Chapter XVI: Plain, Yet Beautiful

"WHY did you not go to the concert this evening?" asked Hester, not very prudently, when matters had advanced thus far, and Beryl had been talking freely of her five years' schooling.

"Aunt Diana said it was of no use, because I am not musical."

"Don't you care for music?"

"I like it sometimes. I mean I like some tunes,—'Bonny Dundee,' and 'Cherry Ripe,' and that sort of thing. And I 'do' think the 'Battle of Prague' really beautiful, only they say that is bad taste."

"Bravo!" said Miss Carmichael. "I do like honesty in any case."

"Ninety-nine people in a hundred would have bad taste, if they did not submissively like exactly what they are told to like," said Hester.

"Then don't you care for music either?" asked Beryl hopefully of Miss Carmichael.

"Yes; I care for it. I have been trained to love music of a kind which perhaps you would not admire at all, and I think the taste is inborn too. And I am afraid I don't much like the 'Battle of Prague.' But, my dear, I do like to hear you speak the honest truth, and not pretend to have a taste which God has not given you,—or which perhaps is only lying dormant, and wanting cultivation."

"Then you would not have cared really for the concert this evening?" said Hester.

"I should have liked to go. I wanted it very much," said Beryl. "Some of the tunes might have been nice, and I should have liked to see the people."

"Honest again," said Miss Carmichael. "I wonder how many who go would care to go if they could 'not' see the people—if they had to sit in curtained recesses, and 'only' enjoy the music."

"I should like that. I could have a private little cry, so nicely, at the touching bits," declared Hester, with a blush.

"And yet it is natural for human beings to enjoy things in company," said Miss Carmichael. "There is immense power in sympathy, in the sort of electric sympathy which runs through even a crowd of strangers. We can't unhumanise human nature. Best to take things and people as they are. I should not like at all when I go to church to be shut up in a box apart from everybody. I like to 'see' as well as to hear that we are all worshipping together."

"Pearl did not want to go to-night," said Beryl, after a pause, not able to respond to all this. "She did not like the feeling of it, with Ivor so ill; but Aunt Di said it would do her good, because she is so low and depressed."

"Your sister looks low," assented Hester. "Who is Ivor?"

"Escott and Ivor are our cousins—at least they would be our cousins if Aunt Di were really our aunt," said Beryl, not very lucidly. "Their mother is Aunt Di's sister, Mrs. Cumming,—and she lives with her uncle, Mr. Crosbie."

"Any relation to Miss Crosbie opposite?" asked Hester.

"Yes, she is Aunt Di's and Mrs. Cumming's sister," said Beryl. "Mrs. Cumming is a widow, and she has these two sons, nearly twenty years old now. I like Escott, but I don't think I care for Ivor. Other people do, though."

"And he is ill?" asked Hester.

"He and Pearl went for a long walk at Weston, and he tried to leap a high gate to get a flower for Pearl, and he caught his feet in the top rung and fell over. He hurt himself dreadfully—a sort of internal strain, I believe. They don't seem to expect he will get over it for a long while. The doctor thought he could not live through the first night, but he did, and there has been another doctor down from London. He thinks Ivor may perhaps get better, but nobody can tell yet."

"Bad," said Miss Carmichael, drawing her lips together. "Poor young fellow. He is at Weston, of course."

"Yes; at least very near Weston, not in it. He was carried to a gentleman's house, not far from where the accident happened. The gentleman and his family were away, but they have been very kind. He wrote to Mrs. Cumming that she must not think of moving Ivor, until the doctors should say it was quite safe; and I don't know when that will be. The accounts of him haven't been so good to-day and yesterday. At all events, he couldn't possibly be moved yet. Aunt Di would not stay in Weston more than four nights after Ivor was hurt. Pearl cried and fretted so that Aunt Di said she would make herself ill, and she thought we had much better come home. And Mr. Crosbie and Escott wanted very much to go to some lodgings in Kewstoke, so as to be near Ivor. I wished they would ask me to stay, but I suppose I couldn't really have been a help."

"It is a sad thing for the poor mother," Miss Carmichael said feelingly.

"Yes, and Ivor has always been the strong one. Escott is often ill, but Ivor is always well. I mean, he has been until now. And he doesn't care for books, so it will be worse for him than for Escott."

"Is Mrs. Cumming like Mrs. Fenwick?" inquired Hester.

"O no," Beryl answered, with unusual warmth. "Not the very least. She is like nobody that I ever saw. She is so beautiful and good that one feels quite afraid of her. It never seems as if I could say 'anything' to her, as I could perhaps to some people."

"Is that the usual effect of beauty and goodness upon you, my dear?" asked Miss Carmichael, with just a touch of sadness in her tone. For she knew—how could she help knowing?—that she had been a "plain" woman all her life through, according to certain ordinary ideas of plainness, and she had never attempted to disguise the fact from herself. It had been something of a life-trial to her, bravely accepted. And she did not know—how could she?—of the genuine positive beauty which was in her face, shining through from below.

"I don't know," Beryl said slowly, in her staid fashion. "I think I feel that with Mrs. Cumming. If I were like Pearl, I suppose I should not. But I am so different. If I were pretty, instead of ugly—"

"I don't believe in ugliness," broke in Hester impetuously, with flushing cheeks and kindling eyes. "In ugliness of that sort, I mean. I never saw the face yet that couldn't look pretty under certain conditions,—except a bad face. And the ugliest and wickedest face I ever saw was that of a particularly handsome man. It isn't a mere question of features. If there is a beautiful mind, the face must have beauty. I don't believe in the sort of nonsense that people talk about looks."

Beryl gazed hard, astonished at Hester's extreme warmth, and then she noticed Miss Carmichael's smile.

"The child is doing her best to comfort her old friend for not being a beautiful woman," Miss Carmichael said. "But don't distress yourself for me, Emmie darling. I have never expected admiration, for I have always known it could not be mine."

"It 'is' yours," said Hester, with a sob, and she knelt down beside Miss Carmichael, and looked up with eyes overflowing. "It is yours. I don't care who doesn't agree with me. I admire you with my whole heart, and you are beautiful—lovely—to me. I'm not flattering you, and you know it. The look in your eyes, and your dear bright smile, are lovely. Do you think I don't mean what I say?" And finishing off with a passionate kiss, Hester sprang up, and ran out of the room.

"My little Hettie is excited on the subject," Miss Carmichael said. "But her loving heart cannot do away with the truth. Will it be any comfort to you, my dear, to know that my lack of good looks has not lost me friends and loving-kindness and happiness, all through life?"

"Miss Wyatt is very fond of you," said Beryl. "But people don't care for me."

"Why not?"

"I don't know." Beryl hesitated, but her reserve was not proof against Miss Carmichael's thawing influence. "I thought it was 'that,'" she said. "I thought that if I were like Pearl, people would take to me, of course."

"If you were like Pearl, people in general might run after you more. But being run after for a pretty face does not mean being loved."

"But people do love Pearl, and they don't care for me," said Beryl, finding it a relief to unburden her mind to one who could, at least in some measure, feel with her. "I heard an old servant say of me once, when I was a child, that nobody ever could care for me, because I was so ugly and disagreeable. And I suppose it is true. I never expect anything else now."

Miss Carmichael sat looking at her.

"You may have been disagreeable as a child," she said. "I do not find you so now,—only I should like to unbend you a little. It was a wrong thing for a child ever to hear said. Has your life since been embittered by those words?"

"I don't know. I couldn't forget them, of course," said Beryl slowly.

"Have you kept them in mind, and allowed them to sour your intercourse with others?"

"I don't know," she repeated, and then she suddenly found herself in danger of following Hester's example. "I couldn't help it. I used to be very miserable, for a long long while. And then I thought it was no good to mind, and I settled that I would just keep to myself, and let other people alone, and be brave and not care."

"And shut up your heart against the many who would willingly enter it. Poor child!"

"There hasn't been—anybody," said Beryl.

"No one who ever could have loved you? How can you tell?"

"Except Mademoiselle at school. She said she would be my friend, and she gave me a ring, and I wrote to her and she never answered me. People are all alike."

"I would trust Mademoiselle a little longer. There may be unknown causes for the delay. People all alike! Nay, my dear, you don't know much yet about human nature."

"They are all alike to me," said Beryl. "And I don't care to have friends who only just become friends because they are sorry for me. If people don't really like me for myself, I would much rather be left alone."

"You are not like me there. If people are kind and loving, I don't pretend to get to the bottom of their motives. It is a hopeless task. I never yet succeeded in getting to the bottom of my own."

Then she rose, crossed over, and placed a hand on each of Beryl's shoulders.

"Hester and I will try not to be sorry for you," she said. "Look up at me, Beryl. We should be sorry for most people who feel as you feel, but you are of too independent a spirit to want pity, so we will offer none. Still, do you not think you would like to have a little love from us?"

Beryl looked up, as directed,—composedly at first, but a changed expression came soon. Her mood melted, and her eyes filled.

Miss Carmichael bent down and kissed her forehead.

"It is no such hard task," she said. "There is plenty of lovable stuff below, my dear, if you don't smother it up. Now mind, there is to be no steeling of your little heart against us. You are to be at home here, and to run in whenever you feel lonely. You understand? I hear Hettie coming, and you may go into the conservatory and gather some cherry-pie for yourself. People who don't like to be pitied, don't like to be caught crying, I know. Run, my dear, and you will come back all right."