by E. H. Young
‘I shouldn’t think she understands anything – except prayer meetings.’
‘Ruth! How can you be so naughty?’
‘I don’t care. She’s a horrible old woman and she smells of camphor. All Father’s relations are horrible, and Uncle Jim’s the only decent one we’ve got.’
This diverted Ethel. ‘Wouldn’t it be lovely if he came for Christmas!’ she cried, but Ruth would never share her raptures, and Ethel began pacing the room again in her suspense.
Wilfrid, however, returned cheerfully. ‘It’s all right!’ he said, ‘nothing worse than idleness. No lies necessary. But it’s confoundedly awkward to have the uncle on all these committees. He’d met the Dean – as well as Mr. Blenkinsop. What’s old Blenkinsop done? You weren’t tactful, Mona Lisa, but you were funny.’
‘Was I?’ Hannah said. ‘It was Mr. Blenkinsop who seemed funny to me – picking the locks, running off with the bags of money –’
‘But he hasn’t!’ Ethel exclaimed. ‘I don’t think you ought to say such things.’
‘If he had,’ said Hannah, solemnly, ‘I should be the last person to breathe a word of it.’
‘Then you’d be quite wrong!’
‘Poor Ethel!’ Wilfrid said tenderly. ‘It’s no good crossing swords with Mona Lisa.’
‘You’re all very unkind!’ Ethel cried. ‘Making fun of everything, when Father’s so upset. You don’t know how he feels it when anyone leaves the chapel. It’s like – like a personal insult.’
‘Ah, yes,’ Wilfrid said sympathetically, ‘he’d take it like that, of course,’ and he looked at Hannah who was cautiously unresponsive. ‘But is that all poor old Blenkinsop’s done? Lucky feller! Still, it’s a poor heart that never rejoices and a dull one that doesn’t take the chance, and I find the chapel distinctly entertaining. I love hearing Mrs. Spenser-Smith telling everybody she’s got a silk petticoat when she swishes down the aisle, and seeing poor old Ernest’s agonies when the widows drop their mites into the plate, and many a time I’ve seen him slip past them before they could do it. I like old Ernest.’
‘I like them both,’ Ethel said, and, forgetting her grievances, she added eagerly, ‘I wonder if they’ll have a party this Christmas.’
‘If they do,’ said Ruth, ‘I’m going to have a bad cold in the head. I hate their parties.’
‘And my duty to my mother will keep me at her side during the festive season. Honestly, I’d rather see her crying over the Christmas pudding and hear her telling fibs about my father and wishing I were like him – and we all know he was a bit of a scamp, and that’s why I hold his memory dear – than go to one of those – you know the word I want to use, Mona Lisa – well, one of those parties.’
‘Miss Mole won’t believe you. She knows Mrs. Spenser-Smith.’
‘But I’ve never been to one of her parties,’ Hannah said. ‘I wonder if she’ll ask you!’
‘I should hardly think so, and I should have to stay at home and look after Ruth.’
‘Which is far better,’ Wilfrid murmured. ‘Well, I’ve promised to turn over a new leaf and I’m going to do it, beside my cheery little gas-fire, so farewell! But I’m always forgetting to ask you something. Who makes my bed?’
‘I do,’ said Hannah.
‘Then, what’s happened to my mattress?’
‘It was there this morning.’
‘I know it’s there, but it’s different. It’s lumpy.’
‘They get lumpy in time,’ Hannah said.
‘It’s done it in jolly quick time, then.’
‘But it’s a new one!’ Ethel said. ‘It’s got a red and fawn ticking, hasn’t it, Miss Mole?’
‘Green,’ said Hannah. ‘Mine’s red and fawn.’
‘Then you’ve got the wrong one. We’ll have to change them.’
‘And give Mona Lisa the lumps! What are you talking about?’
‘I’ll go and look at them now,’ Ethel said.
‘Miss Mole’s the housekeeper!’ Ruth cried hastily.
‘But I bought that mattress,’ Ethel said, going off with a jingle.
‘She’ll pull the bed-clothes off and forget to put them on again!’ Wilfrid exclaimed, going after her.
‘Did you change them?’ Ruth asked softly, and Hannah nodded. ‘I thought so!’ Ruth said with a chuckle.
Chapter 11
If Hannah had chosen to look for them, she could have found as many reasons and excuses for Robert Corder’s peculiarities as for those of Ethel and Ruth. Robert Corder himself did not seek excuses; he saw his troubles as the faults of other people and it did not occur to him that the chief of his difficulties was that he had been born too late. Thirty or forty years earlier, he would have been a happier man. It would not have been necessary, then, to make the mental compromises he found so bewildering; he would have been set firmly on the infallibility of his creed and his authority as its exponent would have been unquestioned. Life would have been simpler to direct and consequently simpler to live. It was the knowledge that infallibility of book, of man and of creed was increasingly denied, and with a strength under which one must bend or break, that took the full sweetness out of his position, and being a man of great energy but no intellect, he felt bound to give the appearance of keeping abreast of modern thought, while his mind resented, and did not really make, the effort. In the days when to doubt or to question was bad manners, if it was not sin, his work would have offered him everything he wanted – adulation, security of mind and station and the loyal following of that army of men and boys it had always been his ambition to lead. Self-confidence, physical strength, a manly exterior were his, but the army was merely a handful of old soldiers, suspicious of changes, and raw recruits, and of this disappointment, with its implication of failure in himself or his teaching, his encounter with Samuel Blenkinsop had reminded him. Those people in his chapel who kept the old simplicity and to whom he was God’s vicegerent, were his inferiors, as he knew too well: most of his flock were his inferiors and this contributed to his comfort, but a few were his equals in ability, if not in state, and these accepted new ideas rather too quickly for the Reverend Robert, who liked to point the way himself, or else they took the Gospel with a literalness which was not practical. If Mrs. Spenser-Smith had not been a level-headed woman, her husband would have given all he had to the poor, without considering their deserts. Fortunately, Mrs. Spenser-Smith and the Reverend Robert were of one mind about deserts, of which agreement a luxurious arm-chair in his study and a son at Oxford were proofs. There is no union, however, which does not involve chafing at times, and the pride he took in casually mentioning the son at Oxford was offset by his annoyance that Howard should have a privilege his father had missed and could have put to better use. Undeniably, a part of Howard’s life was an unknown world to Robert Corder, and while this did not prevent him from criticism and informatory observations, it put him at a disadvantage for which he blamed his benefactress and subtly punished Howard.
And now Mrs. Spenser-Smith’s anxiety for the general welfare of the family had brought Miss Mole into the house.
He glanced with a frown, to which he quickly added a sigh, at the handsomely framed photograph on his desk, another of Mrs. Spenser-Smith’s gifts. He did not like that representation of his wife. He preferred the little one on his bedroom mantelpiece in which her soft face looked at him hopefully above the stiff collar and tie, and under the hard straw hat of her youth. It told him that he was indeed the man he believed himself to be, while this photograph, of a much later date, had suffered some distortion of expression in the enlarging process on which Mrs. Spenser-Smith had insisted. It vexed him that people who had not known her should imagine that faintly humorous, patient look was hers. Miss Mole, for instance, must have received a false impression, if she was capable of receiving any impression at all, and about this Mr. Corder’s opinion wavered. She seemed stupid, outside her sphere. She had been stupidly frivolous – or was it merely tactless? – to-night, but he was disturbed
by her remark, ridiculous in itself, that it would be out of Samuel Blenkinsop’s character to rob a bank. They were unlikely words from the Miss Mole he knew and they had been uttered with a crispness and an assurance which, to quote her own expression, were out of character.
He turned to the letters on his desk. He was wasting time over a matter to which he would not have given a thought if Wilfrid’s idleness and Blenkinsop’s desertion had not upset him. He was, of course, well abreast of his times in his views about women, and it would have horrified him to learn that he could not judge a clever or a plain woman fairly. A clever one challenged him to a combat in which he might not be the victor and a plain one roused in him a primitive antagonism. In failing to please him, a woman virtually denied her sex and became offensive to those instincts which he did his best to ignore.
His letters were soon answered. He might have prepared a sermon, but he was in no mood for it. His interview with the Dean rankled in his memory, his interview with Wilfrid had not given him the satisfaction he expected. Wilfrid, even when submissive, suggested an amused superiority, impossible to notice and therefore impossible to deal with. Samuel had been heavily courteous, but uncommunicative, in reply to the rallying reproaches with which Mr. Corder had met him. In these days a young man showed no pleasure at being treated as an equal, he seemed to expect it, and, after all, Mr. Corder reflected, Blenkinsop must be well on in the thirties. A different method might have been better, he decided, and he had no desire to be another man’s conscience. He had done his duty in the way of reminder, but he was not a tradesman seeking custom, and that brought his thoughts back to Wilfrid, his sister’s son. She had made a marriage to which her father was opposed and it had turned out badly, but the surprisingly snug profits of the parental drapery business had been left to her. The elder Corder had been just as strongly opposed to Robert’s entering the ministry: to the small tradesman, it seemed a costly business, with years of paying out money for which he would get no return, and Robert, as stubborn as his sister, had financed himself with immense difficulty and labour and some timely help from good Non-conformists who were attracted by the handsome, eager young man. Robert Corder considered his rebellion, unlike his sister’s, justified by its intention and its results which his father had not had the generosity to acknowledge, while he had rewarded her, who had merely followed her inclination, and left her in a position to pay her brother for his care of her son. Irritated that he could not afford to get rid of Wilfrid and lose the money, he took a turn up and down the room, glancing at the clock. Ruth must have forgotten to say good night to him. Hurt by his favourite daughter, angry with Wilfrid, Blenkinsop and Miss Mole, he could not settle down to read or to write, and Hannah, entering punctually with the tea-tray, found him standing in front of the fire with his hands in his pockets.
‘Always punctual!’ he said with deceptive cordiality.
‘I try to be,’ Hannah said modestly, putting down the tray. ‘But what a miserable little fire!’ She knelt down to replenish it. ‘Men,’ she said, as though to herself, while she was busy with poker and tongs, ‘are chillier creatures than women, but I’ve never met one yet who could keep a fire in. There must be some reason for it.’
‘Perhaps we have other things to think of.’
‘I hope so,’ said Hannah easily.
He wished he had neglected her remark. He did not want to make a precedent of this conversation, but he could not let her have the last word. ‘And then, we pay for the coal,’ he said.
Still on her knees, she turned and looked at him and, suspecting a hint of amusement on her foreshortened face, he went on, with authority. ‘And, in this household, we have to be economical. I notice that, for some reason or other, Ruth has a night-light in her bedroom.’ He was glad to have a definite fault to find. ‘That seems to me both pampering and wasteful. I don’t understand this innovation. She has been used to going to sleep in the dark.’
‘Yes,’ said Hannah quietly, ‘and waking up in it.’
‘And waking up in it – certainly,’ he said.
‘It’s not good for her,’ Hannah said decidedly.
He did not like her familiarity with his hearthrug. ‘Won’t you sit down?’ he asked. ‘I think we had better discuss this matter.’
‘I’ll just sweep up the hearth first,’ she said, and he thought it was extraordinary that no woman could give her whole attention to a subject.
But it appeared that Miss Mole had been thinking while she swept, for when she had finished and sat down, she said at once, ‘You have made me responsible for the expenses of the house. If I keep within my allowance, as I have done, so far, I don’t think it’s fair to criticize details.’
‘It’s not really a question of the money, Miss Mole,’ he said irritably. ‘It’s a question of training. I don’t want Ruth encouraged in her nervousness. I hoped she was growing out of it. Often, when – when her mother was with us, she would come into our room and wake us, saying she was frightened. What is she afraid of?’
‘Bears, perhaps,’ Hannah said thoughtfully. ‘When I was a child, I was troubled by a most persistent and accomplished bear. And there was no way of escaping him. He could climb perpendicular walls; he could unlock doors. It’s no good pitting reason against things that are not reasonable in themselves – like fears.’
‘So,’ he said, ‘you are a student of psychology!’
Hannah let that sneer pass. ‘Bears,’ she said, still in her quiet tone and looking at the fire, ‘or wolves. There was another time when I knew a wolf would catch me if I wasn’t on a certain stair before my bedroom door banged behind me. The wolf was half a game, but the bear was a real bear.’
‘But this is ridiculous, Miss Mole. You’re not going to tell me Ruth fancies there are wild animals in her bedroom!’
‘In the middle of the night? I could fancy it myself! And Ruth’s young – and old – for her age.’ She looked up at him. ‘What about ghosts?’ she asked. There was another question on the tip of her tongue but, in loyalty to Ruth, she would not ask it. Not once had Ruth spoken of her mother, there was no photograph of her in the dressing-room, and what Hannah wanted to know was whether Ruth had loved or feared the dead woman who had known, perhaps with love, perhaps with sternness, how to manage her.
‘Ghosts!’ Robert Corder snorted. ‘I would rather it was bears!’
‘I expect she would too,’ Hannah said promptly, and stood up. ‘Bears or ghosts, the night-light will keep them off.’
‘I’m not satisfied about it,’ he said. Miss Mole was taking too much for granted. ‘And Ruth knows I’m near her.’
Hannah loosed her folded hands and raised her shoulders. ‘You are the master of the house,’ she said, quite unnecessarily, he thought, ‘but I ask you,’ her hands came together again, ‘to let her have the night-light. I warn you not to take it from her. Ruth isn’t strong, but I can look after her if I’m given the chance.’
‘That is partly what you are here for.’
‘Then give me the chance,’ she said, smiling, rather startlingly, for the first time.
‘I’ll think it over,’ he said, turning towards his tea-tray.
‘Thank you,’ she said quietly, and he was vexed that she should thank him. Had there been something ironical in her tone?
He sat, stirring his tea, considering their conversation and searching for offence in her share of it. She had been a little too talkative with her stories of her childhood. She was gaining confidence, he supposed, and might prove to be one of those chattering women if she was encouraged. Her hint of understanding Ruth better than he did was annoying. But it was true that Ruth was not strong. She caught cold easily – like her mother. He would think it over, he told himself, but he knew that Miss Mole would have her way. He was not going to run a risk and be blamed if harm came of it, and she might be right. Mrs. Spenser-Smith had spoken of her experience. He felt puzzled about Miss Mole and wished he had not mentioned money. Parsimony was not one of his faili
ngs and it had been unfair to himself – the result of his upsetting day – to talk as though it were.
Chapter 12
Ruth’s door was open when Hannah went up to bed and there was no light in her room. Had Mr. Corder been up and blown it out, in the cause of discipline? She was ready to rush downstairs and upbraid him, when a sharp-whistled note called her in.
‘I got into bed,’ Ruth said slowly, ‘and the matches weren’t on the table so I couldn’t light the night-light and I thought I’d wait till you came up.’
‘If you got out of bed to open the door, why didn’t you get the matches at the same time?’
‘The door wasn’t shut,’ Ruth said.
‘I see,’ said Hannah. She admired the strategy and the adroitness of Ruth’s explanation and she had to control the gratified twitching of her lips as she lighted the guardian lamp. ‘But, in future,’ she said severely, ‘I shall light it myself when you go up to bed.’
‘Ten minutes after would be better. Then you can turn out the gas, too. I don’t like turning out gas. I have to get out of bed again to see if I’ve done it properly. Several times. Did you do that?’
‘There was no gas in my home. Lamps downstairs, candles upstairs. And on a very moony night, I didn’t light my candle. We don’t pull down our bedroom blinds in the country, and the lady could look in if she liked and I could look out and see her trailing her skirts over the tree-tops. And the owls used to hoot as she went by.’ She straightened the quilt over Ruth’s motionless little body. ‘Go to sleep. Good night.’
‘Just shut the door for a minute, please, Miss Mole,’ Ruth said quickly.
Hannah obeyed, and as she turned back to the bed she was thankful for the nights of her childhood in the bare bedroom with the sloping roof and the open window free of these lace curtains and Venetian blinds and she was sorry for Ruth who was saying slowly, ‘I don’t believe I’ve ever heard an owl.’
