The Privet Hedge Part 21

Wilf came past, taking long strides and wearing a new hat which he removed slightly; giving a sideways, condescending nod which said as plainly as words: "If you're waiting for _me_, miss, it's no go!"

But though she nodded in return, she was not actually aware of him.

Her heart beat unevenly and she felt a suspense which ran through every nerve and every vein--she had no feeling beyond it. Her face was ashen as she stood by the entrance to the station, with the breakers beyond looking cruel in the cold light. Her eyes shone black, owing to the pupils being so distended, but she appeared pinched and quiet as she stood there, at the edge of the crowd, for her whirling emotions had now reached that point which looks like stillness.

All of a sudden the blood rushed up over her forehead, and she instinctively put her hand to her heart because it seemed to be leaping out of its place. Here was G.o.dfrey at last, walking with another man.

She moved forward and stood directly in his way, so that he must see her. "Good evening," he said, then continued his conversation with the broad, prosperous-looking merchant who walked by his side.

Caroline remained planted there, staring after them with an almost foolish expression on her face. She could not take it in. It seemed incredible. Then the two men vanished round the corner, and at the same moment she heard a girl saying in her ear: "Cheer up, Carrie! If Wilf hasn't caught this, he will get the next. He isn't dead."

"What do you mean?" said Carrie, but her voice sounded m.u.f.fled and vague, even to herself.

"Why, you came to meet your boy, didn't you? And he hasn't turned up.

That's what you looked like, anyway," said the girl, laughing.

Carrie made an immense effort to fight off that feeling of faintness, saying jerkily: "Oh, well, I'm off with Wilf, you know." But the words seemed to echo in some great, vague place a long distance away.

_Chapter XVII_

_The Benefit Concert_

During the evening and many hours of the night Caroline remained in a white heat of anger and hurt pride which left no room for regret. It was true, then, that G.o.dfrey had only been behaving to her all the time as Aunt Creddle said gentlemen did behave to working girls upon whom they bestowed their attentions. She'd been treated exactly like any little ignorant servant girl waiting at a street corner for her young man: just such a one as her aunts and her mother had been; and yet she felt violently that she was different. In the middle of the night she woke to find herself muttering: "I aren't going to stand it! I aren't going to stand it!" Then she bit the sheet to prevent herself from breaking out into a storm of weeping. She loved him so, but was no longer certain of his love. She could give him up almost gladly if he loved her and would always love her--but this was more than she could bear. There seemed to her no paradox in that--it was just what she felt.

Then she saw his heavily cut face on the darkness, as he had looked when he walked past her with that other man--both of them solid, self-contained, out of her reach! And with that the cold wave of anger swept over her again, overwhelming her. "I can't stand it! I aren't going to stand it. He'd no right to treat me like that, as if I were dirt beneath his feet. I'm as good as he is."

So the conflicting thoughts went on during the night hours; all the doubts and feelings which she had inherited, or had imbibed from the Creddles, warring with her own independence and pride. A girl like herself was good enough for any man. He'd no right to insult her by pa.s.sing her like that in the street when they'd kissed as they did on the cliff top. She'd given him up, but she was going to be treated properly--not like a girl who had done something of which they were both ashamed. And again the helpless threat: "I aren't going to stand it!"

At last it was time to get up, and after a while to go down to the promenade. She was by now so exhausted with emotion that she could not feel any more and let her perceptions drift vaguely over outside things. A bill was up on the road-side, announcing the Benefit Concert for the band for that evening; another advertised second-hand tents and folding chairs for sale, cheap. A girl told her about a tent that had blown down the day of the gale, revealing a fat lady in a bathing towel--behaviour of rude Boreas which seemed to have put an end to bathing from tents for the season. Then a man came down the road with a barrow, crying, "Meller pears! Fine meller pe-a-a-rs!" Caroline bought some to take to Aunt Creddle, though she had had no definite thought of going there when she started ten minutes earlier than usual, but the ache of her exhausted emotion drew her subconsciously towards the jolly, serene nature as a hurt child runs to its mother.

The house door was open, so she walked straight in and put the pears down on the table. But she did not kiss her aunt, because she instinctively feared that the slightest breath of emotion might upset her self-control. "I bought these off a barrow. Don't know if they'll be sweet," she said. "Can't stop!"

"Sit down a minute," said Mrs. Creddle. "You look fit to drop. Aren't you feeling well, Carrie?"

"Oh, I'm all right," she answered impatiently. "What's that you are ironing?"

"It's some curtains for Miss Temple. I was there ironing yesterday, but didn't get these finished."

Caroline sharply turned with her back to the kitchen, looking out of the window. "Did they say anything about the wedding being put off?"

"Yes. Miss Laura's got a chill. Something to do with her digestion.

She can't scarcely eat nothing."

"Oh!" Caroline could not say another word.

"Of course, it's hard on Mr. Wilson; but I think she's in the right on it. No use going away to them grand hotels if you can't enjoy the food," pursued Mrs. Creddle.

"Did you--did you hear how long it was put for?" said Caroline.

"Not exactly, as you may say," answered Mrs. Creddle. "Miss Panton came into the kitchen while I was there, and she said delays was dangerous. You know her way. She seemed to think it would be next month." She paused, then added uncomfortably: "I was on pins and needles for fear they might have heard about you and Mr. Wilson, Carrie, you know--being about the lanes at night together, and that.

But I'm sure they hadn't." She paused again. "Well, I aren't sorry you had a lesson that night you were locked out, Carrie. Your mother and I had the same sort of temptations when we were out in placing--though you mayn't think it. There was a young gentleman from college in my last situation who begged me almost on his bended knees to walk out with him, but I knew what that led to." She paused again.

"Cheer up, la.s.s; it hurts a bit at the time, but it's all for the best.

Once bitten, twice shy."

"You're always talking about what people did when _you_ were young,"

said Caroline, turning away abruptly.

"I know that. Things is very altered since my day," said Mrs. Creddle.

"But there's some things----"

"I've no patience with people like you, aunt," said Caroline. "You know everything has changed, and yet you go on expecting girls to be the one thing that hasn't. It isn't common sense."

She was flinging out of the kitchen, when Mrs. Creddle caught her up and put a motherly arm about her. "Good-bye, my la.s.s. You think n.o.body's felt like you before about a young man, but they have."

"I don't know what you're talking about. I've a bit of a head, but that's all," said Carrie.

After that she went away. But all the same she was a little comforted--real, disinterested love being the one ointment that can soothe tender hearts not yet cauterized by pain.

So the day pa.s.sed; then the next wore on towards evening, with no sign of G.o.dfrey. And all through the long hours, Caroline sat in the pay-box looking out of her little window--small, set face, very pale, and bright eyes intently watching--like some creature of the wild behind a gap in the thick leaf.a.ge.

Now it was past sunset. The residents of Thorhaven had taken possession of their town again and the few visitors who remained were sprinkled about inconspicuously among the audience in the concert hall--the dominant factor no longer. Caroline exchanged greetings with many of her acquaintances who emerged from the seclusion entailed by letting rooms or vacating houses, and now shook their feathers like hens coming off the nest with the pleasant knowledge of a nest-egg successfully achieved. "Pretty good season, considering," ran the verdict; but the general mind was a happy one, in spite of a certain feeling of exhaustion. "Pickles!" said Lillie's mother. "I give you my word, Carrie, one lot ate cheese and pickles after the promenade every night to that degree it fair curdles my inside to think of. But as I say, each person's inside is their own. Live and let live, say I." And the good woman hurried on to spend part of the proceeds of this wise neutrality, her Sunday hat still quite like new from lack of use, and a holiday spirit radiating from her rather worn features.

Caroline had responded to all these greetings, but she was glad when the concert began in the promenade hall and only a few stragglers pa.s.sed through the barrier at long intervals. Once more she was free to resume that silent, intent watch which had occupied nearly the whole day.

But night was coming on fast now--with a heavy ground-swell and a wild streak of orange on the western sky. Caroline never thought once of the sea, and certainly was not conscious of being affected by it--she was, in fact, not aware of it at all. Yet it was just because she did most deeply respond to it that her affair with G.o.dfrey was lifted for her beyond the trivial into those regions where pa.s.sion really has dignity. That interview of theirs on the cliff top would have been poignant for both if it had taken place in a dingy back sitting-room; but something must have been absent--that unforgettable thrill which comes when beauty is joined to great emotion.

After a while, Caroline saw a woman leave the concert hall to cross the promenade, which already gleamed darkly with rain-drops. As she went through the turnstile she said: "I doubt we shall have a wet night."

Then followed a storm of applause from the hall. "There!" added the woman, "I wish I could have stopped for the encore, but I had to get away, though I was forced to squeeze past Miss Temple and her gentleman on my way out. She does look bad, my word! Them that said it was all a tale about her being ill, have only to look at her. Well, good night."

Caroline waited a moment, then thrust her head forward and peered round the black s.p.a.ce between her and the hall; and as she did so, her likeness to some watching wild creature became intensified. Then she withdrew her head, rose from her seat and came out of the pay-box, looking over her shoulder. With light, quick steps she went round the gla.s.s walls of the hall until she reached a place through which she could see the occupants of the front seats. Just as she came to a stand, seeking for Laura with heart throbbing and every pulse alert, the singer returned to give the encore.

The voice was long past its prime, but a window above had been opened wide for ventilation and the song could be heard clearly enough. As Caroline peered in vain through the gla.s.s dimmed by heat and human breath, the sentimental words floated out over her head; and the heavy organ-like accompaniment of the ground-swell made them more than ever ephemeral. A few bars of music, sounding so thin and strange against the booming of the sea, and then the next verse:

Now we are young, Life's meaning all grows clear, Does he but whisper low: "My dear--my dear!"

She pressed her forehead close to the gla.s.s, trying to keep back the tears, for she despised crying. Then the singer began again--the clear articulation almost all she had left:

And if we part, I shall not cease to hear For ever in my heart: "My dear--my dear!"

Caroline could not keep the tears back any longer. They would come, and she wiped them away with her fingers as she walked away. But the singer was evidently roused by applause to an extra effort, for the voice gained for the moment some of the timbre of her triumphant youth, and Caroline could hear more and more softly as she went farther off:

When we are old Some love-words disappear, But this goes all the way; "My dear--my dear!"

She did not see the sentimentality of the song because she liked it, just as she liked the simple love-stories with bright covers; and she had hardly time to dry her eyes before the band began to play G.o.d Save the King, and the people to surge through the large gates which were now set open. As soon as she could shut up the pay-box she slipped away into the darkness of the promenade, to escape the crowd who went mostly by the high road. A few steps beyond the north exit took her into absolute solitude, but the rain which was already falling quickly made her afraid of venturing far along the slippery path. The sea and sky were all dark--no white breakers on the heavy swell and no stars in the sky. She felt unutterably sad and deserted, standing there for a moment before she turned up the little terrace which led to the main road. But though she told herself that she was going this way because she had been crying and wished to meet no one, she knew, behind that, that she was lying to herself. She _had_ to know why she really came this way, and what she meant to do, because she had an honest soul.