The Beth Book. Grand Sarah
swans curved their long necks in the sunshine, and breasted the waters of the lake, as if their own grace were a pleasure to them. Beth was enchanted. Every day she discovered some new wonder – nests in the hedgerows, lambs in the fields, a foal and its mother in the paddock, a calf in the byre – more living interests in one week than she had dreamt of in the whole of her little life. For a happy interval the scenes which had oppressed her – the desolation, the sombre colours of the great melancholy mountains, the incessant sound of the turbulent sea, the shock and roar of angry breakers warring with the rocks, which had kept her little being all a-throb, braced to the expectation of calamity – lapsed now into the background of her recollection, and under the benign influence of these lovelier surroundings her mind began to expand in the most extraordinary way, while her further faculty awoke, and gave her glimpses of more delights than mortal mind could have shown her. "Such nice things," as she expressed it, "keep coming into my head, and I want to write them down." Books she flung away impatiently; but the woods and streams, and the wild flowers, the rooks returning to roost in the trees at sunset, the horses playing in the paddocks, the cows dawdling back from their pastures, all sweet country scents and cheerful country sounds she became alive to and began to love. There would be trouble enough in Beth herself at times, wherever she was; it was hard that she could not have been kept in some such paradise always, to ease the burden of her being.
One morning her mother told her that Uncle James was extremely displeased with her because he had seen her pelting the swans.
"He didn't see me pelting the swans," Beth asseverated. "I was feeding them with crusts. And how did he see me, any way? He wasn't there."
"He sees everything that's going on," Mrs. Caldwell assured her.
"He's only pretending," Beth argued, "or else he must be God."
But she kept her eyes about her the next time she was in the grounds, and at last she discovered him, sitting in the little window of his dressing-room with a book before him, and completely blocking the aperture. She had never noticed him there before, because the panes were small and bright, and the shine on them made it difficult to see through them from below. After this discovery she always felt that his eyes were upon her wherever she went within range of that window. Not that that would have deterred her had she wanted to do anything particularly; but even a child feels it intolerable to be spied upon; and as for a spy! Beth scorned the creature.
That day at luncheon Uncle James made an announcement.
"Lady Benyon is going to honour us with a visit," he began in his most impressive manner. There is no snob so inveterate as your snob of good birth; and Uncle James said "Lady" as if it were a privilege just to pronounce the word. "She will arrive this afternoon at a quarter to four."
"But you will be practising," Beth exclaimed.
"The rites of hospitality must be observed," he condescended to inform her.
"Lady Benyon is my mother, Beth," Aunt Grace Mary put in irrelevantly.
"I know," Beth answered. "Your papa was a baronet; Uncle James loves baronets; that was why he married you." Having thus disposed of Aunt Grace Mary, Beth turned to the other end of the table, and resumed: "But you went on practising when we arrived, Uncle James."
Uncle James gazed at her blandly, then looked at his sister with an agreeable smile. "Lady Benyon will probably like to see the children. You do not dress them in the latest fashion, I observe."
"They are shabby," Mrs. Caldwell acknowledged with a sigh, apologetically.
Beth shovelled some spoonfuls of pudding into her mouth very quickly. "That's the money bother again," she said, and then she sang out at the top of her voice —
"Bryan O'Lynn had no breeches to wear,
He bought a sheepskin for to make him a pair,
With the skinny side out, and the woolly side in,
'They're warm in the winter,' said Bryan O'Lynn."
"I suppose it would be quite impossible to suppress this child?" Uncle James lisped with deceptive mildness. "I observe that she joins in the conversation always, with great intelligence and her mouth full. It might be better, perhaps, if she emptied her mouth. However, I suppose it would be impossible to teach her."
"Not at all," Beth answered for herself, cheerfully. "I'm not too stupid to empty my mouth! Only just you tell me what it is you want. Don't bottle things up. I expect I've been speaking with my mouth full ever since I came, and you've been hating me for it; but you never told me."
"May I ask," said Uncle James politely, "by whom you were informed that I 'bottled things up'?"
"Ah, that would be telling," said Beth, and recommenced gobbling her pudding, to the intense relief of some of the party.
Great-Aunt Victoria Bench, sitting upright opposite, looked across the table at the child, and a faint smile flickered over her wrinkled rose-leaf cheek.
Beth finished her pudding, dropped her spoon on her plate with a clatter, leant back in her chair, and sighed with satisfaction. She possessed a horrid fascination for Uncle James. Almost everything she did was an offence to him, yet he could not keep his eyes off her or let her alone.
"Pudding seems to be a weakness of hers," he now observed. "I hope her voracity is satisfied. I should say that it resembles the voracity of the caterpillar."
"What's voracity, Aunt Victoria?" Beth asked.
"Greediness," Aunt Victoria rejoined sententiously.
"He means I'm greedy for pudding? I just am! I'd like to be a caterpillar for pudding. Caterpillars eat all day. But then God's good to them. He puts them on a tree with lots of leaves. I wish He'd put me in a pantry with lots of puddings! My vorass – vor – what is it? Any way, it's satisfied now, Uncle James, and if you'll let me go, I'll wash myself, and get ready for Lady Benyon."
Rather than let her go when she wanted to, however, Uncle James sat some time longer at table than he had intended. It was he who always gave the signal to rise; before he did so on this occasion, he formally requested his sister to request Beth to be silent during Lady Benyon's visit.
Lady Benyon was a shrewd, active little old woman, with four dark curls laid horizontally on either side of her forehead. She had bright black sparkling eyes that glanced about quickly and seemed to see everything. Before she arrived, Uncle James assembled his family in the drawing-room, and set the scene, as it were, for her reception.
"Sit here, facing the window, Caroline," he said. "It will interest Lady Benyon to see how you have aged. And, Aunt Victoria, this Chippendale chair, so stiff and straight, is just like you, I think; so oblige me by sitting on it. Grace Mary, take this easy lounge; it suits your yielding nature. Elizabeth" – Beth, who was perched on the piano-stool, looked up calmly at the clouds through the window opposite. "Elizabeth," he repeated sharply. Beth made no sign.
"Beth, answer your uncle directly," Mrs. Caldwell exclaimed.
"He has not yet addressed me," Beth rejoined, in the manner of Uncle James.
"Don't call your uncle 'he,' you naughty girl. You know your name is Elizabeth."
"Yes, and I know I said I wouldn't answer to it, and I'm not going to break me oath."
"Me oath!" Uncle James ejaculated.
Beth looked disconcerted. It irked her horribly to be jeered at for making a mistake in speaking, and Uncle James, seeing she was hurt, rested satisfied for the moment, and arranged Mildred and Bernadine together in a group, leaving Beth huddled up on the piano-stool, frowning.
When Lady Benyon's carriage stopped at the door, Uncle James stood bareheaded on the steps, ready to receive her.
"So glad to see you, mamma," he lisped, as he handed her out. "Do take my arm."
But the little old lady waved him aside unceremoniously, and hobbled in with the brisk stiffness of age.
"Gracious!" she exclaimed when she saw the party arranged in the drawing-room. "You all look as if you were having your likeness taken – all except Puck there, on the piano-stool."
When