by E. H. Young
‘Yes. I’d been for a walk round the hill to look at the river. Lovely it was, too, in the rain. The mist was thick on the water and there was a tree on the other side like a torch blazing through a fog. But the leaves will be dropping under this rain.’
For a moment, Ruth was held from her purpose. She wished Miss Mole would go on talking like that. She said things differently, in Ruth’s experience, from other people and in a different voice. She had spoken of a moony night, and beauty and peace had stolen over her listener, and now Ruth felt the chill danger of thick mist and the joy of seeing light ahead. The necessity for confession seemed less pressing, the world of vision became of more importance than the one of facts, and while she was persuading herself that it would be easy and kinder to be silent, she began to speak.
‘Miss Mole,’ she said, ‘I think I saw you. I mean – I saw you. But you went past so quickly and I was too late. You know how things happen. I ought to have shouted to you at once, but it would have looked so funny to the other girls if I’d recognized you when you were nearly out of sight, so I didn’t – but I feel so mean.’
‘Mean?’ said Hannah. ‘I’m grateful. When I’m in this ulster, I’m supposed to be invisible. I know what it’s like. I ought not to wear it at all, but it’s thick and it’s an old friend. If you’d stopped me I should have died of shame. Thank goodness you didn’t. I won’t run the risk again, except in the dark. Now will you kindly go and change those clothes? You ought to have worn your mackintosh. It s high-tea night and when I was up on the hill I suddenly thought of mushrooms and I bought some on the way home. We’ll have them with scrambled eggs and you can come and help me if you like.’
Ruth was childish in some ways, but she was not stupid. She could see that Miss Mole’s words might be tactful as well as true. She had not dared to ask whether Miss Mole had seen and avoided her and, if so, whether it was for her own sake or for Ruth’s. The confession had not been a full one, but, after Miss Mole’s expressed horror of the ulster, how could she mention it? That would have been easing her soul at the cost of Miss Mole’s feelings and though it was convenient to say no more, it was not necessarily wrong. Less and less, as she grew older, did she believe that the unpleasant things were the good ones and, as she slowly changed her stockings, she gave way willingly to the belief, which had been reluctant until to-day, that Miss Mole could be trusted with her omissions as safely as with her fears. She felt, rather than thought, that Miss Mole’s mind could overleap gaps and understand how they came there, and when she went down to the kitchen, she felt stiff and awkward in the consciousness of a surrender she had been determined not to make.
Miss Mole was skinning the mushrooms, and when she had shown Ruth how to do it they sat at the kitchen table together and worked busily.
‘I’ve been thinking about clothes,’ Hannah said, and Ruth, though she turned red, decided that it was a good thing to talk about them at once, before the thought of the ulster became a solid barrier against the subject. ‘I’ve always liked them, and never had what I wanted. When I went to school, we weren’t all dressed alike, and I was a scarecrow – but much more noticeable. The only thing to do was to pretend I had an original taste in dress and the other poor things hadn’t, and I’ve done that ever since, except about my shoes and stockings. I’m extravagant about them, so I have to go short elsewhere.’ She glanced down at the shoes she had been too hurried to change. ‘There isn’t a better pair in Radstowe, but I broke a window with this one once,’ she said carelessly.
Ruth looked up. ‘What did you do that for?’
‘It’s one of the stories I can’t tell you, but it was very sad – and exciting.’
‘Can’t you tell me, really? You’re always talking about stories and not telling them. There’s the one about the burglar –’
‘Ah yes, but there’s so little time. You have to work in the evenings and then you have to go to bed, or there’s someone else in the room.’
‘To-night would be a good night,’ Ruth suggested, ‘and I haven’t so very much to do. Unless Wilfrid’s going to be in?’
‘No, he’ll be out.’
‘Oh well, then – !’ Ruth exclaimed.
‘We’ll see. You have to be in the right mood for telling stories. But do remind me to ask Ethel if she knows any old woman who would condescend to wear that ulster.’
‘Oh, Miss Mole,’ Ruth almost pleaded, ‘I shouldn’t give it away, if you like it.’
‘I don’t. I merely master it.’
‘But you said it was an old friend, and there must be yards and yards of stuff in it. Perhaps you could have it altered.’
‘No, I’m not brave enough to show it to a tailor. But I think I’ll keep it. It’s good enough for wearing to the pillarbox on a dark night, but I won’t wear it anywhere else,’ she said, and now Ruth knew that Miss Mole could forgive everything she understood, and that she probably understood everything.
Chapter 14
For once, Hannah’s hands were idle. She lay back in the arm-chair by the dining-room fire with a book on her knee, and Ruth, glancing up from her work, now and then, saw that her eyes were often shut. She looked different like that; younger and, though Ruth did not find words for her thought, more vulnerable. Her dress of dark-red silk was not fashionable and it was old, but the skirt of it and her silk stockings shimmered in the firelight, the buckles on her slippers sparkled, and her idleness and her elegant feet gave Ruth a feeling of satisfaction and of approach to the ideal life in the Vicarage, where everybody changed for dinner, and no one was in a hurry. Her mother, whose resistance to evening meetings had not been complete and who might be called out at any hour on missions of mercy, had seldom worn a dress unsuitable for sudden excursions, and this had offended Ruth’s sense of fitness and added to the restlessness of a home in which everybody was expected to be doing good outside it.
All stuffy things had been implied, for Ruth, in the name of housekeeper; stuffy frocks, thick stockings, a prim face and an oppressive sense of duty, yet here was Miss Mole looking, for all her lack of fashion, like a lady who belonged to a world unconnected with chapels, where beauty and leisure were expected and attained. It was a peep through a door Ruth had always wanted to open, and she said quietly, ‘I like it when you’re not darning.’
Hannah opened her eyes for a moment. ‘Half asleep,’ she said drowsily and shut them again. This was not the truth, for her mind was busy, but Hannah was not scrupulous about truth. She was not convinced of its positive value as human beings knew it, she considered it a limiting and an embarrassing convention. The bare truth was often dull and more often awkward, while lies were a form of imagination and a protection for the privacy of her thoughts and, in a life lived in houses which were not her own and where she was never safe from intrusion, it was necessary to have this retreat.
Now, behind the veil of her sleepiness, she was wondering if she was altogether glad of Ruth’s change of front. It was what she had been working for and she found, once more, that gain was often loss. She had won Ruth and that exciting campaign was over. It had been conducted with a skill of which, unfortunately, only she was aware, and of which she could not boast, and her reward was a possession needing care and involving obligations. She was growing fond of Ruth and, ten years ago, she had promised herself future freedom from soft emotions. They were more trouble than they were worth, but vanity was her weakness. She strove for admiration and found she could get nothing without giving something else. She saw that she would have to resign herself to being fond of Ruth, she had gone too far to withdraw, but there she would have to stop: she must not saddle herself with the whole family and, indeed, it was not likely that she would have the chance. Robert Corder and she were naturally antipathetic, though he had been amiable this evening, praising the mushrooms, with perhaps a covert suggestion that the kitchen was her sphere and she would do well to stay in it, while Ethel was so much divided against herself, dragged in one direction by religion and in anoth
er by mundane desires, that no one else could put the parts together and handle them.
‘I’ve nearly finished,’ she heard Ruth saying, ‘I’m nearly ready for the burglar story.’
‘It’s not a good one for this time of night.’
‘Oh, Miss Mole, you said you liked him!’
‘So I did, but then I’ve got queer tastes. And I’m afraid you’ve scamped your work.’
‘But it’s such a chance – when everybody’s out.’
‘Oh well –’ Hannah said, hastily gathering her thoughts. ‘It was when I was living with an old lady who wore a wig. People without experience of wigs believe they simplify life. They think you just take them off and put them on. Nothing of the sort. A wig needs as much care as a pedigree Pekinese and I know, because I’ve looked after both. I lost a situation once because a woman heard me telling her nasty little dog what I really thought of it, but it did me good, and the dog too, I daresay. Well, anyhow, this old lady had a wig, in fact she had two, because they had to be sent to the hairdresser, now and then, to be tidied up, and they were bright gold. She was rich, and I suppose she liked the colour. But she wasn’t a bad old woman. I was fond of her. Well, one night – it was a lonely house, simply asking for burglars to walk into it – and I ought to have told you that one of the wigs had come back from the hairdresser that very evening, in a registered parcel, and I’d left it, unopened, on the landing table where the bedroom candles were put. It was that kind of house.’
‘Ah,’ said Ruth, ‘the burglar thought it was jewels!’
‘Wait a minute. I saw my old lady into bed and into her nightcap and I longed to tell her how nice she looked when she wasn’t tricked out in the yellow hair –’
‘But it must have been awful when the wig was off and the cap wasn’t on! I don’t think I could have stayed there.’
‘I didn’t stay long. The old lady died. She was going to leave me some money, she said, and I think she meant it, but she died first. It’s a way old ladies have.’
‘Did she die of fright about the burglar?’
‘She didn’t know there’d been one, because he took nothing. Nothing!’ Hannah repeated impressively. ‘And all through me! If she’d known that, she might have given me the money there and then.’
‘And you didn’t tell her?’
‘I haven’t told a soul until to-night. And I’d better warn you that the story’s got a moral.’
‘Of course it has. And the moral’s that you mustn’t be too modest.’
‘That’s always been one of my failings,’ Hannah said with a wink. ‘But this story’s hanging fire a bit, isn’t it? I’ll cut it short. I woke up in the night and heard a rustling sort of noise. “Mice!” I said to myself, but it wasn’t exactly a mousy noise. So I listened and my heart began to thump and, very quietly, I got out of bed. I turned the door handle without making a sound, and then –’ she sat up to illustrate her action, ‘I threw the door open – like that – and what do you think I saw?’
Ruth shook her head. She knew she was not expected to reply.
‘I saw the burglar, looking at himself in the mirror, with my old lady’s wig on the top of his head!’
‘Then,’ said Ruth slowly, ‘there must have been a light on the landing.’
‘Yes, there was,’ Hannah said quickly. ‘He’d turned it on. And that’s where you’re supposed to laugh and you haven’t even smiled.’
‘I’m thinking about the light. He can’t have been a good burglar.’
‘He wasn’t. He was a funny one. I laughed and he laughed and, after that, we felt we were friends, and he went away like a gentleman, saying he was glad he’d met me. And the moral is that we must be ready to laugh on the most terrifying occasions. Now, I call that rather a good story and a good moral, and you don’t seem to like it a bit.’
‘I’m rather worried about it,’ said Ruth, and she looked frowningly past Hannah’s head, ‘because, if it was a house that had bedroom candles, would the landing have had electric light? I really do like the story, Miss Mole, but I can’t bear not to get things clear. Now, if he’d had an electric torch –’
‘Yes,’ said Hannah gloomily, ‘I ought to have thought of that, but it wouldn’t have done. You see, the drama of the thing is opening your bedroom door in the dark, simply shaking like a leaf, as they say, and finding a blaze of light and a burglar standing in front of a looking-glass with a wig on his head. The bedroom candles were a mistake.’
‘Miss Mole,’ Ruth said solemnly, ‘did you make it up?’
Three times Hannah slowly nodded her head, catching her lip like a naughty child. ‘If I’d had more time,’ she began apologetically –
‘If you’d had more time, I shouldn’t have found out,’ Ruth said, and the anxious look, which troubled Hannah, returned to her face. ‘And I suppose it isn’t true about your cottage and the owls.’
‘Every word of it,’ Hannah said. ‘And the old lady and the wigs are true, but what was the good of them without the burglar? You wanted a burglar and I had to give you a nice one.’
‘But have you ever known a nasty one?’
‘No, but I can make one up.’
Ruth smiled feebly. ‘Ethel would think it was dreadful.’
‘I wouldn’t have told it to Ethel,’ Hannah said quickly, and Ruth’s smile broadened.
‘She’d think it was lying.’
‘Not lying. Fiction,’ Hannah said.
‘Yes, fiction,’ Ruth agreed willingly. ‘But how,’ she cried, ‘am I going to know when it really happened and when it didn’t?’
‘Ah, that’s the fun of it. You’ve got to find out and, next time, I shall be more careful.’
‘And did you break the window with your foot?’
‘Yes, that was true.’
‘And you can’t tell me about that?’
‘You wouldn’t like it, though it had its funny side, I must admit. I’m afraid you wouldn’t see it. You’re not very good at laughing.’
‘No. But I’m glad it’s true about the cottage,’ she said contentedly.
‘Are you?’ Hannah asked rather wearily, and she sank back in her chair and shut her eyes again.
Ruth felt a little uneasy. The quality of Miss Mole’s relaxation had changed. She was no longer a lady of leisure, but one who was tired, and, perhaps, unhappy, and Ruth had a peep through another door which led into the places where Miss Mole’s spirit had wandered.
She cleared her throat and said in a small voice, ‘Miss Mole, are you all right?’
‘I’m doing my best,’ Hannah said, smiling, but keeping her eyes shut.
‘I mean, do you feel ill, or something?’
‘I don’t feel ill, but I do feel something.’
‘A pain?’
‘A kind of pain.’
‘Well, would you like anything?’
‘Heaps of things,’ Hannah said, and now she disclosed her eyes which were bright and merry. ‘I want a small fortune to begin with. Fetch me that, if you can. If you can’t, you’d better go to bed.’
‘Not yet. Let’s talk about it. If you had it, what would you do?’
‘Pack my box. No offence meant, but wouldn’t you do it yourself?’
‘I suppose so,’ Ruth said, trying to be reasonable and not hurt.
‘I’d pack my box, but I’d leave you my little ship, for remembrance, and a good home. I should want a good home for it. It would be an awkward thing to take into the Arabian desert, for instance. You want ships of the desert there, not bottled ones. However, I’m not sure that I should go to Arabia. I’ve never been able to eat dates. London first, and new clothes of the very best cut and quality, and while they’re being made, for I’m not going to have anything off a peg, I’ll go into travel agencies and ask questions of young men who don’t know the answers.’
‘How do you know they don’t?’ Ruth asked sharply.
‘Because I’ve tried them. Many an afternoon I’ve spent, leaning over one of those counte
rs. You get all the uncertainty of foreign travel without the expense. But I won’t make things too difficult for them at first. I’m going to Spain. I’ve never been there though it’s full of my own castles.’
‘And of mine,’ said Ruth.
‘Yes, I wonder there’s any room left in the place. Let’s go and see. Will you come with me?’
Ruth nodded. ‘I’d love to.’
‘Good,’ said Miss Mole. ‘I can easily afford it. And after that, where shall we go? Not Italy. Too much culture and too many spinsters like myself. We might pick up a little boat at Marseilles and go jogging down the Mediterranean. And we wouldn’t come back until we wanted to, and we’d begun to wish we hadn’t so much time on our hands. But we’d see South America first.’
The loud ringing of the front-door bell shattered the visions they were sharing of Creole beauties, vast mountain ranges, immense rivers and impassable jungles.
‘There!’ Ruth exclaimed. ‘Somebody’s come to spoil it!’
‘Only the postman,’ Hannah said airily, ‘with a registered letter from my lawyers, about the fortune.’
There was the chance that something exciting was going to happen with every knock or ring, and though few people would have applied the adjective to Mr. Blenkinsop, who was standing on the doorstep, Hannah felt laughter rising in her at the sight of him.
‘I call this very kind,’ she said brightly. ‘Do come in.’
Raising his hat, Mr. Blenkinsop asked if Mr. Corder was at home.
‘Mr. Corder?’ Hannah said, pretending to be disappointed. ‘No, he’s out.’
‘I’m sorry,’ said Mr. Blenkinsop, turning to go.
‘Wait a bit!’ Hannah cried. ‘I haven’t seen you since I carried up your dinner. But I’ve heard about you. Come in, and I’ll tell you what I’ve heard.’
‘Thank you, but I wanted to see Mr. Corder. I’ll come another day.’
‘You won’t find him in on a Wednesday. It’s the week-night service.’
