The Privet Hedge Part 10

He remained obstinately seated on the canvas chair, his legs stretched out before him. "What's the use? When we've just paid twopence each for our chairs? They'll be snapped up in a minute and we shan't get any when we come back."

"All right. You stop where you are," said Caroline, walking away.

He let her go until she reached the exit that led towards the cliff top, then reluctantly rose from his seat and with long strides caught her up. "Oh, don't you come if you don't want to. I'm all right," she said over her shoulder.

"Don't be soft. People would think we'd quarrelled," said Wilf.

"Let them think, then," said Caroline.

"Oh, that's it, is it?" He stood still. "I can go back if you don't want me, you know. I'm not one to force myself on anybody."

"All right. Go back." They stood on the cliff beyond the promenade peering into each other's angry faces, in the translucent dusk reflected from the great expanse of sky and sea.

"You mean that?"

"Yes, I do."

"You want things to come to an end between us?"

"I'm not particular." She paused, then drew a long breath. "Yes--as you put it like that--I do."

"Well, if you do it now, it's done for good. You won't whistle me back again, you know. I'm not that sort. If I go, I go." He paused, adding with a sudden spurt of anger at her injustice: "And I shan't come back if you crawl on your hands and knees after me from one end of the promenade to the other. I haven't done nothing. What's the matter with you? But I can tell you. You're gone on that Wilson."

"I aren't gone on him," said Caroline angrily. "A man I hardly know.

You must have got a bee in your bonnet, Wilf."

"I may, or I may not, but I'm not going to have my future wife conduct herself in a silly style without saying a word," he answered with youthful pomposity.

"Your wife! It hasn't got to that yet," said Caroline. Then she thrust her face nearer to his, adding impulsively: "It would be years and years before we could think of marrying. I didn't plan ahead like that when we started keeping company, and I don't feel as if I could ever look on you as a future husband, Wilf. I don't feel I ever shall want to marry you--not now it comes to it."

"Then that's why you wouldn't have my ring," he said, his face blank and pale in the twilight. He began to see that it was all real--not just a "tiff" such as they had had before.

"I suppose so," said Caroline, her tone changing too--becoming anxious and slightly troubled. "I didn't realize at the time, but I expect I was shying away from the idea, if you know what I mean?"

"Oh, I know what you mean well enough. You're tired of me, and you want to turn me down. But let me tell you you won't find fellows like me growing on every gooseberry bush. I've always treated you like a gentleman--I have. I never hinted a word when you were going out as day girl to that woman who keeps a little shop in your street, though I could see some of my pals thought I was walking out a bit beneath myself. And this is the return I get." He jerked his hat back on his head. "It's enough to make a chap go to the dogs and enjoy himself: blest if it isn't!"

"I'm sorry, Wilf. I know I'm behaving like a perfect pig, but when it comes to marrying, you must have the right sort of feeling, or where are you?" said Caroline.

"Well, I only know one thing. I wish to goodness I had bought that second-hand motor-bike I wanted, instead of saving up the money against getting married! Why, I fair couldn't sleep for thinking about it: and now Simpson has bought it. And it was all for you. And now this is how I'm treated."

"Oh, Wilf! You never told me. I never knew about the motor-bike,"

said Caroline, taken aback.

"There's lots of things you don't know about," said Wilf. "However, if you're bent on ending it all, I shan't try to stop you. _I_ aren't one to force myself upon a girl that doesn't want me."

Caroline's lip began to tremble "Wilf, if I'd known about you giving up the motor-bike I wouldn't never have spoken as I did. I do feel a beast. But you have to think about yourself in this world or n.o.body'll think for you. I can't see any reason in going on as we are doing for years and then getting married when we're both dead sick of it all and of each other. We only keep each other back. We should be better free."

"Meaning you want to be free?" He had to pause a minute, owing to a thickness in his throat. "All right. I shan't hold you to it. You go and see if you can find a chap that can marry you straight off. That's what you want. You'd never have broken with me if I'd had a big house and plenty of money. I should not have been too young for you then.

You'd not have had to chuck me over then, to better yourself."

She was weeping now--very grieved to hurt him, and yet, beneath her softness, an iron determination to do what was best for herself; no thought of sacrifice because of his pain entering her head. "I'm so sorry, Wilf. I'm so sorry," she murmured.

But he felt she was implacable. She was armoured by that phrase of hers, she'd "got to do the best for herself," and he knew he had no weapon to pierce that armour.

They both stood on the edge of the cliff in silence, looking towards the north where the Flamborough lights gleamed out at regular intervals across the dark water. The promenade lay behind them, a fringe of pale lights twinkling along the sh.o.r.e.

Caroline was crying for the sorrow she had given Wilf, but that only lay on the surface, though genuine enough. Beneath that, all unknowing, she mourned a loss which nothing could restore. She and Wilf had given each other that first bloom of young attraction--bright glances, touches, cool kisses almost without pa.s.sion--and no power could bring that back. They felt miserable, standing there with the little waves coming in--whis.h.!.+ whis.h.!.+--upon the gravelly patch of sand: for there lay at the bottom of their hearts a sense of something irretrievably wasted, which they could never have in life any more.

"Well." He spoke first, bitterly. "I hope you may get your rich chap.

As you've no more need for me, I may as well go."

"I'm not throwing you over for that, Wilf," said Caroline in a low voice.

His subdued mood spurted up with a sudden irritability of jarred nerves again. "Then what are you for? That's what I should like to know."

"I--I----" She sought to give him a true answer. "You're not old enough. I want a man, now I'm older. You won't be twenty-one for two years."

"A man!" He swung round towards her, peering with fury through the twilight into her face. "A man! What d'you call me? What do you take me for? A man!" He paused, choking for breath, then shouted out: "Go and find your man, then. I don't want you, I don't want you. I wouldn't have you at a gift. A man! Not if you went down on your hands and knees----" He was walking away as he spoke, shouting over his shoulder, almost incoherent with the rage engendered by that sudden stab in his tenderest spot. Just before he was beyond ear-shot, he paused a second and called out: "There'll be no going back. You needn't think it. I shall pay the first instalment of a new bike in the morning."

So the dusk swallowed up his slim figure, and she was left by herself on the cliff. After a while a couple came along closely entwined and when they were close on her the girl said with a start: "Carrie? Is that you all by yourself? Where's Wilf?"

"Oh, he is a bit further on," said Caroline, striving to make her voice sound casual. "Don't you stop for me."

"All right! So long as you haven't pushed him over the cliff, Carrie,"

said the girl, laughing: then she and her young man went their way, forgetting all about other people.

Caroline waited until they had gone some little distance before she followed them, and as she walked alone on the cliff path with the stars coming out, she had the strangest feeling of loneliness--of lacking something that had always been there since she grew up. It was rather as if she had cast some article of clothing which she had been in the habit of wearing.

On reaching the more crowded part of the cliff near the promenade her first instinct was to keep out of sight; for she had no young man with her, and vaguely felt that she would look odd without one at this time of night. It seemed so "queer" to be walking by herself on the cliff in such an evening hour--but a further strangeness came with the thought that she actually did not possess a "boy" at all. n.o.body to wait for her at the gate when she went out in the evening. No one to hang round the pay-box at the promenade entrance to take her home. The sense of missing something was a great deal stronger now than the sense of freedom; she almost wished she had kept in with Wilf, despite that other feeling that made her desire to break with him.

It was a relief to mingle with the crowd coming out from the promenade, because people might suppose she had just left her post at the gate; but she still kept that odd sensation--lightened of a weight, and yet comfortless--as if she had "cast" something which had been more necessary to her than she ever realized.

_Chapter IX_

_Wedding Clothes_

Miss Ethel was walking up and down the garden with Laura Temple, both talking.

"I heard Caroline practising on the typewriter as I came through the hall. The kitchen door was open," said Laura.

"Yes. She goes out much less now than she used to do. I fancy she has broken off her engagement with that young man."

"I'm glad G.o.dfrey thought of lending her a machine, for it may make her more satisfied to remain with you; but I daresay that was his idea,"

said Laura. "He is like that."

"Is he?" said Miss Ethel rather shortly, and added after a moment: "It was very kind of him, of course." She paused again, then broke out vehemently: "I hate and detest all this conciliating and kowtowing. If only I could manage the work myself, I wouldn't do it."