by E. H. Young
She had another proof of this in the information Ruth gave her, later, about Mr. Pilgrim’s visit. She had been allowed to have tea with him and Ethel, but, afterwards, Ethel had got rid of her, and Hannah easily imagined her clumsy efforts at tact. ‘And she needn’t have bothered,’ Ruth said. ‘I didn’t want to stay. I think he’s a horrid man. He smiles too much and his teeth don’t fit. They click too. And Ethel was so grinny and giggly, till Mr. Pilgrim began talking about you and saying he was sorry to miss you,’ and here Ruth paused and looked at Hannah who could not find it in her conscience to ask questions of this child and waited for her next words. ‘And, of course,’ she said reflectively, ‘you did look specially nice at the party, almost pretty, Moley, when you were talking to Mr. Blenkinsop.’
‘What next?’ Hannah asked disdainfully. ‘And I don’t see much use in a face that’s only almost pretty.’
‘But it’s so exciting. You don’t know what’s going to happen to it.’
‘Well,’ said Hannah, ‘I never thought I should die conceited about my looks and, if they’ve pleased Mr. Pilgrim, I shall also die contented.’
‘I don’t know about pleasing him. At first I thought it was that and so did Ethel, and she stopped giggling, but afterwards, when he’d gone, I found out that he’d been more interested in your cousin. I was rather in a muddle about it all, and I told Ethel you had a cousin Hilda when she asked me, and then I rather wished I hadn’t, in case there might be something about her you wouldn’t want people to know. I suppose I ought to have stayed with them all the time.’
‘Ought?’ Hannah said quickly.
‘Yes, and then I should have known why Ethel was so funny when you came in. It wasn’t only kissing Wilfrid, Moley. I didn’t like that myself.’
‘You’re rather a goose, aren’t you? And look here, I don’t employ private detectives, and my cousin Hilda is quite a match for Mr. Pilgrim, so please mind your own business in future.’
‘It is my business,’ Ruth said stubbornly. ‘If people talk about you and your relations, I shall tell you what they say. Besides, I’m interested. What does Ethel want to tell Father? But you’ll find out. She won’t want to tell you, but she can’t help it. And why did she begin altering her new hat?’
‘She’s always altering things. It’s the reforming spirit. And I’m going to alter mine, the newest I’ve got, and that’s three years old. I shall be out all day on Sunday.’
‘How perfectly beastly! But you’re not going into the country, are you?’
‘Yes I am. I can’t take you. I’m sorry. Some day we’ll go together.’
‘It’s always some day with you,’ Ruth complained.
‘Yes,’ Hannah said, ‘it always has been and I suppose it always will be.’
‘You’re not unhappy, are you?’
‘I should be happier if I could take you with me. In another month or two, perhaps we’ll go across the river and find primroses and violets.’
‘In the Easter holidays?’
‘If we can,’ Hannah said, wondering where she would be by that time.
‘We can if you really want to.’
‘Want to!’ Hannah cried. ‘I’d like to spend the rest of my life doing nothing else.’
‘You’d soon get tired of that,’ Ruth said wisely.
Chapter 34
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 winch 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 tramcar 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 tonight 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 Lilia’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 criticize? 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 realized 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, what’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.’