should go to see Aunt Creddle or not; and as she did so a slim woman of
about forty who had been very pretty came down the Avenue. Caroline
remembered quite well what Mrs. Creddle had said about her. She had
gone into an office as typist instead of being in service like the
other sisters, and thought herself too fine for those who wanted her,
but was not fine enough for those she wanted. So one sister married a
farm labourer who became a prosperous farmer, the other did not disdain
a chimney sweep, and both now possessed houses and children and warm
places of their own in the world, while the prettiest still tripped
with a rather over-bright smile about the Thorhaven streets, aware of
really superior refinement, but not finding much comfort in it.
She stopped to speak to Caroline--and without knowing why, Caroline
felt as if a cold wind out of the future had blown drearily across her
mind.
"Waiting for Wilf?" asked the girl, smiling. "He must have missed you,
for I met him a minute ago. I suppose you are going to this new play
there is on at the Cinema."
"Oh, I don't know," said Caroline vaguely. "I don't see much of Wilf
now. Lovely night, isn't it?"
This was crude but sufficient, and the woman went on, leaving Caroline
once more aimlessly pondering. At last she began to walk slowly down
the Avenue to the Creddles' house, calling out at the door as usual:
"Hello, aunt!"
Mrs. Creddle at once came out of the kitchen, her jolly face rather
anxious. "You never came near yesterday, Carrie. We couldn't think
what had gotten you."
"I was busy at home when I wasn't at the prom.," said Caroline. "I've
come now to see if Winnie would like to go with me to the pictures."
"Well----" Mrs. Creddle hesitated. "Your uncle was in a fine taking
on Thursday night. He seems to have an idea in his head that you were
with somebody you daren't speak about. But you'd never have aught to
do with a married man, I'm sure, Carrie."
"Well, you may make your mind easy, aunt. The man I was with was
single. But I'm not going to say anything more about him. If I have
to be answerable to you and uncle for every young fellow I chance to
walk home from the prom. with----"
"You know we don't expect that," said Mrs. Creddle, still a little
uneasy. "But I told your uncle I could trust you, and I do."
"Where is uncle?" said Caroline, seizing on the nearest pretext for
changing the subject.
"Oh, he's gone to the Buffaloes," said Mrs. Creddle; and though her
tone implied contempt and disapproval, it was but the natural prejudice
of all good women for an institution purely masculine. "They have a
Grand Council or some such rubbish to-night," she added; then she
raised her voice and called "Winnie!" and imparted the joyful news to a
little, rosy-faced girl whose eyes shone with ecstasy. To go to the
pictures--at night--and with Cousin Carrie--Life could hold no more,
and she sped off to change her frock, like an arrow from the bow.
Caroline had turned away and was staring rather moodily out of the
window. Then she felt a hand on her arm. "Carrie, it wasn't young Mr.
Wilson you were with, was it?" Mrs. Creddle said in a low voice.
In the involuntary start which followed the words she had her answer;
letting her hand drop, she turned an agitated face towards Caroline.
"Then you weren't after no good on Thursday night. Your uncle was
right. Oh, Carrie, how could you--with him going to be married in a
fortnight? I should have thought you would have more self-respect."
Caroline swung round upon her, eyes ablaze. "Who told you I was with
Mr. Wilson? You don't want to listen to everything you hear in
Thorhaven, surely! And if I was, I was doing no wrong."
"I don't know how you could, Carrie," repeated Mrs. Creddle.
"Trapesing about at night with Miss Laura's young man when you ought to
have been abed--and after the way she has always treated us all. Why,
the very frock Winnie is putting on now is made out of one of hers. I
should take shame to try and make mischief between her and her young
man, and with him going to be married directly."
"Don't talk such rot, aunt. I have done nothing to be ashamed of,"
said Caroline rudely, "and I've not set eyes on him since Thursday
night. You may talk about Miss Laura--but I owe her nothing. I've
paid all back, and more." She paused a moment, but pride, suspense,
emotion unnaturally repressed--all combined to betray her into saying
what she had never meant to say to any human being. "You think I've
behaved badly, do you? Well! I might have taken him away from her
altogether. He wanted to throw her over, only I wouldn't have it."
"Oh!" Mrs. Creddle gasped; then went on in a low tone of apprehension
and unhappiness. "I didn't think it was as bad as that, Carrie."
"Bad!" Caroline stared with genuine surprise at this reception of her
bomb-shell. "He wanted to _marry_ me, I tell you."
Mrs. Creddle shook her head. "Poor Miss Laura! Well, I didn't think
he was that sort, but you never know." She paused, then said gently:
"My dear little lass, don't you know all men talk like that when they
want to make fools of silly girls? I don't suppose there's hardly a
girl gone wrong in Thorhaven but the man has sworn he wanted to marry
her. It's a trick as common as sin."
"You don't know what you're talking about! You've lived among a low
lot in this terrace until your mind has got poisoned," cried Caroline,
maddened with anger and shame. "You're a wicked woman to have such
horrible thoughts. I'm telling you the truth. May I die to-night if I
aren't!"
"Oh, Carrie!" said Mrs. Creddle, wincing as if she had been struck.
"How can you speak to me like that? I don't doubt you think it is all
true. I don't doubt he said he would throw her over and marry you.
But he didn't mean it. You never suppose he is going to give up Miss
Laura and all that money, to marry a girl that is nobody and has
nothing; I can't believe it! I never should believe it unless I saw
you with his wedding-ring on your finger."
"You can believe or not, as you like," replied Caroline, regaining a
little of her self-control. "At any rate, you must swear to keep it to
yourself, or I will never tell you anything again as long as I live."
"I shan't want to spread such news abroad, you may be sure," said Mrs.
Creddle. "But you must promise me not to trust yourself with him alone
any more, Carrie. You don't know men as I do, and he can't be up to
any good if he talks like that to you."
"Oh, very well," said Caroline, looking out of the window.
"I can see he's got hold of you," said Mrs. Creddle anxiously. "Oh
dear! I don't know what I am to do. I daren't tell your uncle, for
there's no saying what that would lead to. But you must be fond," she
continued, exasperated, "if you think he really wants to make you his
wife. Just fancy your marrying a relation of Miss Ethel's! Why, she'd
fall down dead on the spot!"
"That wouldn't stop me," said Caroline grimly. "Lots of matches far
more unequal than that come off nowadays. But you may make your mind
easy. I aren't going to marry him--and I aren't going to behave in the
way you seem to be afraid of, either. Only I'll just tell you this,
aunt--I can never, never feel the same to you again after what you've
said."
"Well, I can't help it!" answered Mrs. Creddle. "You'll come to thank
me some day, Carrie, and I suppose I shall have to wait for that." All
the same, the good woman's lip was trembling.
But Caroline, angry and dry-eyed, went to the door and called in a
shrill voice: "Winnie! Winnie! Are you ready?"
* * * * * *
Once outside, however, in the broad evening light, with the cool wind
from the sea touching her face and the colours of the girls' bright
dresses on the road growing faint, like flowers in a garden at sunset,
Caroline began to feel somewhat less bitterly towards Mrs. Creddle.
She remembered that her aunt had been in service as a girl, and that no
self-respecting maid-servant of those days would have walked out late
at night with a man who was a relative of their mistress, nor would any
decent-living gentleman have suggested such a thing. But Aunt Creddle
forgot that she was a business girl--self-poised, making her own
position in the world as she chose.
Still her pride continued to smart even when she reached the little
Thorhaven picture house. She sat down in the semi-darkness and fixed
her eyes mechanically on the screen before her, but very little of
Winnie's clear happiness communicated itself to her. After a while,
however, she did begin to feel less miserable, because no one can be
the cause of that rippling joy in a delighted child without being
touched by it a little. But her main feeling was relief. At last she
was free to be as utterly wretched as she liked. No one could peer
into her mind as she sat there, apparently enjoying herself; she was
wrapped in a secrecy so deep that no human being could touch even the
fringe of what she was thinking about, for Winnie's remarks were only
like the chirp of a bird on the window-sill when the window is closed.
But beneath all her restless unhappiness she was still certain that
every word Godfrey said to her on Thursday night was sincere. A sort
of nobleness in her own love--despite the flippant beginnings of
it--made her able to believe that he had not considered money or
ambition any more than she had done. It was the defenceless kindness
of Laura herself which had conquered them both. They were unable
deliberately to deal her such a blow.
But across her thoughts came the legend on the screen after the whirl
of moving figures. At first she followed the words without being aware
of them; when all at once they leapt into her consciousness with a sort
of shock.
"I swear I want to marry you!"
Immediately on that a man appeared on the screen with a girl in his
arms, but Caroline was not going to let her mind accept any possible
relationship between this story and her own. Then Aunt Creddle's
speech forced itself through the barrier she tried to put up and she
had to remember: "Men always talk like that, Carrie. Don't you know
that men always talk like that when they want to get over a girl?"
She moved restlessly in her seat, turning to Winnie: "This is a silly
film."
But she had to go on thinking about it. Supposing Aunt Creddle were
right? No, she couldn't be!
The memory of Godfrey's face as he looked up at her on the cliff ledge
after she had refused him came back more vividly than the picture on
the screen. That was real. If she were to doubt him, she must doubt
the sea booming on the sands and the moon in the sky----
But if men did always say that? He might love her. She could not
believe that he felt no real love for her then. But could he be
wanting her love and everything else as well--like the man in the film?
She remembered that at the beginning of the interview he had suggested
their being friends after his marriage. Could it be that he really had
that in his mind all the time? Did he somehow know--though he loved
her so then, and really meant what he said--that he was not going to
mean it twenty-four hours later?
Suddenly she felt an overwhelming desire to ask him these questions.
She must know. She must have an answer. It was all very well to say
they would not meet again. When she said it she meant it most
sincerely; but there must be some sort of settling up before they
parted for the whole of their lives. It could not be cut off short
like that; just a kiss and running away down a dark garden. They must
for once know exactly where they stood before the shutter went up and
they could never truly look into each other's thoughts any more.
She turned to the child, who sat wide-eyed and rosy-cheeked, staring at
the pictures. "I say, Winnie, I think we must be going home now," she
said. "It's getting late."
She spoke gently, with a guilty consciousness of dragging Winnie away
from a rare treat; but her restlessness would not let her sit still
watching these changing, grimacing faces any longer.
Poor Winnie looked a little crestfallen but cheered up under the
promise of chocolates, and a minute or two later they were outside in
the starlit night, tasting the salt freshness of the air.
Caroline halted a moment, looking down, taking no notice of Winnie,
then she said abruptly:
"We'll go by Beech Lane."
"But that's so dark," pleaded Winnie, looking up anxiously, sensitive
as children are to the changed atmosphere when something goes wrong in
the mysterious grown-up world.
"Oh no; not with the houses still lit up," said Caroline.
"There's such a lot of trees. I hate them old trees," said Winnie
under her breath.
But Caroline did not hear her, and the two walked on silently, side by
side, under the shadow of the large beech trees which formed an avenue
beside the pavement. They went so very slowly that Winnie asked if
Caroline were tired, but receiving no answer she plodded on, still full
of the vague puzzled discomfort which all children know, and which they
never speak of to any human soul. At last she felt the hand in her own
close nervously, and then two people emerged from a gateway in front of
them.
"Oh!" she said, in her high little voice, "there's Mr. Wilson and Miss
Temple. They're going into the house. I like Miss Temple, don't you?
She gave mother----"
"Hush!" interrupted Caroline, her whole being absorbed in watching the
couple who now stood together in the bright light which streamed from
the open door.
"Coming in, Godfrey?" said Laura. Caroline could hear quite plainly
from her dark ambush under the beeches.
Then followed a moment's silence, during which Caroline's heart beat so
loudly that it almost seemed to her as if they must hear the thump!
thump! thump! ever so far away, like a sound of drums beating. Then
Godfrey said: "Oh yes; I'll come in. It is only about half-past nine."
She went first into the house, and he waited outside a moment with the
light streaming through the doorway full on his face. All at once
Caroline started to run--she must see him alone. She must speak to him.
"Cousin Carrie!" piped Winnie. "You're hurting my hand! You're
hurting my hand!" But the door closed before they got across the road,
and they were alone in the dark lane.
Caroline looked at that shut door, moved by an emotion which was not
only the outcome of the experience of the moment, but which was also a
part of her very flesh and blood. Her own mother. Aunt Creddle, Aunt
Ellen, generations of women before them--all had lived "in service" and
had watched the drama of life going on behind room doors which were
always closed lest "the servants" should hear or see. And so acute had
these senses become, sharpened by closed doors, that they always did
see and hear, though they did not in the least resent this attitude of
their employers, considering it just a part of the existing scheme of
life.
But Caroline was different; and as she walked slowly along with Winnie
disconsolately trudging by her side, she had an angry sense of being
shut out from all sorts of things which she had as much right to
possess as any other girl. She hated that shut door--Laura and Godfrey
inside, and herself outside; then she thought how easily she could
destroy all that if she liked, and how Laura's easy, flowery courtship
was only possible because _she_ allowed it.
Winnie spoke again and had to be answered; then Caroline went back to
the aching round of thoughts again. She wouldn't be put aside like
that--knowing nothing. She would give up, but she would not be left
outside, guessing what was going on behind closed doors.
She tramped along, dull, dry-eyed, assailed by a strange feeling that
she belonged nowhere, neither to Aunt Creddle's sort, nor to Laura's;
yet all the time passionately aware that she was a "business girl" and
as good as anybody.
Then there was Winnie again. Well, poor kid, she'd had no sort of an
evening---- "Look here, Winnie, I'll take you again next week and
we'll stop all the time."
"Honour bright?" said Winnie.
"Honour bright!" said Caroline. So Winnie cheered up, because she knew
Cousin Carrie did not break promises.
_Chapter XVI_
_New-Comers_
During the night the wind freshened, then for three days it blew half a
gale from the south-west. The sea was no longer a playfellow for
little boys and girls, but a monster whose white fangs gleamed through
the grey-blue water far out towards the horizon, ready to crunch the
bones of ships and sailors alike with a sort of roistering glee.
A few visitors still fought their way up and down the promenade; and if
of a sanguine temperament, they shouted above the wind, as they passed
Caroline in the pay-box, that this really _ought_ to blow the cobwebs
away! But the furnished houses and apartments near the sea, where a
turn-up bed on the landing could not be obtained for love or money six
weeks ago, were now mostly empty. Even the visitors from Flodmouth who
had remained in Thorhaven because they were so near home, began to
think comfortably of lighted streets, theatres, cinemas, concerts--a
general settling down to their ordinary routine of work and play.
When Caroline came out of the pay-box at the tea hour, she also
realized that the season was over. A sort of flat finality lay over
everything, despite the crispness of the air and the aromatic, clean
fragrance of the masses of sea-weed which had been torn from the floor
of the ocean in the storm and now lay drying on the shore.
Well, that was all over. She said so to herself as she walked away,
feeling dull, resigned--it would be all the same a hundred years hence.
She had not seen Godfrey since that night on the way from the cinema
when she and Winnie caught a glimpse of him from under the dark shadow
of the trees, therefore it was plain that he must be avoiding her. He
knew her hours at the promenade, and could easily have said a word in
passing through even if he did not wish for anything more. He had
taken her at her word; but being a woman, the desire to talk everything
out grew during those three long stormy days to an agony of
exasperation which was almost worse to bear at the moment than the loss
of Godfrey himself.
After passing out of the promenade she came back again, saying to
Lillie over her shoulder that she would go home by the cliff because
she had a headache and a blow would do it good. She told herself the
same thing. But beneath all that she was eagerly aware that Godfrey's
lodgings lay in that direction. As she went down the terrace she could
see the windows all open and the landlady moving about inside with a
duster. For a moment she stood perfectly still, experiencing that
sensation of physical sickness which comes from sudden emotional
disappointment. She did not think at all, only suffered under the
maddening frustration of her desire to have it all out with Godfrey
once more before they finally parted. The waves and the sky did not
exist for her, though they would always give dignity to the memory of
what passed between Godfrey and herself that night on the cliff top.
For while the seaside accords with frothy impermanence in love as no
other background seems able to do, it is because those playing at
passion feel subconsciously how little their light loves matter in face
of that unchangeableness. Caroline stood there until she recovered
herself; then the landlady came to shake the duster from the window and
she walked slowly towards the Cottage.
* * * * * *
The ladies were already seated at tea when Caroline opened the front
door. Miss Ethel at once rose from the table with a dish of jam in her
hand. "Caroline's tea," she said briefly.
"But you have not taken any yourself," objected Mrs. Bradford. "And I
must say I don't see why Caroline should have it when our stock is
getting so low."
"We promised to board and lodge her properly in return for her service,
and I'm going to do it," said Miss Ethel with a tightening of the lips.
"Well, no one can say she has done her fair share of the bargain; at
least, during the last few days," said Mrs. Bradford. "She seems in a
sort of dream. Here! give me a bit more of that jam before you take it
away."
"Caroline has never forgotten to bring my morning tea once since I was
ill," said Miss Ethel. "But she certainly does not seem herself now.
I don't know what is the matter with her."
"Got her head full of young men, no doubt," said Mrs. Bradford. "It
makes some girls like that, of course."
She glanced instinctively at her husband's picture, speaking as one
having first-hand information on all amatory matters.
Miss Ethel went into the kitchen where Caroline was already lifting the
kettle from the fire; but when the girl turned round, her face looked
so queer and drawn despite the colour which the wind had whipped into
her cheeks, that Miss Ethel felt sorry. Still, the barrier of "the
room door" had not been more immovably established in the consciousness
of Aunt Ellen and Aunt Creddle, than the iron law of not "talking to
the servants" in the minds of Miss Ethel and Mrs. Bradford. They had
been so trained in the idea--though, it only became general about a
hundred and fifty years ago--that when Miss Ethel now wanted to speak
of Caroline's unhappy looks as one simple, ordinary human being to
another she could not manage to do it. She meant to be kind and yet
was obliged to assume the tone and manner--throwing her voice
flute-like, as it were, across a gulf neither must cross--which her
mother had always employed in speaking to the servants.
"Oh! Caroline," she said, placing the jam on the table. "I thought
you might like some of this for your tea. It is very stormy out
to-night, is it not? I hope you have not caught cold?"
She had a habit of beginning that way--"Oh! Caroline"--when she
intended to give an order or make a request.
In making her perfunctory reply, Caroline never imagined for one moment
that her own healthy appetite was often satisfied at Miss Ethel's
expense. She had bargained for food, and food was there; and there was
an end of it. But the front-door bell rang, and something in Miss
Ethel's expression did then pierce her self-engrossment.
"Is anything the matter, Miss Ethel?"
"No, no." Miss Ethel stood there, pressing her thin hands
together--striving to speak calmly. "It is only the people to look
over the house, I expect." Then she turned round and walked with her
head erect across the hall.
The door opened to disclose a short, thin, alert man with a taller,
well-nourished woman in handsome clothes, wearing a thick coating of
scented powder on her full cheeks and thick nose. Over her whole
person was written in characters for all to read the consciousness of
having plenty of money. It was new to her, and never for a moment
could she forget it; while her husband also fed _his_ satisfaction in
having plenty of money every time he looked at her. And yet they were
not unkindly people; ready to do a kindness if it did not take away
from them any of the luxuries, pleasures, delightful enviousness in
others less successful, which gradually would give them atrophy of the
soul.
So they thought good-naturedly enough, that though the old girl looked
a bit frosty and forbidding, that was no wonder--it must be a nasty jar
to have to turn out of a house where you had lived so many years. And
they made every allowance for the somewhat ceremonious manner in which
she conducted them through the rooms.
"Ah yes; when I used to see you come into the front seats at the
Flodmouth concerts with your respected father, and me in the shilling
gallery, I little thought---- But it's one down and the other come up
in these days, Miss Wilson. Same all the world over."
"Look, William!" said the wife, jogging her husband's arm. "That's a
beautiful old bureau." Then she turned to Miss Ethel. "I dare say you
have a lot of old furniture here that will be too big for your little
house. Couldn't we offer to relieve you of some of it? I could do
very well with that bureau and no doubt other things besides."
William whipped out his pocket-book. "Yes, Miss Wilson, you just say
what you want to part with, and I'll have the lot valued by anybody you
like. Pity to let the things go out of the house." He paused,
suddenly noticing the grey shade on Miss Ethel's face: then added
encouragingly: "You're quite in the fashion, you know, Miss Wilson.
Everybody's doing it, from dukes downwards."
"Of course," said Miss Ellen. [Transcriber's note: Ethel?]
Mrs. Bradford sat stolidly silent, taking no part in the affair, not
even when the little man said in a low voice: "Deaf, I see. A great
affliction--a great affliction!"
At last they had seen everything, and stood once more in the hall
before the open door. "Well, we came just as a matter of form," said
the husband. "Never do to buy a pig in a poke, you know! But we shall
go straight to Mr. Wilson and tell him we have decided to buy. You may
make your mind at rest about that. Of course, there is a good deal to
be done inside. But what I say is, it is a gentleman's house."