Miss Mole

by E. H. Young

  She hoped he would; if he could show the wound she had given him, she would feel easier at having dealt it, but, by accident or design, he disappointed her, in the morning, and when she went into his study in the afternoon, while he was out, to see that his fire was burning, she thought Mrs. Corder looked at her reproachfully and she realized that indulging her spite against the husband had involved betraying the wife’s little secret, with all the implications of Hannah’s own invention, dissatisfaction, lack of confidence and a taste for a robuster companionship than Robert Corder could offer. Hannah felt almost physically sick. The consequences of her indiscretion were possibly less than she liked to think the consequences of any action of hers could be, but there was a special brutality in telling tales of the dead: nothing could have induced her to tell them of the living, yet she had ignored a greater obligation in her desire to score a point, to get a cheap triumph over a man she despised. If she could do that, what could she not do?

  She attacked the fire viciously, wishing it was her own body she was belabouring, and then she sat back on her heels with the poker still in her hand, and nodded at Mrs. Corder, whose face was fading away as the twilight deepened, assuring her that she would try to make amends for this offence, pleading to be forgiven for what life had made her, and again Hannah wished she had not left the country. She would have been too much occupied to be spiteful, and instead of kneeling in front of Robert Corder’s fire she would have been busy at her own, and, as it was Christmas Eve, there would be coloured candles on the mantelshelf above the big kitchen fire, and coloured candles on the table spread for tea, with thick slabs of bread cut ready for the hungry children, with their reddened noses and ears, when they came in from playing about the farm, bringing with them a whiff of sharp air, of earth, manure and stables as they opened the door. The number of the children was indefinite. It was not a detailed picture Hannah saw framed in the kitchen where her own quiet childhood had been sheltered; it was an impression of arms and legs and faces, of voices which had not known the softening influences of a boarding-school in Radstowe, and of a vague man, the father of these children, whose temper varied with the weather and who had an unwillingness to take off his muddy boots until he went to bed.

  At two fields’ distance from the farm, its blind end facing a rough lane from which a path wound through the orchard to the front door, was the cottage she had refused to sell because of the craving for possessing earth which came of generations of farmers and returned to her strongly now. It was hers, yet she could not see nor touch it. Her common sense, partnered so strangely with her carelessness and a readiness, to lose her property rather than emphasize her ownership, had forced her to tell her tenant, as she called him ironically, of each change of her address, for this was only fair to the cottage and the land, and if he cared to think she was asking for the rent he had light-heartedly promised to pay, she must suffer that with the rest of her disillusions, but, as she sat on her heels in the firelight, thinking with nostalgia of the country she could often forget for weeks at a time, she decided that she must be done with a sentiment already ten years old and go and see if the roof had fallen in or the apple trees been pruned. She had more hope for the roof than for the trees. He would act if the rain dripped on him as he lay in bed, but the welfare of a tree would seem to him a fantastic matter to make a stir about, even though, or perhaps because, it was her tree and not his own.

  The cottage had been let until the war came and emptied it, leaving it vacant for her wounded hero and herself, and what she had saved out of the rental she had spent in furniture and repairs and in starting the little poultry farm which was to supplement, with its profits, the hero’s war pension. What had happened to those hen-houses? Were there any descendants of the original fowls? She pictured rotting wood and rusty wire and a few mournful birds wandering about the orchard, and she saw the refuge she had intended for her old age occupied by the man whose commerce with her had created the probable need for that refuge before her working days were over. She had lost her actual and her potential savings and, when she listened, she could hear the feet of Mr. Pilgrim, an echo of the sound she had heard so defiantly ten years ago, coming nearer with a menacing deliberation, and, as the study door opened and she looked round with a start, she was astonished to see Robert Corder’s tall figure and gladder at his arrival than she could have believed possible, though she was discovered on the hearthrug, making free with his domain.

  ‘Is that you, Ethel?’ he asked, peering towards the figure by the fire which must have illumined it adequately.

  Hannah smiled at the subtlety of this rebuke. ‘I’m afraid it’s me,’ she said gently. ‘I came in to see that the fire hadn’t gone out, and fires have such a reminiscent effect.’

  ‘A pleasant one, I hope,’ he said, kindly making an excuse for the unwarrantable lingering.

  ‘No,’ Hannah said. ‘Not at all. Perfectly horrid, in fact. But there, what does it matter? I’ll light the gas. And when we’re not allowed to have coal fires any more, there’ll be a lot of changes. We shan’t be so much inclined to think about our sins, and babies bathed by electric radiators won’t be the same as babies bathed by open fires, lovers won’t be so romantic and, in the face of scientific improvements, we shan’t think about the past.’ She struck a match and shielded it while she looked at him. ‘Do you think those will be changes for the better?’

  It was obviously his duty to answer this question, which might just as well have been put without so much elaboration, but it was a duty Miss Mole should not have imposed on him and he answered coldly, and indirectly: ‘I think we must always be prepared to suffer for our mistakes.’

  ‘Oh, I’m prepared.’ She lit the gas and turned to him again, and her face had a disconcertingly elfin look. ‘Prepared,’ she repeated, ‘but not what I should call really satisfactorily equipped,’ and she turned to go, but Mr. Corder, as usual, called her back.

  ‘There will be the chapel waits here, this evening, Miss Mole. You have not forgotten that, I hope.’

  ‘Coffee and cakes,’ Hannah said promptly. ‘I’m so glad you reminded me.’ She would have been sorry to miss the opportunity of watching his Christmas geniality with the minstrels.

  Chapter 26

  On Christmas morning, by candle-light, Doris brought an early cup of tea to Miss Mole, with an ornamental box of biscuits, from her young man and herself, on the tray.

  ‘My friend says it’s the least we could do,’ she replied, when Hannah had made suitable exclamations. ‘He thinks you’re such a nice lady.’

  ‘Does he?’ Hannah sat up and the long plait of her dark hair fell across the front of her nightgown. ‘And I think he’s a nice young man and I’ll eat some of your biscuits now, and when they’re finished I shall keep the box on the dressing-table for all my little odds and ends. Thank you for the tea, too, Doris. It was a kind thought and you might make a precedent of it, if you know what that means.’

  Doris did not know and was not concerned to learn. She was used to what she called Miss Mole’s queer way of talking and she was burdened, at the moment, with a confession she had to make.

  ‘It was Mr. Wilfrid who told me to do it, before he went away,’ she said. ‘And I told my friend and that’s how we come to think of the biscuits. I was to make you a nice cup of tea, Mr. Wilfrid said, and give you this parcel on the quiet. I reckon it’s something he didn’t want the rest of them to see. And he give me ten shillings for myself,’ she added with a sigh. She was more than satisfied with her young man, whose mother was so respectably stiff, but Mr. Wilfrid was her ideal of manly beauty and winsomeness. To keep Miss Mole’s little parcel for him was an honour, but it was hard to go away and leave her to the discovery of what was inside, and among Doris’s other reckonings, was the one that she would never know what she had been carrying in her pocket for the last three days.

  It was a small parcel and a small parcel suggested something rare, and, turning it over and rattling it before she o
pened it, Hannah pretended she would find a ruby ring or a necklace of pearls, just as she had felt her stocking, thirty odd years ago, and imagined marvellous toys she knew would not be there, and when, at last, leaning towards the candle, she drew a brooch from the little box, tears started into her eyes and she could not see it clearly. She could feel that it was smooth and oval, with a narrow twisted rim, and she wiped her eyes on the sheet and had a good look before she began to cry again. Wilfrid, if he was awake at this moment, would think she must be laughing, and she did laugh while she cried, for that boy had tactfully chosen an old brooch which had a humorous reference to his avowed admiration and excused the nature of his gift. The brooch was held in a narrow twist of gold and under a shield of glass was what Hannah thought must be an engraving of the blind Cupid drawing his bow, the offering, no doubt, of some early Victorian lover to his lady.

  Holding the brooch and crying, with childish abandonment, for pleasure in this pretty tribute, she wondered how much time he had spent before he found exactly the right thing, beautiful in itself, a whimsical comment on his liking for her, and an ornament which might, so conveniently, have belonged to her own grandmother. She would wear it at the Spenser-Smiths’ party with Mr. Samson’s lace; she could not wear the Chinese silk which was still rolled in its delightfully foreign paper, but her weeping ceased when she told herself that, with three charming presents in as many days, there must be something disagreeable waiting for her, to adjust the balance of fortune. But for that she was prepared and with Wilfrid’s brooch pinned in her nightgown while she finished her tea and biscuits, she was better equipped than she had been. Wilfrid’s affection was worth having and this ridiculous fit of crying had done her good. It was years since she had cried and it would be years before she did it again, and she determined to spend the rest of the day in cheerfulness if this family would permit it, if Ethel would not be injured by some fancied slight and if Howard would continue to hold his tongue.

  The day began quietly. The present-giving in this household did not take place until after the morning service and the midday meal, and Robert Corder, who certainly had some force in his personality, created an atmosphere of peaceful thankfulness at the breakfast-table. The great day had dawned and he seemed to go on tip-toe, as though he felt the presence of the sleeping, sacred babe, and though he smiled readily, he did not do it broadly, and his good wishes were given like blessings, but, at one o’clock, when Hannah was basting the turkey, one of Mrs. Spenser-Smith’s annual gifts, thankful, in spite of her red cheeks, for a duty which freed her from the chapel, she heard the loud tones of his voice like a fanfare authorizing joviality to begin.

  At this signal, Hannah and Doris loaded the tray with turkey, greens, potatoes, gravy and sauce, and Uncle Jim appeared quietly from nowhere and picked up the burden. The sight of his brother-in-law’s helpfulness was not altogether pleasing to Robert Corder; it might have been interpreted as a reproach, but he made a little joke about the handy man and Uncle Jim muttered that the tray was too heavy for a woman.

  ‘But it’s all knack, all knack,’ Robert Corder assured him. ‘Trained nurses – and what wonderful women they are – can lift a heavy man without an effort.’

  ‘But you’re not a trained nurse, are you?’ asked Uncle Jim.

  Hannah wanted to say that, no, unfortunately, she was not a wonderful woman, but she remembered that it was Christmas Day and simply shook her head. She tried to look weak and modest, the subject of contention between two strong men, and then, unable to resist asserting herself, she ruined this unique experience by remarking that she was used to handling turkeys, dead and alive.

  ‘Alive?’ Robert Corder said gently, giving her a chance to retract before she must be proved guilty of untruthfulness.

  ‘And alive. I was born and bred on a farm.’

  ‘Were you? Then you’ll be able to give me some advice. I’m thinking of starting a little farm myself.’

  ‘Come, come, let us take our places,’ said Robert Corder.

  ‘And I’ll ask you to carve, Miss Mole, as you have such an intimate knowledge of turkeys,’ he said, and Hannah, looking at him over the knife she sharpened, thought he had a positive genius for getting a note of disparagement into his voice. ‘But where’s Ethel? We can’t start our Christmas dinner without Ethel.’

  ‘She’ll be here in a minute,’ Howard said quickly.

  ‘But where is she?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Then how can you say she’ll be here in a minute?’

  ‘Because she’ll want her dinner.’

  ‘Your remark was misleading. You made a statement which was nothing but a conjecture. If that sort of quibbling is what you learn at Oxford –’

  ‘Oh, I’ve learnt a lot more than that,’ Howard began, and two people held their breath for the few seconds that passed before Uncle Jim said good-humouredly:

  ‘Well, well, let’s load the tray up again and put the turkey in the oven. The skies won’t fall because Ethel’s a few minutes late.’

  ‘I happen to be thinking of all the trouble Miss Mole has taken.’

  ‘Don’t mention it,’ Hannah said, and wished she could look at Wilfrid. Mr. Corder’s moments of consideration always arrived when he was annoyed with someone else.

  ‘I suppose she was at chapel?’ he went on.

  ‘Oh yes, she was at chapel!’ Ruth and Howard cried together, in an eager unanimity.

  ‘Not in our pew.’

  ‘No,’ it was Ruth who started first and Howard did not try to catch her up. ‘If Ethel sees one of her girls, she always goes and sits with her. I suppose the girl likes it,’ she added thoughtfully, and Robert Corder gave a sharp glance at her innocently pensive face.

  ‘Most inconsiderate,’ he said, ‘and Ethel must have her dinner cold. Let us begin. Ask a blessing, Ruth.’

  Ruth obeyed in an unwilling mumble. She disliked addressing her God in the family circle as much as hearing her father do it from the pulpit, but this was not the moment to make more trouble and, as though even so slight a communication with the unseen, and done by proxy, had cleared away his irritability, Robert Corder forebore to reproach Ethel when, flushed and breathless, she slipped into her place, just as Hannah, with the carving-knife poised in her hand, chose the spot for its insertion with great precision.

  ‘And how did you think they sang the carols, Ethel?’ her father asked.

  ‘Very well,’ Howard and Ruth said heartily in another duet.

  ‘I was asking Ethel.’

  Ethel was physically and mentally incapable of telling a lie: she could not prevaricate without blushing, yet now, in an inspiration of self-protection and in reference, as Hannah guessed, to some singing not heard by Robert Corder, she made the one remark likely to turn aside his questions. ‘Not very well,’ she said, with a roll of her eyes.

  ‘I agree with you,’ he said curtly, and he looked at Howard. ‘I can only suppose you were not listening. But I would rather hear a disagreeable truth than a pleasant fiction. It was very bad. Half the choir was away.’

  ‘Cooking their Christmas dinners, like Miss Mole has been doing for us,’ said Uncle Jim. ‘You’ve roasted this fellow to a turn. Any profit to be made out of turkeys, do you think?’

  ‘Difficult things to rear,’ Hannah said.

  ‘Pigs, perhaps?’

  ‘Prices are so variable. You get a lot of pigs and find everyone else has got them, too. We used our pigs for our own bacon and that was about all.’

  ‘Then what would you start with?’

  ‘Years of experience,’ Hannah said.

  ‘Oh, don’t try to stop him, Moley – Miss Mole –’ Ruth begged. ‘It would be lovely if he had a farm near Radstowe and we could go and stay with him. He could try with a tiny little place at first and then he wouldn’t lose much money. What a pity he can’t have your little farm. Couldn’t you let him have it?’

  ‘It’s let, and when it’s empty I’m going there myself,’
Hannah said, and because she knew that Robert Corder was suddenly attentive to a conversation he had been pointedly ignoring, she added rather grandly: ‘People who own land ought to live on it.’

  In a few moments of time, Robert Corder had to rearrange all his ideas about Miss Mole. He had seen her as a poor, homeless woman who must be glad of the shelter of his house, and now he learnt that she had property of her own: he had wondered at her independence of spirit and this was now explained: he had resented her manner of speech which was better than his own, her evidences of having read at least as widely as he had, the charming notes of her voice, which he acknowledged for the first time; he had been seeking a way of getting rid of her and found she could go when she chose, and he felt that he had been duped. He cast back in his mind to those occasions when he had tried to snub her and hoped she had been as unconscious of them as she had seemed, and he thought Mrs. Spenser-Smith had treated him unfairly in not warning him of Miss Mole’s real position in the world.