The Beth Book

CHAPTER X

That was almost the last of those happy autumn days. Winter fell upon the country suddenly with nipping cold. The mountains, always sombre, lowered in great tumbled masses from under the heavy clouds that seldom rose from their summits. Terrible gales kept the sea in torment, and the voice of its rage and pain filled Castletownrock without ceasing. Torrents of rain tore up the roads, and rendered them almost impassable. There was stolid endurance and suffering written on every face out of doors, while within the people cowered over their peat fires, a prey to hunger, cold, and depression. Draughts made merry through the large rooms and passages in Captain Caldwell's house; the wind howled in the chimneys, rattled at the windows, and whistled at the keyholes, especially at night, when Beth would hide her head under the bed-clothes to keep out the racket, or, in another mood, lie and listen to it, and imagine herself out in the storm, till her nerves were strung to a state of ecstatic tension, and her mind fairly revelled in the sense of danger. When her father was at home in the evening, she would sit still beside the fire in the sitting-room, listening in breathless awe, and excitement wholly pleasurable, to the gale raging without; but if Captain Caldwell had not returned, as frequently happened now that the days were short, and the roads so bad, well knowing the risks he ran, she would see the car upset a hundred times, and hear the rattle of musketry in every blast that shook the house, and so share silently, but to the full, the terrible anxiety which kept her mother pacing up and down, up and down, unable to settle to anything until he entered and sank into a seat, often so exhausted that it was hard to rouse him to change his dripping clothes. His duties, always honourably performed whatever the risk to himself, were far too severe for him, and he was rapidly becoming a wreck; – nervous, liverish, a martyr to headache, and a slave to stimulants, although not a drunkard – he only took enough to whip him up to his work. His digestion too had become seriously impaired, and he had no natural appetite for anything. He was fond of his children, and proud of them, but had hitherto been too irritable to contribute anything to their happiness; on the contrary, his name was a terror to them, and "Hush, papa has come in!" was enough at any time to damp their wildest spirits. Now, however, he suffered more from depression than from irritability, and would cower over the fire on stormy days in a state of despondency which was reflected in every face, taking no notice of any of them. The children would watch him furtively in close silent sympathy, sitting still and whispering for fear of disturbing him; and if perchance they saw him smile, and a look of relief came into their mother's anxious face, their own spirits went up on the instant. But everything was against him. The damp came up from the flags in the sitting-room through the cocoanut matting and the thick carpet that covered it, which it defaced in great patches. Close to the fire the wires of the piano rusted, and had to be rubbed and rubbed every day, or half the notes went dumb. The paper, a rare luxury in those parts, began to drop from the walls. Great turf-fires were constantly kept up, but the damp stole a march on them when they smouldered in the night, and made mildew-marks upon everything.

Good food and cooking would have helped Captain Caldwell, but the food was indifferent, and there were no cooks to be had in the country. Biddy had never seen such a thing as a kitchen-range before she took the situation, and when she first had to use the oven, she put the turf on the bottom shelf in order to heat the top one. Mrs. Caldwell made what were superhuman efforts to a woman of her training and constitution, to keep the servants up to the mark, and grew grey in the endeavour; but Mrs. Caldwell in the kitchen was like a racehorse at the plough; and even if she had been a born housewife, she could have done little with servants who would do nothing themselves except under her eyes, and stole everything they could lay their hands on, including the salt out of the salt-cellars between meals, if it were not locked up.

Towards the end of January, Captain Caldwell was ill in bed; he had wet cloths on his head, and seemed as if he could hardly speak. Beth hung about his door all day, watching for opportunities to steal in. Mamma always sent her away if she could, but if papa heard her, he would whisper, "Let the child come in," and then mamma would let her in, but would still look cross. And Beth sat at one side of the bed, and mamma sat on the other, and no one spoke except papa sometimes; only you could seldom understand what he said. And mamma cried, but Beth did not. She ached too much inside for that. You can't cry when you ache so much.

Beth day after day sat with her hands folded on her lap, and her feet dangling from a chair that was much too high for her, watching her father with an intensity of silent anxiety that was terrible to witness in so young a child. Her mother might have beaten her to death, but she could never have dislodged her from the room once she had her father's leave to stay there. Mrs. Caldwell rarely beat her now, however; she generally ignored her; so Beth came and went as she chose. She would climb up on to the bed when there was nobody in the room, and kiss the curls of papa's thick glossy black hair so softly that he never knew, except once, when he caught her, and smiled. His dark face grew grey in bed, and his blue eyes sunken and haggard; but he battled it out that time, and slowly began to recover.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Her mother coloured painfully.

Her father muttered something about a noble nature.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Captain Caldwell's spirits also went up.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Late in the afternoon Riley came down in a hurry.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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