She held the board until Sammy got astride of it at one end, then she bestrode it herself at the other, and started it with a vigorous kick on the ground. Up and down they went, shaking showers of leaves from the old tree, and an occasional winter pear, which fell with a thud, being hard and heavy.
"Golly! this is fine!" Sammy burst out. "I say, Beth, what a jolly sort of a girl you are!"
"Do you think so?" said Beth, amply rewarded for all her trouble.
"Yes. And you can write a letter! My! What a time it must 'a' took you! But, I say, it's all rot about stops, you know. Stops is things in books. You'd never learn stops."
"How do you know?" Beth demanded, bridling.
"Men write books," said Sammy, proud of his sex, "not women, let alone gels!"
"That's all you know about it, then!" cried Beth, better informed. "Women do write books, and girls too. Jane Austen wrote books, and Maria Edgeworth wrote books, and Fanny Burney wrote a book when she was only seventeen, called 'Evelina' and all the great men read it."
"Oh!" said Sammy, jeering, "so you're as clever as they are, I suppose!"
Sammy was up in the air as he spoke; the next moment he came down bump on the ground.
"There," said Beth, "that'll teach you. You be rude again if you dare."
"I'll not come near you again, spit-cat," cried Sammy, picking himself up.
"I know you won't," Beth rejoined. "You daren't. You're afraid."
"Who's afraid?" said Sammy, blustering.
"Sammy Lee," said Beth. "Oh, Sammy Lee's afraid of me, riding the see-saw under the tree."
"I say, Beth," said Sammy, much impressed, "did you make that yourself?"
"Make what myself? Make you afraid? Yes, I did."
"No, you didn't," said Sammy, plucking up spirit. "I'm not afraid."
"Then don't be a fool," said Beth.
"Fool yourself," Sammy muttered, but not very valiantly.
The church-clock struck nine. They were standing about, Beth not knowing what to do next, and Sammy waiting for her to suggest something; and in the meantime the night became colder and the darkness more intense.
"I think I'd better take you home," Beth said at last. "Here, give me your hand."
She dragged him out of the garden in her impetuous way, and they scampered off together to Orchard Row, and when they reached the Lees' house they were so warmed and cheered by the exercise that they parted from each other in high good-humour.
"I'll come again," said Sammy.
"Do!" said Beth, giving him a great push that sent him sprawling up the passage. This was the kind of attention he understood, so he went to bed satisfied.
There was only one great interest in life for the people at Rainharbour. Their religion gave them but cold comfort; their labour was arduous and paid them poorly; they had no books, no intellectual pursuits, no games to take them out of themselves, nothing to expand their hearts as a community. There were the races, the fair, and the hirings for excitement, but of pleasure such as satisfies because it is soul-sustaining and continuous enough to be part of their lives, they knew nothing. The upper classes were idle, self-satisfied, selfish, and sensual; the lower were industrious enough, but ignorant, superstitious, and depressed. The gentry gave themselves airs of superiority, really as if their characters were as good as their manners; but they did not impose upon the people, who despised them for their veneer. Each class displayed its contempt for the other openly when it could safely do so, but was ready to cringe when it suited its own convenience, the workers for employment, and the gentry for political purposes. But human beings are too dependent on each other for such differences to exist without detriment to the whole community. Society must cohere if it is to prosper; individuals help themselves most, in the long run, when they consider each other's interests. At Rainharbour nothing was done to promote general good fellowship; the kind of Christianity that was preached there made no mention of the matter, and society was disintegrated, and would have gone to pieces altogether but for the one great interest in life – the great primitive interest which consists in the attraction of sex to sex. The subject of sweethearts was always in the air. The minds of boys and girls, youths and maidens, men and women were all full of it; but it was not often openly discussed as a pleasant topic – in fact, not much mentioned at all except for fault-finding purposes; for it was the custom to be censorious on the subject, and naturally those were most so who knew most about it, like the vicar, who had married four times. He was so rabid that he almost went the length of denouncing men and maidens by name from the pulpit if he caught them strolling about together in pairs. His mind was so constituted that he could not believe their dalliance to be innocent, and yet he did not try to introduce any other interest or pleasure into their lives to divert them from the incessant pursuit of each other.
It was the grown-up people who were so nasty on the subject of sweethearts; the boys and girls never could understand why. Their own inclination was to go about together openly in the most public places; that was how they understood sweethearting; part of the pleasure of it consisted in other people seeing them, and knowing that they were sweethearts, and smiling upon them sympathetically. This, however, the grown-up people never did; on the contrary, they frowned and jeered; and so the boys and girls kept out of their way, and sought secret sympathy from each other.
Any little boy at the Mansion-House School who secured a sweetheart enjoyed a proud distinction, and Sammy soon found that his acquaintance with Beth placed him in quite an enviable position. He therefore let his fear of Mrs. Caldwell lapse, and did his best to be seen with Beth as much as possible. And to her it was a surprise as well as a joy to find him hanging about, waiting to have a word with her. Her mother's treatment of her had so damaged her self-respect that she had never expected anybody to care for her particularly, and Sammy's attentions, therefore, were peculiarly sweet. She did not consider the position at all, however. There are subjects about which we think, and subjects upon which we feel, and the two are quite distinct and different. Beth felt on the subject of Sammy. The fact of his having a cherubic face made her feel nice inside her chest – set up a glow there which warmed and brightened her whole existence – a glow which never flickered day or night, except in Sammy's presence, when it went out altogether more often than not; only to revive, however, when the real Sammy had gone and the ideal Sammy returned to his place in her bosom. For Sammy adored at a distance and Sammy within range of criticism were two very different people. Sammy adored at a distance was all-ready response to Beth's fine flights of imagination; but Sammy on the spot was dull. He was seldom on the spot, however, so that Beth had ample leisure to live on her love undisturbed, and her mind became extraordinarily active. Verse came to her like a recollection. On half-holidays they sometimes went for a walk together over the wild wide waste of sand when the tide was out, and she would rhyme to herself the whole time; but she seldom said anything to Sammy. So long as he was silent he was a source of inspiration – that is to say, her feeling for him was inspiring; but when she tried to get anything out of him, they generally squabbled.
Beth lived her own life at this time almost entirely. Since that startling threat of rebellion, her mother had been afraid to beat her lest she should strike back; scolding only made her voluble, and Mrs. Caldwell never thought of trying to manage her in the only way possible, by reasoning with her and appealing to her better nature. There was, therefore, but one thing for her mother to do in order to preserve her own dignity, and that was to ignore Beth. Accordingly, when the perfunctory lessons were over in the morning, Beth had her day to herself. She began it generally by practising for at least an hour by the church-clock, and after that she had a variety of pursuits which she preferred to follow alone if Sammy were at school, because then there was no one to interrupt her thoughts. When the larder was empty, she became Loyal Heart the Trapper, and would wander off to Fairholm to set snares or catapult anything she could get near. The gun she had found impracticable, because she was certain to have been seen out with it; her snares, if they were found, were supposed to have been set by poachers. She herself was known to every one on the estate, and was therefore sure of respect, no matter who saw her; even Uncle James himself would have let her alone had they met, as he was of her mother's opinion, that it was safer to ignore her than to attempt to control her. The snares, although of the most primitive kind, answered the purpose. The great difficulty was how to get the game home; but that she also managed successfully, generally by returning after dark. Her mother, concluding that she owed whatever came to Aunt Grace Mary's surreptitious kindness, said nothing on the subject except to Beth, whom she supposed to be Aunt Grace Mary's agent; but she very much enjoyed every addition to her monotonous diet, especially when Beth did the cooking. In fact, had it not been for Loyal Heart, the family would have pretty nearly starved that winter, because of Jim, who had contracted debts like a man, which his mother had to pay.
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-fashioned-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 retarding 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 noble or ignoble, 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 fishing 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, fishing 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, fishing 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 fishing 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 glassy 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 shining 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 passed, but she was all shaken by it, and shivered 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 fishing 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."
Beth, still leaning against the door-post, clasped her hands behind her head and looked up at the sky. "Things keep coming to me faster than I can say them to-night," she proceeded, paying no heed to his remark; "not things about you, though, because nothing goes with Sammy but jammy, clammy, mammy, and those aren't nice. I want things to come about you, but they won't. I tried last night in bed, and what do you think came again and again?
Yes, yes, that was his cry,
While the great clouds went sailing by;
Flashes of crimson on colder sky;
Like the thoughts of a summer's day,
Colour'd by love in a life which else were grey.
But that isn't you, you know, Sammy. Then when I stopped trying for something about you, there came such a singing! What was it? It seems to have gone – and yet it's here, you know, it's all here," she insisted, with one hand on the top of her head, and the other on her chest, and her eyes straining; "and yet I can't get it."
"Beth, don't get on like that," Sammy remonstrated. "You make me feel all horrid."
"Make you feel," Beth cried in a deep voice, clenching her fists and shaking them at him, exasperated because the verses continued to elude her. "Don't you know what I'm here for? I'm here to make you feel. If you don't feel what I feel, then you shall feel horrid, if I have to kill you."
"Shut up!" said Sammy, beginning to be frightened. "I shall go away if you don't."
"Go away, then," said Beth. "You're just an idiot boy, and I'm tired of you."
Sammy's blue eyes filled with tears. He got down from the heap of sticks, intent on making his escape; but Beth changed her mind when she felt her audience melting away.
"Where are you going?" she demanded.
"I'm going home," he said deprecatingly. "I can't stay if you go on in that fool-fashion."
"It isn't a fool-fashion," Beth rejoined vehemently. "It's you that's a fool. I told you so before."
"If you wasn't a girl, I'd punch your 'ead," said Sammy, half afraid.
"I believe you!" Beth jeered. "But you're not a girl, anyway." She flew at him as she spoke, caught him by the collar, kicked his shins, slapped his face, and drubbed him on the back.
Sammy, overwhelmed by the sudden onslaught, made no effort to defend himself, but just wriggled out of her grasp, and ran home, with great tears streaming down his round red cheeks, and sobs convulsing him.
Beth's exasperation subsided the moment she was left alone in the wood-house. She sat down on the sticks, and looked straight before her, filled with remorse.
"What shall I do? What shall I do?" she kept saying to herself. "Oh dear! oh dear! Sammy! Sammy! He's gone. I've lost him. This is the most dreadful grief I have ever had in my life."
The moment she had articulated this full-blown phrase, she became aware of its importance. She repeated it to herself, reflected upon it, and was so impressed by it, that she got up, and went indoors to write it down. By the time she had found pencil and paper, she was the sad central figure of a great romance, full of the most melancholy incidents; in which troubled atmosphere she sat and suffered for the rest of the evening; but she did not think of Sammy again till she went to bed. Then, however, she was seized anew with the dread of losing him for ever, and cried helplessly until she fell asleep.
For days she mourned for him without daring to go to the window, lest she should see him pass by on the other side of the road with scorn and contempt flashing forth from his innocent blue eyes. In the evening, however, she opened the back-gate, as usual, and waited in the wood-house; but he never came. And at first she was in despair. Then she became defiant – she didn't care, not she! Then she grew determined. He'd have to come back if she chose, she'd make him. But how? Oh, she knew! She'd just sit still till something came.
She was sitting on a heap of beech branches opposite the doorway, picking off the bronze buds and biting them. The blanched skeleton of Sammy's whiting, sad relic of happier moments, grinned up at her from the earthen floor. Outside, the old pear-tree on the left, leafless now and motionless, showed distinctly in silhouette against the night-sky. Its bare branches made black bars on the face of the bright white moon which was rising behind it. What a strange thing time is! day and night, day and night, week and month, spring, summer, autumn, winter, always coming and going again, while we only come once, go, and return no more. It was getting on for Christmas now. Another year had nearly gone. The years slip away steadily – day by day – winter, spring. Winter so cold and wet; March all clouds and dust – comes in like a lion, goes out like a lamb; then April is bright.
The year slips away steadily; slips round the steady year; days come and go – no, no! Days dawn and disappear, winters and springs – springs, rings, sings? No, leave that. Winter with cold and rain – pain? March storms and clouds and pain, till April once again light with it brings.
Beth jumped down from the beech boughs, ran round to the old wooden pump, clambered up by it on to the back-kitchen roof, and made for the acting-room window. It was open, and she screwed herself in round the bar and fastened the door. It was quite dark under the sloping roof, but she found the end of a tallow candle, smuggled up there for the purpose, lighted it, and stuck it on to the top of the rough deal box which formed her writing-table. She had a pencil, sundry old envelopes carefully cut open so as to save as much of the clean space inside as possible, margins of newspapers, precious but rare half-sheets, and any other scrap of paper on which she could write, all carefully concealed in a hole in the roof, from which she tore the whole treasure now in her haste.
"Winter, summer, Sammy," she kept saying to herself. "Autumn, autumn-tinted woods – my king —Ministering Children– ministering – king. Moon, noon. Story, glory. Ever, never, endeavour. Oh, I can do it! I can! I can! Slips round the steady year – "
It took her some days to do it to her satisfaction, but they were days of delight, for the whole time she felt exactly as she had done when first she found Sammy. She had the same warm glow in her chest, the same sort of yearning, half anxious, half pleasant, wholly desirable.
It was late in the evening when she finished, and she had to put her work away in a hurry, because her mother sent Harriet to tell her she must go to bed; but all night long she lay only half asleep, and all the time conscious of joy to come in the morning.
She was up early, but had too much self-restraint to go to the acting-room till lessons were over. She was afraid of being disturbed and so having her pleasure spoilt. As soon as she could safely lock herself up, however, she took her treasure out. It was written on the precious half-sheets in queer little crabbed characters, very distinctly: —
Slips round the steady year,
Days dawn and disappear,
Winters and springs;
March storms and clouds and rain,
Till April once again
Light with it brings.
Then comes the summer song,
Birds in the woods prolong
Day into night.
Hot after tepid showers
Beats down this sun of ours,
Upward the radiant flowers
Look their delight.
O summer scents at noon!
O summer nights and moon!
Season of story.
Labour and love for ever
Strengthen each hard endeavour,
Now climb we up or never,
Upward to glory!
Winter and summer past,
Autumn has come at last,
Hope in its keeping.
Beauty of tinted wood,
Beauty of tranquil mood,
Harvest of earned good
Ripe for the reaping.
Thus on a torrid day
Slipped my fond thoughts away,
Book from thy pages.
Seasons of which I sing,
Are they not like, my king,
Thine own life's minist'ring
In all its stages?
First in the spring, I ween,
Were all thy powers foreseen —
Storms sowed renown.
Then came thy summer climb,
Then came thy golden-prime,
Then came thy harvest-time,
Bringing thy crown.
When Beth had read these lines, she doubled the half sheets on which they were written, and put them in her pocket deliberately. She was sitting on the acting-room floor at the moment, near the window.
"Now," she exclaimed, folding her delicate nervous hands on her lap, and looking up at the strip of sky above her, "now I shall be forgiven!"
It was dark at this time when the boys left school in the evening, and Beth stood at the back-gate waiting to waylay Sammy. He came trotting along by himself, and saw her as he approached, but did not attempt to escape. On the contrary, he stopped, but he had nothing to say; the relief of finding her friendly again was too great for words. Had she looked out, she might have seen him any day since the event, bright-eyed and rosy-cheeked as usual, prowling about, anxious to obtain a reassuring smile from her on his way to and from school. It was not likely that he would lose the credit of being Beth Caldwell's sweetheart if he could help it, just because she beat him. Already he had suffered somewhat in prestige because he had not been seen with her so often lately; and he had been quite as miserable in his own way, under the impression that she meant to cast him off, as she had in hers.
"Come in, Sammy," she cried, catching hold of his hand. "Come in, I've something to show you; but it's too cold to sit in the wood-house, and we can't have a light there either. Come up by the pump to the acting-room. I've fastened the door inside, and nobody can get in. Come! I'll show you the way."
Sammy followed her obediently and in silence, although somewhat suspiciously as usual; but she piloted him safely, and, once in the acting-room, with the candle lighted, he owned that it was jolly.
"Sammy, I have been sorry," Beth began. "I've been quite miserable about – you know what. It was horrid of me."
"I told you scratch-cats were horrid," said Sammy solemnly.
"But I've done something to atone," Beth proceeded. "Something came to me all about you. You shall have it, Sammy, to keep. Just listen, and I'll read it."
Sammy listened with his mouth and eyes open, but when she had done he shook his head. "You didn't make that up yourself," he said decidedly.
"O Sammy! yes, I did," Beth protested, taken aback and much pained.
"No, I don't believe you," said Sammy. "You got it out of a book. You're always trying to stuff me up."
"I'm not stuffing you, Sammy," said Beth, suddenly flaming. "I made it myself, every word of it. I tell you it came to me. It's my own. You've got to believe it."
Sammy looked about him. There was no escape by the door, because that led into the house, and Beth was between him and the window, with her brown hair dishevelled, and her big eyes burning.
"Well," he said, a politic desire to conciliate struggling with an imperative objection to be stuffed, "of course you made it yourself if you say so. But it's all rot anyway."
The words slipped out unawares, and the moment he uttered them he ducked his head: but nothing happened. Then he looked up at Beth, and found her gazing hard at him, and as she did so the colour gradually left her cheeks and the light went out of her eyes. Slowly she gathered up her papers and put them into the hole in the roof. Then she sat on one of the steps which led down into the room, but she said nothing.
Sammy sat still in a tremor until the silence became too oppressive to be borne; then he fidgeted, then he got up, and looked longingly towards the window.
"I shall be late," he ventured.
Beth made no sign.
"When shall I see you again?" he recommenced, deprecatingly. "Will you be at the back-gate to-morrow?"
"No," she said shortly. "It's too cold to wait for you."
"Then how shall I see you?" he asked, with a blank expression.
Beth reflected. "Oh, just whistle as you pass," she said at last, in an offhand way, "and I'll come out if I feel inclined."