The Beth Book Part 30

Count Gustav looked at her little delicate hand lying on the coverlet, and then at the worn little face.

"You've been crying," he said.

"Ah, that was only last night after I went to bed," Beth answered. "It makes you cry when people aren't saved, doesn't it? Are you saved? If you're not it will be awful for me."

"Why?"

"'Cos it would hurt so here to think of you burning in h.e.l.l"--Beth clasped her chest. "It always begins to ache here--in the evening--for the people who aren't saved, and when I go to bed it makes me cry."

"Who told you about being saved, and that?"

"Aunt Victoria. She lives with us, you know. She's going away now to pay a visit, because the boys are coming home, and Mildred, for the holidays, and there wouldn't be room for her. I'm dreadfully sorry; but I shall go to church, and read the Bible just the same when she's away."

Count Gustav sat down on the end of the saloon-table and reflected a little; then he said--"I wouldn't read anything, if I were you, while Aunt Victoria's away. Just play about with Mildred and the boys, and come out fishing with me sometimes. G.o.d doesn't want _you_ to save people. He does that Himself. I expect He's very angry because you cry at night. He thinks you don't trust Him. All He wants you to do is to love Him, and trust Him, and be happy. That's the creed for a little girl."

"Do you think so?" Beth gasped. Then she began to reflect, and her big grey eyes slowly dilated, while at the same time a look of intense relief relaxed the muscles of her pinched little face. "Do you think so?" she repeated. Then suddenly she burst into tears.

Count Gustav, somewhat disconcerted, hurriedly handed her a handkerchief.

Another gentleman came into the saloon at the moment, and raised inquiring eyebrows.

"Only a little martyr, momentarily released from suffering, enjoying the reaction," Count Gustav observed. "Come on deck, and let her sleep. Do you hear, little lady, go to sleep."

Beth, docile to a fault when gently handled, nestled down among the blankets, shut her eyes, and prepared to obey. The sound of the water rippling off the sides of the yacht as it glided on smoothly over the summer-sea both soothed and cheered her. Heavenly thoughts came crowding into her mind; then sleep surprised her, with the tears she had been shedding for the sufferings of others still wet upon her cheek. When she awoke, her clothes were beside her, ready to put on.

She jumped up instantly, dressed, and went on deck. The yacht was almost stationary, and the two gentlemen, attended by the black Dane, Gard, were fishing. Away to starboard, the land lay like a silver mist in the heat of the afternoon. Beth turned her sorrowful little face towards it.

"Are you homesick, Beth?" Count Gustav asked.

"No, sick of home," Beth answered; "but I suppose I shall have to go back."

"And what then?"

"Mamma will punish me for jumping into the harbour, I expect."

"_Jumping_ in!" he e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed, and then a great gravity settled upon him, and he cogitated for some time. "Why did you jump in?" he said at last.

"Because mamma--because mamma--" her chest heaved. She was ashamed to say.

Count Gustav exchanged glances with the other gentleman, and said no more. But he took her home himself in the evening, and had a long talk with mamma and Aunt Victoria; and after he had gone they were both particularly nice to Beth, but very solemn. That night, too, Aunt Victoria did not mention death and the judgment, but talked of heaven and the mercy of G.o.d until Beth's brow cleared, and she was filled with hope.

It was the next day that Aunt Victoria left them to make room for Mildred and the boys. Beth went with her mother to see the old lady off at the station. On account of their connections the little party attracted attention, and Mrs. Caldwell, feeling her importance, expected the officials to be obsequious, which they were; and, in return, she also expected Aunt Victoria to make proper acknowledgment of their attentions. She considered that sixpence at least was necessary to uphold the dignity of the family on such occasions; but, to her horror, when the moment came, Aunt Victoria, after an exciting fumble, drew from her reticule a tract ent.i.tled "The Man on the Slant," and, in the face of everybody, handed it to the expectant porter.

Mrs. Caldwell a.s.sured Lady Benyon afterwards that she should never forget that moment. Beth used to wonder why.

CHAPTER XVIII

The end of the holidays found Beth in a very different mood. Jim had come with the ideas of his adolescence, and Mildred had brought new music, and these together had helped to take her completely out of herself. The rest from lessons, too--from her mother's method of making education a martyrdom, and many more hours of each day than usual spent in the open air, had also helped greatly to ease her mind and strengthen her body, so that, even in the time, which was only a few weeks, she had recovered her colour, shot up, and expanded.

Most of the time she had spent with Jim, whom she had studied with absorbing interest, his point of view was so wholly unexpected. And even in these early days she showed a trait of character for which she afterwards became remarkable; that is to say, she learned the whole of the facts of a case before she formed an opinion on its merits--listened and observed uncritically, without prejudice and without personal feeling, until she was fully informed. Life unfolded itself to her like the rules of arithmetic. She could not conjecture what the answer would be in any single example from a figure or two, but had to take them all down in order to work the sum. And her object was always, not to prove herself right in any guess she might have made, but to arrive at the truth. She was eleven years old at this time, but looked fourteen.

It was when she went out shooting with Jim that they used to have their most interesting discussions. Jim used to take her to carry things, but never offered her a shot, because she was a girl. She did not care about that, however, because she had made up her mind to take the gun when he was gone, and go out shooting on her own account; and she abstracted a certain amount of powder and shot from his flasks each day to pay herself for her present trouble, and also to be ready for the future. Uncle James had given Jim leave to shoot, provided he sent the game he killed to Fairholm; and sometimes they spent the day wandering through the woods after birds, and sometimes they sat on the cliffs, which skirted the property, potting rabbits. Jim expected Beth to act as a keeper for him, and also to retrieve like a well-trained dog; and when on one occasion she disappointed him, he had a good deal to say about the uselessness of sisters and the inferiority of the s.e.x generally. Women, he always maintained, were only fit to sew on b.u.t.tons and mend socks.

"But is it contemptible to sew on b.u.t.tons and mend socks?" Beth asked, one day when they were sitting in a sandy hollow waiting for rabbits.

"It's not a man's work," said Jim, a trifle disconcerted.

Beth looked about her. The great sea, the vast tract of sand, and the blue sky so high above them, made her suffer for her own insignificance, and feel for the moment that nothing was worth while; but in the hollow where they sat it was cosy and the gra.s.s was green. Miniature cliffs overhung the rabbit-holes, and the dry soil was silvered by sun and wind and rain. There was a stiff breeze blowing, but it did not touch them in their sheltered nook. They could hear it making its moan, however, as if it were vainly trying to get at them; and there also ascended from below the ceaseless sound of the sea. Beth turned her back on the wild prospect, and watched the rabbit-holes.

"There's one on the right," she said at last, softly.

Jim raised his gun, aimed, and fired. The rabbit rolled over on its back, and Beth rose in a leisurely way, fetched it, carrying it by its legs, and threw it down on the bag.

"And when all the b.u.t.tons are sewed on and all the socks mended, what is a girl to do with her time?" she asked dispa.s.sionately, when she had reseated herself. "The things only come home from the wash once a week, you see."

"Oh, there's lots to be done," Jim answered vaguely. "There's the cooking. A man's life isn't worth having if the cooking's bad."

"But a gentleman keeps a cook," Beth observed.

"Oh yes, of course," Jim answered irritably. "You would see what I mean if you weren't a girl. Girls have no brains. They scream at a mouse."

"_We_ never scream at mice," Beth protested in surprise. "Bernadine catches them in her hands."

"Ah, but then you've had brothers, you see," said Jim. "It makes all the difference if you're taught not to be silly."

"Then why aren't all girls taught, and why aren't we taught more things?"

"Because you've got no brains, I tell you."

"But if we can be taught one thing, why can't we be taught another?

How can you tell we've no brains if you never try to teach us?"

"Now look here, Miss Beth," said brother Jim in a tone of exasperation, "I know what you'll be when you grow up, if you don't mind. You'll be just the sort of long-tongued shrew, always arguing, that men hate."

"Do you say 'that men hate' or 'whom men hate'?" Beth interrupted.

"There you are!" said Jim; "devilish sharp at a nag. That's just what I'm telling you. Now, you take my advice, and hold your tongue. Then perhaps you'll get a husband; and if you do, make things comfortable for him. Men can't abide women who don't make things comfortable."

"Well," said Beth temperately, "I don't think I could 'abide' a man who didn't make things comfortable."

Jim grunted, as though that point of view were a different thing altogether.

By degrees Beth discovered that sisters did not hold at all the same sort of place in Jim's estimation as "the girls." The girls were other people's sisters, to whom Jim was polite, and whom he even fawned on and flattered while they were present, but made most disparaging remarks about and ridiculed behind their backs; to his own sisters, on the contrary, he was habitually rude, but he always spoke of them nicely in their absence, and even boasted about their accomplishments.

"Your brother Jim says you can act anything," Charlotte Hardy, the doctor's daughter, told Beth. "And you recite wonderfully, although you've never heard any one recite; and you talk like a grown-up person."