Part 30 (2/2)
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.”
<script>