It was a long time since Hannah had lived with a family. After an
exhausting experience in which she had battled with half-a-dozen
riotous children, an ailing mother and a father who tried to be
confidential about the trials and disappointments of marriage, she
had taken a post with an old lady in the hope of comparative leisure
and, like an actress who makes a success in a particular kind of part
and finds it difficult to get another, she had seemed doomed to old,
invalid and lonely ladies for the rest of her life. She had naturally
been suspected of inability to deal with the young after an existence
of picking up dropped stitches, fetching clean pocket handkerchiefs
and reading aloud, though Hannah could have been eloquent about the
wearing nature of such work. Often, she had looked at a charwoman with
envy, desiring healthy labour with brush and bucket, and for her folly
in not hiring a bedroom and letting herself out by the day, she blamed
what must have been an odd lingering desire for the gentility she
affected to despise. She would have made an admirable charwoman: that
vulgar strain in her which Lilla justly deplored, so unsuitable in a
companion or a housekeeper, would have been a positive recommendation
in a charwoman, and she pictured herself, going from house to house,
energetic, good-humoured, free of speech, the perfect charwoman of
fiction, with a home which was all her own and none of these tangled
personalities to deal with. Well, she would tell herself with a sniff,
she might come to it yet, but women in that walk of life were not
liable to be made the heirs of rich old gentlemen, and towards that
pleasant prospect Hannah still pretended to be gazing. She had seen no
one in the chapel who answered to the description, and though she had
waved a duster out of every window, she had not met No. 16's roguish
leer. A sparkling October had given place to a damp November and the
weather, she supposed, was bad for parrots and for gardening. She
sometimes saw No. 16 trundling towards the back gate, she heard him
calling in the cats at night, but she had no time to plan encounters,
for she worked as hard as any charwoman and had to adapt herself to new
and difficult conditions.
In her other situations where there was a man of the house, he had
left it at a reasonable hour in the morning and could be trusted not
to reappear until the evening: there was no such regularity in the
movements of Mr. Corder. The absence or presence of his hat and coat
was the only surety that he was out or in, and it became a habit with
Hannah to glance at the pegs as she went through the hall and to
feel her spirits rising or falling with what she saw there, another
unwilling confession that his personality was not negligible. Hannah's
somewhat toneless singing, which contrasted so strangely with the
quality of her speaking voice, was generally silenced when he was in
the house; he damped down the tempers of his daughters and Hannah
wondered if he knew they had them; he stifled conversation, for he was
ready with information on all subjects, and opinions which differed
from his own either amused or angered him, yet hardly a day passed
without a caller, someone needing help or advice, an ardent chapel
worker with some difficulty to be solved, a deacon on a mission of
importance, and the voice which came from the study was not always
Robert Corder's, and though he might lead the laughter, there was
response to it, and people went away looking happier than they had
come. Nevertheless, Hannah would make a grimace at the study door as
she passed. She was sure Mrs. Corder, from her place on the great man's
desk, was listening gravely to what he said and making her acute,
silent comments, balancing the counsels he gave against what she knew
of him and yet, more tolerant than Hannah, refusing to judge him
harshly.
She had made of Mrs. Corder a person like herself, with more wisdom,
more kindness and more patience, qualities she must have needed in
excess, Hannah thought grimly, for she who prided herself on her
willingness to accept the good and bad in men and women as easily
as she accepted their physical and mental parts, was deliberately
antagonistic to Robert Corder. The swing of his coat tails vexed her
as probably the swing of her skirts vexed him; she would not believe
in the boasted broad-mindedness of a man who sneered at opposing views
or waved them aside, and whose small, tight mouth she could discern
under the moustache which masked it. Like most childless women, she
exaggerated the joys and privileges of possessing offspring and
Robert Corder seemed unaware of them. He was not an unkind father;
he was amiable enough and ready to expand under the affection he had
made it impossible for them to show him, but he seemed to Hannah to
treat his daughters as an audience for his sentiments and the record
of his doings and to forget that these girls had characters, unless
they happened to annoy him. While Hannah chafed under his bland
assumptions, she enjoyed watching for corroborative evidence of the
estimate she had made of him and he rarely disappointed her, for,
when things went well with him, he had to talk, and it was then that
Wilfrid's eyes sought hers and with the tiniest droop of an eyelid,
lift of an eyebrow or face of unnatural solemnity, sent his message to
her across the table.
Hannah took a penitential pleasure in controlling herself. If she
asserted her personality before she had established herself firmly,
even Lilla's patronage would not save her. She had to persuade Robert
Corder that she was useful before she let him suspect her of a mind
quicker than his own, and she behaved discreetly, for she had her
compact with Mrs. Corder to keep, she had her own powers to prove
and, though she would have laughed at the idea, she had the zeal of a
reformer under her thin crust of cynicism. She wanted to fatten Ruth
and see an occasional look of happiness on her face, to ease Ethel's
restlessness and get some sort of beauty into the house. She could not
change the ugly furniture--and there Mrs. Corder had badly failed--but
friendliness and humour and gaiety cost no money; they were, in fact,
in the penniless Hannah's pocket, waiting for these difficult people to
take them, and Hannah bided their time and her own.
She found that Ethel's labours at the Mission were not so arduous as
the state of the house implied. She had bursts of feverish activity,
she was constant in her attendance at the Girls' Club and she sometimes
helped her father with his correspondence, and then, for a whole day,
it would seem she had nothing to do, and she would shadow Hannah about
the house, as though she dreaded loneliness, watch her as she worked,
without offering to help, and spend the evening turning the pages of a
book, making fitful conversation, repairing, or making changes in her
rather tawdry clothes. She had a misguided passion for colour and for
ornaments, and the jingling of her beads was the constant accompaniment
to her restless movements. Ruth, frowning over her lessons, would beg
her to be quiet and one night she asked why the drawing-room fire
should not be lit, so that Ethel and Miss Mole could sit there and
leave her in peace.
'We can't afford a fire in every room in the house,' Ethel explained.
'Doris has one to herself, Father has another, why should the rest of
us have to share one? And anyhow, it's Miss Mole who manages the money
now, so you needn't interfere!'
Miss Mole said nothing. This remark was probably intended as a jeer
at Ethel, but, at least, it recognised her own existence, and a small
smile must have come on her lips, for Wilfrid, entering at that moment,
gave a clap of his hands and cried, 'I've been wondering who you were
ever since the happy hour when I first saw you and I've found out at
last! Good evening, Mona Lisa. And don't pretend you don't know it's
you I'm talking to!'
Hannah looked up, then down. 'It's the long nose,' she said.
'Not a bit of it! It's the secret smile. It's all the wisdom of the
world.'
Ethel was at a loss and seemed distressed. Ruth glanced up curiously
for an instant and then bowed her head over her books and shielded her
face with her hands.
'I can't remember, for the moment,' Ethel said, 'who Mona Lisa is.'
'A plain woman,' Hannah said.
'Then it's very rude of Wilfrid,' there was relief in Ethel's voice,
'to say you're like her.'
'On the contrary,' he said, 'she may be plain, but she's the most
fascinating woman in the world.'
'Oh!' said Ethel blankly, and, after a moment's fidgeting, she went out
of the room.
Wilfrid nodded towards the door. 'She's gone to look her up in the
dictionary!'
'No, she hasn't,' Ruth spoke drily. 'She's gone up to her room and
she'll be opening and shutting drawers and banging things about for
hours and I shan't be able to go to sleep.' Her voice rose painfully.
'Why haven't you more sense?' she cried. 'If you want to say things
like that, why can't you say them when she isn't here?'
For the first time in weeks, Hannah forgot to be on her guard. A
feeling of great mental weariness, of physical sickness, overcame
her. The work slipped from her hands and she leaned back in her
chair, shutting her eyes for a minute. It seemed to her horrible that
Ruth should have so clear an insight into Ethel's nature, and such
bitter experience of it, that Ethel's nature should be what it was.
At Ruth's age, Hannah had just gone to school in Upper Radstowe,
with an intimate, frank knowledge of sexual processes, acquired by
living on a farm, and was discovering that matters which her father
had not scrupled to discuss in her presence were the subjects of sly
whisperings in the school. The shock she suffered was different from
the one to which Lilla piously laid claim, for Lilla was disgusted by
physical details and Hannah was disgusted that anyone should consider
them unclean, and she had been spared Ruth's irritating contact with a
mind subject, no doubt unconsciously, to the dictates of the body.
The crudity of this thought was distasteful to Miss Mole; the truth
of it was worse. It was all very well to talk about civilization's
benefits to women and the preservation of their chastity, but what
was happening to the minds of countless virgins who would never be
anything else if they wished to be thought respectable? And while Ruth,
like Ethel, was probably in ignorance of causes, she, too, was the
unfortunate victim of effects.
Hannah sighed, and raised her eyes to find Ruth looking at her with a
startled interest, and to wonder, under that look, whether her policy
of self-effacement was the right one.
There was a fire in the drawing-room the next evening and there was a
feeling of holiday in the house. Robert Corder was speaking at some
meeting outside Radstowe and would not be back that night, and Hannah
prepared a supper of surprises, such as they could not often have, for
he was a hearty eater and needed solid fare. The family had the grace
to recognise her efforts: Ethel pathetically did her best to pretend
she had no grudge against Wilfrid or Miss Mole, Ruth openly enjoyed the
food, Wilfrid forebore to flatter or to tease, and Hannah told herself
that this was a very good imitation of a temporarily happy family.
When the meal was over Ruth was left in the dining-room to do her work,
as she had desired, in peace, but Hannah lingered to repair the fire
and gather up the mending which was her nightly occupation.
'Now you'll be all right, won't you?' she said cheerfully.
Ruth's small, worried, face became more strained. 'I didn't say I
wanted to be alone,' she said, and Hannah realized that her apparent
sullenness was embarrassment. 'I only wanted to be quiet. You sit so
still. You're not like Ethel. And she'll be happier, alone, in there
with Wilfrid.'
'And I'd rather stay here,' said Hannah, and neither of them spoke
again until Ruth pushed her books aside and said she was going to bed.
'Good night,' Hannah said, with a cool nod and smile.
Ruth stooped to the fire and warmed her hands and then, with a little
catch of her breath, she went away.
'I shall get her yet!' Hannah said to herself.
At some time during that night, she woke with a start. She had been
dreaming a variation of a dream she often had. The scene was always
the same. Somewhere in the neighbourhood of her cottage, in one of
the low-ceilinged rooms or in the orchard, she was supremely happy,
bewildered, or in great distress, and to-night trouble had been
predominant. She thought the pain of it must have waked her, or her
own cry, but as she lay, trying to compose herself, she heard a sound
outside her door and the turning of the handle.
'Who is it?' she said and, under the influence of her dream, her voice
was not quite steady.
'It's only me, Miss Mole. I thought I heard funny noises.'
Hannah fumbled for the matches and lit the candle by her bed. Ruth
stood in the doorway, clad only in her nightgown, with her feet bare,
and in the uncertain light she looked like a little wraith with
frightened eyes.
Hannah swung herself out of bed. 'Get in, quick!' she cried. She threw
the bed-clothes over Ruth and put on her own dressing-gown. 'What is
it?' she asked briskly. 'Burglars?'
'I don't know.' Ruth's teeth were chattering. 'I'd been dreaming.'
'Ah--so had I,' Hannah said.
'I'd been dreaming--and I expect I'm being silly, but I wish I needn't
sleep in that dressing-room. It's bad enough when Father's there, but
to-night his room was so empty or so--or so full. And I couldn't find
the matches to light the gas, and I thought I heard someone moving, so
I ran up here. I'm sorry, Miss Mole.'
'Don't mention it!' Hannah said, making a funny face and sitting on the
bed. 'If it's burglars, I propose to stay here. No good interfering
with them. Might cause bad feeling. We'll give them a few minutes to
help themselves, and when I think they've gone I'll go and look for
them.'
Ruth laughed, and it was the first time Hannah had heard her do it
naturally. 'I don't suppose it was burglars at all. They wouldn't come
to a house like this, would they? But I don't want to go back to that
room, Miss Mole.'
'You shan't. I'll go. We don't mind each other's sheets, do we? And
you'll feel happy up here, won't you, with my little ship on the
mantelpiece, and you'll go to sleep?'
Ruth nodded. 'Where did you get your little ship?'
'Off the mantelpiece in my old home in the country. I'll tell you about
it some day.'
'Whereabouts in the country?'
'Over the hills--but not very far away.' She was silent for a minute or
two, looking down. 'Well,' she said, 'I should think they've gone by
this time. Good night. Promise you'll go to sleep.'
'Won't you be frightened yourself?'
'Not a bit. I met a burglar once and liked him. I'll tell you about
that, too, in the day-time. I shall have to put out the candle, you
know.'
'I know. I don't mind. Miss Mole--' darkness made this confession
easier--'I don't believe I really believed there were burglars at all.'
'No. It was a bad dream. I was having one myself. I'm glad you woke me.
I'll buy some night-lights to-morrow. The matches are never where you
want them.'
'And they go out when you're in a hurry. And Miss Mole--' this was
still more difficult--'you won't tell anybody, will you?'
'But, of course I shall!' Hannah said with a mocking seriousness. 'The
first thing I shall do in the morning is to tell Doris, then your
sister, then your cousin, and when your father comes home he shall hear
all about it.'
Ruth laughed again, a little ghostly sound, and Hannah, as she went
down the dark stairs, said to herself triumphantly, 'I've got her now!'
but with her triumph a little dismay was mixed. She knew the hampering
nature of possessions.