon, all of them,
playing about her, ducking and splashing each other, and Beth also,
including her sociably in their game. And Beth, as was her wont,
responded so cordially that she was very soon heading the
manoeuvres.
"We shall all be ill if we stay in any longer," she said at last. "I
shall take one more dip and go and dress. Let's all take hands and dip
in a row."
They did so, and then, still hand in hand, scampered up on to the
beach.
"My!" one of them exclaimed, when they came to their clothes and had
broken the line,--"My! ain't _she_ nice!"
Then all the other girls stood and stared at Beth, whose fine limbs
and satin-smooth white skin, so different in colour and texture from
their own, drew from them the most candid expressions of admiration.
Beth, covered with confusion, hurried on a garment all wet as she was,
for she had no towel; and then, in order to distract their attention
from her body, she began to display her mind.
"Eh, I have had a good time!" one of the girls exclaimed. "Let's come
again often."
"Let us form a secret society," said Beth, "and I will be your leader,
and we'll have a watchword and a sign; and when the water is right,
I'll send the word round, and then we'll start out unobserved, and
meet here, and bathe in secret."
"My! that would be fine!" the girls agreed.
"But that's not all," said Beth, standing with her chemise only half
on, oblivious of everything now but her subject. "It would be much
better than that. There would be much more in it. We could meet in the
fields by moonlight, and I would drill you, and show you a great many
things, all for the Secret Service of Humanity. You don't know what
we're doing! We're going to make the world just like heaven, and
everybody will be good and beautiful, and have enough of everything,
and we shall all be happy, because nobody will care to be happy unless
everybody else has been made so. But it will be very hard work to
bring it about. The wicked people are doing all they can to prevent
us, and the devil himself is fighting against us. We shall conquer,
however; and those who are first in the fight will be first for the
glory!"
The girls, some standing, some sitting, most of them with nothing on,
remained motionless while she spoke, not understanding much, yet so
moved by the power of her personality, that when she exclaimed, "Well,
what do you say, girls? will you join?" they all exclaimed with
enthusiasm, "We will! we will!"
And then they made haste to dress as if the millennium could be
hurried here by the rate at which they put on their clothes. Beth then
and there composed a terrible oath, binding them to secrecy and
obedience, and swore them all in solemnly; then she chose one for her
orderly, who was to take round the word on occasion; and they were all
to meet again in the fields behind the church on Saturday at eight
o'clock.
But in the meantime, not a word!
Beth made Charlotte captain of the band; and drills, bathing rites,
and other mysteries were regularly conducted, the girls being bound
together more securely by the fascination of Beth's discourses, and
the continual interest she managed to inspire, than by any respect
they had for an oath. Beth's interest in them extended to the smallest
detail of their lives. She knew which would be absent from drill
because it was washing-day, and which was weak for want of food; and
she resumed her poaching habits--only on Uncle James Patten's estate,
of course--and, having beguiled a gunsmith into letting her have an
air-gun on credit, she managed to snare and shoot birds enough to
relieve their necessities to an appreciable extent. She never let any
one into the secret of those supplies, and the mystery added greatly
to her credit with the girls.
That season some friends of the Benyons brought their boys to stay at
Rainharbour for the holidays, and Beth varied her other pursuits by
rambling about with them, Lady Benyon having seen to it that she made
their acquaintance legitimately, for the old lady shrewdly suspected
that Beth was already beginning to attract attention. From her post of
observation in the window she had seen young men turn in the street
and look back at the slender girl, in spite of her short petticoats,
with more interest than many a maturer figure aroused; and she had
heard that Beth Caldwell was already much discussed. Beth's brother
Jim, when he came home that summer, also began to introduce her to his
young men friends in the neighbourhood, so that very soon Beth had
quite a little court about her on the pier when the band played. She
liked the boys, and the young men she found an absorbing study; but
not one of them touched her heart. Her acquaintance with Alfred had
made her fastidious. He had had sense enough to respect her, and his
companionship had given her a fine foretaste of the love that is
ennobling, the love that makes for high ideals of character and
conduct, for fine purpose, spiritual power, and intellectual
development, the one kind worth cultivating. In these more
sophisticated youths she found nothing soul-sustaining. She
philandered with some of them up to the point where comparisons become
inevitable, and, so long as they met her in a spirit of frank
camaraderie, it was agreeable enough; but when, with their commonplace
minds, they presumed to be sentimental, they became intolerable. Still
the glow was there in her breast often and often, and would be
momentarily directed towards one and another; but the brightness of it
only showed the defects in each; and so she remained in love with love
alone, and the power of passion in her, thwarted, was transmuted into
mental energy.
But Beth learnt a good deal from her young men that summer--learnt her
own power, for one thing, when she found that she could twist the
whole lot of them round her little finger if she chose. The thing
about them that interested her most, however, was their point of view.
She found one trait common to all of them when they talked to her, and
that was a certain assumption of superiority which impressed her very
much at first, so that she was prepared to accept their opinions as
confidently as they gave them; and they always had one ready to give
on no matter what subject. Beth, perceiving that this superiority was
not innate, tried to discover how it was acquired that she might
cultivate it. Gathering from their attitude towards her ignorance that
this superiority rested somehow on a knowledge of the Latin grammar,
she hunted up an old one of her brother's and opened it with awe, so
much seemed to depend on it. Verbs and declensions came easily enough
to her, however. The construction of the language was puzzling at the
outset; but, with a little help, she soon discovered that even in that
there was nothing occult. Any industrious, persevering person could
learn a language, she decided; and then she made more observations.
She discovered that, in the estimation of men, feminine attributes are
all inferior to masculine attributes. Any evidence of reasoning
capacity in a woman they held to be abnormal, and they denied that
women were ever logical. They had to allow that women's intuition was
often accurate, but it was inferior, nevertheless, they maintained, to
man's uncertain reason; and such qualities as were undeniable they
managed to discount, as, for instance, in the matter of endurance. If
women were long enduring, they said, it was not because their
fortitude was greater, but because they were less sensitive to
suffering, and so, in point of fact, suffered less than men would
under the circumstances.
This persistent endeavour to exalt themselves by lowering women struck
Beth as mean, and made her thoughtful. She began by respecting their
masculine minds as much as they did themselves; but then came a doubt
if they were any larger and more capable than the minds of women would
be if they were properly trained and developed; and she began to dip
into the books they prided themselves on having read, to see if they
were past her comprehension. She studied Pope's translation of the
Iliad and Odyssey indoors, and she also took the little volume out
under her arm; but this was a pose, for she could not read out of
doors, there were always so many other interests to occupy her
attention--birds and beasts, men and women, trees and flowers, land
and water; all much more entrancing than the Iliad or Odyssey. Long
years afterwards she returned to these old-world works with keen
appreciation, and wondered at her early self; but when she read them
first, she took their meanings too literally, and soon wearied of
warlike heroes, however great a number of their fellow-creatures they
might slay at a time, and of chattel heroines, however beautiful,
which was all that Homer conveyed to her; not did she find herself
elated by her knowledge of their exploits. She noticed, however, that
the acquisition of such knowledge imposed upon the boys, and gained
her a reputation for cleverness which made the young university prigs
think it worth their while to talk to her. They had failed to discover
her natural powers because there was no one to tell them she had any,