III
All over Upper Radstowe, in late springtime, the pavements are strewn with flecks of colour, as though there had been a wedding in every house, for petals of pink and white, purple and yellow, lie there, dropped as a benison on the approach of summer. Before this, urged by the warm rain, the trees open their new leaves slowly, carefully unwrapping the yearly surprise which never grows stale, and the flowers which come afterwards are like happy laughter at its success. The dropping of the petals has a gracious resignation in it for, without them, the smaller flowering trees have lost their beauty for the year; their greenness is merged into the general greenness of the summer and they have no splendour to offer autumn. Miss Mole had missed the spring in Radstowe, she had missed the almond blossom—a faint pink against a bright blue sky or rosy against a grey one—she had missed the lilacs and laburnums and the double cherry, the tall tulips in the gardens and the consciousness that, across the river, primroses were growing on grassy banks; she had seen the summer and made the best of the only season she did not care for and here was autumn, prodigal of its gold and bronze, and there were moments when she renounced her allegiance to the spring or, rather, yoked with it a new allegiance to the autumn which was responsible for spring’s increase. In spring she knew that something both exciting and beautiful would happen with each day while her pleasure in the autumn was as much anticipatory as immediate. Like a man gloating over the wine bottles with which he means to stock his cellar, enjoying the variations in the shapes and sizes of the bottles and the colours of their contents, but looking forward to the day of the wine’s maturity, Hannah watched the big trees in this time of their brilliance, and with a contentment which was not of the eye alone, saw it lying in heaps at their feet. She was a farmer’s daughter; she had a feeling for the earth and liked to see it nourished and though she had been dowered with a constant desire for beauty, and found it sufficient in itself, there was an added satisfaction in knowing it was feeding what it came from, and so, when she wandered about Upper Radstowe that October, finding unexpected little streets, paved lanes and winding paths or flights of steps, leading from the Upper to the Lower Radstowe; when she strolled down the long Avenue where, on one side, well set back from the road, there were large houses screened by one row of the elms, and on the other, screened by the opposing row, a stretch of tree-laden grass ending in a cliff which bound the river; when she walked on the Downs dotted with well-grown hawthorn bushes which were almost insignificant in that expanse, where the sense of the river, out of sight, was always present and the voices of the ships came with challenge or complaint, she could feel that while her own affairs were in a sad condition, those of the earth were doing well and beautifully.
Until she was fourteen years old, she had only seen Radstowe in snatches of a day, when her parents had business in the city and allowed her to accompany them, and there had been torture as well as pleasure in the expeditions, for her father would linger at the cattle market and her mother spend an unreasonable time in the shops. It was maddening to know that there were intricate miles of river and docks to be explored, ferry boats awaiting her at the cost of a halfpenny a journey, broad bridges spanning the water, narrow ones, without railings, across the locks, big ships with sacks of flour sliding into their holds, slow-moving cranes dangling their burdens with apparent unwillingness to let them go; it was maddening to see these things only in glimpses or in a desperate sally from which she was recalled by the anxiety of her mother or the anger of her father and by her own premature knowledge that these two were, in effect, younger than she was and must not be distressed. In a vague way, she was always sorry for them: there must have been a few years during which they represented authority and wisdom but, within her memory, they were a little pathetic in their slowness and in their silences which were only broken for the utterance of what they thought were facts, and physically they seemed very old—they were both in middle life when Hannah was born—while she could afford to postpone her explorations.
This capacity for waiting and believing that the good things were surely approaching had served Hannah very well through a life which most people would have found dull and disappointing. She refused to see it so: it would have been treachery to herself. Her life was almost her only possession and she was as tender with it as a mother with a defective child: there was no doubt it would improve, the big miracle would happen and, meanwhile, there were the smaller ones such as this chance to rove at her will through Upper Radstowe, to cross the suspension bridge and reach the woods covering the high banks on the southern side of the river, or to go further afield—and Mrs. Gibson was astonished at her energy—and find the real country where the wind smelt of apples and damp moss. It was the first such chance she had had for though, in her fifteenth year, she had been sent to school in Upper Radstowe, her excursions were necessarily restricted and never solitary, but she learnt to love the place and she kept her childish wonder, she grew familiar with the colours of the changing seasons, she accepted the frequent rain without resentment and she could never be grateful enough for that spasm of emulation which had induced her father to send his Hannah to school with his rich cousin’s Lilla. In doing this he outraged his belief that what he called a fancy education was a stumbling block to a plain farmer’s daughter, he stretched his resources further than they would easily go and Hannah had often wondered what obscure antagonism had flowered in so unlikely a manner and with such advantage to herself. It was the one impulsive action she remembered in a man as little given to eccentricity as one of his own turnips, but she had seen turnips grown to odd shapes and something comparable to these distortions had happened in the case of Farmer Mole. She had stayed at the school until she was eighteen, for she was not to leave a day before Lilla did, and this was an extravagance which, she suspected, gave her father a grim pleasure, while it set her mother clucking over the continued difficulties of Hannah’s wardrobe. How was she to have a dress for the dancing class, another for Sundays and still another for afternoons unless Mrs. Mole, with the help of the village dressmaker, could alter some of her own clothes? Fortunately, in the days when she was married, materials were made to last, and among the strange garments Hannah took to school were a black watered silk, a prune-coloured merino, and a delaine patterned with large pansies. They lasted a long time, and as Hannah remained thin, though she grew to a moderate height, and her mother’s wedding garments were voluminous, there was always enough stuff with which to lengthen the dresses: they suffered strange partnerships, separations and reunions: they were a thorn in the flesh they covered, but Hannah was never seen to wince. It was Lilla who did that and Hannah enjoyed seeing her do it, yet she had an amused affection for this cousin who had such an air of dignity and importance, such a fixed view of what was proper, even in her teens. With her sanguine colour and her bright eyes, for which she had an evident admiration, with the clothes which were too rich and fashionable for a school girl, and her slight pomposity, Lilla was as ludicrous to Hannah as was Hannah’s appearance to everybody else. But the offensive laughter of these convention-ridden young people stopped there. She saw to it that they should laugh at the rest of her only if she chose, and now, when she was nearly forty, she could appreciate the cleverness—she would not call it courage—which she had shown at fourteen, in persuading scoffers that those dreadful clothes were the symbol of her high difference from themselves.
Hannah often walked past the plain-fronted white house from which the sound of piano practice still came in the strange, discordant, yet satisfying jumble which gave her a glorious sense of liberty. She had soon been released from the bondage of her own hopeless efforts and when she heard scales tripping lightly from one direction, stumbling and starting again from another, while The Merry Peasant took advantage of the pauses, or the Rachmaninoff Prelude assured him he was of no importance, she tasted again an exquisite pleasure of her youth. It was a house which just missed character. It stood four stories high in the middle, there was a lower wing at each side and a walled garden encompassed it. At the front there was a wrought iron gate for visitors and mistresses and, at the back, a door for everybody else, but the glory of the gate had departed: it was rusty and needed paint, and the house itself was shabby. The houses in Upper Radstowe had a way of growing shabby and when Hannah stood at the gate, peering in, she fancied that thus the ghosts of the eighteenth century must stand and look at their fine houses going to decay, let out in flats, with the gathered perambulators and bicycles of the inhabitants cumbering the stately entrance halls. No doubt they found a mournful enjoyment in their memories and exalted them, and the difference between those ghosts and Hannah was that she had a present which did not suffer from comparison with the past. She had no illusions about the wonderful happiness or the misunderstood misery of her girlhood: she had been alive and interested then, as she was now, and if the possibilities of her future were limited by the exigencies of time, this limitation had its value, since what was going to happen must be nearer than it had ever been before. She must be within shouting distance of the rich old gentleman who was going to leave her a fortune, or the moderately rich one who would leave her a competency. Again, lessening her demands of Fortune, she might meet, at any turn of the road, the perfect employer who would appreciate Hannah Mole and keep her as a friend of the family when the need for her services was past and who, to the brief announcement in The Times of Hannah’s death, would add a little tribute of affection. She would be the confidant of the young people as they grew up, the wise and humorous counsellor.
She roused herself from these visions which were passing across the discoloured front of her old school. She was on her way to visit Lilla and she must at least pretend to be practical, she must concoct the mixture of truth and falsehood suitable to that lady’s palate. A week had passed since their meeting in the teashop and for all but a few hours of that week she had been lodged in Mrs. Gibson’s house, she had been under the same roof as Mr. Samuel Blenkinsop. That would have to be explained and Hannah neither wished nor intended to tell the truth. It involved the private affairs of other people and it was always pleasant to deceive Lilla and to tease her. Moreover, it was doubtful whether the truth would appear to her as probable. She would merely tell Hannah to edit her stories more carefully. And truth, after all, was a relative good: it had to be adulterated and adapted, like a drug, to the constitution of each individual, and Hannah would describe neither her first nor her second visit to the house in Prince’s Road.
She had called there after meeting Lilla, and the little maid in her large cap, who still showed signs of her agitation earlier in the evening, had led her into Mrs. Gibson’s comfortable presence. Mrs. Gibson’s anxieties were incapable of disturbing a basic serenity compounded of mental sluggishness, good nature and physical well-being, and though she was still somewhat shaken, she was in no danger of collapse. She was glad to see Hannah again. Everything was going on as well as could be expected, but Mr. Blenkinsop was upset, and a chat was just what she needed.
“And why should Mr. Blenkinsop be upset?” Hannah demanded. “He hasn’t tried to kill himself and he isn’t married to a man who has! He isn’t the baby of an unsuccessful suicide! He ought to count his blessings—and I’m one of them. If it hadn’t been for me—”
“I know!” said Mrs. Gibson. “So quick, you were, too! And how you ever thought of breaking the window—But there, Mr. Blenkinsop is very respectable and he was always against me letting the basement as a flat. He said we’d get undesirables, and there,” Mrs. Gibson pointed downwards, “sure enough, they are.”
“If it hadn’t been for me,” Hannah persisted, “there would have been an inquest. How would Mr. Blenkinsop have liked that? I’m no more used to suicides than he is—”
“Certainly not!” Mrs. Gibson said courteously.
“But I tried to give Mrs. Ridding the impression that there was nothing unusual about it. It was the least one could do, but much more than he did.”
“It was a pity he came along when he did,” Mrs. Gibson sighed. “It’s true I was looking out for him. It was either him or a policeman, until you bumped into me, and then I’m sure there was no need for anybody else. I’d been shouting myself hoarse through the keyhole, but what was the use of that when he’d locked the door on the inside? And that poor young thing! And the baby crying! Dear, dear! Well, let’s hope it will be a lesson to him. He’s in bed now and I’m going to coax her up here for a bit of supper.”
“And what will Mr. Blenkinsop say to that?”
“I’m hoping he won’t find out,” Mrs. Gibson replied simply. “When he settled down here after his mother died, he hoped I’d see my way to keeping other lodgers out. He pays well, but I made no promise. I like a bit of company.”
“Then,” said Hannah, “will you take me in tomorrow? I can’t pay like Mr. Blenkinsop, but I promise not to put my head in a gas oven. It may be for a few days, or a few weeks. I don’t know. I shall be out of a situation.”
“Why,” said Mrs. Gibson, mildly astonished, “I thought you must be a lady with an independence.”
“Plenty of independence, but it doesn’t fill my pockets.”
“Well I never!” Mrs. Gibson exclaimed. “You see, I noticed your shoes. I was always rather noticing. And then, with you being so prompt and managing—but still, I do admit, it’s comfortable to know you’re one more like myself.”