Chapter 13

Caroline had responded to all these greetings, but she was glad when the concert began in the promenade hall and only a few stragglers passed through the barrier at long intervals. Once more she was free to resume that silent, intent watch which had occupied nearly the whole day.

But night was coming on fast now--with a heavy ground-swell and a wild streak of orange on the western sky. Caroline never thought once of the sea, and certainly was not conscious of being affected by it--she was, in fact, not aware of it at all. Yet it was just because she did most deeply respond to it that her affair with Godfrey was lifted for her beyond the trivial into those regions where passion really has dignity. That interview of theirs on the cliff top would have been poignant for both if it had taken place in a dingy back sitting-room; but something must have been absent--that unforgettable thrill which comes when beauty is joined to great emotion.

After a while, Caroline saw a woman leave the concert hall to cross the promenade, which already gleamed darkly with rain-drops. As she went through the turnstile she said: "I doubt we shall have a wet night." Then followed a storm of applause from the hall. "There!" added the woman, "I wish I could have stopped for the encore, but I had to get away, though I was forced to squeeze past Miss Temple and her gentleman on my way out. She does look bad, my word! Them that said it was all a tale about her being ill, have only to look at her. Well, good night."

Caroline waited a moment, then thrust her head forward and peered round the black space between her and the hall; and as she did so, her likeness to some watching wild creature became intensified. Then she withdrew her head, rose from her seat and came out of the pay-box, looking over her shoulder. With light, quick steps she went round the glass walls of the hall until she reached a place through which she could see the occupants of the front seats. Just as she came to a stand, seeking for Laura with heart throbbing and every pulse alert, the singer returned to give the encore.

The voice was long past its prime, but a window above had been opened wide for ventilation and the song could be heard clearly enough. As Caroline peered in vain through the glass dimmed by heat and human breath, the sentimental words floated out over her head; and the heavy organ-like accompaniment of the ground-swell made them more than ever ephemeral. A few bars of music, sounding so thin and strange against the booming of the sea, and then the next verse:

Now we are young, Life's meaning all grows clear, Does he but whisper low: "My dear--my dear!"

She pressed her forehead close to the glass, trying to keep back the tears, for she despised crying. Then the singer began again--the clear articulation almost all she had left:

And if we part, I shall not cease to hear For ever in my heart: "My dear--my dear!"

Caroline could not keep the tears back any longer. They would come, and she wiped them away with her fingers as she walked away. But the singer was evidently roused by applause to an extra effort, for the voice gained for the moment some of the timbre of her triumphant youth, and Caroline could hear more and more softly as she went farther off:

When we are old Some love-words disappear, But this goes all the way; "My dear--my dear!"

She did not see the sentimentality of the song because she liked it, just as she liked the simple love-stories with bright covers; and she had hardly time to dry her eyes before the band began to play God Save the King, and the people to surge through the large gates which were now set open. As soon as she could shut up the pay-box she slipped away into the darkness of the promenade, to escape the crowd who went mostly by the high road. A few steps beyond the north exit took her into absolute solitude, but the rain which was already falling quickly made her afraid of venturing far along the slippery path. The sea and sky were all dark--no white breakers on the heavy swell and no stars in the sky. She felt unutterably sad and deserted, standing there for a moment before she turned up the little terrace which led to the main road. But though she told herself that she was going this way because she had been crying and wished to meet no one, she knew, behind that, that she was lying to herself. She _had_ to know why she really came this way, and what she meant to do, because she had an honest soul.

Then she turned round and went up the uneven road between the dark little houses in the terrace. Only one house still remained lighted downstairs, though the upper blinds were nearly all illuminated from within. Caroline's eyes were fixed on that one house as she went along, and without allowing herself time to think she opened the little iron gate. Then she paused a moment, glancing up towards the attic bedroom where the woman with whom Godfrey lodged was already taking off her tightly curled fringe, and the uncompromising corsets in which she barricaded herself during the waking hours.

With a long knowledge of Thorhaven ways Caroline gently turned the front-door handle, and was not surprised to find the door left on the latch against Godfrey's return. She entered very quietly, tip-toeing down the passage, and went straight into the front room where stood lamp, kettle and other preparations for a light meal.

Caroline breathed hard as she reached the middle of the room, experiencing the odd sense of having been followed by unknown dangers which children know when they run down a long stairway in the dark. But here she was safe. The lamp--the chair--newspaper--the little meal set ready--all reassured her. Yet she was still standing, peering bright-eyed here and there, when a quick step sounded outside, and the next minute Godfrey hurried into the room. "You, here!" he said, staring at her, greatly startled. "What's the matter?"

"Nothing." She moved back towards the fireplace. . . . He had not kissed her; he had not even held out his hand. "I aren't going to stop," she said in a low tone. "I only wanted to know if--if your wedding was really broken off for the reason they said. I felt as if I must know. I--I thought perhaps she'd heard something about you and me."

"How should she hear anything?" he said. "The poor girl is ill enough, as anybody can see. But she would come to this rotten concert to-night in spite of all Miss Panton and I could say. She seems unable to keep quiet." He paused and added jerkily: "I suppose you know we were to have been married to-day?"

"Yes." Caroline felt the room swim round her, but she clutched the mantelpiece and kept quiet.

"I came for a couple of umbrellas. She and Miss Panton are waiting under shelter in the hall. I can't stay." He spoke abruptly, uneasily.

"Oh, I won't keep you." She moved a step or two forward and swayed a little, so that he was obliged to catch hold of her by the arm. The next second he was clasping her close while they looked into each other's eyes with a burning curiosity that must at all costs be satisfied. "Do you love me still? Do you love me still?" And yet there was absolute silence in the room while the question was asked and answered.

"Oh, I don't mind now," sobbed Caroline. "I don't mind now. It was only when I thought----"

"Hush!" said Godfrey, moving away. "What's that?"

"It sounds like Miss Armitage coming down," said Caroline, hurrying towards the door. "I'll slip out as quickly as I----" She drew back. "Oh!" Then pulled herself together as the landlady in curled fringe and long grey ulster entered the room, primming long, thin lips.

"Oh! Good evening, Miss Raby," said the woman. "I'm sorry if I intrude. I heard voices down below and I didn't know who it might be. I wasn't aware, Mr. Wilson, you had visitors."

"No more have I," said Godfrey lightly. "Miss Raby has just come with a message from Miss Wilson. I suppose you can't lend her an umbrella, Miss Armitage? I have to hurry away to the promenade with both mine. Miss Temple and Miss Panton are waiting for me there." He turned to Caroline. "I'm afraid I must hurry away. Good night."

As he went off. Miss Armitage said somewhat grudgingly: "If you wait a minute, I dare say I can find you an old umbrella some visitors left here in the summer."

"Please don't bother. I'm neither sugar nor salt," said Caroline pleasantly. "Good night, Miss Armitage."

And her happy tone was not all put on; because though the tangle and bitterness would come back again before the morning, she could realize nothing in the world now but the triumphant answer to that question she had wanted to ask during all those hours when she looked at the waves without seeing them and heard their moaning only inside her heart.

_Chapter XVIII_

_Uprooting_

Mrs. Bradford and Miss Ethel came out of the Cottage and walked through the garden in which--on so many windy, sunshiny mornings--they had done a little weeding or planting before they went to shop in the long street, where everybody knew them and everybody treated them with respect. "Yes, Miss Wilson. I'll be sure to let you have the middle cut, ma'am. Beautiful day for the time of year." But now there was a "Take it or leave it" attitude which grated very much on Miss Ethel's susceptibilities as she gave her small orders, and she felt thankful there was no shopping to be done on this particular morning. All the same, the errand on which she actually was bent made the way as painful to her as if she had been treading on sharp stones.

"I think Godfrey might have gone over the house with us, as he promised, instead of just leaving the key," she said.

"Did Caroline take the key in? I suppose there was no message?" said Mrs. Bradford.

"No: she said not. I asked her." Miss Ethel paused. "I thought there was something rather funny in her manner."

"What! You don't think there is anything in what the Grahams said?" exclaimed Mrs. Bradford, speaking far more alertly than usual.

"Of course I don't," said Miss Ethel.

"But Mr. Graham is sure he saw Godfrey go up to Caroline at the Gala on the promenade the minute our backs were turned. It was when he went back to buy those air-balloons for the children at the Home and he happened to look round."

"Well, what is there in that? I don't say he is by any means my ideal of a young man," said Miss Ethel. Then she added after a pause: "You must not dream of mentioning the subject to Caroline. It is not our affair."

They walked a few paces in silence, aware that they could not afford to send Caroline away even if she were a bad girl, and yet shamed within themselves by the knowledge.

"The Grahams seemed to think Godfrey has had serious money losses," remarked Mrs. Bradford at last. "Lucky he had Laura's money to fall back on."

"Well, I think she is lucky in having him to make the most of her capital," said Miss Ethel. "He has a wonderful head for business. Any difficulties that he may have will be only temporary." They were both talking without heeding particularly what they said, nervously engrossed by the errand on which they were bent.

But at last they turned the corner of Emerald Avenue, and the blank fact had to be faced. "That is our house, then. Number fifteen," said Miss Ethel.

So they went through the little iron gate, and an old man came hobbling across the street to speak to them. "Good morning, ladies," he said in a high trembling voice. "I hear you're going to live here. I hear my darter's a-going to have you for a neighbour. Well! well! Who'd a-thought it?"

His intention was kindly, but his manner showed a sort of triumph underneath: it was in some way gratifying to him that Miss Ethel, who used to give him tobacco and other little comforts, had come down to the same level as his daughter. Not that he had received anything lately, because Miss Ethel had nothing to give, while his son-in-law made good wages and his daughter let rooms. At any rate Miss Ethel missed the power to give far more than he missed the tobacco; and that from no desire to patronize--though perhaps she did like the gratifying glow of that feeling a little--but because of the real goodness and generosity at the bottom of her nature.

"I'm sure we shall be glad to have such good neighbours," she said pleasantly.

"Yes, yes. My darter's family wants for nothing. They've gotten one of these 'ere gramophones an all," chuckled the old man. "You'll hear it through the wall and it'll mebbe cheer you up if you feel dowly. But it's hard moving at your time of life."

Then he went off, chuckling and muttering to himself, and Mrs. Bradford and Miss Ethel walked up the tiny path to the house which was to be their home for the rest of their lives. But before they reached the door it opened from within, and there stood Laura Temple. She was smiling, and yet her kind eyes were bright with tears which she could scarcely keep from falling--for the two ageing women looked somehow so forlorn in the bright sunshine on the threshold of all this strangeness. But after the briefest pause Miss Ethel relieved the situation by saying briskly: "So you have opened the windows. Now that was good of you."

"Oh, Nanty did that. She's here, too," said Laura. Then they all went through the narrow passage into the front room.

"There is only one corner where I can have my chair," said Mrs. Bradford immediately. "Laura dear, those who lead an active life can't understand how important it is for anyone like me to have a chair in the right place. But you have not been well yourself. I can quite understand your not wanting to go away on a honeymoon when you are not feeling well. I shall never forget having a bilious attack on my own honeymoon. I would always recommend a small medicine chest as part of the wedding outfit--sore-throat remedies and gregory powder, and so on. My dear husband said that, so far as he was concerned, biliousness did not destroy romance; but there are bridegrooms and bridegrooms, and you never know until----"

"We'd better begin measuring the floor," interposed Miss Ethel uneasily, anxious to cut short this unusual loquacity on the part of Mrs. Bradford, which she knew to be caused by the general upset of looking forward to an entire change of place and routine. "Don't you think the old dining-room carpet will do very well here?"

She opened the room door suddenly to discover Miss Panton just outside suppressing her emotion with a handkerchief pressed to her lips. Now she was obliged to let it finally escape in a sort of whoop. "Oh! Excuse me. I can't help it! It's the thought of you here," she said excitedly. "I know silence is golden, but there are tibes---- And to see Miss Ethel going round on her hands and dees with a tape beasure as if it was only an ordinary spring cleaning----" Never had the catarrh been so marked and so marked in its effects on her m's and n's.

"Nonsense! We shall be quite comfortable here and much less work to do. Thousands of richer people than ourselves are having to move into smaller houses," said Miss Ethel; but she was touched all the same.

"I'm not sure my chair will stand in that corner," said Mrs. Bradford, going back to her great preoccupation. "I must measure it. I do wish I had it here."

"I can easily run and get the measurements," said Laura.

"You're sure it won't upset you," said Miss Panton. "You know you ought to take care."

"Of course not," said Laura. "I'm nearly all right again."

But she stood facing the strong light which fell through the uncurtained window, and her face looked very pale beneath the tan; it had the queer bleached appearance which is observable in such complexions even while the healthy brown and red still remain. There were dark marks underneath her eyes, too, which accentuated the faint lines near the mouth. Miss Ethel, glancing across at her was struck for the first time by the fact that Laura was not a young girl any more, though the effect of girlishness produced by her figure and the poise of her head still remained.

Then she went away to measure the chair, while Miss Ethel wrote some figures in a little book and remarked that she would now go up to the front bedroom.

"Then I'll just stay where I am," said Mrs. Bradford. "There is nothing for two to do, is there? And you know my legs, of course----" She did not trouble to be more explicit, because her unusual garrulity was dying down now Miss Panton and Laura had gone, and she knew Ethel would be reasonable enough to understand that the legs of a married lady could not be expected to go up and down stairs as easily as those of a spinster.

Miss Ethel herself so belonged to the generation when a married woman was necessarily on a different and higher level than an "old maid," that though she knew her sister in many ways to be a fool, she yet bowed to the unassailable superiority of the widow. She really did feel that the useless legs of her widowed sister were more worthy of consideration than her own unwedded limbs as she trudged upstairs.

When she spread the measuring tape across the floor in front of the window, her glance wandered for a moment to the house opposite where a fat woman in an untidy blouse was standing in the doorway laughing and talking with the milkman. A small child dragged a noisy cart along the pavement, eating at the same time a large piece of Yorkshire pie. Then a second woman opened the next door and joined the fun. They were all jolly together, self-satisfied. They had done well, and were relaxing after the rush of the season; but they seemed very far away from Miss Ethel as she looked out of the window.

Still she never thought of envying them their jollity and self-satisfaction. Deep in her heart she knew she would rather be herself with nothing, than such as they with everything. She had only a vague sense of uneasiness, which was deepened by the sound of the gramophone next door grinding out "Home, sweet Home." For her sake the old man--who lived with his daughter during the winter when lodgers were few--had sinned against the law which prohibited his use of the new gramophone. This was partly because he really wanted to cheer Miss Ethel, and partly because he realized his daughter's good fortune better when he thought of the ladies listening to him through the wall.

But Miss Ethel's attention was soon distracted, for a baby wailed in the house on the other side, and a fish cart went past ringing a loud bell to warn the women to run out with their dishes. The bell was harsh in tone, filling the street with clamour, and when the cart started again after a purchase the bell pealed afresh each time. It was some time before the desire of Emerald Avenue for the harvest of the sea was satisfied, but in the comparative silence which at last ensued, Miss Ethel pressed her hand to her forehead as she rose dizzily from her knees. For a moment or two the house opposite looked blurred, then the haziness passed off, and she saw the road lying empty in the grey light--the lace-curtained windows, the sideboard with a mirror back on the far side of the room, even the vase of faded flowers.

But despite the minute definiteness of it all, she had a most queer feeling of unreality. She told herself that this would probably be her home until she died, and that there was nothing to complain of--she ought to be ashamed to complain. But the words which were forming on the surface of her thoughts seemed to have no relation whatever to anything going on underneath. She could not, or would not try to see deep down, because that odd sense of unreality rather frightened her; but something rose up like an emanation--a presentiment, she would have called it, had she allowed herself to do so. But the whole idea of her living here seemed so pervaded with bleak unreality, as she stood there looking out of the window, that it seemed to be wiped out of the scheme of actual human happenings. Then from that under-swirl of feeling rose one definite thought: "I shall never live here."

She turned abruptly from the window, bracing herself by saying aloud: "Bless me! I'm getting like the old women in Back Hoggate. I shall soon be counting my ailing relatives over if a spark flies out of the candle." But even this comparison of herself with the superstitious inhabitants of the oldest part of Thorhaven did not drive away that unpleasant feeling, and she felt relieved by the sound of a human voice calling up the stairs: "Miss Ethel! I've brought the key. And I have put your lunch ready, and left the kettle on. I thought you might be glad of a cup of tea."

The voice, fresh, confident, full of abounding vitality, dispelled those queer sensations of Miss Ethel's. She came to the top of the stairs and thanked Caroline, for she had learned that she could no longer take good and willing service for granted. The extent, indeed, to which she had been bowed by circumstances, showed in her anxious, almost humble manner, as she hastened to add--despite her annoyance about the gossip concerning Caroline and Godfrey: "I hope you found the small beef-steak pie I left for your dinner? I forgot to tell you it was in the safe."

"Oh, I got all I wanted, thank you," said Caroline, adding as she went again down the passage: "I'll come straight in, Miss Ethel."

For she had felt very sorry for these two women as she busied herself about the house all the morning, doing her best to make things cheerful against their return. But on the way here, a few minutes ago, she had met Laura Temple on the road, and that put everything else out of her mind. She actually held her breath as they approached, wondering what would happen. If Laura had heard any of the gossip that was about the town her salutation--supposing she gave one at all--would be different.

But her pleasant "Good morning, Miss Raby," was just the same as usual; and though there might be a stiffness about Miss Panton's greeting, that lady never had been cordial.

But the brief encounter had left Caroline disturbed, confused, breathless--as if she had been running too fast for her strength. Her knees shook under her as she went on her way towards Emerald Avenue, though she looked just as usual--able to exchange a chaffing word with a boy of her acquaintance. For she, no less than other human beings, would be obliged to go through the tremendous crises of her emotional existence in the street, or at a party, or in a tram-car--her real self kept close, enshrouded by that strange cloak which hides every man from his neighbour.

Still it was obvious that Laura knew nothing. The marriage really had been put off for the reason stated. No one could doubt that who saw Laura's face even casually in the street.

Caroline had nearly reached Emerald Avenue when it occurred to her that Laura was probably going to the Cottage and would need her key. But she could not run after her with it. She felt a physical revulsion at the bare thought of speaking to a girl who was engaged to Godfrey--talking to him--receiving his kisses----

It had seemed almost easy, that first night on the cliff top, to behave decently about it all. But then everything had turned different. She could scarcely realize now how it had then seemed so clear, so entirely possible at once to give him up, and to be always certain of his love. The difficulties and confusions all came afterwards.

She told herself once more as she walked along that Godfrey could not possibly be such a cad as to throw over a poor girl who was crazy about him just before the wedding day, nor could he be meeting another girl on the sly at the same time.