by E. H. Young
Mrs. Spenser-Smith gave an unwilling, downward glance. ‘Absurd!’ she said. ‘You’ve no sense of proportion.’
‘Yet I risked this one,’ Hannah pointed to her right foot, ‘without a thought for its beauty. Fortunately, it’s hardly scratched.’ She looked up, her face rejuvenated by mischief. ‘I broke a window with it, Lilia.’
Incredulity struggled with curiosity in Mrs. Spenser-Smith, and curiosity with her determination to deny Hannah the pleasure of thinking herself interesting. ‘Pooh!’ she said lightly, and then her unpractised imagination took a clumsy flight. ‘You don’t mean to tell me that woman had locked you out of the house?’
‘I don’t mean to tell you anything,’ Miss Mole said sweetly, and with the smile on her lips she watched her cousin’s admirable exit which was designed to show the increasing number of people in the shop that she was of very different quality from that of the person she left behind her.
Chapter 3
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 Lilia. 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 Lilia 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 Lilia 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, Lilia 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 confidante 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 Lilia 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 tea-shop 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 Lilia 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 Lilia, 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.’
Chapter 4
This was the story which had to be re-arranged for Lilia’s benefit, but Hannah trusted to the inspiration of the moment and wasted no time which could be spent on the beauty of the October day. The sun shone with the peculiar brightness of autumn and, in passing through the trees and gilding them, it seemed to borrow as it gave and strike the heaps of fallen leaves with added strength. The streets had the white, swept appearance given by the east wind, chimneys and roofs made sharp lines on the blue sky, and sounds of voices, footsteps, cars and carts and horses, had an unusual resonance. Michaelmas daisies and dahlias flowered in the gardens, there were berries on the rowan trees, the world seemed to be flying every flag it had, and, when Hannah crossed The Green, the fall of a chestnut sounded stealthy, as though its descent were a little shameful in the general glory. It lay among the leaves, a glossy roan, bursting from its green, spiked shell, and she stooped to pick it up, but left it lying there. When the children came out of school one of them would find it and, for her, to remember the feeling of that polished ball was just as good as to handle it. Indeed, she thought, it was better, for the good thing remembered or hoped for had a blessed superiority over the thing grasped, and she fancied that God, finding the decent order of his plans upset by the wilfulness of the creatures for whom He made them, had been tenderly inspired with this idea of compensation.
‘And a good thing, too!’ she muttered, glancing at the dock on the otherwise conscientiously Early English Church.
There was no time to go round the hill and look at the river: she must go down Chatterton Street, which had a turning into Cha
nning Square, and risk encountering Mrs. Widdows. The risk was not great. She would be dozing, poor thing, over the fire in the stuffy little sitting-room, while the woman she had dismissed with contumely – that was a good word, though Hannah was never sure how to pronounce it – was taking a part in this fine pageant. She realized that her contribution was purely spiritual: there was nothing ornamental in her appearance and her clothes were always of a useful shade, but she held up her head and walked briskly, enjoying the snap of twigs and the sibilance of leaves under her feet.
The narrow road she was following widened at its juncture with several others. The Avenue was stately on her left hand, another road, shaded by trees, came curling up from the river: on her right, a broader one skirted that edge of the Downs which she could reach by the short ascent in front of her, and the ends of all these roads were held together, as in a knot, by a drinking-fountain for men and beasts.
It was hard to believe that the big, sprawling city was so near. This was a place for leisure, for genteel strolling, for long crocodiles of school-girls who must partake of the elegant beauties of nature among their other forms of nourishment, and ladies in small bonnets and bustles should have been walking under the trees. Here there was no impingement of new on old or of shabbiness on prosperity, and Hannah would have felt less affection for this part of Upper Radstowe, lovely as the trees made it, if it had not grown out of the older one and if she had not known that her own country, wild under its demureness, grey-rocked under its springy turf, lay just across the water.
The Downs were not the country, but they came as near it as they could. They stretched away, almost out of sight, rimmed by distant roads and houses on all sides but the cliffed one, and great trees as well as hawthorn bushes grew there. A double row of elms marched straight towards Lilia’s house and, as Hannah walked in their dappled shadows, she heard the thud of hooves and the creak of leather and the jingle of steel, and it seemed to fit the mixed character of the Downs that these riders should be on hired horses, that the sheep, industriously nibbling, should have dirty fleeces, and that voices thick with the Radstowe burr should come from the throats of youths kicking a football. But always, even, it seemed to Hannah, when it rained, the clouds sailed higher over that part of the world than elsewhere, and she had heard Lilia say that, except on Saturdays and Sundays, the view from her windows had almost the appearance of a private park. Unfortunately, Lilia’s house, which was already discernible as a red and white blot beyond the trees, could not be mistaken for one of England’s stately homes. It had been built for Ernest’s father towards the end of his life, and the attempt to produce something like a small Elizabethan manor house had been frustrated by his determination that there should be no misunderstanding about its origin, and below the flat gables of the top story, bow windows and a porch bulged on the ground floor; the tiles were the reddest procurable and white stucco concealed the bricks. The garden was separated from the road by its own width of greensward guarded by posts and chains, and this indication that the Spenser-Smiths had more than enough garden to spare was callously interpreted by urchins as an invitation to swing on the chains. Even Lilia’s ointment had a fly in it, Hannah thought, beaming on a culprit who had expected a frown, and she blinked affectedly, for her own amusement, when she opened the gate and met the full glare of white and red and yellow under the sunshine.