"Yes, it is, so there!" said Sammy triumphantly. "But I"ll lay you won"t guess what it is. Mrs. Barnes has got a baby."
Mrs. Barnes was the wife of the head-master of the Mansion-House School, and all the little boys, feeling that there was more in the event than had been explained to them, were vaguely disgusted.
"I don"t call that anything," Beth answered contemptuously. "Lots of people have babies."
"Well," said Sammy, "I wouldn"t have thought it of him."
"Thought what of whom?" Beth snapped in a tone which silenced Sammy.
He ventured to laugh, however.
"Don"t laugh in that gigantic way, Sammy," she exclaimed, still more irritated. "When you throw back your head and open your mouth so wide, I can see you have no wisdom-teeth."
"You"re always nasty now, Beth," Sammy complained.
Which was true. Love waning becomes critical. Beth"s own feeling for Sammy had been a strong mental stimulant at first, and, in her enjoyment of it, she had overlooked all his shortcomings. There was nothing in him, however, to keep that feeling alive, and it had gradually died of inanition. His slowness and want of imagination first puzzled and then provoked her; and, little-boy-like, he had not even been able to respond to such tenderness as she showed him--not that she had ever showed him much tenderness, for they were just like boys together. She had kissed him, however, once or twice, after a quarrel, to make it up; but she did not like kissing him: little boys are rank. His pretty colouring was all that he had had to attract her, and that, alas! had lost its charm by this time. For a little longer she looked out for him and troubled about him, then let him go gradually--so gradually, that she never knew when exactly he lapsed from her life altogether.
CHAPTER XX
For two years after Beth was outlawed by her mother, Great-Aunt Victoria Bench was her one link with the civilised world. The intimacy had lapsed a little while Sammy was the prevailing human interest in Beth"s life, but gradually as he ceased to be satisfactory, she returned to the old lady, and hovered about her, seeking the sustenance for which her poor little heart ached on always, and for want of which her busy brain ran riot; and the old lady, who had not complained of Beth"s desertion, welcomed her back in a way which showed that she had felt it.
For Great-Aunt Victoria Bench was lonely in the days of her poverty and obscurity. Since the loss of her money, there had been a great change in the att.i.tude of most of her friends towards her, and such attentions as she received were of a very different kind from those to which she had been accustomed. Mrs. Caldwell had been the most generous to her, for at the time that she had offered Aunt Victoria a home in her house, she had not known that the old lady would be able to pay her way at all. Fortunately Aunt Victoria had enough left for that, but still her position in Mrs. Caldwell"s house was not what it would have been had she not lost most of her means. Mrs. Caldwell was not aware of the fact, but her manner had insensibly adjusted itself to Aunt Victoria"s altered circ.u.mstances, her care and consideration for her being as much reduced in amount as her income; and Aunt Victoria felt the difference, but said nothing. Slowly and painfully she learnt to realise that it was for what she had had to bestow, and not for what she was, that people used to care; they had served her as they served their G.o.d, in the hope of reaping a rich reward. Like many other people with certain fine qualities of their own, Aunt Victoria knew that there was wickedness in the outside world, but never suspected that her own immediate circle, the nice people with whom she talked pleasantly every day, could be tainted; and the awakening to find that her friends cared less disinterestedly for her than she did for them was a cruel disillusion. Her first inclination was to fly far from them all, and spend the rest of her days amongst strangers who could not disappoint her because she would have nothing to expect of them, and who might perhaps come to care for her really. Long hours she sat and suffered, shut up in her room, considering the matter, yearning to go, but restrained by the fear that, as an old woman, she would be unwelcome everywhere. In Aunt Victoria"s day old people were only too apt to be selfish, tyrannical, narrow, and ignorant, a terror to their friends; and they were nearly always ill, the old men from lives of self-indulgence, and the old women from unwholesome restraint of every kind. Now we are beginning to ask what becomes of the decrepit old women, there are so few to be seen. This is the age of youthful grandmothers, capable of enjoying a week of their lives more than their own grandmothers were able to enjoy the whole of their declining years; their vitality is so much greater, their appearance so much better preserved; their knowledge so much more extensive, their interests so much more varied, and their hearts so much larger.
Aunt Victoria nowadays would have struck out for herself in a new direction. She would have gone to London, joined a progressive women"s club, made acquaintance with work of some kind or another, and never known a dull moment; for she would have been a capable woman had any one of her faculties been cultivated to some useful purpose; but as it was, she had nothing to fall back upon. She was just like a domestic animal, like a dog that has become a member of the family, and is tolerated from habit even after it grows old, and because remarks would be made if it were put out of the way before its time; and she had been content with the position so long as much was made of her. Now, however, all too late, a great yearning had seized upon her for an object in life, for some pursuit, some interest that would remain to her when everything else was lost; and she prayed to G.o.d earnestly that He would show her where to go and what to do, or give her something--something which at last resolved itself into something to live for.
Then one day there came a little resolute tap at the door, and Beth walked in without waiting to be asked, and seeing in a moment with that further faculty of hers into the old lady"s heart that it was sad, she went to her impulsively, and laid her unkempt brown head against her arm in an awkward caress, which touched the old lady to tears. Beth was lonely too, thought Aunt Victoria, a strange, lonely little being, neglected, ill-used, and misunderstood, and the question flashed through the old lady"s mind, if she left the child, what would become of her? The tangled brown head, warm against her arm, nestled nearer, and Aunt Victoria patted it protectingly.
"Do you want anything, Beth?" she asked.
"No, Aunt Victoria. I just wanted to see you. I was lying on the see-saw board, looking up through the leaves, and I suddenly got a fancy that you were here all by yourself, and that you didn"t like being all by yourself. _I_ feel like that sometimes. So I came to see you."
"Thank you, Beth," said Aunt Victoria, with her hand still on Beth"s head as if she were blessing her; and when she had spoken she looked up through the window, and silently thanked the Lord. This was the sign. He had committed Beth to her care and affection, and she was not to think of herself, but of the child, whose need was certainly the greater of the two.
"Have you nothing to do, Beth?" she said after a pause.
"No, Aunt Victoria," Beth answered drearily--"at least there are plenty of things I could do, but everything I think of makes me shudder. I feel so sometimes. Do you? There isn"t a single thing I want to do to-day. I"ve tried one thing after the other, but I can"t think about what I"m doing. Sometimes I like to sit still and do nothing; but to-day I don"t even like that. I think I should like to be asked to do something. If I could do something for you now--something to help you----"
"Well, you can, Beth," Aunt Victoria answered, after sitting rigidly upright for a moment, blinking rapidly. "Help me to unpick an old gown. I am going to make another like it, and want it unpicked for a pattern."
"Can you make a gown?" Beth asked in surprise.
Aunt Victoria smiled. Then she took down an old black gown that was hanging behind the door, and handed it to Beth with a pair of sharp scissors.
"I"ll undo the body part," Beth said, "and that will save your eyes. I don"t think this gown owes you much."
"I do not understand that expression, Beth," said Aunt Victoria.
"Don"t you," said Beth, working away with the scissors cheerfully.
"Harriet always says that, when she"s got all the good there is to be got out of anything--the dusters, you know, or the dishcloth. I once did a piece of unpicking like this for mamma, and she didn"t explain properly, or something--at all events, I took out a great deal too much, so she----"
"Don"t call your mamma "she." "She" is the cat."
"Mamma, then. Mamma beat me."
"Don"t say she beat you."
"I said mamma."
"Well, don"t talk about your mamma beating you. That is not a nice thing to talk about."
"It"s not a nice thing to do either," said Beth judicially. "And I never used to talk about it; didn"t like to, you know. But now she--mamma--doesn"t beat me any more--at least only sometimes when she forgets."
"Ah, then, you have been a better girl."
"No, not better--bigger. You see if I struck her back again she wouldn"t like it."
"Beth! Beth! strike your mother!"
"That was the danger," said Beth, in her slow, distinct, imperturbable way. "One day she made me so angry I very nearly struck her, and I told her so. That made her look queer, I can tell you. And she"s never struck me since--except in a half-hearted sort of way, or when she forgot, and that didn"t count, of course. But I think I know now how it was she used to beat me. I did just the same thing myself one day.
I beat Sammy----"
"Who is Sammy?" said Aunt Victoria, looking over her spectacles.
"Sammy Lee, you know."
Aunt Victoria recollected, and felt she should improve the occasion, but was at a loss for a moment what to say. She was anxious above everything that Beth should talk to her freely, for how could she help the child if she did not know all she had in her mind? It is upon the things they are never allowed to mention that children brood unwholesomely.
"I thought that you were not allowed to know Sammy Lee," she finally observed.
"No more I was," Beth answered casually.
"Yet you knew him all the same?" Aunt Victoria ventured reproachfully.
"Aunt Victoria," said Beth, "did the Lord die for Sammy?"
"Ye--yes," said Aunt Victoria, hesitating, not because she doubted the fact, but because she did not know what use Beth would make of it.
"Then why can"t _I_ know him?" Beth asked.
"Oh, be--because Sammy does not live as if he were grateful to the Lord."
"If he did, would he be a gentleman?" Beth asked.
"Yes," Aunt Victoria answered decidedly.
Beth stopped snipping, and looked at her as if she were looking right through her, and out into the world beyond. Then she pursed up her mouth and shook her head.