The Beth Book Part 15

The yard very soon became a sociable centre for the whole idle place.

Any one who chose came into it in a friendly way, and lounged about, gossiping, and inspecting the works in progress. Women brought their babies, and sat about on the stones suckling them and talking to the men--a proceeding which filled Beth with disgust, she thought it so peculiarly indelicate.

Beth stood with her mother at the sitting-room window one day to see the last of poor Artless, as he was led away on a halter by a strange man, his glossy chestnut coat showing dappled in the sunshine, but his wild spirit much subdued for want of corn. The first time they had seen him was on the day of their arrival, when Captain Caldwell had ridden out on him to meet them. Mrs. Caldwell burst into tears at the recollection.

"He was the first evidence of promotion and prosperity," she said.

"But the promotion has been to a higher sphere, and I much fear that the prosperity, like Artless himself, has departed for ever."

Mrs. Caldwell had decided to return to her own people in England, and a few days later they started. She took the children to see their father's grave the last thing before they left Castletownrock, and stood beside it for a long time in silence, her gloveless hand resting caressingly on the cold tombstone, her eyes full of tears, and a pained expression in her face. It was the real moment of separation for her. She had to tear herself away from her beloved dead, to leave him lonely, and to go out alone herself, unprotected, unloved, uncomforted, into the cold world with her helpless children. Poverty was in store for her; that she knew; and doubtless she foresaw many another trouble, and, could she have chosen, would gladly have taken her place there beside the one who, with all his faults, had been her best friend on earth.

Her cold, formal religion was no comfort to her in moments like these.

She was a pagan at heart, and where she had laid her dead, there, to her mind, he would rest for ever, far from her. The lonely grave on the wild west coast was the shrine towards which her poor heart would yearn thereafter at all times, always. She had erected a handsome tombstone on the hallowed spot, and was going away in her shabby clothes, the more at ease for the self-denial she had had to exercise in order to beautify it. The radical difference between herself and Beth, which was to keep them apart for ever, was never more apparent than at this moment of farewell. The other children cried, but Beth remained an unmoved spectator of her mother's emotion. She hated the delay in that painful place; and what was the use of it when her father would be with them just the same when they got into the yellow coach which was waiting at the gate to take them away? Beth's beloved was a spirit, near at hand always; her mother's was a corpse in a coffin, buried in the ground.

A little way out of Castletownrock the coach was stopped, and Honor and Kathleen Mayne from the inn came up to the window.

"We walked out to be the last to say good-bye to you, Mrs. Caldwell, and to wish you good luck," Kathleen said. "We were among the first to welcome you when you came. And we've brought a piece of music for Miss Mildred, if she will accept it for a keepsake."

Mrs. Caldwell shook hands with them, but she could not speak; and the coach drove on. The days when she had thought the two Miss Maynes presumptuous for young women in their position seemed a long way off to her as she sat there, sobbing, but grateful for this last act of kindly feeling.

Beth had been eager to be off in the yellow coach, but they had not long started before she began to suffer. The moving panorama of desolate landscape, rocky coast, rough sea, moor and mountain, with the motion of the coach, and the smell of stale tobacco and beer in inn-parlours where they waited to change horses, nauseated her to faintness. Her sensitive nervous system received too many vivid impressions at once; the intense melancholy of the scenes they pa.s.sed through, the wretched hovels, the half-clad people, the lean cattle, and all the evidences of abject poverty, amid dreadful bogs under a gloomy sky, got hold of her and weighed upon her spirits, until at last she shrunk into her corner, pale and still, and sat with her eyes closed, and great tears running slowly down her cheeks. These were her last impressions of Ireland, and they afterwards coloured all her recollections of the country and the people.

But the travellers came to a railway station at last, and left the coach. There was a long crowded train just about to start; and Mrs.

Caldwell, dragging Beth after her by the hand, because she knew she would stand still and stare about her the moment she let her go, hurried from carriage to carriage, trying to find seats.

"I saw some," Beth said. "You've pa.s.sed them."

Mrs. Caldwell turned, and, some distance back, found a carriage with only two people in it, a gentleman whom Beth did not notice particularly, and a lady, doubtless a bride, dressed in light garments, and a white bonnet, very high in front, the s.p.a.ce between the forehead and the top being filled with roses. She sat upright in the middle of the compartment, and looked superciliously at the weary, worried widow, and her helpless children, in their shabby black, when they stopped at the carriage door. It was her cold indifference that impressed Beth. She could not understand why, seeing how worn they all were and the fix they were in, she did not jump up instantly and open the door, overjoyed to be able to help them. There were just four seats in the carriage, but she never moved. Beth had looked up confidently into her face, expecting sympathy and help, but was repelled by a disdainful glance. It was Beth's first experience of the wealthy world that does not care, and she never forgot it.

"That carriage is engaged," her mother exclaimed, and dragged her impatiently away.

In the hotel in Dublin where they slept a night, they had the use of a long narrow sitting-room, with one large window at the end, hung with handsome, heavy, dark green curtains, quite new. The valance at the top ended in a deep fringe of thick cords, and at the end of each cord there was a bright ornamental thing made of wood covered with silks of various colours. Beth had never seen anything so lovely, and on the instant she determined to have one. They were high out of her reach; but that was nothing if only she could get a table and chair under them, and the coast clear. Fortune favoured her during the evening, and she managed to secure one, and carried it off in triumph; and so great was her joy in the colour, that she took it out of her pocket whenever she had a chance next day, and gazed at it enraptured. On their way to the boat Mildred caught her looking at it, and asked her where she got it.

Beth explained exactly.

"But it's stealing!" Mildred exclaimed.

"Is it?" said Beth, in pleased surprise. She had never stolen anything before, and it was a new sensation.

"But don't you know stealing is very wicked?" Mildred asked impressively.

Beth looked disconcerted: "I never thought of that. I'll put it back."

"How can you? You'll never be there again," Mildred rejoined. "You've done it now. You've committed a sin."

Beth slipped the bright thing into her pocket. "I'll repent," she said, and seemed satisfied.

It was a lovely day, and the pa.s.sage from Kingstown to Holyhead was so smooth that everybody lounged about the deck, and no one was ill. Beth was very much interested, first in the receding sh.o.r.e, then in the people about her. There was one group in particular, evidently of affluent people, dressed in a way that made her feel ashamed of her own clothes for the first time in her life. But what particularly attracted her attention were some bunches of green and purple grapes which the papa of the party took out of a basket and began to divide.

Beth had never seen grapes before except in pictures, and thought they looked lovely. The old gentleman gave the grapes to his family, but in handing them, one little bunch fell on the deck. He picked it up, looked at it, blew some dust off it; then decided that it was not good enough for his own children, and handed it to Bernadine, who was gazing greedily.

Beth dashed forward, s.n.a.t.c.hed it out of her hand, and threw it into the sea.

"We are not beggars!" she cried.

"Well done, little one," a gentleman who was sitting near exclaimed.

"Won't pick up the crumbs that fall from the rich man's table, eh?

That's a very proper spirit. And who may you be?"

"My father was a gentleman," Beth answered hotly.

CHAPTER XII

Uncle James Patten sent a landau to meet his sister and her family at the station, on their arrival from Ireland. Mildred was the first to jump in. She took the best seat, and sat up stiff and straight.

"I do love carriages and horses, mamma," she said, as they drove through Rainharbour, the little north-country seaside place which was henceforth to be their home. "I wonder which is to be our house. There are several empty. Do you think it is that one?" She had singled out one of the largest in the place.

"No," said Mrs. Caldwell rather bitterly, "more likely this," and she indicated a tiny two-storied tenement, wedged in between tall houses, and looking as if it had either got itself there by mistake, or had been put in in a hurry, just to fill up.

"That _is_ the one," Beth said.

"How do you know?" Mildred snapped.

"Because we're going to live in Orchard Street, opposite the orchard; and this is Orchard Street, and there's the orchard, and that's the only house empty."

"I'm afraid the child is right," Mrs. Caldwell said with a sigh.

"However," she added, pulling herself up, "it is exceedingly kind of Uncle James to give us a house at all."

"He might have given us something nicer," Mildred remarked disdainfully.

"Oh!" Beth exclaimed, "he's given us the best he has, I expect. And it's a dear little place, with a little bow-window on either side of a little front door--just like the one where Snowdrop found the empty beds when the bears were out."

"Don't talk nonsense, Beth," Mildred cried crossly.

But Beth hardly heard. She was busy peopling the quaint little town with the friends of her fancy, and sat smiling serenely as she looked about her.

They had to drive right through Rainharbour, and about a mile out into the country on the other side, to arrive at Fairholm, Uncle James Patten's place. The sun had set, and the quaintly irregular red-brick houses, mellowed by age, shone warm in tint against the gathering grey of the sky, which rose like a leaden dome above them. At one part of the road the sea came in sight. Great dark mountainous ma.s.ses of cloud, with flame-coloured fringes, hung suspended over its shining surface, in which they were reflected with what was to Beth terrible effect. She sat and shivered with awe so long as the lurid scene was in sight, and was greatly relieved when the carriage turned into a country lane, and sea and sombre sky were blotted out.

It was early spring. Buds were bursting in the hedgerows, birds were building, songsters sang among the branches, and the air was sweet and mild. Fairholm lay all among fertile fields, well wooded and watered.

It was a typical English home, with surroundings as unlike the great, bare, bald mountains and wild Atlantic seas Beth had hitherto shuddered amongst, as peace is unlike war. Certain natures are stimulated by the grandeur of such scenes; but Beth was too delicate an instrument to be played upon so roughly. Storms within reflected the storms without only too readily. She was tempest-tossed by temperament, and, in nature, all her yearning was for repose; so that now, as they drove up the well-ordered avenue to the house, the tender tone of colour, green against quiet grey, and the easy air of affluence, so soothing after the sorrowful signs of a hard struggle for life by which her feelings had hitherto been harrowed, drew from her a deep sigh of satisfaction.

The hall-door stood open, but no one was looking out for them. They could hear the tinkle of a piano in the distance. Then a servant appeared, followed by a stout lady, who came forward to greet them in a hurried, nervous way.

"I'm glad to see you," she said, kissing Mrs. Caldwell. She spoke in a breathless undertone, as if she were saying something wrong, and was afraid of being caught and stopped before she had finished the sentence. "I should like to have gone to meet you, but James said there were too many for the carriage as it was. He says more than two in the carriage makes it look like an excursion-party. But I was listening for you, only I don't hear very well, you know. You remember me, Mildred? This is Beth, I suppose, and this is Bernadine. You don't know who I am? I am your Aunt Grace Mary. James begs you to excuse him for a little, Caroline. It is his half-hour for exercises. So unfortunate. If you had only come a little later! But, however, the sooner the better for me. Come into the dining-room and see Aunt Victoria. We must stay there until Uncle James has finished practising his exercises in the drawing-room."

Great-Aunt Victoria Bench was sitting bolt upright on a high chair in the dining-room, tatting. Family portraits, hung far too high all round the room, seemed to have been watching her complacently until the travellers entered, when they all turned instantly and looked hard at Beth.

Aunt Victoria was a tall thin old lady, with a beautiful delicate complexion, an auburn front and white cap, and a severely simple black dress. She rose stiffly to receive Mrs. Caldwell, and kissed her on both cheeks with restrained emotion. Then she shook hands with each of the children.