The Beth Book Part 19

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Beth, don't speak like that!"

"That's Horner, not me," Beth snapped, impatient of the interruption.

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

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

"But Uncle James _is_ the lord."

"Nonsense, child."

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

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

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

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

"Now, that's just like mamma! She says 'Don't!' and 'How dare you!'

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

"Who told you that?"

"A gentleman in the train."

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

she said at last.

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

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

"Who told you this, Beth?"

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

furgiv' 'im. But, lardie! don't us know the worth o' Mr. James Patten's word!"

Aunt Grace Mary had turned very pale.

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

"Not likely," said Beth.

"How do you remember these things you hear?"

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

Beth added tolerantly.

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

CHAPTER XIII

Meanwhile the English spring advanced in the beautiful gardens of Fairholm, and was a joy to Beth. Blossoms showered from the fruit-trees, green leaves unfurled, the birds were in full song, and the swans curved their long necks in the suns.h.i.+ne, 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 a.s.severated. "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 a.s.sured her.

"He's only pretending," Beth argued, "or else he must be G.o.d."

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 s.h.i.+ne 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 sn.o.b so inveterate as your sn.o.b of good birth; and Uncle James said "Lady" as if it were a privilege just to p.r.o.nounce 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.