Beth was sitting in her usual place beside her father's bed one day when the doctor came and discovered her. He was standing on the other side of the bed, and exclaimed, "Why, it's all eyes!"

"Yes, it's a queer pixie," her father said. "But it's going to do something some day, or I'm much mistaken."

"It's going to make a nuisance of itself if you put such nonsense into its head, or I'm much mistaken," Mrs. Caldwell observed.

"I shall not make a nuisance of myself," Beth indignantly protested.

"I shall never be able to make you understand, Caroline," Captain Caldwell exclaimed. "Little pitchers are generally bad enough, but when there is large intelligence added to the long ears, they're the devil."

Before the doctor left he said to Mrs. Caldwell, "We must keep our patient amused, you know."

"O doctor!" Beth exclaimed, clasping her hands in her earnestness, "do you think if Sophie Keene came?"

The doctor burst into a shout of laughter, in which Captain Caldwell also joined. "Just stay here yourself, Beth," he said, when he had recovered himself. "For amusement, neither Sophie Keene nor any one else I ever knew could hold a candle to you."

"What's 'hold a candle to you'?" Beth instantly demanded.

And then there was more laughter, in which even Mrs. Caldwell joined; and afterwards, when the doctor had gone, she actually patted Beth on the back, and stroked her hair, which was the first caress Beth ever remembered to have received from her mother.

"Now, mamma," she exclaimed, with great feeling, in the fulness of her surprise and delight, "now I shall forget that you ever beat me."

Her mother coloured painfully.

Her father muttered something about a noble nature.

"And that was the child you never wanted at all!" slipped, with a ring of triumph, from Mrs. Caldwell unawares—an interesting example of the complexity of human feelings.

Captain Caldwell soon went back to his duty—all too soon for his strength. The dreadful weather continued. Day after day he returned soaking from some distant station to the damp and discomfort of the house, and the ill-cooked, unappetising food, which he could hardly swallow. And to all this was added great anxiety about the future of his family. His boys were doing well at school by this time; but he was not satisfied with the way in which the little girls were being brought up. There was no order in their lives, no special time for anything; and he knew the importance of early discipline. He tried to discuss the subject with his wife, but she met his suggestions irritably.

"There's time enough for that," she said. "I had no regular lessons till I was in my teens."

"But what answered with you may be disastrous to these children," he ventured. "They are all unlike you in disposition, more especially Beth."

"You spoil that child," Mrs. Caldwell protested. "And at any rate I can do no more. I am run off my feet."

This was true, and Captain Caldwell let the subject drop. His patience was exemplary in those days. He suffered severely both mentally and physically, but never complained. The shadow was upon him, and he knew it, but he met his fate with fortitude. Whatever his faults, they were expiated in the estimation of all who saw him suffer now.

Mrs. Caldwell never realised how ill he was, but still she was uneasy, and it was with intense relief that she welcomed a case of soups and other nourishing delicacies calculated to tempt the appetite, which arrived for him one day from one of his sisters in England.

"This is just what you want, Henry," she said, with a brighter look in her face than he had seen there for months. "I shall soon have you yourself again now."

Captain Caldwell's spirits also went up.

In the evening they were all together in the sitting-room. Mrs. Caldwell was playing little songs for Mildred to sing, Baby Bernadine was playing with her bricks upon the floor, and Beth as usual was hanging about her father. He had shaken off his despondency, and was quite lively for the moment, walking up and down the room, and making merry remarks to his wife in Italian, at which she laughed a good deal.

"Come, Beth, fetch 'Ingoldsby.' We shall just come to my favourite, and finish the book before you go to bed," he said.

Beth brought the book, and then climbed up on his knee, and settled there happily, with her head on his shoulder.

"As I laye a-thynkynge, the golden sun was sinking, O merrie sang that Bird as it glitter'd on her breast, With a thousand gorgeous dyes, While soaring to the skies, 'Mid the stars she seem'd to rise, As to her nest;

As I laye a-thynkynge, her meaning was exprest:— 'Follow, follow me away, It boots not to delay,'— 'Twas so she seemed to saye, 'HERE IS REST!'"

After he had read those last lines, there was a moment's silence, and then Beth burst into a tempest of tears. "O papa—papa! No, no, no!" she sobbed. "I couldn't bear it."

"What is the matter with the child?" Mrs. Caldwell exclaimed, starting up.

"'The vision and the faculty divine,' I think," her father answered. "Leave her to me."

* * * * *

Beth was awake when Anne entered the nursery next morning to call the children.

"Get up, and be good," Anne said. "Your pa's ill."

Mrs. Caldwell came into the nursery immediately afterwards, very much agitated. She kissed Beth, and from that moment the child was calm; but there settled upon her pathetic little face a terrible look of age and anxiety.

When she was dressed, she ran right into her father's room before any one could stop her. He was moaning—"O my head, my head! O my head, my head!" over and over again.

"You mustn't stay here, little woman—not to-day," the doctor said. "It will make your father worse if you do."

Beth stole from the room, and returned to the nursery. There, however, she could still hear her father moaning, and she could not bear it, so she took her prayer-book, by way of life-saving apparatus, and went down to the kitchen to "see" what the servants were thinking—her own significant expression. They were all strangely subdued. "Sit down, Miss Beth," Biddy said kindly. "Sit down in the window there wid your book if you want company. It's a sore heart you'll be having, or I'm much mistaken."

Beth sat in the window the whole morning, reading prayers to herself, while she watched and waited. The doctor sent Riley down from the sick-room several times to fetch things, and each time Beth consulted his countenance anxiously for news, but asked no questions. Biddy tried to persuade her to eat, but the child could not touch anything.

Late in the afternoon Riley came down in a hurry.

"Is the master better, Pat?" Biddy demanded.

"'Deed, thin, he isn't," Riley replied; "and the doctor's sending me off on the horse as hard as I can go for Dr. Jamieson."

"Och, thin, if the doctor's sending you for Dr. Jamieson it's all up. He's niver sent for till the last. The Lord himself won't save him now."

Beth shuffled over the leaves of her prayer-book hurriedly. She had been crying piteously to God in her heart for hours to save her father, and He had not heard; now she remembered that the servants said if you read the Lord's Prayer backwards it would raise the devil. Beth tried; but the invocation was unavailing. Before Riley could saddle the horse, a message was sent down to stop him; and then Anne came for Beth, and took her up to her father's room. The dreadful sounds had ceased at last, and there was a strange silence in the house. Mrs. Caldwell was sitting beside her husband's bed, rocking herself a little as if in pain, but shedding no tears. Mildred was standing with her arm round her mother's neck crying bitterly, while Baby Bernadine gazed at her father wonderingly.

He was lying on his side with his arms folded. His eyes were shut, and there was a lovely look of relief upon his face.

"I sent for you children," their mother said, "to see your father just as he died. You must never forget him."

Ellis and Rickards, two of papa's men, were in the room, and Mrs. Ellis too, and the doctor, and Riley, and Biddy, and Anne; and there was a foot-bath, with steaming hot water in it, on the floor; some mustard on the table; and the fire burnt brightly. These details impressed themselves on Beth's mind involuntarily, as indeed did everything else connected with that time. It seemed to her afterwards as if she had seen everything and felt nothing for the moment—nothing but breathless excitement and interest. Her grief was entirely suspended.

Mrs. Ellis and the doctor led mamma down to the sitting-room; they didn't seem to think that she could walk. And then Mrs. Ellis made her some tea, and stood there, and coaxed her to drink it, just as if mamma had been a child. Mrs. Caldwell sat on the big couch with her back to the window, and Mildred sat beside her, with her arm round her, crying all the time. Bernadine cried too, but it was because she was hungry, and no one thought of giving her anything to eat. Beth fetched her some bread-and-butter, and then she was good. People began to arrive—Mr. Macbean, Captain and Mrs. Keene, the Smalls, the curate—Father Madden even. He had heard the news out in the country, and came hurrying back to pay his respects, and offer his condolences to Mrs. Caldwell, and see if there was anything he could do. He hoped it was not taking a liberty to come; but indeed he came in the fulness of his heart, and because he couldn't help it, for he had known him well, and a better man and truer gentleman never breathed. The widow held out her hand to the priest, and looked up at him gratefully.

Beth opened the door for Mrs. Small, who exclaimed at once: "Oh, my dear child, how is your poor mother? Does she cry at all? I do hope she has been crying."

"No," Beth answered, "nobody cries but Mildred."

When Mrs. Small went in, Mrs. Caldwell spoke to her quite collectedly. "He was taken ill at eight o'clock this morning with a dreadful pain in his head," she told her. "He had suffered fearfully from his head of late. I sent for the doctor at once. But nothing relieved him. From ten o'clock he got worse and worse, and at four he was gone. He always wished to die suddenly, and be spared a lingering illness. He has been depressed of late, but this morning, early, he woke up quite brightly; and last night he was wonderfully better. After the children had gone to bed, he read aloud to me as he used to do in the old days; and he looked so much more like his old self again that I thought a happier time was coming. And so it was. But not for me."

"Poor lady!" Mrs. Small whispered. "It has been a fearful shock."

Mrs. Caldwell showed strength of character in the midst of the overwhelming calamity which had fallen upon her with such awful suddenness. She had a nice sense of honour, and her love was great; and by the help of these she was enabled to carry out every wish of her dead husband with regard to himself. He had had a fastidious horror of being handled after death by the kind of old women who are accustomed to lay out bodies, and therefore Mrs. Caldwell begged Ellis and Rickards to perform that last duty for him themselves.

When the children went to bed, she took them to kiss their father. The stillness of the chamber struck a chill through Beth, but she thought it beautiful. The men had draped it in white, and decorated it with evergreens, there being no flowers in season. Papa was smiling, and looked serenely happy.

"Years ago he was like that," mamma said softly, as if she were speaking to herself; "but latterly there has been a look of pain. I am glad to see him so once more. You are at peace now—dearest." She stroked his dark hair, and as she did so her hand showed white against it.

The children kissed him; and then Mrs. Ellis persuaded mamma to come and help her to put them to bed; and mamma taught them to say: "Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for Thou art with me; Thy rod and Thy staff they comfort me." She told them to remember they had learnt it on the day their father died, and asked them to say it always in memory of him. Beth believed for a long time that it was he who would walk with her through the valley of the shadow, and in after years she felt sure that her mother had thought so too.

Mrs. Ellis stayed all night, and slept with the children.

When their mother left them, Beth could not sleep. She had noticed how cold her father was when she kissed him, and was distressed to think he had only a sheet to cover him. The longer she thought of it, the more wretched she became, especially when she contrasted the warmth and softness of her own little bed with the hardness and coldness of the one they had made up for him; and at last she could bear it no longer. She sat up in bed and listened. She could hear by their breathing that the other children were asleep, but she was not sure about Mrs. Ellis. Very stealthily, therefore, she slipped out of bed, and pulled off the clothes. She could only just clasp them in both arms, but the nursery door was ajar, and she managed to open it with her foot. It creaked noisily, and Beth waited, listening in suspense; but nobody moved; so she slipped out into the passage. It was quite dark there, and the floor felt very cold to her bare feet. She stumbled down the passage, tripping over the bed-clothes as she went, and dreading to be caught and stopped, but not afraid of anything else. The door was open when she reached it, and there was a dim light in the room. This was unexpected, and she paused to peep in before she entered. Two candles were burning on a table at the foot of the bed. Their flames flickered in a draught, and cast shadows on her father's face, so that it seemed as if he moved and breathed again. Her mother was kneeling beside the bed, with her face hidden on her husband's breast, her left arm round him, while with the fingers of her right hand she incessantly toyed with his hair. "Only last night," she was saying, "only last night; oh, I cannot believe it!—perhaps I ought to be glad—there will be no more pain for you—oh, my darling, I would have given my life to save you a moment's pain—and I could do so little—so little. Oh, if only you could come back to tell me that your life had ever been the better for me, that I had not spoilt it utterly, that I brought you some happiness." She raised her head and looked into the tranquil face. The flickering shadows flitted across it, but did not deceive her. She must ache on always for an answer now—always, for ever. With a convulsive sob, she crawled up closer on her knees, and laid her cheek beside his, but no tears came. She had not wept at all that day.

Beth stood for a long time in the doorway, listening to her mother's rambling talk, and watching her white fingers straying through her father's hair. She hugged the bed-clothes close, but she had forgotten why she came. She felt no cold; she held no thought; her whole being was absorbed in the scene before her.

Presently, however, something that her mother said aroused her—"Cold," she was murmuring, "so cold. How you dreaded it too! You were always delicate and suffering, yet you did more than the strongest men, for our sakes. You never spared yourself. What you undertook to do, you did like an honourable gentleman, neglecting nothing. You have died doing your duty, as you wished to die. You have been dying all these months—and I never suspected—I did not know—dying—killed by exposure—and anxiety—and bad food. You came home hungry, and you could not eat what I had to give you—cold, and I could not warm you—oh, the cruel, bitter cold!"

Beth slipped up to her noiselessly.

"Mamma!"

Mrs. Caldwell started.

Beth held out the blankets—"to cover him."

Her mother caught her in her arms. "O my poor little child! my poor little child!" she cried; and then at last she burst into tears.

* * * * *

During the days that preceded her father's funeral, Beth did not miss him. It was as if he were somewhere else, that was all—away in the mountains—and was himself thinking, as Beth did continually, about the still, cold, smiling figure that reposed, serenely indifferent to them all, in his room upstairs. One day, what he had said about being laid out by old women came into her head, and she wondered what he would have looked like when they laid him out that he should have objected so strongly to their seeing him. She was near the death-chamber at the moment, and went in. No one was there, and she stood a long time looking at the figure on the bed. It was entirely covered, but she had only to lift the sheet and learn the secret. She turned it back from the placid face, then stopped, and whispered half in awe, half in interrogation, "Papa!" As she pronounced the word, the inhuman impulse passed and was forgotten.

Hours later, Mrs. Ellis found her sitting beside him as she had so often done during his illness, on that same chair which was too high for her, her feet dangling, and her little hands folded in her lap, gazing at him with a face as placidly set, save for the eyes, as his own.

The next day they had all to bid him the long farewell. Mrs. Caldwell stood looking down upon him, not wiping the great tears that welled up painfully into her eyes, lest in the act she should blot out the dear image and so lose sight of it for one last precious moment. She was an undemonstrative woman, but the lingering way in which she touched him, his hair, his face, his waxen hands, was all the more impressive for that in its restrained tenderness.

Suddenly she uncovered his feet. They were white as marble, and beautifully formed. "Ah, I feared so!" she exclaimed. "They put them into hot water that day. I knew it was too hot, and I said so; he seemed insensible, but I felt him wince—and see!" The scar of a scald proved that she had been right. This last act, due to the fear that he had been made to suffer an unnecessary pang, struck Beth in after years as singularly pathetic.

It was not until after the funeral that Beth herself realised that she had lost her father. When they returned, the house had been set in order, and made to look as usual—yet something was missing. The blinds were up, the sun was streaming in, the "Ingoldsby Legends" lay on the sofa in the sitting-room. When Beth saw the book her eyes dilated with a pang. It lay there, just as he had left it; but he was in the ground. He would never come back again.

Suddenly the child threw herself on the floor in an agony of grief, sobbing, moaning, writhing, tearing her hair, and calling aloud, "Papa! papa! Come back! come back! come back!"

Mrs. Caldwell in her fright would have tried her old remedy of shaking and beating; but Mrs. Ellis snatched the child up and carried her off to the nursery, where she kept her for the rest of that terrible day, rocking her on her knee most of the time, and talking to her about her father in heaven, living the life eternal, yet watching over her still, and waiting for her, until she fired Beth's imagination, and the terrible grave was forgotten.

That night, however, and for many nights to come, the child started up out of her sleep, and wept, and wailed, and tore her hair, and had again to be nursed and comforted.



CHAPTER XI

Just like the mountains, all jumbled up together when you view them from a distance, had Beth's impulses and emotions already begun to be in their extraordinary complexity at this period; and even more like the mountains when you are close to them, for then, losing sight of the whole, you become aware of the details, and are surprised at their wonderful diversity, at the heights and hollows, the barren wastes, fertile valleys, gentle slopes, and giddy precipices—heights and hollows of hope and despair, barren wastes of mis-spent time, fertile valleys of intellectual accomplishment, gentle slopes of aspiration undefined, and giddy precipices of passionate impulse and desperate revolt. Genius is sympathetic insight made perfect; and it must have this diversity if it is ever to be effectual—must touch on every human experience, must suffer, and must also enjoy; great, therefore, are its compensations. It feels the sorrows of all mankind, and is elevated by them; whereas the pain of an individual bereavement is rather acute than prolonged. Genius is spared the continuous gnawing ache of the grief which stultifies; instead of an ever-present wearing sense of loss that would dim its power, it retains only those hallowed memories, those vivid recollections, which foster the joy of a great yearning tenderness; and all its pains are transmuted into something subtle, mysterious, invisible, neither to be named nor ignored—a fertilising essence which is the source of its own heaven, and may also contain the salvation of earth. So genius has no lasting griefs.

Beth utterly rejected all thought of her father in his grave, and even of her father in heaven. When her first wild grief subsided, he returned to her, to be with her, as those we love are with us always in their absence, enshrined in our happy consciousness. She never mentioned him in these days, but his presence, warm in her heart, kept her little being aglow; and it was only when people spoke to her, and distracted her attention from the thought of him, that she felt disconsolate. While she could walk with him in dreams, she cared for no other companionship.

It was a dreadful position for poor Mrs. Caldwell, left a widow—not without friends, certainly, for the people were kind—but with none of her own kith and kin, in that wild district, embarrassed for want of money, and broken in health. But, as is usual in times of great calamity, many things happened, showing both the best and the worst side of human nature.

After Captain Caldwell's death, old Captain Keene, who had once held the appointment himself, and was indebted to Captain Caldwell for much kindly hospitality, went about the countryside telling people that Captain Caldwell had died of drink. Some officious person immediately brought the story to Mrs. Caldwell.

Mrs. Caldwell had the house on her hands, but the officer who was sent to succeed Captain Caldwell would be obliged to take it, as there was no other. He arrived one day with a very fastidious wife, who did not like the house at all. There was no accommodation in it, no china cupboard, nothing fit for a lady. She must have it all altered. From the way she spoke, it seemed to Beth that she blamed her mother for everything that was wrong.

Mrs. Caldwell said very little. She was suffering from a great swelling at the back of her neck—an anthrax, the doctor called it—and was not fit to be about at all, but her indomitable fortitude kept her up. Mrs. Ellis had stayed to nurse her, and help with the children. She and Mrs. Caldwell looked at each other and smiled when the new officer's wife had gone.

"She's a very fine lady indeed, Mrs. Ellis," Mrs. Caldwell said, sighing wearily.

"Yes, ma'am," Mrs. Ellis answered; "but people who have been used to things all their lives think less about them."

Mrs. Ellis was very kind to the children, and when wet days kept Beth indoors, she would stay with her, and study her with interest. She was thin, precise, low-voiced, quiet in her movements, passionless, loyal; and every time she took a mouthful at table, she wiped her mouth.

The doctor came every day to dress the abscess on Mrs. Caldwell's neck, and every day he said that if it had not burst of itself he should have been obliged to make a deep incision in it in the form of a cross. Mildred and Beth were always present on these occasions, fighting to be allowed to hold the basin. Mrs. Ellis wanted to turn them out, but Mrs. Caldwell said: "Let them stay, poor little bodies; they like to be with me."

The poor lady, ill as she was, had neither peace nor quiet. The yard was full of great stones now, and stone-masons hammered at them from early morning till late at night, chipping them into shape for the alterations and additions to be made to the house; the loft was full of carpenters preparing boards for flooring; the yard-gates were always open, and people came and went as they liked, so that there was no more privacy for the family. Mildred stayed indoors with her mother a good deal; but Beth, followed by Bernadine, who had become her shadow, was continually in the yard among the men, listening, questioning, and observing. To Beth, at this time, the grown-up people of her race were creatures with a natural history other than her own, which she studied with great intelligence and interest, and sometimes also with disgust; for, although she was so much more with the common people, as she had been taught to call them, than with her own class, she did not adopt their standards, and shrank always with innate refinement from everything gross. No one thought of shooting her now. She had not only lived down her unpopularity, but, by dint of her natural fearlessness, her cheerful audacity of speech, and quick comprehension, had won back the fickle hearts of the people, who weighed her words again superstitiously, and made much of her. The workmen, with the indolent, inconsequent Irish temperament which makes it irksome to follow up a task continuously, and easier to do anything than the work in hand, would break off to amuse her at any time. One young carpenter—lean, sallow, and sulky—who was working for her mother, interested her greatly. He was making packing-cases, and the first one was all wrong, and had to be pulled to pieces; and the way he swore as he demolished it, ripping out oaths as he ripped up the boards, impressed Beth as singularly silly.

There was another carpenter at work in the loft, a little wizened old man. He always brought a peculiar kind of yellow bread, and shared it with the children, who loved it, and took as much as they wanted without scruple, so that the poor old man must have had short-commons himself sometimes. He could draw all kinds of things—fish with scales, ships in full sail, horses, coaches, people—and Beth often made him get out his big broad pencil and do designs for her on the new white boards. When he was within earshot, the people in the yard were particular about what they said before the children; if they forgot themselves he called them to order, and silenced them instantly, which surprised Beth, because he was the smallest man there. There was one man, however, whom the old carpenter could never suppress. Beth did not know how this man got his living. He came from the village to gossip, wore a tweed suit, not like a workman's, nor was it the national Irish dress. He had a red nose and a wooden leg, and, after she knew him, for a long time she always expected a man with a wooden leg to have a red nose, but, somehow, she never expected a man with a red nose to have a wooden leg. This man was always cheery, and very voluble. He used the worst language possible in the pleasantest way, and his impervious good-humour was proof against all remonstrance. What he said was either blasphemous or obscene as a rule, but in effect it was not at all like the same thing from the other men, because, with them, such language was the expression of anger and evil moods, while with him it was the vehicle of thought from a mind habitually serene.

Mrs. Caldwell was being hurried out of the house with indecent haste, considering the state of her health and all the arrangements she had to make; but she bore up bravely. She was touched one day by an offer of help from Beth, and begged her to take charge of Bernadine and be a little mother to her. Beth promised to do her best. Accordingly, when Bernadine was naughty, Beth beat her, in dutiful imitation. Bernadine, however, invariably struck back. When other interests palled, Beth would encourage Bernadine to risk her neck by persuading her to jump down after her from high places. She was nearly as good a jumper as Beth, the great difference being that Beth always lit on her feet, while Bernadine was apt to come down on her head; but it was this peculiarity that made her attempts so interesting.

The yard very soon became a sociable centre for the whole idle place. Any one who chose came into it in a friendly way, and lounged about, gossiping, and inspecting the works in progress. Women brought their babies, and sat about on the stones suckling them and talking to the men—a proceeding which filled Beth with disgust, she thought it so peculiarly indelicate.

Beth stood with her mother at the sitting-room window one day to see the last of poor Artless, as he was led away on a halter by a strange man, his glossy chestnut coat showing dappled in the sunshine, but his wild spirit much subdued for want of corn. The first time they had seen him was on the day of their arrival, when Captain Caldwell had ridden out on him to meet them. Mrs. Caldwell burst into tears at the recollection.

"He was the first evidence of promotion and prosperity," she said. "But the promotion has been to a higher sphere, and I much fear that the prosperity, like Artless himself, has departed for ever."

Mrs. Caldwell had decided to return to her own people in England, and a few days later they started. She took the children to see their father's grave the last thing before they left Castletownrock, and stood beside it for a long time in silence, her gloveless hand resting caressingly on the cold tombstone, her eyes full of tears, and a pained expression in her face. It was the real moment of separation for her. She had to tear herself away from her beloved dead, to leave him lonely, and to go out alone herself, unprotected, unloved, uncomforted, into the cold world with her helpless children. Poverty was in store for her; that she knew; and doubtless she foresaw many another trouble, and, could she have chosen, would gladly have taken her place there beside the one who, with all his faults, had been her best friend on earth.

Her cold, formal religion was no comfort to her in moments like these. She was a pagan at heart, and where she had laid her dead, there, to her mind, he would rest for ever, far from her. The lonely grave on the wild west coast was the shrine towards which her poor heart would yearn thereafter at all times, always. She had erected a handsome tombstone on the hallowed spot, and was going away in her shabby clothes, the more at ease for the self-denial she had had to exercise in order to beautify it. The radical difference between herself and Beth, which was to keep them apart for ever, was never more apparent than at this moment of farewell. The other children cried, but Beth remained an unmoved spectator of her mother's emotion. She hated the delay in that painful place; and what was the use of it when her father would be with them just the same when they got into the yellow coach which was waiting at the gate to take them away? Beth's beloved was a spirit, near at hand always; her mother's was a corpse in a coffin, buried in the ground.

A little way out of Castletownrock the coach was stopped, and Honor and Kathleen Mayne from the inn came up to the window.

"We walked out to be the last to say good-bye to you, Mrs. Caldwell, and to wish you good luck," Kathleen said. "We were among the first to welcome you when you came. And we've brought a piece of music for Miss Mildred, if she will accept it for a keepsake."

Mrs. Caldwell shook hands with them, but she could not speak; and the coach drove on. The days when she had thought the two Miss Maynes presumptuous for young women in their position seemed a long way off to her as she sat there, sobbing, but grateful for this last act of kindly feeling.

Beth had been eager to be off in the yellow coach, but they had not long started before she began to suffer. The moving panorama of desolate landscape, rocky coast, rough sea, moor and mountain, with the motion of the coach, and the smell of stale tobacco and beer in inn-parlours where they waited to change horses, nauseated her to faintness. Her sensitive nervous system received too many vivid impressions at once; the intense melancholy of the scenes they passed through, the wretched hovels, the half-clad people, the lean cattle, and all the evidences of abject poverty, amid dreadful bogs under a gloomy sky, got hold of her and weighed upon her spirits, until at last she shrunk into her corner, pale and still, and sat with her eyes closed, and great tears running slowly down her cheeks. These were her last impressions of Ireland, and they afterwards coloured all her recollections of the country and the people.

But the travellers came to a railway station at last, and left the coach. There was a long crowded train just about to start; and Mrs. Caldwell, dragging Beth after her by the hand, because she knew she would stand still and stare about her the moment she let her go, hurried from carriage to carriage, trying to find seats.

"I saw some," Beth said. "You've passed them."

Mrs. Caldwell turned, and, some distance back, found a carriage with only two people in it, a gentleman whom Beth did not notice particularly, and a lady, doubtless a bride, dressed in light garments, and a white bonnet, very high in front, the space between the forehead and the top being filled with roses. She sat upright in the middle of the compartment, and looked superciliously at the weary, worried widow, and her helpless children, in their shabby black, when they stopped at the carriage door. It was her cold indifference that impressed Beth. She could not understand why, seeing how worn they all were and the fix they were in, she did not jump up instantly and open the door, overjoyed to be able to help them. There were just four seats in the carriage, but she never moved. Beth had looked up confidently into her face, expecting sympathy and help, but was repelled by a disdainful glance. It was Beth's first experience of the wealthy world that does not care, and she never forgot it.

"That carriage is engaged," her mother exclaimed, and dragged her impatiently away.

In the hotel in Dublin where they slept a night, they had the use of a long narrow sitting-room, with one large window at the end, hung with handsome, heavy, dark green curtains, quite new. The valance at the top ended in a deep fringe of thick cords, and at the end of each cord there was a bright ornamental thing made of wood covered with silks of various colours. Beth had never seen anything so lovely, and on the instant she determined to have one. They were high out of her reach; but that was nothing if only she could get a table and chair under them, and the coast clear. Fortune favoured her during the evening, and she managed to secure one, and carried it off in triumph; and so great was her joy in the colour, that she took it out of her pocket whenever she had a chance next day, and gazed at it enraptured. On their way to the boat Mildred caught her looking at it, and asked her where she got it.

Beth explained exactly.

"But it's stealing!" Mildred exclaimed.

"Is it?" said Beth, in pleased surprise. She had never stolen anything before, and it was a new sensation.

"But don't you know stealing is very wicked?" Mildred asked impressively.

Beth looked disconcerted: "I never thought of that. I'll put it back."

"How can you? You'll never be there again," Mildred rejoined. "You've done it now. You've committed a sin."

Beth slipped the bright thing into her pocket. "I'll repent," she said, and seemed satisfied.

It was a lovely day, and the passage from Kingstown to Holyhead was so smooth that everybody lounged about the deck, and no one was ill. Beth was very much interested, first in the receding shore, then in the people about her. There was one group in particular, evidently of affluent people, dressed in a way that made her feel ashamed of her own clothes for the first time in her life. But what particularly attracted her attention were some bunches of green and purple grapes which the papa of the party took out of a basket and began to divide. Beth had never seen grapes before except in pictures, and thought they looked lovely. The old gentleman gave the grapes to his family, but in handing them, one little bunch fell on the deck. He picked it up, looked at it, blew some dust off it; then decided that it was not good enough for his own children, and handed it to Bernadine, who was gazing greedily.

Beth dashed forward, snatched it out of her hand, and threw it into the sea.

"We are not beggars!" she cried.

"Well done, little one," a gentleman who was sitting near exclaimed. "Won't pick up the crumbs that fall from the rich man's table, eh? That's a very proper spirit. And who may you be?"

"My father was a gentleman," Beth answered hotly.



CHAPTER XII

Uncle James Patten sent a landau to meet his sister and her family at the station, on their arrival from Ireland. Mildred was the first to jump in. She took the best seat, and sat up stiff and straight.

"I do love carriages and horses, mamma," she said, as they drove through Rainharbour, the little north-country seaside place which was henceforth to be their home. "I wonder which is to be our house. There are several empty. Do you think it is that one?" She had singled out one of the largest in the place.

"No," said Mrs. Caldwell rather bitterly, "more likely this," and she indicated a tiny two-storied tenement, wedged in between tall houses, and looking as if it had either got itself there by mistake, or had been put in in a hurry, just to fill up.

"That is the one," Beth said.

"How do you know?" Mildred snapped.

"Because we're going to live in Orchard Street, opposite the orchard; and this is Orchard Street, and there's the orchard, and that's the only house empty."

"I'm afraid the child is right," Mrs. Caldwell said with a sigh. "However," she added, pulling herself up, "it is exceedingly kind of Uncle James to give us a house at all."

"He might have given us something nicer," Mildred remarked disdainfully.

"Oh!" Beth exclaimed, "he's given us the best he has, I expect. And it's a dear little place, with a little bow-window on either side of a little front door—just like the one where Snowdrop found the empty beds when the bears were out."

"Don't talk nonsense, Beth," Mildred cried crossly.

But Beth hardly heard. She was busy peopling the quaint little town with the friends of her fancy, and sat smiling serenely as she looked about her.

They had to drive right through Rainharbour, and about a mile out into the country on the other side, to arrive at Fairholm, Uncle James Patten's place. The sun had set, and the quaintly irregular red-brick houses, mellowed by age, shone warm in tint against the gathering grey of the sky, which rose like a leaden dome above them. At one part of the road the sea came in sight. Great dark mountainous masses of cloud, with flame-coloured fringes, hung suspended over its shining surface, in which they were reflected with what was to Beth terrible effect. She sat and shivered with awe so long as the lurid scene was in sight, and was greatly relieved when the carriage turned into a country lane, and sea and sombre sky were blotted out.

It was early spring. Buds were bursting in the hedgerows, birds were building, songsters sang among the branches, and the air was sweet and mild. Fairholm lay all among fertile fields, well wooded and watered. It was a typical English home, with surroundings as unlike the great, bare, bald mountains and wild Atlantic seas Beth had hitherto shuddered amongst, as peace is unlike war. Certain natures are stimulated by the grandeur of such scenes; but Beth was too delicate an instrument to be played upon so roughly. Storms within reflected the storms without only too readily. She was tempest-tossed by temperament, and, in nature, all her yearning was for repose; so that now, as they drove up the well-ordered avenue to the house, the tender tone of colour, green against quiet grey, and the easy air of affluence, so soothing after the sorrowful signs of a hard struggle for life by which her feelings had hitherto been harrowed, drew from her a deep sigh of satisfaction.

The hall-door stood open, but no one was looking out for them. They could hear the tinkle of a piano in the distance. Then a servant appeared, followed by a stout lady, who came forward to greet them in a hurried, nervous way.

"I'm glad to see you," she said, kissing Mrs. Caldwell. She spoke in a breathless undertone, as if she were saying something wrong, and was afraid of being caught and stopped before she had finished the sentence. "I should like to have gone to meet you, but James said there were too many for the carriage as it was. He says more than two in the carriage makes it look like an excursion-party. But I was listening for you, only I don't hear very well, you know. You remember me, Mildred? This is Beth, I suppose, and this is Bernadine. You don't know who I am? I am your Aunt Grace Mary. James begs you to excuse him for a little, Caroline. It is his half-hour for exercises. So unfortunate. If you had only come a little later! But, however, the sooner the better for me. Come into the dining-room and see Aunt Victoria. We must stay there until Uncle James has finished practising his exercises in the drawing-room."

Great-Aunt Victoria Bench was sitting bolt upright on a high chair in the dining-room, tatting. Family portraits, hung far too high all round the room, seemed to have been watching her complacently until the travellers entered, when they all turned instantly and looked hard at Beth.

Aunt Victoria was a tall thin old lady, with a beautiful delicate complexion, an auburn front and white cap, and a severely simple black dress. She rose stiffly to receive Mrs. Caldwell, and kissed her on both cheeks with restrained emotion. Then she shook hands with each of the children.

"I hope you had a pleasant journey," she was beginning formally, when Mrs. Caldwell suddenly burst into tears. "What is the matter, Caroline?" Aunt Victoria asked.

"Oh, nothing," the poor lady answered in a broken voice. "Only it does seem a sad home-returning—alone—without him—you know."

Aunt Grace Mary furtively patted Mrs. Caldwell on the back, keeping an eye on Aunt Victoria the while, however, as if she were afraid of being caught.

All this time the tinkle-tinkle-tinkle of "Hamilton's Exercises for Beginners" on the piano had been going on; now it stopped. Aunt Grace Mary slipped into a chair, and sat with a smile on her face; Aunt Victoria became a trifle more rigid over her tatting; and Mrs. Caldwell hurriedly wiped her eyes. Then the door opened deliberately, and there entered a great stout man, with red hair sprinkled with grey, large prominent light-coloured eyes, a nondescript nose, a wide shapeless gash of a mouth, and a red moustache with straight bristly hairs, like the bristles of a broom.

"How do you do, Caroline?" he said, holding out his big, fat, white hand, and kissing her coldly on the forehead. He drawled his words out with a decided lisp, and in a very soft voice, which contrasted oddly with his huge bulk. Having greeted his sister, he turned and looked at the children. Mildred went up and shook hands with him.

"Your sisters, I perceive, have no manners," he observed.

Beth had been beaming round blandly on the group; but upon that last remark of Uncle James's the pleased smile faded from her face, and she coloured painfully, and offered him a small reluctant hand.

"You are Elizabeth, I suppose?" he said.

"I am Beth," she answered emphatically.

She and Uncle James looked into each other's eyes for an instant, and in that instant she made a most disagreeable impression of fearlessness on the big man's brain.

"I hope, Caroline," he said precisely, "that you will not continue to call your daughter by such an absurd abbreviation. That sort of thing was all very well in the wilds of Ireland, but here we must have something rational, ladylike, and recognised."

Mrs. Caldwell looked distressed. "It would be so difficult to call her Elizabeth," she pleaded. "She is not at all—Elizabeth."

"You may call me what you like, mamma," Beth put in with decision; "but I shall only answer to Beth. That was the name my father gave me, and I shall stick to it."

Uncle James stared at her in amazement, but Beth, unabashed, stared back obstinately; and so they continued staring until Aunt Grace Mary made a diversion.

"James," she hurriedly interposed, "wouldn't they like some refreshment?"

Uncle James pulled the bell-rope. "Bring wine and cake," he lisped, when the servant answered.

Then he returned to his seat, crossed one great leg over the other, folded his fat hands on his knee, and inspected his sister.

"You certainly do not grow younger, Caroline," he observed.

Mrs. Caldwell did not look cheered by the remark; and there was a painful pause, broken, happily, by the arrival of the cake and wine.

"You will not take more than half a glass, I suppose, Caroline, at this time of the day," Uncle James said playfully, as he took up the decanter; "and marsala, not port. I know what ladies are."

Poor Mrs. Caldwell was exhausted, and would have been the better for a good glass of port; but she meekly held her peace.

Then Uncle James cut the cake, and gave each of the children a very small slice. Beth held hers suspended half-way to her mouth, and gazed at her uncle.

"What is that child staring at?" he asked her mother at last.

"I think she is admiring you," was Mrs. Caldwell's happy rejoinder.

"No, mamma, I am not," Beth contradicted. "I was just thinking I had never seen anything so big in my life."

"Anything!" Uncle James protested. "What does she mean, Caroline?"

"I don't mean this slice of cake," Beth chuckled.

"Come, dear—come, dear," Aunt Grace Mary hurriedly interposed. "Come upstairs, and see—and see—the pretty room you're to have. Come and take your things off, like a good child."

Beth rose obediently, but before she followed her aunt out of the room she said: "Here, Bernadine; you'd better have my slice. You'll howl if you don't get enough. Cakes are scarce and dear here, I suppose."

Aunt Victoria had tatted diligently during this little scene. Now she looked up over her spectacles and inspected Uncle James.

"I like that child," she said decidedly.

"In which respect I should think you would probably find yourself in a very small minority," Uncle James lisped, spreading his mouth into what would have been a smile in any other countenance, but was merely an elongation of the lips in his.

Mrs. Caldwell rocked herself forlornly. Mildred nestled close to her mother; while Baby Bernadine, with a slice of cake in each hand, took a mouthful first from the right and then from the left, impartially.

Uncle James gazed at her. "I suppose that is an Irish custom," he said at length.

"Bernadine! what are you doing?" Mrs. Caldwell snapped; and Bernadine, startled, let both slices fall on the floor, and set up a howl with her mouth full.

"Ah!" Uncle James murmured tenderly. "Little children are such darling things! They make the sense of their presence felt the moment they enter a house. It becomes visible also in the crumbs on the floor. There is evidently nothing the matter with her lungs. But I should have thought it would be dangerous to practise her voice like that with the mouth full. Perhaps she would be more at her ease upstairs." Mrs. Caldwell took the hint.

When the child had gone, Uncle James rang for a servant to sweep up the cake and crumbs, and carefully stood over her, superintending.

"That will do," he said at length, "so far as the cake and crumbs are concerned, but I beg you to observe that you have brushed the pile of the carpet the wrong way."

Meanwhile Aunt Grace Mary had taken Beth up a polished staircase, through a softly carpeted, airy corridor, at the end of which was a large room with two great mahogany four-post beds, hung with brown damask, the rest of the heavy old-fashioned furniture being to match. All over the house there was a delicious odour of fresh air and lavender, everything shone resplendent, and all was orderly to the point of stiffness; nothing looked as if it had ever been used.

"This was your mamma's room when she was a girl," Aunt Grace Mary confided to Beth. "She used to fill the house with her girl-friends, and that was why she had such big beds. She used to be a very high-spirited girl, your dear mamma was. You are all to sleep here."

"How good it smells," said Beth.

"Ah, that's the lavender. I often burn lavender. Would you like to see me burn some lavender? Come to my room, then, and I'll show you. But take your things off first."

Beth dragged off her hat and jacket and threw them aside. They happened to fall on the floor.

"My dear child!" Aunt Grace Mary exclaimed, "look at your things!"

Beth looked at them, but nothing occurred to her; so she looked at her aunt inquiringly.

"I always put mine away—at least I should, you know, if I hadn't a maid," said Aunt Grace Mary.

"Oh, let your maid put mine away too," Beth answered casually.

"But, my dear child, you must learn," Aunt Grace Mary insisted, picking up Beth's things and putting them in a drawer as she spoke. "Who puts your things away at home?"

"Mamma," Beth answered laconically. "She says it's less trouble to do things herself."

"Oh, but you must save your mother the trouble, dear," said Aunt Grace Mary in a shocked tone.

"Well, I will next time—if I remember," Beth rejoined. "Come and burn lavender."

For the next few days, which happened to be very fine, Beth revelled out of doors. Everything was a wonder and a joy to her in this fertile land, the trees especially, after the bleak, wild wastes to which she had been accustomed in the one stormy corner of Ireland she knew. Leaves and blossoms were just bursting out, and one day, wandering alone in the grounds, she happened unawares upon an orchard in full bloom, and fairly gasped, utterly overcome by the first shock of its beauty. For a while she stood and gazed in silent awe at the white froth of flowers on the pear-trees, the tinted almond blossom, and the pink-tipped apple. She had never dreamed of such heavenly loveliness. But enthusiasm succeeded to awe at last, and, in a wild burst of delight, she suddenly threw her arms around a gnarled tree-trunk and clasped it close.

There was a large piece of artificial water in the grounds, in which were three green islands covered with trees and shrubs. Beth was standing on the bank one morning in a contemplative mood, admiring the water, and yearning for a boat to get to the islands, when round one of them, unexpectedly, a white wonder of a swan came gliding towards her in the sunshine.

"Oh, oh! Mildred! Mildred! Oh, the beautiful, beautiful thing!" she cried. Mildred came running up.

"Why, Beth, you idiot," she exclaimed in derision, "it's only a swan. I really thought it was something."

"Is that a swan?" Beth said slowly; then, after a moment, she added, in sorrowful reproach: "O Mildred! you had seen it and you never told me."

Alas, poor Mildred! she had not seen it, and never would see it, in Beth's sense of the word.

On wet days, when they had to be indoors, Aunt Grace Mary waylaid Beth continually, and trotted her off somewhere out of Uncle James's way. She would take her to her own room sometimes, a large, bright apartment, spick-and-span like the rest of the house; and show her the pictures—pastels and water-colours chiefly—with which it was stiffly decorated.

"That was your uncle when he was a little boy," she said, pointing to a pretty pastel.

"Why, he was quite a nice little boy," Beth exclaimed.

"Yes, nice and plump," Aunt Grace Mary rattled off breathlessly. "And your grandmamma did those water-colours and those screens. That lovely printing too; can you guess how she did it? With a camel's hair brush. She did indeed. And she used to compose music. She was a very clever woman. You are very like her."

"But I am not very clever," said Beth.

"No, dear; no, dear," Aunt Grace Mary rejoined, pulling herself up hurriedly from this indiscretion. "But in the face. You are very like her in appearance. And you must try. You must try to improve yourself. Your uncle is always trying to improve himself. He reads 'Doctor Syntax' aloud to us. In the evening it is our custom to read aloud and converse."

An occasional phrase of Uncle James's would flow from Aunt Grace Mary in this way, with incongruous effect.

"Do you try to improve yourself?" Beth asked.

"Yes, dear."

"How?"

"Oh, well—that reminds me. I must write a letter. You shall stay and see me if you like. But you mustn't move or speak."

Beth, deeply interested, watched her aunt, who began by locking the door. Then she slipped a pair of spectacles out of her pocket, and put them on, after glancing round apprehensively as if she were going to do something wrong. Then she sat down at a small bureau, unlocked a drawer, and took out a little dictionary, unlocked another drawer and took out a sheet of notepaper, in which she inserted a page of black lines. Then she proceeded to write a letter in lead-pencil, stopping often to consult the dictionary. When she had done, she took out another sheet of a better quality, put the lines in it, and proceeded to copy the letter in ink. She blotted the first attempt, but the next she finished. She destroyed several envelopes also before she was satisfied. But at last the letter was folded and sealed, and then she carefully burnt every scrap of paper she had spoiled.

"I was educated in a convent in France," she said to Beth. "If you were older you would know that by my handwriting. It is called an Italian hand, but I learnt it in France. I was there five years."

"What else did you learn?" said Beth.

"Oh—reading. No—I could read before I went. But music, you know, and French."

"Say some French," said Beth.

"Oh, I can't," Aunt Grace Mary answered. "But I can read it a little, you know."

"I should like to hear you play," said Beth.

"But I don't play," Aunt Grace Mary rejoined.

"I thought you said you learnt music."

"Oh yes. I had to learn music; and I practised for hours every day; but I never played."

Aunt Grace Mary smiled complacently as she spoke, took off her spectacles, and locked up her writing materials—Beth, the while, thoughtfully observing her. Aunt Grace Mary's hair was a wonderful colour, neither red, yellow, brown, nor white, but a mixture of all four. It was parted straight in the middle, where it was thin, and brought down in two large rolls over her ears. She wore a black velvet band across her head like a coronet, which ended in a large black velvet bow at the back. Long heavy gold ear-rings pulled down the lobes of her ears. All her dresses were of rustling silk, and she had a variety of deep lace-collars, each one of which she fastened with a different brooch at the throat. She also wore a heavy gold watch-chain round her neck, the watch being concealed in her bosom; and jet bracelets by day, but gold ones in the evening.

* * * * *

Beth was deeply interested in her own family history, and intelligently pieced together such fragments of it as she could collect from the conversations of the people about her. She was sitting in one of the deep window-seats in the drawing-room looking out one day, concealed by a curtain, when her mother and Great-Aunt Victoria Bench came into the room, and settled themselves to chat and sew without observing her.

"Where is Grace Mary?" Aunt Victoria asked.

"Locked up in her own room writing a letter, I believe," Mrs. Caldwell replied, "a long and mysterious proceeding. We shall not see her again this morning, I suppose."

"Ah, well," said Aunt Victoria considerately, "she writes a very beautiful hand."

"James thought he was doing so well for himself, too!" Mrs. Caldwell interjected. "He'd better have married the mother."

"There was the making of a fine woman in Grace Mary if she had had a chance," Aunt Victoria answered, pursing up her mouth judicially. "It was the mother made the match. When he came across them in Switzerland, Lady Benyon got hold of him, and flattered him, made him believe Grace Mary was only thirty-eight, not too old for a son-and-heir, but much too old for a large family. She was really about fifty; but he never thought of looking up her age until after they were married. However, James got one thing he likes, and more than he deserved; for Grace Mary is amiable if she's ignorant; and I should say had tact, though some people might call it cunning. But, at any rate, she's the daughter of one baronet and the sister of another."

"What's a baronet?" Beth demanded, tumbling off the window-seat on to the floor with a crash as she spoke, having lost her balance in peering round the curtain.

Both ladies jumped, quite contrary to their principles.

"You naughty child, how dare you?" Mrs. Caldwell began.

Beth picked herself up. "I want to know," she interrupted.

"You've been listening."

"No, I've not. I was here first, and you came and talked. But that doesn't matter. I shan't tell. What's a baronet?"

Aunt Victoria explained, and then turned her out of the room. Uncle James was crossing the hall at the moment; he had a large bunch of keys in his hand, and went through the double-doors which led to the kitchen and offices. Beth followed him into the kitchen. The cook, an old servant, came forward curtseying. The remains of yesterday's dinner, cold roast beef, tongue, chicken, and plum-pudding, were spread out on the table. Uncle James inspected everything.

"For luncheon," he said, "the beef can remain cold on the sideboard, also the tongue. The chicken you will grill for one hot dish, and do not forget to garnish with rolls of bacon. The pudding you can cut into slices, fry, and sprinkle with a little sifted sugar. Mind, I say a little; for, as the pudding is sweet enough already, the sugar is merely an ornament to make it agreeable to the eye. For the rest, as usual."

"Yes, sir. And dinner, sir?"

"Here is the menu." He handed her a paper. "I will give you out what is necessary."

He led the way down a stone passage to the store-room door, which he unlocked.

"I am out of sifted sugar, sir," the cook said nervously.

"What, again?" Uncle James sternly demanded. "This is only Thursday, and I gave you some out on Saturday."

"Yes, sir, but only a quarter of a pound, sir, and I had to use it for the top of the rice-pudding, and the pancakes, and the Charlotte Russe, and the plum-pudding——"

"How?" said Uncle James—"the plum-pudding, which is not yet fried?"

"Beg pardon, sir. I'm all confused. But, however," she added desperately, "the sugar is done."

"Well, I suppose I must give you some more this time. But do not let it occur again. You may weigh out a quarter of a pound."

When that was done, Uncle James consulted a huge cookery-book which lay on a shelf in the window. "We shall require another cake for tea," he said, and then proceeded to read the recipe aloud, keeping an observant eye upon the cook as she weighed out the various ingredients.

"And the kitchen meals, sir?" she asked, as he locked up the store-room.

"Make what you have do," he said, "make what you have do."

"But there is hardly meat enough to go round once, sir."

"You must make it do. People are much healthier and happier when they do not eat too much."

This ceremony over, he went to the poultry-yard, followed by Beth (who carefully kept in the background), the yard-boy, and the poultry-maid who carried some corn in a sieve, which she handed to her master when he stopped. Uncle James scattered a little corn on the ground, calling "chuck! chuck! chuck!" at the same time, in a dignified manner. Chickens, ducks, turkeys and guinea-fowl collected about him, and he stood gazing at them with large light prominent eyes, blandly, as if he loved them—as indeed he did when they appeared like ladies at table, dressed to perfection.

"That guinea-fowl!" he decided, after due consideration.

The yard-boy caught it and gave it to the poultry-maid, who held it while Uncle James carefully felt its breast.

"That will do," he said. "Quite a beauty."

The yard-boy took it from the poultry-maid, tied its legs together, cut its throat, and hung it on a nail.

"That drake!" Uncle James proceeded. The same ceremony followed, Uncle James bearing his part in it without any relaxation of his grand manner.

When a turkey-poult had also been executed, he requested the yard-boy to fetch him his gun from the harness-room.

"We must have a pigeon-pie," he observed as he took it.

Beth, in great excitement, stalked him to the orchard, where there was a big pigeon-house covered with ivy. In front of it the pigeons had a good run, enclosed with wire netting when they were shut in; but they were often let out to feed in the fields. The yard-boy now reached up and opened a little door in the side of the house. As he did so he glanced at Uncle James somewhat apprehensively. Uncle James, with a benign countenance, suddenly lifted his gun and fired. The yard-boy dropped.

"What is the matter?" said Uncle James.

The yard-boy gathered himself up with a very red face. "I thought you meant to shoot me, sir."

Uncle James smiled gently. "May I ask when it became customary for gentlemen to shoot yard-boys?" he said.

"Beg pardon, sir," the boy rejoined sheepishly. "There's accidents sometimes."

The pigeons were wary after the shot, and would not come out, so the yard-boy had to go into the house and drive them. There was a shelf in front of the little door, on which they generally rested a moment, bewildered, before they flew. Uncle James knew them all by sight, and let several go, as being too old for his purpose. Then, standing pretty close, he shot two, one after the other, as they stood hesitating to take flight. While loading again, he discovered Beth; but as he liked an audience when he was performing an exploit, he was quite gracious.

"Nothing distinguishes a gentleman more certainly than a love of sport," he observed blandly, as he shot another pigeon sitting.

This entertainment over, he looked at his watch. He had the whole day divided into hours and half-hours, each with its separate occupation or recreation; and nothing short of a visit from some personage of importance was ever allowed to interrupt him in any of his pursuits. For recreation he sometimes did a little knitting or a piece of Berlin woolwork, because, he said, a gentleman should learn to do everything, so as not to be at a loss if he were ever wrecked on a desert island. For the same reason, he had also trained himself to sleep at odd times, and in all sorts of odd places, choosing by preference some corner where Aunt Grace Mary and the maids would least expect to find him, the consequence being wild shrieks and shocks to their nerves, such as, to use his own bland explanation, might be expected from undisciplined females. Beth found him one day spread out on a large oak chest in the main corridor upstairs, with two great china vases, one at his head and one at his feet, filled with reeds and bulrushes, which appeared to be waving over him, and looking in his sleep, with his cadaverous countenance, like a self-satisfied corpse. She had been on her way downstairs to dispose of the core of an apple she had eaten; but, as Uncle James's mouth was open, she left it there.

Uncle James was wont to deliver little lectures to the children, for the improvement of their minds, during luncheon, which was their dinner-hour.

"With regularity and practice you may accomplish great things," he said on one occasion. "I myself always practise 'Hamilton's Exercises' on the pianoforte for one hour every day, from half-past ten till eleven, and from half-past three till four. I have done so now for many years."

Beth sat with her spoon suspended half-way up to her mouth, drinking in these words of wisdom. "And when will you be able to play?" she asked.

Uncle James fixed his large, light, ineffectual eyes upon her; but, as usual, this gaze direct only excited Beth's interest, and she returned it unabashed in simple expectation of what was to follow. So Uncle James gave in, and to cover his retreat he said: "Culture. Cultivate the mind. There is nothing that elevates the mind like general cultivation. It is cultivation that makes us great, good, and generous."

"Then, I suppose, when your mind is cultivated, Uncle James, you will give mamma more money," Beth burst out hopefully.

Uncle James blinked his eyes several times running, rapidly, as if something had gone wrong with them.

"Beth, you are talking too much; go to your room at once, and stay there for a punishment," her mother exclaimed nervously.

Beth, innocent of any intent to offend, looked surprised, put down her spoon deliberately, got off her chair, took up her plate of pudding, and was making off with it. As she was passing Uncle James, however, he stretched out his big hand suddenly, and snatched the plate from her; but Beth in an instant doubled her little fist, and struck the plate from underneath, the concussion scattering the pudding all over the front of Uncle James.

In the confusion which followed, Beth made her escape to the kitchen, where she was already popular.

"I say, cook," she coaxed, "give me something good to eat. My pudding's got upset all over Uncle James."

The cook sat down suddenly, and twinkled a glance of intelligence at Horner, the old coachman, who happened to be in the kitchen.

"Give me a cheesecake—I won't tell," Beth pleaded.

"That's doubtful, I should think," Horner said aside to the cook.

"Oh, bless you, she never do, not she!" cook answered, and then she fetched Beth a big cheesecake from a secret store. Beth took it smiling, and retired to the brown bedroom, where she was left in solitary confinement until Uncle James drove out with mamma in Aunt Grace Mary's pony-carriage to pay a call in the afternoon. When they had gone, Aunt Grace Mary peeped in at Beth, and said, with an unconvincing affectation of anger: "Beth, you are a naughty little girl, and deserve to be punished. Say you're sorry. Then you shall come to my room, and see me write a letter."

"All right," Beth answered, and Aunt Grace Mary took her off without more ado.

It was a great encouragement to Beth to find that Aunt Grace Mary was obliged to take pains with her writing. All the other grown-up people Beth knew, seemed to do everything with such ease, it was quite disheartening. Beth was allowed a pencil, a sheet of paper, and some lines herself now, and Aunt Grace Mary was taking great pains to teach her to write an Italian hand. Beth was also trying to learn: "because there are such lots of things I want to write down," she explained; "and I want to do it small like you, because it won't take so much paper, you know."

"What kind of things do you want to write down, Beth?" Aunt Grace Mary asked. Beth treated her quite as an equal, so they chatted the whole time they were together, unconstrainedly.

"Oh, you know—things like—well, the day we came here there were great grey clouds with crimson caps hanging over the sea, and you could see them in the water."

"See their reflection, you mean, I suppose."

Beth looked puzzled. "When you think of things, isn't that reflection?" she asked.

"Yes; and when you see yourself in the looking-glass, that's your reflection too," Aunt Grace Mary answered.

"Oh, then I suppose it was the sea's thought of the sky I saw in the water—that makes it nicer than I had it before," Beth said, trying to turn the phrase as a young bird practises to round its notes in the spring. "The sea shows its thoughts, the thought of the sea is the sky—no, that isn't right. It never does come right all at once, you know. But that's the kind of thing."

"What kind of thing?" Aunt Grace Mary asked, bewildered.

"The kind of thing I am always wanting to write down. You generally forget what we're talking about, don't you?—I say, don't you want to drive your own ponies yourself sometimes?"

"No, not when your dear uncle wants them."

"Dear uncle wants them almost always, doesn't he? Horner ses as 'ow——"

"Beth, don't speak like that!"

"That's Horner, not me," Beth snapped, impatient of the interruption. "How am I to tell you what he said if I don't say what he said? Horner ses as 'ow, when Lady Benyon gev them there white ponies to 'er darter fur 'er own use, squire 'e sells two on 'is 'orses, an' 'as used them ponies ever since. Squire's a near un, my word!" Beth perceived that Aunt Grace Mary looked very funny in the face. "You're frightened to death of Uncle James, arn't you?" she asked, after sucking her pencil meditatively for a little.

"No, dear, of course not. I am not afraid of any one but the dear Lord."

"But Uncle James is the lord."

"Nonsense, child."

"Mildred says so. She says he's lord of the manor. Mildred says it's fine to be lord of the manor. But it doesn't make me care a button about Uncle James."

"Don't speak like that, Beth. It's disrespectful. It was the Lord in heaven I alluded to," said Aunt Grace Mary in her breathless way.

"Ah, that is different," Beth allowed. "But I'm not afraid of Him either. I don't think I'm afraid of any one really, not even of mamma, though she does beat me. I'd rather she didn't, you know. But one gets used to it. The worst of it is," Beth added, after sucking the point of her pencil a little—"The worst of it is, you never know what will make her waxy. To-day, at luncheon, you know—now, what did I say?"

"Oh," said Aunt Grace Mary vaguely; "you oughtn't to have said it, you know."

"Now, that's just like mamma! She says 'Don't!' and 'How dare you!' and 'Naughty girl!' at the top of her voice, and half the time I don't know what she's talking about. When I grow up, I shall explain to children. Do you know, sometimes I quite want to be good"—this with a sigh. "But when I'm bad without having a notion what I've done, why, it's difficult. Aunt Grace Mary, do you know what Neptune would say if the sea dried up?" Aunt Grace Mary smiled and shook her head. "I haven't an ocean," Beth proceeded. "You don't see it? Well, I didn't at first. You see an ocean and a notion sound the same if you say them sharp. Now, do you see? They call that a pun."

"Who told you that?"

"A gentleman in the train."

Beth put her pencil in her mouth, and gazed up at the sky. "I don't suppose he'd be such a black-hearted villain as to break his word," she said at last.

"Who?" Aunt Grace Mary asked, in a startled tone.

"Uncle James—about leaving Jim the place, you know. Why, don't you know? Mamma is the eldest, and ought to have had Fairholm, but she was away in Ireland, busy having me, when grandpapa died, and couldn't come; so Uncle James frightened the old man into leaving the place to him, and mamma only got fifty pounds a year, which wasn't fair."

"Who told you this, Beth?"

"Mildred. Mamma told her. And Horner said the other day to cook—I'll have to say it the way Horner says it. If I said it my way, you know, then it wouldn't be Horner—Horner said to cook as 'ow Captain Caldwell 'ud 'a' gone to law about it, but squire 'e swore if 'e'd let the matter drop, 'e'd make 'is nevee, Master Jim, as is also 'is godson, 'is heir, an' so square it; and Captain Caldwell, as was a real gen'lmon, an' fond of the ladies, tuk 'im at 'is word, an' furgiv' 'im. But, lardie! don't us know the worth o' Mr. James Patten's word!"

Aunt Grace Mary had turned very pale.

"Beth," she gasped, "promise me you will never, never, never say a word about this to your uncle."

"Not likely," said Beth.

"How do you remember these things you hear?"

"Oh, I just think them over again when I go to bed, and then they stay," Beth answered. "I wouldn't tell you half I hear, though—only things everybody knows. If you tell secrets, you know, you're a tell-pie. And I'm not a tell-pie. Now, Bernadine is. She's a regular tell-pie. It seems as if she couldn't help it; but then she's young," Beth added tolerantly.

"Were you ever young, I wonder?" Aunt Grace Mary muttered to herself.



CHAPTER XIII

Meanwhile the English spring advanced in the beautiful gardens of Fairholm, and was a joy to Beth. Blossoms showered from the fruit-trees, green leaves unfurled, the birds were in full song, and the swans curved their long necks in the sunshine, and breasted the waters of the lake, as if their own grace were a pleasure to them. Beth was enchanted. Every day she discovered some new wonder—nests in the hedgerows, lambs in the fields, a foal and its mother in the paddock, a calf in the byre—more living interests in one week than she had dreamt of in the whole of her little life. For a happy interval the scenes which had oppressed her—the desolation, the sombre colours of the great melancholy mountains, the incessant sound of the turbulent sea, the shock and roar of angry breakers warring with the rocks, which had kept her little being all a-throb, braced to the expectation of calamity—lapsed now into the background of her recollection, and under the benign influence of these lovelier surroundings her mind began to expand in the most extraordinary way, while her further faculty awoke, and gave her glimpses of more delights than mortal mind could have shown her. "Such nice things," as she expressed it, "keep coming into my head, and I want to write them down." Books she flung away impatiently; but the woods and streams, and the wild flowers, the rooks returning to roost in the trees at sunset, the horses playing in the paddocks, the cows dawdling back from their pastures, all sweet country scents and cheerful country sounds she became alive to and began to love. There would be trouble enough in Beth herself at times, wherever she was; it was hard that she could not have been kept in some such paradise always, to ease the burden of her being.

One morning her mother told her that Uncle James was extremely displeased with her because he had seen her pelting the swans.

"He didn't see me pelting the swans," Beth asseverated. "I was feeding them with crusts. And how did he see me, any way? He wasn't there."

"He sees everything that's going on," Mrs. Caldwell assured her.

"He's only pretending," Beth argued, "or else he must be God."

But she kept her eyes about her the next time she was in the grounds, and at last she discovered him, sitting in the little window of his dressing-room with a book before him, and completely blocking the aperture. She had never noticed him there before, because the panes were small and bright, and the shine on them made it difficult to see through them from below. After this discovery she always felt that his eyes were upon her wherever she went within range of that window. Not that that would have deterred her had she wanted to do anything particularly; but even a child feels it intolerable to be spied upon; and as for a spy! Beth scorned the creature.

That day at luncheon Uncle James made an announcement.

"Lady Benyon is going to honour us with a visit," he began in his most impressive manner. There is no snob so inveterate as your snob of good birth; and Uncle James said "Lady" as if it were a privilege just to pronounce the word. "She will arrive this afternoon at a quarter to four."

"But you will be practising," Beth exclaimed.

"The rites of hospitality must be observed," he condescended to inform her.

"Lady Benyon is my mother, Beth," Aunt Grace Mary put in irrelevantly.

"I know," Beth answered. "Your papa was a baronet; Uncle James loves baronets; that was why he married you." Having thus disposed of Aunt Grace Mary, Beth turned to the other end of the table, and resumed: "But you went on practising when we arrived, Uncle James."

Uncle James gazed at her blandly, then looked at his sister with an agreeable smile. "Lady Benyon will probably like to see the children. You do not dress them in the latest fashion, I observe."

"They are shabby," Mrs. Caldwell acknowledged with a sigh, apologetically.

Beth shovelled some spoonfuls of pudding into her mouth very quickly. "That's the money bother again," she said, and then she sang out at the top of her voice—

"Bryan O'Lynn had no breeches to wear, He bought a sheepskin for to make him a pair, With the skinny side out, and the woolly side in, 'They're warm in the winter,' said Bryan O'Lynn."

"I suppose it would be quite impossible to suppress this child?" Uncle James lisped with deceptive mildness. "I observe that she joins in the conversation always, with great intelligence and her mouth full. It might be better, perhaps, if she emptied her mouth. However, I suppose it would be impossible to teach her."

"Not at all," Beth answered for herself, cheerfully. "I'm not too stupid to empty my mouth! Only just you tell me what it is you want. Don't bottle things up. I expect I've been speaking with my mouth full ever since I came, and you've been hating me for it; but you never told me."

"May I ask," said Uncle James politely, "by whom you were informed that I 'bottled things up'?"

"Ah, that would be telling," said Beth, and recommenced gobbling her pudding, to the intense relief of some of the party.

Great-Aunt Victoria Bench, sitting upright opposite, looked across the table at the child, and a faint smile flickered over her wrinkled rose-leaf cheek.

Beth finished her pudding, dropped her spoon on her plate with a clatter, leant back in her chair, and sighed with satisfaction. She possessed a horrid fascination for Uncle James. Almost everything she did was an offence to him, yet he could not keep his eyes off her or let her alone.

"Pudding seems to be a weakness of hers," he now observed. "I hope her voracity is satisfied. I should say that it resembles the voracity of the caterpillar."

"What's voracity, Aunt Victoria?" Beth asked.

"Greediness," Aunt Victoria rejoined sententiously.

"He means I'm greedy for pudding? I just am! I'd like to be a caterpillar for pudding. Caterpillars eat all day. But then God's good to them. He puts them on a tree with lots of leaves. I wish He'd put me in a pantry with lots of puddings! My vorass—vor—what is it? Any way, it's satisfied now, Uncle James, and if you'll let me go, I'll wash myself, and get ready for Lady Benyon."

Rather than let her go when she wanted to, however, Uncle James sat some time longer at table than he had intended. It was he who always gave the signal to rise; before he did so on this occasion, he formally requested his sister to request Beth to be silent during Lady Benyon's visit.

Lady Benyon was a shrewd, active little old woman, with four dark curls laid horizontally on either side of her forehead. She had bright black sparkling eyes that glanced about quickly and seemed to see everything. Before she arrived, Uncle James assembled his family in the drawing-room, and set the scene, as it were, for her reception.

"Sit here, facing the window, Caroline," he said. "It will interest Lady Benyon to see how you have aged. And, Aunt Victoria, this Chippendale chair, so stiff and straight, is just like you, I think; so oblige me by sitting on it. Grace Mary, take this easy lounge; it suits your yielding nature. Elizabeth"—Beth, who was perched on the piano-stool, looked up calmly at the clouds through the window opposite. "Elizabeth," he repeated sharply. Beth made no sign.

"Beth, answer your uncle directly," Mrs. Caldwell exclaimed.

"He has not yet addressed me," Beth rejoined, in the manner of Uncle James.

"Don't call your uncle 'he,' you naughty girl. You know your name is Elizabeth."

"Yes, and I know I said I wouldn't answer to it, and I'm not going to break me oath."

"Me oath!" Uncle James ejaculated.

Beth looked disconcerted. It irked her horribly to be jeered at for making a mistake in speaking, and Uncle James, seeing she was hurt, rested satisfied for the moment, and arranged Mildred and Bernadine together in a group, leaving Beth huddled up on the piano-stool, frowning.

When Lady Benyon's carriage stopped at the door, Uncle James stood bareheaded on the steps, ready to receive her.

"So glad to see you, mamma," he lisped, as he handed her out. "Do take my arm."

But the little old lady waved him aside unceremoniously, and hobbled in with the brisk stiffness of age.

"Gracious!" she exclaimed when she saw the party arranged in the drawing-room. "You all look as if you were having your likeness taken—all except Puck there, on the piano-stool."

When Uncle James had manoeuvred Lady Benyon into the seat of honour he intended her to take in order to complete the picture, she frankly inspected each member of the group, ending with Beth.

"And who may you be?" she asked.

Beth smiled and shrugged her shoulders.

"Why don't you speak?"

Beth made another gesture.

"Goodness!" Lady Benyon cried; "is the child an idiot?"

"Beth, answer Lady Benyon directly," Mrs. Caldwell angrily commanded.

"Uncle James requested mamma to request me not to speak when you were present," Beth explained suavely.

The old lady burst out laughing. "Well, that's droll," she said—"requested mamma to request me—why, it's James Patten all over. And who may you be, you monkey?"

"I am Elizabeth Caldwell, but I only answer to Beth. Papa called me Beth."

"Good!" said the little old lady. "And what's Ireland like?"

"Great dark mountains," Beth rattled off, with big eyes dilated and fixed on space, as if she saw what she described. "Long, long, long, black bogs; all the poor people starving; and the sea rough—just like hell, you know, but without the fire."

"Oh, now, this is delightful!" the old lady chuckled. "I'm to enjoy myself to-day, it seems. You didn't prepare me for this treat, James Patten!"

Uncle James simpered, as though taking to himself the credit of the whole entertainment.

"So you hate Ireland?" said Lady Benyon.

"No, I love it," said Beth. "It's me native country; and they don't give you little bits of cake there the size of sixpence. What they have you're welcome to. Long live Ireland!"

"Good!" Lady Benyon ejaculated; then turned to Mildred. "And are you another naughty little patriot?" she asked.

"No, I'm not naughty," Mildred answered piously.

"Beth's naughty," said Bernadine.

"I'm sure I don't know what Beth is not," the old lady declared, turning to Beth again.

"Riley said I was one of the little girls the devil put out when he gave up housekeeping," Beth remarked casually.

"Beth!" Mrs. Caldwell remonstrated.

"He did, mamma. He said it the day that perjured villain Pat Murphy killed my magpie. And Riley's a good man. You said so yourself."