All over Upper Radstowe, in late spring-time, the pavements are strewn
with flecks of colour, as though there had been a wedding in every
house, for petals of pink and white, purple and yellow, lie there,
dropped as a benison on the approach of summer. Before this, urged
by the warm rain, the trees open their new leaves slowly, carefully
unwrapping the yearly surprise which never grows stale, and the flowers
which come afterwards are like happy laughter at its success. The
dropping of the petals has a gracious resignation in it for, without
them, the smaller flowering trees have lost their beauty for the year;
their greenness is merged into the general greenness of the summer and
they have no splendour to offer autumn. Miss Mole had missed the spring
in Radstowe, she had missed the almond blossom--a faint pink against a
bright blue sky or rosy against a grey one--she had missed the lilacs
and laburnums and the double cherry, the tall tulips in the gardens
and the consciousness that, across the river, primroses were growing
on grassy banks; she had seen the summer and made the best of the only
season she did not care for and here was autumn, prodigal of its gold
and bronze, and there were moments when she renounced her allegiance
to the spring or, rather, yoked with it a new allegiance to the autumn
which was responsible for spring's increase. In spring she knew that
something both exciting and beautiful would happen with each day while
her pleasure in the autumn was as much anticipatory as immediate. Like
a man gloating over the wine bottles with which he means to stock his
cellar, enjoying the variations in the shapes and sizes of the bottles
and the colours of their contents, but looking forward to the day of
the wine's maturity, Hannah watched the big trees in this time of their
brilliance, and with a contentment which was not of the eye alone,
saw it lying in heaps at their feet. She was a farmer's daughter; she
had a feeling for the earth and liked to see it nourished and though
she had been dowered with a constant desire for beauty, and found it
sufficient in itself, there was an added satisfaction in knowing it
was feeding what it came from, and so, when she wandered about Upper
Radstowe that October, finding unexpected little streets, paved lanes
and winding paths or flights of steps, leading from the Upper to the
Lower Radstowe; when she strolled down the long Avenue where, on one
side, well set back from the road, there were large houses screened by
one row of the elms, and on the other, screened by the opposing row, a
stretch of tree-laden grass ending in a cliff which bound the river;
when she walked on the Downs dotted with well-grown hawthorn bushes
which were almost insignificant in that expanse, where the sense of the
river, out of sight, was always present and the voices of the ships
came with challenge or complaint, she could feel that while her own
affairs were in a sad condition, those of the earth were doing well and
beautifully.
Until she was fourteen years old, she had only seen Radstowe in
snatches of a day, when her parents had business in the city and
allowed her to accompany them, and there had been torture as well as
pleasure in the expeditions, for her father would linger at the cattle
market and her mother spend an unreasonable time in the shops. It was
maddening to know that there were intricate miles of river and docks
to be explored, ferry boats awaiting her at the cost of a halfpenny
a journey, broad bridges spanning the water, narrow ones, without
railings, across the locks, big ships with sacks of flour sliding into
their holds, slow-moving cranes dangling their burdens with apparent
unwillingness to let them go; it was maddening to see these things
only in glimpses or in a desperate sally from which she was recalled
by the anxiety of her mother or the anger of her father and by her
own premature knowledge that these two were, in effect, younger than
she was and must not be distressed. In a vague way, she was always
sorry for them: there must have been a few years during which they
represented authority and wisdom but, within her memory, they were a
little pathetic in their slowness and in their silences which were
only broken for the utterance of what they thought were facts, and
physically they seemed very old--they were both in middle life when
Hannah was born--while she could afford to postpone her explorations.
This capacity for waiting and believing that the good things were
surely approaching had served Hannah very well through a life which
most people would have found dull and disappointing. She refused to see
it so: it would have been treachery to herself. Her life was almost
her only possession and she was as tender with it as a mother with a
defective child: there was no doubt it would improve, the big miracle
would happen and, meanwhile, there were the smaller ones such as
this chance to rove at her will through Upper Radstowe, to cross the
suspension bridge and reach the woods covering the high banks on the
southern side of the river, or to go further afield--and Mrs. Gibson
was astonished at her energy--and find the real country where the wind
smelt of apples and damp moss. It was the first such chance she had
had for though, in her fifteenth year, she had been sent to school in
Upper Radstowe, her excursions were necessarily restricted and never
solitary, but she learnt to love the place and she kept her childish
wonder, she grew familiar with the colours of the changing seasons,
she accepted the frequent rain without resentment and she could never
be grateful enough for that spasm of emulation which had induced her
father to send his Hannah to school with his rich cousin's Lilla. In
doing this he outraged his belief that what he called a fancy education
was a stumbling block to a plain farmer's daughter, he stretched his
resources further than they would easily go and Hannah had often
wondered what obscure antagonism had flowered in so unlikely a manner
and with such advantage to herself. It was the one impulsive action she
remembered in a man as little given to eccentricity as one of his own
turnips, but she had seen turnips grown to odd shapes and something
comparable to these distortions had happened in the case of Farmer
Mole. She had stayed at the school until she was eighteen, for she
was not to leave a day before Lilla did, and this was an extravagance
which, she suspected, gave her father a grim pleasure, while it set her
mother clucking over the continued difficulties of Hannah's wardrobe.
How was she to have a dress for the dancing class, another for Sundays
and still another for afternoons unless Mrs. Mole, with the help of the
village dressmaker, could alter some of her own clothes? Fortunately,
in the days when she was married, materials were made to last, and
among the strange garments Hannah took to school were a black watered
silk, a prune-coloured merino, and a delaine patterned with large
pansies. They lasted a long time, and as Hannah remained thin, though
she grew to a moderate height, and her mother's wedding garments were
voluminous, there was always enough stuff with which to lengthen the
dresses: they suffered strange partnerships, separations and reunions:
they were a thorn in the flesh they covered, but Hannah was never seen
to wince. It was Lilla who did that and Hannah enjoyed seeing her do
it, yet she had an amused affection for this cousin who had such an air
of dignity and importance, such a fixed view of what was proper, even
in her teens. With her sanguine colour and her bright eyes, for which
she had an evident admiration, with the clothes which were too rich and
fashionable for a school girl, and her slight pomposity, Lilla was as
ludicrous to Hannah as was Hannah's appearance to everybody else. But
the offensive laughter of these convention-ridden young people stopped
there. She saw to it that they should laugh at the rest of her only if
she chose, and now, when she was nearly forty, she could appreciate
the cleverness--she would not call it courage--which she had shown at
fourteen, in persuading scoffers that those dreadful clothes were the
symbol of her high difference from themselves.
Hannah often walked past the plain-fronted white house from which the
sound of piano practice still came in the strange, discordant, yet
satisfying jumble which gave her a glorious sense of liberty. She had
soon been released from the bondage of her own hopeless efforts and
when she heard scales tripping lightly from one direction, stumbling
and starting again from another, while The Merry Peasant took advantage
of the pauses, or the Rachmaninoff Prelude assured him he was of no
importance, she tasted again an exquisite pleasure of her youth. It
was a house which just missed character. It stood four stories high in
the middle, there was a lower wing at each side and a walled garden
encompassed it. At the front there was a wrought iron gate for visitors
and mistresses and, at the back, a door for everybody else, but the
glory of the gate had departed: it was rusty and needed paint, and
the house itself was shabby. The houses in Upper Radstowe had a way
of growing shabby and when Hannah stood at the gate, peering in, she
fancied that thus the ghosts of the eighteenth century must stand
and look at their fine houses going to decay, let out in flats, with
the gathered perambulators and bicycles of the inhabitants cumbering
the stately entrance halls. No doubt they found a mournful enjoyment
in their memories and exalted them, and the difference between those
ghosts and Hannah was that she had a present which did not suffer from
comparison with the past. She had no illusions about the wonderful
happiness or the misunderstood misery of her girlhood: she had been
alive and interested then, as she was now, and if the possibilities of
her future were limited by the exigencies of time, this limitation had
its value, since what was going to happen must be nearer than it had
ever been before. She must be within shouting distance of the rich old
gentleman who was going to leave her a fortune, or the moderately rich
one who would leave her a competency. Again, lessening her demands of
Fortune, she might meet, at any turn of the road, the perfect employer
who would appreciate Hannah Mole and keep her as a friend of the
family when the need for her services was past and who, to the brief
announcement in _The Times_ of Hannah's death, would add a little
tribute of affection. She would be the confidant of the young people as
they grew up, the wise and humorous counsellor.
She roused herself from these visions which were passing across the
discoloured front of her old school. She was on her way to visit Lilla
and she must at least pretend to be practical, she must concoct the
mixture of truth and falsehood suitable to that lady's palate. A week
had passed since their meeting in the teashop and for all but a few
hours of that week she had been lodged in Mrs. Gibson's house, she had
been under the same roof as Mr. Samuel Blenkinsop. That would have to
be explained and Hannah neither wished nor intended to tell the truth.
It involved the private affairs of other people and it was always
pleasant to deceive Lilla and to tease her. Moreover, it was doubtful
whether the truth would appear to her as probable. She would merely
tell Hannah to edit her stories more carefully. And truth, after all,
was a relative good: it had to be adulterated and adapted, like a drug,
to the constitution of each individual, and Hannah would describe
neither her first nor her second visit to the house in Prince's Road.
She had called there after meeting Lilla, and the little maid in her
large cap, who still showed signs of her agitation earlier in the
evening, had led her into Mrs. Gibson's comfortable presence. Mrs.
Gibson's anxieties were incapable of disturbing a basic serenity
compounded of mental sluggishness, good nature and physical well-being,
and though she was still somewhat shaken, she was in no danger of
collapse. She was glad to see Hannah again. Everything was going on as
well as could be expected, but Mr. Blenkinsop was upset, and a chat
was just what she needed.
'And why should Mr. Blenkinsop be upset?' Hannah demanded. 'He
hasn't tried to kill himself and he isn't married to a man who has!
He isn't the baby of an unsuccessful suicide! He ought to count his
blessings--and I'm one of them. If it hadn't been for me--'
'I know!' said Mrs. Gibson. 'So quick, you were, too! And how you ever
thought of breaking the window--But there, Mr. Blenkinsop is very
respectable and he was always against me letting the basement as a
flat. He said we'd get undesirables, and there,' Mrs. Gibson pointed
downwards, 'sure enough, they are.'
'If it hadn't been for me,' Hannah persisted, 'there would have been an
inquest. How would Mr. Blenkinsop have liked that? I'm no more used to
suicides than he is--'
'Certainly not!' Mrs. Gibson said courteously.
'But I tried to give Mrs. Ridding the impression that there was nothing
unusual about it. It was the least one could do, but much more than he
did.'
'It was a pity he came along when he did,' Mrs. Gibson sighed. 'It's
true I was looking out for him. It was either him or a policeman, until
you bumped into me, and then I'm sure there was no need for anybody
else. I'd been shouting myself hoarse through the keyhole, but what was
the use of that when he'd locked the door on the inside? And that poor
young thing! And the baby crying! Dear, dear! Well, let's hope it will
be a lesson to him. He's in bed now and I'm going to coax her up here
for a bit of supper.'
'And what will Mr. Blenkinsop say to that?'
'I'm hoping he won't find out,' Mrs. Gibson replied simply. 'When he
settled down here after his mother died, he hoped I'd see my way to
keeping other lodgers out. He pays well, but I made no promise. I like
a bit of company.'
'Then,' said Hannah, 'will you take me in to-morrow? I can't pay like
Mr. Blenkinsop, but I promise not to put my head in a gas oven. It may
be for a few days, or a few weeks. I don't know. I shall be out of a
situation.'
'Why,' said Mrs. Gibson, mildly astonished, 'I thought you must be a
lady with an independence.'
'Plenty of independence, but it doesn't fill my pockets.'
'Well I never!' Mrs. Gibson exclaimed. 'You see, I noticed your shoes.
I was always rather noticing. And then, with you being so prompt and
managing--but still, I do admit, it's comfortable to know you're one
more like myself.'