The Beth Book
"Are you sure," said Miss Clifford, "that the others do not shun you
for some reason or other?"
"One of them wished to be my mother," Beth rejoined, "but I did not
care about it."
"But you cannot be happy always alone like that," Miss Clifford
observed.
Beth was silent.
Miss Clifford looked at her earnestly for a little, then she shook her
head.
"I tell you what I will do if you like, Miss Clifford," Beth said upon
reflection. "I will form a family of my own."
Miss Clifford smiled. "Ah! I see you are ambitious," she said, "but,
my dear child, a sixth girl can't expect to have that kind of
influence."
"It is not ambition," Beth answered, "for I shall feel it no
distinction, only a great bother. Nevertheless, I will do it to show
you that I am not shunned; and to please you, as you do not like me to
wander alone."
A week or two later Beth appeared in the garden with six of the worst
girls in the school clinging to her, fascinated by her marvellous
talk.
Miss Clifford sent for her again. "I am sorry to see you in such
company," she said. "Those girls are all older than you are, and they
will lead you into mischief."
"On the contrary, Miss Clifford," Beth replied, "I shall keep them out
of mischief. Not one of them has had a bad mark this week."
Then Miss Clifford sent for Miss Smallwood, the mistress of the sixth.
"What do you make of Beth Caldwell?" she asked.
"I can't make anything of her," Miss Smallwood answered. "I think she
tries, but she does not seem able to keep up with the other girls at
all. She seldom knows a lesson or does a sum correctly. I sometimes
think she ought to be in the eighth. But then occasionally she shows a
knowledge far beyond her years; not a knowledge of school work, but of
books and life."
"How about her themes?"
"I don't know what to think of them; they are too good. But she
declares emphatically that she does them all out of her own head."
"What sort of temper has she?"
"Queer, like everything else about her. Not unamiable, you know, but
irritable at times, and she has days of deep depression, and moments
of extreme elation."
"Ah!" Miss Clifford ejaculated, and then reflected a little. "Well, be
patient with her," she said at last. "If she hasn't exceptional
ability of some kind, I am no judge of girls; but she is evidently
unaccustomed to school work, and is suffering from the routine and
restraint, after being allowed to run wild. She should have been sent
here years ago."
CHAPTER XXXI
From the foregoing it will be seen that Beth made her mark upon the
school from the day of her arrival in the way of getting herself
observed and talked about. She was set down as queer to begin with,
and when lessons began both girls and mistresses decided that she was
stupid; and queer she remained to the end in the estimation of those
who had no better word to express it, but with regard to her
stupidity there soon began to be differences of opinion.
At preparation one evening she talked instead of doing her work, and
gradually all the girls about her had stopped to listen.
"Gracious!" Beth exclaimed at last, "the bell will go directly, and
I've not done a sum. Show me how to work them, Rosa."
"Oh, bother!" Rosa rejoined. "Find out for yourself! My theme was
turned, and I've got to do it again."
"Look here," said Beth, "if you'll do my sums, I'll do your theme now,
and your thorough bass on Thursday."
"I wish to goodness you wouldn't talk, Beth!" Agnes Stewart exclaimed.
"We shall all get bad marks to-morrow."
"Then why do you listen?" Beth retorted.
"I can't help it," Agnes grumbled. "You fascinate me. I should have
thought you were clever if I had only heard you talk, and not known
what a duffer you are at your lessons."
"Well, she's not a duffer at thorough bass anyway," Rosa put in. "She
only began this term, and she's a long way ahead even of some of the
first. Old Tom's given her a little book to herself."
"I began thorough bass with the rest of you," Beth observed. "It's the
only thing we started fair in. You are years ahead of me in all the
other work."
The girls reflected upon this for a little.
"And you can write themes," Rosa finally asseverated.
"Oh, that's nothing," Beth protested. "Themes are easy enough. I could
write them for the whole school."
"Well, that's no reason why you should put your nose in your cup every
time you drink," Lucy Black, the sharpest shrimp of a girl in the
class, said, grinning.
"I never did such a thing in my life," Beth exclaimed, turning
crimson. "You'll say I eat audibly next."
"No, you don't do that," Rosa said solemnly; "but you do put your nose
in your cup."
The colour flickered on Beth's sensitive cheek, and she shrank into
herself.
"There, don't tease her!" Mary Wright, the eldest, stupidest, and most
motherly girl in the school, exclaimed. "How can you drink without
putting your nose in your cup, stupid?"
Then Beth saw it and smiled, greatly relieved. This venerable
pleasantry was a sign that she had been taken once for all into the
good graces of her schoolmates. The girls who were liked were usually
nicknamed and always chaffed; the rest were treated with different
degrees of politeness, the dockyard girls, as the lowest of all, being
called miss, even by the teachers.
On Thursday evenings the girls in the fifth and sixth were allowed to
do fancy work for an hour while a story-book was read aloud to them,
either by Miss Smallwood or one of themselves when her voice was
tired. The book was always either childish or dull, generally both,
and Beth, who had been accustomed to Scott, Dickens, and Thackeray,
grew restive under the infliction. One evening when she had twice been
reprimanded for yawning aggressively, she exclaimed, "Well, Miss
Smallwood, it is such silly stuff! Why, I could tell you a better
story myself, and make it up as I go on."
"Then begin at once and tell it," said Miss Smallwood, glancing round
at the girls, who smiled derisively, thinking that Beth would have to
excuse herself and thereby tacitly acknowledge that she had been
boasting. To their surprise, however, Beth took the request seriously,
settled herself in her chair, folded her hands, and, with her eyes
roaming about the room as if she were picking up the details from the
walls, the floor, the ceiling, and all it contained, started without
hesitation. It was the romantic story of a haunted house on a great
rocky promontory, and the freshness and sound of the sea pervaded it.
The girls went on with their work for a little, but by degrees first
one and then another stopped, and just sat staring at Beth, while
gravity settled on every face as the interest deepened.
Suddenly the bell rang, and the story was not finished.
"Oh dear!" Miss Smallwood exclaimed, "it is very fascinating, Beth;
but I really am afraid I ought not to have allowed you to tell it. I
had no idea--I must speak to Miss Clifford."
The fame of this wonderful story spread through the school, and the
next half-holiday the first-class girls sent to ask Beth to go to
their room and repeat it; but Beth was not in the mood, and answered
their messenger tragically:--
"'Twas not for this I left my father's home!
Go, tell your class, that Vashti will not come."
"Vashti's a little beast, I think," the head girl observed when the
message was delivered.
Miss Clifford also sent for Beth, and requested her to repeat the
story, that she might judge for herself if she should be allowed to go
on with it; and Beth repeated it, being constrained; but the recital
was so wearisome that Miss Clifford dismissed her before she was
half-way through, with leave to finish it if anybody cared to hear it.
When Thursday came, the girls and Miss Smallwood cared very much to
hear it, and Beth, stimulated by their clamours, went on without a
break for the whole hour, and ended with a description of a shipwreck,
which was so vivid that the whole class was shaken with awe, and sat
silent for a perceptible time after she stopped.
Beth could rarely be persuaded to repeat this performance; but from
that time her standing was unique, both with girls and mistresses, a
fact, however, of which she herself was totally unaware. She felt her
backwardness in school work and nothing else, and petitioned God
incessantly to help her with her lessons, and get her put up; and put
up she was regularly until she reached the third, when she was among
the elder girls. She was never able to do the work properly of any
class she was in, however, and her class mistresses were always
against her being put up, but Miss Clifford insisted on it.
Beth was never anything but miserable at school. The dull routine of
the place pressed heavily upon her, and everything she had to do was
irksome. The other girls accommodated themselves more or less
successfully to the circumstances of their lives; but Beth in herself
was always at war with her surroundings, and her busy brain teemed
with ingenious devices to vary the monotony. The confinement, want of
relaxation, and of proper physical training, very soon told upon her
health and spirits, as indeed they did upon the greater number of the
girls, who suffered unnecessarily in various ways. Beth very soon had
to have an extra hour in bed in the morning, a cup of soup at eleven
o'clock, a tonic three times a day, and a slice of thick bread and
butter with a glass of stout on going to bed; such things were not
stinted during Miss Clifford's administration; but it was a case of
treating effects which all the time were being renewed by causes that
might and ought to have been removed, but were let alone.
St. Catherine's Mansion was regulated on a system of exemplary
dulness. There is a certain dowager still extant who considers it
absurd to provide amusement for people of inferior station. All people
who earn their living are people of inferior station to her; she has
never heard of such a thing as the dignity of labour. Because many of
the girls at St. Catherine's were orphans without means, and would
therefore have to earn their own living as governesses when their
education was finished, the dowager-persons who interested themselves
in the management of the school had used their influence strenuously
to make the life there as much of a punishment as possible. "You
cannot be too strict with girls in their position," was what they
continually averred, their own position by birth being in no way
better, and in some instances not so good, as that of the girls whom
they were depriving of every innocent pleasure natural to their age
and necessary for the good of their health and spirits. They were not
allowed to learn dancing; they had no outdoor games at all, not even
croquet--nothing whatever to exhilarate them and develop them
physically except an hour's "deportment," the very mildest kind of
calisthenics, in the big class-room once a fortnight, and the daily
making of their little beds. For the rest, monotonous walks up and
down the garden-paths in small parties, or about the dreary roads two
and two in long lines, was their only exercise, and even in this they
were restricted to such a severe propriety of demeanour that it almost
seemed as if the object were to teach them to move without betraying
the fact that they had legs. The consequence of all this restraint was
a low state of vitality among the girls, and the outbreak of morbid
phases that sometimes went right through the school. Beth, as might
have been expected, was one of the first to be caught by anything of
this kind; and she arrived, by way of her own emotions, at the cause
of a great deal that was a mystery to older people, and also thought
out the cure eventually; but she suffered a great deal in the process