The Beth Book
thoroughly tranquillised, she fell happily asleep, with a smile on her
lips.
Kitty bent low to look at her, and shook her head several times.
"Coaxin's better nor bating you, anyway," she muttered. "But what are
they going to do wid ye at all?" She stood up, and raised her clasped
hands. "Holy Mother, it 'ud be well maybe if ye'd take her to
yourself--just now--God forgive me for saying it."
Next morning Mrs. Caldwell was sitting at breakfast with Beth and
Mildred. Every moment she glanced at the window, and at last the
postman passed. She listened, but there was no knock, and her heart
sank.
"Beth, will you stop drumming with your spoon?" she exclaimed
irritably. As she spoke, however, Kitty came in with the expected
letter in her hand, and Mrs. Caldwell's countenance cleared: "I
thought the postman had passed," she exclaimed.
"No, m'em," Kitty rejoined. "I was standin' at the door, an' he gave
me the letter."
Mrs. Caldwell had opened it by this time, but it was very short. "How
often am I to tell you not to stand at the door, letting in the cold
air, Kitty?" she snapped.
"And how'd I sweep the steps, m'em, if you plase, when I'm not to
stand at the door?"
But Mrs. Caldwell was reading the letter, and again her countenance
cleared. "Papa wants us to go to him as soon as ever we can get
ready!" was her joyful exclamation. "And, oh, they've had such snow!
See, Mildred, here's a sketch of the chapel nearly buried."
"Oh, let me see, too," Beth cried, running round the table to look
over Mildred's shoulder.
"Did papa draw that? How _wonderful_!"
"Beth, don't lean on me so," Mildred said crossly, shaking her off.
The sketch, which was done in ink on half a sheet of paper, showed a
little chapel with great billows of snow rolling along the sides and
up to the roof. After breakfast, Mildred sat down and began to copy it
in pencil, to Beth's intense surprise. The possibility of copying it
herself would never have occurred to her, but when she saw Mildred
doing it of course she must try too. She could make nothing of it,
however, till Mildred showed her how to place each stroke, and then
she was very soon weary of the effort, and gave it up, yawning.
Drawing was not to be one of her accomplishments.
Kitty was to accompany them to the west.
When the day of departure arrived, a great coach and pair came to the
door, and the luggage was piled up on it. Beth, with her mouth set, and
her eyes twice their normal size from excitement, was everywhere,
watching everybody, afraid to miss anything that happened. Her mother's
movements were a source of special interest to her. At the last moment
Mrs. Caldwell slipped away alone to take leave of the place which had
been the first home of her married life. She was a young girl when she
came to it, the daughter of a country gentleman, accustomed to luxury,
but right ready to enjoy poverty with the man of her heart; and poverty
enough she had had to endure, and sickness and sorrow too--troubles
inevitable--besides some of those other troubles, which are the harder
to bear because they are not inevitable. But still, she had had her
compensations, and it was of these she thought as she took her last
leave of the little place. She went to the end of the garden first,
closely followed by Beth, and looked through the thin hedge out across
the field. She seemed to be seeing things which were farther away than
Beth's eyes could reach. Then she went to an old garden seat, touched it
tenderly, and stood looking down at it for some seconds. Many a summer
evening she had sat there at work while her husband read to her. It was
early spring, and the snowdrops and crocuses were out. She gathered a
little bunch of them. When she had made the tour of the garden, she
returned to the house, and went into every room, Beth following her
faithfully, at a safe distance. In the nursery she stood some little
time looking round at the bare walls, and seeming to listen expectantly.
No doubt she heard ghostly echoes of the patter of children's feet, the
ring of children's voices. As she turned to go she pressed her
handkerchief to her eyes. In her own room she lingered still longer,
going from one piece of furniture to another, and laying her hand on
each. It was handsome furniture, such as a lady should have about her,
and every piece represented a longer or shorter period of self-denial,
both on her own part and on her husband's, and a proportionately keen
joy in the acquisition of it. She remembered so well when the wardrobe
came home, and the dressing-table too, and the mahogany drawers. The
furniture was to follow to the new home, and each piece would still have
its own history, but, once it was moved from its accustomed place, new
associations would have to be formed, and that was what she dreaded. She
could picture the old home deserted, and herself yearning for it, and
for the old days; but she could not imagine a new home or a new chapter
of life with any great interest or pleasure in it, anything, in fact,
but anxiety.
When at last she left the house, she was quite overcome to find that a
little crowd of friends of every degree had collected to wish her good
speed. She went from one to the other, shaking hands, and answering
their words in kindly wise. Mary Lynch gave Beth a currant-cake, and
lifted her into the coach, though she could quite well have got in by
herself. Then they were off, and Mrs. Caldwell stood at the door,
wiping her eyes, and gazing at the little house till they turned the
corner of the street, and lost sight of it for ever.
The tide was out, Dorman's green Isle rested on its grey rocks, the
pond shone like a mirror on the shore, and the young grass was
springing on the giant's grave; but the branches were still bare and
brown on the Castle Hill, and the old grey castle stood out whitened
by contrast with a background of dark and lowering sky. Beth's
highly-strung nerves, already overstrained by excitement, broke down
completely under the oppression of those heavy clouds, and she became
convulsed with sobs. Kitty took her on her knee, but tried in vain to
soothe her before the currant-cake and the motion of the coach had
made her deadly sick, after which she dozed off from sheer exhaustion.
The rest of the journey was a nightmare of nausea to her. She was
constantly being lifted out of the carriage, and made to lie on a sofa
somewhere while the horses were being changed, or put to bed for the
night, and dragged up again unrefreshed in the early morning, and
consigned once more to misery. Sometimes great dark mountains towered
above her, filling her with dread; and sometimes a long lonely level
of bare brown bogs was all about her, overwhelming her little soul
with such a terrible sense of desolation that she cowered down beside
Kitty, and clung to her shivering.
Once her mother shook her for something, and Beth turned faint.
"What's the matter with her, Kitty?" Mrs. Caldwell exclaimed, alarmed
by her white face.
"You've jest shook the life out of her, m'em, I think," Kitty answered
her tranquilly: "An' ye'll not rare her that way, I'm thinking."
Mrs. Caldwell began to dislike Kitty.
On the third day they drove down a delightful road, with hedges on
either hand, footpaths, and trees, among which big country-houses
nestled. The mountains were still in the neighbourhood, but not near
enough to be awesome. On one side of the road was a broad shallow
stream, so clear you could see the brown stones at the bottom, a
salmon-stream with weirs and waterfalls.
They were nearing a town, and Kitty began to put the things together.
Beth became interested. Mamma looked out of the window every instant,
and at last she exclaimed in a tone of relief, which somehow belied
the words: "Here's papa! I _knew_ he would come!" And there was a
horse at the window, and papa was on the horse, looking in at them.
Mamma's face became quite rosy, and she laughed a good deal and showed
her teeth. Beth had not noticed them before.
"What are you staring at, Beth?" Mildred whispered.
"Mamma's all pink," Beth said.
"That's blushing," said Mildred.
"What's blushing?" said Beth.
"Getting pink."
"What does she do it for?"
"She can't help it."
Beth continued to stare, and at last Mrs. Caldwell noticed it, and
asked her what she was looking at.
"You've got nice white teeth," said Beth. Mrs. Caldwell smiled.
"Have you only just discovered that?" papa asked through the window.
"You never told me," Beth protested, thinking herself reproached. "You
said Jane Nettles had."
The smile froze on mamma's lips, and papa's horse became unmanageable.
Beth saw there was something wrong, and stopped, looking from one to
the other intently.
Mrs. Caldwell recovered herself. "What a stolid face she has!" she
remarked presently by way of breaking an awkward pause.
Beth wondered what "stolid" meant, and who "she" was.
"She doesn't look well," papa observed.
"She's jest had the life shook out of her, sir," Kitty put in.
"Kitty, how dare you?" Mrs. Caldwell began.
"It's to the journey I'm alludin' now, m'em," Kitty explained with
dignity. "The child can't bear the travellin'."
"Well, it won't last much longer now," said papa, and then made some
remark to mamma in Italian, which brought back her good-humour. They
always spoke Italian to each other, because papa did not know French
so well as mamma did. Beth supposed at that time that all grown-up
people spoke French or Italian to each other, and she used to wonder
which she would speak when she was grown up.
They stopped at an inn for an hour or two, for there was still another
stage of this interminable journey. Mildred had a bag with a big doll
in it, and some almond-sweets. She left it on a window-seat when they
went to have something to eat, and when she thought of it again it was
nowhere to be found.
"They would steal the teeth out of your head in this God-forsaken
country," Captain Caldwell exclaimed, in a tone of exasperation.
An awful vision of igneous rocks, with mis-shapen creatures prowling
about amongst them, instantly appeared to Beth in illustration of a
God-forsaken country, but she tried vainly to imagine how stealing
teeth out of your head was to be managed.
When they set off again, and had left the grey town with its green
trees and clear rivulet behind, the road lay through a wild and
desolate region. Great dark mountains rolled away in every direction,
and were piled up above the travellers to the very sky. The scene was
most melancholy in its grandeur, and Beth, gazing at it fascinated,
with big eyes dilated to their full extent, became exceedingly
depressed. At one turn of the way, in a field below, they saw a
gentleman carrying a gun, and attended by a party of armed policemen.
"That's Mr. Burke going over his property," Captain Caldwell observed
to his wife. "He's unpopular just now, and daren't move without an
escort. His life's not worth a moment's purchase a hundred yards from
his own gate, and I expect he'll be shot like a dog some day, with all
his precautions."
"Oh, why does he stay?" Mrs. Caldwell exclaimed.
"Just pluck," her husband answered; "and he likes it. It certainly
does add to the interest of life."
"O Henry! don't speak like that," Mrs. Caldwell remonstrated. "They
can't owe you any grudge."
Captain Caldwell flipped a fly from his horse's ear.
Beth gazed down at the doomed gentleman, and fairly quailed for him.
She half expected to see the policemen turn on him and shoot him
before her eyes, and a strange excitement gradually grew upon her. She
seemed to be seeing and hearing and feeling without eyes, or ears, or
a body.
The carriage rocked like a ship at sea, and once or twice it seemed to
be going right over.