The Beth Book
"What a dreadfully bad road!" Mrs. Caldwell exclaimed.
"Yes," her husband rejoined, "the roads about here are the very devil.
This is one of the best. Do you see that one over there?" pointing
with his whip to a white line that zigzagged across a neighbouring
mountain. "It's disused now. That's Gallows Hill, where a man was
hanged."
Beth gazed at the spot with horror. "I see him!" she cried.
"See whom?" said her mother.
"I see the man hanging."
"Oh, nonsense!" Mrs. Caldwell exclaimed. "Why, the man was hanged ages
ago. He isn't there now."
"You must speak the truth, young lady," papa said severely.
Beth, put to shame by the reproof, shrank into herself. She was keenly
sensitive to blame. But all the same her great grey eyes were riveted
on the top of the hill, for there, against the sky, she did distinctly
see the man dangling from the gibbet.
"Kitty," she whispered, "don't you see him?"
"Whisht, darlint," Kitty said, covering Beth's eyes with her hand. "I
don't see him. But I'll not be after calling ye a liar because ye do,
for I guess ye see more nor most, Holy Mother purtect us! But whisht
now, you mustn't look at him any more."
The carriage came to the brow of the mountain, and down below was
their destination, Castletownrock, a mere village, consisting
principally of one long, steep street. Some distance below the village
again, the great green waves of a tempestuous sea broke on a dangerous
coast.
"The two races don't fuse," papa was saying to mamma, "in this part of
the country, at all events. There's an Irish and an English side to
the street. The English side has a flagged footpath, and the houses
are neat and clean, and well-to-do; on the Irish side all is poverty
and dirt and confusion."
Just outside the village, a little group of people waited to welcome
them--Mr. Macbean the rector, Captain Keene, the three Misses Keene,
and Jim.
The carriage was stopped, and they all got out and walked the rest of
the distance to the inn, where they were to stay till the furniture
arrived. On the way down the street they saw their new home. It made
no impression on Beth. But she recognised the Roman Catholic Chapel on
the other side of the road from papa's drawing, only it looked
different because there was no snow.
The "gentleman and lady" who kept the inn, Mr. and Mrs. Mayne, with
their two daughters, met them at the door, and shook hands with mamma,
and kissed the children.
Then they went into the inn parlour, and there was wine and plum-cake,
and Dr. and Mrs. Macdougall came with their little girl Lucy, who was
eleven years old, Mildred's age.
Mr. Macbean, the rector, who was tall and thin, and had a brown beard
that waggled when he talked, drew Beth to his side, and began to ask
her questions, just when she wanted so much to hear what everybody
else was saying, too.
"Well, and what have you been taught?" he began.
Beth gazed at him blankly.
"Do you love God?" he proceeded, putting his hand on her head.
Beth looked round the room, perplexed, then fixed her eyes on his
beard, and watched it waggle with interest.
"Ask her if she knows anything about the other gentleman," Captain
Keene put in jocosely--"here's to his health!" and he emptied his
glass.
Beth's great eyes settled upon him with sudden fixity.
"I suppose you never heard of the devil?" he proceeded.
"Oh yes, I have," was Beth's instant and unexpected rejoinder. "The
devil is a bad road."
There was an explosion of laughter at this.
"But you said so, papa," Beth remonstrated indignantly.
"My dear child, I said just the reverse."
"What's the reverse?" said Beth, picturing another personality.
"There now, that will do," Mrs. Caldwell interposed. "Little bodies
must be seen and not heard."
Mr. Macbean stroked Beth's head--"There is something in here, I
expect," he observed.
"Not much, I'm afraid," Mrs. Caldwell answered. "We've hardly been
able to teach her anything."
"Ah!" Mr. Macbean ejaculated, reflecting on the specimen he had heard
of the method pursued. "You must let me see what _I_ can do."
CHAPTER V
In a few days all the bustle of getting into the new house began. The
furniture arrived in irregular batches. Some of it came and some of it
did not come. When a box was opened there was nothing that was wanted
in it, only things that did not go together, and mamma was worried,
and papa was cross.
The workpeople were wild and ignorant, and only trustworthy as long as
they were watched. They were unaccustomed to the most ordinary comforts
of civilised life, particularly in the way of furniture. When the family
arrived at the house one morning, they found Mrs. Caldwell's wardrobe,
mahogany drawers, and other articles of bedroom furniture, set up in
conspicuous positions in the sitting-room, and the carpenter was much
ruffled when he was ordered to take them upstairs.
"Shure it's mad they are," he remonstrated to one of the servants, "to
have sich foine things put in a bedroom where nobody'll see thim."
The men came up from the coastguard station to scrape the walls, and
Ellis, the petty officer, used the bread-knife, and broke it, and papa
bawled at him. Beth was sorry for Ellis.
The house was built of stone, and very damp. There was a great deal of
space in it, but little accommodation. On the ground-floor were a huge
hall, kitchen, pantry and sitting-room, all flagged. The sitting-room
was the only one in the house, and had to be used as dining-room and
drawing-room, but it was large enough for that and to spare. There was
a big yard and a big garden too, and Riley was in the stable, and
Biddy and Anne in the kitchen, and Kitty in the nursery. This increase
of establishment, which meant so much to the parents, was accepted as
a matter of course by the children.
Kitty told Riley and Biddy and Anne about what Beth had seen on
Gallows Hill, and they often asked Beth what she saw when she used to
sit looking at nothing. Then Beth would think things, and describe
them, because it seemed to please the servants. They used to be very
serious, and shake their heads and cross themselves, with muttered
ejaculations, but all the time they liked it. This encouraged Beth,
and she used to think and think of things to tell them.
Beth was exceedingly busy in her own way at this time. Her mind was
being rapidly stored with impressions, and nothing escaped her.
The four children and Kitty were put all together in one great
nursery, an arrangement of which Kitty, with the fastidious delicacy
of a strict Catholic, did not at all approve.
"Indeed, m'em," she said, "I'm thinkin' Master Jim's too sharp to be
in the nursery wid his sisters now."
"Nonsense, Kitty," Mrs. Caldwell exclaimed. "How can you be so
evil-minded? Master Jim's only a child--a baby of ten!"
"Och, thin, me'm, it's an ould-fashioned baby he is," said Kitty; "and
I'm thinkin' it's a bit of a screen or a curtain I'd like for dressin'
behind if he's to be wid us."
"I have nothing of the kind to give you," Mrs. Caldwell rejoined. And
afterwards she made merry with papa about Kitty's prudishness.
But Kitty was right as it happened. Jim had been left pretty much to
his own devices during the time he had been alone with his father at
Castletownrock. Captain Caldwell's theory was that boys would look
after themselves, "and the sooner you let 'em the sooner you'd make
men of 'em. Blood will tell, sir. Your gentleman's son is a match for
any ragamuffin"--a theory which Jim justified in many a free fight;
but, during the suspension of hostilities he hobnobbed with the
ragamuffins, who took a terrible revenge, for by the time Mrs.
Caldwell arrived Jim was thoroughly corrupted. Kitty took precautions,
however. She arranged the nursery-life so that Master Jim did not
associate with his sisters more than was absolutely necessary. She had
him up in the morning, bathed, and sent off to school before she
disturbed the little girls, and at night she never left the nursery
until he was asleep. Out of her slender purse she bought some print,
and fixed up a curtain for his sisters to dress behind, and all else
that she had to do for the children was done decently and in order.
She had almost entire charge of them, their mother being engrossed
with her husband, whose health and spirits had already begun to suffer
from overwork and exposure to the climate.
Kitty was teaching her charges dainty ways, mentally as well as
physically. When she had washed them at night, she made them purge their
little souls of all the sins of the day in prayer, and in the morning
she taught them how to fortify themselves with good resolutions. Beth
took naturally to the Catholic training, and solemnly dedicated herself
to the Blessed Virgin; Mildred conformed, but without enthusiasm; the
four-year-old baby Bernadine lisped little _Aves_; but Jim, in the words
of Captain Keene, "the old buffalo," as their father called him, sneered
at that sort of thing "as only fit for women."
"Men drink whisky," said Jim, puffing out his chest.
"True for ye," said Kitty; "but I've been told that them as drinks
whisky here goes dry in the next world."
"Well, I shall drink whisky and kiss the girls all the same," said
Jim. "And I wouldn't be a Catholic now, not to save me sowl. I owe the
Catholics a grudge. They insulted me."
"How so?" asked Kitty.
"At the midnight Mass last Christmas. Father John got up, and ordered
all heretics out of the sacred house of God, and Pat Fagan ses to me,
'Are ye a heretic?' and I ses, 'I am, Pat Fagan.' 'Thin out ye go,'
ses he, and, but for that, I'd 'a' bin a Catholic; so see what you
lose by insulting a gentleman."
"What's insulting?" Beth asked.
Jim slapped her face. "That's insulting," he explained.
Beth struck him back promptly, and a scuffle ensued.
"Oh, but it's little divils yez are, the lot of ye!" cried Kitty as
she separated them.
During fits of nervous irritability Captain Caldwell had a habit of
pacing about the house for hours at a time. One evening he happened to
be walking up and down on the landing outside the nursery door, which
was a little way open, and his attention was attracted by Beth's
voice. She was reciting a Catholic hymn softly, but with great
feeling, as if every word of it were a pleasure to her.
"What's the meaning of this?" he demanded, breaking in on her
devotions. "What papistical abominations have you been teaching the
child, Kitty?"
"Shure, sorr, it's jest a bit of a hymn," said Kitty bravely; but her
heart sank, and the colour left her lips.
Captain Caldwell was furious.
"Caroline!" he called peremptorily, going to the head of the stairs,
"Caroline, come up directly!"
Mrs. Caldwell fussed up in hot haste.
"Do you know," Captain Caldwell demanded, "that this woman is making
idolaters of your children? I heard this child just now praying to the
Virgin Mary! Do you hear?"
Mrs. Caldwell's pale face flushed with anger.
"How dare you do such a thing, you wicked woman?" she exclaimed. "I
shall not keep you another day in the house. Pack up your things at
once, and go the first thing in the morning."
"O mamma!" Beth cried, "you're not going to send Kitty away? Kitty,
Kitty, you won't go and leave me?"
"There, you see!" Captain Caldwell exclaimed. "You see the influence
she's got over the child already! That's the Jesuit all over!"
"An ignorant woman like you, who can hardly read and write, setting up
to teach _my_ children, indeed--how dare you?" Mrs. Caldwell stormed.
"Well, m'em, I _am_ an ignorant woman that can hardly read and write,"
Kitty answered with dignity; "but I could tell you some things ye'll
not find out in all yer books, and may be they'd surprise ye."