by E. H. Young
Robert Corder made a handsome figure, standing on the hearthrug, with his head thrown back and some of the urbanity, fit for a visit to the Spenser-Smiths’, still beaming from him, and at the sight of him, Hannah’s faith in her resolutions failed her. She could deal with hysteria, she could help those she pitied, but, in the presence of this man, could she sustain her character of industrious nonentity? Something alive seemed to turn in her breast. It was the demon of mischief who lay there; he was stretching himself in lazy preparation for action and, if she was not careful, he would presently express himself in speech. Perhaps, she thought, a little, a very little, liberty would be good for him: if she kept him too quiet, he would suddenly get out of control, and there would be an end to her high endeavours for the family. The best thing, she decided swiftly, was to be natural: that would satisfy the demon and it was the golden rule for manners, but if she obeyed it at this moment, she would throw the teapot at Mr. Corder’s head. She had had a tiring day and he stood there, like a large healthy animal waiting to be fed, and made no movement to relieve her of the tray.
‘If you would kindly take those books off the table,’ she said politely, ‘I shall be able to put this down.’
He looked at his watch before he obliged her. ‘Half-past ten,’ he said.
‘Is that all?’ Hannah said pleasantly. ‘I thought it was about eleven,’ and before he had time to make one of the several retorts that must have occurred to him, she exclaimed, ‘And now I’ve forgotten the biscuits!’
‘Don’t trouble about them, Miss Mole. I had supper with Mr. and Mrs. Spenser-Smith.’
She recognized the cue for a murmur of congratulation or envy, but she chose to miss it. ‘Then, if you don’t want them, I’ll say good night, Mr. Corder.’
‘Just a moment, Miss Mole. Mrs. Spenser-Smith expressed some surprise that you had not been to see her. I think it would be courteous to pay her that attention.’
‘Then I’ll try to pop in some afternoon, when I’m having a walk.’
Robert Corder’s quick little frown, like Ruth’s, but different in its causes, came and went. ‘Her At Home day is the first Friday in the month.’
‘Does she have an At Home day?’ Hannah asked with a wide smile. ‘I thought that was unfashionable. Then I can’t go till December.’
‘You misunderstand me,’ he said gently. ‘It might be better for you to avoid that day.’
‘Yes, they’re dreary occasions, aren’t they? Thank you for telling me. Good night.’
She knew she would be called back when she reached the door.
‘Another thing, Miss Mole. I shall be asking a gentleman to supper next week. I think Thursday would be the best day. He has just taken up the ministry of Highfield Chapel – a small place, but I suppose he considers it promotion – and I feel we ought to do what we can to welcome him. You will bear that in mind, won’t you?’
‘Yes,’ Hannah said. ‘Do you want anything special to eat?’
‘I can safely leave that to you, I’m sure. In fact, I think I ought to say how much I appreciate the care you have given to our meals.’
‘I’m glad you’re pleased,’ she said sincerely. If he was not obtuse, he was generous, and she smiled as she spoke; then her eyes, leaving his face, fell on that of Mrs. Corder who was listening attentively to all they said, and Hannah persuaded herself that Mrs. Corder was glad to think of Ruth, upstairs in the dovecot, and trusted Hannah to do what she could for Ethel. ‘And, by the way,’ Hannah said, ‘is the minister married?’
Mr. Corder’s annoyance expressed itself in a somewhat sickly smile. ‘Always the first question!’ he exclaimed. ‘But is it of any real importance to you, Miss Mole?’
‘Of great importance,’ she replied, ‘because I suppose, if he is, he will bring his wife.’
Robert Corder turned away quickly. ‘No, no, he’s not married,’ he said.
She looked at his back almost tenderly. The poor man could not open his mouth without betraying himself and though she had said nothing at which he could reasonably take offence, perhaps she had given him something to think about, and her demon had had his little outing and she had a soothing draught to offer Ethel when she carried up a cup of hot milk and knocked at her door.
It was a little while before she gained admittance. She had the impression that everything Ethel possessed was being hurriedly concealed in drawers and cupboards and, when she entered, there were still signs of disorder in the room.
‘Don’t worry about Doris,’ she said at once. ‘I’ll have a few words with her in the morning. It will be easier for me than for you. And drink this while it’s hot.’ She tried to avoid looking at Ethel’s scarred face, but Ethel showed no more shame than she had shown control. ‘I’m all in favour of walking out, but I should like to know something about the young man.’
‘She ought to have told me!’ Ethel exclaimed. ‘I’ve been so good to her!’
‘Yes,’ Hannah said, ‘it’s a mistake to be good to people, if you’re hoping for reward, because you won’t get it. It would have been better for both of you if you’d tried to train her. You’ll feel ashamed of her, to-morrow week, when she slams the dishes on the table. Did you know your father is asking a minister to supper?’
Ethel, who had been restive under reproof, rolling her eyes and threatening to bolt, steadied herself as Hannah produced this carrot. ‘A minister! Who is it?’
‘I don’t know,’ Hannah said carelessly. ‘Some young man who’s got a new cure of souls – if you have such things in your denomination. Anyhow, I hope he’ll cure them.’
‘Then it must be the new minister at Highfield Chapel.’
‘That’s the man. We shall have to kill the fatted calf, I suppose,’ Hannah said, and she wished it was possible to put a love potion into the ginger-beer which was the Corders’ festal beverage. Ethel loved, and married to a minister, would be a useful member of society, and he must have his fatted calf, so he must think Ethel had cooked it and, in the meantime, a week of tranquillity for the family was assured.
An hour later she lay in Ruth’s bed, considering the events of the past day. She thought of them, one by one, extracting from them all their savour, whether sweet or bitter. There was her walk on the hill overlooking the water, with the bright tree showing through a grey mist which seemed to darken when the wings of a swooping gull flashed through it: there was the sound of unseen ships hooting or booming at the turn of the river and, at her will, she had been able to imagine them as huge amphibians, calling to each other as they floundered in the water and sought the hidden banks, or she could acknowledge them as the sirens of ships which were coming home from distant places or setting out on fresh voyages, and standing up there with the soft rain on her face, she had marvelled at the richness of human life in which imagination could create strange beasts though facts were sufficient in themselves, while she, who had the privilege of these experiences, had no ache or pain in the whole of her lithe body and no more troubles than were good for her.
She had a feeling of sovereignty while she stood there; she could make what she liked of her world. She was more than a sovereign; she was a magician, changing ships into leviathans with some tiny adjustment of her brain, and, in addition, she had a freedom such as, surely, no one else in all Radstowe could claim, for she was in possession of herself and did not set too great a value on it.
In this high mood, she had swung down from her perch above the rocks and kept her fine content until she came upon Ruth, near Regent Square, and remembered her old ulster and realized, with a pang, that a part of her belonged to Ruth. She had given it willingly and could not withdraw it and she had increased her gift before the day was over.
It had been the most eventful day of her sojourn with the Corders and, in an existence like hers, where excitements outside herself came seldom, it seemed wasteful to have such a walk, to seal her friendship with Ruth, interview Mr. Blenkinsop, witness Ethel’s abandonment and Doris’s impudence, talk to Mr
. Samson over the hedge and get a compliment from Robert Corder and news about a minister, in one day.
‘This is extravagance,’ she murmured.
There were no more sounds from Ethel’s room, and as Hannah turned on her other side to sleep, she saw that the door communicating with Robert Corder’s room was framed in gold. Then that border slowly changed its shape, widening at the top and side, and his figure was silhouetted against the light. She lay still and stiff and shut her eyes. She heard him advance a step and felt his silent, swift retreat. He shut the door as quietly as he had opened it and the gold band was round it, as though it had never stirred.
‘What will he make of this?’ she wondered, pressing her mouth against the pillow. There would be trouble in the morning, but it would be something to tell Lilia when she paid her call, avoiding the first Friday of the month. Yes, with some amplifications, it would make a very good story, and while she amplified it and planned a fit and reasonable reply to any complaint Robert Corder might make, she felt a new kindness for a man who could steal into a room so gently to look at his little daughter.
Chapter 17
The shadow that fell on Hannah the next morning was not the one of Robert Corder’s displeasure. It was a darker one that hung over her all the week and, on the evening of the supper-party, she slipped out of the house and walked swiftly up the road. At the top of it, she stood still and, drawing a deep breath, looked back. The road was empty. There was nothing to be seen, and she had not expected to see anything, except the lighted windows of the houses and the street lamps which stood like sentinels who were tired of keeping unnecessary watch and did not recognize a fugitive in Miss Mole, and there was no one to notice her as she paused with her back against the railings of a garden and a wry smile on her lips. She was thinking that, until this moment, she had not run away from anything since the days when she had believed in the clever bear and pretended a wolf was coming after her.
‘Drat the man!’ she said, recovering her jauntiness.
She had shut her door in his face, ten years ago, and that was a heartening memory, and if she avoided him now it was for reasons which he would be the last person to understand. And, if she had stayed, what a pleasantly-shocking little talk he and Robert Corder, closeted in the study, would have had about her! She could imagine the shakings of heads over Mr. Pilgrim’s revelations, the pursings of lips, and Robert Corder’s sudden, angry realization that he would have to face an awkward situation. She had spared him that, for the present, and it had been easier than she dared to hope when the name of Mr. Pilgrim fell blastingly on her ears. It was Mr. Pilgrim for whom she had been so ready to kill the fatted calf – but it was she who was the prodigal! It was he who was the eligible bachelor of her hopes and, characteristically, she had time to be sorry for Ethel before she began to consider herself. Even Ethel could hardly be enthusiastic about Mr. Pilgrim after she had seen him, and Ruth and Wilfrid were already in dismay at the prospect of an evening with a strange minister. They enraged Ethel with their prophecies of how he would look and what he would say and, in spite of Hannah’s distress, she longed to prompt them. They wondered if he would be content to discuss ministerial affairs with Robert Corder, a possibility at which Ethel rolled anxious eyes, or whether they would be expected to help in his entertainment, and it was then that Wilfrid opened the door for Hannah by thanking his God they had her to rely on. ‘And if he’s not the man I take him for, he’ll think she’s a rare bird to find in Beresford Road. But if he is, and I’m afraid he is, then it will be she who’ll get all the fun. So you’ll enjoy yourself, Mona Lisa if no one else does, and you must do your best for us.’
Ethel was affronted as, no doubt, Wilfrid meant her to be, and her anger against him, assuaged by the imminence of Mr. Pilgrim, returned in force. She had been keeping her father’s house, she reminded him, for the last two years and this was not the first time they had received a guest. He was trying to make Miss Mole think he did not know how to behave – he was always praising someone to annoy somebody else – and, as a matter of fact, it would be easier for her without Miss Mole. It was very difficult to be the hostess when there was another woman there, older than oneself. It made her nervous. They had had the Spenser-Smiths to supper and Mrs. Spenser-Smith had said how nice everything had been.
‘That was because she talked all the time. This Pilgrim fellow may stammer, or something, and then the uncle will have to do the talking and that’ll be the last visit Pilgrim pays here. You mark my words! It’s better to have Miss Mole in the hand than to drive Pilgrim into the bush.’
‘Oh, how horrid you are!’ Ethel cried. ‘Of course he doesn’t stammer. How could he preach?’
‘Perhaps he can’t.’
‘And you’re disgusting about Father, and perfectly ridiculous about Miss Mole.’ Ethel’s voice was getting beyond control. ‘Why should you think she’s such a brilliant conversationalist? I’ve never noticed it.’
‘Ah, she’s like old Samson’s parrot. She can do it when she chooses. But then, I know I’m prejudiced about her.’
Hannah raised her head from her darning and looked coolly from one to the other. ‘I don’t know what your manners will be like on Thursday,’ she said quietly, ‘but I hope they won’t be what they are now. You needn’t continue the discussion, because I happen to be engaged that evening.’
‘Oh, I say, what luck! Can’t you be engaged to me?’
‘But, Miss Mole –’ Ethel began and her face was stilled by her rapid calculations.
‘If you’re thinking about the cooking, you needn’t worry about that. I shall leave the supper prepared and, as you say, it will be easier for you without me, and for everybody else.’
‘It won’t. It’ll be much worse,’ Ruth muttered, and Ethel, preoccupied with a new thought, could only dart a glance at this second ally of Miss Mole’s before she asked – ‘But what will Father think?’
‘I don’t know,’ Hannah replied simply.
‘And I don’t mean to be rude, Miss Mole –’
‘But you succeeded,’ Hannah said.
‘I’m sorry, Miss Mole. It was only because Wilfrid made me so angry. And I don’t think Father will like it. And suppose Doris makes mistakes?’
‘She will,’ Hannah said pleasantly, and she could have added the assurance that Mr. Pilgrim would not know.
It was clear that her mind was made up and though Robert Corder resented Miss Mole’s engagement, in a place unnamed, and let her know it, he also let her know, but without intention, that he was secretly relieved, for a housekeeper, like a son at Oxford, was a good thing to mention casually, but an irritation in the flesh, when she happened to have a trick of misinterpreting the most obvious remarks. It was this which had obliged him to ignore his discovery of her in Ruth’s bedroom and he felt mentally securer when she was out of the house.
She could divine all this with the acuteness which was partly natural and partly an acquired habit of self-defence, she could see him on the brink of asking what her engagement might be and retiring, as usual, under cover of some unnecessary orders, and now, just before the guest was due, she had run up the street to find a temporary refuge with Mrs. Gibson.
As she turned into Prince’s Road she reflected sagely on the sequence of events and the difficulty of deciding that this one was good and that one evil. If she had not deceived Mrs. Widdows and gone out to buy the reel of silk, she could not have saved Mr. Ridding’s life, and while Mr. Blenkinsop seemed to regret this preservation, it had been the means of providing Hannah with a shelter in her time of need. It was impossible to please everybody, and even the menace of Mr. Pilgrim, which had been darkening her life for the past week, might prove to be one of those clouds with a silver lining, but no one could really know until the end of time, when each little action and its consequence would be balanced in the scales, and she was sure the adjudicator would not be aggrieved, though he might be astonished, at the result. She was conscious in herself of a tolerance w
hich must be a dim reflection of a greater one; she refused to be harsher with herself than she was with other people or than her vague but tender God was with all the world, and she had recovered her spirits when she saw the lighted window of Mrs. Ridding’s basement kitchen and rang the bell of Mrs. Gibson’s front door.
There was always a strangely muffled feeling in that house. If there was still trouble in the basement, it did not penetrate into Mrs. Gibson’s comfortably-furnished rooms, and as Hannah ate her supper and listened to Mrs. Gibson’s gentle and contented talk, she felt as though she were under the influence of some mild narcotic. Mrs. Gibson’s voice rose only when she pressed Hannah to eat. She thought Miss Mole was looking tired. She had been out to choose the chicken herself and Miss Mole must eat as much as she could.
‘You’re a lady, Mrs. Gibson, if ever there was one,’ Hannah said. ‘I don’t know anybody else who would have taken so much trouble for me.’
‘Oh, my dear!’ Mrs. Gibson exclaimed. It saddened and flattered her to think this was true.
‘Yes,’ Hannah went on, ‘if Mrs. Spenser-Smith had asked me out to supper, she would have given me yesterday’s mutton hashed. Quite good enough for Miss Mole! She’d keep her chickens for the people who could afford them. It’s the way of the world, but you don’t belong to it. You ought to be in Heaven, Mrs. Gibson, and I hope you won’t go yet. You had all this to see to and Mr. Blenkinsop’s dinner as well.’
Mrs. Gibson nodded her head in satisfaction. ‘Mr. Blenkinsop was very obliging when I told him you were coming. He said he’d have his dinner early and then it would be out of the way.’
‘Ah,’ said Hannah, ‘he was afraid I’d take it up to him!’
‘I don’t know, dear. He’s got a kind heart, really. What do you think he did on Sunday? Took Mr. Ridding off for a walk in the country!’
