Part 36 (1/2)
With regard to Beth's cooking, it is remarkable that, although Mrs.
Caldwell herself had suffered all through her married life for want of proper training in household matters, she never attempted to have her own daughters better taught. On the contrary, she had forbidden Beth to do servant's work, and objected most strongly to her cooking, until she found how good it was, and even then she thought it due to her position only to countenance it under protest. The extraordinary inefficiency of the good-old-fas.h.i.+oned-womanly woman as a wife on a small income, the silly pretences which showed her want of proper self-respect, and the ill-adjusted balance of her undeveloped mind which betrayed itself in petty inconsistencies, fill us with pity and surprise us, yet encourage us too by proving how right and wise we were to try our own experiments. If we had listened to advice and done as we were told, the woman's-sphere-is-home would have been as ugly and comfortless a place for us to-day as it used to be when Beth was forced by the needs of her nature to poach for diversion, cook for kindness, and clean, and fight, and pray, and lie, and love, in her brave struggle against the hard and stupid conditions of her life--conditions which were not only r.e.t.a.r.ding the development, but threatening utterly to distort, if not actually to destroy, all that was best, most beautiful, and most wonderful in her character.
Beth rather expected to get into difficulties eventually about the game, but she calculated that she would have a certain time to run before her head was snapped off, and during that time her mother would enjoy her good dinners and be the better for them, and she herself would enjoy the sport--facts which no amount of anger afterwards could alter. Since Mrs. Caldwell had washed her hands of Beth, they were beginning to be quite good friends. Sometimes her mother talked to her just as she would to anybody else; that is to say, with civility. She would say, ”And what are you going to do to-day, Beth?” quite pleasantly, as though speaking to another grown-up person; and Beth would answer politely, and tell the truth if possible, instead of making some sulky evasion, as she had begun to do when there was no other way of keeping the peace. She was fearlessly honest by nature, but as she approached maturity, she lost her nerve for a time, and during that time she lied, on occasion, to escape a harrowing scene.
She always despised herself for it, however, and therefore, as she grew stronger, she became her natural straightforward self again, only, if anything, all the more scrupulously accurate for the degrading experience. For she soon perceived that there is nothing that damages the character like the habit of untruth; the man or woman who makes a false excuse has already begun to deteriorate. If a census could be taken to establish the grounds upon which people are considered n.o.ble or ign.o.ble, we should find it was in exact proportion to the amount of confidence that can be placed first of all in their sincerity, and then in their accuracy. Sincerity claims respect for character, accuracy estimation for ability; no high-minded person was ever insincere, and no fool was ever accurate.
When the close season began, Beth left the plantations, and took to fis.h.i.+ng in the sea. She would sit at the end of the pier in fine weather, baiting her hooks with great fat lob-worms she had dug up out of the sands at low tide, and watching her lines all by herself; or, if it were rough, she would fish in the harbour from the steps up against the wooden jetty, where the sailors hung about all day long with their hands in their pockets when the boats were in. Some of them would sit with her, all in a row, fis.h.i.+ng too, and they would exchange bait with her, and give her good advice, while others stood behind looking on and listening. And as of old in Ireland she had fascinated the folk, so here again these great simple bearded men listened with wondering interest to her talk, and never answered at all as if they were speaking to a child. Beth heard some queer things, sitting down there by the old wooden jetty, fis.h.i.+ng for anything she could catch, and she said some queer things too when the mood was upon her.
Sometimes, when she wanted to be alone and think, she would go off to the rocks that appeared at low-water down behind the south pier, and fish there. She loved this spot; it was near to nature, yet not remote from the haunts of man. She sat there one afternoon, holding her line, and dreamily watching the fis.h.i.+ng boats streaming across the bay, with their brown sails set to catch the fitful breeze which she could see making cat's-paws on the water far out, but could not feel, being sheltered from it by the old stone pier. The sea was gla.s.sy smooth, and lapped up the rocks, heaving regularly like the breast of a tranquil sleeper. Beth gazed at it until she was seized with a great yearning to lie back on its s.h.i.+ning surface and be gently borne away to some bright eternity, where Sammy would be, and all her other friends. The longing became imperative. She rose from the rock she was sitting on, she raised her arms, her eyes were fixed. Then it was as if she had suddenly awakened. The impulse had pa.s.sed, but she was all shaken by it, and s.h.i.+vered as if she were cold.
Fortunately the fish were biting well that day. She caught two big dabs, four whitings, a small plaice, and a fine fat sole. The sole was a prize, indeed, and mamma and Aunt Victoria should have it for dinner. As she walked home, carrying the fish on a string, she met Sammy.
”Where did you get those fish?” he asked.
”Caught them,” she answered laconically.
”What! all by yourself? No! I don't believe it.”
”I did, all the same,” she answered; ”and now I'm going to cook them--some of them at least.”
”Yourself? Cook them yourself? No!” he cried in admiration. Cooking was an accomplishment he honoured.
”If you'll come out after your tea, I'll leave the back-gate ajar, and you can slip into the wood-house; and I'll bring you a whiting on toast, all hot and brown.”
With such an inducement, Sammy was in good time. Beth found him sitting contentedly on a heap of sticks, waiting for the feast. She had brought the whiting out with a cover over it, hot and brown, as she had promised; and Sammy's mouth watered when he saw it.
”What a jolly girl you are, Beth!” he exclaimed.
But Beth was not so much gratified by the praise as she might have been. The vision and the dream were upon her that evening, her nerves were overwrought, and she was yearning for an outlet for ideas that oppressed her. She stood leaning against the door-post, biting a twig; restless, dissatisfied; but not knowing what she wanted.
When Sammy had finished the whiting, he remembered Beth, and asked what she was thinking about.
”I'm not thinking exactly,” she answered, frowning intently in the effort to find expression for what she had in her consciousness.
”Things come into my mind, but I don't think them, and I can't say them. They don't come in words. It's more like seeing them, you know, only you don't see them with your eyes, but with something inside yourself. Do you know what it is when you are fis.h.i.+ng off the rocks, and there is no breaking of waves, only a rising and falling of the water; and it comes swelling up about you with a sort of sob that brings with it a whiff of fresh air every time, and makes you take in your breath with a sort of sob too, every time--and at last you seem to be the sea, or the sea seems to be you--it's all one; but you don't think it.”
Sammy looked at her in a blank, bewildered way. ”I like it best when you tell stories, Beth,” he said, under the impression that all this incomprehensible stuff was merely a display for his entertainment.
”Come and sit down beside me and tell stories.”
”Stories don't come to me to-night,” said Beth, with a tragic face.
”Do you remember the last time we were on the sands--oh! I keep feeling--it was all so--_peaceful_, that was it. I've been wondering ever since what it was, and that was it--peaceful;
The quiet people, The old church steeple; The sandy reaches Of wreck-strewn beaches--”
”Who made that up?” said Sammy suspiciously.
”I did,” Beth answered offhand. ”At least I didn't make it up, it just came to me. When I make it up it'll most likely be quite different.
It's like the stuff for a dress, you know, when you buy it. You get it made up, and it's the same stuff, and it's quite different, too, in a way. You've got it put into shape, and it's good for something.”
”I don't believe you made it up,” said Sammy doggedly. ”You're stuffing me, Beth. You're always trying to stuff me.”