The Beth Book
and they only thought what they were told to think about people and
things, and admired what they were told to admire. In this Beth
differed from them widely, for she began by having tastes of her own.
She did not believe that they enjoyed Homer a bit more than she did;
but the right pose was to pretend that they did; so they posed and
pretended, according to order, and Beth posed and pretended too, just
to see what would come of it.
It was a young tutor in charge of a reading-party who helped Beth with
the Latin grammar. He managed to ingratiate himself with Mrs.
Caldwell, and came often to the house; and finally he began to teach
Beth Latin at her own request, and with the consent of her mother. The
lessons had not gone on very long, however, before he tried to
insinuate into his teaching some of the kind of sophistries which
another tutor had imposed by way of moral philosophy on Rousseau's
Madame de Warens in her girlhood, to her undoing. This was all new to
Beth, and she listened with great interest; but she failed utterly to
see why not believing in a God should make it right and proper for her
to embrace the tutor: so the lessons ended abruptly. Beth profited
largely by the acquaintance, however,--not so much at the time,
perhaps, as afterwards, when she was older, and had gained knowledge
enough of men of various kinds to enable her to compare and reflect.
It was her first introduction to the commonplace cleverness of the
academic mind, the mere acquisitive faculty which lives on pillage,
originates nothing itself, and, as a rule, fails to understand, let
alone appreciate, originality in others. The young tutor's ambition
was to be one of a shining literary clique of extraordinary cheapness
which had just then begun to be formed. The taint of a flippant wit
was common to all its members, and their assurance was unbounded. They
undertook to extinguish anybody with a few fine phrases; and, in their
conceited irreverence, they even attacked eternal principles, the
sources of the best inspiration of all ages, and pronounced sentence
upon them. Repute of a kind they gained, but it was by glib
falsifications of all that is noble in sentiment, thought, and action,
all that is good and true. It was the contraction of her own heart,
the chill and dulness that settled upon her when she was with this
man, as compared to the glow and expansion, the release of her finer
faculties, which she had always experienced when under the influence
of Aunt Victoria's simple goodness, that first put Beth in the way of
observing how inferior in force and charm mere intellect is to
spiritual power, and how soon it bores, even when brilliant, if
unaccompanied by other endowments, qualities of heart and soul, such
as constancy, loyalty, truthfulness, and that scrupulous honesty of
action which answers to what is expected as well as to what is known
of us.
Beth played very diligently at learning during this experiment, but
only played for a time. The mind in process of forming itself
involuntarily rejects all that is unnecessary, and that kind of
knowledge was not for her. It opened up no prospect of pleasure in
itself. All she cared to know was what it felt like to have mastered
it; and that she arrived at by resolving herself into a lady of great
attainments, who talked altogether about things she had learnt, but
had nothing in her mind besides. A mind with nothing else in it, in
Beth's sense of the word, was to Beth what plainness is to beauty; so,
while many of her contemporaries were stultifying themselves with
Greek and Latin ingenuities, she pursued the cultivation of that in
herself which is beyond our ordinary apprehension, that which is more
potent than knowledge, more fertilising to the mind--that by which
knowledge is converted from a fallow field into a fruitful garden.
Altogether, apart from her special subject, she learnt only enough of
anything to express herself; but it was extraordinary how aptly she
utilised all that was necessary for her purpose, and how invariably
she found what she wanted--if found be the right word; for it was
rather as if information were flashed into her mind from some outside
agency at critical times when she could not possibly have done without
it.
One sad consequence of her separation from Alfred, and the strange
things she did and dreamed for distraction in the unrest of her mind,
was a change in her constitution. Her first fine flush of health was
over, the equability of her temper was disturbed, and she became
subject to hysterical outbursts of garrulity, to fits of moody
silence, to apparently causeless paroxysms of laughter or tears; and
she was always anxious. She had real cause for anxiety, however, for,
in her efforts to realise her romance to Charlotte's satisfaction, she
had run up little bills all over the place. What would happen when
they were presented, as they certainly would be sooner or later, she
dared not think; but the dread of the moment preyed upon her mind to
such an extent that, whenever she heard a knock at the door, she
entreated God to grant that it might not be a bill. And even when
there were no knocks, she went on entreating to be spared, and worked
herself into such a chronic fever of worry that she was worn to a
shadow, and developed a racking cough which gave her no peace.
Just at this time, too, the whole place began to be scandalised by her
vagaries, her mysterious expeditions on the big brown horse, and her
constant appearance in public with a coterie of young men about her.
At a time when anything unconventional in a girl was clear evidence of
vice to all the men and most of the women who knew of it, Beth's
reputation was bound to suffer, and it became so bad at last that Dr.
Hardy forbade Charlotte to associate with her. Charlotte told her with
tears, and begged to be allowed to meet her in the Secret Service of
Humanity as usual; but Beth refused. She said it was too dangerous
just then, they must wait; the truth being that she was sick of the
Secret Service of Humanity, of Charlotte, of everything and everybody
that prevented her hearing when there was a knock at the door, and
praying to the Lord that it might not be a bill.
The secret society was practically dissolved by this time, and very
soon afterwards the catastrophe Beth had been dreading occurred, and
wrought a great change in her life. It happened one day when she was
not at home. Aunt Grace Mary was so alarmed by her cough and the
delicacy of her appearance that she had braved Uncle James and carried
her off to stay with her at Fairholm for a change. Once she was away
from the sound of the knocks, Beth suffered less, and began to revive
and be herself again to the extent of taking Aunt Grace Mary into her
confidence boldly.
"Beth, Beth, Beth!" said that poor good lady tenderly, "you naughty
girl, how could you! Running in debt with nothing to pay; why, it
isn't honest!"
"So _I_ think," said Beth in cordial agreement, taking herself aside
from her own acts, as it were, and considering them impartially. "Help
me out of this scrape, Aunt Grace Mary, and I'll never get into such
another."
"But how much do you owe, Beth dear?"
"I'm sure I don't know," Beth answered. "Pounds for Tom Briggs alone."
"Who's _he_?" was Aunt Grace Mary's horrified exclamation.
"Oh, only the horse--a dark bay with black points. I rode him a lot,
and oh! it _was_ nice! It was like poetry, like living it, you know,
like being a poem one's self. And I'm glad I did it. If I should die
for it, I couldn't regret it. And I shouldn't wonder if I did die, for
I feel as if those knocks had fairly knocked me to bits."
"Nonsense, Beth, you silly child, don't talk like that," said Aunt
Grace Mary. "What else do you owe?"
"Oh, then there's Mrs. Andrews, the confectioner's, bill."
"Confectioner's!" Aunt Grace Mary exclaimed. "O Beth! I never thought
you were greedy."
"Well, I don't think I am," Beth answered temperately. "I've been very
hungry, though. But I never touched any of those good things myself. I
only got them for Charlotte when she had heavy work to do for the
Secret Service of Humanity."
"The _what_?" Aunt Grace Mary demanded.
"The game we played. Then there's the hairdresser's bill, that must be
pretty big. I had to get curls and plaits and combs and things,
besides having my hair dressed for entertainments to which I was
obliged to go----"
"Beth! _are_ you mad?" Aunt Grace Mary interrupted. "You've never been
to an entertainment in your life."
"No," Beth answered casually, "but I've played at going to no end of a
lot."
"Well, this is the most extraordinary game I ever heard of!"
"But it was such an exciting game," Beth pleaded with a sigh.
"But, my dear child, such a reckless, unprincipled game!"
"But you don't think of that at the time," Beth assured her. "It's all
real and right then. We----"
But here the colloquy was interrupted by the arrival of Mrs. Caldwell
in a state of distraction with the hairdresser's bill in her hand.
Aunt Grace Mary made her sit down, and patted her shoulder soothingly.
Uncle James was out. Beth, greatly relieved, looked on with interest.
She knew that the worst was over.
"Never mind, Caroline," Aunt Grace Mary said cheerfully. "Beth has
just been telling me all about it. Confession is good for the saints,
you know, or the soul, or something; so that's cheering. She has been
very naughty, very naughty indeed, but she is very sorry. She
sincerely regrets. Hairdresser, did you say? Oh, give it to me! Now,
do give it to me, _there's_ a dear! And we won't have another word
about it. Beth, you bad girl, be good, and say you repent."
"Say it!" Beth ejaculated, coughing. "Look at me, and you'll see it,
Aunt Grace Mary. I've been repenting myself to pieces for months."
"Well, dear; well, dear," Aunt Grace Mary rejoined, beaming blandly,
"that will do; that's enough, I'm sure. Mamma forgives you, so we'll
have no more about it."
The hairdresser's bill was the only one Mrs. Caldwell ever heard of,
for Aunt Grace Mary got the use of her pony carriage next day, by
telling Uncle James her mamma had sent Caroline to say she
particularly wished her to take Beth to see her. Uncle James, to whom
any whim of Lady Benyon's was wisdom, ordered the carriage for them
himself; and, as they drove off together, Aunt Grace Mary remarked to
Beth, "I think I managed that very cleverly; don't you?" Naturally
estimable women are forced into habits of dissimulation by the
unreason of the tyrant in authority in many families; and Aunt Grace
Mary was one of the victims. She had been obliged to resort to these
small deceits for so many years, that all she felt about them now was
a sort of mild triumph when they were successful. "I mean to go and
see mamma, you know, so it won't be any story," she added.
She went with Beth first, however, to the various shops where Beth
owed money, and paid her debts; and Beth was so overcome by her
generosity, and so anxious to prove her repentance, that she borrowed
sixpence more from her, and went straightway to the hairdresser's, and
had all her pretty hair cropped off close like a boy's, by way of
atonement. When she appeared, Lady Benyon burst out laughing; but her
mother was even more seriously annoyed than she had been by the
hairdresser's bill. Beth's hair had added considerably to her market
value in Mrs. Caldwell's estimation. She would not have put it so
coarsely, but that was what her feeling on the subject amounted to.
"What is to be done with such a child?" she exclaimed in despair.
"Send her to school," Aunt Grace Mary gasped.
"She would be expelled in a month," Mrs. Caldwell averred.
"Possibly; but it would be worth the trial," Aunt Grace Mary rejoined
in her breathless way.