Ruth had not learnt to accept imperfection. She saw it all round
her and she was in a constant state of rebellion against it. She
saw it in herself, in her father, in Ethel, in the house and in her
circumstances. Nothing, to her mind, was what it should have been.
The loss of her mother was not included in this criticism. That was
a disaster for which there was no expression. She did not join it to
these minor but persistent frets as a cause for discontent. It was
too big for comparison or connection with anything else she knew. It
came from outside and, in a way, it remained outside, as a black, cold
cloud would have been outside her body, but it had emptied her life of
all that had been soft and gracious and amusing in it. Her father had
told her that God, for His own good purposes, had taken her mother to
Himself and, unwilling as she always was to believe in His decisions,
she had to submit to this one. No power but God's was great enough to
bring about so terrible a catastrophe, and she did not wonder that He
wanted her for Himself. It was selfish to take her, but it was natural,
and she had to endure the loss patiently because she was helpless
under it. The things against which Ruth rebelled were those which
might so easily have been different, and her mother's death had not
created them; they had merely become more apparent and some of them
were actually easier to bear without her. The closeness of her contact
with her mother's mind had doubled her embarrassment when her father
was didactic or petty and Ethel was unreasonable: the quick sympathy
which both tried to hide had magnified the importance of what they
both deplored: they suffered for and wanted to protect each other, and
Ruth could be more stoical when it was only her father and sister and
not her mother's husband and daughter who offended her. The tension of
one side of Ruth's life had slackened a little when her mother died,
while, on another, it had tightened. Now that she need not be careful
to pretend, now that she could neither love nor laugh--and it would
have surprised Mrs. Corder's acquaintances and, perhaps, her husband,
to know how often she had made Ruth laugh--she could concentrate on
her dissatisfactions. She had her ideal of what a home should be. The
mother in it would be her mother, but the father would be different.
If it was necessary for him to be a minister of religion, he would
be the vicar of the Established Church, and the church itself would
be old and dim and beautiful and people would not shake hands across
the yellow pews and talk intimately about their ailments and their
children. They would do that, if they must, in the sunny churchyard,
and quietly, with the hush of the service on them and the influence
of stained glass and carved stone. The house would be old too, with
a cedar on the lawn, and several dogs, and inside there would be
pretty and precious things, things which had belonged to ancestors,
portraits and old silver, and the ancestors would be admirals and
generals and judges. The sons of that house would go to public schools
and universities and no one would think it necessary to mention it;
the girls would have beauty and beautiful clothes and gracious love
affairs: they would not giggle with young men, like Ethel, or be cross
with everybody, like Ruth: there would be order in that household and
quiet servants. She was not sure whether the father would be more
like a country gentleman than a vicar, interested in agriculture and
sport, or whether he would be vague and gentle, with some absorbing
hobby which made him lovably absent-minded, but she knew he would never
embarrass his wife and children, he would neither be effusive nor
condescending with his parishioners, and his children need not hesitate
to ask anyone to tea. School life and home life could merge into each
other safely and though, like all vicars, he would be more or less of
a public character, he could be trusted not to say things at which his
children's friends could sneer.
These were the surroundings and the conditions Ruth wanted and her
mother had not taken them with her. Ruth had wanted them almost as
much while she lived, and in default of the unattainable, she posed
at school as a stout Nonconformist and a despiser of aristocracy who
was fiercely loyal to her humble Puritan forebears. There were girls
in her form who went to Beresford Road Chapel and, while her father
preached, Ruth was listening with those girls' ears and framing replies
to criticism, though with much criticism she had not to deal. The girls
were as ready as their parents to admire, Ruth had her reflected glory,
but she could not risk the loss of it by introducing these admirers
into the home. Her father had his place in the pulpit, Ruth had hers
in the school, where, with her defiances and the humour her family
never saw, she was considered an amusing and original character by her
contemporaries, but how would she appear to them when her father called
her Ruthie and teased her and made rather foolish jokes in his desire
to put the young people at their ease and to show that he could be
a jolly, ordinary man? Their conception of her would be changed; she
would be different, too, and she could never again be the self which
came most naturally to her at school.
It would have been simple in the old Vicarage; in Beresford Road it
was impossible. She kept her two lives apart, despising herself for
snobbishness and lack of courage, but keeping the place she had made
for herself and living almost freely for half her time. No one there
would have suspected her of the fears that assailed her at night or
of yearnings for beauty within and without. She was a hard worker and
though this keenness and an odd sense of fair play constrained her
from being tiresome in class, these virtues were forgiven for the sake
of her readiness to see and mimic the peculiarities of her superiors;
the Ruth who strolled homewards with her friends was gay and impudent,
or downright and cynical according to her mood and the impression she
wished to make, and very different from the one who, later on, brooded
over the supper-table, and to a Ruth who, one day, was showing off
more successfully than usual, it was terrible to turn and see the
approaching figure of Miss Mole, clad in a very old-fashioned ulster.
It might have been a handsome, and it must have been a sturdy garment
when it was bought: it had a character which the oncoming of dusk
and the drizzling rain could not disguise: it gave Miss Mole a waist
where waists no longer existed and a breadth of shoulder out of all
proportion to her thin frame; it was impossible not to notice it and
it was all Ruth could do to sustain her mirth under the sound of those
rapidly-approaching footsteps.
The figure passed; Ruth felt a nudge at each side of her; someone
giggled and Ruth continued her chatter, but when she parted from
her companions, she began to run, drawing sharp breaths through her
piteously-parted lips. She was like Peter: she had denied her friend,
and if those girls ever saw the ulster again and recognised Miss Mole
as the wearer, what would they think of Ruth? They had nudged and
giggled and she had not said a word. She ought to have called out
to Miss Mole and stopped her, but she had been afraid of ridicule.
She had not only committed a disloyal act, but one which might be
discovered, and in that bitter moment she learnt that secret sin could
be forgotten, while sin revealed to the world could be remembered for
ever. All she could do now was to hurry and wipe away some of the stain.
Going home was not quite as bad as it had been for the last two years,
she was not so anxious to linger in the streets, her habit of running
past the next-door house and entering her own with a rush, was an old
one, and Miss Mole, lighting the hall gas, showed no surprise at Ruth's
breathless entrance, though her sharply benevolent eyes may have seen
more than the dampness of Ruth's clothes as she said briskly, 'Don't
stand about in your coat. And you'll change your stockings, won't you?'
'What about you, Miss Mole?' Ruth said faintly. 'You're wet, too.'
Miss Mole patted the abominable ulster. 'It can't get through this. Do
go and change or you'll have a cold and it seems a pity to waste one
when there isn't a party to dodge.'
Ruth's smile was wan. Miss Mole, revealing herself as a person of
humour and understanding, was simply making things worse for her. She
went towards the stairs where there was more shadow. 'Did you come
across Regent Square?'
'Yes. I'd been for a walk round the hill to look at the river. Lovely
it was, too, in the rain. The mist was thick on the water and there was
a tree on the other side like a torch blazing through a fog. But the
leaves will be dropping under this rain.'
For a moment, Ruth was held from her purpose. She wished Miss Mole
would go on talking like that. She said things differently, in Ruth's
experience, from other people and in a different voice. She had spoken
of a moony night and beauty and peace had stolen over her listener,
and now Ruth felt the chill danger of thick mist and the joy of seeing
light ahead. The necessity for confession seemed less pressing, the
world of vision became of more importance than the one of facts, and
while she was persuading herself that it would be easy and kinder to be
silent, she began to speak.
'Miss Mole,' she said, 'I think I saw you. I mean--I saw you. But you
went past so quickly and I was too late. You know how things happen. I
ought to have shouted to you at once, but it would have looked so funny
to the other girls if I'd recognised you when you were nearly out of
sight, so I didn't--but I feel so mean.'
'Mean?' said Hannah. 'I'm grateful. When I'm in this ulster, I'm
supposed to be invisible. I know what it's like. I ought not to wear
it at all, but it's thick and it's an old friend. If you'd stopped me
I should have died of shame. Thank goodness you didn't. I won't run
the risk again, except in the dark. Now will you kindly go and change
those clothes? You ought to have worn your mackintosh. It's high-tea
night and when I was up on the hill I suddenly thought of mushrooms and
I bought some on the way home. We'll have them with scrambled eggs and
you can come and help me if you like.'
Ruth was childish in some ways, but she was not stupid. She could see
that Miss Mole's words might be tactful as well as true. She had not
dared to ask whether Miss Mole had seen and avoided her and, if so,
whether it was for her own sake or for Ruth's. The confession had not
been a full one, but, after Miss Mole's expressed horror of the ulster,
how could she mention it? That would have been easing her soul at the
cost of Miss Mole's feelings and though it was convenient to say no
more, it was not necessarily wrong. Less and less, as she grew older,
did she believe that the unpleasant things were the good ones and, as
she slowly changed her stockings, she gave way willingly to the belief,
which had been reluctant until to-day, that Miss Mole could be trusted
with her omissions as safely as with her fears. She felt, rather than
thought, that Miss Mole's mind could overleap gaps and understand how
they came there, and when she went down to the kitchen, she felt stiff
and awkward in the consciousness of a surrender she had been determined
not to make.
Miss Mole was skinning the mushrooms, and when she had shown Ruth how
to do it they sat at the kitchen table together and worked busily.
'I've been thinking about clothes,' Hannah said, and Ruth, though
she turned red, decided that it was a good thing to talk about them
at once, before the thought of the ulster became a solid barrier
against the subject. 'I've always liked them, and never had what I
wanted. When I went to school, we weren't all dressed alike, and
I was a scarecrow--but much more noticeable. The only thing to do
was to pretend I had an original taste in dress and the other poor
things hadn't, and I've done that ever since, except about my shoes
and stockings. I'm extravagant about them, so I have to go short
elsewhere.' She glanced down at the shoes she had been too hurried to
change. 'There isn't a better pair in Radstowe, but I broke a window
with this one once,' she said carelessly.
Ruth looked up. 'What did you do that for?'
'It's one of the stories I can't tell you, but it was very sad--and
exciting.'
'Can't you tell me, really? You're always talking about stories and not
telling them. There's the one about the burglar--'
'Ah yes, but there's so little time. You have to work in the evenings
and then you have to go to bed, or there's someone else in the room.'
'To-night would be a good night,' Ruth suggested, 'and I haven't so
very much to do. Unless Wilfrid's going to be in?'
'No, he'll be out.'
'Oh well, then--!' Ruth exclaimed.
'We'll see. You have to be in the right mood for telling stories.
But do remind me to ask Ethel if she knows any old woman who would
condescend to wear that ulster.'
'Oh, Miss Mole,' Ruth almost pleaded, 'I shouldn't give it away, if you
like it.'
'I don't. I merely master it.'
'But you said it was an old friend, and there must be yards and yards
of stuff in it. Perhaps you could have it altered.'
'No, I'm not brave enough to show it to a tailor. But I think I'll keep
it. It's good enough for wearing to the pillar-box on a dark night, but
I won't wear it anywhere else,' she said, and now Ruth knew that Miss
Mole could forgive everything she understood, and that she probably
understood everything.