feeling the tears running down, though she had no thought of crying a
moment earlier.
For Miss Ethel, as she stood there very erect, talking in that dry,
clear tone, with her thin face towards the light and the right temple
twitching a little, looking out at the garden she had loved to tend,
was a sight very touching to a sensitive heart. And though Laura knew
that it was not such a terrible misfortune to leave an agreeable house
with a nice garden for a smaller one less pleasant, she still
felt--ridiculous though her reason knew it to be--that the atmosphere
of the low room was charged with something momentous. The throb!
throb! throb! of a heavy sea at low tide came through the window, and
it sounded to Laura's excited perceptions like the tread of something
dreadful coming. Perhaps she was in a state of heightened emotion
owing to her nearly approaching marriage, and that made her unduly
impressionable, but she did experience a queer, helpless sense of
destiny approaching such as you feel in dreams.
But Miss Ethel had conquered a momentary trembling of the lips caused
by Laura's tears, and she crisply broke the silence. "I dare say you
think we are making a mountain out of a molehill."
"No, no," said Laura eagerly. "Only you will have less work to do, and
by next year at this time you may be really glad you are not here."
"Shall I?" said Miss Ethel. "I hope it may be so!"
"Don't take it like that, Miss Ethel!" said Laura in a quick, sharp
tone, most unusual for her. "Things can never be as they were again.
Is it likely? Look out into the world. There's not a corner where you
don't feel the backwash of a storm of some sort. You and I have lived
in such a sheltered happy way here that we don't realize what's going
on unless we are brought up against it by something in our own lives."
She wanted to be kind--yet words which were not very kind came out in
spite of herself: and she felt herself trembling a little, as if they
had to do with a deep emotion of her own which it distressed her to
bring to light. "You can't feel sure of anything or anybody in the
whole world. Anybody may change. They can't help it, any more than
you can help seeing it." She was very pale now, aghast at what had
grown from a faint stirring of unformulated doubt to a spoken reality.
Almost every sensitive person has trembled thus before something which
has sprung up into sight through the accidental touching of a hidden
spot in the mind.
But that only lasted a moment--the next, she was not going to leave it
so. Every particle of her being rebelled against what she had seen and
she would rather doubt her senses than her love. "I except Godfrey, of
course," she said, lifting up her head with a little laugh. "_He_
remains stable."
"Yes. Yes. Of course," responded Miss Ethel absently, her mind so
full of what they had just decided to do that she could think of
nothing else. "Then you will tell Godfrey? I don't think there is any
need for me to write."
"He will come in to see you, no doubt." Laura had remained standing
since that moment when she rose hastily from her seat, and she went
forward now with a gesture which showed she did not intend to sit down
again. "I have such heaps to do this morning. I'm afraid I must run
away now."
But as she touched Miss Ethel's hand with her own she was startled by
its icy coldness. In a moment her sympathy flowed back again over
those dreadful thoughts, washing them away. "I know you'll love your
new home when you get settled, and you will have all your friends just
the same. More, because you will be nearer the town." And she pressed
her lips to that white cheek.
Miss Ethel did not seem to relax in that embrace, or to be in the least
sensible of the natural kindness which permeated every fibre of Laura's
being like the sweetness of sun-warmed fruit, but perhaps she did feel
a little comforted by that soft human contact all the same.
For she went with the guest to the door and stood alone there watching
until the sound of steps and the click of the gate gave place to
silence. The builders had gone away for their dinner-hour, and the
close-shaven grass in the sunshine near the high hedge seemed so
cloistered--so much more remote than it really was. Before those new
houses came, you need not see anything beyond the privet hedge unless
you wished---- But now the outside was close upon her. It was time to
give in and go away.
As she stood there with the neat curled hair over her forehead blowing
in the wind, and her short skirt and blouse trimly set about her spare
figure, she was thinking thoughts which were almost incredibly
different from what she looked--seeking all over the world with a sort
of desperate forlornness for a corner where her mind could find rest.
Then the very quiet of the half-built houses over the hedge reminded
her that she must go in to fry the rissoles for the midday dinner, but
she revolted from the anticipated smell of hot fat with a sensation of
physical sickness. For she had never possessed a robust appetite, and
until this last year had scarcely ever sat down to a meal prepared by
herself: so she did not bring to the task that interest which a good
appetite or a natural taste for cooking will give even to those who
have had no previous experience.
However, it had to be done, so she went in, catching sight as she
passed through the hall of a roll of music returned by Laura: but it
failed to stir any regret that she was always too tired to practise
nowadays. Leisure--which she had all her life regarded as a right, no
more to be considered than water or air--was hers no longer.
But she had no idea that she was sharing the exact experience of
thousands of women throughout England--throughout Europe: that as she
stood there alone over a stove in a quiet little house in a remote part
of Yorkshire, carrying out the everyday details of her narrow
existence, she was more widely and actually international than the
manual workers themselves.
She only knew that she loathed the smell of frying fat.
_Chapter XIV_
_The Cliff Top_
Caroline had just come back from her tea and stood at the door of the
pay-box, talking to Lillie, who was about to go off duty. The bright
light reflected from the sea shone on the two girls, and on some
children with brown legs and streaming hair who raced along the
promenade.
"Going for a walk?" said Caroline, glancing idly in front of her at the
expanse of dappled water.
"No. Mother has a bad cold and we're full up with visitors. I shall
go straight home."
Then--just at this least expected moment--the thing happened for which
some hidden feeling within her had been so intently waiting all day.
She saw Godfrey standing there as she had pictured, with his broad,
long-fingered hand on the iron bar; the hand so indicative--had she but
known--of the contradictions in his character.
Lillie sat down again to release the clutch, and he passed through to
the promenade. "Oh, lovely afternoon, isn't it?" he said, and walked
briskly away between the neat rows of bedding plants.
The two girls looked after him; at last Lillie said with a slight
giggle: "Seems in a hurry, doesn't he? But I expect he's got his young
lady waiting for him. My word, she'd give him beans if she knew he saw
you home last night, wouldn't she?" A pause, during which Caroline
failed to respond; then, rather shortly: "Well, so long!" But Caroline
did not notice; her whole mind bent on Godfrey's retreating figure as
it went firmly down the broad concrete walk of the promenade--for now
the question she'd been craving to ask all day had been answered. He
thought nothing about what happened last night. The kiss had been
nothing to him. He intended to show her that he did not recognize any
slightest claim on his attention which she might think she had gained
from it.
Then she had to cease looking after him in order to answer a stout lady
visitor who made a point of being nice to the girl at the pay-box.
"Yes--a great pity the weather was not like this for the Gala."
But all the time she was saying to herself, with the queer, dazed
feeling which comes from a sudden shock of discovery: "I'm gone on him!
I'm fair gone on him, and him going to be married!"
Even in her thoughts she usually chose her words--just as she kept
herself scrupulously "nice" underneath to match her carefully tended
hands and well-brushed hair. But now she reverted back to the
expressions of her earliest girlhood. "I only meant a bit of fun, and
I'm fair gone on him."
Oh! it was desolating--most miserable. There was nothing on earth to
be got from it but heartache. She had tried to do the best for
herself, and Fate had treated her like this--stabbed her from behind.
It was abominable that she should be punished so for a bit of fun when
other girls got off scot-free who had done all sorts of things that she
would be ashamed of doing. Life was unfair. It was horribly unfair----
An Urban District Councillor on his way home separated himself from the
stream of men with bags which emerged blackly from the railway station
and flowed over Thorhaven between half-past five and half-past six.
"Fine evening! Fine evening!" he said, bustling through the barrier.
For a moment the agony lifted; but when he was gone it started again
worse than ever--like the pain in an inflamed nerve. The waste of it!
She had thrown away her best asset for nothing. She could no longer
fall in love with the rich young man who might want to marry her one
day--as she had always more or less sub-consciously expected--because
she loved Godfrey. Instinct warned her that the best goods in her shop
window were gone without any return, and for the moment her chief
feeling was an intense anger against fate first and then against
Godfrey.
Not that she blamed him particularly for the kiss. Any man would kiss
a girl when he saw her home if he had a chance, of course. But she was
vaguely furious with him because he was the cause of such a
disorganization of all her life plans. She felt cheated, though she
did not realize what she was cheated of, as she sat there looking out
of her little window towards the north.
Through the remainder of the evening and all the next day her mood
remained thus--indrawn and sombre. The people going on the promenade
passed by her like marionettes, and she like another marionette
responded, but there was no feeling in it at all. She might equally
well have seen the whole lot of them, herself included, jerked by wires
from a sardonic heaven that had no purpose, no plan--only such figures
of thought were not within her scope; still the feeling was there,
corroding her faith in life.
At last Saturday night came. But the week of long working hours during
which she had been constantly in the sea air and yet protected from
wind and rain, had left her filled with vitality, despite her
bitterness of mind. The night was not dark, because of a growing moon
and pale stars peppering the sky, and as she walked along the light
road with no care for her footsteps she found a vent for that unusual
vitality in a certain habit of her girlhood which she had almost
entirely dropped during the past year or two. Often enough before
that, she had walked about the Thorhaven streets imagining herself in
all sorts of impossible situations, though always happy, beloved and
rich. But she had since given it up, as she had put away her dolls a
year or two earlier; and she now felt a secret shame in abandoning
herself to it again--as if she had at fourteen taken to playing with
dolls once more.
So she let herself imagine Godfrey walking by her side with his arm
through hers--kissing her at the gate. After all, nobody would ever
know. It hurt nobody; it was all she would ever get. Then weakened by
her dreaming she actually did see Godfrey come forth from a clump of
dark elders and had not the power to walk straight on as she would have
done half an hour earlier. Instead, she stood still and looked at
him--disturbed, unhappy, yet with the dull bitterness suddenly gone.
He was close to her before he spoke; then he said hurriedly: "I only
wanted to apologize for the other night. I hope you were not
offended?" But he knew quite well she was not: it was the urge of that
curiosity still burning within him which drove him to find out what she
had felt--how his kiss had left her--whether he had been able to reach
anything in her.
"You didn't seem to be bothering much about me when you went through
into the promenade," she said at last.
He was answered in part; the next moment she felt his arm through hers,
just as she had been dreaming on the road, only the reality had a
compelling magnetism which was beyond any dreams. "Let us go a little
way along the cliff," he said. "I want to speak to you. I want to
explain." He spoke excitedly, with a sort of jaded eagerness in his
tone; and though she knew her own unwisdom, she went with him.
The turning towards the cliff was just beyond the Cottage, on the
opposite side of the road, and consisted of a gravel path that opened
out into a small space on the cliff top. It was a lonely spot, out of
the way of strolling visitors at that time of night: the bench in the
middle of the gravelled space lay empty in the luminous sea-twilight
with a great arch of sky overhead and the waves below catching a gleam
from moon and stars on every ripple. Though Thorhaven might not be
beautiful on a Gala evening, with futile little lamps and starved
visitors blown about by the wind, it had, on such nights as these, an
exquisite, cool beauty which appealed to the spirit as well as the
senses.
As they sat down, Caroline could feel his fingers trembling on her arm;
suddenly his kiss struck hard on her lips and her head fell back so
that he could see the dark rims of her eyelashes. "Ah! You're in it
too--you're in it too," he murmured triumphantly--caring for nothing
but that triumphant knowledge.
She knew what he meant--they were both in it. Their oneness enveloped
her in a cloud of rapture. Then she jerked herself out of his embrace.
"No. No. I can't have you kissing me. It isn't fair to take your fun
out of me when you're going to be married directly. I don't know how
you can want to do it."
He jumped up without speaking and walked towards the cliff edge. "Good
God!" he burst out. "You don't imagine I _want_ to be in love with
you! I'm in hell--hell! Whatever I do, I see your face. It's beyond
all reason----" He stopped short, amazed and enraged by this strange,
biting curiosity which made him mad about a girl who was nothing--who
was not even really pretty. What could influence men in this
way--driving them to insane acts for the sake of some one woman out of
all the millions? There must be something not yet understood.
Suddenly he dropped on to the seat, holding his head in his hands. "I
don't know what on earth I am going to do," he said.
She looked at him--so helpless in his passion--and the protective
instinct of a real woman for her man began to stir in her: so, in spite
of her own pain, she tried hard to find something to say that would
comfort him. "You--you'll get over it," she said, her voice shaking.
"It isn't as if you and I had been going together long, you know.
You'll soon forget me."
"Don't!" he said sharply.
She drew back offended. "Oh! All right." She rose with a sort of
dignity. "I think I'd better be going home. It must be getting late."
"Now you're vexed." He peered at her--haggard-eyed in that curious
twilight from the sea. "Can't you see that everything you do and say
makes me want you more? If you'd only turned out a fool!" He drew a
long breath.
"I must be going home," she repeated, moving away.
He caught hold of her dress as she went. "Carrie, I can't let you go.
I can't do without you."
"You'll have to," she said sombrely. "We shall both have to. There's
no help for it."
He waited a moment, then the words seemed to come out of
themselves--despite him. "I'm not married yet, you know."
She started. "You don't mean----" Then she backed away from him, the
silhouette of her slim figure very clear against the luminous
background of sea and sky--every line of it dragging at his
senses--hurting him with pity. "You know you couldn't do it," she said
after a pause. "We neither of us could. It would kill her. Besides,
I couldn't sneak another girl's man after the banns were up and the
cake bought--a girl who'd never done me any harm. I aren't so low down
as all that, yet."
"Anything is better than marrying without love," he said, but he said
it half-heartedly. How was a decent man to throw over a charming
devoted girl to whom he was to be married in a fortnight, shaming her
before all her little world after he had sought and won her? He
thought of Laura's soft acquiescence with an agony of self-reproach and
impatience. Then he heard Caroline speaking again, her voice low and
clear with the murmur of the sea running in and out of it--he felt it
go to his heart.
"It's too late to begin to think whether you'll be miserable or not
now," she said. "You made her fond of you. It was your own doing.
And you wouldn't get me if you did give her up. I'd no more take you
from her, now she's got her wedding-dress and all, than I'd stick a
knife into a baby sleeping in its pram. She worships you--can't you
see that? It would spoil all her life."
"What about yours--and mine?" he said. "You don't really care for me,
or you couldn't talk like that."
She looked away to the glimmering sea, not troubling to answer him.
What was the use? He knew.
"Well, I'll be getting on," she said at last.
But he found the hopelessness in her voice unbearable.
"Carrie, we can't leave it like this," he said. "I can't do without
you; that's a fact. We must arrange something." He hesitated.
"You--you won't cease to be friends with me just because I'm married,
will you?"
She moved so quickly out of the reach of his hand that she stood poised
on the extreme edge of the cliff. "What do you mean?" she said
fiercely. "Is that what you take me for? Then let me tell you I never
carried on with a married man in my life and never shall. You're as
good as married now. Leave me alone. You think you can talk to me
like that because I'm fond of you. But before I'd have anything to do
with those underhand ways, I'd jump over this cliff and have done with
it. I would, too. I aren't _that_ sort, you know--though I have
behaved like a silly fool."
But her very defiance only gave his curiosity a keener edge, and he
moved towards her with his hand outstretched. "You won't get out of it
like that," he said. "Do you suppose I'm going to let you go now, and
never see you alone again? I will see you, or I'll chuck the whole
thing up to-morrow morning, come what may."
She glanced at him sideways, temporizing: "I shall be meeting you, no
doubt."
But he was not to be deceived. "You mean you have done with me unless
I break off my engagement. Very well. I'll do it."
She shook her head. "That's nonsense," she said sharply. "You know
you can't do it."
"It is only what you did yourself," he said sullenly. "You threw over
that young man I saw you with at the dance, and I don't suppose you
considered it a crime."
They spoke as enemies, throwing the barbed words back and forth.
"Of course I didn't."
"But why not? It was the same thing."
"No; that was quite different," she said.
"I don't see it. Why different?"
"Because----" She struggled: but suddenly her voice began to tremble.
"Oh, I didn't know what love was like then. But he never cared as Miss
Laura does. And I shouldn't have minded so much about her, if I hadn't
found out for myself----" She broke off. "Only three weeks from the
wedding. You couldn't do it, either. Not when it came to only three
weeks from the wedding, you couldn't. You know that as well as I do."
"But you always say everybody ought to do the best for themselves. I
remember your saying so. What sense is there in spoiling our two lives
for the sake of a third?" he said, eagerly and yet heavily. "Why can't
you act up to what you believe in this instance, just as you did when
you threw over that young man?"
She shook her head, looking at him through unshed tears. "I don't
know," she said. "But when it comes to, you can't do it. You know you
can't, either. If we were the weak sort, we might."
He let fall her hand which he had been holding and sat down heavily,
almost with a groan, upon the wooden bench. It was true enough, what
she said. They were both better than their word.
And yet it was not any hope of a future reward which sustained them as
they sat there side by side, not touching each other, while the
Flamborough lights swung out monotonously across the sea and the waves
washed up with regular beat upon the shore. They imagined they
believed this life to be probably all--and yet they did not seize what
they could get and let everything else go. It was because love
constrained them. They felt within themselves the stirring of their
own immortality. But they experienced none of the exultation of
sacrifice as they turned away from the cliff edge and walked silently,
glumly, towards the high road, she trying to wipe the tears away with
her fingers so that he should not notice.
As they neared the gate of the Cottage, Godfrey said suddenly: "You
don't think I'm frightened of what people say?"
She shook her head. "I aren't so silly as that." She hesitated, then
held out her hand. "It's good-bye, then." But her voice trembled
again, though she tried to keep it steady, and the next minute she was
in his arms, crying her heart out.
"Caroline! What are we to do? What are we to do?" he said, the tears
hot in his own eyes. "I can't give you up. I can't live without you."
She clung to him, not answering, and his mind darted back to the name
he had given her that first time he had his arm about her at the
promenade dance. A nymph on fire. There was something just so fresh
and cool about her in the midst of all her passion----
Then he felt her releasing herself gently, but with determination.
"What's the use of beginning it all over again?" she said. "You know
there's nothing to be done. I aren't that sort. And you aren't
either. Don't you know she's got the bride-cake bought, poor girl?"
He could not speak. Her childish insistence on the wedding-cake having
been purchased was like a knife through his heart. If only he had left
her alone!
"I deserve to be shot for letting you in for this," he said hoarsely.
Then he broke out again. "I can't stand it! I must break off my
engagement--whatever it costs and however she suffers. You're
suffering. And I am! Good God, I should think I am."
But he spoke the last word to empty air--and the next moment he could
hear the click of the gate as she slipped away from him up the dark
drive.
_Chapter XV_
_The Cinema_
On Monday evening Caroline stood at the corner of Emerald Avenue, not
sure whether to go down it or not, for she had not visited the Creddles
since Mr. Creddle so ignominiously took her back to the Cottage at
midnight.
While she was hesitating a cab-load of sunburnt children, accompanied
by a stout, jolly-looking mother, went by on their way to the railway
station. It was the beginning of that exodus which would grow more
general every day during the next fortnight until the season was over.
Already cards had appeared in one or two windows, and those who had let
their houses furnished for "August month" while they found shelter in
tumble-down cottages, tents or converted railway carriages, were coming
back--glad now the money was in their pockets that they had borne the
discomfort, though each year on departing they said "Never again!" A
sea-gull flew across the sky with the pink sunset on its outspread
wings, and below, the grey church stood in a tender haze against a
sheet of gold. But this peaceful time at the end of summer only
increased Caroline's restlessness. There was nothing she wanted to do.
She neither liked to walk alone, nor to find friends.