"But you cannot be happy always alone like that," Miss Clifford observed.
Beth was silent.
Miss Clifford looked at her earnestly for a little, then she shook her head.
"I tell you what I will do if you like, Miss Clifford," Beth said upon reflection. "I will form a family of my own."
Miss Clifford smiled. "Ah! I see you are ambitious," she said, "but, my dear child, a sixth girl can"t expect to have that kind of influence."
"It is not ambition," Beth answered, "for I shall feel it no distinction, only a great bother. Nevertheless, I will do it to show you that I am not shunned; and to please you, as you do not like me to wander alone."
A week or two later Beth appeared in the garden with six of the worst girls in the school clinging to her, fascinated by her marvellous talk.
Miss Clifford sent for her again. "I am sorry to see you in such company," she said. "Those girls are all older than you are, and they will lead you into mischief."
"On the contrary, Miss Clifford," Beth replied, "I shall keep them out of mischief. Not one of them has had a bad mark this week."
Then Miss Clifford sent for Miss Smallwood, the mistress of the sixth.
"What do you make of Beth Caldwell?" she asked.
"I can"t make anything of her," Miss Smallwood answered. "I think she tries, but she does not seem able to keep up with the other girls at all. She seldom knows a lesson or does a sum correctly. I sometimes think she ought to be in the eighth. But then occasionally she shows a knowledge far beyond her years; not a knowledge of school work, but of books and life."
"How about her themes?"
"I don"t know what to think of them; they are too good. But she declares emphatically that she does them all out of her own head."
"What sort of temper has she?"
"Queer, like everything else about her. Not unamiable, you know, but irritable at times, and she has days of deep depression, and moments of extreme elation."
"Ah!" Miss Clifford e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed, and then reflected a little. "Well, be patient with her," she said at last. "If she hasn"t exceptional ability of some kind, I am no judge of girls; but she is evidently unaccustomed to school work, and is suffering from the routine and restraint, after being allowed to run wild. She should have been sent here years ago."
CHAPTER x.x.xI
From the foregoing it will be seen that Beth made her mark upon the school from the day of her arrival in the way of getting herself observed and talked about. She was set down as queer to begin with, and when lessons began both girls and mistresses decided that she was stupid; and queer she remained to the end in the estimation of those who had no better word to express it, but with regard to her stupidity there soon began to be differences of opinion.
At preparation one evening she talked instead of doing her work, and gradually all the girls about her had stopped to listen.
"Gracious!" Beth exclaimed at last, "the bell will go directly, and I"ve not done a sum. Show me how to work them, Rosa."
"Oh, bother!" Rosa rejoined. "Find out for yourself! My theme was turned, and I"ve got to do it again."
"Look here," said Beth, "if you"ll do my sums, I"ll do your theme now, and your thorough ba.s.s on Thursday."
"I wish to goodness you wouldn"t talk, Beth!" Agnes Stewart exclaimed.
"We shall all get bad marks to-morrow."
"Then why do you listen?" Beth retorted.
"I can"t help it," Agnes grumbled. "You fascinate me. I should have thought you were clever if I had only heard you talk, and not known what a duffer you are at your lessons."
"Well, she"s not a duffer at thorough ba.s.s anyway," Rosa put in. "She only began this term, and she"s a long way ahead even of some of the first. Old Tom"s given her a little book to herself."
"I began thorough ba.s.s with the rest of you," Beth observed. "It"s the only thing we started fair in. You are years ahead of me in all the other work."
The girls reflected upon this for a little.
"And you can write themes," Rosa finally a.s.severated.
"Oh, that"s nothing," Beth protested. "Themes are easy enough. I could write them for the whole school."
"Well, that"s no reason why you should put your nose in your cup every time you drink," Lucy Black, the sharpest shrimp of a girl in the cla.s.s, said, grinning.
"I never did such a thing in my life," Beth exclaimed, turning crimson. "You"ll say I eat audibly next."
"No, you don"t do that," Rosa said solemnly; "but you do put your nose in your cup."
The colour flickered on Beth"s sensitive cheek, and she shrank into herself.
"There, don"t tease her!" Mary Wright, the eldest, stupidest, and most motherly girl in the school, exclaimed. "How can you drink without putting your nose in your cup, stupid?"
Then Beth saw it and smiled, greatly relieved. This venerable pleasantry was a sign that she had been taken once for all into the good graces of her schoolmates. The girls who were liked were usually nicknamed and always chaffed; the rest were treated with different degrees of politeness, the dockyard girls, as the lowest of all, being called miss, even by the teachers.
On Thursday evenings the girls in the fifth and sixth were allowed to do fancy work for an hour while a story-book was read aloud to them, either by Miss Smallwood or one of themselves when her voice was tired. The book was always either childish or dull, generally both, and Beth, who had been accustomed to Scott, d.i.c.kens, and Thackeray, grew restive under the infliction. One evening when she had twice been reprimanded for yawning aggressively, she exclaimed, "Well, Miss Smallwood, it is such silly stuff! Why, I could tell you a better story myself, and make it up as I go on."
"Then begin at once and tell it," said Miss Smallwood, glancing round at the girls, who smiled derisively, thinking that Beth would have to excuse herself and thereby tacitly acknowledge that she had been boasting. To their surprise, however, Beth took the request seriously, settled herself in her chair, folded her hands, and, with her eyes roaming about the room as if she were picking up the details from the walls, the floor, the ceiling, and all it contained, started without hesitation. It was the romantic story of a haunted house on a great rocky promontory, and the freshness and sound of the sea pervaded it.
The girls went on with their work for a little, but by degrees first one and then another stopped, and just sat staring at Beth, while gravity settled on every face as the interest deepened.
Suddenly the bell rang, and the story was not finished.
"Oh dear!" Miss Smallwood exclaimed, "it is very fascinating, Beth; but I really am afraid I ought not to have allowed you to tell it. I had no idea--I must speak to Miss Clifford."
The fame of this wonderful story spread through the school, and the next half-holiday the first-cla.s.s girls sent to ask Beth to go to their room and repeat it; but Beth was not in the mood, and answered their messenger tragically:--
""Twas not for this I left my father"s home!
Go, tell your cla.s.s, that Vashti will not come."
"Vashti"s a little beast, I think," the head girl observed when the message was delivered.
Miss Clifford also sent for Beth, and requested her to repeat the story, that she might judge for herself if she should be allowed to go on with it; and Beth repeated it, being constrained; but the recital was so wearisome that Miss Clifford dismissed her before she was half-way through, with leave to finish it if anybody cared to hear it.
When Thursday came, the girls and Miss Smallwood cared very much to hear it, and Beth, stimulated by their clamours, went on without a break for the whole hour, and ended with a description of a shipwreck, which was so vivid that the whole cla.s.s was shaken with awe, and sat silent for a perceptible time after she stopped.
Beth could rarely be persuaded to repeat this performance; but from that time her standing was unique, both with girls and mistresses, a fact, however, of which she herself was totally unaware. She felt her backwardness in school work and nothing else, and pet.i.tioned G.o.d incessantly to help her with her lessons, and get her put up; and put up she was regularly until she reached the third, when she was among the elder girls. She was never able to do the work properly of any cla.s.s she was in, however, and her cla.s.s mistresses were always against her being put up, but Miss Clifford insisted on it.