"For I rather like ye, Miss Beth Caldwell," she said. "You"re not a sycophant, whatever else ye are. They"ve not been able to do much wi"
ye in regard to yer work in the rest of the school, but ye"ve done well under me, and I"ll let ye have yer chance to distinguish yerself before ye go."
"Oh, but do you think I can do it?" Beth exclaimed.
"Ye can do anything ye set yerself to do, Beth Caldwell," Old Tom shouted at her.
Beth set herself accordingly, and when the day came she led the solo and duet with the precision of a musical box, but with such an expenditure of nerve-power that she was prostrated by the effort. She was considered quite a musician at St. Catherine"s, but by this time the dire method of teaching had had its effect. Her confidence and her memory for music were gone, the beauty of her touch spoilt, and the further development of her talent effectually checked.
She did not go home for the holidays. Miss Clifford had advised, Lady Benyon approved, and Mrs. Caldwell decided, that she should be sent direct to a finishing school in London, and when St. Catherine"s broke up, Miss Bey, who happened to be going that way, good-naturedly undertook to see Beth safely to her destination.
Miss Clifford held Beth"s hand long, and gazed into her face earnestly when she took leave of her. "I shall hear of you again," she said, "and I pray G.o.d it may be good news; but it depends upon yourself, Beth. We are free agents. Good-bye, my dear child, and G.o.d bless you."
Beth had been eighteen intolerable months at the school, and had been exceedingly miserable most of the time, yet she left it with tears in her eyes, melted and surprised by the kindest farewells from every one. It had never dawned upon her until that moment that she was really very much liked.
Her new school was a large house in a long wide street of houses, all exactly alike. When she arrived with Miss Bey, they were shown into a deliciously cool shady drawing-room, charmingly furnished, and the effect upon Beth, after the graceless bareness of St. Catherine"s, was altogether rea.s.suring.
In front of the fireplace, which was hidden by ferns and flowering plants, a slender girl, with thick dark hair down her back, was lying on the white woolly hearthrug, reading. She got up to greet the visitors without embarra.s.sment, still holding her book in her hand.
"Miss Blackburne will be here directly," she said. "Will you sit down?" Then there was a little pause, which Miss Bey broke by asking in her magisterial way, "What is that you are reading, my dear?"
"The Idylls of the King," the girl answered.
Miss Bey"s nostrils flapped.
"Is it not rather advanced for you, my dear?" she said. "We do not allow it at all, even to our first-cla.s.s girls."
"Oh, Miss Blackburne likes us to read it," was the easy answer. "She says that Tennyson and all the good modern writers are a part of our education."
"Thank goodness!" Beth e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed fervently. "At St. Catherine"s our minds were starved on books suited to the capacity of infants and imbeciles."
"I should think, Beth, you are hardly old enough or educated enough to be a judge of literature as yet," Miss Bey said severely.
"Nor do I pretend to be a judge. How can I know anything of literature when literature is unknown at St. Catherine"s? But I should think babes and sucklings would be wise enough to object to the silly trash we had instead of literature."
Beth spoke emphatically, shaking herself free of the restrictions of the Royal Service School for Officers" Daughters once for all.
Miss Blackburne came in while she was speaking, and smiled.
"I like to hear a girl express an opinion," she said. "She may be quite wrong, but she must have some mind if she attempts to think for herself at all; and mind is material to work upon."
"I"m afraid _I_ haven"t much mind," Beth said, sighing, "or manner either."
Miss Blackburne smiled again, and looked at Miss Bey; but Miss Bey supported Beth in her self-depreciation by preserving an ominous silence.
"This is one of your new school-fellows," Miss Blackburne said to Beth; "let me introduce you to each other. Clara Herring, Beth Caldwell."
When Miss Bey took her leave, Miss Blackburne left the room with her, and immediately afterwards another girl came in, clapping her hands.
"Oh, I say!" she exclaimed, "Signor Caponi _is_ a dear! He has the nicest chocolate eyes, and he says my Italian is wonderful! Now I"ve done all my work for to-day."
"Have you?" said Beth. "Why, it isn"t five o"clock yet!"
"Miss Blackburne won"t let us work long hours," the girl rejoined.
"She says it destroys our freshness. But let us know each other"s names. I am Geraldine Tressillion. Good name for a novel, isn"t it?"
and she clapped her little white hands and laughed again.
"That"s just what you"re made to be--the heroine of a novel," Clara Herring observed, looking at her admiringly. "I always think of you when I come across a gay one, with golden hair and blue eyes."
"I have my good points, I know," Geraldine rejoined. "But how about my hips? Too high, alas!"
"Oh, that won"t show much while you"re slight," said Clara, looking at her critically.
"Well, I"ll make haste and marry me before I"m afflicted with flesh, as I"m sure to become. For I deny myself nothing--I live to eat,"
Geraldine rattled on cheerfully. "One can"t get very fat before one comes out; and I hate a thin dowager. I"m engaged already, you know, but I don"t like the man much--don"t like him at all, in fact; and my sister says I can do better. She"s been married a year, and has a baby. She told me all about it. Mamma imagines we"re all innocent. A lady implored her to tell my sister things before she married, but she said she really could not speak to an innocent girl on such a subject.
I don"t believe she was ever so innocent herself. A grown girl can"t be innocent unless she"s a fool; but anyway, it"s the right pose to pretend. You"ve got to play the silly fool to please a man; then he feels superior."
"But it"s hypocritical," said Beth.
"Yes, my dear. But you must be hypocritical if you want to be a man"s ideal of a woman. You must know nothing, do nothing, see nothing, but just what suits his pleasure and convenience; and in order to answer to his requirements you must be either a hypocrite, or a blind worm without eyes or intelligence. Men don"t like innocence because it"s holy, but because it whets their appet.i.tes, my sister says, and if they"re deceived it serves them right. They work the world for their own pleasure, not ours; and we must look out for ourselves. If we want money, liberty, devotion, admiration, and any other luxury, we must pretend. Don"t you see?"
"I don"t know," Beth rejoined. "But, personally, I shall never pretend anything."
"Then you will suffer for your sincerity," Geraldine rejoined.
Beth shrugged her shoulders. The turn the conversation had taken was distasteful to her, and she would not pursue it.
There was a pause, then Clara observed sententiously:
"Innocence is not impossible, Geraldine. Surely Adelaide is innocent enough."
"I said innocence and intelligence were incompatible," Geraldine answered. "You don"t call Adelaide intelligent, do you?"
"Who is Adelaide?" Beth asked.
"The daughter of a Roman Catholic peer," Geraldine replied. "She is eighteen, and her mind is absolutely undeveloped. We think she"s in training for a convent, and that"s why they don"t let her learn much.
Miss Ella Blackburne is a Roman Catholic, and so also is Adelaide"s maid; They trot her round to all the observances of her Church regularly, and in the intervals she plays with the kitten. I don"t know why she should have been sent here at all, for this is a regular forcing-house for the marriage market. Miss Blackburne expects all her girls to marry well, and they generally do. I should think, Miss Beth, she will be able to make something of you with those eyes!"
"Look at its neck and shoulders, too, and the way its head is set on them!" Clara exclaimed.
"Not to mention its hands and its complexion!" Geraldine supplemented.
"But its voice alone--_soft, gentle, and low_--would get it into the peerage!"
Beth, unused to be appraised in this way, blushed and smiled, rather pleased, but confused.
"How many girls are there here?" she asked, to change the subject.
"Six boarders till you came, but now we are seven," Clara answered.
"There are some day-girls too, but they are children, and don"t count.