Hannah studied the sky carefully on Saturday night. It promised
well for the next day, and when she had finished with the stars she
lowered her gaze to the housetops and tried to decide from which of
the chimneys in Prince's Road the smoke of Mr. Blenkinsop's excellent
coal fire was rising. She thought there would have been more sense
in an arrangement which allowed her to look after the baby while Mr.
Blenkinsop took Mrs. Ridding into the country, but, fond as Hannah was
of babies, she rejoiced in Mr. Blenkinsop's caution. A day spent in
Mrs. Ridding's basement, or in pushing the baby about the streets of
Upper Radstowe, could hardly be favourably compared with the plan he
had made, and no one but a woman with Hannah's experience of living
in other people's houses and of being perpetually on duty, could
understand the rapture with which she looked forward to the morrow. If
she had a wish it was that she might have gone alone into some place
free of associations, where she could have walked whither she liked,
and as fast or as slowly, thinking her own thoughts until, in wide
spaces, she lost all pressing sense of her personality. But things were
very well as they were, and in this mood she started the next morning,
before the family had gone to chapel, leaving a Ruth who tried not to
look neglected and a Robert Corder who was almost paternal in his good
wishes for her undertaking.
She put away her cares. She would not think about Mr. Pilgrim and what
he had told Ethel: she would not think about Ethel and her renewed
manner of a distrustful colt, advancing, with suspicious glances, for
favours, in such matters as altering a hat, and edging away as though
it were Hannah, and not she, who had a tendency to bite. With such
worries, Miss Mole was not going to spoil her day: Mr. Blenkinsop was
waiting for her at the station, and the tram-car which carried her to
that grimy portal was a processional coach, and the more it swayed, the
better Hannah was pleased. She was determined to be, she could not help
being, pleased with everything.
At nine o'clock that evening, Miss Mole walked slowly up the garden
path. She did not turn and wave a hand to Mr. Blenkinsop at the
gate, yet she knew he would stand there until he heard the front
door shut behind her, and perhaps a little longer, and through all
her other memories of the day she saw his stalwart figure, pursuing
and protective; his solemn face, anxious but chivalrously incurious.
She went through the hall and up the stairs, hardly feeling solidity
under her feet, noticing things from the habit of observation, but
indifferent to them. The drawing-room door was open and she could see
that the blinds had not been drawn, an omission peculiarly irritating
to her, and on any other night she would have drawn them quickly and
had a sharp word for Doris: to-night she passed on. She knew Mr. Corder
would be waiting for his tea and the knowledge flicked her mind and
left no impression, and it was only when she came to Ruth's door, which
was ajar, and heard Ruth's voice, that she halted in a march which
seemed to have been going on for ever, through lanes, and fields, and
woods and the streets of Radstowe.
'Oh, come in, Moley,' Ruth said. 'I've been waiting for you. Light the
night-light. I thought you said you would be in to supper, and we've
had such an awful day! Have you seen Ethel?'
'I haven't seen anybody,' Hannah said in a colourless voice. She stood
at the end of Ruth's bed, gradually distinguishing the face from the
pillow and the dark eyes from the face, and slowly, finger by finger,
she drew off her gloves, making that business last as long as possible.
'I was afraid she would come upstairs before you did and begin
banging,' Ruth sighed. 'I very nearly got into your bed. Why don't you
light the light? I'd do it, but you always do, and I like you to.'
'In a minute,' Hannah said.
'I can't see you and you don't sound as if you're here at all. You
sound as if you're where you've come from.'
'Oh, no, no,' Hannah said faintly. And now Ruth sat up and asked
anxiously, 'Have you had an awful day, too?'
Hannah swept her face with her hands, trying to brush away its
weariness and the stiffness of its control. A certain amount of mental
warmth invaded her cold brain, telling her that here was Ruth, who had
had an awful day, and who was afraid of Ethel, and she responded to the
suggestion that she was needed. 'Where are the matches?' she said.
'Oh, that's right, that's right,' Ruth said, as the little flame budded
and then flowered. 'That's better. Standing there in the dark, all
frosty, as if you'd come sailing through the air and hadn't any breath
left--it gave me a funny feeling. You're not unhappy, are you?'
'Tired,' Hannah said. 'I've walked for miles and miles.'
'And was the little house all right?'
'I don't know. I didn't go inside.'
'But I thought that was what you went for.'
'So it was, but I had a good long walk instead.'
'Then I wish you'd come home earlier, if that was all you were doing.
You managed Father about Howard,' and at these unexpected words,
Hannah's brain became normally active, 'and you might have managed him
about Ethel. But it would have been better if you hadn't gone at all.'
'No doubt,' Hannah said sourly.
'For you, I mean. Because Father thinks you didn't go to see your
little house, and you haven't seen it properly, have you? But still, if
you meant to--'
Hannah heard this careful balancing of her deeds and intentions,
this calculation of consequences, with a surprise which changed to
indignation that Ruth should have them to make and then should offer
them to her, and she said sharply. 'Don't talk like that! You can tell
me about Ethel, if you like.'
It was seldom that Miss Mole spoke severely and there was always humour
in her acidity, but there was none to-night and Ruth was silent for a
few moments before she said, 'I do hate people to talk after chapel,
across the pews. I believe that's what they go for.'
Hannah did not know a depth of misery from which she could not rise for
the discussion of human impulses and motives. 'No,' she said, 'it's the
psychological what-d'you-call-it of the varnish. Something adhesive
about it, I suppose. And then, with the bright blue firmament overhead,
you must expect geniality.'
'I wish I could go to a beautiful church where nobody speaks until they
get outside, and then not much. I can't bear the way they ask each
other to tea, and talk about who's got influenza, and what the doctor
said. They look so holy before the service, and, as soon as it's over,
they're just like Jack-in-the-boxes, nodding their heads and being so
pleasant to each other.' Ruth paused. 'So pleasant, but not really
nice,' she said slowly. 'And that's how Ethel got into trouble.'
Hannah sat on the end of the bed, looking at the floor, and through
the vision Ruth had conjured up of yellow pews and the matrons of the
congregation in their Sunday best of amiability and garments, with
roast beef and batter pudding waiting for them at home, she saw herself
in a lane sunk between high banks topped by trees, and heard the
whistle of a robin. If she had been standing on higher ground, if the
robin had not whistled with that sweet detachment, she might not have
run away, but she had felt that she was in a pit of her own making, and
the robin gaily mocked her.
'You're not listening, are you?' Ruth asked.
Hannah raised her head. 'Yes. Ethel. Trouble. Who made it?'
'Barley sugar Patsy. And Mrs. Spenser-Smith made some more, but you
won't let me tell you about that. And it was partly Mr. Pilgrim's
fault, too, because somebody must have told Patsy that Ethel went to
his chapel on Christmas Day, and I should think he's the kind of man who
would. And she let it out to Father, on purpose, when they were talking
after the service, just so that Mrs. Spenser-Smith shouldn't think she
knows more about us than Patsy does. And then Mrs. Spenser-Smith had to
let Patsy know that she knew something that Patsy didn't, but they both
talked to Father and pretended they weren't talking to each other.'
'It sounds complicated.'
'It was worse when we got home. Father and Ethel had a quarrel and
she's been to Mr. Pilgrim's chapel to-night and says she'll go as often
as she likes, and I don't know whether she's come back yet. So that's
the kind of day we've had. Do you think,' Ruth asked wistfully, 'you
could finish it up a bit better? It was so wonderful about Howard, but
that's always the way. The horrid things happen all of a sudden, and we
were so peaceful, weren't we?'
It seemed to Hannah that all her work was undone. Here was Ruth, as
nervous and unhappy as she had been three months ago, Ethel had bolted
from her stable in search of Mr. Pilgrim, and Lilla's spite, too
great for her caution, had shaken Robert Corder's growing trust of
his housekeeper in some way yet to be discovered. And Mr. Blenkinsop
had had a fruitless errand and never again would he come to Miss Mole
for help, or give it to her in asking for it. She had seen him for
the last time, perhaps. He had been good and kind, but he must have
despised her and compared her unfavourably with Mrs. Ridding who was
self-controlled. And how was he explaining her behaviour? He had asked
no questions, but they must be knocking at his brain and he would have
to answer them. She was indifferent about his answers, for who was
he to criticise? It was a sense of loss that oppressed her when she
went down the stairs to do what she could for Ruth. She had lost Mr.
Blenkinsop, she had lost the remnants of her romance and some of her
self-esteem, and she did not know what else she was going to lose when
she encountered Mr. Corder. She had, too, a sense of shame from which
she had been running all day and she must turn and face it when she
was alone, stare it out of countenance, until it dwindled and then
vanished. This she had not been able to do while Mr. Blenkinsop was
near. His pained solemnity and mute desire to help had confused her
mind, for he was connected with the shame, his presence had increased
it, and she longed for the solitude of her bedroom, a hiding place
for her wounds, towards which she had been making when the habit of
thinking about Ruth had stopped her. And Ruth's need had come at a
fortunate moment: she realised that, in spite of her misery, and up
sprang her resilient hopefulness. The disasters of this day might have
their value--all things had their value if they were properly used--and
who could handle them better than Hannah Mole? And whatever Robert
Corder's cause of complaint might be, she was ready to do battle with
him.
'We have had a very unfortunate day,' he said sternly when she entered.
'I found the fire out when I came back from evening service.'
'Ah, that's why I never go to it,' Hannah said, and she said it with
more roguishness than was quite suitable.
'I have reason to know that some people find superior attractions
elsewhere,' he said loftily, 'and naturally, I must be the last to
blame them, but when one of them is my own daughter.... By the way,'
he said, and she approved the carelessness of his manner, 'I hope your
business was done satisfactorily.'
With her head calculatingly on one side, Hannah looked at him. She was
not going to be trapped, and she saw safety in the truth which, for
her, had been accidental and dreadful, but was already proving useful.
'Well, no, it wasn't,' she said.
'But you saw your house?'
'Yes, I saw it. But then a robin sang--' There was a delicious pain
in speaking of the robin and already the power of that memory was
lessened. 'He sang, and I didn't go any further, not in that direction,
but we went a long way in another.'
'We? You were not alone?'
'Oh no! I was with Mr. Blenkinsop.'
'If it was only a walk with Mr. Blenkinsop, I think it was a pity you
chose a Sunday. And I wish you had told me before,' he said in a lower
tone.
'How could I know you would be interested?'
'I don't like to be informed about my domestic affairs by outsiders.'
'Then you knew?' Hannah asked innocently, and she decided that if he
could thus deceive her, she was justified, if she needed justification,
in deceiving him.
'No, I--well, I had a suspicion.'
'Then it was lucky that I told the truth!' She laughed and seemed to
expect him to laugh with her. 'And why shouldn't I? But will you tell
me who forestalled me?'
'It was Mrs. Spenser-Smith.'
'How on earth--Oh yes, I told her myself.'
'But she gave me to understand that Mr. Blenkinsop was taking you to
some other place of worship.'
'Only to Nature's cathedral, as they call it. That's a painful
expression, isn't it?'
'Is it?' Mr. Corder replied vaguely, and she thought he was wondering
how often he had used it, but he put that aside. 'And it hurt me, Miss
Mole.'
'It would,' she said sympathetically.
'Coming, as it did, after more troubling news of the same kind.'
'And perhaps there's just as good an explanation.'
'I'm afraid not. I'm afraid there is no doubt that my daughter had
been attending Mr. Pilgrim's chapel, not regularly, but noticeably. How
can I explain a desertion like that? And it's not--it's not modest,
Miss Mole. She won't listen to reason. She defied me this afternoon.'
He shaded his eyes with his hand. 'This is worse than Howard,' he said
in a muffled voice and she thought that in this reference to his son,
the man himself was speaking, and past his shoulder, on the desk, she
saw Mrs. Corder listening.
She took a breath and said, 'You must ask him to the house.'
'But why? I dislike the man. He is not a man with whom I have, or
could have, any sympathy. Ignorant--and rather absurd. And if you are
suggesting that I should do it for Ethel's sake, I must refuse. I don't
wish her to be friendly with him.'
'The more she sees him, the less she may like him, and stolen fruits
are sweet--so they say. It isn't everybody's experience.'
'And I have never encouraged young men to come to the house.'
'If you had, she might not have been interested in Mr. Pilgrim, and
he's middle-aged, but I think a middle-aged man would suit her.'
'I'm disappointed, Miss Mole. I was hoping for your support, but it
seems as though no woman can see a man who is not married without
prejudice in his favour.'
Hannah controlled a smile and gave what was almost a sniff. 'I don't
call Mr. Pilgrim a savoury object myself, but that's neither here nor
there. Make a bargain with her. She doesn't go to his chapel, but he
comes here if he wants to. If she's going to tire of him, she'll tire
the quicker; if not, what can you do? No, she must not go to his
chapel. It's a fierce light that beats on those thrones of yours.'
'Could you--' he hesitated, 'would you speak to her yourself? She won't
listen to me. I used some strong expressions about Mr. Pilgrim.'
'I'll keep mine to myself. _Suaviter in modo._ I'll do my best.' She
looked at Mrs. Corder and hoped she was feeling grateful. 'And, Mr.
Corder, it's a pity for Ruth to hear about things like this.'
'It's a pity for the things to occur. And--er--Miss Mole, you'll
forgive me, but I think you will agree I ought to know--is there
any--any attachment between you and Mr. Blenkinsop?'
Hannah cast down her eyes and her lips twitched, but, suddenly she
wanted to cry. She had lost Mr. Blenkinsop: the only use he had for her
was gone, and the one she had for him, which was no more than the sense
of a strange kind of fellowship, was growing greater as Mr. Pilgrim
approached. She had meant to equivocate and tease Mr. Corder with the
prospect of another amorous situation, even to raise her value in his
opinion, and she found she could not do it. She looked up and she was
afraid there were tears in her eyes. 'No, none,' she said firmly.