Part 42 (1/2)
Beth was rebellious, too, about some things. There was a grocery shop at one end of the street, kept by a respectable woman, but Beth refused to go to it because the respectable woman had a fussy little Pomeranian dog, and allowed it to lick her hands and face all over, which so disgusted Beth that she could not eat anything the woman touched. It was in this shop that Beth picked up the moribund black beetle that kicked out suddenly, and set up the horror of crawling things from which she ever afterwards suffered. This was another reason for not going back to the shop, but Aunt Victoria could not understand it, and insisted on sending her. Beth was firmly naughty in the matter, however, and would not go, greatly to the old lady's discomposure.
One means of torture, unconsciously devised by Aunt Victoria, tried Beth extremely. Aunt Victoria used to send her to church alone on Sunday afternoons to hear a certain eloquent preacher, and required her to repeat the text, and tell her what the whole sermon was about on her return. Beth did her best, but if she managed to remember the text by repeating it all the time, she could not attend to the sermon, and if she attended to the sermon, she invariably forgot the text. It was another instance of the trickishness of her memory; she could have remembered both the text and sermon without an effort had she not been afraid of forgetting them.
But the thing that gave her aunt most trouble of mind was Beth's habit of making acquaintance with all kinds of people. It was vain to warn her, and worse than vain, for the reasons Aunt Victoria gave her for not knowing people only excited her interest in them, and she would wait about, watching, to see for herself, studying their habits with the patient pertinacity of a naturalist. The drawing-room floor was let to a lady whose husband was at sea, a Mrs. Crome. She was very intimate with a gentleman who also lodged in the house, a friend of her husband's, she said, who had promised to look after her during his absence. Their bedrooms adjoined, and Beth used to see their boots outside their doors every morning when she went down to breakfast, and wonder why they got up so late.
”Out again together nearly all last night,” Prentice remarked to Aunt Victoria one morning; and then they shook their heads, but agreed that there was nothing to be done. From this and other remarks, however, Beth gathered that Mrs. Crome was going to perdition; and from that time she had a horrid fascination for Beth, who would gaze at her whenever she had an opportunity, with great solemn eyes dilated, as if she were learning her by heart--as, indeed, she was--involuntarily, for future reference; for Mrs. Crome was one of a p.r.o.nounced type, as Beth learnt eventually, when she knew the world better, an example which helped her to recognise other specimens of the kind whenever she met them.
She sc.r.a.ped acquaintance with Mrs. Crome on the stairs, at last, and was surprised to find her as kind as could be, and was inclined to argue from this that Prentice and Aunt Victoria must be mistaken about her. But one evening Mrs. Crome tempted her into the drawing-room. The gentleman was there, smoking a cigar and drinking whisky-and-water; and there was something in the whole aspect and atmosphere of the room that made Beth feel exceedingly uncomfortable, and wish she was out of it immediately.
”Aren't you very dull with that old lady?” said Mrs. Crome. ”I suppose she never takes you to the theatre or anything.”
”No,” said Beth; ”she does not approve of theatres.”
”Then I suppose she doesn't approve of me?” Mrs. Crome observed good-naturedly.
”No,” said Beth solemnly; ”she does not.”
Mrs. Crome burst out laughing, and so did the gentleman.
”This is rich, really,” he said. ”What a quaint little person!”
”Oh, but she's sweet!” said Mrs. Crome; and then she kissed Beth, and Beth noticed that she had been eating onions, and for long afterwards she a.s.sociated the smell with theatres, frivolous talk, and a fair-haired woman smiling fatuously on the brink of perdition.
Aunt Victoria retired early to perform her evening ablutions, and on this occasion she had gone up just as usual, with a little bell, which she rang when she was ready for Beth to come. In the midst of the talk and laughter in the drawing-room the little bell suddenly sounded emphatically, and Beth fled. She found Aunt Victoria out on the landing in her petticoat and dressing-jacket, and without her auburn front, a sign of great perturbation. She had heard Beth's voice in the drawing-room, and proceeded to admonish her severely. But Beth heard not a word; for the sight of the old lady's stubbly white hair had plunged her into a reverie, and already, when the vision and the dream were upon her, no Indian devotee, absorbed in contemplation, could be less sensitive to outward impressions than Beth was. Aunt Victoria had to shake her to rouse her.
”What are you thinking of, child?” she demanded.
”Riding to the rescue,” Beth answered dreamily.
”Don't talk nonsense,” said Aunt Victoria. Beth gazed at her with a blank look. She was saving souls just then, and could attend to nothing else.
Beth's terror of the Judgment never returned; but after she had been away from home a few weeks she began to have another serious trouble which disturbed her towards evening in the same way. The first symptom was a curious lapse of memory which worried her a good deal. She could not remember how much of the garden was to be seen from her mother's bedroom window at home, and she longed to fly back and settle the question. Then she became conscious of being surrounded by the country on every side, and it oppressed her to think of it. She was a sea-child, living inland for the first time, and there came upon her a great yearning for the sight and sound of moving waters. She sniffed the land-breeze, and found it sweet but insipid in her nostrils after the tonic freshness of the sea-air. She heard the voice of her beloved in the sough of the wind among the trees, and it made her inexpressibly melancholy. Her energy began to ebb. She did not care to move about much, but would sit silently sewing by the hour together, outwardly calm, inwardly all an ache to go back to the sea. She used to wonder whether the tide was coming in or going out; wonder if the fish were biting, how the sands looked, and who was on the pier. She devoured every sc.r.a.p of news that came from home in the hope of finding something to satisfy her longing. Bernadine wrote her an elaborate letter in large hand, which Beth thought very wonderful; Harriet sent her a letter also, chiefly composed of moral sentiments copied from the _Family Herald_, with a view to producing a favourable impression on Miss Victoria; and Mrs. Caldwell wrote regularly once a week, a formal duty-letter, but a joy to Beth, to whom letters of any kind were a new and surprising experience. She had never expected that any one would write to her; and in the first flush of her grat.i.tude she responded with enthusiasm, sending her mother, in particular, long descriptions of her life and surroundings, which Mrs. Caldwell thought so good she showed them to everybody. In replying to Beth, however, she expressed no approval or pleasure; on the contrary, she put Beth to shame by the way she dwelt on her mistakes in spelling, which effectually checked the outpourings, and shut Beth up in herself again, so that she mourned the more. During the day she kept up pretty well, but towards twilight, always her time of trial, the yearning for home, for mamma, for Harriet, for Bernadine, began again; the most gloomy fears of what might be happening to them in her absence possessed her, and she had great difficulty in keeping back her tears.
Aunt Victoria noticed her depression, but mistook it for fatigue, and sent her to bed early, which Beth was glad of, because she wanted to be alone and cry. But one evening, when she was looking particularly sad, the old lady asked if she did not feel well.
”Yes, I feel quite well, thank you, Aunt Victoria,” Beth answered with a great sigh; ”but I know now what you meant about home-ties. They do pull strong.”
”Ah!” said Aunt Victoria, enlightened; ”you are homesick, are you?”
And from that day forward, when she saw Beth moping, she took her out of herself by making her discuss the subject, and so relieved her; but Beth continued to suffer, although less acutely, until her return.
CHAPTER XXIII
Rainharbour was not yet deserted by summer visitors, although it was late in the autumn when Beth and Aunt Victoria returned. It had been such a lovely season that the holiday people lingered, loath to leave the freshness of the sea and the freedom of the sh.o.r.e for the stuffy indoor duties and the conventional restrictions of their town lives.
On the day of their arrival, Beth looked about her in amaze. She had experienced such a world of change in herself since she went away, that she was surprised to find the streets unaltered; and yet, although they were unaltered, they did not look the same. It was as if the focus of her eyes had been readjusted so as to make familiar objects seem strange, and change the perspective of everything; which gave the place a different air, a look of having been swept and garnished and set in order like a toy-town. But the people they pa.s.sed were altogether unchanged, and this seemed stranger still to Beth.
There they had been all the time, walking about as usual, wearing the same clothes, thinking the same thoughts; they had had no new experiences, and, what was worse, they were not only unconscious of any that she might have had, but were profoundly indifferent; and to Beth, on the threshold of life, all eager interest in everything, caring greatly to know, and ready to sympathise, this vision of the self-centred with shrivelled hearts was terrible; it gave her the sensation of being the one living thing that could feel in a world of automata moved by machinery.
Bernadine and her mother had met them at the station, but Beth was so busy looking about her, collecting impressions, she had hardly a word to say to either of them. Mrs. Caldwell set this down as another sign of want of proper affection, but Aunt Victoria grumped that it was nothing but natural excitement.