Chapter 12

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 Godfrey 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, assailed by a strange feeling that she belonged nowhere, neither to Aunt Creddle's sort, nor to Laura's; yet all the time passionately aware that she was a "business girl" and as good as anybody.

Then there was Winnie again. Well, poor kid, she'd had no sort of an evening---- "Look here, Winnie, I'll take you again next week and we'll stop all the time."

"Honour bright?" said Winnie.

"Honour bright!" said Caroline. So Winnie cheered up, because she knew Cousin Carrie did not break promises.

_Chapter XVI_

_New-Comers_

During the night the wind freshened, then for three days it blew half a gale from the south-west. The sea was no longer a playfellow for little boys and girls, but a monster whose white fangs gleamed through the grey-blue water far out towards the horizon, ready to crunch the bones of ships and sailors alike with a sort of roistering glee.

A few visitors still fought their way up and down the promenade; and if of a sanguine temperament, they shouted above the wind, as they passed Caroline in the pay-box, that this really _ought_ to blow the cobwebs away! But the furnished houses and apartments near the sea, where a turn-up bed on the landing could not be obtained for love or money six weeks ago, were now mostly empty. Even the visitors from Flodmouth who had remained in Thorhaven because they were so near home, began to think comfortably of lighted streets, theatres, cinemas, concerts--a general settling down to their ordinary routine of work and play.

When Caroline came out of the pay-box at the tea hour, she also realized that the season was over. A sort of flat finality lay over everything, despite the crispness of the air and the aromatic, clean fragrance of the masses of sea-weed which had been torn from the floor of the ocean in the storm and now lay drying on the shore.

Well, that was all over. She said so to herself as she walked away, feeling dull, resigned--it would be all the same a hundred years hence.

She had not seen Godfrey since that night on the way from the cinema when she and Winnie caught a glimpse of him from under the dark shadow of the trees, therefore it was plain that he must be avoiding her. He knew her hours at the promenade, and could easily have said a word in passing through even if he did not wish for anything more. He had taken her at her word; but being a woman, the desire to talk everything out grew during those three long stormy days to an agony of exasperation which was almost worse to bear at the moment than the loss of Godfrey himself.

After passing out of the promenade she came back again, saying to Lillie over her shoulder that she would go home by the cliff because she had a headache and a blow would do it good. She told herself the same thing. But beneath all that she was eagerly aware that Godfrey's lodgings lay in that direction. As she went down the terrace she could see the windows all open and the landlady moving about inside with a duster. For a moment she stood perfectly still, experiencing that sensation of physical sickness which comes from sudden emotional disappointment. She did not think at all, only suffered under the maddening frustration of her desire to have it all out with Godfrey once more before they finally parted. The waves and the sky did not exist for her, though they would always give dignity to the memory of what passed between Godfrey and herself that night on the cliff top. For while the seaside accords with frothy impermanence in love as no other background seems able to do, it is because those playing at passion feel subconsciously how little their light loves matter in face of that unchangeableness. Caroline stood there until she recovered herself; then the landlady came to shake the duster from the window and she walked slowly towards the Cottage.

* * * * * *

The ladies were already seated at tea when Caroline opened the front door. Miss Ethel at once rose from the table with a dish of jam in her hand. "Caroline's tea," she said briefly.

"But you have not taken any yourself," objected Mrs. Bradford. "And I must say I don't see why Caroline should have it when our stock is getting so low."

"We promised to board and lodge her properly in return for her service, and I'm going to do it," said Miss Ethel with a tightening of the lips.

"Well, no one can say she has done her fair share of the bargain; at least, during the last few days," said Mrs. Bradford. "She seems in a sort of dream. Here! give me a bit more of that jam before you take it away."

"Caroline has never forgotten to bring my morning tea once since I was ill," said Miss Ethel. "But she certainly does not seem herself now. I don't know what is the matter with her."

"Got her head full of young men, no doubt," said Mrs. Bradford. "It makes some girls like that, of course."

She glanced instinctively at her husband's picture, speaking as one having first-hand information on all amatory matters.

Miss Ethel went into the kitchen where Caroline was already lifting the kettle from the fire; but when the girl turned round, her face looked so queer and drawn despite the colour which the wind had whipped into her cheeks, that Miss Ethel felt sorry. Still, the barrier of "the room door" had not been more immovably established in the consciousness of Aunt Ellen and Aunt Creddle, than the iron law of not "talking to the servants" in the minds of Miss Ethel and Mrs. Bradford. They had been so trained in the idea--though, it only became general about a hundred and fifty years ago--that when Miss Ethel now wanted to speak of Caroline's unhappy looks as one simple, ordinary human being to another she could not manage to do it. She meant to be kind and yet was obliged to assume the tone and manner--throwing her voice flute-like, as it were, across a gulf neither must cross--which her mother had always employed in speaking to the servants.

"Oh! Caroline," she said, placing the jam on the table. "I thought you might like some of this for your tea. It is very stormy out to-night, is it not? I hope you have not caught cold?"

She had a habit of beginning that way--"Oh! Caroline"--when she intended to give an order or make a request.

In making her perfunctory reply, Caroline never imagined for one moment that her own healthy appetite was often satisfied at Miss Ethel's expense. She had bargained for food, and food was there; and there was an end of it. But the front-door bell rang, and something in Miss Ethel's expression did then pierce her self-engrossment.

"Is anything the matter, Miss Ethel?"

"No, no." Miss Ethel stood there, pressing her thin hands together--striving to speak calmly. "It is only the people to look over the house, I expect." Then she turned round and walked with her head erect across the hall.

The door opened to disclose a short, thin, alert man with a taller, well-nourished woman in handsome clothes, wearing a thick coating of scented powder on her full cheeks and thick nose. Over her whole person was written in characters for all to read the consciousness of having plenty of money. It was new to her, and never for a moment could she forget it; while her husband also fed _his_ satisfaction in having plenty of money every time he looked at her. And yet they were not unkindly people; ready to do a kindness if it did not take away from them any of the luxuries, pleasures, delightful enviousness in others less successful, which gradually would give them atrophy of the soul.

So they thought good-naturedly enough, that though the old girl looked a bit frosty and forbidding, that was no wonder--it must be a nasty jar to have to turn out of a house where you had lived so many years. And they made every allowance for the somewhat ceremonious manner in which she conducted them through the rooms.

"Ah yes; when I used to see you come into the front seats at the Flodmouth concerts with your respected father, and me in the shilling gallery, I little thought---- But it's one down and the other come up in these days, Miss Wilson. Same all the world over."

"Look, William!" said the wife, jogging her husband's arm. "That's a beautiful old bureau." Then she turned to Miss Ethel. "I dare say you have a lot of old furniture here that will be too big for your little house. Couldn't we offer to relieve you of some of it? I could do very well with that bureau and no doubt other things besides."

William whipped out his pocket-book. "Yes, Miss Wilson, you just say what you want to part with, and I'll have the lot valued by anybody you like. Pity to let the things go out of the house." He paused, suddenly noticing the grey shade on Miss Ethel's face: then added encouragingly: "You're quite in the fashion, you know, Miss Wilson. Everybody's doing it, from dukes downwards."

"Of course," said Miss Ellen. [Transcriber's note: Ethel?]

Mrs. Bradford sat stolidly silent, taking no part in the affair, not even when the little man said in a low voice: "Deaf, I see. A great affliction--a great affliction!"

At last they had seen everything, and stood once more in the hall before the open door. "Well, we came just as a matter of form," said the husband. "Never do to buy a pig in a poke, you know! But we shall go straight to Mr. Wilson and tell him we have decided to buy. You may make your mind at rest about that. Of course, there is a good deal to be done inside. But what I say is, it is a gentleman's house."

Then the wife said, glancing through the open door. "Oh! by the way, Miss Wilson, we wondered if you would mind our man coming in one day to dig up the privet hedge? You know labour is so difficult to get in Thorhaven, and we happen to have a man engaged for another month; so perhaps you----" Her voice trailed off into silence, for she was a little abashed by that look in Miss Ethel's pale eyes. "It won't look so pretty, of course, but it will let light and air into the house."

"Oh yes," said Miss Ethel, smiling with strained lips.

Then they went down the drive, leaving her there in the doorway staring at the privet hedge. Over the hedge, a fire had just been lighted in the scarcely completed bungalow, so that the white smoke streamed like a flag from the tall chimney, just moved a little from the south so that it swung over towards the Cottage. A week or two more and the hedge would be down. There would be no barrier at all between this quiet garden and all those rows of houses which had been marching on, nearer and nearer, ever since the first one was built. As Miss Ethel stood there, she felt beaten. She knew at last, what she had fought so hard not to know, that the powers against her in the world were too strong--that her opposition was ridiculous and futile. Nothing that she could ever say or do would make the slightest difference.

She returned to the room where Mrs. Bradford was sitting. "They will be sending some one to take up the hedge in a few days," she said.

"You don't mean it!" exclaimed Mrs. Bradford, startled into animation. "Oh, what a thing it is to be without a man in a matter like this! I know my dear husband would never have allowed it."

But Miss Ethel was at the window again, quietly looking out. "They say it will let light and air into the house. It won't look so pretty, but it will let light and air into the house."

Then they ceased speaking for the moment because Caroline had come into the room to take away the tea-tray; but before she had closed the door, Mrs. Bradford began again, still for her excitedly: "Ethel! Mrs. Graham ran in for a minute while you were upstairs, and she says Laura Temple's wedding is put off." There came a sudden crash of crockery just beyond the door. "Caroline!" cried Miss Ethel, "have you let the tray fall?"

Caroline did not answer at first; then she said in a low voice: "There's nothing broken, Miss Ethel."

But she did not move away--only forced her hands to hold the tray steadily so that they should not know she was there. The next moment she heard Miss Ethel cross the room and was obliged to go back to the kitchen.

There she stood washing up over the sink, seething with a conflict which almost maddened her. The old habit of Aunt Creddle and Aunt Ellen--grown into an instinct in course of generations--to guess, and listen for chance words, and piece together any drama that was going on "in the room" because their own lives were so circumscribed, fought with her own free impulse to return openly and ask the plain question: "Do you know why Miss Temple's engagement is broken off?"

The conflict made her feel terribly over-excited and nervous; but she had one over-mastering reason for not obeying that impulse to ask a direct question--she was afraid lest these two women might see she was in love with Godfrey. Then she happened to glance at the clock, and saw she was already late for the promenade; but as she hurried down the drive she heard the whistle of a railway engine and stood perfectly still just as if some one had called to her. But that was the five-twenty-five train, of course. That by which Godfrey invariably returned when he had spent the day in the city, was half an hour later. If she waited outside the station until it came in, she would be certain to see him. He _must_ speak to her then. This maddening agony of uncertainty and suspense would be over at least.

But as she hurried along to the station with the moist west wind in her face, she saw--behind those engrossing thoughts--the other girl waiting angrily to be released from the pay-box. Still, that didn't matter to Caroline. Nothing mattered in the world, but getting that talk with Godfrey. For she had reached a point now, when all these business men and shopping ladies who began to flow past her from the platform--drawing their scarves closer, and buttoning their coats as they merged into the cool, salt air after the warmer atmosphere of the city--seemed no more to her than flies buzzing round a path she was bent on following.

Wilf came past, taking long strides and wearing a new hat which he removed slightly; giving a sideways, condescending nod which said as plainly as words: "If you're waiting for _me_, miss, it's no go!"

But though she nodded in return, she was not actually aware of him. Her heart beat unevenly and she felt a suspense which ran through every nerve and every vein--she had no feeling beyond it. Her face was ashen as she stood by the entrance to the station, with the breakers beyond looking cruel in the cold light. Her eyes shone black, owing to the pupils being so distended, but she appeared pinched and quiet as she stood there, at the edge of the crowd, for her whirling emotions had now reached that point which looks like stillness.

All of a sudden the blood rushed up over her forehead, and she instinctively put her hand to her heart because it seemed to be leaping out of its place. Here was Godfrey at last, walking with another man. She moved forward and stood directly in his way, so that he must see her. "Good evening," he said, then continued his conversation with the broad, prosperous-looking merchant who walked by his side.

Caroline remained planted there, staring after them with an almost foolish expression on her face. She could not take it in. It seemed incredible. Then the two men vanished round the corner, and at the same moment she heard a girl saying in her ear: "Cheer up, Carrie! If Wilf hasn't caught this, he will get the next. He isn't dead."

"What do you mean?" said Carrie, but her voice sounded muffled and vague, even to herself.

"Why, you came to meet your boy, didn't you? And he hasn't turned up. That's what you looked like, anyway," said the girl, laughing.

Carrie made an immense effort to fight off that feeling of faintness, saying jerkily: "Oh, well, I'm off with Wilf, you know." But the words seemed to echo in some great, vague place a long distance away.

_Chapter XVII_

_The Benefit Concert_

During the evening and many hours of the night Caroline remained in a white heat of anger and hurt pride which left no room for regret. It was true, then, that Godfrey had only been behaving to her all the time as Aunt Creddle said gentlemen did behave to working girls upon whom they bestowed their attentions. She'd been treated exactly like any little ignorant servant girl waiting at a street corner for her young man: just such a one as her aunts and her mother had been; and yet she felt violently that she was different. In the middle of the night she woke to find herself muttering: "I aren't going to stand it! I aren't going to stand it!" Then she bit the sheet to prevent herself from breaking out into a storm of weeping. She loved him so, but was no longer certain of his love. She could give him up almost gladly if he loved her and would always love her--but this was more than she could bear. There seemed to her no paradox in that--it was just what she felt.

Then she saw his heavily cut face on the darkness, as he had looked when he walked past her with that other man--both of them solid, self-contained, out of her reach! And with that the cold wave of anger swept over her again, overwhelming her. "I can't stand it! I aren't going to stand it. He'd no right to treat me like that, as if I were dirt beneath his feet. I'm as good as he is."

So the conflicting thoughts went on during the night hours; all the doubts and feelings which she had inherited, or had imbibed from the Creddles, warring with her own independence and pride. A girl like herself was good enough for any man. He'd no right to insult her by passing her like that in the street when they'd kissed as they did on the cliff top. She'd given him up, but she was going to be treated properly--not like a girl who had done something of which they were both ashamed. And again the helpless threat: "I aren't going to stand it!"

At last it was time to get up, and after a while to go down to the promenade. She was by now so exhausted with emotion that she could not feel any more and let her perceptions drift vaguely over outside things. A bill was up on the road-side, announcing the Benefit Concert for the band for that evening; another advertised second-hand tents and folding chairs for sale, cheap. A girl told her about a tent that had blown down the day of the gale, revealing a fat lady in a bathing towel--behaviour of rude Boreas which seemed to have put an end to bathing from tents for the season. Then a man came down the road with a barrow, crying, "Meller pears! Fine meller pe-a-a-rs!" Caroline bought some to take to Aunt Creddle, though she had had no definite thought of going there when she started ten minutes earlier than usual, but the ache of her exhausted emotion drew her subconsciously towards the jolly, serene nature as a hurt child runs to its mother.

The house door was open, so she walked straight in and put the pears down on the table. But she did not kiss her aunt, because she instinctively feared that the slightest breath of emotion might upset her self-control. "I bought these off a barrow. Don't know if they'll be sweet," she said. "Can't stop!"

"Sit down a minute," said Mrs. Creddle. "You look fit to drop. Aren't you feeling well, Carrie?"

"Oh, I'm all right," she answered impatiently. "What's that you are ironing?"

"It's some curtains for Miss Temple. I was there ironing yesterday, but didn't get these finished."

Caroline sharply turned with her back to the kitchen, looking out of the window. "Did they say anything about the wedding being put off?"

"Yes. Miss Laura's got a chill. Something to do with her digestion. She can't scarcely eat nothing."

"Oh!" Caroline could not say another word.

"Of course, it's hard on Mr. Wilson; but I think she's in the right on it. No use going away to them grand hotels if you can't enjoy the food," pursued Mrs. Creddle.

"Did you--did you hear how long it was put for?" said Caroline.

"Not exactly, as you may say," answered Mrs. Creddle. "Miss Panton came into the kitchen while I was there, and she said delays was dangerous. You know her way. She seemed to think it would be next month." She paused, then added uncomfortably: "I was on pins and needles for fear they might have heard about you and Mr. Wilson, Carrie, you know--being about the lanes at night together, and that. But I'm sure they hadn't." She paused again. "Well, I aren't sorry you had a lesson that night you were locked out, Carrie. Your mother and I had the same sort of temptations when we were out in placing--though you mayn't think it. There was a young gentleman from college in my last situation who begged me almost on his bended knees to walk out with him, but I knew what that led to." She paused again. "Cheer up, lass; it hurts a bit at the time, but it's all for the best. Once bitten, twice shy."

"You're always talking about what people did when _you_ were young," said Caroline, turning away abruptly.

"I know that. Things is very altered since my day," said Mrs. Creddle. "But there's some things----"

"I've no patience with people like you, aunt," said Caroline. "You know everything has changed, and yet you go on expecting girls to be the one thing that hasn't. It isn't common sense."

She was flinging out of the kitchen, when Mrs. Creddle caught her up and put a motherly arm about her. "Good-bye, my lass. You think nobody's felt like you before about a young man, but they have."

"I don't know what you're talking about. I've a bit of a head, but that's all," said Carrie.

After that she went away. But all the same she was a little comforted--real, disinterested love being the one ointment that can soothe tender hearts not yet cauterized by pain.

So the day passed; then the next wore on towards evening, with no sign of Godfrey. And all through the long hours, Caroline sat in the pay-box looking out of her little window--small, set face, very pale, and bright eyes intently watching--like some creature of the wild behind a gap in the thick leafage.

Now it was past sunset. The residents of Thorhaven had taken possession of their town again and the few visitors who remained were sprinkled about inconspicuously among the audience in the concert hall--the dominant factor no longer. Caroline exchanged greetings with many of her acquaintances who emerged from the seclusion entailed by letting rooms or vacating houses, and now shook their feathers like hens coming off the nest with the pleasant knowledge of a nest-egg successfully achieved. "Pretty good season, considering," ran the verdict; but the general mind was a happy one, in spite of a certain feeling of exhaustion. "Pickles!" said Lillie's mother. "I give you my word, Carrie, one lot ate cheese and pickles after the promenade every night to that degree it fair curdles my inside to think of. But as I say, each person's inside is their own. Live and let live, say I." And the good woman hurried on to spend part of the proceeds of this wise neutrality, her Sunday hat still quite like new from lack of use, and a holiday spirit radiating from her rather worn features.