This was all rather gushing, but it did not offend Beth, because she a.s.sociated gush with Aunt Grace Mary, who had always been kind to her.

Gushing people are usually weak and amiable, gush being the ill-judged outcome of a desire to please; but at that happy age it was the amiable intention that Beth took into account. Her desire to be pleased, which had so seldom been gratified, had become a danger to her judgment by this time; it made her apt to respond to any attempt to please her without considering means and motives which should have discounted her appreciation. Everybody was trying to please her now, and all her being answered only too readily. She spent a delightful day at Fairholm, and went home in extravagantly high spirits.

Dr. Dan called early the next morning, and found her with her hat on, just going out.

"How are you this misty cold grey day?" he asked.

"Oh, very bright," she answered. "I feel as if I were the sun, and I'm just going to shine out on the world to enliven it."

"May I accompany you?" he asked.

"The sun, alas! is a solitary luminary," she answered, shaking her head.

"Then I shall hope for better luck next time," he said, and let her go alone.

In the evening he came in again to have a game of cribbage with Mrs.

Caldwell. Beth was sleepy and had gone to bed early. In the pauses of the game they talked about her, and the responsibilities of a family.

"A girl wants some one to look after her," the doctor said, "especially if she has money."

"Yes, indeed," Mrs. Caldwell replied, "girls are a great anxiety. Now a boy you can put into a profession and have done with it. But it is not so easy to find a suitable husband for a girl."

"But, of course, if she has a little money it makes a difference," he observed. "Only she should have some one to advise her in the spending of it. Now, Miss Beth, for instance, will be as much a child at twenty-one in money matters as she is now."

"I hope we shall find the right man for her before then," Mrs.

Caldwell answered archly; "not that I think her aunt's fortune will cause her much anxiety." She alluded to the smallness of the sum.

"She gets some of the interest, I suppose, to go on with," he said.

"Just enough to dress on."

Beth saw a great deal of Dr. Dan after that. She was not in the least in love with him, but they became intimate all the sooner on that account. A girl shrinks more shyly from a man she loves than from one for whom she has only a liking; in the one case every womanly instinct is on the alert, in the other her feeling is not strong enough to seem worth curbing. Beth was fond of men's companionship, and Dr. Dan's a.s.siduous attentions enlivened her, made her brain active, and brought the vision and the dream within reach; so that she moved in a happy light, but considered the source of it no more than she would have considered the stick that held the candle by which she read an entrancing book.

There are idyllic gleams in all interesting lives; but life as we live it from day to day is not idyllic. In Beth's case there was the inevitable friction, the shocks and jars of difficulties and disagreements with her mother. These had been suspended for a time after her return, but began to break out again, fomented very often by Bernadine, who was always her mother's favourite, but was never a pleasant child. Dr. Dan came one very wet day, and found Beth sitting in the drawing-room alone, looking miserable. She had done all her little self-imposed tasks honestly, but had reaped no reward. On the contrary, there had come upon her a dreadful vision of herself doing that sort of thing on always into old age, as Aunt Victoria did her French, with no object, and to no purpose; and for the first time she formulated a feeling that had gradually been growing up in her of late: "I must have more of a life than this." What could she do, however, tied to that stupid place, without a suspicion as yet that she had it in her to do anything special, and without friends to help her, with no one to advise. As she reflected, the hopelessness of it all wrung from her some of the bitterest tears she ever shed. If her mother would only send her back to Miss Blackburne she would be learning something, at all events; but, although Mrs. Caldwell had said nothing definite on the subject, Beth was pretty certain by this time that she did not mean to let her return to school.

Beth was in the middle of this misery when Dr. Dan arrived.

"How's this?" he said, "Down? You should have the window open. It's not cold to-day, though it's wet; and the room is quite stuffy. Never be afraid of fresh air, you know."

"I'm not," Beth said. "I didn't know the window was shut. Open it as wide as you like--the wider the better for me."

"That's better," he said, as the fresh air flowed in. "It's singular how women will shut themselves up. No wonder they get out of spirits!

Now, I never let myself run down. When one thing goes wrong, I just take up another, and don't bother. You'd think I wasn't having much of a time here; but I'm as happy as the day is long, and I want to see you the same." He sat down beside her on the old-fashioned sofa, took her hand, and began to stroke it gently. "Cheer up, little girl," he added. "I believe you've been crying. Aren't they kind to you?"

"Oh yes, they're kind enough," Beth answered, soothed by the caress; "at least they mean to be. The misery is in myself. I feel all dissatisfied."

"Not when I'm with you, do you?" he asked reproachfully.

"No, I don't bother about myself when I have you to talk to," Beth answered. "You come in fresh, and give me something else to think about."

"Then, look here, Beth," he said, putting his arm round her. "I don't think I can do better than take you away with me. You've a head on your shoulders, and an original way with you that would be sure to bring people about the house, and you're well connected and look it;--all of which would be good for my practice. Besides, a young doctor must marry. I'm over thirty, though you might not think it.

Come, what do you say? You'd have a very good time of it as my wife, I can tell you. All your own way, and no nagging. You know what _I_ am, a cheery fellow, never put out by anything. Now, what do you say?"

"Are you asking me to marry you?" said Beth, breaking into a smile.

The position struck her as comical rather than serious.

"Why, what else?" he replied, smiling also. "I see you are recovering your spirits. You'll be as happy as the day is long when we're married. You'd never get on with anybody else as you'd do with me. I don't think anybody else would understand you."

Beth laughed. She liked him, and she liked to be caressed. Why not marry him and be independent of every one? She hadn't the slightest objection at the moment; far from it, for she saw in the offer the one means of escape she was likely to have from the long dull dreary days, and the loneliness, which was all the life she could have to look forward to when he had gone. And he was good-looking, too, and nice--everybody said so. Besides, they would all be pleased if she accepted him, her mother especially so. Now that she came to think of it, she perceived that this was what they had been suggesting to her ever since her return.

"It is settled then?" he said, stooping forward to look into her face.

She looked at him shyly and laughed again. For the life of her she could not keep her countenance, although she felt she was behaving in the silly, giggling-girl sort of way she so much despised.

"That's all right," he exclaimed, looking extremely well pleased; and at that moment Mrs. Caldwell walked into the room, just in time to witness a lover-like caress. Beth jumped up, covered with confusion.

Mrs. Caldwell looked from one to the other, and waited for an explanation.

"We've just come to the conclusion that we cannot live apart," Dan said deliberately, rising at the same time and taking Beth's hand.

"My dear child!" Mrs. Caldwell exclaimed, embracing Beth with happy tears in her eyes. "This _is_ a joy! I _do_ congratulate you."

Beth became suddenly serious. The aspect of the affair had changed. It was no longer a game of the moment, but a settled business, already irrevocable. She wanted to explain that she had not actually pledged herself, that she must take time to consider; but her heart failed her in view of her mother's delight. It was Beth's great weakness that, as a rule, she could neither spoil pleasure nor give pain to save herself in an emergency.

CHAPTER x.x.xVI

When Dan came to see her the next morning, he found her in a mixed mood. Half-a-dozen times during the night she had declined to marry him in a painful scene, but just as often her imagination would run on into the unknown life she would have to lead with him. She saw herself in white satin and lace and pearls, a slender figure at the head of a long dining-table, interesting to everybody, and Dan was at the foot, looking quite distinguished in evening dress, with his glossy black hair and wonderful clear skin. She had gathered the nicest people in the neighbourhood about her, and on her right there was a shadowy person, a man of mark, and knightly, who delighted in her conversation.

When she came downstairs to receive Dan she was coughing, and he showed his devotion by being greatly concerned about her health. He said she must have port wine and a tonic, and be out in the air as much as possible, and suggested that they should go for a walk at once as it was a lovely day, though still wet under foot.

"I would not ask you to walk if I had a carriage to offer you," he said, "for I hate to see a delicate lady on foot in the mud. But you shall have your carriage yet, please G.o.d, all in good time!"

"Where shall we go?" said Beth when they left the house.

"Oh, anywhere," he answered. "Take me to one of your own favourite haunts."

She thought of the Fairholm cliffs for a moment, but felt that they were sacred to many recollections with which she would not care to a.s.sociate this new experience. "I'll show you the chalybeate spring,"

she said.

They turned out of Orchard Street, and went down the hill to the Beck, a broad, clear, shallow rivulet, that came round a sharp green curve between high banks, well wooded with old trees, all in their heavy, dark-green, summer foliage. As they crossed the rustic wooden bridge Beth paused a little to look up at the trees and love them, and down into the clear water at the scarlet sticklebacks heading up stream.

Her companion looked at her in surprise when she stopped, and then followed the direction of her eyes. All he saw, however, was a shallow stream, a green bank, and some trees.

"This is not very interesting," he observed.

Beth made no reply, but led the way up the hill on the other side, and, to the right, pa.s.sed a row of cottages with long gardens at the back running down to the brow of the bank that overhung the Beck. In most of these cottages she was an object of suspicion because of her uncanny words and ways, and she knew it, and the thought of it was a grief to her. She wanted the people to like her as she would have liked them had they let her. The wish to win them fired her imagination. She looked on ahead into futurity, and was a beautiful lady, driving a pair of ponies down a wooded lane, with a carriage full of good things for the cottagers, and they all loved her, and were very glad to see her.

"What are you thinking about?" Dan asked.