The Privet Hedge Part 4

"Yes," said Mr. Graham, "the people who used to support it haven't the money to give any longer; and those who have it, won't give, I suppose."

"Oh, don't let us start that all over again," said Mrs. Graham.

"Arthur, you will take cold standing here in the night air. Laura, won't you come in for a few minutes?"

But Laura had no desire to share that cosy half-hour by the fire during which Mr. Graham would press his Lizzie to pile on coal and put more sugar in her cocoa for the good of her health, and she would press him to take a little whisky and hot water--in spite of the high price--for the same reason.

_Chapter IV_

_The Three Men_

Miss Ethel glanced out of the bedroom window next morning as she was opening it more widely, and suddenly, as she looked, every muscle stiffened. What were those three men doing a few yards beyond the privet hedge? But her reason refused to let in the thought that followed. It was preposterous to imagine they would start building there first, with all the field to choose from. Besides, she had never heard of the land being sold--the board was still in its place. Of course, if the land had been sold, the board would have been removed.

She knelt down to say her prayers, beginning with the very same which she used to repeat when she was a little girl by her mother's knee: only the numbers of near relatives then mentioned by name had since dwindled, one by one, as they pa.s.sed over that bridge from life to eternal life. Then "Our Father"--but the thought of the three men came in between, and she found herself saying "Amen" without having prayed at all. Then she started over again. "Thy kingdom come." But her mind shot away at once from that image of divine order to the unrest by which she was troubled. Pictures of strikes--staring headlines--these crowded in upon her as she knelt, and she rose from her knees still without having really prayed to G.o.d.

Then she came downstairs to breakfast to find that Caroline had cleaned the room and had set the breakfast with a certain daintiness, while leaving dust thick on the corners of the floor and under the clock on the mantel-piece. Still, it was such a relief not to have to get up and prepare the breakfast and light the fire that Miss Ethel tried to forget the dust. Of course, after Caroline had gone out, she could go round with a brush and duster, but it was a great rest in the meantime not to start the day with tasks too arduous for her strength and her unaccustomed muscles.

Mrs. Bradford, however, who never felt able to help in the house-work herself, owing to something obscure about the legs, would persist in talking all breakfast time about the dust and Caroline's other shortcomings. "Never know when you have her. This week she is eating at all sorts of hours because she has to go to the promenade and free the other girl at meal times; then next week she will be here at meals only. It is your affair, Ethel. When I came back I let you go on doing the housekeeping, though I am a married woman. But I know when I had a house to manage myself, I should never have put up with such goings-on."

"It's all very well to talk. Neither should I, five years ago,"

retorted Miss Ethel. "In fact, I should not do so now if there were any alternative. But you know perfectly well that we could not afford to keep a good maid at the present rate of wages, even if we could get one."

Mrs. Bradford contented herself with peering irritatingly through her spectacles at the dusty places after that, because Miss Ethel's statement admitted of no argument; for Mr. Bradford left his widow the honour and glory of the conjugal state and practically nothing more tangible. But to Miss Ethel's generation the mere fact of being married meant more than the present one can understand, and she was accustomed to acquiesce in her sister's air of heavy superiority, though she knew herself to be much the more intelligent of the two.

Still her temper felt so rasped as she went out into the kitchen carrying a tray of crockery that she was in no mood to receive kindly any more new suggestions made to her, and when Caroline asked for a latch-key as a matter of course, she replied stiffly: "I'm sorry, but I could not think of such a thing, Caroline. I must say I rather wonder at your asking it. Your aunt Ellen----"

"Aunt Ellen lived in different times," said Caroline, flus.h.i.+ng and throwing up her head. "I am going to a dance with my boy at the Promenade Hall, and it doesn't finish till twelve. I didn't want you to sit up so late for me, that was all."

Miss Ethel also flushed a little on her thin cheekbones, while the left side of her face twitched a little as it did when she was agitated; but that was all the sign she gave of the tumult of irritation, impatience and hurt pride which surged within her. That Ellen's niece should dare to speak to her like that! Still, she knew that she was worn out and could not go on doing all the work of the house, and they would never get anyone else to help them who would be as cheap and respectable as Caroline; so she must put up with it. By a great effort, she managed to control her temper and to say, almost agreeably: "Does Mrs. Creddle know you are going to this dance with a young man?"

"Of course she does," said Caroline, still rather defiant. "I'm not ashamed of it. There's nothing between me and Wilf that I should want to hide from Aunt Creddle."

For without knowing it, Miss Ethel had touched upon a delicate point which Caroline was far more sensitive about than Laura--for instance--would have been; because girls of Caroline's sort have to guard their chast.i.ty themselves, while those like Laura are careless, because it has always been guarded for them by somebody else. Still Miss Ethel saw that Caroline was offended, so added after a pause: "If Mrs. Creddle approves of your going, of course it is not my affair.

But you must see for yourself that I could not let a girl under my roof stay out until midnight without asking the question. That would be fair neither to you nor to myself."

"No," muttered Caroline. "I didn't mean anything either. Only it has been such a--a rotten thing in the past for every one to think that servant girls must be misbehaving themselves if they stopped out after half-past ten."

"They often were," said Miss Ethel grimly. "Because if they weren't, they remembered it was time to come in and came. But here is your latch-key." And she went out of the kitchen, not daring to trust herself to say any more for fear she should offend Caroline and be left without any help in the house.

But she suffered an almost physical ache from the readjustment of her behaviour to the changed conditions of life as she went upstairs to her bedroom. It was constantly happening like that--there was no time for the irritation to subside before something roused it again. And Miss Ethel took no comfort from the fact that all over the world people were more or less suffering in the same way, because she only vaguely realized that this was so.

She knew, however, that she felt humiliated as she handed over the latch-key to Caroline, contrary to all her own principles, just before the girl went out to collect tickets on the promenade during the dinner interval.

The morning was cold for the first week in June, but a brief spell of August weather in May had acted as a bait to the visitors that Thorhaven lived on now, just as it used to live on the crabs and mackerel and codling and shrimps caught in the bay. But that time was so entirely over and done with that there were not enough real fishermen left to man the lifeboat, and the smell of fish and brine had departed, even from the narrow alleys in the old part of the town where it had been for hundreds of years. Now the owners of the smallest and most inconvenient cottages hung clean curtains, put "To Let, Furnished"

bills in the windows, and went off to camp in booths, tents, out-houses or in any place where they could find shelter.

So this morning, though it was still so early in the year, provident mothers with little children, and others bent on a cheaper holiday than August could afford, were walking in light dresses about the roads, emerging gaily from little front gates, cl.u.s.tering round the little bright shops with their piles of fruit and cakes and sweets. It was a bright-coloured company that Caroline saw about the streets as she went along the road towards the familiar row of yellowish-red houses where the Creddles lived.

Mrs. Creddle was ironing, and she looked up from the board almost in tears as her niece entered the kitchen. "Oh, Carrie," she began at once, "I thought you'd be coming. I am in such a way. I don't know whatever you'll say to me, but I've burnt a great place on the front width of your dress. I was pressing it out, because you'd got it all crumpled up in your drawer upstairs, and then Winnie tumbled down on the fender and made her nose bleed. You never saw such a sight. So somehow in my fl.u.s.ter I left the iron on the dress. I can't think how I ever came to do such a thing."

Caroline looked from the burnt front breadth to Mrs. Creddle's agitated face and said nothing. Her disappointment was so great that she must have "told Aunt Creddle off" if she had opened her lips, and she did not want to do that, because she could see the poor woman was distressed enough already.

"Oh, well; never fret!" she managed to say at last. "Plenty more dances before I'm dead. We won't make a trouble about this one."

"But I do," said Mrs. Creddle, dissolving into tears at this kindly address. "Me--that always wants you to enjoy yourself while you can--to have gone and spoilt your only party dress! I could hit myself, I could, if it would do any good."

Upon this little Winnie, still tearful from past sorrows, began to cry loudly again. "You shan't hit yourself, Mummy. I won't let you hit yourself."

"Here!" said Caroline, putting a parcel down on the table. "I got some kippers as I came past the fish shop. I know Uncle Creddle fancies one with his tea."

"You shouldn't have done that, Carrie," said Mrs. Creddle, wiping her eyes. "Kippers is dear nowadays, and I'm sure you have plenty to do with your money."

"Nonsense!" said Caroline. "I'm rolling in riches. You see my keep costs me nothing, and I have all I earn to spend." She went towards the door, saying over her shoulder: "Now, don't you worry about the dress. I can easily get another, and you may cut this up into a Sunday frock for Winnie."

"That I never shall----" began Mrs. Creddle: then her round face became suddenly illuminated. "Why, yes, so I will. And then you can have the one Miss Temple gave me to make into something for the children. It's a queer sort of colour--neither red nor yellow--but it looks all right by night. She said Mr. Wilson didn't like to see her in it. Of course, she's bigger than you, but they wear things so short and loose nowadays that I dare say if I hem the bottom up it will be all right.

My word, I am glad I thought of it. I hate keeping you away from the dance."

Caroline paused on the threshold. "I don't like wearing other people's clothes," she said doubtfully.

"No; but Miss Temple's different. She gives things with such a good heart and she never talks about what she does. I can't see that you need mind her," urged Mrs. Creddle. "There's no time to get another dress. It's that, or stopping away from the dance."

Still Caroline hesitated, standing there on the blue linoleum with the bright light s.h.i.+ning through the open door on her face. "Oh! all right," she exclaimed finally, then glanced at the clock. "Goodness, I shall be late! You can measure the dress against my old frock. I haven't a minute." And she was out, banging the door behind her.

But before she was many yards away, the door burst open again and Mrs.

Creddle's anxious face looked out. "Carrie! Carrie! You don't want to tell your uncle if you come across him. He'd have a fit if he knew you were going to the dance on the prom., let alone wearing that fine frock. You know what he is!"

"Don't I just!" responded Caroline, her spirits beginning to rise again. "Well, what he doesn't know he can't grieve about, so you keep a still tongue in your head and I'll run round for the dress when I leave the prom. after tea." Then at last she was running along the grey pavements with the clean wind blowing towards her from the sea.

In her haste she almost ran into three men who were coming along from the direction of the Cottage with measuring tapes and other appliances in their hands, but she took no particular notice of them, never dreaming that these three commonplace looking men in ordinary dark clothes could even now be haunting another person's imagination with the sinister effect of birds of prey who mark the approach of an invading horde.

But Miss Ethel had seen them from her upper window, and the sight of them walking about in the field had produced an acute physical feeling of nausea and faintness; for her fear lest the field should be built upon and the last seclusion spoilt, had already made one of those deep ruts in the mind along which every thought runs when not actually driven in another direction. And each time Miss Ethel's thoughts pa.s.sed that way, the rut was bound to become deeper. Though she imagined herself so self-controlled, and seemed so safe as she went quietly about her work removing the dust from corners where Caroline had left it, she was indeed a woman in real danger, still fighting all the great forces of change arrayed against her, and which she must give in to or be destroyed.

_Chapter V_

_The Dance on the Promenade_

A night in June brings to the mind of most people soft airs--the scent of roses--a time when the young can sit out-of-doors in the moonlight, and the middle-aged may venture forth without risk of catching cold.

But even on such a night in Thorhaven there is a nipping freshness at sunset which keeps the mind alert instead of lulling the senses--giving an exquisite clearness to the thoughts of lovers: at any rate, to the thoughts of lovers like Laura Temple.

But visitors did not realize this, only remarking to each other with disapproval that it was much colder than in Flodmouth, and that you always needed a thick coat in the evening at Thorhaven, whatever the time of year. At the present moment, however, most of them were hurrying away from the wide expanse of sh.o.r.e and sea that glimmered under the reflection of the sunset, for dancing was to start at half-past eight in the gla.s.s hall which filled the centre of the promenade.

The girl in charge of the pay-box was busier than usual, and Caroline stood at a little distance taking a professional interest in the number of tickets sold. Her first feeling of importance had worn off, but she had the correct official air of detachment, glancing at the throng which hurried through the barrier with a sort of indulgent superiority, while the band under the gla.s.s roof of the hall tootled faintly against the deep roll of the waves. The immensity of the arched sky above, with the dim, flat land on one side, and the expanse of darkening sea on the other, seemed to give to those dance tunes an indescribable melancholy. They seemed to epitomize all the shortness and futility of the little lives which had flickered for a few years on the edge of that sea and then gone out.