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Page 1
CHAPTER V.
"For I Love You, Beth" 47
CHAPTER VI.
'Varsity 55
CHAPTER VII.
Ended 64
CHAPTER VIII.
The Heavenly Canaan 78
CHAPTER IX.
'Varsity Again 95
CHAPTER X.
Death 113
CHAPTER XI.
Love 124
CHAPTER XII.
Farewell 137
BETH WOODBURN.
CHAPTER I.
_BETH AT EIGHTEEN._
In the good old county of Norfolk, close to the shore of Lake Erie, lies
the pretty village of Briarsfield. A village I call it, though in truth
it has now advanced almost to the size and dignity of a town. Here, on
the brow of the hill to the north of the village (rather a retired spot,
one would say, for so busy a man), at the time of which my story treats,
stood the residence of Dr. Woodburn.
It was a long, old-fashioned rough-cast house facing the east, with
great wide windows on each side of the door and a veranda all the way
across the front. The big lawn was quite uneven, and broken here and
there by birch trees, spruces, and crazy clumps of rose-bushes, all in
bloom. Altogether it was a sweet, home-like old place. The view to the
south showed, over the village roofs on the hill-side, the blue of Lake
Erie outlined against the sky, while to the north stretched the open,
undulating country, so often seen in Western Ontario.
One warm June afternoon Beth, the doctor's only daughter, was lounging
in an attitude more careless than graceful under a birch tree. She, her
father and Mrs. Margin, the housekeeper--familiarly known as Aunt
Prudence--formed the whole household. Beth was a little above the
average height, a girlish figure, with a trifle of that awkwardness one
sometimes meets in an immature girl of eighteen; a face, not what most
people would call pretty, but still having a fair share of beauty. Her
features were, perhaps, a little too strongly outlined, but the brow was
fair as a lily, and from it the great mass of dark hair was drawn back
in a pleasing way. But her eyes--those earnest, grey eyes--were the most
impressive of all in her unusually impressive face. They were such
searching eyes, as though she had stood on the brink scanning the very
Infinite, and yet with a certain baffled look in them as of one who had
gazed far out, but failed to pierce the gloom--a beaten, longing look.
But a careless observer might have dwelt longer on the affectionate
expression about her lips--a half-childish, half-womanly tenderness.
Beth was in one of her dreamy moods that afternoon. She was gazing away
towards the north, her favorite view. She sometimes said it was prettier
than the lake view. The hill on which their house stood sloped abruptly
down, and a meadow, pink with clover, stretched far away to rise again
in a smaller hill skirted with a bluish line of pines. There was a
single cottage on the opposite side of the meadow, with white blinds and
a row of sun-flowers along the wall; but Beth was not absorbed in the
view, and gave no heed to the book beside her. She was dreaming. She had
just been reading the life of George Eliot, her favorite author, and the
book lay open at her picture. She had begun to love George Eliot like a
personal friend; she was her ideal, her model, for Beth had some repute
as a literary character in Briarsfield. Not a teacher in the village
school but had marked her strong literary powers, and she was not at all
slow to believe all the hopeful compliments paid her. From a child her
stories had filled columns in the Briarsfield _Echo_, and now she was
eighteen she told herself she was ready to reach out into the great
literary world--a nestling longing to soar. Yes, she would be
famous--Beth Woodburn, of Briarsfield. She was sure of it. She would
write novels; oh, such grand novels! She would drink from the very
depths of nature and human life. The stars, the daisies, sunsets,
rippling waters, love and sorrow, and all the infinite chords that
vibrate in the human soul--she would weave them all with warp of gold.
Oh, the world would see what was in her soul! She would be the bright
particular star of Canadian literature; and then wealth would flow in,
too, and she would fix up the old home. Dear old "daddy" should retire
and have everything he wanted: and Aunt Prudence, on sweeping days,
wouldn't mind moving "the trash," as she called her manuscripts. Daddy
wouldn't make her go to bed at ten o'clock then; she would write all
night if she choose; she would have a little room on purpose, and
visitors at Briarsfield would pass by the old rough-cast house and point
it out as Beth Woodburn's home, and--well, this is enough for a sample
of Beth's daydreams. They were very exaggerated, perhaps, and a little
selfish, too; but she was not a fully-developed woman yet, and the years
were to bring sweeter fruit. She had, undoubtedly, the soul of genius,
but genius takes years to unfold itself.
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