Part 42 (2/2)
The first thing Beth did after greeting Harriet, who stood smiling at the door, was to run upstairs to her mother's bedroom to settle the question of how much of the garden was visible from the window; and then she rushed on up to the attic, dragged a big box under the skylight in hot haste, and climbed up on it to look at the sea. It was the one glimpse of it to be had from the house, just a corner, where the water washed up against the white cliffs that curved round an angle of the bay. Beth flung the skylight open, and gazed, then drew in her breath with a great sigh of satisfaction. The sea! The sea!
Even that glimpse of it was refres.h.i.+ng as a long cool drink to one exhausted by heat and cruelly athirst.
While she was away, Beth had made many good resolutions about behaving herself on her return. Aunt Victoria had talked to her seriously on the subject. Beth could be good enough when she liked: she did all that her aunt expected of her; why could she not do all that her mother expected? Beth promised she would; and was beginning already to keep her promise faithfully by being as troublesome as possible, which was all that her mother ever expected of her. Whether or not thoughts are things which have power to produce effects, there are certainly people who answer to expectation with fatal facility, and Beth was one of them. Eventually she resisted with all her own individuality, but at this time she acted like an instrument played upon by other people's minds. This peculiar sensitiveness she turned to account in after life, using it as a key to character; she had merely to make herself pa.s.sive, when she found herself reflecting the people with whom she conversed involuntarily; and not as they appeared on the surface, but as they actually were in their inmost selves. In her childhood she unconsciously ill.u.s.trated the thoughts people had in their minds about her. Aunt Victoria believed in her and trusted her, and when they were alone together, Beth responded to her good opinion; Mrs. Caldwell expected her to be nothing but a worry, and was not disappointed. When Beth was in the same house with both aunt and mother, she varied, answering to the expectation that happened to be strongest at the moment. That afternoon Aunt Victoria was tired after her journey, and did not think of Beth at all; but Mrs. Caldwell was busy in her own mind antic.i.p.ating all the trouble she would have now Beth was back; and Beth, standing on the box under the attic skylight, with her head out, straining her eyes to seaward, was seized with a sudden impulse which answered to her mother's expectation. That first day she ought to have stayed in, unpacked her box, exhibited her beautiful needlework, got ready for dinner in good time, and proved her affection for her mother and sister by making herself agreeable to them; but instead of that, she stole downstairs, slipped out by the back-gate, and did not return until long after dinner was over.
She did not enjoy the scamper, however. Her home-sickness was gone, but her depression returned nevertheless, as the day declined, only in another form. She had still that curious sensation of being the only living thing in a world of figures moved by mechanism. She stood at the top of the steps which led down on to the pier, where the sailors loitered at idle times, and was greeted by those she knew with slow smiles of recognition; but she had nothing to say to any of them.
The tide was going out, and had left some of the s.h.i.+ps in the harbour all canted to one side; cobles and pleasure-boats rested in the mud; a c.o.c.kle-gatherer was wading about in it with his trousers turned up over his knees, and his bare legs so thickly coated, it looked as if he had black leggings on. Beth went to the edge of the pier, and stood for a few minutes looking down at him. She was facing west, but the sun was already too low to hurt her eyes. On her right the red-roofed houses crowded down to the quay irregularly. Fis.h.i.+ng-nets were hanging out of some of the windows. Here and there, down in the harbour, the rich brown sails had been hoisted on some of the cobles to dry. There were some yachts at anchor, and Beth looked at them eagerly, hoping to find Count Bartahlinsky's _Seagull_ amongst them. It was not there; but presently she became conscious of some one standing beside her, and on looking up she recognised Black Gard, the Count's confidential man. He was dressed like the fishermen in drab trousers and a dark blue jersey, but wore a blue cloth cap, with the name of the yacht on it, instead of a sou'wester.
”Has your master returned?” she said.
”No, miss,” he answered. ”He's still abroad. He'll be back for the hunting, though.”
”I doubt it,” said Beth, resentful of that vague ”abroad,” which absorbed him into itself the greater part of the year. When she had spoken, she turned her back on Gard and the sunset, and wandered off up the cliffs. She had noticed a sickly smell coming up from the mud in the harbour, and wanted to escape from it, but somehow it seemed to accompany her. It reminded her of something--no, that was not it. What she was searching about in her mind for was some way, not to name it, but to express it. She felt there was a formula for it within reach, but for some time she could not recover it. Then she gave up the attempt, and immediately afterwards she suddenly said to herself--
”... the smell of death Came reeking from those spicy bowers, And man, the sacrifice of man, Mingled his taint with every breath Upwafted from the innocent flowers.”
She did not search for any occult meaning in the lines, nor did they convey anything special to her; but they remained with her for the rest of the day, haunting her, in among her other thoughts, and forcing themselves upon her attention with the irritating persistency of a catchy tune.
On the cliffs she paused to look about her. It was a desolate scene.
The tide was so far out by this time it looked as if there were more sand than sea in the bay. The water was the cloudy grey colour of flint, with white rims where the waves broke on the sh.o.r.e. The sky was low, level, and dark; where it met the water there was a heavy bank of cloud, from which an occasional flash of summer lightning, dimmed by daylight, shot along the horizon. The air was peculiarly clear, so that distant objects seemed nearer than was natural. The sheltering headland on the left, which formed the bay, stood out bright white with a crown of vivid green against the sombre sea and sky; while, on the right, the old grey pier, which shut in the view in that direction, and the red-roofed houses of the town crowding down to it, showed details of design and masonry not generally visible to the naked eye from where Beth stood. There were neither s.h.i.+ps nor boats in the bay; but a few cobles, with their red-brown sails flapping limp against their masts, rocked lazily at the harbour-mouth waiting for the tide to rise and float them in. Beth heard the men on them shouting an occasional remark to one another, and now and then one of them would sing an uncouth s.n.a.t.c.h of song, but the effort was spiritless, and did not last.
Leaving the harbour behind, Beth walked on towards the headland.
Presently she noticed in front of her the dignified and pathetic figure of an old man, a Roman Catholic priest, Canon Hunter, who, sacrificing all worldly ease or chance of advancement, had come to minister to the neglected fisherfolk on the coast, most of whom were Roman Catholics. He led the life of a saint amongst them, living in dire poverty, his congregation being all of the poorest, with the exception of one lady in the neighbourhood, married to a man whose vices were too expensive to leave him much to spare for his wife's charities. She managed, however, to raise enough money for the rent of the top room in the public hall, which they used as a chapel, and so kept the flickering flame of the old religion alight in the place; but it was a severe struggle. It was whispered, indeed, that more of the gentry in the neighbourhood sympathised with the Catholics than was supposed, and would have helped them but for the discredit--did help them, in fact, when they dared; but no one outside the communion knew how true this report might be, and the fisherfolk loyally held their peace.
It was natural that Beth as she grew up should be attracted by the mystery that surrounded the Roman Catholics, and anxious to comprehend the horror that Protestants had of them. She knew more of them herself than any of the people whom she heard pa.s.s uncharitable strictures upon them, and knew nothing for which they could justly be blamed. For the old priest himself she had a great reverence. She had never spoken to him, but had always felt strongly drawn towards him; and now, when she overtook him, her impulse was to slip her hand into his, less on her own account, however, than to show sympathy with him, he seemed so solitary and so suffering, with his slow step and bent back; and so good, with his beautiful calm face.
As she approached, lost in her own thoughts, she gazed up at him intently.
”What is it, my child?” he asked, with a kindly smile. ”Can I do anything for you?”
”I was thinking of the beauty of holiness,” Beth answered, and pa.s.sed on.
The old man looked after her, too surprised for the moment to speak, and by the time he had recovered himself, she had turned a corner and was out of sight.
After Beth went home that evening, and had been duly reproached by her mother for her selfish conduct, she stole upstairs to Aunt Victoria's room, and found the old lady sitting with her big Bible on her knee, looking very sad and serious.
”Beth,” she said severely, ”have you had any food? It is long past your dinner-time, and it does not do for young girls to fast too long.”
”I'll go and get something to eat, Aunt Victoria,” Beth answered meekly, overcome by her kindness. ”I forgot.”
She went down to the pantry, and found some cold pie, which she took into the kitchen and ate without appet.i.te.
The heat was oppressive. All the doors and windows stood wide open, but there was no air, and wherever Beth went she was haunted by the sickly smell which she had first perceived coming up from the mud in the harbour, and by the lines which seemed somehow to account for it:--
”... the smell of death Came reeking from those spicy bowers, And man, the sacrifice of man, Mingled his taint with every breath Upwafted from the innocent flowers.”
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