The Privet Hedge Part 7

Caroline, defiantly aware of all this, answered Laura's pleasant remarks at random. She was not going to have him tell about the red dress in his own way--since he had evidently never thought again of it or her--making a funny tale to amuse Miss Laura--she'd tell it in _her_ way! "Miss Temple, I wanted to tell you, I wore that flame-coloured dress you gave Aunt Creddle at the promenade dance the other night.

She burnt mine ironing it out, so I borrowed that at the last minute.

But I did it no harm and gave it back to her next day." The words came out breathlessly, in a little rush, and the bright eyes peered defiantly through the little window.

"Oh, what a pity to give it back," said Laura. "I expect it suited you, and really I only gave it to Mrs. Creddle, because Mr. Wilson disliked it so much." She smiled round at him, then turned again to Caroline. "Do wear it again, and then I can let you have the shoes and stockings to match. They are such a peculiar shade that they will go with nothing else I have."

"No, thank you," said Caroline abruptly: but the next minute she smiled into the face so near her own, softening her refusal--for she could not help feeling the charm of that open-eyed kindness with which Laura had looked out at the world since she was in the cradle. It was so real: and yet it formed a weak spot in Laura's nature. For she wanted so much to be liked that she was--as some one had once said of her--just a little bit disappointed if a stray cat did not purr as she went past.

Now she answered quite eagerly, but with a perfectly genuine eagerness: "Oh, I do hope you'll change your mind. Anyway, I'll send the shoes and stockings, though I'm afraid the shoes will be too big for you."

Then she went off, leaving Caroline tingling from head to foot with annoyance against Wilson. To think he should treat her in that way, as if the dance the other night were something to be ashamed of. Only wait until he tried to speak to her when Miss Temple was not there, and he should see what would happen.

But Wilson was walking by Laura's side on the promenade without the remotest intention of talking to Caroline again: and he had so lost interest in her that he was almost surprised to hear his lady ask how the dress looked.

"I spoke to the girl because I mistook her for you from the back," he said.

"But did she look nice in it?" persisted Laura.

"Nice?" He paused, and she was so tall that his face was almost on a level with her own. Then he glanced back at the pay-box. "Poor little devil! She can't have known herself, if she happened to see her reflection that night. The dress worked miracles. I can hardly believe it was the same girl."

"She is engaged to some young man in an office in Flodmouth, I believe," said Laura. "I wonder if you could do anything for him?"

"I'm afraid not. We don't interfere in each other's office arrangements in Flodmouth business circles," he said, teasing her, though he saw and appreciated that kindness always welling up in her like a spring, ready for every one. "All right, old girl. If I have a chance, I'll do what I can," he added, "but the youth only looks about nineteen, so they have plenty of time yet."

"n.o.body has too much time to be happy in," said Laura, smiling at her lover. "Fancy, if we had fallen in love with each other and married ten years ago, we should have been all that to the good."

He laughed. "We might have been all that to the bad," he said. "You don't know what I was like at nineteen, Laura."

So they went along, very happy, laughing and talking together, viewed with envy, contempt or sympathy by the girls and women who read and worked round the band-stand. A thin stream of music drifted out with a sort of melancholy sprightliness to join the deep sound of waves breaking and drawing back from the gravel on the sands. In the distance Caroline looked out from her little window at Wilson's broad back and hated them both, in spite of Laura's kindness. They'd everything--everything. What right had one girl to have so much more than another? . . . Then a bevy of children came through the barrier, and when she next looked the lovers had vanished.

But later in the morning when Wilson returned home alone by way of the promenade, he glanced at Caroline in pa.s.sing the barrier with the faintest renewed stirring of curiosity. Surely there must have been something--he couldn't quite have imagined it _all_ that night at the dance. Then he saw a bill near the gate announcing another dance this week, and that made him say lightly, as he went through the iron turnstile: "Shall you be at the dance on Thursday? You ought to wear that red dress again."

"No, I aren't--I'm not going to wear the dress any more." She spoke rudely, abruptly--saying to herself that this was what she had expected.

He read her thoughts with ease, smiling to himself, for he knew something about women. But as he looked at her closely in the strong light, he became aware of a velvety texture in her skin which is usually seen only in children. She had a powdering of freckles on her nose, and her pupils had dilated with anger until her eyes looked black; her head was very erect on her slim shoulders. He thought to himself that here were traces of the nymph after all---at least, here was a girl who might conceivably look like one by artificial light and in the right gown. And beyond that, he was vaguely conscious of something in her that was pliant yet unbreakable--or almost unbreakable--and which defied him and all the world.

"What will your other cavalier say to that?" he said. "I expect he will want to see you take the shine out of all the other girls once more."

"Excuse me. There is some one waiting to come through," said Caroline with immense aloofness.

But inwardly she was furious with herself for feeling a just perceptible response to his virile personality and his absolute sureness. Anything he _wanted_---- Then she bent her mind resolutely upon a respected inhabitant of Thorhaven.

"Yes, lovely day, isn't it?" she said. "I suppose you're full up with visitors?"

The woman replied that she was full up, and furthermore that she would remain in the same happy condition until October, then said casually as she moved off: "I didn't know you were living servant with Miss Wilson.

I suppose you'll stop there altogether when this job on the promenade is done?"

"I aren't--I'm not living servant with her," said Caroline sharply.

"Who's been telling you that? I simply went to light the fire for them in the morning and do a few odd jobs until they could get somebody permanent."

"But I always understood from Mrs. Creddle you were going to be servant there," persisted the woman. "She once told me your aunt Ellen promised years ago."

"Very likely she did," said Caroline. "I can't help that. Everybody must do the best they can for themselves."

"Well, you're right there," answered the woman, and saying Amen thus to the creed of her day, she took up her basket and went through the turnstile.

_Chapter VII_

_Sea-Roke_

One afternoon at the turn of the tide, a sort of transformation scene took place along the sands and on the promenade; a bank of cold vapour advanced from the sea, through which the sun glimmered faintly yellow, then disappeared. The girls' thin blouses began to flap limply against their chilled arms; matrons turned a little red or blue about the nose; children's hair either curled more tightly or hung limp, while their cheeks took on a lovely colour in the cool dampness; tiny beads of moisture hung on everybody's eyelashes. Those who had come out to the seaside from the hot streets of Flodmouth felt when they emerged from the railway station, as if they were plunging into a cold vapour bath.

When Caroline went to relieve her colleague Lillie at tea-time, she was met by a stream of nurses, protesting infants and middle-aged women on their way home. And as the men who had just arrived from a day's business in the city made straight for their lodgings, Thorhaven in the very midst of the season took on an air of exclusion--of remoteness.

You could notice the wash of the waves again now.

The mist crept steadily along inland, m.u.f.fling the church, the trees beyond--almost hiding the privet hedge from Miss Ethel as she glanced out of the window.

"A heavy roke. I hope it won't last," she said; but she was not really thinking of what she was saying because her attention was engrossed by the noises on the other side of the hedge. Never the same continuously, but always changing, so that the ear never became dulled by knowing what to expect. A sharply whistled tune. Voices. The knock, knock, knock of a tool on a hard substance. A sound of sc.r.a.ping. Then blessed silence for a few seconds. Then knock, knock, knock again. She turned impatiently to Mrs. Bradford, who sat close up to the window reading the paper. "Thank goodness, it is nearly five; the men will be gone directly."

"You should try to get used to it," said Mrs. Bradford. "You have let it get on your nerves." And she returned at once to the newspaper in which she was reading a minutely-reported divorce case; for though a stolid and intensely respectable woman she loved to read these reports.

"It is plain to see that the husband wants to get rid of his wife," she said after a while.

"Well, that seems easily done nowadays," said Miss Ethel, listening still as she spoke. "Perhaps women don't realize that though they can easily get rid of an unsatisfactory husband, it will be just as easy for a satisfactory husband to get rid of them."

But Mrs. Bradford did not care for abstract questions. "I expect the Marchioness will have the custody of the children," she said.

So Miss Ethel took up the other half of the paper to try and distract her mind from the noises over the hedge. But every head-line seemed to dart at her sore consciousness as if it were a snake's head with a sting in it. Murder. Unrest. Strikes. Dissatisfactions. Change.

The whole outlook was indescribably comfortless and depressing to her.

She felt something akin to the vague, apprehensive misery--beyond reason or common sense--which people feel during the rumble of a distant earthquake.

"I hate reading the papers," she said, flinging the sheet down.

"You shouldn't read the parts that worry you. I don't," said Mrs.

Bradford. "But you always were one to work yourself up about things.

I remember once how you fretted over some little newsboys with no stockings on, when we went into Flodmouth as children to see the pantomime. You worried yourself and everybody else to death. But they were used to it, as dear father said, and it did them no harm. You are of the worrying sort, Ethel, and you should try to hold yourself in."

"Poor world if n.o.body worried," said Miss Ethel; then she rose abruptly and carried out the tea-tray.

Soon she was back again with a duster in her hand, beginning to dust the large bookshelf, which had been overlooked for a day or two. As her duster pa.s.sed over the red-leather backs of the old bound volumes of _Punch_ she saw with a wistful inner eye--as if she looked back to a Promised Land on which the gate was shut for ever--that world of swells and belles, of croquet and sunshine, of benevolence to the "poor" and fingers touching forelocks, black being black and white white.

Then Mrs. Bradford spoke again. "Why not leave that dusting, Ethel?

You have been at it all day."

"Somebody must," said Miss Ethel, going on dusting.

"Well, I only wish I could do more," said Mrs. Bradford, comfortably turning her page with a rustling crackle. "But my legs have given way ever since I was married. I don't know why, I'm sure; but marriage does seem to affect the const.i.tution in queer ways."