XXXI
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.
Ruth had her own comment to make, though she put it as a question which was not meant to be enlightening. She had the appearance, Hannah thought, as she lit the night-light, of a person who has had a severe bout of pain, and lies limp and contented in its cessation. Her face, which softened and hardened so quickly, seemed to have taken on childish contours, but her eyes, drowsy with comfort, kept their look of guarded intelligence.
“Isn’t it wonderful,” she sighed, “not to be as miserable as you thought you were going to be?”
“Is it? I don’t know. I’m never miserable.”
“Well, you must have been, often, when you were young.”
“There was always something else,” Hannah said. “There’s always something else, when you look for it. But no, I wasn’t unhappy when I was young. There were my boots, of course, but there were the feet inside them and, you know, if I’d had the kind of boots I wanted, my feet wouldn’t have been so pretty now, and I suppose I realised, even then, that it was all for the best. I’ve always been good at that.”
“You’re very conceited about your feet. And people don’t notice feet much.”
“What does that matter to me? I notice them myself, and every night I have a little reception for them. They sit at one end of the bed and I sit at the other and I look at my nice straight toes and all the little bones of my feet and think of the manifold works of God. It’s not conceit. I didn’t make them.”
“But you like them more because they’re yours than you would if they were mine.”
“Perhaps; they’re such a surprise. My father and mother had honest yeomen’s feet and so has Lilla.”
“Lilla? That’s Mrs. Spenser-Smith’s name.”
“Did I say Lilla? I meant Hilda.”
“Who’s she?”
“Oh, she’s a cousin, rather a mysterious cousin. I’ll tell you about her some day. She was better looking than me, but not much, and her feet were ugly. Nice hands, though, and she used to say that if she and I could pick out our best features, we might make one quite decent-looking woman of us.”
“Is she alive now?”
“Good gracious, yes, I hope so. Somewhere. She’s no older than I am, but I haven’t seen her for years. Elusive creature,” Hannah said, staring at the little flame of the night-light.
“Go on about her.”
“Not now. Good night.”
“Moley …” this was Ruth’s question, “was Father angry when you took in his tea? I know he was furious with Uncle Jim, because we heard him shouting, and I never thought he’d come in and be so nice to us.”
“But as it wasn’t your fault, why should he be angry with you?”
Ruth made no reply to that; there was none to make and she did not refer to past experience. It was plain to Hannah that Ruth was giving credit where credit was due, and it was sad that she should have to look beyond her father’s character for the cause of his unexpected gentleness. “Well, I hope he’ll stop being angry with Uncle Jim,” she said. “I’ll tell you what I’ve decided. I shall go out to South Africa, to be with Howard, as soon as I can.”
“And what about me?”
“Couldn’t you stay and look after Father?”
“I’m here to look after you because you’re such a baby and can’t mend your own stockings. As soon as you can, I shall go.”
“Is that why you haven’t tried to make me do it?” Ruth asked slyly. “And why shouldn’t you come too?”
“I don’t know why I didn’t go years ago,” Hannah said. “What a fool I’ve been!”
“There was your little house.”
“Yes,” she said, “perhaps that had something to do with keeping me, but there, I never had enough money to pay my fare and I never shall have.”
“That’s because you’re so extravagant about your shoes,” Ruth said pertly. “And that reminds me. There’s the story about breaking the window, and now there’s your cousin Hilda. You’re always promising and never telling.”
“I can’t tell you about the window because the story isn’t finished. Neither is the one about Cousin Hilda, for that matter. Stories don’t finish. The window one is coming to what you might call a period, but not an end. No indeed. I fancy that Part Two will be less exciting but more enthralling to the student of human nature than Part One. Really good biographies can’t be written until the what-you-may-call-thems are dead. But I might tell you when we’re in South Africa—far away.”
“Couldn’t you just give me a hint about why you broke the window? Was it in Radstowe?”
“Not a hint,” Hannah said. “Why can’t you make up some stories for yourself? That’s what I have to do.”
“But these are true, aren’t they?” Ruth cried anxiously. “Not like the burglar one?”
“Not in the least like the burglar one. And now, sleep. If you’re going to South Africa, you must take a profession with you and you’ll never have one if you stay awake till this time of night. Be anything you like, but be something. Simply being a useful woman like me isn’t good enough.”
“You’re good enough for me,” Ruth said, shutting her eyes on the awkwardness of this confession.
Hannah went upstairs and stood in the darkness of her bedroom. For the first time she heard her own true story with Ruth’s ears and she did not like the sound of it, and Ruth did not repeat her assertion that Miss Mole was good enough for her. She was mute, stricken, all her faiths shaken, what she had seen as beauty changed to ugliness, her sight, perhaps incurably, dimmed or distorted, and this was Hannah’s work. Apart from the consequences of her acts on the innocent, the undreamed of, her adult conscience was not troubled. Her regrets were for her lack of judgment, not for a chastity which did not seem to her to be sensibly diminished. She had loved her lover and expected to marry him, but she did not make that expectation an excuse. She did not need an excuse. Her values were not those of Robert Corder and Beresford Road Chapel and she was heartily thankful that there was no legal bond, but she was unhappy when she tried to exchange her own conscience for Ruth’s juvenile one, and what Ruth made of the story would chiefly depend on who presented it to her. If it were her father or her sister, all these happy hours they had had together would be smeared by their disgust. And yet Hannah had a heartening belief in the independence of Ruth’s mind and her natural tendency to go contrary to her relatives: moreover, they were not likely to tell her much. Miss Mole would disappear mysteriously, her name would not be spoken, and Ruth’s silent loyalty might be strengthened by her secret defiance, yet she might be disillusioned, though she was still loyal. No woman, not even Hannah, who had made a practice of indifference to most people’s opinions, could relish the prospect of being thought evil, but it was the effect on Ruth herself about which she was really troubled, and it seemed to her hard that what she had done ten years ago should have its influence on a child of whose existence she had not known, so hard and unreasonable that her sanity refused to take the weight of this responsibility and, as she stood there, meditating immediate flight, her commonsense resisted a temptation which, indeed, was not very alluring, for where was she to go and what good would she be doing Ruth if she left the field to Mr. Pilgrim? And perhaps her cousin Hilda would save her from him as she had saved her from the bull. No, she told herself, undressing in the darkness which clarified her thoughts, the worst thing she could do was to waste the powers which had been signally proved this evening. Through her means, Ruth and Ethel had gone comparatively happily to bed and all her calculations were grossly wrong if Robert Corder did not return cheerfully from his interview with Lilla, for by the first post, she would learn that the occasion for discreet behaviour had arrived. And, during the interview in which they tried to make things easy for each other, Hannah hoped Robert Corder would speak enthusiastically of his housekeeper. That would give Lilla something to worry about, she chuckled, as she got into bed, and she thought she would be almost willing to sacrifice herself maritally to Robert Corder, if she got the chance, for the sake of supplanting Lilla as leading lady of the chapel, a short-lived joy for a long martyrdom, but she knew that he would only praise her in flattery of Lilla and that he was in happy ignorance of his indebtedness to Miss Mole.
It was difficult to endure his look of self-satisfaction the next evening. A stranger would have thought he had planned his son’s escape and made Mrs. Spenser-Smith a party in the enterprise, and Hannah had another glimpse into the life of Mrs. Corder, who, surely, must have wilted and perhaps actually died, under the blandly arrogant delusions of her husband. The face which looked out of its silver frame was that of a woman with delicate perceptions who would find more truth in Mr. Samson’s extravagant inventions than in Robert Corder’s interpretation of his acts and thoughts, but, no doubt, her chief desire, like Hannah’s, was for the happiness of her children and she had borne with her husband as wives find it necessary to do.
This was Hannah’s view of their relationship and Uncle Jim had given her no cause to change or amplify it. He, at least, did not yield to Hannah’s wiles. Under his matter-of-fact directness, he was not simple; he seemed able to guess the destination of Hannah’s conversation, when it was Mrs. Corder, though she might start in the opposite direction, and she gave him up. When she saw him go, the next day, she would be almost as poor in information as she was when he arrived and this was hardly fair, for he had constantly questioned her about farming and expressed his regret that he could not see her little place. He would be a good tenant when she wanted another one. The place would suit him very well, he thought; it was near enough to Radstowe and he wanted to keep an eye on Ruth.
“Well, one never knows,” Hannah said. “You’d better leave me your address. I suppose,” she went on thoughtfully, “I’ve got another twenty years of work left in me. My tenant may not last as long as that and, while I’m working, you could be paying me rent. And I’ll charge you a high one too, for depreciation of my property. Then, at sixty, I’ll turn you out and retire. But the difficulty is that if I lose this job, I may not get another.”
“Why should you lose it? But look here, if you do, you’ve got to let me know. I’m going to wander about for a bit, but my bank will always find me.”
“Are you thinking of kidnapping Ruth, too?” Hannah asked coolly.
“I’ll have a shot,” he said.
“And Ethel?”
“No, I don’t think I need kidnap Ethel. I’m hoping she’ll get married. Who was that black-haired chap who made such a fool of himself at the party? I thought they seemed pretty friendly.”
“Would you like her to marry him?”
“I’d like her to marry anybody, so long as he didn’t drink or knock her about,” he said, and increased Hannah’s respect for his astuteness.
“But perhaps it will be Mr. Corder who gets married. There are plenty of ladies in the congregation who would meet him more than halfway.”
“Yes, I spotted one of those, too,” he said. “The fair, floppy one. No use to Ruth at all. I wish to goodness,” he said, knocking his pipe out against the grate, “you’d marry him yourself.”
“Anything to oblige you, of course,” Hannah said dryly, and then, flaring up, she cried: “Upon my word, I think you’re the most unscrupulous person I ever met.”