The Privet Hedge Part 19

"I don't know how you could, Carrie," repeated Mrs. Creddle.

"Trapesing about at night with Miss Laura's young man when you ought to have been abed--and after the way she has always treated us all. Why, the very frock Winnie is putting on now is made out of one of hers. I should take shame to try and make mischief between her and her young man, and with him going to be married directly."

"Don't talk such rot, aunt. I have done nothing to be ashamed of,"

said Caroline rudely, "and I've not set eyes on him since Thursday night. You may talk about Miss Laura--but I owe her nothing. I've paid all back, and more." She paused a moment, but pride, suspense, emotion unnaturally repressed--all combined to betray her into saying what she had never meant to say to any human being. "You think I've behaved badly, do you? Well! I might have taken him away from her altogether. He wanted to throw her over, only I wouldn't have it."

"Oh!" Mrs. Creddle gasped; then went on in a low tone of apprehension and unhappiness. "I didn't think it was as bad as that, Carrie."

"Bad!" Caroline stared with genuine surprise at this reception of her bomb-sh.e.l.l. "He wanted to _marry_ me, I tell you."

Mrs. Creddle shook her head. "Poor Miss Laura! Well, I didn't think he was that sort, but you never know." She paused, then said gently: "My dear little la.s.s, don't you know all men talk like that when they want to make fools of silly girls? I don't suppose there's hardly a girl gone wrong in Thorhaven but the man has sworn he wanted to marry her. It's a trick as common as sin."

"You don't know what you're talking about! You've lived among a low lot in this terrace until your mind has got poisoned," cried Caroline, maddened with anger and shame. "You're a wicked woman to have such horrible thoughts. I'm telling you the truth. May I die to-night if I aren't!"

"Oh, Carrie!" said Mrs. Creddle, wincing as if she had been struck.

"How can you speak to me like that? I don't doubt you think it is all true. I don't doubt he said he would throw her over and marry you.

But he didn't mean it. You never suppose he is going to give up Miss Laura and all that money, to marry a girl that is n.o.body and has nothing; I can't believe it! I never should believe it unless I saw you with his wedding-ring on your finger."

"You can believe or not, as you like," replied Caroline, regaining a little of her self-control. "At any rate, you must swear to keep it to yourself, or I will never tell you anything again as long as I live."

"I shan't want to spread such news abroad, you may be sure," said Mrs.

Creddle. "But you must promise me not to trust yourself with him alone any more, Carrie. You don't know men as I do, and he can't be up to any good if he talks like that to you."

"Oh, very well," said Caroline, looking out of the window.

"I can see he's got hold of you," said Mrs. Creddle anxiously. "Oh dear! I don't know what I am to do. I daren't tell your uncle, for there's no saying what that would lead to. But you must be fond," she continued, exasperated, "if you think he really wants to make you his wife. Just fancy your marrying a relation of Miss Ethel's! Why, she'd fall down dead on the spot!"

"That wouldn't stop me," said Caroline grimly. "Lots of matches far more unequal than that come off nowadays. But you may make your mind easy. I aren't going to marry him--and I aren't going to behave in the way you seem to be afraid of, either. Only I'll just tell you this, aunt--I can never, never feel the same to you again after what you've said."

"Well, I can't help it!" answered Mrs. Creddle. "You'll come to thank me some day, Carrie, and I suppose I shall have to wait for that." All the same, the good woman's lip was trembling.

But Caroline, angry and dry-eyed, went to the door and called in a shrill voice: "Winnie! Winnie! Are you ready?"

Once outside, however, in the broad evening light, with the cool wind from the sea touching her face and the colours of the girls' bright dresses on the road growing faint, like flowers in a garden at sunset, Caroline began to feel somewhat less bitterly towards Mrs. Creddle.

She remembered that her aunt had been in service as a girl, and that no self-respecting maid-servant of those days would have walked out late at night with a man who was a relative of their mistress, nor would any decent-living gentleman have suggested such a thing. But Aunt Creddle forgot that she was a business girl--self-poised, making her own position in the world as she chose.

Still her pride continued to smart even when she reached the little Thorhaven picture house. She sat down in the semi-darkness and fixed her eyes mechanically on the screen before her, but very little of Winnie's clear happiness communicated itself to her. After a while, however, she did begin to feel less miserable, because no one can be the cause of that rippling joy in a delighted child without being touched by it a little. But her main feeling was relief. At last she was free to be as utterly wretched as she liked. No one could peer into her mind as she sat there, apparently enjoying herself; she was wrapped in a secrecy so deep that no human being could touch even the fringe of what she was thinking about, for Winnie's remarks were only like the chirp of a bird on the window-sill when the window is closed.

But beneath all her restless unhappiness she was still certain that every word G.o.dfrey said to her on Thursday night was sincere. A sort of n.o.bleness in her own love--despite the flippant beginnings of it--made her able to believe that he had not considered money or ambition any more than she had done. It was the defenceless kindness of Laura herself which had conquered them both. They were unable deliberately to deal her such a blow.

But across her thoughts came the legend on the screen after the whirl of moving figures. At first she followed the words without being aware of them; when all at once they leapt into her consciousness with a sort of shock.

"I swear I want to marry you!"

Immediately on that a man appeared on the screen with a girl in his arms, but Caroline was not going to let her mind accept any possible relationship between this story and her own. Then Aunt Creddle's speech forced itself through the barrier she tried to put up and she had to remember: "Men always talk like that, Carrie. Don't you know that men always talk like that when they want to get over a girl?"

She moved restlessly in her seat, turning to Winnie: "This is a silly film."

But she had to go on thinking about it. Supposing Aunt Creddle were right? No, she couldn't be!

The memory of G.o.dfrey's face as he looked up at her on the cliff ledge after she had refused him came back more vividly than the picture on the screen. That was real. If she were to doubt him, she must doubt the sea booming on the sands and the moon in the sky----

But if men did always say that? He might love her. She could not believe that he felt no real love for her then. But could he be wanting her love and everything else as well--like the man in the film?

She remembered that at the beginning of the interview he had suggested their being friends after his marriage. Could it be that he really had that in his mind all the time? Did he somehow know--though he loved her so then, and really meant what he said--that he was not going to mean it twenty-four hours later?

Suddenly she felt an overwhelming desire to ask him these questions.

She must know. She must have an answer. It was all very well to say they would not meet again. When she said it she meant it most sincerely; but there must be some sort of settling up before they parted for the whole of their lives. It could not be cut off short like that; just a kiss and running away down a dark garden. They must for once know exactly where they stood before the shutter went up and they could never truly look into each other's thoughts any more.

She turned to the child, who sat wide-eyed and rosy-cheeked, staring at the pictures. "I say, Winnie, I think we must be going home now," she said. "It's getting late."

She spoke gently, with a guilty consciousness of dragging Winnie away from a rare treat; but her restlessness would not let her sit still watching these changing, grimacing faces any longer.

Poor Winnie looked a little crestfallen but cheered up under the promise of chocolates, and a minute or two later they were outside in the starlit night, tasting the salt freshness of the air.

Caroline halted a moment, looking down, taking no notice of Winnie, then she said abruptly:

"We'll go by Beech Lane."

"But that's so dark," pleaded Winnie, looking up anxiously, sensitive as children are to the changed atmosphere when something goes wrong in the mysterious grown-up world.

"Oh no; not with the houses still lit up," said Caroline.

"There's such a lot of trees. I hate them old trees," said Winnie under her breath.

But Caroline did not hear her, and the two walked on silently, side by side, under the shadow of the large beech trees which formed an avenue beside the pavement. They went so very slowly that Winnie asked if Caroline were tired, but receiving no answer she plodded on, still full of the vague puzzled discomfort which all children know, and which they never speak of to any human soul. At last she felt the hand in her own close nervously, and then two people emerged from a gateway in front of them.

"Oh!" she said, in her high little voice, "there's Mr. Wilson and Miss Temple. They're going into the house. I like Miss Temple, don't you?

She gave mother----"

"Hush!" interrupted Caroline, her whole being absorbed in watching the couple who now stood together in the bright light which streamed from the open door.

"Coming in, G.o.dfrey?" said Laura. Caroline could hear quite plainly from her dark ambush under the beeches.

Then followed a moment's silence, during which Caroline's heart beat so loudly that it almost seemed to her as if they must hear the thump!

thump! thump! ever so far away, like a sound of drums beating. Then G.o.dfrey said: "Oh yes; I'll come in. It is only about half-past nine."

She went first into the house, and he waited outside a moment with the light streaming through the doorway full on his face. All at once Caroline started to run--she must see him alone. She must speak to him.

"Cousin Carrie!" piped Winnie. "You're hurting my hand! You're hurting my hand!" But the door closed before they got across the road, and they were alone in the dark lane.

Caroline looked at that shut door, moved by an emotion which was not only the outcome of the experience of the moment, but which was also a part of her very flesh and blood. Her own mother. Aunt Creddle, Aunt Ellen, generations of women before them--all had lived "in service" and had watched the drama of life going on behind room doors which were always closed lest "the servants" should hear or see. And so acute had these senses become, sharpened by closed doors, that they always did see and hear, though they did not in the least resent this att.i.tude of their employers, considering it just a part of the existing scheme of life.

But Caroline was different; and as she walked slowly along with Winnie disconsolately trudging by her side, she had an angry sense of being shut out from all sorts of things which she had as much right to possess as any other girl. She hated that shut door--Laura and G.o.dfrey inside, and herself outside; then she thought how easily she could destroy all that if she liked, and how Laura's easy, flowery courtship was only possible because _she_ allowed it.

Winnie spoke again and had to be answered; then Caroline went back to the aching round of thoughts again. She wouldn't be put aside like that--knowing nothing. She would give up, but she would not be left outside, guessing what was going on behind closed doors.

She tramped along, dull, dry-eyed, a.s.sailed by a strange feeling that she belonged nowhere, neither to Aunt Creddle's sort, nor to Laura's; yet all the time pa.s.sionately aware that she was a "business girl" and as good as anybody.