"What are you eating, Beth?" she asked in a cautious voice, whispering, fearful of awaking a monitress and being reported for talking.
"Apples," Beth answered. "Have some?"
"All right! but where did you get them?" Janey asked.
"Never you mind!" said Beth.
Janey did not mind at the moment, and ate the greater number, but next day she went treacherously and told, in order to ingratiate herself with one of the mistresses, and the matter was reported to Miss Clifford, who sent for Beth. Janey North was also sent for.
"What is this I hear about your having apples in your bedroom last night, Beth?" Miss Clifford said.
"A story, I should think," Beth answered readily. "Who told you?"
Janey North looked disconcerted.
"What have you to say, Miss North?" Miss Clifford asked.
"You were eating apples," Janey said to Beth.
"How do you know?" Beth asked suavely.
"I saw you."
"What, in the middle of the night when the gas was out?"
"Ye-yes," Janey faltered.
Beth shrugged her shoulders and looked at Miss Clifford, who said severely: "I think, Miss North, you have either dreamt this story or invented it."
Janey was barred in the school after that, the girls deciding that, whether the story were true or not, she was a dockyard girl for telling it. It was Beth's sporting instinct that had made her evade the question. When she had won the game, and the excitement was over, she felt she had been guilty of duplicity, and determined to confess when Miss Clifford sent for her next and gave her a good opportunity. She would have gone at once but for the dread of losing the precious liberty that was life to her. All through the weeks that followed she kept herself sane and healthy by midnight exercises in the moonlight. Her appetite had failed her till she took to this diversion, but after her second ramble she was so hungry that she went down to the kitchen boldly to forage in the hope of finding a crust. The fire was still burning brightly, and by its light she discovered on the table the thick bread and butter for the next morning's breakfast, all cut ready, and piled up under covers on the dishes. There was half a jug of beer besides, doubtless left from the servants' supper. It was rather flat, but she thought it and the new bread and butter delicious. She had a bad cold after the first ramble, but that was the only one, strange to relate, for she always went out in her night-dress, and bare-footed.
During this time her imagination was exceedingly active and her health improved, but her work was a greater trouble than ever. She had just been put into the third, but Miss Clifford threatened to put her down again if she did not do better, and one day she sent for Beth, who went trembling, under the impression that that was what the summons was for. She found Miss Clifford and Miss Bey discussing a letter, and both looking very serious.
"Beth," Miss Clifford began, "a gentleman whom I know well has written to tell me that he was walking home by the river-path at two o'clock on Monday morning, and saw a girl here at St. Catherine's with only her night-dress on, hanging over the railing looking into the river; and I am sure from the description it was you."
"Yes," said Beth, "I saw him."
Miss Clifford let the letter fall on her lap, and Miss Bey dropped into a chair. Beth looked on with interest, and wondered about that accurate description of herself; she would have given anything to see it.
"What were you doing there?" Miss Clifford asked; and Beth noticed that she was treating the matter just as her mother had treated the menagerie business.
"Just looking at the water," Beth said.
"At two o'clock in the morning! How did you get out?"
"By the conservatory window."
"Had you been out before?"
"Oh yes, often."
"Do any of the other girls go out?"
"Not that I know of," said Beth, then added, "No, I'm sure they don't."
"Thank Heaven for that, at all events!" Miss Clifford ejaculated. Then she made Beth sit down beside her, and took her hand, and gazed at her long and sorrowfully.
"Was it such a very dreadful thing to do?" Beth asked at last.
"You have been a great disappointment to me, Beth," Miss Clifford answered indirectly, "and to Miss Bey. We expected more of you than of any other girl now in the school – you promised so well in many ways at one time."
"Did I?" said Beth, looking from one to the other in consternation. "Oh, why didn't you tell me? I thought you all fancied I should never do anything well, and that disheartened me. If I had known – " She burst into tears.
Late that night Miss Clifford and Miss Bey sat together discussing Beth.
"I feel more than ever convinced there is something exceptional about the child," Miss Clifford declared. "I hope it is not insanity; but, at all events, it is not sin, and I won't have her punished. I say now what I said at first, she should have been sent here early, or not at all. And now she must go."
"What, expel her!" Miss Bey ejaculated.
"No. Didn't I say I would not have her punished? There is some explanation of her wild escapade besides mere naughtiness, I feel sure, and she shall have every chance that I can give her. There is no vice in her of any kind that I can discover, and she is fearlessly honest. If she were grown-up we should call her eccentric, and be interested and amused by her vagaries; and I do not see why she should not be allowed the same excuse as it is, only St. Catherine's is not the place for her. Here all must move in the common orbit, to save confusion. So I shall write to her mother, and get her to take her from the school at the end of the term in the regular way."
"But in the meantime?" Miss Bey asked.
"Beth has given me her word that she will be good, and do nothing I should disapprove of, and she will keep it."
So Beth's credit was saved by the good judgment of this kind, wise woman, and her career at St Catherine's ended honourably, if somewhat abruptly.
CHAPTER XXXIII
When it was rumoured amongst the mistresses that Beth was to leave that term, Old Tom put her on to play first piano in the first-class solo, and to lead the treble in the second-class duet at the examination.
"For I rather like ye, Miss Beth Caldwell," she said. "You're not a sycophant, whatever else ye are. They've not been able to do much wi' ye in regard to yer work in the rest of the school, but ye've done well under me, and I'll let ye have yer chance to distinguish yerself before ye go."
"Oh, but do you think I can do it?" Beth exclaimed.
"Ye can do anything ye set yerself to do, Beth Caldwell," Old Tom shouted at her.
Beth set herself accordingly, and when the day came she led the solo and duet with the precision of a musical box, but with such an expenditure of nerve-power that she was prostrated by the effort. She was considered quite a musician at St. Catherine's, but by this time the dire method of teaching had had its effect. Her confidence and her memory for music were gone, the beauty of her touch spoilt, and the further development of her talent effectually checked.
She did not go home for the holidays. Miss Clifford had advised, Lady Benyon approved, and Mrs. Caldwell decided, that she should be sent direct to a finishing school in London, and when St. Catherine's broke up, Miss Bey, who happened to be going that way, good-naturedly undertook to see Beth safely to her destination.
Miss Clifford held Beth's hand long, and gazed into her face earnestly when she took leave of her. "I shall hear of you again," she said, "and I pray God it may be good news; but it depends upon yourself, Beth. We are free agents. Good-bye, my dear child, and God bless you."
Beth had been eighteen intolerable months at the school, and had been exceedingly miserable most of the time, yet she left it with tears in her eyes, melted and surprised by the kindest farewells from every one. It had never dawned upon her until that moment that she was really very much liked.
Her new school was a large house in a long wide street of houses, all exactly alike. When she arrived with Miss Bey, they were shown into a deliciously cool shady drawing-room, charmingly furnished, and the effect upon Beth, after the graceless bareness of St. Catherine's, was altogether reassuring.
In front of the fireplace, which was hidden by ferns and flowering plants, a slender girl, with thick dark hair down her back, was lying on the white woolly hearthrug, reading. She got up to greet the visitors without embarrassment, still holding her book in her hand.
"Miss Blackburne will be here directly," she said. "Will you sit down?" Then there was a little pause, which Miss Bey broke by asking in her magisterial way, "What is that you are reading, my dear?"
"The Idylls of the King," the girl answered.
Miss Bey's nostrils flapped.
"Is it not rather advanced for you, my dear?" she said. "We do not allow it at all, even to our first-class girls."
"Oh, Miss Blackburne likes us to read it," was the easy answer. "She says that Tennyson and all the good modern writers are a part of our education."
"Thank goodness!" Beth ejaculated fervently. "At St. Catherine's our minds were starved on books suited to the capacity of infants and imbeciles."
"I should think, Beth, you are hardly old enough or educated enough to be a judge of literature as yet," Miss Bey said severely.
"Nor do I pretend to be a judge. How can I know anything of literature when literature is unknown at St. Catherine's? But I should think babes and sucklings would be wise enough to object to the silly trash we had instead of literature."
Beth spoke emphatically, shaking herself free of the restrictions of the Royal Service School for Officers' Daughters once for all.
Miss Blackburne came in while she was speaking, and smiled.
"I like to hear a girl express an opinion," she said. "She may be quite wrong, but she must have some mind if she attempts to think for herself at all; and mind is material to work upon."
"I'm afraid I haven't much mind," Beth said, sighing, "or manner either."
Miss Blackburne smiled again, and looked at Miss Bey; but Miss Bey supported Beth in her self-depreciation by preserving an ominous silence.
"This is one of your new school-fellows," Miss Blackburne said to Beth; "let me introduce you to each other. Clara Herring, Beth Caldwell."
When Miss Bey took her leave, Miss Blackburne left the room with her, and immediately afterwards another girl came in, clapping her hands.
"Oh, I say!" she exclaimed, "Signor Caponi is a dear! He has the nicest chocolate eyes, and he says my Italian is wonderful! Now I've done all my work for to-day."
"Have you?" said Beth. "Why, it isn't five o'clock yet!"
"Miss Blackburne won't let us work long hours," the girl rejoined. "She says it destroys our freshness. But let us know each other's names. I am Geraldine Tressillion. Good name for a novel, isn't it?" and she clapped her little white hands and laughed again.
"That's just what you're made to be – the heroine of a novel," Clara Herring observed, looking at her admiringly. "I always think of you when I come across a gay one, with golden hair and blue eyes."
"I have my good points, I know," Geraldine rejoined. "But how about my hips? Too high, alas!"
"Oh, that won't show much while you're slight," said Clara, looking at her critically.
"Well, I'll make haste and marry me before I'm afflicted with flesh, as I'm sure to become. For I deny myself nothing – I live to eat," Geraldine rattled on cheerfully. "One can't get very fat before one comes out; and I hate a thin dowager. I'm engaged already, you know, but I don't like the man much – don't like him at all, in fact; and my sister says I can do better. She's been married a year, and has a baby. She told me all about it. Mamma imagines we're all innocent. A lady implored her to tell my sister things before she married, but she said she really could not speak to an innocent girl on such a subject. I don't believe she was ever so innocent herself. A grown girl can't be innocent unless she's a fool; but anyway, it's the right pose to pretend. You've got to play the silly fool to please a man; then he feels superior."
"But it's hypocritical," said Beth.
"Yes, my dear. But you must be hypocritical if you want to be a man's ideal of a woman. You must know nothing, do nothing, see nothing, but just what suits his pleasure and convenience; and in order to answer to his requirements you must be either a hypocrite, or a blind worm without eyes or intelligence. Men don't like innocence because it's holy, but because it whets their appetites, my sister says, and if they're deceived it serves them right. They work the world for their own pleasure, not ours; and we must look out for ourselves. If we want money, liberty, devotion, admiration, and any other luxury, we must pretend. Don't you see?"
"I don't know," Beth rejoined. "But, personally, I shall never pretend anything."
"Then you will suffer for your sincerity," Geraldine rejoined.
Beth shrugged her shoulders. The turn the conversation had taken was distasteful to her, and she would not pursue it.
There was a pause, then Clara observed sententiously:
"Innocence is not impossible, Geraldine. Surely Adelaide is innocent enough."
"I said innocence and intelligence were incompatible," Geraldine answered. "You don't call Adelaide intelligent, do you?"
"Who is Adelaide?" Beth asked.
"The daughter of a Roman Catholic peer," Geraldine replied. "She is eighteen, and her mind is absolutely undeveloped. We think she's in training for a convent, and that's why they don't let her learn much. Miss Ella Blackburne is a Roman Catholic, and so also is Adelaide's maid; They trot her round to all the observances of her Church regularly, and in the intervals she plays with the kitten. I don't know why she should have been sent here at all, for this is a regular forcing-house for the marriage market. Miss Blackburne expects all her girls to marry well, and they generally do. I should think, Miss Beth, she will be able to make something of you with those eyes!"
"Look at its neck and shoulders, too, and the way its head is set on them!" Clara exclaimed.
"Not to mention its hands and its complexion!" Geraldine supplemented. "But its voice alone —soft, gentle, and low– would get it into the peerage!"
Beth, unused to be appraised in this way, blushed and smiled, rather pleased, but confused.
"How many girls are there here?" she asked, to change the subject.
"Six boarders till you came, but now we are seven," Clara answered. "There are some day-girls too, but they are children, and don't count. The greatest pickle in the school is the daughter of an Archbishop – at least, she has been the greatest pickle so far – we don't know you as yet, however. But we have heard things!"
"Come and see my room," Geraldine interrupted. "And perhaps you'd like to see your own. It's next to mine."
"Are you allowed to go up and down stairs just as you like?" Beth asked in surprise.
"Why, of course!" Geraldine cried. "You can go where you like and sit where you like when you've done your work. We're not in prison!"
Beth had a dainty little room, hung with white curtains, all to herself. Her heart expanded when she saw it. The delightful appearance of her new surroundings had already begun to have the happiest effect upon her mind.
When Geraldine took her into her own room she drew a yellow book from under a quantity of linen in a drawer. "It's a French novel," she said. "Miss Blackburne wouldn't let me read it for worlds if she knew, so you mustn't tell. I'll lend it to you if you like."
"I couldn't read it if I would; I don't know enough," Beth said.
"Oh, you'll soon learn; and I'll tell you all there is in it. I say, what size is your waist? Mine is only seventeen inches; but I laced till I got shingles to reduce it to that. I know a doctor who says small waists are neither healthy nor beautiful; but then they're the fashion, and men are such awful fools about fashion. They sneer at a healthy figure, and saddle themselves every day with ailing wives, all deformed, because they're accustomed to see women so; and then they call us silly! My husband won't think me silly once I get command of his money, whatever else he may think me. Till then – !" she made a pretty gesture with her hands and laughed – Beth observing her the while with deep attention as a new specimen.
She found eventually that Geraldine was not at all a bad girl, or in the least inclined to be vicious, her conversation notwithstanding; she was merely a shrewd one learning how to protect herself in that state of life to which she was destined. If a woman is to make her way in society and keep straight, she must have wits and knowledge of a special kind. There is probably no more delightful, high-minded, charming-mannered, honourable and trustworthy woman in the world than a well-bred Englishwoman; but, on the other hand, there can be nothing more vulgar-minded, coarse, and despicable than women of fashion tend to become. There is no meanness nor shabbiness, not to mention fraud, that they will not stoop to when it suits themselves, from tricking a tradesman and sweating a servant, to neglecting their children, deceiving their husbands, and slandering their friends. They are sheep running hither and thither in servile imitation of each other, without an original thought amongst them; the froth of society, with the natural tendency of froth to rise to the surface and thence be swept aside; mere bubbles, that shine a moment and then burst. It is fashion that unsexes women and unmakes men. To be in the world of fashion and of it, is to degenerate; but to be in it and not of it, to know it and remain untainted, despising all it has to give, makes towards solid advance. There are some ugly stages to be gone through, however, before the advancement is pronounced.
The six girls at Miss Blackburne's were all daughters of people of position, all enjoying the same advantages and under the same influences; but three of them were already shaping themselves into women of fashion, while the other three were tending as inevitably to develop into women of fine character and cultivated mind. Beth was attracted to all such women, and recognised their worth, often long before they appreciated her at all. She was seventh among the girls, her place being in the middle, as it were, with three on either side of her, teaching her all they could, as was inevitable. In association with the budding women of fashion, she lost the first fine delicacy of maiden modesty of mind; but the example of the young gentlewomen, on the other hand, confirmed her taste and settled her convictions. The ladies who kept the school were high-minded themselves and exemplary in every possible way, and if they did not make all their pupils equally so, it was because factors go to the formation of character with which, for want of knowledge, no one can reckon at present. The influence of these ladies upon Beth was altogether benign. She was in a new world with them – a world of ease and refinement, of polished manners, of kindly consideration, where, instead of being harried by nagging rules, stultified by every kind of restraint, and lowered in her own estimation for want of proper respect and encouragement, she was allowed as much liberty as she would have had in a well-ordered home, and found herself and her abilities of special interest to each of her teachers. Instead of being an item, a part of a huge piece of machinery to be strictly kept in the particular place assigned to her, whether it were adapted to the needs of her nature or not, for fear of putting the whole mechanism out of order, her present and future being less considered than the smooth working of the machine – she was a girl again with some character of her own to be formed and developed. Here, too, she was put upon her honour to do all that was expected of her, and the immediate consequence of this in her case was the most scrupulous exactness. She attached herself to Miss Ella, attracted first of all by the fact that she was a Roman Catholic. How she could be one was a mystery Beth longed to solve; but Miss Ella did not consider it loyal to Protestant parents to influence their daughters at school, and would give her no help in this. In every other respect, however, Beth found her exceedingly kind and sympathetic, a serene, strong woman, who began to curb the exuberance of Beth's naughtiness from the first, and to direct the energy of which it was the outcome into profitable channels.
There was no monotony in Miss Blackburne's establishment. The girls were taken in turns to operas, concerts, picture-galleries, and every kind of exhibition that might help to cultivate their minds. To be able to discuss such things was a part of their education. They were expected to describe all they saw, fluently and pleasantly, but without criticism enough to require thought and provoke argument, which is apt to be tedious; and thus was formed the habit of chatting in the genial light frothy way which does duty for conversation in society. Geraldine had not exaggerated when she called Miss Blackburne's school a forcing house for the marriage market. At that time marriage was the only career open to a gentlewoman, and the object of her education was to make her attractive. The theory then was that solid acquirements were beyond the physical strength of girls, besides being unnecessary. Showy accomplishments, therefore, were all that was aimed at; but they had to be thorough. Music, singing, drawing, dancing, French, German, Italian – whatever it might be; the girl who was learning it had the greatest attention from her master or mistress during the lesson; she was made to do it as much by the will of the teacher as by her own intelligence. This was the first experience of thorough teaching Beth had ever had, and she enjoyed it, and would have worked harder to profit by it than Miss Blackburne would allow. As it was, she made great progress with her work, while all the time the more informal but most valuable part of her education, which was directed to the strengthening of every womanly attribute, went on steadily under the influence of Miss Ella.
It would have been well for Beth if she had been left at Miss Blackburne's for the next three years; but just when the rebellious beating of her wings against the bars had ceased, and they had folded themselves contentedly behind her for awhile; just when the wild flights of her imagination were giving way to wholesome habits of thought, and her own vain dreams were being dissipated by the honest ambition to accomplish something actual – she was summoned away. Her sister Mildred had died suddenly of meningitis, and the immediate effect of the shock on Mrs. Caldwell, who had dearly loved her eldest daughter, was a kindlier feeling for Beth, and a wish to have her at home – for a time at all events. And Beth went willingly under the circumstances. She sympathised deeply with her mother, and was full of grief herself for her sister, to whom she had been tenderly attached although they had seen so little of each other. Beth was not yet sixteen, and this was the third blow that death had dealt her.