The Privet Hedge Part 27

"Yes, at least, I have only one other errand," said Caroline. With that she turned to the man behind the counter who was waiting to transact her business, and Laura went out of the bank.

Caroline walked home, thinking once or twice about the incident, for Laura's manner seemed odd if she only wanted to know whether Mrs.

Bradford were at home or not. Then about an hour later, when she was near a front window, she chanced to see Laura coming up the drive. So going to the door; she said at once: "I'm sorry, but Mrs. Bradford has not come in yet. Do you care to leave a message?"

As Laura stood there hesitating, that odd mixture of maturity and a sort of girlish angularity in her appearance became unusually marked.

"No--no message. I--I think I will just come in."

"But I am afraid Mrs. Bradford may be some time," said Caroline.

Laura looked at her as if seeking something in her face, then repeated awkwardly: "Oh! I think I will just come in."

So Caroline led the way to the sitting-room, but just as she was about to go, Laura said quickly: "I suppose you like the idea of working at an office?"

"Oh yes; I think it will be all right, thank you," said Caroline, moving on towards the door all the time. She did not want to stay in the same room with this girl who was to marry G.o.dfrey. Let them marry and be happy, so far as she was concerned; but she did not want to have anything to do with either of them again.

Then she went through the door, but before she was across the hall she heard Laura's voice raised on a sort of high, breathless note calling after her: "Don't--don't go, yet. I--we so seldom have a chat.

This--this must have been a most trying time for you."

Caroline went back and stood just within the door, her small face pale and rather severe. What did this girl want of her? For she could see that there was something behind those halting words which Laura felt either afraid or ashamed to say. She would not help by a single word.

No, not though the kind brown eyes began to distress her a little, like those of a dog with a hurt paw.

"I suppose office work is really what you like best?" said Laura nervously. "You think you will really enjoy it? You"--she drew a breath and plunged, as it were--"you have no idea of getting married at present?"

"No," said Caroline, speaking with fair composure, though her own nerves began to quiver and she breathed rather quickly. For this was what Laura had come for, then! She had heard tales and wanted to find out if they were true.

Well--let her! For one second a great temptation a.s.sailed Caroline.

She stood there in the doorway, with the power of happiness or unhappiness in her hands, knowing perfectly well that she had only to tell the actual, unvarnished truth as it had actually happened for G.o.dfrey's chance of a rich wife, and Laura's chance of a probably successful marriage to vanish in less time than you could open and shut the door.

But the next moment it was all over. She knew, with a just pride, that she could never do a mean trick like that: it was not in her. When the room, which had gone a little dim, grew clear again, she heard herself continuing, as if it were somebody else: "I'm sure I shall enjoy being on my own. I'd rather keep myself than be dependent on any man. You can do as you like. It's better than getting married."

"But nothing is better than marriage with the right man," said Laura.

She was still looking intently at Caroline; still seeming all the time to have something behind her words which hovered but remained unspoken.

Then, suddenly her eyes filled with tears.

Caroline looked away, perplexed and troubled. "I'm afraid Mrs.

Bradford may not be in for some time."

Laura rose in a hesitating fas.h.i.+on. "Do you think so? Well, I suppose I had better go. Mrs. Bradford will be glad when the sale is over.

She will be happier in a boarding-house at Scarborough."

They were at the front door now; and to avoid looking at each other they both glanced at the man who was wheeling a barrow-load of building implements in from the field across the place where the privet hedge used to be.

"I suppose that is for the improvements to the Cottage?" said Laura, who seemed as if she could not go and yet did not really want to stay.

"Yes. They begin altering the outside buildings before the sale," said Caroline; but all the time she was asking within herself: "What is it?

What is it?"

Again they looked at the man, who was now trudging back over the newly-laid sods.

"Poor Miss Ethel!" said Laura. "She would not have liked that, would she?"

Caroline shook her head, not speaking--it was all so curiously far off from what they were both thinking about that words only seemed to echo from a distance. "There have to be changes," she said at last, growing afraid of the pause lest it should imply too much.

"Well, Miss Ethel always hated change," said Laura. Then her expression began to alter curiously under Caroline's eyes--becoming charged, as it were, with an inner radiance that shone right through the outer dullness, or embarra.s.sment, or sadness--whatever there might be. "At any rate, she has gone where things are certain."

Caroline's heart beat fast with the sudden impact of discovery. Laura, too, then! They were both just like people hanging on to a spar in a rough sea and hoping to be thrown on sh.o.r.e at last. That was what life was, even when you were going to be married to the man of your choice.

But the expression of Laura's face--or was it that thought of a rough sea?--had in some way brought back that time in the pay-box after Miss Ethel's death, when Caroline herself had looked up at the blue sky breaking through the grey. Once more she tried to grope across the barrier between the seen and the unseen.

What was there after all? Then a line of one of those Sunday-school hymns floated across her mind--"Oh, Thou that changest not"--And the thought of Miss Ethel on the stairs with that heavy pail in her hand.

But the thoughts pa.s.sed so quickly that Laura had not noticed the pause. "I like to fancy Miss Ethel in a place where things don't change. It makes you think, when somebody you know goes----" And Caroline saw Laura felt the same; was drawn more closely in touch with this eternity to which Miss Ethel had just gone over.

Then a man over in the field shouted loudly to his mate. Both girls glanced, half startled, in that direction, and when they looked at each other again the mental atmosphere had quite altered.

"Well, I must be going," said Laura.

But it was still so evident she had left something unsaid, that Caroline remained half-consciously expectant in the doorway. And a few steps down the drive Laura did suddenly stop short, pause a moment and return with quick, nervous steps. "Oh, by the way, I suppose you won't know that my engagement with Mr. Wilson is broken off?"

For a moment--an age--Caroline's throat seemed to dry up, and she felt like a person in a nightmare struggling to make a sound which will not come. Then, out of all the turmoil of questions, fears, emotions that Laura's words had caused to seethe within her, she was only able to bring to the surface: "I--I didn't know."

"No?" Laura paused. "Well, you'll tell Mrs. Bradford I have been----"

And she hurried away down the drive; but she had not yet lost that air of having left something unsaid which she had come on purpose to say.

Caroline could see her near the gate, then paused a moment as at the approach of voices; and the next minute Mr. and Mrs. Graham came in, accompanying Mrs. Bradford. Their att.i.tudes were most plainly visible to Caroline in the doorway, though she could not hear what was said; Mrs. Bradford solidly engrossed in her own importance as a mourner--Mr.

Graham bending forward to speak to Laura, conciliatory, voluble; and Laura herself unresponsive.

Caroline gave a last look at them before going indoors to take the potatoes from the fire; and as she did so, she experienced one of those sudden, blindingly clear moments of intuition common to almost every one, in which the processes of fact, argument, reason are all skipped, and the knowledge is there, full blown. She knew perfectly well that Mr. and Mrs. Graham had felt it their solemn duty to inform Laura--with the best intentions--of what was being said about G.o.dfrey Wilson and the girl on the promenade.

But before she had time to turn away the group dissolved, Laura going on alone, while Mrs. Bradford and Mrs. Graham came up the drive. The picture bit like acid into her mind. The three coming up the path; the clear sky; the man with the barrow wheeling cement over the forlorn dismantled part of the garden where the privet hedge had been.

But in the kitchen, while she was taking the potatoes from the steamer, her face suddenly flushed crimson. "I aren't going to be frightened,"

she murmured to herself. "I aren't going to care what anybody says.

She would never break off her engagement because of a bit of scandal.

She's not that sort. They'll be married, all right."

Beneath her defiance, however, Caroline was terribly afraid. She sub-consciously so dreaded the agony she must endure if he did come after her again and she had to send him away. For that was what she would do. Never for one second did she waver in her determination to have no more to do with a man who could behave as he had done. She couldn't help loving him, but she could help trusting him with her life.

Mrs. Bradford appeared, black and bulky in the kitchen doorway. "Oh, Caroline----" And her voice, though heavy and rather husky, put the same immeasurable distance between Caroline and every Wilson in the world as Miss Ethel's clear tones, speaking the same words, had always done. "I am expecting Mr. Wilson on business after tea. Will you show him into the breakfast-room if you have not gone out when he comes?"

Caroline murmured acquiescence, angry to feel herself blus.h.i.+ng; and when she looked up Mrs. Bradford's little eyes were fixed on her with the insatiable curiosity of the dull; so she looked steadily down again at the bowl of potatoes. After a pause that seemed very long, she heard the pad-pad-pad of a heavy, elderly woman's walk sounding along the pa.s.sage.

Mrs. Bradford, waiting for her lunch, also looked at the wheel-marks left by the pa.s.sing of the workman's barrow over the place where the privet hedge used to be. She might not like it, but she was without that fiery hatred of change which did actually release Miss Ethel's spirit for its escape to certainty.

_Chapter XXIII_

_On the Sh.o.r.e_