The Beth Book
of acquiring her special knowledge of the subject. She was especially
troubled by her old malady--depression of spirits. Sometimes, on a
summer evening, when all the classes were at preparation, and the
whole great house was still, a mistress would begin to practise in one
of the music-rooms, and Beth would be carried away by the music, so
that work was impossible. One evening, when this happened, she sat,
with a very sad face, looking out on the river. Pleasure-boats were
gliding up and down; a gay party went by, dancing on the deck of a
luxurious barge to the music of a string-band; a young man skimmed the
surface in a skiff, another punted two girls along; and people walked
on the banks or sat about under the trees, and children played--and
they were all free! Suddenly Beth burst into tears. Miss Smallwood
questioned her. Was she ill? had she any pain? had any one been unkind
to her? No? What was the matter then? Nothing; she was just miserable!
"Beth, don't be so silly," Miss Smallwood remonstrated. "A great girl
like you, crying for nothing! It is positively childish."
The other girls stole glances at her and looked grave. At the
beginning of the term they would not have sympathised perhaps; but
this was the middle, and many of them were in much the same mood
themselves.
When the bell rang, and the recreation hour began, they got out their
little bits of fancy-work, and such dull childish books as they were
allowed, and broke up into groups. Beth was soon surrounded by the
cleverer girls in the class.
"I sympathise with you, Beth," said Janey North, a red-haired Irish
girl, "for I felt like it myself, I did indeed."
"Will the holidays never be here?" sighed Rosa Bird.
"I can't think why I stay at all," said Beth. "I hate it--I hate it
all the time."
"But how could one get away?" said Janey.
"Only by being ill," Agnes Stewart answered darkly. She was a delicate
girl, and from that time she starved herself resolutely, until she was
so wasted that Miss Clifford in despair sent her home. Another girl
was seized with total deafness suddenly, and had also to go; the
change brought her hearing back in a very short time; and some of the
dockyard girls received urgent summonses from dying relations, and
were allowed to go to them. They always returned the brighter for the
experience.
One day, after the weather became cold, a girl appeared in class
wrapped up in a shawl, and with her head all drawn down to one side.
Her neck was stiff, and she could not straighten it. She was sent to
the infirmary. The girls thought her lucky. For it was warm there, and
nurse was kind, and sang delightful songs. She would be able to do
fancy-work, too, and read as much as she liked, and would not have to
get up till she had had her breakfast and the fire was lighted, and
need not trouble about lessons at all--a stiff neck was a very small
drawback to the delights of such a change.
Next day another girl's neck was stiff. Miss Smallwood searched for a
draught, but did not succeed in finding one. That evening at prayers
one of the girls in the first appeared in a shawl with her head on one
side and a white worn face; and next day there was another case from
the third and fourth. So it was evident that there was something like
an epidemic going through the school; but the doctor had never seen
one of the kind before, and was at a loss to account for it. The cases
were all exactly alike: stiff neck, with the head drawn down to one
side, accompanied by feverishness, and followed by severe prostration.
Beth sat with a stolid countenance, and stared solemnly at every girl
that was attacked, as if she were studying her case. Then, one
morning, she came down in a shawl herself, with her head on one side
and a very white face. Nurse marched her off at once to the infirmary,
and put her in a bed beside the fire, and Beth, as she coiled herself
up, and realised that she need not worry about lessons, or rush off to
practise when the bell rang, or go out to walk up and down in the
garden till she hated every pebble on the path, heaved a great sigh of
relief and fell asleep. When she awoke the doctor was feeling her
pulse.
"She's very low," he said. "Is she a delicate girl naturally?"
"She looked strong enough when she came to school," nurse answered;
"but she soon went off, as so many of them do."
"The loss of vitality amongst them is really extraordinary," the
doctor observed. "Give her port wine and beef-tea. Don't keep her in
bed too much, but don't hurry her up. Rest and relief from lessons is
the great thing."
Some healthy pleasure to vary the monotonous routine, some liberty of
action and something to look forward to, would have been better; but
nobody thought of that.
How many of those necks were really stiff beyond the will of the
sufferer to move it, no one will ever know; but when it occurred to
Beth to straighten her own one day, she found no difficulty.
CHAPTER XXXII
When Beth was moved into the upper school, she came under the direct
influence of Miss Crow, the English mistress of the third and fourth,
who had been educated at St. Catherine's herself, and was an ardent
disciple of Miss Clifford's. Beth, although predisposed to pietism,
had not been sensibly influenced by Miss Clifford's teaching
heretofore; now, however, she attached herself to Miss Crow, who began
at once to take a special interest in her spiritual welfare. She
encouraged Beth to sit and walk with her when she was on duty, and
invited her to her room during recreation in order to talk to her
earnestly on the subject of salvation, or to read to her and expound
portions of Scripture, fine passages from religious books, and
beautiful hymns. Some of the hymns she took the trouble to copy out
for Beth's help and comfort when they were specially appropriate to
the needs of her nature, such as "Calm me, my God, and keep me calm,"
or specially suited to her case, like "Call me! and I will answer,
gladly singing!" Beth responded readily to her kindness, and very soon
became a convert to her views; but she did not stop there, for it was
not in Beth's nature to rest content with her own conversion while
there were so many others still sitting in darkness who might be
brought to the light. No sooner was she convinced herself than she
began to proselytise among the other girls, and in a short time her
eloquence and force of character attracted a following from all parts
of the school. Miss Crow told Miss Clifford that she spoke like one
inspired, and high hopes were entertained of the work which they
somewhat prematurely concluded she was destined to do. Unfortunately
Beth's fervent faith received a check at a critical time when it was
highly important to have kept it well nourished--that is to say, when
she was being prepared for confirmation. It happened when Miss Crow
was hearing the girls their Scripture lesson one morning, the subject
being the escape of the children of Israel from Egypt, and the
destruction of Pharaoh's hosts in the Red Sea.
"I know a man who says the whole of that account has been garbled,"
Beth remarked in a dreamy way, meaning Count Gustav Bartahlinsky, but
not thinking much of what she was saying.
Miss Crow nearly dropped the Bible, so greatly was she startled and
shocked by the announcement.
"Beth!" she exclaimed, directly the class was over and she could speak
to Beth privately, "how could you be so wicked as to say that anything
in Holy Scripture is a garbled account?"
"I said I knew a man who said so," Beth answered, surprised that so
simple a remark should have created such consternation.
But Miss Crow saw in her attitude a dangerous tendency to scepticism,
and expressed strong condemnation of any one who presumed to do other
than accept Holy Writ in blind unquestioning faith. She talked to Beth
with horror about the ungodly men who cast doubt on the unity of the
Bible, called its geology in question, and even ventured to correct
its chronology by the light of vain modern scientific discoveries; and
Beth shocked her again by the questions she asked, and the intelligent
interest she showed in the subject. She told Miss Crow that Count
Gustav had also said that the Old Testament was bad religion and worse
history, but she did not know that other people had thought so too.
Whereupon Miss Crow went to Miss Clifford and reported Beth's attitude
as something too serious for her to deal with alone, and Miss Clifford
sent for Beth and talked to her long and earnestly. She told her that
it was absurd for a girl of her age to call in question the teaching
of the best and greatest men that ever lived, which somehow reminded
Beth of the many mistakes made by the best and greatest men that ever
lived, of their differences of opinion and undignified squabbles, the
instances of one man discovering and suffering for a truth which the
rest refused to accept, and the constant modification, alteration, and
rejection by one generation of teaching which had been upheld by
another with brutality and bloodshed,--instances of all of which were
notorious enough even to be known at a girls' school. Beth said very
little, however; but she determined to read the Bible through from
beginning to end, and see for herself if she could detect any grounds
for the mischief-making doubts and controversies she had been hearing
about. She began in full faith, but was brought up short at the very
outset by the discrepancy between the first and second chapters of
Genesis, which she perceived for the first time. She went steadily on,
however, until she had finished the Book of Job, and then she paused
in revolt. She could not reconcile the dreadful experiment which had
entailed unspeakable suffering and loss irreparable upon a good man
with any attribute she had been accustomed to revere in her deity.
There might be some explanation to excuse this game of god and devil,
but until she knew the excuse she would vow no adhesion to a power
whose conduct on that occasion seemed contrary to every canon of
justice and mercy. She did not belong to the servile age when men,
forgetting their manhood, fawned on patrons for what they could get,
and cringingly accepted favours from the dirtiest hands. Even her God
must be worthy to help her, worthy to be loved, good as well as great.
The God who connived at the torment of Job could not be the God of her
salvation.
Beth had spoken casually in class. She had never questioned her
religion, and would not have done so now if the remark had been
allowed to pass; but the fuss that was made about it, and the severity
with which she was rebuked, by putting her mind into a critical
attitude, had the effect of concentrating her attention on the
subject; so that it was the very precautions which were taken to check
her supposed scepticism that first made her sceptical. The immediate
consequence was that she gave up preaching and refused to be
confirmed. Miss Clifford, Miss Crow, and the chaplain argued,
expostulated, and punished in vain. It was the first case of the kind
that had occurred in the school, and Beth was treated as a criminal;
but she felt more like a martyr, and was not to be moved. She did not
try to make partisans for herself, however; on the contrary, she
deserted her family as well as her congregation, and took to wandering
about alone again; but she was not unhappy. Her old faith had gone, it
is true, but it had left the way prepared for a new one. She did not
believe in the God of Job--because she was sure that there must be a
better God--that was all.
From this time, however, her imagination rode rampant once more over
everything. The vision and the dream were upon her. All wholesome
interest in her work was over. There was an old piano in the