The Beth Book
exceedingly, and on the next wondered why they had thought her
good-looking at all. She had the mesmeric quality which makes it
impossible to escape observation, and her personality never failed to
interest the intelligent whether it pleased them or not; but she was
only at her best in mind, manner, and appearance when her fitful
further faculty was active; then indeed she shone with a strange
loveliness, a light to be felt rather than seen, and not to be
described at all. At such times the mere physical beauty of other
women went out in her immediate neighbourhood, and was no more thought
of. It was not until she was quite mature, however, that her manner
permanently acquired that subtle indefinable quality called charm,
which is the outcome of a large tolerant nature and kindness of heart.
It was as if she did not come into full possession of her true self
until she had experienced numberless other phases of being common to
the race. Hence the apparently incongruous mixture she presented in
the earlier stages of her youth, her sluggish indifference at times,
her excesses of energy and zeal, her variations of taste.
At first, after she left school, as was inevitable, her
self-discipline was irksome enough at times, and some of the details
she shirked; but not for long, because the time which accustomed
duties should have occupied hung heavy on her hands, and she felt
dissatisfied with herself rather than relieved when she neglected
them. So by degrees her habits were formed, and in after life she
found them a very present help in time of trouble, anchors which kept
her from drifting to leeward, as she must have done but for their hold
upon her. Some of her erratic tricks were not to be cured, but they
came to be part of the day's work rather than a hindrance to it. She
saw many a sunrise, for instance, and revelled with uplifted spirit in
the beauty and wonder of the hour; but the soul that sang responsive
to the glories of the summer dawn, the colour, the freshness, the
perfume, was steeped at noon with equal energy in the book she was
studying, so that, instead of losing anything, she gained that day one
sunrise more.
When she left school Beth was fastidiously refined. She hurried over
all the hateful words and passages in the Bible, Shakespeare, or any
other book she might be reading. The words she would not even
pronounce to herself, so strongly did her delicate mind revolt from a
vile idea, and sicken at the expression of it. But, nevertheless, she
pored patiently over every book she could get that had a great
reputation, and in this way she read many not usually given to girls,
and became familiarised with certain facts of life not generally
supposed to be of soul-making material. But she took no harm. The soul
that is shaping itself to noble purpose, the growing soul, tries more
than is proper for its nourishment in its search for sustenance, but
rejects all that is unnecessary or injurious, as water creatures
without intelligence reject any unsuitable substance they collect with
their food.
Before she had been many days at home, Beth found that her mother had
made a new acquaintance, who came to the house often in a casual way
like an intimate friend. He came in on the day of her arrival after
dinner, and was introduced to Beth by her mother as "the doctor." Beth
broke into smiles, for she recognised her long-ago acquaintance of the
rocks, the doctor of her Hector-romance. And it seemed he really was a
doctor; now that was a singular coincidence! In their little
drawing-room she discovered him to be a bigger man than she had
supposed, but otherwise he was like her first impression of him,
striking because of his colouring; the red and white of his
complexion, which was unusually clear for a man, and the lightness of
his grey-green eyes being in peculiar contrast to the blackness of his
hair. She noticed again, too, that the expression of his face when he
smiled was not altogether agreeable, because his teeth were too far
apart; and she also thought his finely-formed hands would have looked
better had they not been so obtrusively white.
"But we have met before," he exclaimed when Beth acknowledged the
introduction. "You are the young lady I helped on the rocks one day,
quite a long time ago now, when you were a little girl."
"I remember," Beth said, noticing that he claimed to have helped her
on that occasion, and remembering also that she had declined his help.
"You never told me, Beth," her mother said reproachfully.
"There was really nothing to tell," he answered, coming to the rescue.
"What a day that was!" Beth observed. "Did you notice the sea? It was
the sort of sea that might make one long to be a crab to live in it.
Though a crab is not the animal that I should specially choose to be.
I long to be a cat sometimes. To be able to fluff out my fur and spit
would be such a satisfaction. There are feelings that can be expressed
in no other way. And then to be able to purr! Purring is the one sound
in nature that expresses perfect comfort and content, I think."
"Beth, don't talk nonsense," her mother said impatiently.
"Oh, it's not nonsense altogether," the doctor interposed. "It is just
cheery chatter, and that is good. Miss Beth will raise your spirits in
no time, or I'm much mistaken." He had watched Beth with gravity while
she was speaking, as one sees people watch an actress critically,
obviously marking her points, but betraying no emotion.
Mrs. Caldwell sighed heavily. "The doctor has been so good, Beth," she
said. "He has come here continually, and done more to cheer me than
anybody."
"Oh now, Mrs. Caldwell, you exaggerate," he remonstrated with a smile.
"But it's my principle, you know, to be cheery. I always say be cheery
whatever happens. It's no use crying over spilt milk!"
"A merry heart goes all the day,
Your sad tires in a mile-a,"
Beth rattled off glibly, and again the doctor considered her.
"Now that's good," he said, just as if he had never heard it before;
"and it's my meaning exactly. Don't let your spirits go down----"
"For there's many a girl, as I know well,
A-looking for you in the town,"
Beth concluded, her spirits rising uproariously.
"Beth!" her mother remonstrated, but with a smile.
"The worst of it is, the ones on the look-out are not the ones with
the good looks," the doctor observed, also smiling.
"But they are the ones with the money," Beth rejoined. "I wonder how
it is that plain girls so often have money. I suppose the
money-grubbing spirit comes out in ugliness in the female branch."
Tea was brought in, but Beth refused to take any. The doctor tried to
persuade her.
"You had better change your mind," he said. "Ladies are privileged to
change their minds."
"I know," said Beth. "Ladies are privileged to be foolish. It is
almost the only privilege men allow them. I scorn it myself. At school
we were warned to be firm when once we had said 'No, thank you.' Miss
Ella used to say that people who allowed themselves to be
over-persuaded and changed their minds lost self-control and became
self-indulgent eventually."
"Ah, that makes me think of my poor dear mother," said the doctor. "A
better and more consistent woman never lived. Once she said a thing,
you couldn't move her. She was a good mother to me! I was always her
favourite son. But, like other young fellows, I'm afraid I didn't half
appreciate her till I had lost her."
"All the same, I am sure you were all that a good son should be," Mrs.
Caldwell observed sincerely.
The doctor's eyes shone with emotion.
When he had gone, Mrs. Caldwell began to discuss him.
"He really _is_ cheery," she said, "he always raises my spirits; and I
am sure he is good and kind. Did you see how his eyes filled with
tears when he mentioned his mother? He is handsome, too, don't you
think so? Such a colour! And always so well dressed. Lady Benyon
admires him very much. But he gets on with every one, even Uncle
James! What do you think of him, Beth?"
"I think he looks neat to the point of nattiness, which is finical in
a man," Beth answered.
"Ah, that is because you are not accustomed to well-dressed men," her
mother assured her. "Here in Rainharbour you don't often see one."
"I have been in London lately," Beth observed.
"Beth," her mother began emphatically, "that is so like you! Will you
never get out of the habit of answering so? You are always in
opposition, and it is too conceited of you at your age. I did hope
they would have cured you of the trick at school; but no sooner do you
get home, than you begin again as bad as ever."
"Well, rather than displease you, mamma, I'll do my best to hold my
tongue for the future when I can't say what you want me to say," Beth
answered cheerfully. "I came home to be a comfort to you, and if I
can't be a comfort to you and express myself as well, why, I must go
unexpressed."
"Now, there you are again, Beth," Mrs. Caldwell cried peevishly. "Is
that a nice thing to say?"
Beth looked at her mother and smiled enigmatically. Then she
reflected. Then her countenance cleared.
"Mamma," she said, "your hair is much whiter than it was; but I don't
think I ever saw you look so nice. You have such a pretty complexion,
and so few wrinkles, and such even teeth! What a handsome girl you
must have been!"
Mrs. Caldwell smiled complacently, and went to bed in high good
humour. She told Bernadine, as they undressed, that she thought Beth
greatly improved.
But Beth herself lay long awake that night; tossing and troubled,
feeling far from satisfied either with herself or anybody else.
The next morning she rose early and drew up her plan of life.
CHAPTER XXXV
As that first day at home wore on, Beth was seized with an importunate
yearning to go out, and it was with difficulty that she got through
her self-appointed tasks. She thought of the sea, the shore, the
silence and solitude, which were apt to be so soothing to her dull
senses that she ceased to perceive with them, and so passed into the
possession of her farther faculty for blissful moments. She fancied
the sea was as she best loved to have it, her favourite sea, with tiny
wavelets bringing the tide in imperceptibly over the rocks, and the
long stretch of water beyond heaving gently up to the horizon, with
smooth unruffled surface shining in the sun. When she had done her
work she fared forth to the sea, to sit by it, and feel the healthy
happy freshness of it all about her, and in herself as well. She went
to the rocks. The tide was coming in. The water, however, was not
molten silver-grey, as she had imagined it, but bright dark sapphire
blue, with crisp white crests to the waves, which were merry and
tumbled. It was the sea for an active, not for a meditative mood; its
voice called to play, rather than to that prayer of the whole being
which comes of the contemplation of its calmness; it exhilarated
instead of soothing, and made her joyous as she had not been since she
went to school. She stood long on the rocks by the water's edge,
retreating as the tide advanced, watching wave after wave curve and
hollow itself and break, and curve and hollow itself and break again.
The sweet sea-breeze sang in her ears, and braced her with its
freshness, while the continuous sound of wind and water went from her
consciousness and came again with the ebb and flow of her thoughts.
But the strength and swirl of the water, its tireless force, its
incessant voices choiring on a chorus of numberless notes, invited
her, fascinated her, filled her with longing--longing to trust herself
to the waves, to lie still and let them rock her, to be borne out by
them a little way and brought back again, passive yet in ecstatic