by E. H. Young
‘I hope there is no brandy in it,’ he said seriously.
Miss Mole looked disappointed. ‘I know some people prefer beer,’ she said, ‘but I think brandy’s better. I ought to have asked you.’
He dropped the spoon. ‘But Miss Mole, you must know we never have intoxicants in this house, and I happen to be the president of the Radstowe Temperance Society.’
‘Does it count,’ she asked meekly, ‘when it’s cooked and in a pudding? I’m so sorry. What can we do about it? I can’t possibly eat all these puddings by myself.’
‘Waste would only be an aggravation of the mistake,’ he said sharply, ‘but, another time, Miss Mole . . .’
He went away, very much disturbed. Surely the woman could not be as simple as she seemed, and if she was not, what was she? And this was the sort of thing which could be ignored in an ordinary household but was of real importance in one like this. Doris would spread the story; it might have a far-reaching effect on the girl’s attitude towards the drink question, and probably the brandy had been bought through that young man whose relationship to Doris had affected Robert Corder’s own attitude towards the girl, as towards some one not quite unspotted from the world of the flesh, and it would be impossible to offer Christmas pudding to any visitor to the house.
He returned hurriedly to the kitchen.
‘And the mincemeat?’ he inquired.
‘I’m afraid that is contaminated, too,’ Miss Mole replied.
No, she was not simple, and he remembered the mattresses. He had an impulse to order the destruction of the savoury mess, to let the family go puddingless at Christmas, but he hesitated and the ardour of his indignation left him, and he did nothing. What he needed in his house was a little committee of people like himself which would frame and pass resolutions and give orders in which responsibility was shared. Alone, he felt that, in some way he would be baffled and his position worsened, but when the pudding appeared on Christmas Day he would quietly refuse to eat it and he hoped Miss Mole would feel ashamed. Then swiftly, with the glibness acquired by answering awkward questions at his class for young men, he arranged such tolerant, humorous comments as might be needed, on domestic accidents and the lenience which must be extended to others in affairs of conscience, but he felt very bitter towards a woman who put him to these shifts and, as the object of his suspicions and dislike, she became oddly fascinating: he liked looking at her and despising her for her lack of beauty, he enjoyed listening to her and silently sneering at her remarks: he was puzzled by the frankness which alternated with her slyness and he did not see how he was to get rid of her without less petty reasons to offer Mrs. Spenser-Smith, a practical woman who would make nothing of the little objections he could name and who would not understand that a mere personality could trouble his peace of mind. He saw himself permanently saddled with Miss Mole and, two days after the pudding incident, he found more causes for mistrustful speculation.
He saw her go down the garden path in what might be taken for her best apparel and, as she went up the road, she waved a hand gaily towards the next-door house. It was growing dusk, but he saw her hand plainly in its light glove and the light glove offended him. She was not at the tea-table and when he asked where she was Ethel reported that she had gone out. He made a dubious sound and Ethel, tactlessly loyal to Miss Mole, said quickly: ‘She has to go out sometimes.’
‘I am quite aware of that, Ethel. Do you know where she has gone?’
‘She said she was going to see Mrs. Gibson first,’ Ethel said, and he allowed a sufficient pause to elapse before he made some reference to Mr. Samson. Had anyone seen him lately? Did he still live alone?
Ethel said she had not seen, and was not interested in, the horrid old man, but Ruth said, a little shyly: ‘He isn’t horrid. It’s just his face and that’s not his fault. Miss Mole says she thinks he’s rather nice, like everybody else when you get to know them.’
‘And how has Miss Mole discovered this?’
‘Oh, she just knows things like that,’ Ruth said contentedly, pretending not to notice her father’s covert sneer.
Chapter 23
Hannah accepted life as she found it, she accepted imperfection, but this did not prevent her from pondering on human existence in her own fashion. Finding pleasure and excitement in little things, because there were no others, seeing those about her doing the same, though, as she believed, with less intensity, she could still wonder whether more was not expected of human beings, or whether, in getting food and shelter and what happiness came their way, they were doing all that was required of them. Robert Corder could see himself as a man with a definite mission against evil; Wilfrid, perhaps, was somewhat shamefacedly hoping to alleviate the physical sufferings of men, but the mass of people was like herself, without her special advantages, living from one day of small things to another, grateful when sorrow was avoided and pathetically thankful for peace, and in a world which knew the procession of sun and moon and stars, the miracle of spring and the pageantry of autumn, the occupations of these two-legged creatures, running about the earth, seemed insufficient. They vexed themselves about things of no apparent moment, such as mattresses; they became excited over a mild entertainment, such as having tea with Mr. Blenkinsop; they wasted time, which ought surely to have been given to some higher purpose, in trying new modes of hairdressing for the benefit of a strange sailor who would not notice them. But what were these higher purposes and who pursued them, outside the special band of thinkers and creators? And to these people did their efforts sometimes seem as unimportant as hers to Hannah Mole? She envied artists with their definite objects and work which seemed to them imperative, but envy was one of the emotions she never allowed herself for long, and it vanished when she realized that she, too, should be an artist in her own sphere, that, indeed, she was already doing almost her best to be one, and that the results of her labours, if they were good, were no more to be despised than was a painting of a Dutch interior because it did not deal with gods and goddesses.
This decision to be a conscientious artist was an inspiriting one, particularly as it exacted the expression of her own, and not Robert Corder’s, conception of what the housekeeper to a Non-conformist minister should be. It was comforting to think there would be disloyalty in pandering to his notions, for in her relations with Robert Corder she sometimes felt guilty. She who boasted that she could like anybody, had not tried to like him, yet Wilfrid had told her that a little encouragement would be for the good of the community. The artist, however, did not consider the good of the community. The best work was not done in that way, and Hannah felt perfectly free to go on disliking Robert Corder and to get from that exercise the peculiar kind of pleasure which, as she suspected, he was beginning to get out of his dislike for her. She was cleverer at disguising her feelings than he was, cleverer in every way, she believed, and her pleasure would increase in proportion to her concealment and his revelations. She must be allowed this joy, she told herself: moreover, nothing was more dangerous than going contrary to nature for the sake of an imagined future good, and, if future good must be considered, what could be better for Robert Corder and his family than the impact of an independent mind on his?
Miss Mole was feeling rather gay and conceited after her tea with Mr. Blenkinsop. She had made that serious young man laugh once and smile unwillingly several times, and, in a secluded corner of the tea shop, where the food and the tea were good, she had talked freely for the first time for many years. In her situations, she had listened more often than she had spoken, and though some of them had been lost through the sharp readiness of her tongue, that tongue had merely been restive with pent-up energy and lack of exercise, like a horse, not ill-natured, but riotous when it sees a stretch of grass. To have a listener like Mr. Blenkinsop was to have the grass and no punishment for bolting. There had been no need to pick her words – and when she did not pick them they were harmless enough – with a potential, if not an active fellow-sinner, and when she le
ft him she was afraid she had talked too much for his convenience, though not for her own comfort. Voluntarily, he had not spoken of his affairs, and when, giving him his chance, she tried to tease him about the gilded gratings of the bank and the dangerous reactions of his evening liberty, he had assured her that he was not an impulsive person. She had expressed amazement and this was one of the moments when he smiled, but he was solemn when he went on to say that due consideration was always given to his undertakings.
‘Then you haven’t my excuse,’ she said, ‘or my fun. It’s a wonderful world, Mr. Blenkinsop, when you may find an adventure round any corner.’
‘Yes, but one doesn’t,’ he replied crushingly.
‘Of course one can avoid them. It’s a startling thought that if I’d been of the avoiding kind, I should never have known you. I’m sorry this incident always crops up when we meet, but I suppose it’s in both our minds. I’m referring –’
‘I know what you’re referring to.’
‘And you regret the reference and the incident.’
‘Not entirely.’
‘Then you’ve changed.’
‘Yes, I’ve changed.’
‘Ah!’ Hannah said significantly. ‘And I don’t regret it at all, for here I am, having an outing with a single gent, and but for that, I might still be in Mrs. Widdows’ stuffy parlour. But that’s not very likely,’ she added honestly. She wished she had called him a technically single gent and seen what he made of that. Possibly she had talked so much that he had decided on reserve. She had told him about her childhood in the country, about her situations and the kind of books she liked and what she would do if she had a lot of money. She felt tired by her own eloquence, but relieved, and she did not think she had given him cause to doubt her discretion. It would be a pity if she had. She liked Mr. Blenkinsop and she wanted to know whether the stories she had made about him would come true, and when she looked back at her past and the men she had met, as her employers and their relatives and friends – for her life had been singularly barren of closer relationships with men and women – she decided that Mr. Blenkinsop was the one to whom she would tell a secret or go for help, and when, in a quick, frightened thought, she remembered Mr. Pilgrim, it did not need a great effort of her imagination to see the solid, bulky form of Mr. Blenkinsop overshadowing the narrow-shouldered, somewhat slinking figure of the other, like a policeman keeping an eye on a suspicious character.
Mr. Pilgrim, however, had come no nearer; Mr. Blenkinsop had given her nothing new to consider except a feeling of safety, and her mind was free to receive the impression of Uncle Jim. As Hannah always had her tongue in her cheek when she created romantic stories about herself, she could make them as extravagant as she chose, and she was hardly disappointed when she saw a man, in clothes which looked too tight for him, who had no likeness to her buccaneer. It was just as well, she thought, when she remembered the difference between the Miss Mole she had fitted to him and the one with which this plain Uncle Jim, who might have been a tax collector, was shaking hands. He had a close-clipped fair moustache in a short face, a pucker of wrinkles round his eyes which gave him an amused rather than a worried expression, and though he was bronzed enough to make Robert Corder look hectic with the colour on his cheekbones, he was not immediately suggestive of hurricanes and tropic sun. He was an ordinary looking man yet, in the slowness of his movements and speech and in his calm, apparently uncritical regard, there was something to make Hannah feel that here was another person who could be relied on. He had a dwarfing effect on Robert Corder, but this was Hannah’s first opportunity of comparing the minister with a man who belonged to a wider world than that of Beresford Road Chapel, and it seemed to her that Uncle Jim in the pulpit would be less incongruous than Robert Corder on the bridge of a ship. Uncle Jim’s authority was that of the man who knew his trade and had his position as a consequence and a matter of course, while, with Robert Corder, the position came first, and the authority derived from it was a constant source of gratification and made a constant demand for recognition. Hannah thought sadly that she was rather like him herself; she had no position to give her a fair start, but she was not content to let her personality make what mark it could, without assistance; a sign, she feared, of a weak character.
She made another of her good resolutions and remained silent and observant. She saw Ruth looking with shining eyes at the imperturbable face of her uncle and glancing from him to Hannah, as though she wished to connect them in her happiness and to know what each thought of the other. Ethel, wearing an extra necklace in honour of the occasion, and a bright blue frock, rattled her beads and jerked in her seat at the supper table, but her glances had not the confidence of Ruth’s. She could never forget the presence of her father, and her anxiety was that conversation should go amicably between him and Uncle Jim. Robert Corder did his best as host. He invited his brother-in-law to talk of his experiences and Uncle Jim was as unresponsive as Howard had been on the night of his return. He said something about the weather and Robert Corder lifted his eyebrows patiently. He was not really eager to hear another person talk, but it was exasperating to see such a waste of opportunity. A single voyage would have supplied the minister with anecdotes for countless supper tables and sewing meetings, with texts and illustrations for innumerable sermons, and this man, who had followed the sea since he was a boy and knew all the ports of the world, could produce nothing more illuminating than a casual reference to the weather. Opportunities did not come to those who could use them. Howard and Jim were alike in their dumb obtuseness, and what sort of minister Howard would make, his father feared to prophesy. He sank back in his chair and resigned his duties. He had done all he could.
Then Uncle Jim volunteered a remark.
‘What’s the matter with the gas?’ he said, looking at the pendant light. ‘It oughtn’t to make a noise like that. I’ll have a look at it to-morrow.’
‘I’ve been looking at it for more than two months and it doesn’t take the slightest notice,’ Hannah said mournfully.
Ruth laughed and looked at her uncle. She had been hoping Miss Mole would say something to show she was not just an ordinary housekeeper who was afraid to speak.
Robert Corder frowned. ‘Then, Miss Mole,’ he said sharply, ‘you should have called in the plumber.’
‘But would he come, if I did call to him? And would he go, if once he came? Plumbers,’ she said, ‘are like everything else. You want them badly and, when you get them, you’re sorry.’
‘I think,’ Robert Corder said in the bland manner of his annoyance, ‘you must make a point of wanting the things you should not have.’
‘That was implied,’ Hannah said brightly. She had broken her good resolution and Uncle Jim had waked to the fact of her existence.
‘We’ll try combined tactics to-morrow,’ he said, and then he created a timely diversion. ‘I’ve got some Chinese silks upstairs. I’ll bring them down after supper.’
Hannah stayed in the dining-room and Robert Corder lingered by the fire.
‘You and I, Miss Mole,’ he said, ‘are not interested in the Chinese silks.’
‘Aren’t we?’ Hannah replied. ‘I expect they’re beautiful.’
‘Oh, no doubt, no doubt, but hardly matters of concern to you and me.’
Was he trying to remind her of her age and position and hinting that she should not follow the others to the drawing-room?
‘Not of concern, certainly. That’s why I’m staying here,’ she said reassuringly. ‘I wonder if Mr. Erley can stop these jets from hissing as well as the other one from bubbling. I thought I was getting used to the noise, but, as Christmas draws nearer, it sounds like all the geese and turkeys making a fuss at the thought of being killed.’
‘What a very unpleasant idea!’ he said, frowning quickly.
‘Yes, isn’t it?’ Then she looked up at him and laughed. ‘I’ve spoilt your Christmas pudding and now I’ve spoilt your goose.’
Mr. Corder suddenl
y condescended to jest. ‘Or, as you might say, you have cooked it.’
Hannah laughed still more merrily. She was not going to be beaten by the ladies at the sewing meeting and Robert Corder might have found it necessary to withdraw in good-humoured dignity, before Miss Mole took advantage of his affability, if Ruth had not appeared, to say that Uncle Jim had given her a lovely silk with little flowers all over it, and did Miss Mole think it could possibly be made into a frock in time for the Spenser-Smiths’ party?
‘We’ll try,’ Hannah said slowly. She was thinking of the little velveteen dress which was to have been a surprise and which would seem so humble in comparison with the flowery silk.
‘I knew you’d say that!’ In her excitement, Ruth turned to her father and exclaimed, ‘she never says she can’t do anything when she knows you want it! And do come and stop Ethel from choosing a bright pink. There are heaps of others and the drawing-room’s like a shop.’
‘Just a minute, Miss Mole. I suppose you have replied to Mrs. Spenser-Smith’s invitation?’
‘No,’ Hannah said, ‘your daughter has done that.’
‘But I think it would be courteous to send a separate little note. It’s very kind of her to ask you.’
‘Yes, but I wasn’t sure that I ought to go,’ Hannah said meekly.
‘But certainly, certainly! You could hardly refuse and you will find it quite a homely, friendly affair. Just write to Mrs. Spenser-Smith and express your appreciation.’
‘In the first, or the third, person?’ Hannah inquired.
‘The first, Miss Mole, would be more suitable. Write it in the form of a note.’
‘Very well,’ Hannah said, and she began to plan her humble little letter, but Ruth had her by the arm to lead her into the drawing-room, and was asking if she had a party frock.