by E. H. Young
‘No. This came by hand, as they say, as though a postman hadn’t got one.’
‘For me?’
‘No, for me,’ she said, and she opened and read it while he stood there.
‘Not bad news, I hope,’ he said.
‘Not at all,’ she replied, smiling at him as she tucked the letter into the bosom of her dress, and returned to the dining-room.
The smile was still on her lips, though she did not know it until Ruth cried: ‘And I do believe it really is the fortune!’
‘Good gracious! Do I look as pleased as all that?’
‘Not now. Now you’re frowning a little. Isn’t it something nice?’
‘That depends on one’s point of view,’ Hannah said, and Ruth resumed her reading. There were times when she knew it was of no use to ask Miss Mole any questions.
Hannah wondered, and was half annoyed at her satisfaction, but a day in the country with Mr. Blenkinsop would be a day of inward and outward laughter: she could not look at him without a bubbling feeling of pleasure, even his handwriting made her smile and, if she gave him the day he asked for, she must postpone her own expedition. This, in itself, was a relief, and to be looked after as she knew Mr. Blenkinsop would look after her, to have her ticket taken for her, to be asked if she were tired, was an alluring prospect to Hannah, who had spent so much of her time in looking after other people. But Mr. Blenkinsop took a good deal for granted: he assumed, and no doubt she had given him cause, that her interest in Mrs. Ridding was considerable, but to take her into the country to inspect the little house he had found – that house, which, no doubt, was to be Mrs. Ridding’s refuge from her husband – was a dependence on her judgment which that lady might resent, and it was a deliberate involving of Mr. Corder’s housekeeper in an affair which would do her reputation no good. This care for her reputation satisfactorily explained her slight feeling of irritation with Mr. Blenkinsop, but it did not influence her desire to oblige him. Such invitations did not often come her way and, irritated or not, she liked Mr. Blenkinsop, and the thought of his companionship, preoccupied though he might be, for a whole day in the country, with bare branches against grey skies and pale fields slipping into brown ones, and the chance of a primrose, was more than enough to make her smile.
Mr. Blenkinsop hoped the following Sunday would not be an impossible day for her. He was afraid it would be awkward but – he was quite playful in the excitement which had made him begin his note without any formality of address – he also hoped she would be able to produce the usual grandmother or aunt whose illness or funeral called her away. Hannah, however, did not need these ladies, for she had a tenant, and Mr. Corder’s prejudice against Sunday pleasures would not be applied to business if she explained that it could be transacted on no other day. Her trouble was not Mr. Corder; it was lack of suitable clothing for this outing. She had the shoes, but she had no well-cut tweeds, no gay scarf and jaunty hat. Life was simpler for men. Their festive occasions were not brightened or dimmed by the clothes question; it was dull for them, but easy, and Hannah looked at her battered headgear and sighed. She counted her little savings and saw the coins as so many meals and so many nights of shelter: it would be madness to spend a penny, but why should she not be mad? There was not much difference between having food for a month and having it for a day, and she put her purse in her pocket and decided to go and look at the shops. The January sales had begun, and she might pick up a bargain: she might save a rich old gentleman from being run over and her future would be secured because she had dared to risk it, and she set off, believing the miracle was really going to happen, ready to squander, but possessed of the pleasant certainty that she could restrain herself if she chose. This was the right mood in which to go shopping. The smell of spring in the mild air, the thought of Sunday, and the purse held firmly in the pocket of her coat, were like wine to Miss Mole, who walked with her quick, light tread until she reached the shops, and then she walked slowly, gazing into the windows, but her exhilaration left her before she had gone far. She was born fastidious and the heaps of clothing, boldly ticketed, did not attract her. She knew it was better to be decently shabby than cheaply gay and she retraced her steps up The Slope, looking back now and then at the beauty she could get for nothing.
As she neared the top of the hill, she spied the figure of Lilia bustling down, and a new light came into her eyes. If she could not have a new hat, she could have some fun with Lilia, and she greeted her cousin so loudly and lovingly that Lilia looked round for a retreat.
‘Come in here and have some tea,’ she said, indicating the shop where they had met on that October evening when Hannah first saw Mr. Blenkinsop, and Hannah followed her into the most secluded corner.
‘I’ve been wanting to see you,’ Lilia said.
‘You don’t look a bit pleased, dear,’ Hannah said sadly.
‘I’m not pleased, but I wanted to tell you that I wish you’d mind your own business and leave me to mind mine. I don’t need instructions about how to behave, Hannah, and your letter was quite unnecessary.’
‘Not instructions, dear – only hints. You told me I was to bark when necessary, so I barked. You put me in that house to take care of Mr. Corder, and I’m trying to do it. I thought you’d be glad. Are you paying for this tea, or am I?’
‘Never mind about that. I want to get to the bottom of this affair of Howard’s.’
‘But I do mind, Lilia. If it’s me, I’m having a bun. If it’s you, I’ll have buttered toast to start with.’
‘Have anything you like,’ Lilia said grandly. ‘I suppose that boy is running away from trouble, but of course his father wouldn’t admit it. He talked a lot of rubbish about temperament and the open air, and I did my best to make things easy for him, but he ought to have trusted me. I’ve a great respect for Robert Corder –’
‘Nothing to what he has for you,’ Hannah said feelingly.
‘I really believe the only thing that worried him about Howard was the fear that you would be hurt. He has a noble character, Lilia.’
‘H’m,’ Lilia said. ‘I’m not satisfied, but I must say he seemed anxious to return the money I’d spent. Where he’s going to get it from, I don’t know, and, if he can pay it back, it seems to me that he can’t have needed it. And that’s not a pleasant thought.’
‘Then don’t think it. Just remember that you’re a lucky woman. If Mr. Corder admired me as he admires you –’
‘Now don’t begin getting sentimental, Hannah. It’s no good. He thinks you’re a capable woman, but there he stops. I took care to find that out.’
‘Oh, did you?’
‘Yes, I did. There’s too much nonsense about him in the chapel already, and really, Patsy Withers made me feel quite ashamed at my party. What with her and Mr. Pilgrim –’
‘What was she doing?’ Hannah asked quickly. ‘I didn’t notice her.’
‘No,’ Lilia said dryly, ‘you were too busy monopolizing Mr. Blenkinsop, and I may tell you that Mr. Corder saw it. It wasn’t fair, Hannah, with so many girls in the room.’
‘I couldn’t help it, dear. I’ve a fatal sort of attraction for him. Why is it, do you think? I was the belle of the ball for Mr. Blenkinsop, there isn’t a doubt.’
‘I invite young men for the sake of the girls, not for you to sharpen your wits on, but if I’d known, as Mr. Corder tells me, that he’d left the chapel, I shouldn’t have invited him at all. And he wouldn’t have been missed, as it happened, and that was your fault. Do you know where he goes?’
‘Goes?’ said Hannah.
‘What place of worship?’
‘Oh, here and there; here and there. He wants to take me with him on Sunday.’
‘Stuff!’ Lilia said, but she said it doubtfully. ‘Well, Mr. Pilgrim isn’t likely to get him, after the exhibition he made of himself – and that was Ernest’s fault. What did you think of him?’ she asked, and her bright eyes sharpened a little. ‘He told me he’d seen you before, Hannah, and he seemed c
urious about you.’
‘Naturally,’ Hannah said easily. ‘I’ll never get you to understand that I’m a noticeable character.’
‘And he used to live in your part of the country,’ Lilia went on, but as you haven’t lived there for years –’ she sighed. ‘I wish I could feel more comfortable about you.’
‘Don’t try,’ Hannah said. ‘I haven’t split on you yet.’
‘I’m thinking of your own good, Hannah. I didn’t like the man’s manner at all. If there’s anything I ought to know, you’d better tell me.’
Hannah shook her head. ‘I won’t betray him.’
‘Him!’ Lilia cried.
Hannah smiled in the way Wilfrid loved and Lilia distrusted.
‘It hasn’t occurred to you that he might be nervous about his own little secrets, I suppose?’
Chapter 33
Wilfrid was to return that evening and, as Hannah walked home slowly, she was glad to think she would see him soon. He, if anyone could, would restore her liking for herself. Her little outing had been a failure. She had not bought a hat; she had told Lilia what amounted to a lie about Mr. Pilgrim, and, until to-day, Hannah’s excursions into fiction had always stopped at the injury of anyone else. Her offence was the greater because she did not in the least mind injuring Mr. Pilgrim: it was at her own peculiar kind of integrity she had aimed a blow, and it would not be the last one. It was a choice between her integrity and her treasure, and she had not been tender with her treasure for ten years to have it breathed upon by Mr. Pilgrim’s outraged sanctimony and revengeful spite. She was tired and disheartened as she walked through the streets and she was careless, for once, of the life about her. She forgot to remind herself that hers was only a small part in a big drama and that all these men and women, going home from work or coming from the opposite direction in search of pleasure, felt the same overwhelming importance of their lives as she felt of hers: she forgot her little sermon to Robert Corder about infinity, the sun, the moon and the stars: she allowed her own affairs to cast a dun cloud over the whole world, and the tramcars, like noisy magic lantern slides, the shadows of trees on the pavements, the sound of her own footsteps which she had often heard as a sound of advance and adventure, had lost their significance and beauty. In her heart there was the unacknowledged belief that with her lies and evasions she was paying too big a price for what she was concealing; she would have had to pay no more for the memory of something perfect, something she would not have wanted to conceal, and, without actually making that confession, her mind went on to imagine what a real love might have been. But such loves do not come in the way of the Miss Moles of this world, and now she was nearly forty. And thinking thus, she allowed the threatening wave of her loneliness, avoided for so long, to sweep over her, and she stood still in the street, helpless while it engulfed her. It fell back, leaving her battered, but on her feet, and longing for a hand to help her upward before she could be swamped again, but she longed in vain and it was a weary woman who walked up Beresford Road and found no comfort in the ruby glow of Mr. Samson’s window curtains.
She assumed her usual look of competence as soon as she entered the house. Employers do not expect their servants to have visible emotions, and professional pride straightened her back when she went into the dining-room. Yet at the sight of Wilfrid, sitting by the fire and listening to what his cousins had to tell him, and leaping to his feet at her appearance, she felt as she had felt when she opened his Christmas parcel, tearfully grateful for a liking which was for herself and not for what she could do for him, and she put her hand on his shoulder and kissed his cheek, without a thought, as naturally as though he were her son.
‘Miss Mole!’ Ethel exclaimed. And in her voice, the rolling of her eyes, the gleam of her teeth and the checked spring of her body, Hannah recognized the colt she had been trying to tame, now scared, shocked and jealous.
‘Yes?’ Hannah said pleasantly, but she looked at Ruth who was smiling stiffly, and Wilfrid, laughing, seized Hannah’s hand and said dramatically, ‘we have betrayed ourselves, Mona Lisa, but no gentleman will compromise a lady and refuse to make honourable amends. You must marry me!’
‘Wilfrid! She can’t!’ Ethel cried. ‘She’s old enough to be your mother!’
‘Oh, not quite,’ Hannah begged. She took off her hat and threw it down. ‘Don’t be so silly, all of you. Are kisses so scarce among you that you take fright when you see one? I’m sorry, Wilfrid. Absence of mind!’
‘Don’t spoil it. I’m grateful. Ruth didn’t kiss me, Ethel didn’t –’
‘I shouldn’t think of doing such a thing! I didn’t even kiss my own brother.’
‘Perhaps that’s why he’s gone to South Africa,’ Wilfrid said.
‘Oh, you know it isn’t!’ Ethel said helplessly, and Ruth gave a hard little laugh.
‘Dear me, dear me, dear me!’ Hannah said. ‘What a fuss! The only thing I can suggest is that we should kiss all round and cry quits.’
‘It isn’t that. You know it isn’t, but I think kisses ought to be sacred, and I don’t see why you should take such a liberty with Wilfrid.’
‘Then I’ll tell you why,’ Hannah said, her body as tense, her eyes as green and keen as a watchful cat’s, and a stillness fell on the little company in the presence of this new and formidable Miss Mole. She held them like that for a few seconds and then, satisfied with this small triumph, she dispersed the thoughts that had been crowding into speech and smiled benevolently at all three, remembering that they were children. ‘Because he’s a dear boy,’ she said, ‘and I like him.’
‘Because he’s a man!’ Ethel said with stubborn courage, and Hannah looked him up and down teasingly and said: ‘Yes, he’ll be a man, some day.’
No one answered her smile, and she felt that there was an influence in the room of which she knew nothing, and she believed it was stealthy and malign. She glanced at Wilfrid and saw that he, too, was puzzled, seeking, behind that thoughtless kiss, some explanation of the atmosphere which Ruth and Ethel created between them, Ethel struggling between caution and the blundering candour natural to her; Ruth sitting on her feet, her back pressed against the back of her chair, perched there like a hard young judge, weighing unspoken evidence against some person unnamed.
‘I think,’ Ethel said at last, ‘I ought to tell Father,’ and even now she looked at Hannah for advice, and though she did not ask for it in words, her expression had a familiar appeal and a pathos in its offended bewilderment.
‘Don’t be a fool,’ Wilfrid said. ‘The poor man’s got worry as it is. A son who runs away – ! He doesn’t want to hear about a nephew who has kissed Miss Mole.’
‘It was Miss Mole who kissed you.’
‘Yes, but I kissed back, and jolly quick! Didn’t you notice?’ His speech fell into its provoking drawl. ‘I call this exceedingly vulgar. Don’t you, Mona Lisa?’
‘No,’ she said, ‘nothing seems vulgar to me, not really. There’s something wrong with me, I suppose. It’s funny,’ she went on, and she leaned forward eagerly, though she looked at nobody, ‘it’s funny that it’s so easy to be positive about good things and so difficult about what are called bad ones. And d’you know why I think it is? It’s because the good things exist and the bad ones don’t.’
‘Oh, but, Miss Mole –’ Ethel could not resist a discussion in which she had a sort of professional interest, though her antagonist was Miss Mole, ‘we know there are bad things like – like deceit.’
‘Yes, yes, it has a bad name; but get to know the person, the cause and the circumstances, and it may deserve a good one.’
‘Then you think I oughtn’t to tell Father?’
‘I’m hardly the person to advise you, and this is rather like a nightmare, but I’ll try. Do you mean about the kiss?’
‘Not only the kiss,’ Ethel muttered, biting her tortured lips.
Ruth’s voice came clearly. ‘If you do, you’ll have to tell him that Mr. Pilgrim came to tea.’
; ‘Oh, has Mr. Pilgrim been? Did he recite?’ Hannah asked, and there was no one in the world who knew her well enough to detect the anxiety under her careless tones. Ethel turned to Ruth. ‘Why shouldn’t I tell him?’
‘Because Father doesn’t like him.’
‘Father doesn’t know him.’
‘That won’t make any difference,’ Ruth said. ‘Moley, you told me about your cousin Hilda, didn’t you?’
‘I didn’t tell you much.’
‘Ah, but you’re going to. So there, Ethel! But of course you wouldn’t believe me.’
‘I don’t know who to believe,’ Ethel said, blinking away her tears.
‘What on earth are you all talking about?’ Wilfrid asked.
‘And if there’s nothing bad, what’s the use of trying to be good?’ Ethel asked.
‘It isn’t being good to be a sneak.’
‘But how can you help being a sneak if you try to tell the truth?’
‘You can hold your tongue.’
‘But I’m worried!’ Ethel cried. ‘And what does a little girl like you know about it?’
‘More than you know, anyhow!’
‘Don’t quarrel, don’t quarrel,’ Hannah begged. ‘This is the queerest conversation I’ve ever heard. Why doesn’t anyone else want to laugh?’
‘Because we like listening to you,’ Wilfrid said, ‘and whatever your sins may be, you’ll go to Heaven. They’ll give you all the indulgences you need because they’ll want you in the choir.’
‘But I can’t sing a note.’
‘Then the choir will go on strike and say they’d rather hear you talking in your lovely voice.’
‘Have I got a lovely voice?’ Hannah asked.
‘Has she?’ said Ethel, and Ruth exclaimed: ‘Oh, Wilfrid, how sickening of you! I thought nobody knew it except me,’ and that remark, flattering though it was, seemed to Hannah indicative of the fiercely individual attitude of the Corders towards anything they considered good. They could see trouble in its effect on the family, as they had shown in the case of Howard’s departure, which neither Ethel nor Ruth had mentioned as a personal loss, but they would not share their pleasures.