The Beth Book
so there were water-colours on the wall. Her mother smilingly tried to
explain, but Beth stamped, and stuck to her point; the water accounted
for the water-colours.
On the way home, Beth found a new interest in life. The mill had been
burnt down, and they went to see the smouldering embers, and Beth
smelt fire for the first time. The miller's family had been burnt out,
and were sheltering in a shed. One little boy had his fingers all
crumpled up from the fire. Beth's benevolence awoke. She was all
sympathetic excitement, and wanted to do something for somebody. The
miller's wife was lying on a mattress on the floor. She had a little
baby, a new one, a pudgy red-looking thing. Mrs. Caldwell fed the
other children with bread-and-milk, and Beth offered to teach them
their letters.
Mrs. Caldwell laughed at her: "_You_ teach them their letters!" she
exclaimed. "You had better learn your own properly." And Mildred also
jeered. Beth subsided, crimson with shame at being thus lowered in
everybody's estimation. She was deficient in self-esteem, and required
to be encouraged. Praise merely gave her confidence; but her mother
never would praise her. She brought all her children up on the same
plan, regardless of their different dispositions. It made Mildred vain
to praise her, and therefore Beth must not be praised; and so her
mother checked her mental growth again and again instead of helping
her to develop it. "It's no use your trying to do that, Beth, you
can't," she would say, when Beth would have done it easily, if only
she had been assured that she could.
Beth had a strange dream that night after the fire, which made a
lasting impression upon her. Dorman's Isle was a green expanse, flat
as a table, and covered with the short grass that grows by the sea. At
high tide it was surrounded by water, but when the tide was low, it
rested on great grey, rugged rocks, as the lid of a box rests upon its
sides. Between the grey of the rocks and the green of the grass there
was a fringe of sea-pinks. That night she dreamt that she was under
Dorman's Isle, and it was a great bare cave, not very high, and
lighted by torches which people held in their hands. There were a
number of people, and they were all members of her own family,
ancestors in the dresses of their day, distant relations--numbers of
strange people whom she had never heard of; as well as her own father
and mother, brothers and sisters. She knew she was under Dorman's
Isle, but she knew also that it was the dark space beneath the stage
of a theatre. When she entered, the rest of the family were already
assembled; but they none of them spoke to each other, and the doors
kept opening and shutting, and the people seemed to melt away, until
at last only three or four remained, and they were just going. She saw
the shine on the paint of the door-posts, and the smoke of the
torches, as they let themselves out. Then they had all gone, and left
her alone in a cave full of smoke. Vainly she struggled to follow
them, the doors were fast, the smoke was smothering her, and in the
agony of a last effort to escape she awoke.
In after days, when Beth began to think, she used to wonder how it was
she knew those people were her ancestors, and that the place was like
any part of a theatre. She had never heard either of ancestors or
theatres at that time. Was it recollection? Or is there some more
perfect power to know than the intellect--a power lying latent in the
whole race, which will eventually come into possession of it; but with
which, at present, only some few rare beings are perfectly endowed.
Beth had the sensation of having been nearer to something in her
infancy than she ever was again--nearer to knowing what it is the
trees whisper--what the murmur means, the all-pervading murmur which
sounds incessantly when everything is hushed, as at night; nearer to
the "arcane" of that evening on the Castle Hill when she first felt
her kinship with nature, and burst into song. It may have been
hereditary memory, a knowledge of things transmitted to her by her
ancestors along with their features, virtues, and vices; but, at any
rate, she herself was sure that she possessed a power of some kind in
her infancy which gradually lapsed as her intellectual faculties
developed. She was conscious that the senses had come between her and
some mysterious joy which was not of the senses, but of the spirit.
There lingered what seemed to be the recollection of a condition
anterior to this, a condition of which no tongue can tell, which is
not to be put into words, or made evident to those who have no
recollection; but which some will comprehend by the mere allusion to
it. All her life long Beth preserved a half consciousness of this
something--something which eluded her--something from which she
gradually drifted further away as she grew older--some sort of vision
which opened up fresh tracts to her; but whether of country, or
whether of thought, she could not say. Only, when it came to her, all
was immeasurable about her; and she was above--above in a great calm
through which she moved without any sort of effort that is known to
us; she just thought it, and was there; while humanity dwindled away
into insignificance below.
One other strange vision she had which she never forgot. With her
intellect, she believed it to have been a dream, but her further
faculty always insisted that it was a recollection. She was with a
large company in an indescribable, hollow space, bare of all
furnishments because none were required; and into this space there
came a great commotion, bright light and smoke, without heat or sense
of suffocation. Then she was alone, making for an aperture; struggling
and striving with pain of spirit to gain it; and when she had found
it, she shot through, and awoke in the world. She awoke with a
terrible sense of desolation upon her, and with the consciousness of
having traversed infinite space at infinite speed in an interval of
time which her mortal mind could not measure.
All through life, when she was in possession of her further faculty,
and perceived by that means--which was only at fitful intervals,
doubtless because of unfavourable circumstances and surroundings--she
was calm, strong, and confident. She looked upon life as from a
height, viewing it both in detail and as a whole. But when she had
only her intellect to rely upon, all was uncertain, and she became
weak, vacillating, and dependent. So that she appeared to be a
singular mixture of weakness and strength, courage and cowardice,
faith and distrust; and just what she would do depended very much on
what was expected of her, or what influence she was under, and also on
some sudden impulse which no one, herself included, could have
anticipated.
CHAPTER IV
Up to this time, Beth's reminiscences jerk along from incident to
incident, but now there come the order and sequence of an eventful
period, perfectly recollected. The date is fixed by a change of
residence. Her father, who was a commander in the coastguard, was
transferred on promotion from the north of Ireland to another
appointment in the wild west, and Beth was just entering upon her
seventh year when they moved. Captain Caldwell went on in advance to
take up his appointment, and Jim accompanied him; Mildred, Beth, and
Bernadine, the youngest, who had arrived two years after Beth, being
left to follow with their mother. The elder children had been sent to
England to be educated. In their father's absence Mildred and
Bernadine were transferred to their mother's room, Jane Nettles and
Bridget, the sulky, had disappeared, and Kitty slept in the nursery
with Beth. Beth had grown too long for her crib, but still had to
sleep in it, and her legs were cramped at night and often ached
because she could not stretch them out, and the pain kept her awake.
"Mamma, my legs do ache in bed," she said one day.
"Beth, you really _are_ a whiny child, you always have a grievance,"
her mother complained.
"But, mamma, they _do_ ache."
"Well, it's only growing pains," Mrs. Caldwell replied with a satisfied
air, as if to name the trouble were to ease it. And so Beth's legs ached
on unrelieved, and, when they kept her awake, Kitty became the object of
her contemplation. The sides of the crib were like the seat of a
cane-bottomed chair, and Beth had enlarged one of the holes by fidgeting
at it with her fingers. This was her look-out station. A night-light had
been conceded to her nervousness at the instance of Dr. Gottley, when it
became a regular thing for her to wake in the dark out of one of her
vivid dreams, and shriek because she could not see where she was. The
usual beating and shaking had been tried to cure her of her nonsense,
but this sensible treatment only seemed to make her worse, she was such
a tiresome child, till at last, when Dr. Gottley threatened serious
consequences, the light was allowed, a dim little float that burned on
an inch of oil in a glass of water, and made Kitty look so funny when
she came up to bed. Kitty began to undress, and at the same time to
mutter her prayers, as soon as she got into the room; and sometimes she
would go down on her knees and beat her breast, and sigh and groan to
the Blessed Virgin, beseeching her to help her. Beth thought at first
she was in great distress, and pitied her, but after a time she believed
that Kitty was enjoying herself, perhaps because she also had begun to
enjoy these exercises. Beth had been taught to say her Protestant
prayers, but not made to feel that she was addressing them to any
particular personality that appealed to her imagination, as Kitty's
Blessed Lady did.
"Kitty, Kitty," she cried one night, sitting up in her crib, with a
great dry sob. "Tell _me_ how to do it. I want to speak to her too."
Kitty, who was on her knees on the floor, with her rosary clasped in
her hands, her arms and shoulders bare, and her dark hair hanging down
her back, looked up, considerably startled: "Holy Mother! how you
frightened me!" she exclaimed. "Go to sleep."
"But I _want_ to speak to her," Beth persisted.
"Arrah, be good now, Miss Beth," Kitty coaxed, still on her knees.
"I'll be good if you'll tell me what to say," Beth bargained.
Kitty rose from her knees, went to the side of the crib, and looked
down at the child.
"What do ye want to say to her at all?" she asked.
"I don't know," Beth answered. "I just want to speak to her. I just
want to say, 'Holy Mother, come close, I love you. Stay by me all
night long, and when the daylight comes don't forget me.' How would
you say that, Kitty?"
"Bless your purty eyes, darlint!" said Kitty, "just say it that way
every time. It couldn't be better said, not by the praste himself. An'
if the Blessed Mother ever hears anything from this world," she added
in an undertone, "she'll hear that. But turn over now, an' go to
sleep, honey. See! I'll stand here till ye do, and sing to you!"
Beth turned over on her left side with her face to the wall, and
settled herself to sleep contentedly, while Kitty stood beside her,
patting her shoulder gently, and crooning in a low sweet voice--
"Look down, O Mother Mary,
From thy bright throne above;
Send down upon thy children
One holy glance of love!
And if a heart so tender
With pity flows not o'er,
Then turn, O Mother Mary,
And smile on me no more."
As Beth listened her little heart expanded, and presently the Blessed
Virgin stood beside her bed, a heavenly vision, like Kitty, with dark
hair growing low on her forehead and hanging down her back, blue eyes,
and an earnest, guileless face. Beth's little mouth, drooping with
dissatisfaction ordinarily, curled up at the corners, and so,