"I did not mean to dig," Beth said, looking up in his face;and then looking round about her in perfect comprehension of his mood—"The beautiful bare brown bosom of the shore," she slowly repeated, delighting in the phrase. "It's the kind of thing you can sing, you know."
"Yes," said the man, suddenly smiling; "it is pure poetry, and I make you a present of the copyright."
"But," Beth objected, "the shore isnotbrown. I've been thinking and thinking what to call it. It's the colour—the colour of—the colour of tarnished silver," she burst out at last triumphantly.
"Well observed," he said.
"Then I make you a present of the copyright," Beth answered readily.
"Thank you," he said; "but it will not scan."
"What is scan?"
"It won't fit into the verse, you know."
"The beautiful bare colour-of-tarnished-silver bosom of the shore," she sang out glibly; then agreed, with a wise shake of her head, that the phrase was impossible; and recurred to another point of interest, as was her wont—"What is copyright?"
Before he could answer, however, Mrs. Caldwell had swooped down upon them. She had seen him from the cliff talking to Beth, and hastened down the steps in her hot-tempered way, determined to rebuke the man for his familiarity, and heedless of Aunt Victoria, who had made an effort to stop her.
"May I ask why you are interfering with my child, sir?" she demanded.
The man in the sailor-suit raised his hat and bowed low.
"Excuse me, madam," he said. "I could not possibly have supposed that she was your child."
Mrs. Caldwell coloured angrily as at an insult, although the words seemed innocent enough. When he had spoken, he turned to Beth, with his hat still in his hand, and added—"Good-bye, little lady. We must meet again, you and I—on the beautiful bare brown bosom of the shore."
Beth's sympathy shone out in a smile, and she waved her hand confidingly to him as he turned away. Mrs. Caldwell seized her arm and hurried her up the steps to Aunt Victoria, who stood on the edge of the cliff blinking calmly.
"Imagine Beth scraping acquaintance with such a common-looking person!" Mrs. Caldwell cried. "You must never speak to him or look at him again—do you hear? I wonder what taste you will develop next!"
"It is a pity that you are so impetuous, Caroline," Aunt Victoria observed quietly. "That gentleman is the CountGustav Bartahlinsky, who may perhaps be considered eccentric here, where noblemen of great attainments and wealth are certainly not numerous; but is hardly to be called common-looking."
Beth saw her mother's countenance drop.
"Then Imayspeak to him," she decided for herself. "What's a copyright, mamma?"
"Oh, don't bother, Beth!" Mrs. Caldwell exclaimed irritably.
When they went home, Bernadine clamoured for food, and her mother gave her a piece of bread. They were to have dinner at four o'clock, but no luncheon, for economy's sake. Beth was hungry too, but she would not confess it. What she had heard of their poverty had made a deep impression on her, and she was determined to eat as little as possible. Aunt Victoria glanced at Bernadine and the bread as she went up to her room, and Beth fancied she heard her sigh. Was the old lady hungry too, she wondered, and her little heart sank.
This was Beth's first exercise in self-denial, but she had plenty of practice, for the scene was repeated day after day.
The children being free, had to amuse themselves as best they could, and went out to play in the little garden at the back of the house. Mrs. Caldwell's own freedom was merely freedom for thought. Most of the day she spent beside the dining-room table, making and mending, her only distraction being an occasional glance through the window at the boughs of the apple-trees which showed above the wall opposite, or at the people passing. Even when teaching the children she made, mended, and pursued her own thoughts, mapping out careers for her boys, making brilliant matches for Mildred and Bernadine, and even building a castle for Beth now and then. She made and mended as badly as might be expected of a woman whose proud boast it was that when she was married she could not hem a pocket-handkerchief; and she did it all herself. She had no notion of utilising the motive-power at hand in the children. As her own energy had been wasted in her childhood, so she wasted theirs, letting it expend itself to no purpose instead of teaching them to apply it. She was essentially a creature of habit. All that she had been taught in her youth, she taught them; but any accomplishment she had acquired in later life, she seemed to think that they also should wait to acquire. She had always dressed for dinner; so now, at half-past three every day, she put away her work, went into the kitchen for some hot water, which she carried upstairs herself, called the children, and proceeded to brush her own hair carefully, and change her dress. She expected the children to follow her example, but did not pay much attentionto their proceedings, and they, childlike, constantly and consistently shirked as much of the ceremony as possible. If their mother caught them with unwashed hands and half-brushed hair, she thumped them on the back, and made them wash and brush; but she was generally thinking about something else, and did not catch them. The rite, however, being regularly although imperfectly performed, resulted in a good habit.
There was another thing too for which Beth had good reason to be grateful to her mother. During winter, when the days were short, or when bad weather made it impossible to go out on summer evenings, Mrs. Caldwell always read aloud to the children after tea till bed-time. Most mothers would have made the children read; but there was a great deal of laxity mixed with Mrs. Caldwell's harshness. She found it easier to do things herself than to make the children do them for her. They objected to read, and liked to be read to, so she read to them; and as, fortunately, she had no money to buy children's books, she read what there were in the house. Beth's ear was still quicker than her eye, and she would not read to herself if she could help it; but before she was fourteen, thanks to her mother, she knew much of Scott, Jane Austen, Dickens, Thackeray, Bulwer Lytton, and even some of Shakespeare, well; besides such books as "The Woman in White," "The Dead Secret," "Loyal Heart; or, The Trappers," "The Scalp Hunters," and many more, all of which helped greatly to develop her intelligence.
Duringthe next two years, Beth continued to look on at life, with eyes wide open, deeply interested. Her mind at this time, acting without conscious effort, was a mere photographic apparatus for the registration of impressions on the brain. Every incident stored and docketed itself somewhere in her consciousness for future use, and it was upon this hoard that she drew eventually with such astonishing effect.
Rousseau in "Emile" chose a common capacity to educate, because, he said, genius will educate itself; but even genius would find its labours lightened by having been taught the use of some few tools, such as are supplied by the rudiments of a conventional education. Beth was never taught anything thoroughly; very few girls were in her day. A woman was expected at that time to earn her livelihood by marrying a man and bringing up a family; and, so long as her face was attractive, the fact that she was ignorant, foolish, and trivial did not, in the estimation of the average man, at all disqualify her for the task. Beth's education,at this most impressionable period of her life, consisted in the acquisition of a few facts which were not made to interest her, and neither influenced her conduct nor helped to form her character. She might learn in the morning, for instance, that William the Conqueror arrived 1066, but the information did not prevent her being as naughty as possible in the afternoon. One cannot help speculating on how much she lost or gained by the haphazard of her early training; but one thing is certain, had the development of her genius depended upon a careful acquisition of such knowledge as is to be had at school, it must have remained latent for ever.
As it was, however, being forced out into the life-school of the world, she there matriculated on her own account, and so, perhaps, saved her further faculty from destruction. For theoretical knowledge would have dulled the keenness of her insight probably, confused her point of view, and brought in accepted commonplaces to spoil the originality of her conclusions. It was from practical experience of life rather than from books that she learnt her work; she saw for herself before she came under the influence of other people's observations; and this was doubtless the secret of her success; but it involved the cruel necessity of a hard and strange apprenticeship. From the time of their arrival in Rainharbour she lived three lives a day—the life of lessons and coercion which was forced upon her, an altogether artificial and unsatisfactory life; the life she took up the moment she was free to act for herself; and a life of endless dreams, which mingled with the other two unwholesomely. For the rich soil of her mind, left uncultivated, was bound to bring forth something, and because there was so little seed sown in it, the crop was mostly weeds.
When we review the march of events which come crowding into a life, seeing how few it is possible to describe, no one can wonder that there is talk of the difficulty of selection. Who, for instance, could have supposed that a good striped jacket Jim had outgrown, and Mrs. Caldwell's love of grey, would have had much effect upon Beth's career? And yet these trifles were epoch-making. Mrs. Caldwell thought grey a ladylike colour, and therefore bought Beth a carmelite dress of a delicate shade for the summer. For the first few weeks the dress was a joy to Beth, but after that it began to be stained by one thing and another, and every spot upon it was a source of misery, not only because she was punished for messing the dress, but also because she had messed it; for she was beginning to be fastidious about her clothes; and every time she went out she was conscious of those unsightly stains, and fancied everybody was looking at them. She had to wear the frock, however, for want of another; and in the autumn, whenthe days began to be chilly, a cast-off jacket of Jim's was added to the affliction. Mrs. Caldwell caught her trying it on one day, and after shaking her for doing so, she noticed that the jacket fitted her, and the bright idea of making Beth wear it out, so that it might not be wasted, occurred to her. To do her justice, Mrs. Caldwell had no idea of the torture she was inflicting upon Beth by forcing her to appear in her soiled frock and a boy's jacket. The poor lady was in great straits at the time, and had nothing to spend on her daughters, because her sons were growing up, and beginning to clamour for pocket-money. Their mother considered it right that they should have it too; and so the tender, delicate, sensitive little girl had to go dirty and ashamed in order that her brothers might have the wherewithal to swing a cane, smoke, drink beer, play billiards, and do all else that makes boys men in their own estimation at an early age.
Rainharbour was little more than a fishing village in those days, though it became a fashionable watering-place in a very few years. When Mrs. Caldwell first settled there, a whole codfish was sold for sixpence, fowls were one-and-ninepence a pair, eggs were almost given away, and the manners of the people were in keeping with the low prices. The natives had no idea of concealing their feelings, and were in the habit of expressing their opinions of each other and things in general at the top of their voices in the open street. They were as conservative as the Chinese too, and thought anything new and strange ridiculous. Consequently, when a little girl appeared amongst them in a boy's jacket, they let her know that they resented the innovation.
"She's getten a lad's jacket on! oh! oh! she's getten a lad's jacket on!" the children called aloud after her in the street, while their mothers came to the cottage-doors, wiping soap-suds from their arms, and stood staring as at a show; and even the big bland sailors lounging on the quay expanded into broad grins or solemnly winked at one another. Beth flushed with shame, but her courageous little heart was instantly full of fight. "What ignorant people these are!" she exclaimed haughtily, turning to Bernadine, who had dropped behind out of the obloquy. "What ignorant people these are! they know nothing of the fashions." The insinuation stung her persecutors, but that only made them the more offensive, and wherever she went she was jeered at—openly if there were no grown-up person with her, covertly if there were, but always so that she understood. After that first explosion she used to march along with an air of calm indifference as if she heard nothing, but she had to put great constraint upon herself in order to seem superior while feeling deeply humiliated; and all the time she suffered so acutely that at last she could hardly be induced to go out at all.
Mrs. Caldwell, who never noticed the "common people" enough to be aware of their criticism, would not listen to anything Beth had to say on the subject, and considered that her objection to go out in the jacket was merely another instance of her tiresome obstinacy. Punishments ensued, and Beth had the daily choice whether she should be scolded and beaten for refusing to go out, or be publicly jeered at for wearing a "lad's jacket."
Sometimes she preferred the chance of public derision to the certainty of private chastisement; but oftener she took the chastisement. This state of things could not last much longer, however. Hitherto her mother had ruled her by physical force, but now their wills were coming into collision, and it was inevitable that the more determined should carry her point.
"Go and put your things on directly, you naughty, obstinate child," her mother screamed at her one day. Beth did not move.
"Do you hear me?" Mrs. Caldwell exclaimed.
Beth made no sign. And suddenly Mrs. Caldwell realised that if Beth would not go out, she could not make her. She never thought of trying to persuade her. All that occurred to her was that Beth was too big to be carried or pulled or pushed; that she might be hurt, but could not be frightened; and that there was nothing for it, therefore, but to let her have her own way.
"Very well, then," said Mrs. Caldwell, "I shall go without you. But you'll be punished for your wickedness some day, you'll see, and then you'll be sorry."
Mildred had gone to be educated by a rich sister of her father's by this time, Aunt Victoria and Bernadine usually went out with Mrs. Caldwell, so it came to pass that Beth began to be left pretty much to her own resources, of which Harriet Elvidge in the kitchen was one, and a considerable one.
Harriet was a woman of well-marked individuality and brilliant imagination. She could never separate fact from fiction in any form of narrative, and narrative was her speciality. She was always recounting something. Beth used to follow her from room to room, as she went about her work, listening with absolute faith and the deepest interest to the stream of narrative which flowed on without interruption, no matter what Harriet was doing. Sometimes, when she was dusting the drawing-room mantelpiece, she would pause with a china cup in one hand and her duster in the other, to emphasise a thrilling incident, or make a speech impressive with suitable gesticulation; and sometimes, for the same purpose, she would stop with her hand on the yellowstone with which she was rubbing the kitchen-hearth, and her head in the grate almost. Often, too, Beth in hereager sympathy would say, "Let me do that!" and Harriet would sit in an arm-chair if they were in the drawing-room, and resign the duster—or the dishcloth, if they were in the kitchen—and continue the recital, while Beth showed her appreciation, and encouraged her to proceed, by doing the greater part of her work for her. Mrs. Caldwell never could make out why Beth's hands were in such a state. "They are all cracked and begrimed," she would exclaim, "as if the child had to do dirty work like a servant!" And it was a good thing for Beth that she did it, for otherwise she would have had no physical training at all, and would have suffered as her sister Mildred did for want of it. Mildred, unlike Beth, held her head high, and never forgot that she was a young lady by right of descent, with an hereditary aptitude for keeping her inferiors in their proper place. She only went into the kitchen of necessity, and would never have dreamed of dusting, sweeping, bed-making, or laying the table, to help the servant, however much she might have been over-tasked; neither would Harriet have dared to approach her with the familiar pleading: "I say, miss, 'elp uz, I'm that done," to which Beth so readily responded. Mildred was studious; she had profited by the good teaching she had had while her father was alive, and was able to "make things out" for herself; but she cultivated her mind at the expense of her body. She was one of those delicate, nervous, sensitive girls, whose busy brains require the rest of regular manual exercise; and for want of it, she lived upon books, and very literally died of them eventually. She was naturally, so to speak, an artificial product of conventional ideas; Beth, on the contrary, was altogether a little human being, but one of those who answer to expectation with fatal versatility. She liked blacking grates, and did them well, because Harriet told her she could; she hated writing copies, and did them disgracefully, because her mother beat her for a blot, and said she would never improve. For the same reason, long before she could read aloud to her mother intelligibly, she had learnt all that Harriet could teach her, not only of the house-work, but of the cooking, from cleaning a fish and trussing a fowl to making barley-broth and puff-pastry. Harriet was a good cook if she had the things, as she said herself, having picked up a great deal when she was kitchen-maid in Uncle James's household.
Harriet was the daughter of a labourer. Her people lived at a village some miles away, and every Saturday morning a carrier with a covered cart brought her a letter from home, and a little parcel containing a cheesecake or some other dainty. Beth took a lively interest both in the cheesecake and the letter. "What's the news from home to-day?" she would ask. "How's Annie,and what has mother sent?" Whereupon Harriet would share the cheesecake with her, and read the letter aloud, work being suspended as long as possible for the purpose.
Harriet was about twenty-five at this time. She had very black silky hair, straight and heavy, parted in the middle, drawn down over her ears, and gathered up in a knot behind. Her face was oval, forehead high, eyebrows arched and delicate, nose straight, and she had large expressive dark grey eyes, rather deeply set, with long black lashes, and a mouth that would have been handsome of the sensual full-lipped kind, had it not been distorted by a burn, which had disfigured her throat and chin as well. She had set her pinafore on fire when she was a child, and it had blazed up under her chin, causing irreparable injury before the flames could be extinguished. But for that accident she would have been a singularly good-looking woman of a type which was common in books of beauty at the beginning of this reign.
She could read and write after a fashion, and was intelligent, but ignorant, deceitful, superstitious, and hysterical. Mrs. Caldwell continually lectured Beth about going into the kitchen so much; but she only lectured on principle really. Young ladies could not be allowed to associate with servants as a rule, but an exception might be made in the case of a good, steady, sober sort of person, such as Mrs. Caldwell believed Harriet to be, who would keep the troublesome child out of mischief, and do her no harm. Harriet, as it happened, delighted in mischief, and was often the instigator; but Mrs. Caldwell might be excused for not suspecting this, as she only saw her on her best behaviour. When the children were safe in bed, and Miss Victoria Bench, who was an early person, had also retired, Harriet would put on a clean apron, and appear before Mrs. Caldwell in the character of a respectable, vigilant domestic, more anxious about her mistress's interests than her own; and she would then make a report in which Beth figured as a fiend of a child who could not be trusted alone for a moment, and Harriet herself as a conscientious custodian, but for whom nobody knows what might have happened.
When Harriet had no particular incident to report at these secret conferences, she would tell Mrs. Caldwell her dreams, and describe signs and portents of coming events which she had observed during the day; and Mrs. Caldwell would listen with interest. Superstition is a subject on which the most class-proud will consult with the lowest and the wickedest; it is a mighty leveller downwards. But the poor lady had a lonely life. It was not Mrs. Caldwell's fault, but the fault of her day, that she was not a noble woman. She belonged to early Victorian times, when every effort was made to mould the characters of women as the homes of the period were built, on lines of ghastly uniformity.The education of a girl in those days was eminently calculated to cloud her intelligence and strengthen every failing developed in her sex by ages of suppression. Mrs. Caldwell was a plastic person, and her mind had been successfully compressed into the accustomed groove until her husband came and helped it to escape a little in one or two directions—with the effect, however, of spoiling its conventional symmetry without restoring its natural beauty. If the mind be tight-laced long enough, it is ruined as a model, just as the body is; and throwing off the stays which restrained it, merely exposes its deformities without remedying them; so that there is nothing for the old generation but to remain in stays. Mrs. Caldwell, with all her deformities, was just as heroic as she knew how to be. She lived for her children to the extent of denying herself the bare necessaries of life for them; and bore poverty and obscurity of a galling kind without a murmur. She scarcely ever saw a soul to speak to. Uncle James Patten and the Benyon family did not associate much with the townspeople, and were not popular in the county; so that Mrs. Caldwell had very few visitors. Of course it was an advantage to be known as a relation of the great people of the place, although the great people had a bad name; but then she was evidently a poor relation, which made it almost a virtue to neglect her in a community of Christians who only professed to love the Lord Himself for what they could get. "You must worship God because He can give you everything," was what they taught their children. Even the vicar of the parish would not call on anybody with less than five hundred a year. He kept a school for boys, which paid him more than cent. per cent., but did nothing for his parishioners except preach sermons an hour long on Sundays. Self-denial and morality were his favourite subjects. He had had three wives himself, and was getting through a fourth as fast as one baby a year would do it.
Mrs. Caldwell, left to herself, found her evenings especially long and dreary. It was her habit to write her letters then, and read, particularly in French and Italian, which, she had some vague notion, helped to improve her mind. But she often wearied for a word, and began to hear voices herself in the howling winter winds, and to brood upon the possible meaning of her own dreams, and to wonder why a solitary rook flew over her house in particular, and cawed twice as it passed. Little things naturally become of great importance in such a life, and Harriet kept up the supply; she being the connecting link between Mrs. Caldwell and the outer world. She knew all that was happening in the place, and she claimed to know all that was going to happen; and by degrees the mistress as well as the maid fell into the way of comparing events with the forebodingswhich had preceded them, and often established a satisfactory connection between the two.
Mrs. Caldwell always made coffee in the kitchen for breakfast in the morning, and while she was so engaged, Harriet, busy making toast, would begin—"Did you 'ear a noise last night, m'em?"
"No, Harriet—at least—was it about ten o'clock?"
"Yes, m'em, just about—a sort of scraping rattling noise, like a lot of people walking over gravel."
"I did hear something of the kind. I wonder what it was," Mrs. Caldwell would rejoin.
"Well, m'em, I think it means there are people coming to the 'ouse, for I remember it 'appened the night before your brother come, m'em, unexpected, and the lawyer."
If nobody came during the day, the token would be supposed to refer to some future period; and so, by degrees, signs and portents took the place of more substantial interests in Mrs. Caldwell's dreary life. Such things were in the air, for the little seaside place was quite out of the world at the time, and the people still had more faith in an incantation than a doctor's dose. If an accident happened, or a storm decimated the fishing-fleet, signs innumerable were always remembered which had preceded the event. If you asked why nobody had profited by the warning, people would shake their heads and tell you it was to be; and if you asked what was the use of the warning then, they would say to break the blow—in which idea there seemed to be some sense.
"When they told Tom's wife 'e was drownded, she'd 'a' dropped down dead 'erself and left the children, if she 'adn't 'a' knowed it all along," Harriet explained to Beth. "Eh! lass, you mark my words, warnin's comes for one thing, and warnin's comes for another, but they always comes for good, an' you're forced to take notice an' act on 'em or you're forced to leave 'em alone, just as is right, an' ye can't 'elp it yerself, choose 'ow. There's Mrs. Pettinger, she dreamed one night 'er husband's boat was lost, an' next mornin' 'e was to go out fishin', but she wouldn't let 'im. 'No, 'Enery John,' she ses, 'you'll not go, not if ah 'as to 'old you,' ses she, an' 'e was that mad 'e struck 'er an' knocked 'er down an' broke 'er arm, an' then, needs must, 'e 'ad to fetch the doctor to set it, an' by the time that was done, the boat 'ad gone wi'out 'im. The other men thought 'e was drunk—'e often was—an' they wouldn't wait. Well, that boat never came back."
"And did he beat his wife again?" Beth asked.
"Oh, as to that, 'ow could it make any difference?" Harriet answered.
Beth was fascinated by the folk-lore of the place, and soon surpassed Harriet herself in the interpretation of dreams and the reading of signs and tokens. She began to invent methods of divination for herself too, such as, "If the boards don't creak when I walk across the room I shall get through my lessons without trouble this morning," a trick which soon became a confirmed habit into which she was apt to lapse at any time; and so persistent are these early impressions that to the end of her days she would always rather have seen two rooks together than one alone, rooks being the birds of omen in a land where magpies were scarce. Mrs. Caldwell knew nothing of Beth's proficiency in the black arts. She would never have discussed such a subject before the children, and took it for granted that Harriet was equally discreet; while Beth on her part, with her curious quick sense of what was right and proper, believed her mother to be above such things.
Harriet was a person of varied interests, all of which she discussed with Beth impartially. She had many lovers, according to her own account, and was stern and unyielding with them all, and so particular that she would dismiss them at any moment for nothing almost. If she went out at night she had always much to tell the next morning, and Beth would hurry over her lessons, watch her mother out of the way, and slip into the kitchen or upstairs after Harriet, and question her about what she had said, and he had said, and if she had let him kiss her even once.
"Well, last night," Harriet said on one occasion, in a tone of apology for her own weakness and good-nature. "Last night I couldn't 'elp it. 'E just put 'is arm round me, and, well, there! I was sorry for 'im."
"Why don't you sayheandhimandhis, Harriet?"
"I do."
"No, you don't. You say 'e and 'im and 'is."
"Well, that's what you say."
Beth shouted the aspirates at her for answer, but in vain; with all the will in the world to "talk fine," as she called it, Harriet could never acquire the art, for want of an ear to hear. She could not perceive the slightest difference between him and 'im.
Even at this age Beth had her own point of view in social matters, and frequently disconcerted Harriet by a word or look or inflection of the voice which expressed disapproval of her conduct. Harriet had been at home on one occasion for a week's holiday, a charwoman having done her work in her absence, and on her return she had much to relate of Charles Russell, the groom at Fairholm, who continued to be an ardentadmirer of hers, but not an honourable one, because he did not realise what a very superior person Harriet was. He thought she was no better than other girls, and when they were sitting up one night together in her mother's cottage, the rest of the family having gone to bed, he made her a proposal which Harriet indignantly rejected.
"And ahsesto 'im, 'CharlesRussell,' ah ses to 'im, 'not was it ever so,' ah ses to 'im"—she was proceeding emphatically when Beth interrupted her.
"Did you say you sat up with him alone all night?" she asked.
"Yes, there's no 'arm, you know," Harriet answered on the defensive, without precisely knowing why.
"Well, what did he say?" Beth rejoined without comment.
But Harriet, put out of countenance, omitted the details, and brought the story to an abrupt conclusion.
Another of Harriet's interests in life was theFamily Herald, which she took regularly, and as regularly read aloud to Beth, to the best of her ability—from the verses to "Violet," or "My own Love," on the first page, to the "Random Readings" on the last. They laughed at the jokes, tried to guess the riddles, were impressed with the historical anecdotes and words of wisdom, and became so hungry over the recipes for good dishes that they frequently fried eggs and potatoes, or a slice stolen from the joint roasting at the fire, and feasted surreptitiously.
Beth tried in after years to remember what the stories in theFamily Heraldhad been about, but all she could recall was a vague incident of a falling scaffold, of a heroine called Margaret taking refuge in the dark behind a hoarding, and of a fascinating hero whom Harriet called Ug Miller. Long afterwards it dawned upon Beth that his name was Hugh.
When Mildred went to her aunt, Beth and Bernadine became of necessity constant companions, and it was a curious kind of companionship, for their natures were antagonistic. Like rival chieftains whose territories adjoin, they professed no love for each other, and were often at war, but were intimate nevertheless, and would have missed each other, because there was no one else with whom they could so conveniently quarrel. Harriet took the liveliest interest in their squabbles, which, under her able direction, rapidly developed from the usual little girls' scrimmages into regular stand-up fights.
One day Beth pulled Bernadine's hair passionately, and Bernadine retaliated by clawing Beth's face, and then howled as a further relief to her feelings. Mrs. Caldwell rushed to see what accident had happened to the dear child, and Harriet came to see the sport.
"Mamma, Beth pulled my hair," Bernadine whined.
Mrs. Caldwell immediately thumped Beth, who seldom said a word in her own defence. Harriet was neutral till her mistress had disappeared, and then she supported Beth.
"Just you wait till after dinner," she said. "Come into the kitchen when your ma's asleep, and fight it out. Don't you be put upon by tell-pie-tits."
"What's the use of my going into the kitchen?" Beth rejoined; "Bernadine doesn't fight fair. She's a horrid, low little coward."
"Am I!" Bernadine howled. "Just you wait till after dinner! I'm as brave as you are, and as strong, though youarethe biggest." Which was true. Bernadine was sallow, thin, wiry, and muscular; Beth was soft, and round, and white. She had height, age, and weight on her side; Bernadine had strength, agility, and cunning.
"Phew—w—w!" Beth jeered, mimicking her whine. "You'd 'tell mamma' if you got a scratch."
"I won't, Beth, if you'll fight," Bernadine protested.
"We'll see after dinner," Harriet put in significantly, and then returned to her work.
After the four o'clock dinner, during the dark winter months, Mrs. Caldwell dozed for half-an-hour in her chair by the fire. This was the children's opportunity. They were supposed to sit still and amuse themselves quietly while their mother slept; and, until she slept, they would sit motionless, watching her, the greater their anxiety to get away the more absolute their silence. Mrs. Caldwell looked as if she were being mesmerised to sleep by the two pairs of bright eyes so resolutely and patiently fixed upon her. The moment her breathing showed she was sound asleep, the children stole to the kitchen, shutting the doors after them softly, and instantly set to work.
It was a gruesome sight, those two children, with teeth set and clenched fists, battering each other in deadly earnest, but with no noise save the fizzle of feet on the brick floor, an occasional thump up against a piece of furniture, or the thud when they fell. They were afraid to utter a sound lest Aunt Victoria, up in her room, should hear them, and come down interfering; or their mother should wake, and come out and catch them. They bruised and blackened and scratched each other, and were seldom without what they considered the honourable scars of these battles. Sometimes, when Bernadine was badly mauled, she lost her temper, and threatened to tell mamma. But Beth could always punish her, and did so, by refusing to fight next time, although, without that recreation, life were a blank.
Harriet always cleared away obstacles to give them room, andthen sat down to eat her dinner, and watch the fight. She had the tastes, and some of the habits, of a Roman empress, and encouraged them with the keenest interest for a long time, but when she had finished her dinner she usually wearied of the entertainment, and would then stop it.
"I say, yerma'scomin'! I can 'ear 'er!" she would exclaim. "'Elp us to wash up, or I shan't be done for the reading."
When Harriet wanted help, Bernadine usually slipped away, helping anybody not being much in her line; but Beth set to work with a will.
Beth, always sociable, had persuaded her mother to let Harriet come to the reading; and Harriet accordingly, in a clean cap and apron, with a piece of sewing, was added to the party.
So long as she sat on a high chair, at a respectful distance, and remembered that she was a servant, her being there rather gratified Mrs. Caldwell than otherwise, once she had yielded to Beth's persuasion, and saw the practical working of the experiment; it made her feel as if she were doing something to improve the lower classes. It was a pity she did not try to improve Beth and Bernadine by finding some sewing for their idle hands to do. During the reading, dear little Bernadine, "so good and affectionate always," would sit on the floor beside her mother, whose pocket she often picked of a penny or sixpence to vary the monotony when she did not understand the book. Beth also sat idle, listening intently, and watching her sister. If the reading had been harrowing or exciting, she would fight Bernadine for the sixpence when they went to bed. There were lively scenes during the readings. They all wept at the pathetic parts, laughed loudly when amused, and disputed about passages and incidents at the top of their voices. Mrs. Caldwell forgot that Harriet was a servant, Harriet forgot herself, and the children, unaccustomed to wordy warfare, forgot their fear of their mother, and flew at each other's throats.
When the story was very interesting, Mrs. Caldwell read until she was hoarse, and then went on to herself—"dipping," the children called it. It was a point of honour with them not to dip, and they would remonstrate with their mother loudly when they caught her at it. Their feeling on the subject was so strong that she was ashamed to be seen dipping at last. She used to put the book away until they were safe in bed, and then gratify her curiosity; but they suspected her, because once or twice they noticed that she was unaffected by an exciting part; so one night they came down in their night-dresses and caught her, and after that the poor lady had to be careful. She might thump the children for coming downstairs, but she could not alter the low opinion they had of a person who dipped.
Beth'sbrain began to be extraordinarily busy. She recorded nothing, but her daily doings were so many works of her imagination. She was generally somebody else in these days, seldom herself; and people who did not understand this might have supposed that she was an exceedingly mendacious little girl, when she was merely speaking consistently in the character which she happened to be impersonating. She would spend hours of the afternoon alone in the drawing-room, standing in the window looking out while she wove her fancies; and she soon began to go out also, by the back-door, when the mood was upon her, without asking anybody's leave. She had wandered off in this way on one occasion to the south side, whither her people rarely went. At the top of the cliff, where the winding road began which led down to the harbour, a paralysed sailor was sitting in a wickerwork wheeled chair, looking over the sea. Beth knew the man by sight. He had been a yachtsman in the service of one of her great-uncles, and she had heard hints of extraordinary adventures they had had together. It filled her with compassion to see him sitting there so lonely and helpless, and as she approached she resolved herself into a beneficent being, able and willing to help. She had a book under her arm, a costly volume which Mrs. Caldwell had borrowed to read to the children. Beth had been looking at the pictures when the desire to go out suddenly seized upon her, and had carried the book off inadvertently.
"How are you to-day, Tom?" she said, going up to the invalid confidently. "I'm glad to see you out. We shall soon have you about again as well as ever. I knew a man in Ireland much worse than you are. He couldn't move his hands and arms. Legs are bad enough, but when it's hands and arms as well, you know, it's worse. Well, now you couldn't tell there'd ever been anything the matter with him."
"And what cured 'im?" Tom asked with interest.
"Oh, he justthoughthe'd get well, you know. You've got to set yourself that way, don't you see? If mountains can be moved by faith, you can surely move your own legs!"
"That sounds reasonable any way," Tom ejaculated.
"Do you like reading?" said Beth.
"Yes, I read a bit at times."
"Well, I've brought you a book," Beth proceeded, handing him the borrowed volume. "You'll find it interesting, I'm sure. It's a great favourite of mine."
"You're mighty good," the sailor said.
"Oh, not at all," Beth answered largely. Then she wished him good-bye. But she often visited him again in the same character, and the stories she told that unhappy invalid for his comfort and encouragement were amazing. When the book was missed, and her mother bothered about it, she listened serenely, and even helped to look for it.
Beth strolled homewards when she left her protégé, and on the way she became Norna of the Fitful Head. She tried Minna and Brenda first, but these characters were too insipid for her taste. Norna was different. She did things, you know, and made charms, and talked poetry, and people were afraid of her. Beth believed in her thoroughly. She'd be Norna, and make charms. But she had no lead. Norna looked about her. She knew by magic that Cleveland was coming to consult her, and she had no lead. There was a border of lead, however, over the attic window outside. All she had to do was to steal upstairs, climb out of the window on to the roof, and cut a piece of the lead off. It was now the mystic moment to obtain lead, but she must be wary. She strolled through the kitchen in a casual way. Harriet was busy about the grate, and paid no attention to her; so she secured the carving-knife without difficulty, went up to the attic, and opened the window. She was now on the dangerous pinnacle of a temple, risking her life in order to obtain the materials for a charm which would give her priceless power.
On the other side of the street, there lived in the Orchard House another widow-woman with three daughters. She let lodgings, and was bringing up her children to honest industry in that state of life. She and Mrs. Caldwell took a kindly interest in each other's affairs. Mrs. Davy happened to be changing the curtains in front that afternoon when Beth crept out of the attic window on to the roof, and she was paralysed with horror for a moment, expecting to see the child roll off into the street. She was a sensible woman, however, and quickly recovering herself, she ran across the road, with her spectacles on, and rapped at Mrs. Caldwell's door. Beth, hacking away at the lead with the carving-knife, did not heed the rap. Presently, however, she heard hurried footsteps on the stairs, and climbed back into the attic incontinently, putting her spoils in her pocket. When Mrs. Davy, her mother, and Harriet, all agitated, burst open the door, she was standing at the window looking out tranquilly.
"What were you doing on the roof, Beth?" her mother demanded.
"Nothing," Beth answered.
"Mrs. Davy says she saw you get out of the window."
Beth was silent.
"You're a bad girl, giving your mother so much trouble,"Mrs. Davy exclaimed, looking at her under her spectacles sternly. "If you was my child I'd whack you, I would."
Beth was instantly a lady, sneering at this common woman who was taking a liberty which she knew her mother would resent as much as she did.
"And what were you doing with the carving-knife, Miss Beth?" cried Harriet, spying it on the floor, and picking it up. Criminals are only clever up to a certain point; Beth had forgotten to conceal the carving-knife. "Oh dear! oh dear! If you 'aven't 'acked it all the way along!"
"Oh dear! oh dear!" Mrs. Caldwell echoed. It was her best carving-knife, and Beth would certainly have been beaten if Mrs. Davy had not suggested it. As it was, however, Mrs. Caldwell controlled her temper, and merely ordered her to go downstairs immediately. In the management of her children she would not be dictated to by anybody.
This was Beth's first public appearance as a disturber of the peace, and the beginning of the bad name she earned for herself in certain circles eventually. But she was let off lightly for it. Mrs. Caldwell's punishments were never retrospective. She was thunder and lightning in her wrath; a flash and then a bang, and it was all over. If she missed the first movement, the culprit escaped. She could no more have punished one of her children in cold blood than she could have cut its throat.
Beth ran down to the acting-room, so called because the boys had brought home the idea of acting in the holidays, and they had got up charades there on a stage made of boxes, with an old counterpane for a curtain, and farthing candles for footlights. It was a long, narrow room over the kitchen, with a sloping roof. Three steps led down into it. There was a window at one end, a small lattice with an iron bar nailed to the outside vertically. Beth swung herself out round the bar, dropped on to the back-kitchen roof, crept across the tiles to the chimney at the far corner, stepped thence on to the top of the old wooden pump, and from the top to the spout, from the spout to the stone trough, and so into the garden. Then she ran round to the kitchen, and got a candle, a canister, and some water in a pail, all of which she took up to the acting-room by way of the back-kitchen roof. The canister happened to contain allspice, but this was not to be considered when she wanted the canister, so she emptied it from the roof on to Harriet's head as she happened to be passing, and so got some good out of it, for Harriet displayed strong feeling on the subject both at the moment and afterwards, when she was trying to get the stuff out of her hair; which interested Beth, who in some such way often surprised people into the natural expression of emotions which she might neverotherwise have discovered. Bernadine had been playing alone peaceably in the garden, but Beth persuaded her to come upstairs. She found Beth robed in the old counterpane, with her hair dishevelled, and the room darkened. Beth was Norna now in her cell on the Fitful Head, and Bernadine was the shrinking but resolute Minna come to consult her. Beth made her sit down, drew a magic circle round her with a piece of chalk, and, in a deep tragic voice, warned her not to move if she valued her life, for there were evil spirits in the room. The pail stood on a box draped with an old black shawl, and round this she also drew a circle. Then she put some lead in the canister, melted it over the candle, dropped it into the water, and muttered—