Harriet was the daughter of a labourer. Her people lived at a village some miles away, and every Saturday morning a carrier with a covered cart brought her a letter from home, and a little parcel containing a cheesecake or some other dainty. Beth took a lively interest both in the cheesecake and the letter. "What's the news from home to-day?" she would ask. "How's Annie, and what has mother sent?" Whereupon Harriet would share the cheesecake with her, and read the letter aloud, work being suspended as long as possible for the purpose.
Harriet was about twenty-five at this time. She had very black silky hair, straight and heavy, parted in the middle, drawn down over her ears, and gathered up in a knot behind. Her face was oval, forehead high, eyebrows arched and delicate, nose straight, and she had large expressive dark grey eyes, rather deeply set, with long black lashes, and a mouth that would have been handsome of the sensual full-lipped kind, had it not been distorted by a burn, which had disfigured her throat and chin as well. She had set her pinafore on fire when she was a child, and it had blazed up under her chin, causing irreparable injury before the flames could be extinguished. But for that accident she would have been a singularly good-looking woman of a type which was common in books of beauty at the beginning of this reign.
She could read and write after a fashion, and was intelligent, but ignorant, deceitful, superstitious, and hysterical. Mrs. Caldwell continually lectured Beth about going into the kitchen so much; but she only lectured on principle really. Young ladies could not be allowed to associate with servants as a rule, but an exception might be made in the case of a good, steady, sober sort of person, such as Mrs. Caldwell believed Harriet to be, who would keep the troublesome child out of mischief, and do her no harm. Harriet, as it happened, delighted in mischief, and was often the instigator; but Mrs. Caldwell might be excused for not suspecting this, as she only saw her on her best behaviour. When the children were safe in bed, and Miss Victoria Bench, who was an early person, had also retired, Harriet would put on a clean apron, and appear before Mrs. Caldwell in the character of a respectable, vigilant domestic, more anxious about her mistress's interests than her own; and she would then make a report in which Beth figured as a fiend of a child who could not be trusted alone for a moment, and Harriet herself as a conscientious custodian, but for whom nobody knows what might have happened.
When Harriet had no particular incident to report at these secret conferences, she would tell Mrs. Caldwell her dreams, and describe signs and portents of coming events which she had observed during the day; and Mrs. Caldwell would listen with interest. Superstition is a subject on which the most class-proud will consult with the lowest and the wickedest; it is a mighty leveller downwards. But the poor lady had a lonely life. It was not Mrs. Caldwell's fault, but the fault of her day, that she was not a noble woman. She belonged to early Victorian times, when every effort was made to mould the characters of women as the homes of the period were built, on lines of ghastly uniformity. The education of a girl in those days was eminently calculated to cloud her intelligence and strengthen every failing developed in her sex by ages of suppression. Mrs. Caldwell was a plastic person, and her mind had been successfully compressed into the accustomed groove until her husband came and helped it to escape a little in one or two directions – with the effect, however, of spoiling its conventional symmetry without restoring its natural beauty. If the mind be tight-laced long enough, it is ruined as a model, just as the body is; and throwing off the stays which restrained it, merely exposes its deformities without remedying them; so that there is nothing for the old generation but to remain in stays. Mrs. Caldwell, with all her deformities, was just as heroic as she knew how to be. She lived for her children to the extent of denying herself the bare necessaries of life for them; and bore poverty and obscurity of a galling kind without a murmur. She scarcely ever saw a soul to speak to. Uncle James Patten and the Benyon family did not associate much with the townspeople, and were not popular in the county; so that Mrs. Caldwell had very few visitors. Of course it was an advantage to be known as a relation of the great people of the place, although the great people had a bad name; but then she was evidently a poor relation, which made it almost a virtue to neglect her in a community of Christians who only professed to love the Lord Himself for what they could get. "You must worship God because He can give you everything," was what they taught their children. Even the vicar of the parish would not call on anybody with less than five hundred a year. He kept a school for boys, which paid him more than cent. per cent., but did nothing for his parishioners except preach sermons an hour long on Sundays. Self-denial and morality were his favourite subjects. He had had three wives himself, and was getting through a fourth as fast as one baby a year would do it.
Mrs. Caldwell, left to herself, found her evenings especially long and dreary. It was her habit to write her letters then, and read, particularly in French and Italian, which, she had some vague notion, helped to improve her mind. But she often wearied for a word, and began to hear voices herself in the howling winter winds, and to brood upon the possible meaning of her own dreams, and to wonder why a solitary rook flew over her house in particular, and cawed twice as it passed. Little things naturally become of great importance in such a life, and Harriet kept up the supply; she being the connecting link between Mrs. Caldwell and the outer world. She knew all that was happening in the place, and she claimed to know all that was going to happen; and by degrees the mistress as well as the maid fell into the way of comparing events with the forebodings which had preceded them, and often established a satisfactory connection between the two.
Mrs. Caldwell always made coffee in the kitchen for breakfast in the morning, and while she was so engaged, Harriet, busy making toast, would begin – "Did you 'ear a noise last night, m'em?"
"No, Harriet – at least – was it about ten o'clock?"
"Yes, m'em, just about – a sort of scraping rattling noise, like a lot of people walking over gravel."
"I did hear something of the kind. I wonder what it was," Mrs. Caldwell would rejoin.
"Well, m'em, I think it means there are people coming to the 'ouse, for I remember it 'appened the night before your brother come, m'em, unexpected, and the lawyer."
If nobody came during the day, the token would be supposed to refer to some future period; and so, by degrees, signs and portents took the place of more substantial interests in Mrs. Caldwell's dreary life. Such things were in the air, for the little seaside place was quite out of the world at the time, and the people still had more faith in an incantation than a doctor's dose. If an accident happened, or a storm decimated the fishing-fleet, signs innumerable were always remembered which had preceded the event. If you asked why nobody had profited by the warning, people would shake their heads and tell you it was to be; and if you asked what was the use of the warning then, they would say to break the blow – in which idea there seemed to be some sense.
"When they told Tom's wife 'e was drownded, she'd 'a' dropped down dead 'erself and left the children, if she 'adn't 'a' knowed it all along," Harriet explained to Beth. "Eh! lass, you mark my words, warnin's comes for one thing, and warnin's comes for another, but they always comes for good, an' you're forced to take notice an' act on 'em or you're forced to leave 'em alone, just as is right, an' ye can't 'elp it yerself, choose 'ow. There's Mrs. Pettinger, she dreamed one night 'er husband's boat was lost, an' next mornin' 'e was to go out fishin', but she wouldn't let 'im. 'No, 'Enery John,' she ses, 'you'll not go, not if ah 'as to 'old you,' ses she, an' 'e was that mad 'e struck 'er an' knocked 'er down an' broke 'er arm, an' then, needs must, 'e 'ad to fetch the doctor to set it, an' by the time that was done, the boat 'ad gone wi'out 'im. The other men thought 'e was drunk – 'e often was – an' they wouldn't wait. Well, that boat never came back."
"And did he beat his wife again?" Beth asked.
"Oh, as to that, 'ow could it make any difference?" Harriet answered.
Beth was fascinated by the folk-lore of the place, and soon surpassed Harriet herself in the interpretation of dreams and the reading of signs and tokens. She began to invent methods of divination for herself too, such as, "If the boards don't creak when I walk across the room I shall get through my lessons without trouble this morning," a trick which soon became a confirmed habit into which she was apt to lapse at any time; and so persistent are these early impressions that to the end of her days she would always rather have seen two rooks together than one alone, rooks being the birds of omen in a land where magpies were scarce. Mrs. Caldwell knew nothing of Beth's proficiency in the black arts. She would never have discussed such a subject before the children, and took it for granted that Harriet was equally discreet; while Beth on her part, with her curious quick sense of what was right and proper, believed her mother to be above such things.
Harriet was a person of varied interests, all of which she discussed with Beth impartially. She had many lovers, according to her own account, and was stern and unyielding with them all, and so particular that she would dismiss them at any moment for nothing almost. If she went out at night she had always much to tell the next morning, and Beth would hurry over her lessons, watch her mother out of the way, and slip into the kitchen or upstairs after Harriet, and question her about what she had said, and he had said, and if she had let him kiss her even once.
"Well, last night," Harriet said on one occasion, in a tone of apology for her own weakness and good-nature. "Last night I couldn't 'elp it. 'E just put 'is arm round me, and, well, there! I was sorry for 'im."
"Why don't you say he and him and his, Harriet?"
"I do."
"No, you don't. You say 'e and 'im and 'is."
"Well, that's what you say."
Beth shouted the aspirates at her for answer, but in vain; with all the will in the world to "talk fine," as she called it, Harriet could never acquire the art, for want of an ear to hear. She could not perceive the slightest difference between him and 'im.
Even at this age Beth had her own point of view in social matters, and frequently disconcerted Harriet by a word or look or inflection of the voice which expressed disapproval of her conduct. Harriet had been at home on one occasion for a week's holiday, a charwoman having done her work in her absence, and on her return she had much to relate of Charles Russell, the groom at Fairholm, who continued to be an ardent admirer of hers, but not an honourable one, because he did not realise what a very superior person Harriet was. He thought she was no better than other girls, and when they were sitting up one night together in her mother's cottage, the rest of the family having gone to bed, he made her a proposal which Harriet indignantly rejected.
"And ah ses to 'im, 'Charles Russell,' ah ses to 'im, 'not was it ever so,' ah ses to 'im" – she was proceeding emphatically when Beth interrupted her.
"Did you say you sat up with him alone all night?" she asked.
"Yes, there's no 'arm, you know," Harriet answered on the defensive, without precisely knowing why.
"Well, what did he say?" Beth rejoined without comment.
But Harriet, put out of countenance, omitted the details, and brought the story to an abrupt conclusion.
Another of Harriet's interests in life was the Family Herald, which she took regularly, and as regularly read aloud to Beth, to the best of her ability – from the verses to "Violet," or "My own Love," on the first page, to the "Random Readings" on the last. They laughed at the jokes, tried to guess the riddles, were impressed with the historical anecdotes and words of wisdom, and became so hungry over the recipes for good dishes that they frequently fried eggs and potatoes, or a slice stolen from the joint roasting at the fire, and feasted surreptitiously.
Beth tried in after years to remember what the stories in the Family Herald had been about, but all she could recall was a vague incident of a falling scaffold, of a heroine called Margaret taking refuge in the dark behind a hoarding, and of a fascinating hero whom Harriet called Ug Miller. Long afterwards it dawned upon Beth that his name was Hugh.
When Mildred went to her aunt, Beth and Bernadine became of necessity constant companions, and it was a curious kind of companionship, for their natures were antagonistic. Like rival chieftains whose territories adjoin, they professed no love for each other, and were often at war, but were intimate nevertheless, and would have missed each other, because there was no one else with whom they could so conveniently quarrel. Harriet took the liveliest interest in their squabbles, which, under her able direction, rapidly developed from the usual little girls' scrimmages into regular stand-up fights.
One day Beth pulled Bernadine's hair passionately, and Bernadine retaliated by clawing Beth's face, and then howled as a further relief to her feelings. Mrs. Caldwell rushed to see what accident had happened to the dear child, and Harriet came to see the sport.
"Mamma, Beth pulled my hair," Bernadine whined.
Mrs. Caldwell immediately thumped Beth, who seldom said a word in her own defence. Harriet was neutral till her mistress had disappeared, and then she supported Beth.
"Just you wait till after dinner," she said. "Come into the kitchen when your ma's asleep, and fight it out. Don't you be put upon by tell-pie-tits."
"What's the use of my going into the kitchen?" Beth rejoined; "Bernadine doesn't fight fair. She's a horrid, low little coward."
"Am I!" Bernadine howled. "Just you wait till after dinner! I'm as brave as you are, and as strong, though you are the biggest." Which was true. Bernadine was sallow, thin, wiry, and muscular; Beth was soft, and round, and white. She had height, age, and weight on her side; Bernadine had strength, agility, and cunning.
"Phew – w – w!" Beth jeered, mimicking her whine. "You'd 'tell mamma' if you got a scratch."
"I won't, Beth, if you'll fight," Bernadine protested.
"We'll see after dinner," Harriet put in significantly, and then returned to her work.
After the four o'clock dinner, during the dark winter months, Mrs. Caldwell dozed for half-an-hour in her chair by the fire. This was the children's opportunity. They were supposed to sit still and amuse themselves quietly while their mother slept; and, until she slept, they would sit motionless, watching her, the greater their anxiety to get away the more absolute their silence. Mrs. Caldwell looked as if she were being mesmerised to sleep by the two pairs of bright eyes so resolutely and patiently fixed upon her. The moment her breathing showed she was sound asleep, the children stole to the kitchen, shutting the doors after them softly, and instantly set to work.
It was a gruesome sight, those two children, with teeth set and clenched fists, battering each other in deadly earnest, but with no noise save the fizzle of feet on the brick floor, an occasional thump up against a piece of furniture, or the thud when they fell. They were afraid to utter a sound lest Aunt Victoria, up in her room, should hear them, and come down interfering; or their mother should wake, and come out and catch them. They bruised and blackened and scratched each other, and were seldom without what they considered the honourable scars of these battles. Sometimes, when Bernadine was badly mauled, she lost her temper, and threatened to tell mamma. But Beth could always punish her, and did so, by refusing to fight next time, although, without that recreation, life were a blank.
Harriet always cleared away obstacles to give them room, and then sat down to eat her dinner, and watch the fight. She had the tastes, and some of the habits, of a Roman empress, and encouraged them with the keenest interest for a long time, but when she had finished her dinner she usually wearied of the entertainment, and would then stop it.
"I say, yer ma's comin'! I can 'ear 'er!" she would exclaim. "'Elp us to wash up, or I shan't be done for the reading."
When Harriet wanted help, Bernadine usually slipped away, helping anybody not being much in her line; but Beth set to work with a will.
Beth, always sociable, had persuaded her mother to let Harriet come to the reading; and Harriet accordingly, in a clean cap and apron, with a piece of sewing, was added to the party.
So long as she sat on a high chair, at a respectful distance, and remembered that she was a servant, her being there rather gratified Mrs. Caldwell than otherwise, once she had yielded to Beth's persuasion, and saw the practical working of the experiment; it made her feel as if she were doing something to improve the lower classes. It was a pity she did not try to improve Beth and Bernadine by finding some sewing for their idle hands to do. During the reading, dear little Bernadine, "so good and affectionate always," would sit on the floor beside her mother, whose pocket she often picked of a penny or sixpence to vary the monotony when she did not understand the book. Beth also sat idle, listening intently, and watching her sister. If the reading had been harrowing or exciting, she would fight Bernadine for the sixpence when they went to bed. There were lively scenes during the readings. They all wept at the pathetic parts, laughed loudly when amused, and disputed about passages and incidents at the top of their voices. Mrs. Caldwell forgot that Harriet was a servant, Harriet forgot herself, and the children, unaccustomed to wordy warfare, forgot their fear of their mother, and flew at each other's throats.
When the story was very interesting, Mrs. Caldwell read until she was hoarse, and then went on to herself – "dipping," the children called it. It was a point of honour with them not to dip, and they would remonstrate with their mother loudly when they caught her at it. Their feeling on the subject was so strong that she was ashamed to be seen dipping at last. She used to put the book away until they were safe in bed, and then gratify her curiosity; but they suspected her, because once or twice they noticed that she was unaffected by an exciting part; so one night they came down in their night-dresses and caught her, and after that the poor lady had to be careful. She might thump the children for coming downstairs, but she could not alter the low opinion they had of a person who dipped.
CHAPTER XVI
Beth's brain began to be extraordinarily busy. She recorded nothing, but her daily doings were so many works of her imagination. She was generally somebody else in these days, seldom herself; and people who did not understand this might have supposed that she was an exceedingly mendacious little girl, when she was merely speaking consistently in the character which she happened to be impersonating. She would spend hours of the afternoon alone in the drawing-room, standing in the window looking out while she wove her fancies; and she soon began to go out also, by the back-door, when the mood was upon her, without asking anybody's leave. She had wandered off in this way on one occasion to the south side, whither her people rarely went. At the top of the cliff, where the winding road began which led down to the harbour, a paralysed sailor was sitting in a wickerwork wheeled chair, looking over the sea. Beth knew the man by sight. He had been a yachtsman in the service of one of her great-uncles, and she had heard hints of extraordinary adventures they had had together. It filled her with compassion to see him sitting there so lonely and helpless, and as she approached she resolved herself into a beneficent being, able and willing to help. She had a book under her arm, a costly volume which Mrs. Caldwell had borrowed to read to the children. Beth had been looking at the pictures when the desire to go out suddenly seized upon her, and had carried the book off inadvertently.
"How are you to-day, Tom?" she said, going up to the invalid confidently. "I'm glad to see you out. We shall soon have you about again as well as ever. I knew a man in Ireland much worse than you are. He couldn't move his hands and arms. Legs are bad enough, but when it's hands and arms as well, you know, it's worse. Well, now you couldn't tell there'd ever been anything the matter with him."
"And what cured 'im?" Tom asked with interest.
"Oh, he just thought he'd get well, you know. You've got to set yourself that way, don't you see? If mountains can be moved by faith, you can surely move your own legs!"
"That sounds reasonable any way," Tom ejaculated.
"Do you like reading?" said Beth.
"Yes, I read a bit at times."
"Well, I've brought you a book," Beth proceeded, handing him the borrowed volume. "You'll find it interesting, I'm sure. It's a great favourite of mine."
"You're mighty good," the sailor said.
"Oh, not at all," Beth answered largely. Then she wished him good-bye. But she often visited him again in the same character, and the stories she told that unhappy invalid for his comfort and encouragement were amazing. When the book was missed, and her mother bothered about it, she listened serenely, and even helped to look for it.
Beth strolled homewards when she left her protégé, and on the way she became Norna of the Fitful Head. She tried Minna and Brenda first, but these characters were too insipid for her taste. Norna was different. She did things, you know, and made charms, and talked poetry, and people were afraid of her. Beth believed in her thoroughly. She'd be Norna, and make charms. But she had no lead. Norna looked about her. She knew by magic that Cleveland was coming to consult her, and she had no lead. There was a border of lead, however, over the attic window outside. All she had to do was to steal upstairs, climb out of the window on to the roof, and cut a piece of the lead off. It was now the mystic moment to obtain lead, but she must be wary. She strolled through the kitchen in a casual way. Harriet was busy about the grate, and paid no attention to her; so she secured the carving-knife without difficulty, went up to the attic, and opened the window. She was now on the dangerous pinnacle of a temple, risking her life in order to obtain the materials for a charm which would give her priceless power.
On the other side of the street, there lived in the Orchard House another widow-woman with three daughters. She let lodgings, and was bringing up her children to honest industry in that state of life. She and Mrs. Caldwell took a kindly interest in each other's affairs. Mrs. Davy happened to be changing the curtains in front that afternoon when Beth crept out of the attic window on to the roof, and she was paralysed with horror for a moment, expecting to see the child roll off into the street. She was a sensible woman, however, and quickly recovering herself, she ran across the road, with her spectacles on, and rapped at Mrs. Caldwell's door. Beth, hacking away at the lead with the carving-knife, did not heed the rap. Presently, however, she heard hurried footsteps on the stairs, and climbed back into the attic incontinently, putting her spoils in her pocket. When Mrs. Davy, her mother, and Harriet, all agitated, burst open the door, she was standing at the window looking out tranquilly.
"What were you doing on the roof, Beth?" her mother demanded.
"Nothing," Beth answered.
"Mrs. Davy says she saw you get out of the window."
Beth was silent.
"You're a bad girl, giving your mother so much trouble," Mrs. Davy exclaimed, looking at her under her spectacles sternly. "If you was my child I'd whack you, I would."
Beth was instantly a lady, sneering at this common woman who was taking a liberty which she knew her mother would resent as much as she did.
"And what were you doing with the carving-knife, Miss Beth?" cried Harriet, spying it on the floor, and picking it up. Criminals are only clever up to a certain point; Beth had forgotten to conceal the carving-knife. "Oh dear! oh dear! If you 'aven't 'acked it all the way along!"
"Oh dear! oh dear!" Mrs. Caldwell echoed. It was her best carving-knife, and Beth would certainly have been beaten if Mrs. Davy had not suggested it. As it was, however, Mrs. Caldwell controlled her temper, and merely ordered her to go downstairs immediately. In the management of her children she would not be dictated to by anybody.
This was Beth's first public appearance as a disturber of the peace, and the beginning of the bad name she earned for herself in certain circles eventually. But she was let off lightly for it. Mrs. Caldwell's punishments were never retrospective. She was thunder and lightning in her wrath; a flash and then a bang, and it was all over. If she missed the first movement, the culprit escaped. She could no more have punished one of her children in cold blood than she could have cut its throat.
Beth ran down to the acting-room, so called because the boys had brought home the idea of acting in the holidays, and they had got up charades there on a stage made of boxes, with an old counterpane for a curtain, and farthing candles for footlights. It was a long, narrow room over the kitchen, with a sloping roof. Three steps led down into it. There was a window at one end, a small lattice with an iron bar nailed to the outside vertically. Beth swung herself out round the bar, dropped on to the back-kitchen roof, crept across the tiles to the chimney at the far corner, stepped thence on to the top of the old wooden pump, and from the top to the spout, from the spout to the stone trough, and so into the garden. Then she ran round to the kitchen, and got a candle, a canister, and some water in a pail, all of which she took up to the acting-room by way of the back-kitchen roof. The canister happened to contain allspice, but this was not to be considered when she wanted the canister, so she emptied it from the roof on to Harriet's head as she happened to be passing, and so got some good out of it, for Harriet displayed strong feeling on the subject both at the moment and afterwards, when she was trying to get the stuff out of her hair; which interested Beth, who in some such way often surprised people into the natural expression of emotions which she might never otherwise have discovered. Bernadine had been playing alone peaceably in the garden, but Beth persuaded her to come upstairs. She found Beth robed in the old counterpane, with her hair dishevelled, and the room darkened. Beth was Norna now in her cell on the Fitful Head, and Bernadine was the shrinking but resolute Minna come to consult her. Beth made her sit down, drew a magic circle round her with a piece of chalk, and, in a deep tragic voice, warned her not to move if she valued her life, for there were evil spirits in the room. The pail stood on a box draped with an old black shawl, and round this she also drew a circle. Then she put some lead in the canister, melted it over the candle, dropped it into the water, and muttered —
"Like snakes the molten metal hisses,
Curses come instead of kisses."
She plunged her hand into the water —
"I search a harp for harmony,
But daggers only do I see;
I search a heart for love and hope,
But find a ghastly hangman's rope.
Woe! Woe!"
Three times round the pail she went, moaning, groaning, writhing her body, and wringing her hands —
"Woe! Woe!
Thy courage will be sorely tried,
Thou shalt not be the pirate's bride."
At this Bernadine, whose nerves were completely shaken, set up such a howl that Harriet came running to see what was the matter. She soon let light into the acting-room. Mrs. Caldwell and Aunt Victoria had gone to see Aunt Grace Mary, so Harriet was in charge of the children, and to save herself further trouble, she took them up to a black-hole there was without a window at the top of the house, and locked them in. The place was quite empty, so that they could do no harm, and they did not seem to mind being locked up. Harriet intended to give them a little fright and then let them out; but, being busy, she forgot them, and when at last she remembered, it was so dark she had to take a candle; and great was her horror, on opening the door, to see both children stretched out on the bare boards side by side, apparently quite dead. One glance at their ghastly faces was enough for Harriet. She just looked and then fled, shrieking, with the candle alight in her hand, right out into the street. Several people who happened to be passing at the time stopped to see what was the matter. Harriet's talent for fiction furnished her with a self-saving story on the instant. She said the children had shut themselves up and got smothered.
"We'd better go and see if there's nothing can be done," a respectable workman suggested.
Harriet led the way, about a dozen people following, all awe-stricken and silent. When they came to the door, they peeped in over each other's shoulders at the two poor children, stretched out stiff and stark, the colour of death, their jaws dropped, their glazed eyes shining between the half-closed lids, a piteous spectacle.
"Just let's see the candle a moment," the workman said. He took it from Harriet, and entered stooping – the place was a mere closet just under the roof, and he could not stand upright in it. He peered into the children's faces, then knelt down beside them, and felt their arms and chests. Suddenly he burst out laughing.