Miss Mole

by E. H. Young

  This was unfair to Ethel who had her own consolations and who was doing her best to be pleasant to Miss Mole, preferring her, in the capacity of housekeeper in spite of her dark past, to the possibility of Miss Patsy Withers as a stepmother, and Ethel knew no more than they did that this was the day Mr. Pilgrim had chosen for ingratiating himself with her father, obeying the instinct which recommends a piece of scandal shared for the sound knitting of a bond.

  Unconscious of this danger in the rear, Ruth and Hannah started, and if the trees had been in bud they could have fancied it was April. There was a lovely mildness in the air and it was a day on which something delightful ought to happen as, indeed, it did, for instead of going through Albert Square and reaching the bridge by way of The Green, Hannah dived into a narrow, twisting lane, with mysteriously untidy gardens on one side of it and the backs of houses on the other, and, twisting and turning in their descent, they came into a square where dirty children played on the steps of Georgian houses, and when they had passed through this and a narrow street, they were on the road running parallel with the docks. These were places which Ruth, living all her life in Upper Radstowe, had not seen before, nor had she crossed the docks by the footbridges Hannah knew, some of them, to an adventurous imagination, hardly wider than a plank, with a hand-rail on one side only.

  ‘Bad places on a dark night,’ Hannah said solemnly.

  ‘And very exciting now,’ Ruth replied appreciatively.

  It took them some time to get across the docks and stand in another county, for everywhere there were ships; big ones moored alongside warehouses and loading or unloading; sailing-ships piloted by tugs and looking, Hannah said, like sad widows in their pathetic dignity under their bare masts and yards, and the tugs were like the undertakers, in a fuss about the funeral. There were dredgers with endless chains of buckets, picking up the river mud, and there were rowing-boats and men shouting and locks being opened and shut. The sky was blue and bluer when the gulls struck across it, and on the right, high up, the suspension bridge was like a thread, and the carts crossing it were the toys of midgets.

  ‘We might stay all day,’ Ruth said.

  ‘We might, but we’re not going to. We’ve got to have our walk.’

  ‘Oh, don’t say it like that, as though it’s the only chance!’

  ‘For the benefit of our health,’ Hannah said. ‘Why didn’t you wait and let me finish my sentence?’

  They had their walk, up a long winding hill until they reached the level of the bridge, along a pleasant road bordered with the woods that sloped down to the river, across fields and through copses, to the Monks’ Pool where the red trunks of firs were mirrored in the water. There, rather late in the day, they ate their lunch, and dusk seemed to be deepening round them though the sky was a pale blue circle like a reflection of the pool, and the tops of the trees which circled the water made a fringe for the patch of sky, and when they had thrown their crumbs for the age-old carp which were said to live in that water, they walked home slowly, saying very little, happy in each other’s company, and passed over the spangled bridge and saw the docks, spangled too, far below them on one side and the dark river on the other.

  ‘It’s been a lovely day,’ Ruth said, on a deep breath, when they stood outside the door in Beresford Road, but when they entered the dining-room and saw Ethel sitting by the fire, they knew it had not been a lovely day for her.

  Chapter 38

  It was fortunate for Hannah that Robert Corder heard her story from Mr. Pilgrim. From another, he might have listened to it receptively, but from Mr. Pilgrim whom he disliked, who had spoilt Mrs. Spenser-Smith’s party for him, who had lured Ethel to his chapel and who was creating trouble of the kind Robert Corder dreaded most and felt, in some obscure way, to be indecent, he heard it with studied incredulity. He was not the man to let Mr. Pilgrim think he could supply information of any kind to the leading Non-conformist minister in Radstowe, and he would have seen this approach as an insult to his household and his own acumen if his vanity had not assured him that Mr. Pilgrim had worldly, as well as sentimental, reasons for performing what he called an unpleasant duty, though it was one which might be the means of putting him on familiar terms with Ethel’s father. Robert Corder was not, and never had been, quite comfortable about Miss Mole, and, while he listened and showed Mr. Pilgrim a forbidding face, he remembered all his suspicions and irritations, forgotten lately in his reliance on her, but his chief impulse, at the moment, was to be as different from Mr. Pilgrim as he could, and he read him a little lecture on tolerance, generosity, tenderness towards women and the duty of Christians to accept sinners who had repented, which was as good as the best of his sermons. He did not commit himself to a belief in Miss Mole’s innocence: he was too wily for that, and he preferred to present himself as a man who was ready to fit his practice to his theory, but if Mr. Pilgrim had had a tail, it would have been between his legs when he left the house, and that was why Ethel wept alone.

  ‘Oh, what’s the matter now?’ Ruth exclaimed. ‘It’s always the same. We can’t have anything nice, in this family, without having something nasty afterwards. Is it because Moley and I have been out together?’

  ‘I don’t care what you and Miss Mole do!’ Ethel cried. ‘I wished she’d never come here!’

  ‘Oh – you beast!’ Ruth said with vicious slowness. ‘If she wasn’t here, I wouldn’t stay. No, I wouldn’t. I’d ask Uncle Jim to let me live with him, and I know he would. But you’ll stay, won’t you, Moley? Don’t listen to her. She doesn’t mean it. She’ll be sorry, soon, but she hasn’t any self-control.’

  ‘Be quiet!’ Hannah said sharply. ‘Why, in the name of goodness, can’t you be kinder to each other? I tell you this – and I hope you’ll remember it – I believe unkindness is the worst sin of all. Yes,’ she said, looking at Ethel, ‘the very worst.’

  ‘I’m not unkind to Ruth,’ Ethel said sullenly.

  ‘But you were to Moley, so I was to you. What’s she done to you, anyhow?’

  ‘That’s not for a child like you to know,’ Ethel said.

  ‘Then I don’t believe you know yourself.’

  ‘Well, I know more –’ Fearful, Ethel caught her lip on what she was going to say, but daring and careless, in her wretchedness, of consequences, she let it go, and said in a strained, weak voice, ‘I know more than Mr. Blenkinsop does,’ and she looked at Hannah from between shoulders raised as if to ward off a blow.

  It was the table Hannah struck with a single smart rap, calling attention, if it had been necessary, to her white face and sombre eyes, and Ruth’s murmured, questioning repetition of Mr. Blenkinsop’s name sounded, in all their ears, like the last effrontery. There had been dark rings round Hannah’s eyes for days and now they showed, like bruises, on her pallor, and Ruth and Ethel, looking at what seemed to them the very symbol of fury and, waiting for fierce, denunciatory tones, heard her say quietly, in a movingly sweet and weary voice, ‘You have no manners, either of you. What’s to become of you? You can’t go through life biting and scratching like this.’ The sadness went out of her voice and, in the one they were used to, she said, ‘I don’t flatter myself that mine are good, but they ought to be, for when I was at school in – when I was at school – I used to look at a motto on the wall and I thought it was rather silly, but I’ve never forgotten it. And that just shows that when you’re a school, or anywhere else for that matter, there are people who know better than you do. And, in this room, I’m the one who knows, and I’m going to tell you, as the motto told me, that manners are not idle, but the fruit of a loyal nature and a noble mind. Yes,’ she said emphatically, ‘a loyal nature and a noble mind. As for you two, you remind me of nothing so much as a pair of monkeys in a cage.’

  ‘Oh, Moley, that’s not manners!’ Ruth expostulated, half laughing in her relief at escape from something much worse than this, but she obeyed Hannah’s significant look at the door, while Ethel moaned piteously, in excuse, ‘I’m so unhappy.’
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  Hannah checked a movement of impatience. She knew the unhappiness of a girl could be as poignant as that of a woman, perhaps more poignant, but the doors were still open for the girl and she had time to wander and find what she wanted, while, for the woman, the doors were shut and barred and she had to find, not what she wanted, but what she could get, inside. ‘What’s the matter?’ she asked gently, and Ethel cried, ‘Oh, Miss Mole, Mr. Pilgrim’s been, and Father was furious with him – about you!’

  ‘How do you know it was about me?’

  ‘Because I – I saw Mr. Pilgrim afterwards, and he told me.’

  ‘Well, it’s very obliging of you to pass on the news,’ Hannah said, and she went out of the room to the sound of Ethel’s protestations that her father’s anger was not going to affect her actions.

  In the hall, Hannah rubbed her cheeks vigorously and blinked her eyes to rid them of their stiff, glaring feeling. Her indignant, sore anger, too bitter for relief in words, had changed into a lively, almost gay, one, and she knocked at the study door and showed Mr. Corder a face which, he immediately decided was not the right one for his housekeeper.

  He was in a noble state of scorn for Mr. Pilgrim, but he was ready to see suspicious symptoms in Miss Mole and the consciousness that he knew something to her possible detriment and meant to keep that knowledge from her, gave him a sense of power which was expressed in the cold blandness of his manner. ‘Can I do anything for you?’ he asked. She did not look like a guilty person, but the guilty were often shameless.

  ‘Yes, please,’ Hannah said. ‘I want to know what Mr. Pilgrim has been telling you.’

  This vexed Mr. Corder. He always shrank from a direct attack and his feeling of power was sensibly diminished. ‘It was a confidential interview, Miss Mole.’

  ‘Of which Ethel knows some of the details.’

  ‘I am not responsible for that.’ He did not want to repeat Mr. Pilgrim’s remarks. He had a fear that this woman, who was like no other he had met, would corroborate them, and force him to some action about which he could consult no committee, and he took refuge on that height from which he had addressed Mr. Pilgrim.

  ‘I think I can guarantee that he will say no more. I consider his behaviour unmanly, Miss Mole, and even if I did not doubt the truth of his statements, I should ignore them. We have all sinned, in some way, at some time.’

  ‘Oh, not all of us,’ Hannah interpolated, and she tried to look at him admiringly.

  ‘In greater or lesser degree,’ he said, ‘and I, for one, am willing to let bygones be bygones. I judge you as I know you, Miss Mole. I ask you no questions. I wish to hear nothing from you.’

  If he had wanted Hannah to tell him everything this was the way to do it. His condescension was almost more than she could bear. Every feeling of antipathy she had had for him returned in force. She wondered what influence her little property was having on his leniency and his wish to hear nothing from her was the strongest of motives for disobliging him. It would be worth a good deal to see him floundering in the embarrassment of her confession, and she was in a mental condition which craved the satisfaction of desperate measures. She believed that most of her soreness would be healed if she could tell him what she had done, and assure him that she did not care a damn. Yes, if she could use that word it would do her all the good in the world.

  But after that – what? She had nowhere to go, she had very little money, and even Mrs. Gibson’s house was now closed to her. She could not go there and, wherever she went, she must leave Ruth behind.

  The tightness of her body slackened, her hands came together in front of her. ‘You are very generous,’ she said, and some of her pleasure in offering that tribute was lost in her fear that it might be true, but her fear was not great: his generosity would cease when other people became aware of it. ‘One has one’s family pride, and after all, there wouldn’t be much sense in punishing me because of poor Cousin Hilda. I’ve always been friends with her and I always shall be. I haven’t Mr. Pilgrim’s fear of contamination and I have none of his reforming spirit. And I’m very fond of her. There must be some reason why the naughty people are so much nicer than the others, and Hilda is one of the naughty, nice ones. But then, perhaps I’m prejudiced,’ she added with a smile.

  ‘I’m afraid I don’t know what you are talking about,’ Robert Corder said with his quick frown.

  Hannah’s eyebrows went as high as they could. ‘You don’t know what I’m talking about? Then what on earth has Mr. Pilgrim been saying to you? Tell me, please, Mr. Corder. I must know.’

  Mr. Corder reddened above his beard. ‘He was talking about you,’ he said reluctantly.

  ‘About me? About me? Oh, I see,’ she said slowly. ‘Yes, we’re very much alike. Poor Mr. Pilgrim! How disappointing for him!’

  ‘Why should it be disappointing for him?’ Robert Corder asked with an acuteness she had not been prepared to meet.

  ‘He’s that kind of man, isn’t he? And you are even more generous than I thought.’

  ‘Too generous, I am afraid,’ he said, for he was not sure that he was wise in associating himself with what proved to be Miss Mole’s own views, and he could not forbear expressing his doubts and his general uneasiness by adding, ‘It must be a remarkable likeness.’

  ‘It is,’ Hannah said, and with that she turned to go, and again, a bad sign, he called her back.

  ‘Just to clear things up, Miss Mole –’

  ‘But I thought you didn’t want to!’

  He frowned again. He was not used to having his words brought up against him. ‘For your own sake,’ he said, and her enigmatic smile was a goad, quickening his temper. ‘Your cousin seems to have been living in her own little house in a part of the country known to Mr. Pilgrim. It’s an odd coincidence that you should both have a little house in the country.’

  ‘Not at all. She was in mine.’ All Hannah’s desire to enlighten Mr. Corder had gone. This was better sport, and the rules of the game demanded that she should take risks, but save her life. She had an exquisite enjoyment in watching for the feints of her adversary, and into her mind, stored with detached, incomplete pieces of information, there darted all the fencing terms she had ever heard, those bright, gleaming words with the ring of steel and the quick stamping of feet in them. She had the advantage of him. She knew what she was going to do, and she knew that he had no plan of action and she felt that she had him on her point, but, behind the temporary excitement, there was waiting for her the moment when she would have to tell herself that, for all its outward gallantry, this was a sorry, sordid business.

  Robert Corder brought it to an end with an unconvinced inclination of the head. ‘Thank you, Miss Mole. I don’t think you will have any more trouble with Mr. Pilgrim,’ he said, and Hannah became aware of Mrs. Corder’s candid gaze. Whether she approved of these prevarications, Hannah could not be sure. In saving the younger of her daughters, Hannah was embarrassing the other, but would Mrs. Corder look favourably on Mr. Pilgrim as a husband for Ethel, and had Mr. Pilgrim any intention of asking for the privilege of the post? There was no knowing with Ethel. A kind word was enough to set her heart beating faster; she had probably built high hopes on the unsteady foundation of such compliments as would trickle easily from his lips, and Hannah found comfort in the thought that, if they really cared for each other, Robert Corder’s antagonism would not separate them for ever.

  That night, when she sat on Ruth’s bed and they discoursed on their favourite topic, which was where they would go when they had money and could travel, Hannah felt that, on the whole, she had done well. It was possible to be too careful about one’s own soul and, in trying to help two people, she might help neither. Moreover, Ruth’s queer, selfish affection was dear to her: it was worth lying for, and though there was the chance that some day, and perhaps soon, Ruth would hear about those lies, the chance had to be taken; and the saying of an old woman she had known in childhood came back to her, telling her that, in times of trouble, wis
dom lay in living for one day at a time, but even that one day was more than Hannah felt she could endure.

  Chapter 39

  Ruth had had one lovely day, marred, it is true, by Ethel’s outburst, but mended, afterwards, by the talk of those voyages she was to make with Hannah, and on the next day Wilfrid had a surprise for her. Hannah was informed of it in a paraphrase designed to protect her in case of trouble and, at the midday meal, Wilfrid mentioned, in an off-handed manner, that he and Ruth were having a little excursion that afternoon. In answer to questions, he was prepared to say that they meant to examine some of Radstowe’s public buildings, but, in the absence of Howard, Robert Corder made a practice of ignoring Wilfrid’s remarks when he could not find fault with them, and he said nothing, and Ethel’s concern with her own affairs deadened her to those of others.

  The changeable nature of Robert Corder’s views made these precautions necessary. He had never been in a theatre in his life. He had been trained to a distrust of everything connected with the stage and though his mind had broadened with the times and the opinions of eminent fellow-ministers, he had remained aloof. Thus he was scared the awkwardness of deciding what plays were fit for him to see and the danger of making unfortunate mistakes. Ethel also remained aloof, for the sake of her girls who might be misled in those questionable haunts, and pastoral plays in the Zoological Gardens were all she and Ruth had seen. The Spenser-Smiths always went to the Radstowe pantomime, and if Ruth had been invited to accompany them, no doubt her father would have let her go, but it was a different matter when Wilfrid carried his young cousin off, and she had all the excitement of this longed-for experience, yoked to the difficulty of wearing her velveteen frock, in honour of Wilfrid and the dress circle, and getting out of the house before Ethel could see the significant finery under her concealing coat.