The Privet Hedge Part 16

"Yes. Makes you feel as if you could jump over the moon, doesn't it?"

said Caroline gaily--that surface mind responding to his brisk jollity.

"Ha! Ha! So long as you haven't a liver to weigh you down," jested the rosy-faced gentleman. Then he stepped away down the promenade, well pleased with himself and his surroundings, and feeling that he was not such an old dog yet, so long as he could enjoy a joke with a girl on the promenade.

Caroline looked after him with a smile which gradually faded from her lips as the slight stimulation from without ceased to act. For beneath it all there was something inside, deep down within her, which was not to be touched by the influences of sea air or sunshine--something that watched anxiously and doggedly for one thing and would heed no other.

But the people came and went--came and went--until her knee ached with the clutch and her whole being with watching. . . . And still the one man she was looking for never put his broad-palmed, long-fingered hand on the iron bar or turned his heavy-featured face towards her little window.

She kept telling herself that she was tired after last night, so as to explain the ache, but her little, pale face was looking pinched in the light from the sea when Laura Temple paused at the barrier to say a few words. The two girls spoke to each other through the little window; one smiling, the other rather grave and reluctant. They talked a moment or two of trivial things--the weather, the Gala--but Caroline felt a queer animosity towards this pleasant, kind girl whose lover had kissed her the night before. Though she told her surface self that the kiss was only a "bit of fun" and meant nothing, that other self knew well enough that it had meant quite enough to const.i.tute an injury to a bride who was to be married in less than three weeks' time.

She replied abruptly, turning over the leaves of her account book; irritated by this contradictory sense of being obliged to feel she had done an injury when she knew she really had not. So at last Laura thought she had a headache or something, and soon went on towards the Cottage.

Miss Ethel came to the door, and at once took Laura into the living-room. Mrs. Bradford sat as usual on an arm-chair, idle with a clear conscience, because of her great, successful effort in the past.

Laura greeted them both gaily, for she felt the world was an agreeable place that morning. "I received your message with an almond cake from the baker's. I do hope your news is something good, too," she said.

But Miss Ethel did not respond to the mild pleasantry. "Yes. I had to get the baker's boy to take a message, because I am not very well to-day, and Caroline declined to call round on her way to the promenade."

"Said she hadn't time," added Mrs. Bradford. "She had quite sufficient time. And considering that she came in at all hours last night after pretending to lose the latch-key, I think she might have done what Ethel asked. No doubt she had been wandering about with some man. She went to the Creddles, intending to stay the night there, but Creddle brought her back."

"Oh, I feel sure she really did lose the key," said Laura. "It is a thing I have done myself before now. And I'm sure I never wandered about at night with young men."

"But she pretended that she had been here earlier and was unable to make anyone hear. I didn't like that. We are not Rip van Winkles,"

said Miss Ethel crisply.

Laura laughed, anxious to conciliate them both for Caroline's sake. "I dare say she was afraid of disturbing you. She is a kind-hearted girl, I am sure, and she would remember that you have been ill, Miss Ethel."

"And yet she declined to go on a simple errand for me this morning,"

said Miss Ethel. "No, they are all alike: all for self. The young people of the present day think of nothing but their own amus.e.m.e.nt."

She paused and added, anxious to be just, "Though I must own that Caroline was kind when I was ill. I dare say there is something good-hearted about her, at the bottom: but it is her general att.i.tude which I so dislike."

"If we only had Ellen back!" moaned Mrs. Bradford from the depths of the arm-chair. "Or somebody like Ellen."

"You may just as well wish for b.u.t.ter at fourteen-pence a pound or oranges twelve a penny like we used to get in Flodmouth Market,"

retorted Miss Ethel. Then her voice changed, taking on a heavy, inward note. "Those days are done. They'll never come back any more."

"I mean," said Mrs. Bradford, who had all the curiosity often shown by stupid people, "what sort of a young man Caroline has got now. A great deal depends on that." And she looked inquiringly at Laura.

"I'm sure I don't know," said Laura. "Caroline's young men are her affair, not mine."

"At any rate," said Miss Ethel, "we have not brought you here on a busy morning to talk about them. We know you must have a great deal on your hands just now, preparing for the wedding."

"Oh, it makes a great difference, having no house to get ready," said Laura, flushing at the mention of her wedding, as she could not help doing, though she felt such a sign of emotion to be ridiculous at this time of day. "We must stay in my cottage until the house G.o.dfrey has taken is at liberty, and they say that won't be before the end of March at the earliest."

"I don't think I should have liked that," said Mrs. Bradford. "I remember how my dear husband insisted on having everything absolutely complete, down to the very toilet-tidies on the looking-gla.s.ses, before he took me home as a bride. But there are few like him." And she sighed and glanced up at the quite imposing photograph which she had long since come to believe exactly resembled Mr. Bradford in life.

Laura felt a very little annoyed for the moment, being sensitive on this point of a house because hints had not failed to reach her that G.o.dfrey was considered to be feathering his nest at her expense; but the next minute she forgot her annoyance in a tender flow of sympathy for this other woman who had lost everything which she herself was about to possess.

"G.o.dfrey and I thought it preferable to waiting until the spring," she said gently. "But of course I should have liked my new home to be all ready for me, as yours was."

"Well, you needn't regret the toilet-tidies," said Miss Ethel. "Green paper with magenta ribbon, if I remember right." Then she paused a moment, nervously trying to steel herself for an effort which was exceedingly painful to her. "But what we asked you to come in for was this----" She paused again to clear her throat. "We have decided to sell this house, and we thought you would kindly convey the message to G.o.dfrey for us."

"Of course I will," said Laura readily. The question as to why a letter could not have been sent to G.o.dfrey was latent in her tone, but Miss Ethel did not answer it, because she herself did not know how she dreaded the effort of writing the letter.

"We knew you would be seeing G.o.dfrey this afternoon--we thought perhaps you would break it to him."

"We have only just decided," added Mrs. Bradford. "But I daresay we shall be all right in Emerald Avenue. There is a pleasant window in the front bedroom facing south. So long as I have my knitting and a warm corner I can make myself happy. My dear husband once said that my disposition made me immune from the arrows of adversity. It was a beautiful thing to say, and I have never forgotten it."

"I'll be sure to tell G.o.dfrey," said Laura, for once bluntly disregarding Mrs. Bradford's reminiscences, because she understood far more than they thought. It was plain enough that Miss Ethel had sent in this haste so as to make the matter irrevocable--to strengthen a decision almost beyond her powers. But once they had talked openly about leaving the house, it became an established thing.

"Tell G.o.dfrey we can be out by Christmas, if he is able to effect a sale," said Miss Ethel. "We must leave the roses, of course, as there will be no garden in Emerald Avenue. The privet hedge has been clipped this year, but it will want pruning in January."

"Oh, Miss Ethel!" said Laura, with a catch in her throat, suddenly feeling the tears running down, though she had no thought of crying a moment earlier.

For Miss Ethel, as she stood there very erect, talking in that dry, clear tone, with her thin face towards the light and the right temple twitching a little, looking out at the garden she had loved to tend, was a sight very touching to a sensitive heart. And though Laura knew that it was not such a terrible misfortune to leave an agreeable house with a nice garden for a smaller one less pleasant, she still felt--ridiculous though her reason knew it to be--that the atmosphere of the low room was charged with something momentous. The throb!

throb! throb! of a heavy sea at low tide came through the window, and it sounded to Laura's excited perceptions like the tread of something dreadful coming. Perhaps she was in a state of heightened emotion owing to her nearly approaching marriage, and that made her unduly impressionable, but she did experience a queer, helpless sense of destiny approaching such as you feel in dreams.

But Miss Ethel had conquered a momentary trembling of the lips caused by Laura's tears, and she crisply broke the silence. "I dare say you think we are making a mountain out of a molehill."

"No, no," said Laura eagerly. "Only you will have less work to do, and by next year at this time you may be really glad you are not here."

"Shall I?" said Miss Ethel. "I hope it may be so!"

"Don't take it like that, Miss Ethel!" said Laura in a quick, sharp tone, most unusual for her. "Things can never be as they were again.

Is it likely? Look out into the world. There's not a corner where you don't feel the backwash of a storm of some sort. You and I have lived in such a sheltered happy way here that we don't realize what's going on unless we are brought up against it by something in our own lives."

She wanted to be kind--yet words which were not very kind came out in spite of herself: and she felt herself trembling a little, as if they had to do with a deep emotion of her own which it distressed her to bring to light. "You can't feel sure of anything or anybody in the whole world. Anybody may change. They can't help it, any more than you can help seeing it." She was very pale now, aghast at what had grown from a faint stirring of unformulated doubt to a spoken reality.

Almost every sensitive person has trembled thus before something which has sprung up into sight through the accidental touching of a hidden spot in the mind.

But that only lasted a moment--the next, she was not going to leave it so. Every particle of her being rebelled against what she had seen and she would rather doubt her senses than her love. "I except G.o.dfrey, of course," she said, lifting up her head with a little laugh. "_He_ remains stable."

"Yes. Yes. Of course," responded Miss Ethel absently, her mind so full of what they had just decided to do that she could think of nothing else. "Then you will tell G.o.dfrey? I don't think there is any need for me to write."

"He will come in to see you, no doubt." Laura had remained standing since that moment when she rose hastily from her seat, and she went forward now with a gesture which showed she did not intend to sit down again. "I have such heaps to do this morning. I'm afraid I must run away now."

But as she touched Miss Ethel's hand with her own she was startled by its icy coldness. In a moment her sympathy flowed back again over those dreadful thoughts, washing them away. "I know you'll love your new home when you get settled, and you will have all your friends just the same. More, because you will be nearer the town." And she pressed her lips to that white cheek.

Miss Ethel did not seem to relax in that embrace, or to be in the least sensible of the natural kindness which permeated every fibre of Laura's being like the sweetness of sun-warmed fruit, but perhaps she did feel a little comforted by that soft human contact all the same.

For she went with the guest to the door and stood alone there watching until the sound of steps and the click of the gate gave place to silence. The builders had gone away for their dinner-hour, and the close-shaven gra.s.s in the sunshine near the high hedge seemed so cloistered--so much more remote than it really was. Before those new houses came, you need not see anything beyond the privet hedge unless you wished---- But now the outside was close upon her. It was time to give in and go away.

As she stood there with the neat curled hair over her forehead blowing in the wind, and her short skirt and blouse trimly set about her spare figure, she was thinking thoughts which were almost incredibly different from what she looked--seeking all over the world with a sort of desperate forlornness for a corner where her mind could find rest.

Then the very quiet of the half-built houses over the hedge reminded her that she must go in to fry the rissoles for the midday dinner, but she revolted from the antic.i.p.ated smell of hot fat with a sensation of physical sickness. For she had never possessed a robust appet.i.te, and until this last year had scarcely ever sat down to a meal prepared by herself: so she did not bring to the task that interest which a good appet.i.te or a natural taste for cooking will give even to those who have had no previous experience.

However, it had to be done, so she went in, catching sight as she pa.s.sed through the hall of a roll of music returned by Laura: but it failed to stir any regret that she was always too tired to practise nowadays. Leisure--which she had all her life regarded as a right, no more to be considered than water or air--was hers no longer.