Produced by Al Haines
The Privet Hedge
By
J. E. BUCKROSE
[Transcriber's note: J. E. Buckrose is the pseudonym for Annie Edith
Jameson.]
By the Same Author
THE HOUSE WITH THE GOLDEN WINDOWS
YOUNG HEARTS
THE GIRL IN FANCY DRESS
MARRIAGE WHILE YOU WAIT
THE GOSSIP SHOP
THE SILENT LEGION
THE TALE OF MR. TUBBS
THE MATCHMAKERS
THE ROUND-ABOUT
DOWN OUR STREET
A LITTLE GREEN WORLD
BECAUSE OF JANE
LOVE IN A LITTLE TOWN
THE GREY SHEPHERD
Hodder and Stoughton Limited
London
1921
Contents
CHAP.
I THE COTTAGE
II CAROLINE
III THE PROMENADE
IV THE THREE MEN
V THE DANCE ON THE PROMENADE
VI MORNING CALLS
VII SEA-ROKE
VIII THE HEIGHT OF THE SEASON
IX WEDDING CLOTHES
X SUNDAY NIGHT
XI THE GALA
XII THE END OF THE GALA
XIII NEXT MORNING
XIV THE CLIFF TOP
XV THE CINEMA
XVI NEW-COMERS
XVII THE BENEFIT CONCERT
XVIII UPROOTING
XIX A WINDY MORNING
XX LEVELLING
XXI ST. MARTIN'S SUMMER
XXII MORNING
XXIII ON THE SHORE
_Chapter I_
_The Cottage_
At the far end of Thorhaven towards the north was a little square house
surrounded by a privet hedge. It had a green door under a sort of
wooden canopy with two flat windows on either side, and seemed to stand
there defying the rows and rows of terraces, avenues and meanish
semi-detached villas which were creeping up to it. Behind lay the flat
fields under a wide sky just as they had lain for centuries, with the
gulls screaming across them inland from the mud cliffs, and so the
cottage formed a sort of outpost, facing alone the hordes of
jerry-built houses which threatened to sweep on and surround it.
The ladies who lived at the Cottage had once been nicknamed the Misses
Canute--which showed how plainly all this could be seen, as a sort of
symbol, by anyone in the least imaginative; though it was a rather
unsatisfactory curate from Manchester who actually gave them the name.
No one felt surprised when he afterwards offended his bishop and went
into the motor business, for he suffered from that constitutional
ability to take people as seriously as they wished to be taken, which
is so bad for any career.
Thus the curate departed, but his irreverence lived on after him for
quite a long time, because many people like a mild joke which every one
must see at once--which is ready-made--and for which they cannot be
held responsible. So this became for a little while the family jest of
Thorhaven, in no way spoiled by the fact that one sister had married a
man called Bradford and was now a widow, while the other retained the
paternal Wilson.
The two ladies were walking together on this twenty-sixth of March, by
the side of the privet hedge which divided their garden from the large
field beyond and hid from them everything which they did not care to
see.
Miss Ethel's name was entirely unsuited to her, but she had received it
at a period when Ethels were as thick as blackberries in every girls'
school of any pretensions; and she was not in the very least like any
Miss Amelia out of a book, though she possessed an elder sister and had
reached fifty-five without getting married. On the contrary, she
carried her head with great assurance on her spare shoulders, put her
hair in curling pins each night as punctually as she said her prayers,
and wore a well-cut, shortish tweed skirt with sensible shoes. Her
face was thin and she had a delicately-shaped, rather long nose,
together with a charmingly-shaped mouth that had grown compressed and
lost its sweetness. A mole over her right eyebrow accentuated her
habit of twitching that side of her face a little when she was nervous
or excited.
But she was calm now, walking there with her sister, enjoying the keen
air warmed with sunshine which makes life on such a day in Thorhaven
sparkle with possibilities.
"I'm glad," she said, "that we decided not to clip the hedge. It has
grown up until it hides that odious Emerald Avenue entirely from the
garden."
"I can still see it from my bedroom window all the same," said Mrs.
Bradford.
"Don't look out of your window, then!" retorted Miss Ethel sharply.
"You take care of that," said Mrs. Bradford. "You have made the short
blinds so high that I can scarcely see over them."
"Do you want the people in those awful little houses to see you
undressing?" demanded Miss Ethel.
"They couldn't--not unless they used a telescope or opera glasses,"
said Mrs. Bradford. And she managed to convey, by some subtle
inflexion of voice and expression--though she was a dull woman--that if
you had been married, you were not so pernickitty about such things;
and, finally, that if Emerald Avenue cared to go to that trouble it was
welcome, because she remained always invested with the mantle of Hymen.
As a matter of fact, she had--in a way--spent her life for some years
in echoing that romantic declaration of the lady in the play: "I have
lived and loved." Only she had never said anything so vivid as
that--she simply sat down on the fact for the rest of her life in a
sort of comatose triumph.
Her husband had been a short, weasely man of bilious temperament;
still, he sufficed; and his death at the end of two years from
whooping-cough only added to Mrs. Bradford's complacency. She came
back home again to the Cottage, feeling as immeasurably superior to her
unmarried sister as only a woman of that generation could feel, who had
found a husband while most of her female relatives remained spinsters.
She at once caused the late Mr. Bradford's photograph to be
enlarged--the one in profile where the eyebrows had been strengthened,
and the slight squint was of course invisible--and she referred to him
in conversation as "such a fine intellectual-looking man." After a
while, she began to believe her own words more and more thoroughly, so
that at the end of ten years she would not have recognized him at all
had he appeared in the flesh.
"At any rate," she remarked, "our field won't be built over."
"No, thank goodness!" assented Miss Ethel emphatically, her left
eyebrow twitching a little. "The Warringborns will never sell their
land, whatever other people do. I remember grandfather telling us how
he was ordered out of the room by old Squire Warringborn when he once
went to suggest buying this field. Oh, no; the Warringborns won't
sell. Not the least fear of that."
But she only talked in this way because she was afraid--trying to keep
her heart up, as she saw in her mind's eye that oncoming horde of
yellowish-red houses.
Before Mrs. Bradford could reply about the Warringborns, there came a
sound of voices in the great field which stretched park-like beyond the
privet hedge. "Butcher Walker putting some sheep in, I expect," said
Mrs. Bradford. "He has the lease of it now."
But even as she spoke, her heavy jaw dropped and she stood staring.
Miss Ethel swerved quickly round in the same direction, and her pale
eyes focused. Neither of them uttered a sound as they looked at the
square board which rose slowly above the privet hedge. They could not
see the pole on which it was supported from that position in the
garden, and so it appeared to them like a banner upheld by unseen hands.
"Well," said Mrs. Bradford at last, "we mustn't clip the hedge this
year, that's all. Then----"
"Hedge!" cried Miss Ethel. "What's the use of talking about the hedge
when our home is spoilt? Look! Read!" She pointed to that square
object which flaunted now in all its glaring black and white newness--a
blot against the grey sky.
FOR SALE
FOR THE ERECTION OF VILLAS AND BUNGALOWS
APPLY MESSRS. GLATT & WILSON
Miss Ethel could not have felt deeper dismay if the square notice board
on the pole had been indeed held aloft by the very Spirit of Change
itself, with streaming hair still all aflame from rushing too closely
past a bursting sun. Only those who hate change as she did could ever
understand her dismay.
"We shall be driven out of our house. We shall have to leave," she
said, very pale. "After all these years, we shall have to go. We
_can't_ stand all their nasty little back ways!"
"Where are we to go to?" said Mrs. Bradford. She paused a moment.
"It's the same everywhere. Besides, the houses are not built yet."
There was nothing for them to do but to turn their backs on the board
and walk quietly away, filled with that aching home-sickness for the
quiet past which thousands of middle-aged people were feeling at that
moment all over Europe. Everything was so different, and the knowledge
of it gave to Miss Ethel a constant sense of exasperated discomfort,
like the ache of an internal disease which she could not forget for a
moment.
"I expect," she said after a while, "that Mrs. Graham will once more
tell us to let ourselves go with the tide and not worry. Thank God, I
never was a supine jelly-fish, and I can't start being one now."
"She was talking about servants," said Mrs. Bradford, who was troubled,
but not so troubled, because she took things differently. "I expect
she only meant we should never get another like Ellen; but we can't
expect to do so after having her for eleven years."
"No. We are lucky to have Ellen's niece coming. But I wish she were a
little older," said Miss Ethel. "Nineteen is very young."
"Yes," replied Mrs. Bradford, letting the conversation drop, for she
was not very fond of talking. And in the silence they looked back; and
to both of them nineteen seemed a rather ridiculous and foolish
age--even for a servant, who is supposed to be rather young.
Then Miss Ethel began again--talking on to try and banish the insistent
vision in her mind's eye of that square board over the privet hedge,
which she knew herself foolish to dwell upon. "I wish Caroline had not
lived with Ellen's sister and gone out as a day-girl to that little
grocer's shop in the Avenue. I'm afraid that may have spoilt her. But
it is Caroline or nobody. We may want a sensible middle-aged maid, but
in these days it isn't what you want--it's what you can get."
Mrs. Bradford nodded; and again they felt all over them that resentful
home-sickness for the past.
"One thing--we must begin as we mean to go on," said Miss Ethel. "If
mistresses were only firmer there would never be such ridiculous
proceedings as one hears about; but they are so afraid of losing maids
that they put up with anything. No wonder the girls find this out and
cease to have any respect for them. Look at Mrs. Graham! A latch-key
allowed, and no caps or aprons. That's swimming with the tide, with a
vengeance."
"There's no fear of Caroline wanting anything of that sort," said Mrs.
Bradford. "Ellen's sister, Mrs. Creddle, is as steady as Ellen."
"She'd need to be, with four children on her hands, and a husband like
one of those coco-nuts at Hull fair that have the husk partly left on,"
said Miss Ethel. "I never could understand how a nice-looking girl,
such as Mrs. Creddle was then, came to marry such a man."
Mrs. Bradford looked down at her fat hands and smiled a little, seeming
to see things in the matrimonial philosophy that no spinster was likely
to understand. Then after opening the door they both turned again,
from force of long habit, to look across the garden, and saw the square
board more plainly now than they had done when close under the hedge.
It stood there in the midst of the grass field--as if it were leading
on--while in the distance the wind from the east was blowing the smoke
like flags from the long row of chimney-tops in Emerald Avenue.
At last Miss Ethel said with a sort of doubtful hopefulness, as if
keeping her courage up before those advancing hordes: "Perhaps nobody
will want to buy the land there. Always heard it was boggy."
Mrs. Bradford shook her head silently and went in, followed by her
sister: in a world where all things were now odiously possible, one had
to take what came and make the best of it.
But Miss Ethel already experienced the faint beginning of a state of
suspense which was never to cease, day or night, though at times she
was not conscious of it. She fancied that every person who crossed the
field was an intending buyer, and woke with a start when the old
wardrobe gave the sudden "pop!" in the night to which she had been long
accustomed, thinking for the moment that she heard the first stroke of
a workman's hammer. In truth she was run down with doing most of the
work of the house since Ellen's departure to look after an invalid
mother, besides suffering from several severe colds during the winter,
so that the possibility of new houses being built close at hand had got
on her nerves, and gained an almost ridiculous importance.
She and her sister had thought, like so many others, that they could
escape change by living in one place, but it had followed them, as it
always inexorably does. Shut their eyes as they might, they had to see
neighbours leaving, neighbours dying. And even those who remained did
not continue the same. One day Miss Ethel was obliged to notice how
grey little Mrs. Baker at the newspaper shop was going--and that
brought to mind that she had been married thirty years come Christmas.
Thirty years! It seemed incredible that so much of life had slipped
almost imperceptibly away.
All the same, she _ached_ to stand still. She simply could not realize
that perhaps some other generation would look back on hers as she did
on the past. One Saturday the following lines in the local corner of
the _Thorhaven and County Weekly Budget_--between an advertisement of a
new poultry food and a notice of a fine goat for sale--did express a
little of her state of mind, though they were written by a retired
schoolmistress in the detested Emerald Avenue--
The world is full of hurry and change,
And everything seems so new and strange;
But it's stranger still that one of these days
They'll call what _we're_ doing, "the dear old ways."
It remained incredible, whatever reason might tell her, that anything
more iconoclastic could be hidden in the womb of time than the
Warringborns selling their land and Mrs. Graham letting her maid go to
dances on the promenade, with a powdered face and a latch-key.
_Chapter II_
_Caroline_
The promenade at Thorhaven was reached by a short, wide street where a
wind blew always, even on the stillest days, and the hall in which the
young people of the little town danced weekly stood straight in front
of the approaching visitor, entirely blocking out the view and the sea.
Some people thought this must have happened by accident, but others
felt sure that some subtle brain on the Urban District Council had
correctly gauged what the cherished Visitor--the Council naturally
thought of him or her with a capital letter--really considered a most
important feature of an up-to-date seaside resort.
The hall itself was a glass erection, and it was in design so like
those miniature forcing-houses placed over cherished plants in a garden
border that no one with any imagination could avoid feeling momentarily
that it must have been placed there by some good-natured giant--well
disposed towards Thorhaven--for the express purpose of making the
Visitor "come on" during the seaside holiday.
At the entrance gate stood a sort of sentry-box where two girls sat in
turn from ten to ten. These girls were chosen by an optimistic
Committee who hoped they would possess amiability, endurance, and
particularly a gift for remembering faces: because the inhabitants of
Thorhaven felt that their promenade was first of all _theirs_--and that
no assistant employed at the gate had a right _not_ to know them by
sight when they entered the precincts for which their own rates and
taxes had paid. Therefore--though this led to occasional abuse--it was
found necessary to municipal harmony to let inhabitants in "on the nod."
Two young ladies of blameless reputation who were supposed to possess
the required gifts had already been engaged for the season. One had
filled the post before, and another was new to the job but promising.
But time and love wait on the convenience of none--not even so
important a body as the Thorhaven Amusements Committee--and girl number
one unexpectedly ran away with a ship's engineer, while girl number two
developed bronchial tendencies which made the pay-box unsuitable. So
there were none.
On this bleak, bright day at the end of March, the pay-box with the
wind howling round it did indeed look a bracing place to spend the day
in, nor was it by any means an object which any would be likely to
watch for five minutes at a stretch in a strong north-easter. But that
was exactly what a palish girl with freckles on her nose had been doing
for that length of time, and so intent was she on her own thoughts that
she held a loose strand of hair in her hand instead of tucking it under
her cap while she stood there with eyes fixed intently on the little
ticket-window.
Her eyes were light--a greenish-grey flecked with gold--but they were
very bright with dark lashes and themselves appeared quite dark when
she was moved or excited. Nobody ever seemed to know what colour they
were, not even the young fellow with whom she had been "going" ever
since she left school, and she was generally considered in Thorhaven to
have brown eyes.
After some time she withdrew that eager gaze, swerved round as if on a
pivot, and started at a tremendous pace up the short, windy street that
led to the main road. "I'll do it!" she said to herself--young lips
tightly pressed, and nails biting into her palms even through her
gloves. "I don't care what aunt says. It's my life, not hers. It's
nobody's business but my own."
At the corner she stood a moment, searching the long grey road that led
to the church. After a while she saw a cart in the distance laden with
parcels and boxes, and she began to run after it, calling as she went:
"Hi! Mr. Willis! Mr. Willis! Please stop! I want my box back. I
don't want it taken to Miss Wilson's."
Mr. Willis pulled up and looked back over his shoulder. He had a
weather-beaten, humorous face and was very slow in his habit of speech.
"Quarrelled with Miss Ethel before you get there?" he said. "That's a
bit quicker work than usual. Servant lasses generally let me get their
boxes over the doorstep before they want to come away, even nowadays."
"Well, I don't mean to live servant with anybody," said Caroline,
frowning. "I've changed my mind all of a sudden because I only heard
of another opening this morning. I never wanted to go to the Cottage;
it was all Aunt Creddle. She always promised I should, when I got to
be nineteen, and I didn't seem as if I could get out of it."
"Well!" He jerked the reins. "Appears to me you might have spread
some of your thinking over the last four years instead of doing it all
since breakfast this morning." And he added over his shoulder: "I'm to
leave your box at Mrs. Creddle's, as I come back, then?"
"Yes, please," said Caroline, fumbling with her purse.
Mr. Willis's face wrinkled up into many little lines and bosses as he
looked down at her running beside the cart, with her coppers held out.
"No, no. Put it in your pocket. You told me to take your box to Miss
Wilson's. I don't want money for work I haven't done." Then he
whipped up the horse so that she could not keep pace with it.
She paused to take breath and stood looking after him, thinking it was
no wonder Dan Willis had never got on in the world; but she did not
know how many things in the world he enjoyed which people who must hunt
the last farthing all the time are obliged to miss. He was indeed a
happy bachelor, lodging over a little bread shop in the old part of the
village, and his sixty years sat lightly on him because he had always
found so much to see and to admire in the streets of Thorhaven.
But as Caroline turned to hurry down Emerald Avenue she immediately
forgot all about him, for in nearly every house some acquaintance was
making ready for the advent of the Visitor--either hanging curtains or
washing covers or standing furniture outside to beat--and she could
have written a most valuable book entitled "Hint to Lodging Seekers."
She possessed recondite, first-hand information, such as no outsider
can know; as, for instance, the more white mats, spotless covers and
antimacassars in April, the more stains and flies towards the end of
August. But fortunately for the few slatterns in Thorhaven, she did
not use her power.
Now she was racing in a whirl of emotion down Emerald Avenue and round
the next turn into Pearl Terrace, where her aunt Mrs. Creddle lived.
Strangers wondered to see the newer streets in Thorhaven all named
after precious stones, but the reason was simple enough. A member of
the Council had been inspired one warm June evening after three bottles
of ginger-beer to name the first of these red rows of houses Cornelian
Crescent. But that bold flight of fancy exhausted the afflatus, and it
seemed easier to go on to Sapphire Road than to think of anything
fresh. Now--after a lapse of years--Thorhaven's city fathers had begun
to be proud of this street nomenclature, and to believe they had meant
it from the very first.
Number 10 Pearl Terrace was a house on the north side of the road, and
Caroline had been "day-girl" with the wife of a small grocer just round
the corner from the age of fifteen and a half to the present time.
Before she went there at eight and after her return at six, she had
helped Mrs. Creddle during the crises constantly recurring in a family
of four little girls under twelve years old. Indeed, as her aunt said,
she formed another example of good coming out of evil--for evil it
seemed, when the Creddles had been obliged to take in Caroline among
their increasing brood after the death of her father and mother.
Not that there had ever been any question about it. "You couldn't let
the poor little lass go to the workhouse," said Mrs. Creddle when
anyone spoke to her on the subject. "Bless you, we've never missed the
bit she used to eat before she began to make aught, and she's earned
her keep with us over and over again since then."
Mr. Creddle also expressed the same meaning, though in different terms,
when pals ventured with a smile to hint that he had lasses enough under
his roof without getting in any from outside. "That's my business," he
would say. "I don't see as anybody has a right to pass a remark. I'd
rather have four lasses than a red nose, anyway."
If the person addressed happened to possess the outward and visible
signs of alcoholic excess, so much the worse for him--Mr. Creddle was
touchy on the subject of his family and did not wish to please. His
own nose was slightly rubicund, but it was solely owing to the east
winds which constantly blew across it as he worked for the Council on
the long roads near the sea; for he was a sober man, and when he did
have a glass of beer on a Saturday night, he brought it home in a jug
to share with his wife.
For years, indeed, when the babies were arriving, that was their only
little festival from week's end to week's end. They would stand the
jug on the table, and Mrs. Creddle would bring out some freshly baked
"pie"; with thick crust above and below, and apples or currants and
sugar, or gooseberries inside; and with the house all clean for Sunday,
they would take their hour of ease late on Saturday night.
So Caroline had been brought up in an atmosphere of kindness, though
Mr. Creddle had once threatened to strap her if she ran about with the
lads again after dark. He had caught her racing with streaming hair
round some half-built houses in Emerald Avenue, among a party of boys
who ought to have been in bed, and his brief comments as he escorted
her home were Elizabethan and to the point. Oddly enough, they burnt
deeper into her mind than the whole of Mrs. Creddle's cautious advice.
All that, however, was long ago. Now--demure and slim--Caroline would
no more have thought of racing round half-built houses at night than
Mrs. Creddle herself. But she flung open the front door of Number 10
with the same certainty of warm interest she had always felt on
entering that house, for Mrs. Creddle might be "put out," unhappy,
anxious--but never coldly indifferent.
"Aunt!" called Caroline from the foot of the stairs in the excited
voice which she strove to keep calm.
Mrs. Creddle emerged from a bedroom, with her usual air of being a
little too warm, whatever the weather, and her clear-skinned, jolly
face a little perturbed. "What's the matter, Carrie? You know Miss
Ethel's expecting you. You ought to be there by now."
Caroline drew back a pace, then let her missile fly. "I aren't----"
But even in this stress of emotion she paused from force of habit to
correct her speech--"I'm not going to Miss Wilson's."
"What!" Mrs. Creddle came down the stairs with the peculiar buoyancy
of active stout people. "I've just sent your box. Whatever are you
talking about, Carrie?"
"I met Mr. Brook--he's the one that has to do with the Amusements
Committee: and he said if I applied for Maggie Wake's job, I should get
it. They want somebody steady and respectable that knows how to
behave."
"But you can't apply for it!" said Mrs. Creddle, breathing sharply as
if from the impact of an actual blow. "You've promised for years to go
to Miss Wilson's when Ellen left, and they've waited for you ever since
November. You _can't_ behave like this to them now, Carrie. I can
understand your being tempted, but you can't do it. You promised
faithful."
"No, I didn't," said Caroline. "I never promised anything. It was you
that promised for me. And I always hated the thought of living in, and
being tied up at nights in their old kitchen; only you and Aunt Ellen
fixed it all up when I was a kid, and I somehow never thought of going
against you. It seemed one of the things that had to be--like putting
your hair up and such like--but I never wanted to do it my own self."
"Well, you can't run back now," said Mrs. Creddle. "After all that
Miss Ethel and Mrs. Bradford have done for us in the past, I should be
ashamed to think of such a thing. Why, this very dress I have on came
from Mrs. Bradford, and your blouse was made from a print skirt of Miss
Ethel's. And when you had whooping cough, they sent jelly and oranges
and I don't know what. I don't understand how you can want to behave
so badly to them, Carrie."
"Oh, I've not forgotten all that!" said Carrie, working herself up into
a defiant rage because she wanted to feel a counter-irritant to a
secret uneasiness which lurked at the bottom of her mind. "But spare
food and old clothes ought not to buy a girl, body and soul. Anyway, I
price myself higher than that. I'm not going to sacrifice a job I
fancy, and thirty shillings a week, to be general servant to those two
old women, and that's flat."
"But the ticket-collecting only lasts until the end of September,"
urged Mrs. Creddle, flushed and perturbed. "What shall you do then?"
"I don't know," said Caroline. "I mean to learn typewriting and
shorthand somehow, and then I shall be a clerk."
"Clerk indeed!" cried Mrs. Creddle, losing her temper. "And what does
that lead to, I should like to know? No girl clerk earns enough to buy
food and lodging such as you would get at Miss Wilson's. I don't
understand where the charm comes in, I'm sure, unless you want to be
considered a lady. But you aren't one--and you'll never be one--though
you do go out every morning and come back at night, and have a leather
bag and a powdered nose instead of a cap and apron."
"Then I can tell you," said Caroline, pale and bright-eyed. "The charm
is freedom. I'd starve before I'd ask permission to go to the
pillar-box, and spend my nights in that old kitchen by myself."
"You know perfectly well that Miss Ethel would let you go out nearly
every night," ejaculated Mrs. Creddle. "You're talking just for the
sake of talking." Then she suddenly began to cry. "I can't bear for
one of mine to behave like that--and I've always looked on you as my
own child," she said, whimpering through a corner of her apron. "I've
been poor all my life, but my word's been my bond. I never behaved
shabby nor dishonourable to anybody that I knows on."
"I'm sorry, Aunt," said Caroline, flushing with distressful impatience.
"But you have to think of yourself in these days, or get left. It's
the rule all over the world now. And if everybody did the same, we
should be all all right. Don't you see?"
Mrs. Creddle shook her head. "It might work out all right if the
pushing-est sort was always the best," she said. Then, after a pause,
she added, turning back towards the stairs: "Well, you may go and tell
them yourself. I can't!"
"I don't want you to. I'm not afraid of those two old ladies," said
Caroline, "if you are. So long!"
But as she went down the terrace again, it was not her own brilliant
future which she saw before her mind's eye, but the desponding curve of
Mrs. Creddle's figure going upstairs again to finish the bedrooms.
Steadfastness, patience, endurance--without being actually aware of it,
she saw those things embodied in that middle-aged woman's figure. Then
her own spirit revolted from the suggestion. "Aunt doesn't
understand," she said, half aloud. "You _have_ to think of yourself
first in these days."
Such was her mood as she emerged from Emerald Avenue into the main
road, walked past the long field where the square board caught the eye
at once amid all that springing verdure, and entered the garden of the
Cottage. Immediately afterwards the front door opened and Miss Ethel
stepped briskly forth. "Oh, there you are, Caroline. I am very
pleased to see you. I suppose Willis will be bringing your box
shortly, but in the meantime----"
"I aren't coming. I have only come to say I aren't coming,"
interrupted Caroline--the measure of her disturbance shown by the fact
that she did not correct this lapse into the Holderness dialect. "I'm
applying to be ticket collector on the promenade," she added, with a
sort of defiant rudeness in her tone. She sub-consciously wanted Miss
Ethel to be "horrid," feeling that it would make the situation easier
to carry off with satisfaction to herself.
But Miss Ethel had been working since half-past six at unaccustomed
blacking of the kitchen stove and such-like tasks in order that the new
maid should see how things ought to be kept and maintain the same high
standard, and she was too utterly weary and disappointed now, to do
anything but reply with a very slight trembling of the lip: "I think
you might have let me know before this, Caroline." For she felt that
if she let herself go, she might burst into ignoble, undignified tears
before this impertinent child--she, who never "gave way" even at a
wedding or a funeral.
Caroline's quick eyes, however, had caught that passing quiver of the
lips, and for one moment all her dreams of independence trembled in the
balance. She was feeling--deeply as even Mrs. Creddle could wish--that
she was behaving badly. Then Miss Ethel chanced to notice Caroline's
blouse, which was made from her own summer dress of twenty years ago,
and an irrepressible wave of hurt exasperation swept over her, rousing
her to active resentment. "I must say I think you are treating me
abominably, Caroline. Surely your Aunt Creddle is not a party to
this?" she said in her sharpest tone. And though she would not have
mentioned the blouse or any other benefit bestowed for the world, some
thought of it must have rushed along the taut wires between her own
mind and Caroline's, for the girl instantly flushed crimson and became
defiant again. So the wavering balance crashed down on the side of the
job on the promenade. Her whole future course, indeed, was decided in
that instant, just by a look and a tone--though neither was aware of
what had happened.
"Aunt had no idea I was trying for the place on the prom. until this
morning," said Caroline quietly. "She's very upset about it, and tried
her best to make me come to live with you after all, only I wouldn't.
Nobody can blame her."
Miss Ethel opened her lips to administer a rebuke; then she felt it was
no good and stood looking drearily in front of her. In so doing, her
glance fell on the square board over the privet hedge, and that seemed
somehow the visible sign of everything else that was happening in her
life. Everything was changed. Without another word she turned back
into the house, telling herself that it was of no use to fight against
change; but at the bottom of her soul, she knew she _would_ fight, so
long as there was breath left in her.
"Stop a minute, Miss Ethel," said Caroline. "I am very sorry indeed I
couldn't let you know before, and I have nothing against you or the
place. It's only that I don't want to be a servant at all. Everybody
must do the best they can for themselves in these days."
"I understand that you are like the rest of them. You want to go
gadding about every night, no doubt," said Miss Ethel.
"And if I do?" said Caroline. "Where's the harm in it? Of course I
want my freedom, Miss Ethel. We all do. That's why there aren't any
servants to be had. You're free yourself and always have been. That's
why you don't understand."
Miss Ethel felt a groping thought in the back of her mind. She--free!
The long chain seemed to rattle through the empty years since childhood
as she paused, though she thought she only heard the wind in the
branches. "Oh, well; I suppose it is no use my saying any more. I
trust for Mrs. Creddle's sake that you may be successful in your new
employment. Good morning."
But in going over the threshold she swayed a little, because she had
one of her bilious headaches and had eaten nothing since rising. Those
headaches had been a feature of the establishment ever since Caroline
would remember, and she recalled "Aunt Ellen" arraying a spotless tray
in the kitchen while she herself sat eating gingerbread by the table.
So all the kindnesses she had experienced in that house came back to
war with this new spirit of prickly independence, and as she was
fundamentally good-natured, she felt impelled to say impulsively: "Miss
Ethel, I'll tell you what I could do. I might sleep here for a week or
two and light the fire, and get breakfast ready and do any odd jobs for
you. I should have time for that before I went out. One fortnight in
the month I should only act as supply during meal hours--and that will
leave me a lot of time during the day. I'll be glad to come and do
that for my board and lodging, if you like: I'm not a big eater. Only
I must have my nights free and no fixed time for getting in, of course."
Miss Ethel put her hand to her swimming head. Even in this extremity
she could hardly bring herself to consider such a proposal. But the
thought of washing up those greasy dishes after lunch was so
intolerable that everything else faded into the background, and she had
to humiliate herself for the sake of necessity. "Very well," she said
faintly. "I shall be glad to accept your offer for the time being. We
will talk about the remuneration later, but I think you can trust Mrs.
Bradford and myself not to treat you unfairly."
"I'm not afraid of that," said Caroline, half ashamed: still she had to
have it clear about her freedom. "You do understand about the
evenings, though? Because I may want to go with Wilf--he's my friend,
you know--to one of those dances on the prom., and then I shouldn't be
back until after twelve."
"Yes, I understand," said Miss Ethel. "I'm much obliged to you," she
forced herself to add, trying to rise above the dizziness which made
her unable to think clearly.
"Then I'll be off and see if I can catch Willis with my box," said
Caroline, hurrying away down the path.
Miss Ethel watched her go, wondering in a heavy sort of way if the girl
would come back. It would not be in the least surprising if she failed
to do so. Well, you could only take things as they came. Nothing was
as it used to be. You couldn't calculate at all on what would happen
in this strange new world. . . .
Caroline, hastening down the road, had the same thought; but to her it
brought a glorious sense of fresh vistas opening, of splendid conflicts
in which she and her sort were bound to be victorious--she saw already
a sun rising which would really warm rich and poor alike, and would
make every one in the end happy and good.
No wonder Mr. Willis smiled at her when she went flying after him once
more, all wind-blown hair and eyes a-shine; but he pulled up with a
pretence of grumpiness, saying over his shoulder: "Well, what is it
now? Have you rued throwing up your place?"
"No; I'm only going to help them a bit until they get a girl. You
can't help being sorry for Miss Ethel."
"I'm to take your box on to the Cottage after all, then?" he said in a
teasing way. "Well, well, it's a queer thing how women like to change
their minds. I expect they're made so."
"I'm not," said Caroline. "I knew my own mind right enough: only I
couldn't leave Miss Ethel with one of her bad headaches and nobody to
do a thing for her. You'd be the first to blame me."
But he had whipped up his horse before she finished her sentence, and
was already rattling away in the direction of the Cottage.
_Chapter III_
_The Promenade_
Pale blue sky with scudding clouds--a dun sea dappled with pale
silver--and that intense greyish-white light on promenade,
bleak-fronted houses and sparsely scattered visitors, which always
makes everything so distinct as to seem unreal on such a day in
Thorhaven--like an old copper-print.
As Caroline sat in her pay-box at the gate of the promenade, she had
plenty of time to note these atmospheric conditions, but she only felt
them. That grey, clear, windy brightness was mingled for all the rest
of her life with what was to happen during the months between this
morning and the end of September, when the job would be over. But now
she was entirely immersed in her ticket issuing, when there was any to
do, and in feeling excited and self-conscious and important when there
was not. Book, pencil, pile of tickets were all meticulously ready,
and she would not put her window down for a moment despite the
north-east wind which swept round the little shelter.
But so early in the season there was scarcely a person to be seen about
on the broad, grey stretch of the promenade, and the gardener's back as
he worked hard at bedding out plants, looked in some way as if it still
belonged to the easy-shirt-sleeved winter time, when Thorhaven was not
expecting visitors. At last a little brisk woman with a neat figure
came up to the turnstile, and Caroline greeted her with just that
surprising warmth shown to casual acquaintances by stall-holders at a
bazaar. "A season-ticket? Certainly. A pity not to get all the good
out of it you can. Some people silly enough to wait until the season
is half over and then pay just the same----" But the woman appreciated
this cordiality at its true worth and was unresponsive. "So you've got
the job. They'd be sorry to part with Maggie." Then pursing her lips,
she placed her season ticket in her purse, and said with condescending
asperity: "I want to go through, please."
So Caroline, thus reminded, hastily released the turnstile with her
knee from within, and felt momentarily abashed. After a while,
however, a solitary visitor approached the little window, and she was
doubly brisk and official to make up for it.
"Day-ticket? But are you staying a week? If so, you'll find it much
more to your advantage----" Until the visitor, who did not really want
a weekly ticket at all, but happened to be of that ever-growing class
which is cowed at once by any sign of bureaucratic authority, did as
Caroline suggested.
But little by little this first eagerness wore off, and by the time she
returned from the tea interval--during which her place had been taken
by the girl who acted as "supply"--she had already begun to show faint
beginnings of the slightly contemptuous, detached air of the official.
She was pleasant still, but as a favour, and with the whole power of
the Thorhaven Council at her back "Three in family, I think? I
suppose you take one for Mildred?" And she expected Mrs. Creddle's
neighbour to feel a little flattered by her remembering the size of the
family.
But though justly irritated by that "Three in family, I think"--when
Caroline had pulled pigtails with Mildred only yesterday, as it
were--the good woman was actually pleased when Caroline "held up" a
stout person in a fur coat and a motor veil to add pleasantly: "I
suppose you are expecting visitors this week?" Which remark is the
recognized conversational small change in Thorhaven, during spring and
summer, scarcely more personal than the "Fine day!" of the country
labourers who live in the still untouched country beyond the Cottage.
But if Mrs. Creddle's neighbour said to herself that Caroline would
soon be too big for her boots, there remained a slight glow of
satisfaction in being acknowledged as an old acquaintance while an
affluent person from a car was kept waiting. It is therefore not
surprising that Wilfred Ball felt the same glow greatly intensified
when he strolled up to the pay-box, twirling his walking-stick, to take
his stand near by as the future proprietor of the girl inside. Perhaps
the young husband of a great prima donna may feel nearly as
sophisticated and proud and "in it" when he strolls carelessly into the
dressing-room where the bouquets of admirers overflow upon the
floor--but this is scarcely likely, for he would not have the morning
freshness still on him of a life spent so far between Thorhaven and
Flodmouth.
Every now and then he took a little walk up and down the promenade,
either alone or with a casual acquaintance, but he soon returned to
enjoy close at hand this epoch-making evening. For now, he felt, there
was nothing that could keep the Wilfred Balls back from those pinnacles
of affluence which a combination of the more easily assimilated comic
papers and articles on Self-Help had enabled him to envisage: Self-Help
kind showing how a poor man might grow rich, and the comic papers how
he might spend his money when he got it.
As the wife of a wealthy man, Caroline would be All Right. He had had
his doubts before, at times, because he really felt it was a come-down
for a young fellow in a seed-merchant's office to be engaged to a
servant. And remorse had something to do now with his ardour, because
he really had begun to wonder if he could "keep on" with it, when
Caroline was a true servant, living in, like the little maids all up
and down the new streets. He had seen himself standing at a corner
waiting for her under a lamp-post on her nights out, and had found his
faithfulness wavering.
Still, she was Caroline--and they had "gone together" ever since the
time when he first perceived that a "girl" was as necessary to man's
estate as a dressy lounge suit and a Homburg hat. He did not like to
behave badly to her. And now he had been rewarded. He had achieved
the difficult feat mentioned in those articles he so casually read in
the train, of keeping one eye on the main chance and the other on the
example of Sir Galahad. Now he was still engaged to somebody who took
tickets on the prom. and was a young lady--and was yet Caroline. No
wonder he stood and beamed, and walked away and twirled his stick and
cocked his hat, and then came back and beamed again.
Other youths of her acquaintance, or enterprising strangers going
through the barrier, had to content themselves with a "Good evening,
miss," or at most some more or less dashing remark about the weather;
but _he_ was the one to help her on with her coat when the brilliant
shades of blue and yellow on the sentry-box had faded into grey: it was
_his_ privilege to walk her off with a hand through her arm, feeling
sure that the three elderly spinsters and the one middle-aged gentleman
who chanced to be about just there wondered who that gay dog was, and
thought him no end of a fellow.
"Well, Carrie, how did you like it?" he said as they went along.
"Oh, it was all right," said Caroline in an off-handed fashion--but she
also had an elated consciousness of being important, and did not care a
bit though her feet were stone-cold from sitting still in the
sentry-box.
So talking eagerly, they went down the main road until the last avenue
was left behind and the loneliness of stars and sea-wind fronted them.
Only one light glimmered above the privet hedge from an upper room in
the Cottage.
At the gate they stopped to kiss and say good night as usual, but the
excitement of a new experience had stirred Caroline's emotions, and
Wilf's pride in her had also roused the possessive instinct in him, so
that the kiss they exchanged was a little different from the almost
passionless salute to which they had long grown accustomed. Wilf's
eyes shone and Caroline's cheeks were flushed when they drew back from
each other. She began to speak quickly, nervously. "Well, so long!
They'll think I'm never coming."
"Here! Hold on a minute." He caught her round the waist. "I say,
Carrie, it's rotten you having to go in, and me stopping outside. I
wish you'd never promised to."
"It wouldn't have made any difference if I had been staying at Uncle
Creddle's. They wouldn't want company at this time of night," she
answered, peering up at him uneasily through the starry twilight.
"Carrie!" He held her closer, his thin, boyish arms trembling a
little. "I wish to goodness we could have a home of our own. There's
some houses going to be built in that field there. I wish we could
apply for one of them."
"Well, we can't," said Caroline, touched by some wistful tone in the
lad's voice to a deeper tenderness for him than she had hitherto known.
"We have nothing to get married on. People would only laugh at us."
"But you wish it, same as me, Carrie? If I was one of them rich young
chaps that can plank down the money for a half-year's rent and a
mahog'ny suite, like I do for a packet of cigs., you'd be ready to get
married, Carrie?"
It was the first time they had seriously talked of marriage, though
they had been "going together" ever since Caroline knew that a 'boy'
was as essential to her grown-up panoply as hairpins, and she felt
something indefinable at the back of her mind which was not pleasure;
and yet it was not fear---- She turned from her own emotions with a
sort of relief. "Goodness! There's the church clock striking a
quarter to eleven. We must have been three-quarters of an hour coming
from the prom. here. I know Miss Ethel goes to bed at ten, and she'll
have been sitting up for me."
"Never mind. You're only stopping to oblige. They ought to be jolly
thankful to you, whatever time you turn up," babbled Wilf--all
impatient excitement. "Carrie, just one more. I must----"
He clung to her, then let her go. She ran up the path towards the
house while he stood there, listening to her footsteps and yet
restraining himself from following her, as a matter of course. For the
idea of running after her and holding her in his arms by force, as he
wanted to do, simply never entered his mind. Despite that dark lane
and the evening hour, the chivalry of the ordinary decent Anglo-Saxon
man--which some races are unable to understand--stood like a sentinel
at the door of his desires.
Caroline entered the door of the Cottage in a state of hurry and
excitement; but the empty kitchen seemed to act on it like a sort of
emotional cold douche. The varnished walls, the neatly set chairs, the
clock ticking so loudly above the mantel-shelf, all seemed somehow
unnatural, with the unnaturalness of empty houses where steps go
echoing--echoing--though nobody is there.
She hastily put the kettle on the gas-ring, then prepared a glass for
Miss Ethel's hot water and two cups for Mrs. Bradford's cocoa and her
own. But as the water would not boil all at once she stood there
watching the little blue and yellowish flames of that unsatisfactory
Thorhaven gas splutter under the kettle. All sorts of thoughts went
scurrying about her mind as the clock measured the seconds--tick-tock!
tick-tock!--over her head.
How silly of Wilf to begin to talk about marrying at all. But, of
course, if you were engaged--only she and Wilf weren't engaged. They'd
been "going together," of course, but she had no ring. She had never
considered herself really engaged. Neither had Aunt Creddle----
But the kettle suddenly boiled over, so she filled the glass and the
cups, and hurried off with the tray, her head still so full of her own
engrossing thoughts that she did not become aware that visitors were
present until she was well inside the room.
"Oh, Caroline, you can just put the tray down on the round table," said
Miss Ethel, high and cool. It was plain that she thought the hour very
late, and that Caroline's red cheeks, disordered hair and hat rakishly
on one side did not please her.