The Privet Hedge Part 12

Miss Panton murmured something about Wordsworth, obviously thinking that a more fitting topic to be discussed before a young person who was taking tea on sufferance with her betters.

"Perhaps Miss Raby is like me, and doesn't care much for Wordsworth,"

said Laura, looking across at her guest in a very friendly fashion. "I never got beyond 'We are seven,' and never wanted to."

"It's never too late to bend," retorted Miss Panton, still austere; her glance resting with deep disapproval upon the neatly stockinged leg which Caroline displayed.

"Come, Nanty," said Laura, laughing. "Don't be so superior. You know you don't really care for anything but a love-story with a happy ending yourself." She paused, looking round at them with her happy, brown eyes: "Well, there isn't anything better: is there?"

"Of course not," said Wilson, just touching Laura's shoulder as he pa.s.sed her in handing the cake to Caroline. But as he did so his glance met Caroline's by chance, and he became instantly aware that she had been watching him, for she looked hastily away, while a colour which she could not control came into her cheeks, deepening and deepening until it almost brought tears to her eyes.

She sat near the window with the full light on her face, somehow oddly defenceless in her extreme embarra.s.sment, and he could see the light powdering of freckles on her nose, as well as that curious, camellia-petal fineness of skin which always escaped notice until the observer came quite close, for there was a tinge of sallowness in the colour which prevented people from admiring it at first sight.

But a decent man who is to be married in a month does not, of course, indulge in speculations about another girl's complexion--at any rate, he does not encourage himself in doing so--and very soon Caroline removed temptation out of his way by rising and taking her leave.

As she said good-bye, the lovers stood in the doorway with the sunshine on their faces and the bright flowers seen through the far door behind them. She was glad to get away, her mind in a whirl of grat.i.tude, defiance, curiosity and envy which bewildered herself. Of course, it was nice of Miss Temple to ask her to tea and treat her like any other girl friend, but anybody could be nice when they were getting everything in the whole world that they could want. . . . Her thoughts paused on that. That _didn't_ always make people kind----

She started at the sound of the church clock and began to run, lest she should be late for the promenade.

But when she arrived her budget of news proved very disappointing to the expectant Lillie, who had lingered round the pay-box with her own tea waiting at home in the hope of hearing in more detail what every separate garment was like. But when she at length extracted the information that Wilson was also there, and that the party had taken afternoon tea together, her curiosity became intense.

"Did they look as if they were awfully gone on each other? I always thinks she seems sweet, and I think he ought to consider himself lucky, don't you? I say, fancy if you or I were in her place and going to be married next month? Feel funny, wouldn't it? But I shouldn't care much to be taking him on, should you? Too jolly c.o.c.ksure for me."

"Chance is a bonny thing," said Caroline shortly. "I'll shut the door if you don't mind. There's a fearful draught blows through this place with it open."

The girl went round to the turnstile on her way out and addressed a last remark to Caroline through the little window. "You needn't be chippy with me because you haven't got twelve of everything all hand-embroidered. It isn't my fault!" she flung over her shoulder.

And having thus revenged herself for her colleague's uncommunicativeness, she went her way.

Caroline, left alone in her chair before the little window, automatically scanned the faces of those pa.s.sing through the barrier, ready to release the clutch with a "Good evening" if the person were known to her, or to say in a dull monotone, "Six-pence, please," to a stranger. Every now and then she glanced at the darkening sky towards the North where clouds were gathering up, and after a while, single drops of rain began to fall. Very soon the empty promenade glittered black under a downpour, the lights making streaks of pale gold across it. People only came in now at infrequent intervals; a few dark figures hurried along the promenade; while the sound of the band in the covered hall drifted across through the open windows, mingling with the deep voice of a storm rising far out at sea.

After a while Wilf pa.s.sed through, ostentatiously indifferent. "Oh, that you, Carrie? Good evening, I didn't see it was you at first.

Beastly night, isn't it?" And he went on jauntily, sticking his hands in the pockets of his mackintosh.

Caroline watched him go with a most illogical sense of being deserted; then the turnstile clicked and she had to release the clutch, letting through a pleasant-looking mother with a daughter of about seventeen, both so happy in each other's company--making a lark of coming out together to hear the band on such a wet night. Caroline's unreasonable feeling of being alone and deserted deepened. For the first time in years, she consciously wanted her own mother--longed for her with an ache of the heart that almost brought tears. She seemed so alone.

Aunt Creddle was goodness itself, but had her own family to think of first, of course, and could no longer take quite such a vivid interest in a niece as when her own children were quite little. Uncle Creddle had a steady kindness which nothing could change, but he too was a struggling man with a family. Besides, he was rather hard in some ways beneath his good-nature. She still remembered how he had spoken to her that evening when he found her screaming and playing about those empty houses with the boys.

No, she belonged nowhere: that was it. She did not think as the Creddles did about lots of things, and yet she did not belong to the world which girls like Miss Laura Temple lived in, either. She had got past one sort, and had not found another. All these thoughts pa.s.sed confusedly through a mind that had been quickened by something incomprehensible in her experiences at Laura Temple's that afternoon.

Through her thoughts she heard the hum of the sea, the tinkling fall of heavy rain on asphalt, the faint rising and falling of violin music.

She felt a sudden spirit of rebellion. Why shouldn't she have some fun? She would enjoy herself! She wasn't going to go on like this, letting people in to the promenade, doing housework, practising typewriting. Why did some girls get everything, like Laura Temple, and others nothing? It was not fair. It was not fair----

Then she saw Wilson at the little window. "Good evening. Stormy night!" he said, and pa.s.sed through without any further remark.

She knew he had come straight from Laura's and was taking a short cut across the parade to his own lodgings, which were beyond the exit towards the north. He had come from no desire to see her. Still he might have spoken a word: he need not have gone through like that, as if it were only Lillie working the turnstile.

As she thought that, she felt a tear on her lips. Licking it off, she demanded furiously of herself how she could be such a fool as to cry about nothing. She must be run down. She must want a tonic.

Then she glanced up at the sound of a step approaching from the promenade, and there was Wilson's face, quite near, looking in at her little window. "You'll have a wet walk home, I'm afraid," he said.

"Yes." Her voice held a faint surprise, for he had already spoken once about the weather. "But I have an umbrella here."

"That's a good thing." He hesitated. "I might have lent you one, only it is rather large for a little girl," he added, speaking with a sort of artificial jocosity. "You must find that road rather dark and lonely on a night like this?" He paused again. "Don't you?"

For a moment or two she did not speak, and that silence somehow gave her answer an undue significance. "Yes," she said at last.

He opened his lips to speak, then suddenly his expression changed and he moved away from the window. "Wretched night! Wretched night!" he said, walking briskly on.

Caroline sat back in her chair, almost feeling as if she had been struck in the face--for a question had been asked and answered during that silence which involved all sorts of joys, fears, infidelities; then in a minute he banished them so utterly that she could scarcely believe they had ever been in question.

The next moment Mr. and Mrs. Graham were at the window. "Oh, dreadful night, is it not? You must feel the wind here."

Then they were merged into the shadow of the hall, warning each other as they went along against taking cold. Caroline saw what had happened now. Wilson had no doubt caught sight of the Grahams over his shoulder, and had not wished them to see him talking to her.

Very well!--she was in a flame from head to foot--very well! When he _did_ want----

But beneath all that she sensed a weak longing for him which she was trying to drown in a flood of exaggerated indignation. Something told her that when he did want to speak to her again she would not be able to refuse: for he was not only a man for whom she felt a personal attraction, but he was also a type towards which all her new ambitions aspired. Poised as she now was, between what she had left and where she desired to be, he represented to her an ideal--a.s.sured, educated, a gentleman.

But though he did not walk home with her--in spite of what he said of the lonely road--she was not to go by herself after all. For a young man who was a connection of the Creddles--a railway porter by trade--chanced to pa.s.s just as she was leaving the promenade, and escorted her as far as the gate of the Cottage. He was a good-looking, intelligent youth, with a pleasant, hearty manner and a fair share of those solid qualities which adorned Mr. Creddle--the very man to make a good father and a good husband. Already attracted by Caroline, he would have gone further that night if he had not been discouraged, but she thought of his broken and blackened finger-nails, and of the noise he made when he drank tea, and so they parted at the gate without anything definite being said.

But as she ran up the garden path with her self-esteem thus agreeably restored, she had not the faintest idea that she had just pa.s.sed by that rarest thing in life--a chance of real happiness.

_Chapter X_

_Sunday Night_

The long street leading to the church was thronged with people who walked slowly, smiling and talking to each other, either going towards the lanes beyond the little town, or towards the sea. But a third sort, much smaller in number, threaded rather quickly in and out of the gently-moving crowds with an air of obeying some purpose within themselves and not merely enjoying the lull in the wind at sundown and the warm air. And above it all, clanging out from the grey tower, the last bell rang out a single note urgently: "Come! Come! Come!"

A good many did not notice the bell at all; others just took it in as a sound of Sunday evening which ministered pleasantly to their agreeable feeling of having nothing to do but enjoy themselves; scarcely anyone was troubled by declining that invitation, because the habit of church-going has fallen from the position of a duty to that of a compliment which the religiously disposed are willing to pay their G.o.d if quite convenient.

Caroline walked briskly, now and then glancing up at the clock on the tower as if she belonged to the purposeful minority which was making its way to the grey porch. Not that she had started out with any intention of going to the service, but her girl friend had come across an admirer at the church corner, and so it became necessary to do something in self-defence. Impossible to contemplate wandering alone on a Sunday evening without a companion of any sort. The lack of a "boy" for such a purpose made Caroline feel oddly self-conscious--as if people were staring at her and wondering. She would have been glad of the young railway porter's company now, if he had turned up, and would have welcomed him as a sort of refuge.

He sat and smoked on a bench by the sea front, however, all unaware of the opportunity that was rushing past him, never to return. At the last insistent "Come!" Caroline caught sight of Lillie with a young man rounding the next bend of the road, and the idea of being pitied for her solitary condition made her march straight up the flagged path to the church door, as if she had meant going ever since leaving home.

But once inside the church, she experienced a gradual cessation of that p.r.i.c.kling awareness of other people's thoughts and other people's eyes which had been so uncomfortable on the road. For she was familiar with the service--having gone to the Sunday school in childhood and attended church at times since, though the Creddles were chapel folk--so that the places in the Prayer Book came automatically to her fingers, and the soothing flow of the words gave her a chance to come to herself.

She did not worship in any real sense of the word, but her mind was, despite itself, attuned to peace. "From all the perils and dangers of this night----" Then, after an interval during which the sunset struck golden across a tomb in the chancel: "The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ . . . now and for evermore. Amen."

She rose from her knees and her glance fell upon Miss Ethel, who sat a fair distance away in the spa.r.s.ely filled side aisle. She wondered whether Miss Ethel were a really religious sort or not--you never heard her mention a word about it, and she seemed so up against everything----

Then the hymn--old-fashioned because the Vicar was away and the elderly organist who had chosen it liked that kind best. Perhaps he knew that all religion must at the last be a matter of feeling and not of reason, for he had lived such a long time in the world and really loved G.o.d.

But the strange preacher who was going to occupy the pulpit looked down the church at the congregation singing and felt they required a great deal of sound teaching. So, being a good man with a high ethical standard, he stepped up into the pulpit and did his best during the opportunity which was at his disposal to correct the effect of what he considered sentimental doggerel.

But as Caroline listened to him, she felt his explanations of a reasonable faith washing away from her mind all the beautiful pictures which had been stored there and had formed part of her life, though she had not valued them. No doubt he meant well; still the explanations took away and gave nothing to fill the empty place. Soon her mind wandered and she caught sight of a hat trimmed in a way that was exceedingly smart and easy enough to copy; so that occupied her attention until she heard the familiar rustle among the congregation and the "Now" which gives release.

The clergyman stood near the east window to give the blessing with a side light slanting across his white surplice, and a thought darted into Caroline's mind, turning her hot from head to foot--Why, that was just how the Vicar would stand with the bride and bridegroom before him at the altar-rails in three weeks' time! And a vision of Laura in her veil beside Wilson's broad, strong figure gave her a queer, unhappy feeling of irritation and pain; yet somehow she wanted to indulge the pain--to press it in upon her senses by dwelling on it.