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Updated: June 13, 2025
Miss Deeble marched her downstairs to an empty kitchen, and left her sitting on a stool in the middle of it with an A B C in her hand. But Beth took no interest in the alphabet in those days, and hunted black-beetles with the bellows instead of learning it. The hearthstone was the place of execution. When she found a beetle, she would blow him along to it with the bellows, and there despatch him.
Her brows were wide, her eyes brown and steady, nose and lips sensitive. She had a way of throwing back her head and pointing her chin fearlessly, as though in perpetual declaration that she cared not a hang either for black-beetles or Germans. And she was straight as a dart, with the figure of a young Diana Diana before she began to worry her head about beauty competitions.
Long afterwards she was trying some waltzes of Chopin's, and came upon one with which she was quite familiar. She knew that she had heard it all, over and over again, but could not think when or where. Presently, however, as she played it, she perceived a smell of black-beetles, and instantly she was back in that disused kitchen of Miss Deeble's, listening to the practising overhead.
"Imagine yourself in the garret, acting to the rats." He vanished. The curtain drew up shrivelled to the ceiling: the bright lights, the long room, the gay throng, burst upon us. I thought of the black-beetles, the old boxes, the worm-eaten bureau. I said my say badly; but I said it.
"Thanks, I dined on the way up in a twilit refreshment-room, with one waiter and a number of attendant black-beetles." Things were going worse and worse. Sir John smiled, and he was still smiling when the man brought in coffee. "Yes," he said conversationally, "for speed combined with discomfort I suppose we can hold up heads against any country.
So certain was I of this, that I had descended the stairs, gun in hand, only to find the doors and windows securely fastened, and the mice and black-beetles in sole possession of the floor. This was certainly not sufficient to account for the strength of my feelings.
"Last night they came into the parlour. Of course, in a night or two, they'll walk up into the bedroom. They'll be here regiments of 'em on the quilt. But what do you care? Nothing of the sort ever touches you: but you know how they come to me; and that's why you're so quiet. A pleasant thing to have black-beetles in one's bed! "A pretty matter, indeed, to have poison in the house!
I suppose I'm to be mistress of my own house? If not, I'd better leave it. "And the very first night we were here, you know it, the black- beetles came into the kitchen. If the place didn't seem spread all over with a black cloth, I'm a story-teller. What are you coughing at, Mr. Caudle? I see nothing to cough at. But that's just your way of sneering. Millions of black-beetles!
But a second cousin, who had travelled as far as Covent Garden, and who lived for many years in a London kitchen, told me that he thought my uncle was wrong, and that man comes out and feeds at night. He said he knew of at least one house in which the crickets and black-beetles never got a quiet kitchen to themselves till it was nearly morning.
As the opening of the shutters gave light, enormous black-beetles which seemed to Stephen as large as pigeon's eggs, crawled out from cracks between wall and floor, stumbling awkwardly about, and falling over each other. It was a disgusting sight, and did not increase the visitors' desire to accept the Caïd's hospitality for any length of time. It may be that he had thought of this.
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