The Beth Book Part 26

"Oh, not at all," Beth answered largely. Then she wished him good-bye.

But she often visited him again in the same character, and the stories she told that unhappy invalid for his comfort and encouragement were amazing. When the book was missed, and her mother bothered about it, she listened serenely, and even helped to look for it.

Beth strolled homewards when she left her protege, and on the way she became Norna of the Fitful Head. She tried Minna and Brenda first, but these characters were too insipid for her taste. Norna was different.

She did things, you know, and made charms, and talked poetry, and people were afraid of her. Beth believed in her thoroughly. She'd be Norna, and make charms. But she had no lead. Norna looked about her.

She knew by magic that Cleveland was coming to consult her, and she had no lead. There was a border of lead, however, over the attic window outside. All she had to do was to steal upstairs, climb out of the window on to the roof, and cut a piece of the lead off. It was now the mystic moment to obtain lead, but she must be wary. She strolled through the kitchen in a casual way. Harriet was busy about the grate, and paid no attention to her; so she secured the carving-knife without difficulty, went up to the attic, and opened the window. She was now on the dangerous pinnacle of a temple, risking her life in order to obtain the materials for a charm which would give her priceless power.

On the other side of the street, there lived in the Orchard House another widow-woman with three daughters. She let lodgings, and was bringing up her children to honest industry in that state of life. She and Mrs. Caldwell took a kindly interest in each other's affairs. Mrs.

Davy happened to be changing the curtains in front that afternoon when Beth crept out of the attic window on to the roof, and she was paralysed with horror for a moment, expecting to see the child roll off into the street. She was a sensible woman, however, and quickly recovering herself, she ran across the road, with her spectacles on, and rapped at Mrs. Caldwell's door. Beth, hacking away at the lead with the carving-knife, did not heed the rap. Presently, however, she heard hurried footsteps on the stairs, and climbed back into the attic incontinently, putting her spoils in her pocket. When Mrs. Davy, her mother, and Harriet, all agitated, burst open the door, she was standing at the window looking out tranquilly.

"What were you doing on the roof, Beth?" her mother demanded.

"Nothing," Beth answered.

"Mrs. Davy says she saw you get out of the window."

Beth was silent.

"You're a bad girl, giving your mother so much trouble," Mrs. Davy exclaimed, looking at her under her spectacles sternly. "If you was my child I'd whack you, I would."

Beth was instantly a lady, sneering at this common woman who was taking a liberty which she knew her mother would resent as much as she did.

"And what were you doing with the carving-knife, Miss Beth?" cried Harriet, spying it on the floor, and picking it up. Criminals are only clever up to a certain point; Beth had forgotten to conceal the carving-knife. "Oh dear! oh dear! If you 'aven't 'acked it all the way along!"

"Oh dear! oh dear!" Mrs. Caldwell echoed. It was her best carving-knife, and Beth would certainly have been beaten if Mrs. Davy had not suggested it. As it was, however, Mrs. Caldwell controlled her temper, and merely ordered her to go downstairs immediately. In the management of her children she would not be dictated to by anybody.

This was Beth's first public appearance as a disturber of the peace, and the beginning of the bad name she earned for herself in certain circles eventually. But she was let off lightly for it. Mrs.

Caldwell's punishments were never retrospective. She was thunder and lightning in her wrath; a flash and then a bang, and it was all over.

If she missed the first movement, the culprit escaped. She could no more have punished one of her children in cold blood than she could have cut its throat.

Beth ran down to the acting-room, so called because the boys had brought home the idea of acting in the holidays, and they had got up charades there on a stage made of boxes, with an old counterpane for a curtain, and farthing candles for footlights. It was a long, narrow room over the kitchen, with a sloping roof. Three steps led down into it. There was a window at one end, a small lattice with an iron bar nailed to the outside vertically. Beth swung herself out round the bar, dropped on to the back-kitchen roof, crept across the tiles to the chimney at the far corner, stepped thence on to the top of the old wooden pump, and from the top to the spout, from the spout to the stone trough, and so into the garden. Then she ran round to the kitchen, and got a candle, a canister, and some water in a pail, all of which she took up to the acting-room by way of the back-kitchen roof. The canister happened to contain allspice, but this was not to be considered when she wanted the canister, so she emptied it from the roof on to Harriet's head as she happened to be pa.s.sing, and so got some good out of it, for Harriet displayed strong feeling on the subject both at the moment and afterwards, when she was trying to get the stuff out of her hair; which interested Beth, who in some such way often surprised people into the natural expression of emotions which she might never otherwise have discovered. Bernadine had been playing alone peaceably in the garden, but Beth persuaded her to come upstairs. She found Beth robed in the old counterpane, with her hair dishevelled, and the room darkened. Beth was Norna now in her cell on the Fitful Head, and Bernadine was the shrinking but resolute Minna come to consult her. Beth made her sit down, drew a magic circle round her with a piece of chalk, and, in a deep tragic voice, warned her not to move if she valued her life, for there were evil spirits in the room. The pail stood on a box draped with an old black shawl, and round this she also drew a circle. Then she put some lead in the canister, melted it over the candle, dropped it into the water, and muttered--

"Like snakes the molten metal hisses, Curses come instead of kisses."

She plunged her hand into the water--

"I search a harp for harmony, But daggers only do I see; I search a heart for love and hope, But find a ghastly hangman's rope.

Woe! Woe!"

Three times round the pail she went, moaning, groaning, writhing her body, and wringing her hands--

"Woe! Woe!

Thy courage will be sorely tried, Thou shalt not be the pirate's bride."

At this Bernadine, whose nerves were completely shaken, set up such a howl that Harriet came running to see what was the matter. She soon let light into the acting-room. Mrs. Caldwell and Aunt Victoria had gone to see Aunt Grace Mary, so Harriet was in charge of the children, and to save herself further trouble, she took them up to a black-hole there was without a window at the top of the house, and locked them in. The place was quite empty, so that they could do no harm, and they did not seem to mind being locked up. Harriet intended to give them a little fright and then let them out; but, being busy, she forgot them, and when at last she remembered, it was so dark she had to take a candle; and great was her horror, on opening the door, to see both children stretched out on the bare boards side by side, apparently quite dead. One glance at their ghastly faces was enough for Harriet.

She just looked and then fled, shrieking, with the candle alight in her hand, right out into the street. Several people who happened to be pa.s.sing at the time stopped to see what was the matter. Harriet's talent for fiction furnished her with a self-saving story on the instant. She said the children had shut themselves up and got smothered.

"We'd better go and see if there's nothing can be done," a respectable workman suggested.

Harriet led the way, about a dozen people following, all awe-stricken and silent. When they came to the door, they peeped in over each other's shoulders at the two poor children, stretched out stiff and stark, the colour of death, their jaws dropped, their glazed eyes s.h.i.+ning between the half-closed lids, a piteous spectacle.

"Just let's see the candle a moment," the workman said. He took it from Harriet, and entered stooping--the place was a mere closet just under the roof, and he could not stand upright in it. He peered into the children's faces, then knelt down beside them, and felt their arms and chests. Suddenly he burst out laughing.

"You little devils," he said, "what 'a' ye done this for?"

Beth sat up. "Harriet locked us in to give us a fright, so we thought we'd frighten Harriet," she said.

The walls were whitewashed, and the children had made themselves ghastly by rubbing their faces all over with the whitening.

"You've getten yer 'ands full wi' them two, I'm thinkin', missis," the workman remarked to Harriet as he went off chuckling.

"Did you hear, Beth?" Bernadine complained; "he called us little devils."

"All right," Beth answered casually. But Bernadine was disgusted. She was one of those pious children who like to stand high in the estimation of the grown-up people; and she disapproved of Beth's conduct when it got her into trouble. She was like the kind of man who enjoys being vicious so long as he is not found out by any one who will think the less of him for it; when he is found out he excuses himself, and blames his a.s.sociates. Bernadine never resisted Beth's eloquent persuasions, nor the luring fascination of her schemes; but when she had had her full share of the pleasures of naughtiness, and was tired and cross, her conscience smote her, and then she told mamma. This did her good, and got Beth punished, which made Bernadine feel that she had expiated her own naughtiness and been forgiven, and also made her feel sorry for Beth--a nice kind feeling, which she always enjoyed.

Beth despised her for her conscientious treachery, and retaliated by tempting her afresh. One day she lured her out on to the tiles through an attic window in the roof, at the back of the house. It would be such fun to sit astride on the roof-ridge, and look right down into the street, she said, and across Mrs. Davy's orchard to the fields on that side, and out to sea on the other.

"And things will come into our minds up there--such lovely things,"

she proceeded, beguiling Bernadine to distract her attention as she helped her up. When they were securely seated, Bernadine began to grumble.

"Things don't come into my mind," she whined.

"Don't they? Why, I was just thinking if we were to fall we should certainly be killed," Beth answered cheerfully. "We should come down thump, and that would crack our skulls, and our brains would roll out on the pavement. Ough! wouldn't they look nasty, just like a sheep's!

And mamma and Aunt Victoria would rush out, and Harriet and Mrs. Davy, and they'd have to hold mamma up by the arms. Then they'd pick us up, and carry us in, and lay us out on a bed, and say they were beautiful in their lives, and in death they were not divided; and when they shut the house up at night and it was all still, mamma would cry. She'd be always crying, especially for you, Bernadine, because you're not such a trouble as I am. And when you were buried, and the worms were eating you, she would give all the world to have you here again."

This sad prospect was too much for the sensitive Bernadine. "Don't, Beth," she whimpered. "You frighten me."

"Oh, you mustn't be frightened," said Beth encouragingly. "When people up on a height like this get frightened, they always roll off. Do you feel as if the roof were moving?" she exclaimed, suddenly clutching hold.

Bernadine fell down flat on her face with a dismal howl.

"Let's be cats now," said Beth. "I'll say miew-ow-ow, and you oo-oo-owl-hiss-ss-ss."

"Don't, Beth. I want to go back."

"Come along then," said Beth.

"I can't. I daren't move."

"Oh, nonsense," said Beth; "just follow me. I shall go and leave you if you don't. You shouldn't have come up if you were afraid."

"You made me," Bernadine whimpered with her eyes shut.

"Of course it was me!" said Beth, on her way back to the skylight.

"You haven't a will of your own, I suppose!"

"You aren't leaving me, Beth!" Bernadine cried in an agony. "Don't go!

I'm frightened! Help me down! I'll tell mamma!"

"Then there you'll sit, tell-pie-t.i.t," Beth chanted, as she let herself down through the skylight.