by E. H. Young
‘It was one of the brightest moments of my life,’ she replied, ‘but then, I’m afraid I am not charitable.’
There was a pause before Robert Corder, having digested this, said kindly, ‘But I’m glad to find you have a sense of humour, Miss Mole. A sense of humour, I sometimes think, is as valuable a possession as brains.’
‘Then I must try to cultivate mine,’ Hannah said.
‘However,’ he said, following her into the tramcar in which the others already sat, four tired-looking people in the otherwise empty, brightly-lit conveyance, ‘I am sorry we both had to exercise it to-night. I’m afraid Mr. Pilgrim made himself rather ridiculous and it was lucky for him that his own people did not hear him. Though,’ he added with satisfaction, ‘they might have missed the absurdity. They are not a highly-intelligent little community,’ and putting his hand into his pocket, for the fares, he fell into talk with the conductor who, like most of the conductors in Radstowe, was an acquaintance.
Hannah saw that, to the young man clipping the tickets, Robert Corder was a fine reverend with no nonsense about him, and she knew it was not fair to judge him by the only side he showed her. It seemed to her that he had to be given a certain character before he could live up to it, and that if his children would see him as the conductor did, he would be the kind of father he thought he was. Perhaps everybody was like that, she mused, but when she looked at Uncle Jim, she saw a man unaffected by opinion and quite unconscious of himself as a possible object of interest to anyone. That, probably, was the happy thing to be, and it was what poor Ethel certainly was not. Like her father, but without his self-assurance and with less stability, and urged by her pitiful desire for love, she reacted violently to appreciation, and Mr. Pilgrim had taken her in to supper, he had chosen her for the dance, and the hard words just uttered by the father she admired were painful, but of no critical value, when she remembered the kind looks of the man who seemed to admire her, and she cast distrustful glances at the two who had been discussing him.
Looking at the young Corders, at Ethel with the flush of excitement on her cheeks and gleams of resentment in her eyes, and yet with a mouth willing to smile, at Ruth, tired and leaning contentedly against her uncle, and at Howard, sitting in the far corner of the tramcar, as though to mark his spiritual distance from his father, Hannah renewed her unreasonable feeling of responsibility for them all, and now it was not Ruth, but Ethel, who demanded most of her. This change might have been due to the knowledge that Ruth was safely hers and Ethel was still a half-conquered country, and Hannah would have been ready enough to accept this less creditable explanation if the truth had not lain in her conviction that Ruth was fundamentally less helpless than Ethel. She had some of Hannah’s own qualities under the layer of nervousness her conditions had imposed on her, and Hannah could liken her, as she had so often likened herself, to the little ship in the bottle, sailing gallantly and alone, but towards a surer harbour than Hannah’s, with her Uncle Jim for port in a storm, while Ethel rolled helplessly at the mercy of winds and tides, defenceless against piracy, starvation, thirst, and all those Acts of God which would be no less lamentable on account of their name. Hannah wondered if Mr. Pilgrim was a pirate or a pilot. Probably, he intended to be neither, but intentions counted for little, in their emotional effect, compared with Ethel’s wishes and ready credence. Poor Ethel, ready to make a hero of Mr. Pilgrim, Hannah thought, and her compassion turned suddenly against herself, and changed to scorn, for she had been as foolish and as pitiable as Ethel and she was as much Mr. Pilgrim’s prey, and a little panic came over her, not for her future, though that was desperate enough, but for her sad little past, held and turned over in Mr. Pilgrim’s soft, damp hands.
Nevertheless, her future had to be thought of and when they alighted at the end of Beresford Road, and the same procession walked up the street, she took advantage of Robert Corder’s restrained but evident approval of the woman who had laughed at Mr. Pilgrim, to make her first request. She hoped Mr. Corder would be able to spare her for a whole day, before long; she had business to do in the country.
‘Why, certainly, Miss Mole. We must manage as best we can without you, and if I can be of any help – but if your business has to do with the tenancy of your farm, you should consult a lawyer. Mr. Wyatt, one of my deacons, is a sound lawyer and he tells me ladies are generally too trustful in business dealings.’
‘Yes, I suppose we are,’ Hannah said, including herself among the trustful ladies.
‘Too ready to make arrangements by word of mouth, and he would advise you well, I am sure, and make a nominal charge, at my request.’
‘Thank you,’ Hannah said. She had seen Mr. Wyatt, taking round the offertory plate: he did not slip past the poorer members of the congregation, as Ernest Spenser-Smith took care to do; she doubted his liberality of pocket or opinion and, as she glanced up at Robert Corder, striding beside her, sure of himself and his little world, stepping over crevasses he did not see, blind to the clouds confronting him, amiably companioning the woman whose virtue he took for granted, because all decent useful women were virtuous, Hannah’s long nose took on its derisive twist. There were several shocks awaiting Robert Corder, but she thought his chief suffering would come from the memory of his gradual softening towards the bad Miss Mole.
Chapter 30
Hannah’s cousin Hilda had developed into a definite person before Hannah went to bed, but it was just as well to know everything about her and, when it was all settled, Hannah liked her very much and as good as believed in her existence. She had some of the characteristics of the people who used to live in the kitchen cupboard; she would come out when she was wanted and, in the meantime, it was nice to feel that she was there, for her own sake as well as for her possible uses, and as the creator is not satisfied until someone else has seen his work, so Hannah longed to produce her cousin for inspection. By the time she had dressed, the next morning, Hilda, that wayward, charming girl, impulsive, but sound at heart, was woven into the substance of Hannah’s youth and it seemed a pity not to entertain Ruth with stories of their escapades: there was the time when they were chased by the bull, for instance, and Hilda had nobly diverted his attention from Hannah, but, as it happened, Ruth was in no need of entertainment that day, for she was confronted with an event which demanded all her horrified, trembling attention.
It was on this day that Howard vanished like a shadow, without a sound, or like some wild beast slipping into the forest without the snap of a twig for warning, and in the excitement that followed, the rage, the bewilderment, the demands for explanations, the grief and tears, Uncle Jim stood calm and stolid in his certainty that he had done right to let the animal escape. There was a story Hannah had often heard told in her childhood about some resident in their countryside – dead before her time – who had made himself famous and infamous for giving shelter to a hunted fox and withstanding the clamour of the hounds and the abuse of the huntsmen, and she thought of him when she looked at Uncle Jim. But it was hardly fair to compare Robert Corder with a hunter: he was more like a man who had brought up, and thought he had tamed, some creature he half despised, yet took a pleasure in having about him, and he had lost it through the treachery of one of his own household. This, however, was far too simple a metaphor for a complicated position. He had been outraged as a father and, as a father, he was responsible for Howard’s scurvy treatment of Mrs. Spenser-Smith. How was he to explain matters to her and how would she explain them to his congregation? Was he to repeat his brother-in-law s statement that he had advised Howard against dealing frankly with his father, had told him it would be a waste of time and would make bad blood between them, and had persuaded the boy to take the opening that had been offered to him on a South African fruit farm and leave his uncle to stand the racket? Those were Jim’s words and Robert Corder was more enraged with him than with his son. He was genuinely and bitterly hurt by what he saw as a perverse cruelty, he was shocked at such an estimate of his sympathetic
understanding, but it was inevitable that he should immediately calculate the impression this extraordinary behaviour would make on his world, of which the chapel was only a part. If he owned to a bad son, there would be people ready enough to imply that the father was to blame, yet with what other story was he to approach Mrs. Spenser-Smith? He could not conscientiously take the fault on himself, but when he rehearsed what he should say to her, his pride, and perhaps his love, forbade him to show her the picture of Howard which he saw himself.
He tried to shut his mind against the things Jim had told him quietly, as though they were accepted facts, unjust things about his character and his treatment of Howard and his incapacity to see another person’s point of view. He had said, in so many words, that if the boy was to escape from the net Mrs. Spenser-Smith and his father had spun for him, it must be done on the instant, with a sudden break: he would never have been able to disentangle himself gradually from reproaches of ingratitude and that gentle bullying of which he had had too much. He would have stayed where he was rather than have struggled without dignity, but he had gone and Robert must make the best of it. It was bad now, but it would be better later on, and when the two met again they would find themselves feeling more kindly towards each other than they had ever done before.
It is difficult to quarrel with a man who refuses to be ruffled, but Robert Corder managed to do it with the man who was quietly insulting him, as the anxious listeners in the next room could tell, and at the end of this angry eloquence, Jim suggested, still mildly, that Robert might like to pay back what Mrs. Spenser-Smith had spent on Howard and, if so, he would let him have the money. He was willing to pay for his undertaking, he was glad to buy the boy what he wanted, what all the Erleys wanted, he added, and Robert, angry, resentful, in a quandary about this money business, and foreseeing his own compliance, was still curious enough to ask, unwillingly, what it was that the Erleys wanted. Uncle Jim became less articulate when his own feelings were in question. He mumbled that it was what had sent him to sea, and made his sister feel like a hen in a coop.
Robert Corder repeated these last words, slowly, as though he could not understand them, and then, realizing their cruel import, he struck his desk a hard blow so that Mrs. Corder’s silver-framed photograph let out a little jingle, like laughter, and: ‘You can leave my house!’ he cried, in a great voice. ‘You’re trying to take my wife from me now!’
‘Don’t be a fool, Bob. I’m not saying she wasn’t fond of you, but she was cramped. I’m sorry if I’ve hurt your feelings, but I still think I’ve done right – and what she would have wanted me to do.’
He left the room but he had no intention of leaving the house immediately. In his experience, the man who shouted his commands was not the one who expected them to be obeyed, and though he had enough imagination to divine the needs of those he loved – and his sister’s children were dear to him for her sake – he could not picture the real distress of Robert Corder whose imaginative powers were concentrated on himself. His son! His wife! Mrs. Spenser-Smith and the chapel! The fellow-members of his committees, who all knew he had a son at Oxford! The ingratitude and cowardliness of Howard! And how could his wife have been cramped when she shared her husband’s life? Yet he thought of her strange visits to Mr. Samson and he knew he had consistently sneered at Howard. He admitted that he was not perfect: no doubt he had made mistakes, but, where his wife was concerned, he could see none, and he felt a slight, unconfessed easing of his duty towards the dead.
His thoughts were too tumultuous, too painful and too sad for clearness. He was more unhappy than he had ever been before, and neither of his daughters had offered him a word of comfort, but already he was adapting himself to new conditions, hearing his own remarks and seeing himself as he went about his work with undiminished spirit, disappointed but tolerant, and gradually acknowledging that Howard had been right and quoting extracts from his letters. But it was very lonely in the study that night, and when Miss Mole came in with his tea he was glad to see her, but he thought of Miss Patsy Withers who would have been tenderly indignant for him and more helpful in her tearfulness and her pity than Miss Mole, with her swift, sure movements and her matter-of-fact face.
‘I’ve cut you some sandwiches,’ she said, ‘as you didn’t have much supper.’
‘That is very kind.’
‘And I hope you’ll eat them.’ She was pouring out his tea and remembering that he liked one big and one small lump of sugar.
‘This is a bad business, Miss Mole,’ he said.
‘Yes,’ she agreed. She was, indeed, sorry for him and thought he had been unfairly treated. She was sorry for Howard too, for Ethel and for Ruth: she was suffering the discomfort of seeing everybody’s point of view and the impatience of considering it all unnecessary. ‘But when you think of the sun and the moon and the stars –’
‘What have they to do with it?’
‘Nobody knows,’ she replied, ‘but they do make our affairs seem rather small beer, don’t they? And if you compare infinity – whatever that is – with three weeks, for in about three weeks all this will be forgotten –’
‘I shall never forget it,’ he said, his head in his hands. ‘No, but other people will, and that’s what really matters.
That’s our weakness – and our strength. There’s no shame,’ she said, as though to herself, ‘no disappointment, no disillusionment, we can’t bear if we can keep it to ourselves. It’s the beastly curiosity and the beastly speculations of other people that get one on the raw. But no,’ she was faithful to her creed, ‘it’s not beastly. It’s natural. I’d do it myself.’
‘Then,’ he said, forgetting, in the relief of speech, to be superior, ‘you can understand how I feel.’
‘I do!’ she cried, and he said sadly, from the depths of an experience denied to her, ‘But no. You are not a parent, Miss Mole.’
She gave him one of her sidelong glances. ‘You take a good deal for granted,’ she said, trying to control the upward tilt of her lips. ‘But you happen to be right,’ she went on with a calmness which left him displeased, but dumb, ‘I’m not a parent. I’m not a minister, either, or a son, and yet, somehow . . . Please eat these sandwiches. Minced ham and turkey. They’re very good. And it isn’t so difficult for you as it seems.’ She spoke to him quietly, as though she persuaded a child to its good. ‘Your son had a sudden offer in South Africa, an out-of-door life is really what he is fitted for, he had to take it or leave it, so he cabled his reply and went off at once and there was no time for explanations.’
‘So that was what cost fifteen shillings,’ Robert Corder muttered. ‘And Mrs. Spenser-Smith, who has been so generous?’
‘I should tell her as much of the truth as is good for her – and you. That’s only fair to yourself.’
‘I shall pay back the money!’ he said loudly and with determination.
‘Then she can’t complain, and I don’t believe she will. Good night, Mr. Corder.’
‘Good night, Miss Mole.’
This time, he did not call her back, but she returned. She stood with her hands clasped in front of her, smiling timidly and looking pleasingly diffident, and more like his idea of what a woman should be than he had ever seen her.
‘I wonder . . .’ she began, and he said briskly, with a defensive caution at the back of his mind, ‘Well, Miss Mole, what is it?’
‘Could you pretend,’ she said, ‘not to be as angry as you are?’
‘I’m not angry, but deeply hurt.’ Her silence accepted the paraphrase and he added, with his usual authority, ‘And pretence of any kind is against my rule.’
Her eyes widened, she looked remarkably child-like and that gaze made him uneasy. He was beginning to know her well enough to expect some retort in violent contrast to the expression of her odd, mobile face, but it did not come.
‘I was thinking of Ruth,’ she said. ‘And Ethel. Yes, she has asked me to call her Ethel,’ she said quickly, in answer to the slight contraction of h
is brows. ‘They are very unhappy.’
‘That is my son’s responsibility. We must all suffer together.’
‘But don’t suffer at all,’ she suggested. ‘If you can’t pretend, the only thing to do is not to feel. You can’t have people thinking your son has done something wrong. In your position,’ she added softly. ‘And Ethel and Ruth are very much worried about you.’
‘They’ve shown no signs of it.’
‘Ah,’ she said, ‘they’re a little afraid of you. You can be rather terrible, Mr. Corder, if you’ll forgive my saying so. They are sitting in there, shivering and trying not to cry. Could you make them realize that you have the situation in hand, that there’ll be nothing for them to do but follow your lead? Ethel is troubling herself about Mrs. Spenser-Smith and wondering what she is to say to her – and to everybody else.’
Robert Corder did not fail in his response. ‘There is no need for Ethel to distress herself,’ he said. ‘She can leave it to me. I shall go and see Mrs. Spenser-Smith to-morrow. I suppose there are troubles in every family and some day she may have some of her own.’
‘I should think it’s more than likely,’ Hannah said. She glanced at the clock. ‘I must write a letter before I go to bed. I shall just have time to catch the post. Good night, Mr. Corder.’ She hesitated and said, with the timidity he found very becoming in her, ‘I shall tell your daughters they must try to be as brave as you are,’ but as she left the study, she was telling herself that one of his children was free and she must do what she could to secure liberty for the others.
Chapter 31
To see Robert Corder reassuring his children, gravely taking this new burden on himself and shouldering it courageously, was, for Hannah, rather like watching a man palming off the work of an artist as his own, and she wondered he did not see the pathos, the tacit reproach, of Ethel’s surprised admiration for him and of the relief which flushed Ruth’s face, but, after all, it did not matter to Hannah why he acted well so long as he did it, and she remembered that her suggestions had been successful, not because she was skilful, but because they were practical. If he was to keep his picture of his broad-minded optimistic self, he must take Howard’s departure and give it his approval in a wise, foresighted spirit; only so could he mount his pulpit on Sunday and feel that he still dominated his people. There are certain kinds of sorrow which add to a man’s value, but that of possessing a bad son is not one of them, and Robert Corder decided not to have it. That, at least, was Hannah’s criticism of his behaviour.
