"What's that?" said Mrs. Caldwell. "Give it to me."

Beth's heart stood still.

There was a card attached to the flowers, and Mrs. Caldwell read aloud, "Miss Caldwell, with respectful compliments."

"Who brought this, Harriet?" she asked.

"No one, ma'am," Harriet replied. "It was 'itched on till the knocker."

"Very strange," Mrs. Caldwell muttered suspiciously. "Beth, do you know anything about it?"

"Is there no name on the card?" Beth asked diplomatically; and Mrs. Caldwell looked at the card instead of into Beth's face, and discovered nothing.

Raindrops sparkled on the flowers, their fragrance filled the room, and their colours and forms and freshness were a joy to behold. "How beautiful they are!" Mrs. Caldwell exclaimed.

"May I have them, mamma?" Beth put in quickly.

"Well, yes, I suppose you may," Mrs. Caldwell decided; "although I must say I do not understand their being left in this way at all. Who could have sent you flowers?"

"There's the gardener at Fairholm," Beth ventured to suggest.

"Oh, ah, yes," said Mrs. Caldwell, handing the flowers to Beth without further demur. The gift appeared less lovely, somehow, when she began to associate it with the gardener's respectful compliments.

Beth took the flowers, and hid her burning face with them. This was her first bouquet, the most exquisite thing that had ever happened to her. She carried it off to her room, and put it in water; and when she went to bed she kept the candle burning that she might lie and look at it.

The following week a menagerie came to the place. Alfred and Dicksie went to it, and their description filled Beth with a wild desire to see the creatures, especially the chimpanzee. The boys were quite ready to take her, but how was it to be managed? The menagerie was only to be there that one night more, but it would be open late, and they would be allowed to go because animals are improving. Could she get out too? Beth considered intently.

"I can go to bed early," she said at last, "and get out by the acting-room window."

"But suppose you were missed?" Alfred deprecated.

"Then I should be found out," said Beth; "but you would not."

"How about being recognised in the menagerie, though?" said Dicksie. "You see there'll be lots of people, and it's all lighted up."

"I can disguise myself to look like an old woman," Beth rejoined, thinking of Aunt Victoria's auburn front and some of her old things.

"Oh no, Beth!" Alfred protested. "That would be worse than the whiskers."

"Can't you come as a boy?" said Dicksie.

"I believe I can," Beth exclaimed. "There's an old suit of Jim's somewhere that would be the very thing—one he grew out of. I believe it's about my size, and I think I know where it is. What a splendid idea, Dicksie! I can cut my hair off."

"Oh no! Your pretty hair!" Alfred exclaimed.

"Is it pretty?" said Beth, surprised and pleased.

"Is it pretty!" he ejaculated, lifting it with both hands, and bathing his face in it; "the brightest, brownest, curliest, softest, sweetest hair on earth! Turn it up under your cap. These little curls on your neck will look like short hair."

They were all so delighted with this romantic plan, that they danced about, and hugged each other promiscuously. But this last piece of cleverness was their undoing, for Beth was promptly recognised at the menagerie by some one with a sense of humour, who told Lady Benyon, who told Mrs. Caldwell.

Mrs. Caldwell came hurrying home from Lady Benyon's a few nights later with the queerest expression of countenance Beth had ever seen; it was something between laughing and crying.

"Beth," she began in an agitated manner, "I am told that you went with two of Mr. Richardson's sons to the menagerie on Tuesday night, dressed as a boy."

"One of his sons," said Beth, correcting her; "the other boy was his pupil."

"And you were walking about looking at the animals in that public place with your arm round the girl from the shoe-shop?"

Beth burst out laughing. "All the boys had their arms round girls," she explained. "I couldn't be singular."

Mrs. Caldwell dropped into a chair, and sat gazing at Beth as if she had never seen anything like her before, as indeed she never had.

"Who is this pupil of Mr. Richardson's?" she asked at last, "and how did you make his acquaintance?"

"His name is Alfred Cayley Pounce," Beth answered. "We were caught by the tide and nearly drowned together on the sands, and I've known him ever since."

"And do you mean to say that you have been meeting this young man in a clandestine manner—that you hadn't the proper pride to refuse to associate with him unless he were known to your family and you could meet him as an equal?"

"He did wish to make your acquaintance, but I wouldn't let him," Beth said.

"Why?" Mrs. Caldwell asked in amazement.

"Oh, because I was afraid you would be horrid to him," Beth answered.

Mrs. Caldwell was thunderstruck. The whole affair had overwhelmed her as a calamity which could not be met by any ordinary means. Scolding was out of the question, for she was not able to utter another word, but just sat there with such a miserable face, she might have been the culprit herself, especially as she ended by bursting into tears.

Beth's heart smote her, and she watched her mother for some time, yearning to say something to comfort her.

"I don't think you need be so distressed, mamma," she ventured at last "What have I done, after all? I've committed no crime."

"You've done just about as bad a thing as you could do," Mrs. Caldwell rejoined. "You've made the whole place talk about you. You must have known you were doing wrong. But I think you can have no conscience at all."

"I think I have a conscience, only it doesn't always act," Beth answered disconsolately. "Very often, when I am doing a wrong thing, it doesn't accuse me; when it does, I stop and repent."

She was sitting beside the dining-table, balancing a pencil on her finger as she spoke.

"Look at you now, Beth," her mother ejaculated, "utterly callous!"

Beth sighed, and put the pencil down. She despaired of ever making her mother understand anything, and determined not to try again.

"Beth, I don't know what to do with you," Mrs. Caldwell recommenced after a long silence. "I've been warned again and again that I should have trouble with you, and Heaven knows I have. You've done a monstrous thing, and, instead of being terrified when you're found out, you sit there coolly discussing it, as if you were a grown-up person. And then you're so queer. You ought to be a child, but you're not. Lady Benyon likes you; but even she says you're not a child, and never were. You say things no sane child would ever think of, and very few grown-up people. You are not like other people, there's no denying it."

Beth's eyes filled with tears. To be thought unlike other people was the one thing that made her quail.

"Well, mamma, what am I to do?" she said. "I hate to vex you, goodness knows; but I must be doing something. The days are long and dreary." She wiped her eyes. "When people warned you that you would have trouble with me, they always said unless you sent me to school."

Mrs. Caldwell rocked herself on her chair forlornly. "School would do you no good," she declared at last. "No, Beth, you are my cross, and I must bear it. If I forgive you again this time, will you be a better girl in future?"

"I don't believe it's my fault that I ever annoy you," Beth answered drily.

"Whose fault is it, then?" her mother demanded.

Beth shrugged her shoulders and began to balance the pencil on her fingers once more.

Mrs. Caldwell got up and stood looking at her for a little with a gathering expression of dislike on her face which it was not good to see; then she went towards the door.

"You are incorrigible," she ejaculated as she opened it, making the remark to cover her retreat.

Beth sighed heavily, then resolved herself into a Christian martyr, cruelly misjudged—an idea which she pursued with much satisfaction to herself for the rest of the day.

In consequence of that conversation with her mother, when the evening came her conscience accused her, and she made no attempt to go out. She was to meet Alfred and Dicksie on Saturday, their next half-holiday, and she would wait till then. That was Wednesday.

During the interval, however, a strange chill came over her feelings. The thought of Alfred was as incessant as ever, but it came without the glow of delight; something was wrong.

They were to meet on the rocks behind the far pier at low water on Saturday. Few people came to the far pier, and, when they did, it was seldom that they looked over; and they could not have seen much if they had, for the rocks were brown with seaweed, and dark figures wandering about on them became indistinguishable. Beth went long before the time. It was a beautiful still grey day, such as she loved, and she longed to be alone with the sea. The tide was going out, and she had a fancy for following it from rock to rock as it went. Some of the bigger rocks were flat-topped islands, separated from the last halting-place of the tide by narrow straits, across which she sprang; and on these she would lie her length, peering down into the clear depths on the farther side, where the healthy happy sea-creatures disported themselves, and seaweeds of wondrous colours waved in fantastic forms. The water lapped up and up and up the rocks, rising with a sobbing sound, and bringing fresh airs with it that fanned her face, and caused her to draw in her breath involuntarily, and inhale long deep draughts with delight. As the water went out, bright runnels were left where rivers had been, and miniature bays became sheltered coves, paved with polished pebbles or purple mussels, and every little sandy space was ribbed with solid waves where the busy lob-worms soon began to send up their ropy castings. Beyond the break of the water the silver sea sloped up to the horizon, and on it, rocking gently, far out, a few cobles were scattered, with rich red sails all set ready, waiting for a breeze. It was an exquisite scene, remote from all wail of human feeling, and strangely tranquillising. Gradually it gained upon Beth. Her bosom heaved with the heaving water rhythmically, and she lost herself in contemplation of sea and sky scape. Before she had been many minutes prone upon the farthest rock, the vision and the dream were upon her. That other self of hers unfurled its wings, and she floated off, revelling in an ecstasy of gentle motion. Beyond the sea-line were palaces with terraced gardens, white palaces against which grass and trees showed glossy green; and there she wandered among the flowers, and waited. She was waiting for something that did not happen, for some one who did not come.

Suddenly she sat up on her rock. The sun was sinking behind her, the silver sea shone iridescent, the tide had turned. But where were the boys? She looked about her. Out on the sands beyond the rocks on her right, a man was wading in the water with a net, shrimping. Close at hand another was gathering mussels for bait, and a gentleman was walking towards her over the slippery rocks, balancing himself as though he found it difficult to keep his feet; but these were the only people in sight. The gentleman was a stranger. He wore a dark-blue suit, with a shirt of wonderful whiteness, and Beth could not help noticing how altogether well-dressed he was—too well-dressed for climbing on the rocks. She noticed his dress particularly, because well-dressed men were rare in Rainharbour. He was tall, with glossy black hair inclining to curl, slight whiskers and moustache, blue eyes, and a bright complexion. A woman with as much colour would have been accused of painting; in him it gave to some people the idea of superabundant health, to others it suggested a phthisical tendency. Beth looked at him as he approached as she looked at everybody and everything with interest—nothing escaped her; but he made no great impression upon her. She thought of him principally as a man with a watch; and when he was near enough she asked him what time it was. He told her, looking hard at her, and smiling pleasantly as he returned his watch to his pocket. She noticed that his teeth were good, but too far apart, a defect which struck her as unpleasant.

"Why, it is quite late!" she exclaimed, forgetting to thank him in her surprise.

"Are you all alone here?" he asked.

"I was waiting for some friends," she answered, "but they have not come. They must have been detained."

She began to walk back as she spoke, and the gentleman turned too perforce, for the tide was close upon them.

"Let me help you," he said, holding out his hand, which was noticeably white and well-shaped; "the rocks are rough and slippery."

"I can manage, thank you," Beth answered. "I am accustomed to them."

Beth involuntarily resolved herself into a young lady the moment she addressed this man, and spoke now with the self-possession of one accustomed to courtesies. Even at that age her soft cultivated voice and easy assurance of manner, and above all her laugh, which was not the silvery laugh of fiction, but the soundless laugh of good society, marked the class to which she belonged; and as he stumbled along beside her, her new acquaintance wondered how it happened that she was at once so well-bred and so shabbily dressed. He began to question her guardedly.

"Do you know Rainharbour well?" he asked.

"I live here," Beth answered.

"Then I suppose you know every one in the place," he pursued.

"Oh, no," she rejoined. "I know very few people, except my own, of course."

"Which is considered the principal family here?" he asked.

"The Benyon family is the biggest and the wickedest, I should think," she answered casually.

"But I meant the most important," he explained, smiling.

"I don't know," she said. "Uncle James Patten thinks that next to himself the Benyons are. He married one of them. He's an awful snob."

"And what is his position?"

"I don't know—he's a landowner; that's his estate over there," and she nodded towards Fairholm.

"Indeed! How far does it extend?"

"From the sea right up to the hills there, and a little way beyond."

They had left the rocks by this time, and were toiling up the steep road into the town. When they reached the top, Beth exclaimed abruptly, "I am late! I must fly!" and leaving her companion without further ceremony, turned down a side street and ran home.

When she got in, she wondered what had become of Alfred and Dicksie, and she was conscious of a curious sort of suspense, which, however, did not amount to anxiety. It was as if she were waiting and listening for something she expected to hear, which would explain in words what she held already inarticulate in some secret recess of her being—held in suspense and felt, but had not yet apprehended in the region of thought. There are people who collect and hold in themselves some knowledge of contemporary events as the air collects and holds moisture; it may be that we all do, but only one here and there becomes aware of the fact. As the impalpable moisture in the air changes to palpable rain so does this vague cognisance become a comprehensible revelation by being resolved into a shower of words on occasion by some process psychically analogous to the condensation of moisture in the air. It is a natural phenomenon known to babes like Beth, but ill-observed, and not at all explained, because man has gone such a little way beyond the bogey of the supernatural in psychical matters that he is still befogged, and makes up opinions on the subject like a divine when miracles are in question, instead of searching for information like an honest philosopher, whose glory it is, not to prove himself right, but to discover the truth.

Beth did not sleep much that night. She recalled the sigh and sob and freshness of the sea, and caught her breath again as if the cool water were still washing up and up and up towards her. She saw the silver surface, too, stretching on to those shining palaces, where grass and tree showed vivid green against white walls, and flowers stood still on airless terraces, shedding strange perfumes. And she also saw her new acquaintance coming towards her, balancing himself on the slippery, wrack-grown rocks, in boots and things that were much too good for the purpose; but Alfred and Dicksie never appeared, and were not to be found of her imagination. They were nowhere.

She expected to see them in church next day—at least, so she assured herself, and then was surprised to find that there was no sort of certainty in herself behind the assurance, although they had always hitherto been in church. "Something is different, somehow," she thought, and the phrase became a kind of accompaniment to all her thoughts.

Dicksie was the first person she saw when she entered the church, but Alfred was not there, and he did not come. She went up the field-path after the service, and waited about for Dicksie. When Alfred was detained himself, Dicksie usually came to explain; but that day he did not appear, and they were neither of them at the evening service. Beth could not understand it, but she was more puzzled than perturbed.

She was reading French to her mother next morning by way of a lesson, when they both happened to look up and see Mrs. Richardson, the vicar's worn-out wife, passing the window. The next moment there was a knock at the door.

"Can she be coming here?" Mrs. Caldwell exclaimed.

"What should she come here for?" Beth rejoined, her heart palpitating.

"Oh dear, oh dear! this is just what I expected!" Mrs. Caldwell declared. "And if only she had come last week, I should have known nothing about it."

"You don't know much as it is," Beth observed, without, however, seeing why that should make any difference.

The next moment the vicar's wife was ushered in with a wink by Harriet. Mrs. Caldwell and Beth both rose to receive her haughtily. She had entered with assurance, but that left her the moment she faced them, and she became exceedingly nervous. She was surprised at the ease and grace of these shabbily-dressed ladies, and the refinement of their surroundings—the design of the furniture, the colour of curtains and carpet, the china, the books, the pictures, all of which bespoke tastes and habits not common in the parish.

"I must apologise for this intrusion," she began nervously. "I have a most unpleasant task to perform. My husband requested me to come——"

"Why didn't he come himself?" Beth asked blandly. "Why does he make you do the disagreeable part of his duties?"

The vicar's wife raised her meek eyes and gazed at Beth. She had not anticipated this sort of reception from poor parishioners, and was completely nonplussed. She was startled, too, by Beth's last question, for she belonged to the days of brave unhonoured endurance, when women, meekly allowing themselves to be classed with children and idiots, exacted no respect, and received none—no woman, decent or otherwise, being safe from insult in the public streets; when they were expected to do difficult and dirty work for their husbands, such as canvassing at elections, without acknowledgment, their wit and capacity being traded upon without scruple to obtain from men the votes which they were not deemed wise and worthy enough to have themselves; the days when they gave all and received nothing in return, save doles of bread and contempt, varied by such caresses as a good dog gets when his master is in the mood. That was the day before woman began to question the wisdom and goodness of man, his justice and generosity, his right to make a virtue of wallowing when he chose to wallow, and his disinterestedness and discretion when he also arrogated to himself the power to order all things. Mrs. Richardson had no more thought of questioning the beauty of her husband's decisions than she had thought of questioning the logic and mercy of her God, and this first flash of the new spirit of inquiry from Beth's bright wit came upon her with a shock at first—one of those shocks to the mind which is as the strength of wine to the exhausted body, that checks the breath a moment, then rouses and stimulates.

"May I sit down?" she gasped, then dropped into a chair. "He might have come himself, to be sure," she muttered. "I have more than enough to do that is disagreeable in my own womanly sphere without being required to meddle in parish matters."

Yet when her husband had said to her: "It is a very disagreeable business indeed this. I think I'll get you to go. You'll manage it with so much more tact than a man," the poor lady, unaccustomed to compliments, was gratified. Now, however, thanks to Beth, she had been nearer to making an acute observation than she had ever been in her life before; she all but perceived that the woman's sphere is never home exclusively when man can make use of her for his own purposes elsewhere. The sphere is the stable he ties her up in when he does not want her, and takes her from again to drag him out of a difficulty, or up to some distinction, just as it suits himself.

Mrs. Caldwell and Beth waited for Mrs. Richardson to commit herself, but gave her no further help.

"The truth is," she recommenced desperately, "we have lost an excellent pupil. His people have been informed that he was carrying on an intrigue with a girl in this place, and have taken him away at a moment's notice."

"And what has that to do with us?" Mrs. Caldwell asked politely.

"The girl is said to be your daughter."

"This is my eldest daughter at home," Mrs. Caldwell answered. "She is not yet fourteen."

"But she's a very big girl," Mrs. Richardson faltered.

"Who is this person, this pupil you allude to?" Mrs. Caldwell asked superciliously.

"He is the son of wealthy Nottingham people."

"Ah! lace manufacturers, I suppose," Mrs. Caldwell rejoined.

"Yes—s," Mrs. Richardson acknowledged with reluctance. She associated, as she was expected to do, with gentlemen who debauched themselves freely, but would have scorned the acquaintance of a shopman of saintly life.

"Then certainly not a proper acquaintance for my daughter," Mrs. Caldwell decided, with the manner of a county lady speaking to a person whom she knows to be nobody by birth. "Beth, will you be good enough to tell us what you know of this youth?"

"I was caught by the tide on the sands one day, and he was there, and helped me; and I always spoke to him afterwards. I thought I ought, for politeness' sake," Beth answered easily.

"May I ask how that strikes you?" Mrs. Caldwell, turning to Mrs. Richardson, requested to know, but did not wait for a reply. "It strikes me," she proceeded, "that your husband's parish must be in an appalling state of neglect and disorder when slander is so rife that he loses a good pupil because an act of common politeness, a service rendered by a youth on the one hand, and acknowledged by a young lady on the other, is described as an intrigue. But I still fail to see," she pursued haughtily, "why you should have come to spread this scandal here in my house."

"Oh," the little woman faltered, "I was to ask if there had been any—any presents. But," she added hastily, to save herself from the wrath which she saw gathering on Mrs. Caldwell's face, "I am sure there were not. I'm sure you would never bring a breach of promise case—I'm sure it has all been a dreadful mistake. If Mr. Richardson wants anything of this kind done in future, he must do it himself. I apologise."

She uttered the last word with a gasp.

"Let me show you out," said Beth, and the discomforted lady found herself ushered into the street without further ceremony.

When Beth returned she found her mother smiling blandly at the result of her diplomacy. It was probably the first effort of the kind the poor lady had ever made, and she was so elated by her success that she took Beth into her confidence, and forgave her outright in order to hob-nob with her on the subject.

"I think I fenced with her pretty well," she said several times. "A woman of her class, a country attorney's daughter or something of that kind, is no match for a woman of mine. I hope, Beth, this will be a lesson to you, and will teach you to appreciate the superior tact and discretion of the upper classes."

Beth could not find it in her heart to say a word to check her mother's jubilation; besides, she had played up to her, answering to expectation, as she was apt to do, with fatal versatility. But she did not feel that they had come out of the business well. It was as if their honesty had been bedraggled somehow, and she could not respect her mother for her triumph; on the contrary, she pitied her. That kind of diplomacy or tact, the means by which people who have had every advantage impose upon those who have had no advantages to speak of, did not appeal to Beth as pleasant, even at fourteen.

Mrs. Caldwell put her work away at once, and hurried off to describe the encounter to Lady Benyon.

"They had not heard of the menagerie affair, I suppose," the old lady observed, twinkling. "Thanks to yourself, I think you may consider Miss Beth is well out of that scrape. But take my advice. Get that girl married the first chance you have. I know girls, and she's one of the marrying kind. Once she's married, let her mutiny or do anything she likes. You'll be shut of the responsibility."



CHAPTER XXVIII

From that time forward it was as if Alfred had vanished into space. Whether he ever attempted to communicate with her, Beth could not tell; but she received no letter or message. She expected to hear from him through Dicksie, but it soon became apparent that Dicksie had deserted her. He came to none of their old haunts, and never looked her way in church or in the street when they met. She was ashamed to believe it of him at first, lest some defect in her own nature should have given rise to the horrid suspicion; but when she could no longer doubt it, she shrugged her shoulders as at something contemptible, and dismissed him from her mind. About Alfred she could not be sure. He might have sent letters and messages that never reached her, and therefore she would not blame him; but as the thought of him became an ache, she resolutely set it aside, so that, in a very short time, in that part of her consciousness where his image had been, there was a blank. Thus the whole incident ended like a light extinguished, as Beth acknowledged to herself at last. "It is curious, though," she thought, "but I certainly knew it in myself all along from the moment the change came, if only I could have got at the knowledge."

As a direct result of her separation from Alfred, Beth entered upon a bad phase. The simple satisfaction of her heart in his company had kept her sane and healthy. With such a will as hers, it had not been hard to cast him out of her anticipations; but with him, there went from her life that wholesome companionship of boy and girl which contains all the happiness necessary for their immaturity, and also stimulates their growth in every way by holding out the alluring prospect of the fulfilment of those hopes of their being towards which their youth should aspire from the first, insensibly, but without pause. Having once known this companionship, Beth did not thrive without it. She had no other interest in its place to take her out of herself, and the time hung heavy on her hands. With her temperament, however, more than a momentary pause was impossible. Her active mind, being bare of all expectation, soon began to sate itself upon vain imaginings. For the rational plans and pursuits she had been accustomed to make and to carry out with the boys, she had nothing to substitute but dreams; and on these she lived, finding an idle distraction in them, until the habit grew disproportionate, and began to threaten the fine balance of her other faculties: her reason, her power of accurate observation and of assimilating every scrap of knowledge that came in her way. To fill up her empty days, she surrounded herself with a story, among the crowding incidents of which she lived, whatever she might be doing. She had a lover who frequented a wonderful dwelling on the other side of the headland that bounded Rainharbour bay on the north. He was rich, dark, handsome, a mysterious man, with horses and a yacht. She was his one thought, but they did not meet often because of their enemies. He was engaged upon some difficult and dangerous work for the good of mankind, and she had many a midnight ride to warn him to beware, and many a wild adventure in an open boat, going out in the dark for news. But there were happy times too, when they lived together in that handsome house hidden among the flowers behind the headland, and at night she always slept with her head on his shoulder. He had a confidential agent, a doctor, whom he sent to her with letters and messages, because it was not safe for him to appear in the public streets himself. This man was just like the one she had met on the rocks, and his clothes were always too good for the occasion. His name was Angus Ambrose Cleveland.

Just at this time, Charlotte Hardy, the daughter of a doctor who lived next door to the Benyon Dower House, fell in love with Beth, and began to make much of her. Beth had never had a girl companion before, and although she rather looked down on Charlotte, she enjoyed the novelty. They were about the same age, but Charlotte was smaller than Beth, less precocious, and better educated. She knew things accurately that Beth had only an idea of; but Beth could make more use of a hint than Charlotte could of the fullest information. Beth respected her knowledge, however, and suffered pangs of humiliation when she compared it to her own ignorance; and it was by way of having something to show of equal importance that she gradually fell into the habit of confiding her romance to Charlotte, who listened in perfect good faith to the fascinating details which Beth poured forth from day to day. Beth did not at first intend to impose on her credulity; but when she found that Charlotte in her simplicity believed the whole story, she adapted her into it, and made her as much a part of it as Hector the hero, and Dr. Angus Ambrose Cleveland, the confidential agent on whom their safety depended. Charlotte was Beth's confidante now, a post which had hitherto been vacant; so the whole machinery of the romance was complete, and in excellent order.

"It's queer I never see the doctor about," Charlotte said one day, when they were out on the cliffs together.

Beth happened to look up at that moment and saw her acquaintance of the rocks coming towards them.

"Your curiosity will be gratified," she said, "for there he is."

"Where?" Charlotte demanded in an excited undertone.

"Approaching," Beth answered calmly.

"Will he speak?" Charlotte asked in a breathless whisper.

"He will doubtless make me a sign," Beth replied.

When he was near enough, the gentleman recognised Beth, and smiled as they passed each other.

"Oughtn't he to have taken off his hat?" Charlotte asked.

"He means no disrespect," Beth answered with dignity. "It is safer so. In fact, if you had not been my confidante, he would not have dared to make any sign at all."

"Oh, then he knows that I am your confidante!" Charlotte exclaimed, much gratified.

"Of course," said Beth. "I have to keep them informed of all that concerns me. I brought you here to-day on purpose. I shall doubtless have to ask you to take letters, and you could not deliver them if you did not know the doctor by sight. There is the yacht," she added, as a beautiful white-winged vessel swept round the headland into the bay.

"O Beth! aren't you excited?" Charlotte cried.

"No," Beth answered quietly. "You see I am used to these things."

"Beth, what a strange creature you are," said Charlotte, with respect. "One can see that there's something extraordinary about you, but one can't tell what it is. You're not pretty—at least I don't think so. I asked papa what he thought, and he said you had your points, and a something beyond, which is irresistible. He couldn't explain it, though; but I know what he meant. I always feel it when you talk to me; and I believe I could die for you. There's Mrs. Warner Benyon out again," she broke off to observe. "Papa was called in to see her the other day. He isn't their doctor, but she was taken ill suddenly, so they sent for him because he was at hand; and he says her shoulders are like alabaster."

Beth pursed up her mouth at this, but made no answer. When she got home, however, she repeated the observation to her mother in order to ask her what alabaster was exactly. Mrs. Caldwell flushed indignantly at the story. "If Dr. Hardy speaks in that way of his patients to his family, he won't succeed in his profession," she declared. "A man who talks about his patients may be a clever doctor, but he's sure not to be a nice man—not high-minded, you know—and certainly not a wise one. Remember that, Beth, and take my advice: don't have anything to do with a 'talking doctor'"—a recommendation which Beth remembered afterwards, but only to note the futility of warnings.

Matters became very complicated in the story as it proceeded. It was all due to some Spanish imbroglio, Beth said. Hector ran extraordinary risks, and she was not too safe herself if things went wrong. There were implicating documents, and emissaries of the Jesuits were on the look-out.

One day, Charlotte's mother being away from home, Beth asked her mysteriously if she could conceal some one in her room at night unknown to her father.

"Easily," Charlotte answered. "He never comes up to my room."

"Then you must come and ask mamma to let me spend the day and night with you to-morrow," Beth said. "I shall have business which will keep me away all day, but I shall return at dusk, and then you must smuggle me up to your room. We shall be obliged to sit up all night. I don't know what is going to happen. Are the servants safe? If I should be betrayed——"

"Safe not to tell you are there," said Charlotte, "and that is all they will know. They won't tell on me. I never tell on them."

The next morning early, Charlotte arrived in Orchard Street with a face full of grave importance, and obtained Mrs. Caldwell's consent to take Beth back with her; but instead of having to go home to spend the day alone waiting for Beth, as she had expected, she was sent out some distance along the cliffs to a high hill, which she climbed by Beth's direction. She was to hide herself among the fir-trees at the top, and watch for a solitary rider on a big brown horse, who would pass on the road below between noon and sunset, if all went well, going towards the headland.

"I shall be that rider," Beth said solemnly. "And the moment you see me, take this blue missive, and place it on the Flat Rock, with a stone on it to keep it from blowing away; then go home. If I do not appear before sunset, here is a red missive to place on the Flat Rock instead of the blue one, which must then be destroyed by fire. If I return, I return; if not, never breathe a word of these things to a living soul as you value your life."

"I would rather die than divulge anything," Charlotte protested solemnly, and her choice of the word divulge seemed to add considerably to the dignity of the proceedings.

They separated with a casual nod, that people might not suspect them of anything important, and each proceeded to act her part in a delightful state of excitement; but what was thrilling earnest to Charlotte, calling for courage and endurance, was merely an exhilarating play of the fancy put into practice to Beth.

By the time Charlotte arrived at the top of the hill, and had settled herself among the firs overlooking the road below, she was very tired. Beth had given her a bag, one of Aunt Victoria's many reticules, with orders not to open it before her watch began. The bag had been a burden to carry, but Charlotte was repaid for the trouble, for she found it full of good things to eat, and a bottle of cold coffee and cream to drink, with lumps of sugar and all complete. Beth had really displayed the most thoughtful kindness in packing that bag. The contents she had procured on a sudden impulse from a pastry-cook in the town, by promising to pay the next time she passed.

After having very much enjoyed a solid Melton Mowbray pie, a sausage in puff-pastry, a sponge-cake, a lemon cheesecake, and two crisp brandy snaps, and slowly sipped the coffee, Charlotte felt that this was the only life worth living, and formally vowed to dedicate herself for ever to the Secret Service of Humanity—Beth's name for these enterprises. She kept a careful eye on the road below all this time, and there ran through her head the while fragments of a ballad Beth had written, which added very much to the charm of the occasion.

"The fir-trees whisper overhead, Between the living and the dead, I watch the livelong day. I watch upon the mountain-side For one of courage true and tried, Who should ride by this way,"

it began. When she first heard that Beth had written that ballad, Charlotte was astonished. It was the only assertion of Beth's she had ever doubted; but Beth assured her that any one could write verses, and convinced her by "making some up" there and then on a subject which she got Charlotte to choose for her.

Many things passed on the road below—teams of waggons, drawn by beautiful big cart-horses with glossy coats, well cared for, tossing their headland rattling the polished brasses of their harness proudly, signs of successful farming and affluence; smart carriages with what Beth called "silly-fool ladies, good for nothing," in them; a carrier's cart, pedestrians innumerable, and then—then, at last, a solitary big brown horse, ridden at a steady canter by a slender girl in a brown habit (worn by her mother in her youth, and borrowed from her wardrobe without permission for the occasion). The horse was a broken-down racer with some spirit left, which Beth had hired, as she had procured the provisions, on a promise to pay. In passing, she waved a white handkerchief carelessly, as if she were flicking flies from the horse, but without relenting her speed. This was the signal agreed upon. Charlotte, glowing with excitement, and greatly relieved, watched the adventurous rider out of sight; then trudged off bravely to the Flat Rock, miles away behind the far pier, where she loyally deposited the blue missive. The red one she destroyed by fire according to orders.

Beth had warned her that she would be tired to death when she got in, and had better snatch some repose in preparation for the night.

"But if I oversleep myself and am not on the look-out for you when you come, what will you do?" Charlotte objected.

"Leave that to me," said Beth.

And Charlotte did accordingly with perfect confidence.

When she awoke the room was dark, but there was a motionless figure sitting in the window, clearly silhouetted against the sky. Charlotte, who expected surprises, was pleasantly startled.

"Is all safe in the west, sister?" she said softly, raising herself on her elbow.

"Yes," was the reply, "but clouds are gathering in the north. Our hope is in the east. Let us pray for the sunrise. You left the letter?"

"Yes. As fast as I could fly I went."

"Ah! then it will be gone by this time!" Beth ejaculated with conviction. The Flat Rock was only uncovered at low water, and now the tide was high. "Can you get me some food, little one, for I am famished?" she proceeded. "I have had nothing since the morning, and have ridden far, and have done much."

"Oh dear! oh dear!" said Charlotte. "And you got me such good things!"

"Ah! that was different," Beth rejoined.

Charlotte stole downstairs. Her father had been out seeing his patients all day, and had not troubled about her.

She returned with chicken and ham, cold apple-tart and cream, and a little jug of cider.

Poor Beth, accustomed to the most uninteresting food, and not enough of that, was so exhausted by her long fast and arduous labours, that she found it difficult to restrain her tears at the sight of such good things. She ate and drank with seemly self-restraint, however; it would have lowered her much in her own estimation if she had showed any sign of the voracity she felt.

Then the watch began. Having wrapped themselves up in their walking things to be ready for any emergency, they locked the door and opened the window softly. They were in a room at the top of the house, which, being next door to the Benyons, commanded the same extensive view down the front street and a bit of Rock Street and the back street, and up Orchard Street on the left to the church. They were watching for a sailor in a smart yachting suit, a man-of-war's man with bare feet, and a priest in a heavy black cloak. Beth, greatly refreshed and stimulated by her supper and the cider, fell into her most fascinating mood; and Charlotte listened enthralled to wonderful descriptions of places she had visited with Hector, sights she had seen, and events she had taken part in.

"But how is it you are not missed from home when you go away like that?" said Charlotte.

"How is it I am not missed to-night?" Beth answered. "When you are fully initiated into the Secret Service of Humanity you will find that things happen in a way you would never suspect."

"I suppose it is all right and proper being so much alone with single gentlemen," Charlotte just ventured.

"All things are right and proper so long as you do nothing wrong," Beth answered sententiously.

Lights began to move from room to room in the houses about them, gigantic shadows of people appeared on white window blinds in fantastic poses, and there was much moving to and fro as they prepared for bed. Then one by one the lights went out, and in the little old-fashioned window-panes the dark brightness of the sky and the crystal stars alone were reflected. It was a fine clear night, the gas burnt brightly in the quiet streets, there was not a soul stirring.

"Isn't it exquisite?" said Beth, sniffing the sweet air. "I am glad I was born, if it is only for the sake of being alive at night."

After this they were silent. Then by degrees the desire for sleep became imperative, and they both suffered acutely in their efforts to resist it. Finally Charlotte was vanquished, and Beth made her lie down on the bed. As she dropped off she saw Beth sitting rigidly at the open window; when she awoke it was bright daylight, and Beth was still there in exactly the same attitude.

"Beth," she exclaimed, "you are superhuman!"

"Ah!" said Beth, with a mysterious smile, "when you have learnt to listen to the whispers of the night, and know what they signify as I do, you will not wonder. Marvellous things have been happening while you slept."

"O Beth!" said Charlotte reproachfully, "why didn't you wake me?"

"I was forbidden," Beth answered sadly. "But now watch for me. It is your turn, and I must sleep. A yachtsman or a man-of-war's man with bare feet, remember."

Beth curled herself up on the bed, and Charlotte, very weary and aching all over, but sternly determined to do her duty, took her place in the window. She had her reward, however, and when Beth awoke she found her all on the alert, for she had seen the yachtsman. He came up the street and hung about a little, pretending to look at the shops, then walked away briskly, which showed Charlotte that the plot was thickening, and greatly excited her. Beth smiled and nodded as though well satisfied when she heard the news, but preserved an enigmatical silence.

Then Charlotte went downstairs and smuggled her up such a good breakfast—fried ham, boiled eggs, hot rolls with plenty of butter, and delicious coffee—that the famishing Beth was fain to exclaim with genuine enthusiasm—

"In spite of all the difficulty, danger, and privation we have to endure in the Secret Service of Humanity, Charlotte, is there anything to equal the delight of it?"

And Charlotte solemnly asseverated that there was not.

Much stimulated by her breakfast, Beth took leave of Charlotte. She must be alone, she said, she had much to think about. She went to the farther shore to be away from everybody. She wanted to hear what the little waves were saying to the sand as they rippled over it. It was another grey day, close and still, and the murmur of the calm sea threw her at once into a dreamy state, full of pleasurable excitement. She hid herself in a spot most soothing from its apparent remoteness, a sandy cove from which, because of the projecting cliffs on either hand, neither town nor coast could be seen, but only the sea and sky. Although the grey was uniform enough to make it impossible to tell where cloud met water on the horizon, it was not dull, but luminous with the sunshine it enfolded, and full of colour in fine gradations as Beth beheld it. She sat a long time on the warm dry sand, with her chin resting on her knees, and her hands clasped round them, not gazing with seeing eyes nor listening with open ears, but apprehending through her further faculty the great harmony of Nature of which she herself was one of the triumphant notes. At that moment she tasted life at its best and fullest—life all ease and grace and beauty, without regret or longing—perfect life in that she wanted nothing more. But she rose at last, and, still gazing at the sea, slowly unclasped her waistbelt, and let it fall on the sand at her feet; then she took her hat off, her dress, her boots and stockings, everything, and stood, ivory-white, with bright brown wavy hair, against the lilac greyness under the tall dark cliffs. The little waves had called her, coming up closer and closer, and fascinating her, until, yielding to their allurements, she went in amongst them, and floated on them, or lay her length in the shallows, letting them ripple over her, and make merry about her, the gladdest girl alive, yet with the wrapt impassive face of a devotee whose ecstasy is apart from all that acts on mere flesh and makes expression. All through life Beth had her moments, and they were generally such as this, when her higher self was near upon release from its fetters, and she arose an interval towards oneness with the Eternal.

But on this occasion she was surprised in her happy solitude. A troop of what Mrs. Caldwell called "common girls" came suddenly round the cliff into her sheltered nook, with shouts of laughter, also bent on bathing. Beth plunged in deeper to cover herself the moment they appeared; but they did not expect her to have anything on, and her modesty was lost upon them.

"How's the water?" they shouted.

"Delicious," she answered, glad to find them friendly.

They undressed as they came along, and were very soon, all of them, playing about her, ducking and splashing each other, and Beth also, including her sociably in their game. And Beth, as was her wont, responded so cordially that she was very soon heading the manoeuvres.

"We shall all be ill if we stay in any longer," she said at last. "I shall take one more dip and go and dress. Let's all take hands and dip in a row."

They did so, and then, still hand in hand, scampered up on to the beach.

"My!" one of them exclaimed, when they came to their clothes and had broken the line,—"My! ain't she nice!"

Then all the other girls stood and stared at Beth, whose fine limbs and satin-smooth white skin, so different in colour and texture from their own, drew from them the most candid expressions of admiration.

Beth, covered with confusion, hurried on a garment all wet as she was, for she had no towel; and then, in order to distract their attention from her body, she began to display her mind.

"Eh, I have had a good time!" one of the girls exclaimed. "Let's come again often."

"Let us form a secret society," said Beth, "and I will be your leader, and we'll have a watchword and a sign; and when the water is right, I'll send the word round, and then we'll start out unobserved, and meet here, and bathe in secret."

"My! that would be fine!" the girls agreed.

"But that's not all," said Beth, standing with her chemise only half on, oblivious of everything now but her subject. "It would be much better than that. There would be much more in it. We could meet in the fields by moonlight, and I would drill you, and show you a great many things, all for the Secret Service of Humanity. You don't know what we're doing! We're going to make the world just like heaven, and everybody will be good and beautiful, and have enough of everything, and we shall all be happy, because nobody will care to be happy unless everybody else has been made so. But it will be very hard work to bring it about. The wicked people are doing all they can to prevent us, and the devil himself is fighting against us. We shall conquer, however; and those who are first in the fight will be first for the glory!"

The girls, some standing, some sitting, most of them with nothing on, remained motionless while she spoke, not understanding much, yet so moved by the power of her personality, that when she exclaimed, "Well, what do you say, girls? will you join?" they all exclaimed with enthusiasm, "We will! we will!"

And then they made haste to dress as if the millennium could be hurried here by the rate at which they put on their clothes. Beth then and there composed a terrible oath, binding them to secrecy and obedience, and swore them all in solemnly; then she chose one for her orderly, who was to take round the word on occasion; and they were all to meet again in the fields behind the church on Saturday at eight o'clock.

But in the meantime, not a word!

Beth made Charlotte captain of the band; and drills, bathing rites, and other mysteries were regularly conducted, the girls being bound together more securely by the fascination of Beth's discourses, and the continual interest she managed to inspire, than by any respect they had for an oath. Beth's interest in them extended to the smallest detail of their lives. She knew which would be absent from drill because it was washing-day, and which was weak for want of food; and she resumed her poaching habits—only on Uncle James Patten's estate, of course—and, having beguiled a gunsmith into letting her have an air-gun on credit, she managed to snare and shoot birds enough to relieve their necessities to an appreciable extent. She never let any one into the secret of those supplies, and the mystery added greatly to her credit with the girls.

That season some friends of the Benyons brought their boys to stay at Rainharbour for the holidays, and Beth varied her other pursuits by rambling about with them, Lady Benyon having seen to it that she made their acquaintance legitimately, for the old lady shrewdly suspected that Beth was already beginning to attract attention. From her post of observation in the window she had seen young men turn in the street and look back at the slender girl, in spite of her short petticoats, with more interest than many a maturer figure aroused; and she had heard that Beth Caldwell was already much discussed. Beth's brother Jim, when he came home that summer, also began to introduce her to his young men friends in the neighbourhood, so that very soon Beth had quite a little court about her on the pier when the band played. She liked the boys, and the young men she found an absorbing study; but not one of them touched her heart. Her acquaintance with Alfred had made her fastidious. He had had sense enough to respect her, and his companionship had given her a fine foretaste of the love that is ennobling, the love that makes for high ideals of character and conduct, for fine purpose, spiritual power, and intellectual development, the one kind worth cultivating. In these more sophisticated youths she found nothing soul-sustaining. She philandered with some of them up to the point where comparisons become inevitable, and, so long as they met her in a spirit of frank camaraderie, it was agreeable enough; but when, with their commonplace minds, they presumed to be sentimental, they became intolerable. Still the glow was there in her breast often and often, and would be momentarily directed towards one and another; but the brightness of it only showed the defects in each; and so she remained in love with love alone, and the power of passion in her, thwarted, was transmuted into mental energy.

But Beth learnt a good deal from her young men that summer—learnt her own power, for one thing, when she found that she could twist the whole lot of them round her little finger if she chose. The thing about them that interested her most, however, was their point of view. She found one trait common to all of them when they talked to her, and that was a certain assumption of superiority which impressed her very much at first, so that she was prepared to accept their opinions as confidently as they gave them; and they always had one ready to give on no matter what subject. Beth, perceiving that this superiority was not innate, tried to discover how it was acquired that she might cultivate it. Gathering from their attitude towards her ignorance that this superiority rested somehow on a knowledge of the Latin grammar, she hunted up an old one of her brother's and opened it with awe, so much seemed to depend on it. Verbs and declensions came easily enough to her, however. The construction of the language was puzzling at the outset; but, with a little help, she soon discovered that even in that there was nothing occult. Any industrious, persevering person could learn a language, she decided; and then she made more observations. She discovered that, in the estimation of men, feminine attributes are all inferior to masculine attributes. Any evidence of reasoning capacity in a woman they held to be abnormal, and they denied that women were ever logical. They had to allow that women's intuition was often accurate, but it was inferior, nevertheless, they maintained, to man's uncertain reason; and such qualities as were undeniable they managed to discount, as, for instance, in the matter of endurance. If women were long enduring, they said, it was not because their fortitude was greater, but because they were less sensitive to suffering, and so, in point of fact, suffered less than men would under the circumstances.

This persistent endeavour to exalt themselves by lowering women struck Beth as mean, and made her thoughtful. She began by respecting their masculine minds as much as they did themselves; but then came a doubt if they were any larger and more capable than the minds of women would be if they were properly trained and developed; and she began to dip into the books they prided themselves on having read, to see if they were past her comprehension. She studied Pope's translation of the Iliad and Odyssey indoors, and she also took the little volume out under her arm; but this was a pose, for she could not read out of doors, there were always so many other interests to occupy her attention—birds and beasts, men and women, trees and flowers, land and water; all much more entrancing than the Iliad or Odyssey. Long years afterwards she returned to these old-world works with keen appreciation, and wondered at her early self; but when she read them first, she took their meanings too literally, and soon wearied of warlike heroes, however great a number of their fellow-creatures they might slay at a time, and of chattel heroines, however beautiful, which was all that Homer conveyed to her; not did she find herself elated by her knowledge of their exploits. She noticed, however, that the acquisition of such knowledge imposed upon the boys, and gained her a reputation for cleverness which made the young university prigs think it worth their while to talk to her. They had failed to discover her natural powers because there was no one to tell them she had any, and they only thought what they were told to think about people and things, and admired what they were told to admire. In this Beth differed from them widely, for she began by having tastes of her own. She did not believe that they enjoyed Homer a bit more than she did; but the right pose was to pretend that they did; so they posed and pretended, according to order, and Beth posed and pretended too, just to see what would come of it.

It was a young tutor in charge of a reading-party who helped Beth with the Latin grammar. He managed to ingratiate himself with Mrs. Caldwell, and came often to the house; and finally he began to teach Beth Latin at her own request, and with the consent of her mother. The lessons had not gone on very long, however, before he tried to insinuate into his teaching some of the kind of sophistries which another tutor had imposed by way of moral philosophy on Rousseau's Madame de Warens in her girlhood, to her undoing. This was all new to Beth, and she listened with great interest; but she failed utterly to see why not believing in a God should make it right and proper for her to embrace the tutor: so the lessons ended abruptly. Beth profited largely by the acquaintance, however,—not so much at the time, perhaps, as afterwards, when she was older, and had gained knowledge enough of men of various kinds to enable her to compare and reflect. It was her first introduction to the commonplace cleverness of the academic mind, the mere acquisitive faculty which lives on pillage, originates nothing itself, and, as a rule, fails to understand, let alone appreciate, originality in others. The young tutor's ambition was to be one of a shining literary clique of extraordinary cheapness which had just then begun to be formed. The taint of a flippant wit was common to all its members, and their assurance was unbounded. They undertook to extinguish anybody with a few fine phrases; and, in their conceited irreverence, they even attacked eternal principles, the sources of the best inspiration of all ages, and pronounced sentence upon them. Repute of a kind they gained, but it was by glib falsifications of all that is noble in sentiment, thought, and action, all that is good and true. It was the contraction of her own heart, the chill and dulness that settled upon her when she was with this man, as compared to the glow and expansion, the release of her finer faculties, which she had always experienced when under the influence of Aunt Victoria's simple goodness, that first put Beth in the way of observing how inferior in force and charm mere intellect is to spiritual power, and how soon it bores, even when brilliant, if unaccompanied by other endowments, qualities of heart and soul, such as constancy, loyalty, truthfulness, and that scrupulous honesty of action which answers to what is expected as well as to what is known of us.

Beth played very diligently at learning during this experiment, but only played for a time. The mind in process of forming itself involuntarily rejects all that is unnecessary, and that kind of knowledge was not for her. It opened up no prospect of pleasure in itself. All she cared to know was what it felt like to have mastered it; and that she arrived at by resolving herself into a lady of great attainments, who talked altogether about things she had learnt, but had nothing in her mind besides. A mind with nothing else in it, in Beth's sense of the word, was to Beth what plainness is to beauty; so, while many of her contemporaries were stultifying themselves with Greek and Latin ingenuities, she pursued the cultivation of that in herself which is beyond our ordinary apprehension, that which is more potent than knowledge, more fertilising to the mind—that by which knowledge is converted from a fallow field into a fruitful garden. Altogether, apart from her special subject, she learnt only enough of anything to express herself; but it was extraordinary how aptly she utilised all that was necessary for her purpose, and how invariably she found what she wanted—if found be the right word; for it was rather as if information were flashed into her mind from some outside agency at critical times when she could not possibly have done without it.

One sad consequence of her separation from Alfred, and the strange things she did and dreamed for distraction in the unrest of her mind, was a change in her constitution. Her first fine flush of health was over, the equability of her temper was disturbed, and she became subject to hysterical outbursts of garrulity, to fits of moody silence, to apparently causeless paroxysms of laughter or tears; and she was always anxious. She had real cause for anxiety, however, for, in her efforts to realise her romance to Charlotte's satisfaction, she had run up little bills all over the place. What would happen when they were presented, as they certainly would be sooner or later, she dared not think; but the dread of the moment preyed upon her mind to such an extent that, whenever she heard a knock at the door, she entreated God to grant that it might not be a bill. And even when there were no knocks, she went on entreating to be spared, and worked herself into such a chronic fever of worry that she was worn to a shadow, and developed a racking cough which gave her no peace.

Just at this time, too, the whole place began to be scandalised by her vagaries, her mysterious expeditions on the big brown horse, and her constant appearance in public with a coterie of young men about her. At a time when anything unconventional in a girl was clear evidence of vice to all the men and most of the women who knew of it, Beth's reputation was bound to suffer, and it became so bad at last that Dr. Hardy forbade Charlotte to associate with her. Charlotte told her with tears, and begged to be allowed to meet her in the Secret Service of Humanity as usual; but Beth refused. She said it was too dangerous just then, they must wait; the truth being that she was sick of the Secret Service of Humanity, of Charlotte, of everything and everybody that prevented her hearing when there was a knock at the door, and praying to the Lord that it might not be a bill.

The secret society was practically dissolved by this time, and very soon afterwards the catastrophe Beth had been dreading occurred, and wrought a great change in her life. It happened one day when she was not at home. Aunt Grace Mary was so alarmed by her cough and the delicacy of her appearance that she had braved Uncle James and carried her off to stay with her at Fairholm for a change. Once she was away from the sound of the knocks, Beth suffered less, and began to revive and be herself again to the extent of taking Aunt Grace Mary into her confidence boldly.

"Beth, Beth, Beth!" said that poor good lady tenderly, "you naughty girl, how could you! Running in debt with nothing to pay; why, it isn't honest!"

"So I think," said Beth in cordial agreement, taking herself aside from her own acts, as it were, and considering them impartially. "Help me out of this scrape, Aunt Grace Mary, and I'll never get into such another."

"But how much do you owe, Beth dear?"

"I'm sure I don't know," Beth answered. "Pounds for Tom Briggs alone."

"Who's he?" was Aunt Grace Mary's horrified exclamation.

"Oh, only the horse—a dark bay with black points. I rode him a lot, and oh! it was nice! It was like poetry, like living it, you know, like being a poem one's self. And I'm glad I did it. If I should die for it, I couldn't regret it. And I shouldn't wonder if I did die, for I feel as if those knocks had fairly knocked me to bits."

"Nonsense, Beth, you silly child, don't talk like that," said Aunt Grace Mary. "What else do you owe?"

"Oh, then there's Mrs. Andrews, the confectioner's, bill."

"Confectioner's!" Aunt Grace Mary exclaimed. "O Beth! I never thought you were greedy."

"Well, I don't think I am," Beth answered temperately. "I've been very hungry, though. But I never touched any of those good things myself. I only got them for Charlotte when she had heavy work to do for the Secret Service of Humanity."

"The what?" Aunt Grace Mary demanded.

"The game we played. Then there's the hairdresser's bill, that must be pretty big. I had to get curls and plaits and combs and things, besides having my hair dressed for entertainments to which I was obliged to go——"

"Beth! are you mad?" Aunt Grace Mary interrupted. "You've never been to an entertainment in your life."

"No," Beth answered casually, "but I've played at going to no end of a lot."

"Well, this is the most extraordinary game I ever heard of!"

"But it was such an exciting game," Beth pleaded with a sigh.

"But, my dear child, such a reckless, unprincipled game!"

"But you don't think of that at the time," Beth assured her. "It's all real and right then. We——"

But here the colloquy was interrupted by the arrival of Mrs. Caldwell in a state of distraction with the hairdresser's bill in her hand. Aunt Grace Mary made her sit down, and patted her shoulder soothingly. Uncle James was out. Beth, greatly relieved, looked on with interest. She knew that the worst was over.

"Never mind, Caroline," Aunt Grace Mary said cheerfully. "Beth has just been telling me all about it. Confession is good for the saints, you know, or the soul, or something; so that's cheering. She has been very naughty, very naughty indeed, but she is very sorry. She sincerely regrets. Hairdresser, did you say? Oh, give it to me! Now, do give it to me, there's a dear! And we won't have another word about it. Beth, you bad girl, be good, and say you repent."

"Say it!" Beth ejaculated, coughing. "Look at me, and you'll see it, Aunt Grace Mary. I've been repenting myself to pieces for months."

"Well, dear; well, dear," Aunt Grace Mary rejoined, beaming blandly, "that will do; that's enough, I'm sure. Mamma forgives you, so we'll have no more about it."

The hairdresser's bill was the only one Mrs. Caldwell ever heard of, for Aunt Grace Mary got the use of her pony carriage next day, by telling Uncle James her mamma had sent Caroline to say she particularly wished her to take Beth to see her. Uncle James, to whom any whim of Lady Benyon's was wisdom, ordered the carriage for them himself; and, as they drove off together, Aunt Grace Mary remarked to Beth, "I think I managed that very cleverly; don't you?" Naturally estimable women are forced into habits of dissimulation by the unreason of the tyrant in authority in many families; and Aunt Grace Mary was one of the victims. She had been obliged to resort to these small deceits for so many years, that all she felt about them now was a sort of mild triumph when they were successful. "I mean to go and see mamma, you know, so it won't be any story," she added.

She went with Beth first, however, to the various shops where Beth owed money, and paid her debts; and Beth was so overcome by her generosity, and so anxious to prove her repentance, that she borrowed sixpence more from her, and went straightway to the hairdresser's, and had all her pretty hair cropped off close like a boy's, by way of atonement. When she appeared, Lady Benyon burst out laughing; but her mother was even more seriously annoyed than she had been by the hairdresser's bill. Beth's hair had added considerably to her market value in Mrs. Caldwell's estimation. She would not have put it so coarsely, but that was what her feeling on the subject amounted to.

"What is to be done with such a child?" she exclaimed in despair.

"Send her to school," Aunt Grace Mary gasped.

"She would be expelled in a month," Mrs. Caldwell averred.

"Possibly; but it would be worth the trial," Aunt Grace Mary rejoined in her breathless way.

"Yes," Lady Benyon agreed. "She has been at home far too long, running wild, and it's the only thing to be done. But let it be a strict school."

"How am I to afford it?" Mrs. Caldwell wailed, rocking herself on her chair.

"Well, there's the Royal Service School for Officers' Daughters; you can get her in there for next to nothing, and it's strict enough," Lady Benyon suggested.

And finally, after the loss of some more precious time, and with much reluctance, Mrs. Caldwell yielded to public opinion, and decided to deprive Jim of Beth's little income, and send Beth to school, some new enormities of Beth's having helped considerably to hasten her mother's decision.



CHAPTER XXIX

Mrs. Caldwell's married life had been one long sacrifice of herself, her health, her comfort, her every pleasure, to what she conceived to be right and dutiful. Duty and right were the only two words approaching to a religious significance that she was not ashamed to use; to her all the other words savoured of cant, and even these two she pronounced without emphasis or solemnity, lest the sense in which she used them might be mistaken for a piece of religiosity. Of the joy and gladness of religion the poor lady had no conception.

Nevertheless, as has already been said, Mrs. Caldwell was an admirable person, according to the light of her time. To us she appears to have been a good woman marred, first of all, by the narrow outlook, the ignorance and prejudices which were the result of the mental restrictions imposed upon her sex; secondly, by having no conception of her duty to herself; and finally, by those mistaken notions of her duty to others which were so long inflicted upon women, to be their own curse and the misfortune of all whom they were designed to benefit. She had sacrificed her health in her early married life to what she believed to be her duty as a wife, and so had left herself neither nerve nor strength enough for the never-ending tasks of the mistress of a household and mother of a family on a small income, the consequence of which was that shortness of temper and querulousness which spoilt her husband's life and made her own a burden to her. She was highly intelligent, but had carefully preserved her ignorance of life, because it was not considered womanly to have any practical knowledge of the world; and she had neglected the general cultivation of her mind partly because intellectual pursuits were a pleasure, and she did not feel sufficiently self-denying if she allowed herself any but exceptional pleasures, but also because there was a good deal of her husband's work in the way of letters and official documents that she could do for him, and these left her no time for anything but the inevitable making and mending. Busy men take a sensible amount of rest and relaxation, of food and fresh air, and make good speed; but busy women look upon outdoor exercise as a luxury, talk about wasting time on meals, and toil on incessantly yet with ever-diminishing strength, because they take no time to recoup; therefore they recede rather than advance; all the extra effort but makes for leeway.

The consequence of Mrs. Caldwell's ridiculous education was that her judgment was no more developed in most respects than it had been in her girlhood, so that when she lost her husband and had to act for her children, she had nothing better to rely on for her guidance than time-honoured conventions, which she accepted with unquestioning faith in their efficacy, even when applied to emergencies such as were never known in the earlier ages of human evolution to which they belonged. She had starved herself and her daughters in mind and body in order to scrape together the wherewithal to send her sons out into the world, but she had let them go without making any attempt to help them to form sound principles, or to teach them rules of conduct such as should keep them clean-hearted and make them worthy members of society; so that all her privation had been worse than vain, it had been mischievous; for the boys, unaided by any scheme or comprehensive view of life, any knowledge of the meaning of it to show them what was worth aiming at, and also unprotected by positive principles, had drifted along the commonest course of self-seeking and self-indulgence, and were neither a comfort nor a credit to her. However, she was satisfied that she had done her best for them, and therefore, being of the days when the woman's sphere was home exclusively, and home meant, for the most part, the nursery and the kitchen, she sat inactive and suffered, as was the wont of old-world women, while her sons were sinning all the sins which she especially should have taught them to abhor; and, with regard to her girls, she was equally satisfied that she had done the right thing by them under the circumstances. She could not have been made to comprehend that Beth, a girl, was the one member of the family who deserved a good chance, the only one for whom it would have repaid her to procure extra advantages; but having at last been convinced that there was nothing for it but to send Beth to school, she set to work to prepare her to the best of her ability. Her own clothes were in the last stage of shabbiness, but what money she had she spent on getting new ones for Beth, and that, too, in order that she might continue the allowance to Jim as long as possible. She made a mighty effort also to teach Beth all that was necessary for the entrance examination into the school, and sewed day and night to get the things ready—in all of which, be it said, Beth helped to the best of her ability, but without pride or pleasure, because she had been made to feel that she was robbing Jim, and that her mother was treating her better than she deserved, and the feeling depressed her, so that the much-longed-for chance, when it came, found her with less spirit than she had ever had to take advantage of it.

"Ah, Beth!" her mother said to her, seeing her so subdued, "I thought you would repent when it was too late. You won't find it so easy and delightful to have your own way as you suppose. When it comes to leaving home and going away among strangers who don't care a bit about you, you will not be very jubilant, I expect. You know what it is when Mildred leaves home, how she cries!"

"Summer showers, soft, warm, and refreshing," Beth snapped, irritated by the I-told-you-so tone of superiority, which, when her mother assumed it, always broke down her best resolutions, and threw her into a state of opposition. "Mildred the Satisfactory has the right thing ready for all occasions."

The result of this encounter was an elaborate pose. In dread of her mother's comments, should she betray the feeling expected of her, she set herself to maintain an unruffled calm of demeanour, whatever happened.

Autumn was tinting the woods when Beth packed up. The day before her departure she paid a round of visits, not to people, but to places, which shows how much more real the life of her musings was to her at that time than the life of the world. She got up at daybreak and went and sat on the rustic seat at the edge of the cliff where the stream fell over on to the sand, and thought of the first sunrise she had ever seen, and of the puritan farmer who had come out and reprimanded her ruggedly for being there alone at that unseemly hour. Poor man! His little house behind her was shut up and deserted, the garden he had kept so trim was all bedraggled, neglect ruled ruin all over his small demesne, and he himself was where the worthy rest till their return. The thought, however, at that hour and in that heavenly solitude, where there was no sound but the sea-voice which filled every pause in an undertone with the great song of eternity it sings on always, did not sadden Beth, but, on the contrary, stimulated her with some singular vague perception of the meaning of it all. The dawn was breaking, and the spirit of the dawn all about her possessed and drew her till she revelled in an ecstasy of yearning towards its crowning glory—Rise, Great Sun! When she first sat down, the hollow of the sky was one dark dome, only relieved by a star or two; but the darkness parted more rapidly than her eyes could appreciate, and was succeeded, in the hollow it had held, by rolling clouds monotonously grey, which, in turn, ranged themselves in long low downs, irregularly ribbed, and all unbroken, but gradually drawing apart until at length they were gently riven, and the first triumphant tinge of topaz colour, pale pink, warm and clear, like the faint flush that shyly betrays some delicate emotion on a young cheek, touched the soft gradations of the greyness to warmth and brightness, then mounted up and up in shafts to the zenith, while behind it was breathed in the tenderest tinge of turquoise blue, which shaded to green, which shaded to primrose low down on the horizon, where all was shining silver. Then, as the grey, so was the colour riven, and rays of light shot up, crimson flashes of flame, which, while Beth held her breath, were fast followed from the sea by the sun, that rose enwrapt in their splendour, while the water below caught the fine flush, and heaved and heaved like a breast expanding with delight into long deep sighs.

Beth cried aloud: "O Lord of Loveliness! how mighty are Thy manifestations!"

Later in the day she climbed to the top of the hill where Charlotte had kept her faithful watch for the dark-brown horse, and there, beneath the firs, she sat looking out, with large eyes straining far into the vague distance where Hector had been.

The ground was padded with pine-needles, briony berries shone in the hedgerows below, and hips and haws and rowans also rioted in red. Brambles were heavy with blue-black berries, and the bracken was battered and brown on the steep hill-side. Down in the road a team of four horses, dappled bays with black points and coats as glossy as satin, drawing a waggon of wheat, curved their necks and tossed their heads till the burnished brasses of their harness rang, and pacing with pride, as if they rejoiced to carry the harvest home. On the top of the wheat two women in coloured cotton frocks rested and sang—sang quite blithely.

Beth watched the waggon out of sight, then rose, and turning, faced the sea. As she descended the hill she left that dream behind her. Hector, like Sammy and Arthur, passed to the background of her recollections, where her lovers ceased from troubling, and the Secret Service of Humanity, superseded, was no more a living interest.

Beth went also to the farther sands to visit the spot where she had been surprised in the water by the girls, and had become the white priestess of their bathing rites, and taught that girls had a strength as great as the strength of boys, but different, if only they would do things. Mere mental and physical strength were what Beth was thinking of; she knew nothing of spiritual force, although she was using it herself at the time, and doing with it what all the boys in the diocese, taken together, could not have done. She had heard of works of the Spirit, and that she should pray to be imbued with it; but that she herself was pure spirit, only waiting to be released from her case of clay, had never been hinted to her.

The next day she travelled with her mother from the north to the south, and during the whole long journey there was no break in the unruffled calm of her demeanour. Her mother wondered at her, and was irritated, and fussed about the luggage, and fumed about trains she feared to miss; but Beth kept calm. She sat in her corner of the carriage looking out of the window, and the world was a varied landscape, to every beauty of which she was keenly alive, yet she gave no expression to her enthusiasm, nor to the discomfort she suffered from the August sun, which streamed in on her through the blindless window, burning her face for hours, nor to her hunger and fatigue; and when at last they came to the great house by the river, and her mother, having handed her over to Miss Clifford, the lady principal, said, somewhat tearfully, "Good-bye, Beth! I hope you will be happy here. But be a good girl." Beth answered, "Thank you. I shall try, mamma," and kissed her as coolly as if it were her usual good-night.

"We do not often have young ladies part from their mothers so placidly," Miss Clifford commented.

"I suppose not," Mrs. Caldwell said, sighing.

Beth felt that she was behaving horridly. There was a lump in her throat, and she would liked to have shown more feeling, but she could not. Now, when she would have laid aside the mask of calmness which she had voluntarily assumed, she found herself forced to wear it. Falsifications of our better selves are easily entered upon, but hard to shake off. They are evil things that lurk about us, ready but powerless to come till we call them; but, having been called, they hold us in their grip, and their power upon us to compel us becomes greater than ours upon them.

Mrs. Caldwell felt sore at heart when she had gone, and Beth was not less sore. Each had been a failure in her relation to the other. Mrs. Caldwell blamed Beth, and Beth, in her own mind, did not defend herself. She forbore to judge.



CHAPTER XXX

St. Catherine's Mansion, the Royal Service School for Officers' Daughters, had not been built for the purpose, but bought, otherwise it would have been as ugly to look at as it was dreary to live in. As it was, however, the house was beautiful, and so also were the grounds about it, and the views of the river, the bridge with its many arches, and the grey town climbing up from it to the height above.

Beth was still standing at the top of the steps under the great portico, where her mother had left her, contemplating the river, which was the first that had flowed into her experience.

"Come, come, my dear, come in!" some one behind her exclaimed impatiently. "You're not allowed to stand there."

Beth turned and saw a thin, dry, middle-aged woman, with keen dark eyes and a sharp manner, standing in the doorway behind her, with a gentler-looking lady, who said, "It is a new girl, Miss Bey. I expect she is all bewildered."

"No, I am not at all bewildered, thank you," Beth answered in her easy way. As she spoke she saw two grown-up girls in the hall exchange glances and smile, and wondered what unusual thing she had done.

"Then you had better come at once," Miss Bey rejoined drily, "and let me see what you can do. Please to remember in future that the girls are not allowed to come to this door."

She led the way as she spoke, and Beth followed her across the hall, up a broad flight of steps opposite the entrance, down a wide corridor to the right, and then to the right again, into a narrow class-room, and through that again into another inner room.

"These are the fifth and sixth rooms," Miss Bey remarked,—"fifth and sixth classes."

They were furnished with long bare tables, forms, hard wooden chairs, a cupboard, and a set of pigeon-holes. Miss Bey sat down at the end of the table in the "sixth," with her back to the window, and made Beth sit on her left. There were some books, a large slate, a slate pencil, and damp sponge on the table.

"What arithmetic have you done?" Miss Bey began.

"I've scrambled through the first four rules," Beth answered.

"Set yourself a sum in each, and do it," Miss Bey said sharply, taking a piece of knitting from a bag she held on her arm, and beginning to knit in a determined manner, as if she were working against time.

Beth took up the slate and pencil, and began; but the sharp click-click of the needles worried her, and her brain was so busy studying Miss Bey she could not concentrate her mind upon the sums.

Miss Bey waited without a word, but Beth was conscious of her keen eyes fixed upon her from time to time, and knew what she meant.

"I'm hurrying all I can," she said at last.

"You'll have to hurry more than you can, then, in class," Miss Bey remarked, "if this is your ordinary rate of work."

When the sums were done, she took the slate and glanced over them. "They are every one wrong," she said; "but I see you know how to work them. Now clean the slate, and do some dictation."

She took up a book when Beth was ready, and began to read aloud from it. Beth became so interested in the subject that she forgot the dictation, and burst out at last, "Well, I never knew that before."

"You are doing dictation now," Miss Bey observed severely.

"All right, go on," Beth cheerfully rejoined.

Miss Bey did not go on, however, and on looking up to see what was the matter, Beth found her gazing at her with bent brows.

"May I ask what your name is?" Miss Bey inquired.

"Beth Caldwell."

"Then allow me to inform you, Miss Beth Caldwell, that 'all right, go on,' is not the proper way to address the head-mistress of the Royal Service School for Officers' Daughters."

"Thank you for telling me," Beth answered. "You see I don't know these things. I always say that to mamma."

"Have you ever been to school before?" Miss Bey asked.

"No," Beth answered.

"Oh!" Miss Bey ejaculated, with peculiar meaning. "Then you will have a great deal to learn."

"I suppose so," Beth rejoined. "But that's what I came for, you know—to learn. It's high time I began!"

She fixed her big eyes on the blank wall opposite, and there was a sorrowful expression in them. Miss Bey noted the expression, and nodded her head several times, but there was no relaxation of her peremptory manner when she spoke again.

"Go on, my dear," she said. "If I give as much time to the others as you are taking, I shall not get through the new girls to-night."

Beth finished her dictation.

"What a hand!" Miss Bey exclaimed. "Wherever did you learn to write like that?"

"I taught myself to write small on purpose," Beth replied. "You can get so much more on to the paper."

"You had better have taught yourself to spell, then," Miss Bey rejoined. "There are four mistakes in this one passage."

Beth balanced her pencil on her finger with an air of indifference. She was wondering how it was that the head-mistress of the Royal Service School for Officers' Daughters used the word "wherever" as the vulgar do.

The examination concluded with some questions in history and geography, which Beth answered more or less incorrectly.

"I shall put you here in the sixth," Miss Bey informed her; "but rather for your size than for your acquirements. There is a delicate girl, much smaller than you are, in the first."

"Then I'd rather be myself, tall and strong, in the sixth," Beth rejoined. "If I don't catch her up, at all events I shall have more pleasure in life, and that's something."

Again Miss Bey gazed at her; but she was too much taken aback by Beth's readiness to correct her on the instant, although it was an unaccustomed and a monstrous thing for a girl to address a mistress in an easy conversational way, let alone differ from her.

She took Beth to the great class-room where the seventh and eighth worked, and the fifth and sixth joined them for recreation and preparation, and where also the Bible lessons were given by Miss Clifford to the whole school.

There were a good many girls of various ages in the room, who all looked up.

"This is a new girl," Miss Bey said, addressing them generally,—"Miss Beth Caldwell. Please to show her where to go and what to do."

She glanced round keenly as she spoke, then left the room; and at the same time a thin, sharp-looking little girl with short hair rose from the table at which she was sitting and went up to Beth.

"I'm head of the fifth," she said. "Has Bey been examining you? What class did she put you in?"

"The sixth," Beth said.

"I should have thought you'd have been in the third at least," the head of the fifth piped, "you're so big. Here are some sixth girls—Jessie Baker, Ina Formby, Rosa Bird."

The sixth girls were sitting at a round table, with their little desks before them, writing letters. One of them pulled out a chair for Beth. They had just returned from the holidays, and were in various stages of home-sickness—some of them crying, and the rest depressed; but they welcomed Beth kindly, as one of themselves, and inspected her with interest.

"You can write a private letter to-day, you know," Rosa Bird said to Beth.

"What is a private letter?" Beth asked.

"One to your mother, you know, that isn't read. You seal it up yourself. Public letters have to be sent in open to Miss Clifford. One week you write a public letter, and the next a private one. Hello! here's Amy Wynne!"

A dark girl of about eighteen had entered by a door at the farther end of the room, and was received with acclamation, being evidently popular. Beth, who was still in her mask of calm indifference, looked coldly on, but in herself she determined to be received like that some day.

Most of the girls in the room jumped up, and Amy Wynne kissed one after the other, and then shook hands with Beth.

"Are all my children back?" she asked.

"I don't know," Rosa Bird rejoined, glancing round. "They are not all here."

"That's one of the mothers," Rosa explained to Beth when Amy Wynne had gone again. "The first-class girls are mothers to us. You walk with your mother in the garden, and sit with her on half-holidays, and she's awfully good to you. I advise you to be one of Amy Wynne's children if you can." She was interrupted by the loud ringing of a bell in the hall. "That's for tea," Rosa added. "Come, and I'll show you the way."

The big dining-room was downstairs in the basement, next the kitchen. Miss Clifford dined in the next room attended by her maids of honour (the two girls at the top of the first class for the time being) and the rest of the class except the girls at the bottom, who were degraded to the second-class table in the big dining-room. Here each two classes had a separate table, at either end of which a teacher sat on a Windsor chair. The girls had nothing but hard benches without backs to sit on. Miss Bey, the housekeeper Miss Winch, and the head music-mistress, irreverently called Old Tom by the girls, sat at a separate table, where, at dinner-time, they did all the carving, and snatched what little dinner they could get in the intervals, patiently and foolishly regardless of their own digestions. For tea there were great dishes of thick bread and butter on all the tables, which the girls began to hand round as soon as grace had been said. Each class had a big basin of brown sugar to put in the tea, which gave it a coarse flavour. The first cup was not so bad, but the second was nothing but hot water poured through the teapot. It was not etiquette to take more than two. When the girls were ready for a second, they put pieces of bread in their saucers that they might know their own again, and passed the cups up to the teacher who poured out tea. If any girl suspected that the cup returned to her was not her own, she would not touch the tea. When the meal was over, one of the girls took the sugar-basin, beat down the sugar in it flat and hard with the spoon, did a design on the top, and put it away.

"What's that for?" Beth asked.

"That's so that we shall know our own again," Rosa answered. "But it never lasts the proper time."

"What do you do when it's done?" said Beth.

"Do without," was the laconic rejoinder.

All the girls were talking at once.

"What a racket!" Beth exclaimed.

"It'll be quiet enough to-morrow," Rosa replied. "The first class talks at table in Miss Clifford's room, but we are not allowed to speak a word here, except to the teachers, nor in the bedrooms either, once work begins. Do you see that great fat old thing at the mistress's table? That's Old Tom, the head music-mistress. She is a greedy old cat! She likes eating! You can see it by the way she gloats over things, and she's quite put out if she doesn't get exactly what she wants. Fancy caring! It's just like a man; and that's why she's called Old Tom."

"Not that she's fastidious!" said Agnes Stewart, a tall slender girl with short crisp black hair and grey-green eyes, who was sitting opposite to Beth. "I believe she likes mutton."

"Oh, she's horrid enough for anything!" the girl next her exclaimed with an expression of disgust.

Some of the girls ate their thick bread and butter unconcernedly, others were choked with tears, and could not touch it. Most of the tearful ones were new girls, and the old ones were kind to them; the teachers, too, were sympathetic, and did their best to cheer them.

After tea they all returned to their class-rooms. Beth went and stood in one of the great windows looking out on to the grounds, the river, the old arched bridge, and the grey houses of the town climbing up the hill among the autumn-tinted trees. All the windows were shut, and she began to feel suffocated for want of fresh air, and bewildered by the clatter of voices. If only she could get out into the garden! The door at the end of the room, which led into the first and second, was open. She went through. But before she was half across the room, one of the elder girls exclaimed roughly, "Hello! what are you doing here?"

"It's a new girl, Inkie," another put in.

"Well, the sooner she learns she has no business here the better," Inkie rejoined.

Beth thought her exceedingly rude, and passed on into the vestibule unconcernedly.

"Well, that's cool cheek!" Inkie exclaimed.

"Hie—you—new girl! come back here directly, and go round the other way, just to teach you manners."