V + 

The wind had risen strongly as night came on and Hannah crossed the Downs under swaying branches and swirling leaves. The football-players, the riders, the children had all gone home; lamps edged the roads but, where Hannah walked under the elms, there was a stormy darkness. The branches creaked lugubriously or with shrill protest, and those which still kept their leaves were like great flails, threshing the winds, maddened by their sterile efforts, for it was the wind, threshing harder, that produced the harvest, whipping it from the trees and driving it before him. Hannah was driven, too; a wisp of a woman, exhilarated by the noise and the buffeting. Lilla’s comfortable, bright room seemed unreal to her, Mr. Corder was the invention of an idle moment and Hannah Mole had no past, no future, only this breathless present when the wind would have had her go westwards and she was making for the south. For ten minutes or a quarter of an hour, until she reached lower ground and the shelter of the streets, where the wind did its best with the trees in the gardens but found their weaker resistance a dull affair, she had that freedom from care which is the reward of exciting physical effort; but in the comparative quiet of Chatterton Road she became conscious of the self which needed money for food and clothing and, absurdly, she saw it handed to her by Mr. Corder on one of his own offertory plates. She shook her head and made a grimace of refusal. She had a prejudice against Nonconformist ministers, she pictured Mr. Corder according to the pattern in her mind, ignorantly unctuous, pretending to a humility which was patently absent, and she had a moment of rebellion. She could see herself clearly enough with other people’s eyes: she was drab, she was nearing, if she had not reached, middle-age, she bore the stamp of a woman who had always worked against the grain, she was, in fact, the ideal housekeeper for Mr. Corder. She admitted that no one sitting in his dining-room and mending his woven underwear at a table with a rusty little fern in the middle of a green serge cloth, could look more suitable than Hannah Mole. Who would suspect her of a sense of fun and irony, of a passionate love for beauty and the power to drag it from its hidden places? Who could imagine that Miss Mole had pictured herself, at different times, as an explorer in strange lands, as a lady wrapped in luxury and delicate garments, as the mother of adorably naughty children and the inspiringly elusive mistress of a poet? She could turn up her own long nose at these fanciful excursions, without convincing herself of their improbability. The desires, the energy, the gaiety were there, but they were ruled by an ironic conception of herself which did not seem inconsistent and which was also the armour she assumed against the world when it was not willing to be friendly. And, after all, as she told herself, quelling her useless rebellion, the things she wanted, if she had them, would soon turn into those she wanted no longer and⁠—here was God’s happy idea of compensation again⁠—she found a wealth of amusement in going about disguised, while because her clear-sightedness was not kept entirely for the weaknesses of others, she had to own that she who had been a failure in the lot forced on her, was not likely to be a success in any one she chose. She was a vagrant and with the vagrant’s advantages, the readiness to move on, the carelessness of possessions, she had to support the inconvenience of being moved on before she was ready to go and of finding herself poorer than was comfortable. Now both these conditions had befallen her. Few things, she thought at that moment, could be more distasteful than leaving the house where she was treated as a friend, where she had a sly, lazy pleasure in listening to Mrs. Gibson’s platitudes and a keener one in discomfiting Mr. Blenkinsop by waylaying him on the stairs and forcing him into conversation; a house which she could leave at her caprice for a saunter round Upper Radstowe or a long walk on the other side of the river, to which she could return with the certainty of a welcome, and she must resign all this for the sake of mending Mr. Corder’s daughter’s stockings and keeping herself fed and clad. + 

Yet it was better to be Hannah Mole than to be Lilla who could see herself as one person only, and that was Mrs. Spenser-Smith, who had never broken a basement window to save a man from gas poisoning, dragged him from the neighbourhood of the oven, and then consoled the baby who was crying, neglected, in his perambulator: better than to be poor little Mrs. Ridding with that strange look on her face. It was the look, Hannah thought, of someone who had braced herself for approaching an inevitable catastrophe and seen its postponement with despair. The look had no more than flashed across her face but Hannah had seen it and she could recall it plainly now, in the darkness. “Oh, for money!” Hannah moaned, not thinking of herself. Money could cause neurotics to be cured or, if it failed in that, it could enable a young widow to bring up her boy, and Hannah began to desire it passionately. She had heard Lilla speak with grand disparagement of it, but that was just what Lilla, who had always had it, would take care to do. Money was one of the best things in the world, used properly, used by Miss Hannah Mole, and all the way down Prince’s Road she was buying annuities for people like herself, settling some thousands of pounds on Mrs. Ridding, and sending people Christmas cards and valentines in the shape of five pound notes. + 

When she reached Mrs. Gibson’s house she saw a light in the basement kitchen and, through the mended window, which was open, she could hear Mrs. Ridding singing. Hannah’s big mouth drooped. She heard that singing every morning before Mr. Ridding went to work and every evening when he came home, but never at any other time of day, and it hurt her that anyone so young should be so unhappy and so brave. She was ashamed of her own discontent and her concentration on herself. What happened to her, who had lived more than half her life and had some fun in it and, yes, one mad, romantic interlude, was of very little importance now, but Mrs. Ridding was a girl and Hannah’s large, erratic heart was aching for her. And there was nothing she could do. Her funds of advice⁠—which she did not take herself⁠—of drollery, of encouragement, were of no use, for Mrs. Ridding was very bright and cold with the witnesses of that sordid scene in the basement, even with the woman who had comforted and bathed the baby. Hannah wished she could bath the baby again. Mrs. Gibson had been much impressed by her handling of him; Mrs. Gibson, in fact, admired everything Hannah did, and perhaps it would be salutary for her to live with a man who was much more likely to admire what he did himself. + 

Hannah turned the lock with the latchkey Mrs. Gibson lent her and found Mr. Blenkinsop hanging up his hat in the hall. + 

“Oh, good evening, Mr. Blenkinsop!” she exclaimed girlishly. “You’re rather late, aren’t you?” + 

Mr. Blenkinsop looked at her severely through his spectacles. “Purposely,” he remarked significantly, and stood aside to let her pass up the stairs before him. + 

Hannah went ahead meekly. She had not yet found the manner to which Mr. Blenkinsop would respond. She had tried to deepen the impression which her prowess in the basement kitchen must have made on him; she had hinted that she, too, had an interest in literature and Charles Lamb; she had asked foolish feminine questions about banking, which was Mr. Blenkinsop’s profession, but nothing stirred him. He remained grave, solid, and as monosyllabic as language and bare courtesy would allow. + 

“Sickening!” she said to herself, straightening her back, for she knew that the view, from below, of a woman ascending the stairs is often unfortunate, but when she had turned on the light in her room and looked at her reflection, she forgave him, though she had not done with him yet. Mr. Blenkinsop was clearly not a reader of character or a connoisseur of human rarities, and there was no reason why he should encourage the attentions of this woman with the satirical nose, a rather sallow skin and eyes of no particular colour, yet she felt as uneasy as a soldier in a hostile country who has left an unconquered fortified place behind him. She wished she had introduced the subject of Mr. Corder; that might have roused him and instructed her at the same time. Forewarned was forearmed and Mrs. Gibson’s views would be of no value. To her, all reverend gentlemen were good and most of them were awful; they were like the stars; they shed their light, but they were unapproachable. However, though there was no doubt about what she would say, her way of saying it might be amusing, and when Hannah had changed her outdoor dress for an old silk one which looked well enough by artificial light, she tapped on Mrs. Gibson’s sitting-room door and popped in without waiting for a summons. + 

“Oh, there you are, dear,” Mrs. Gibson sighed. “Always so cheerful!” + 

“What’s the matter?” Hannah asked, for Mrs. Gibson’s voice was melancholy and she was sunk in her chair as though she had been pushed there. + 

“He’s been at me,” Mrs. Gibson said, “about the Riddings. He’s just this minute left me. It’s either them or him, he says. What d’you think of that? I’m sorry to say it, but I call it unkind, unkind to me and to those poor things down there. Now, what would you do yourself, Miss Mole, dear? Would you turn them out? No, I know you wouldn’t. Standoffish as she is, considering everything, if you know what I mean, I can’t help feeling I’ve got a duty by her. I can keep my eye on her. And there’s that baby. I never had one of my own and, if you ask me, the motherly ones are those that never had any.” + 

“Ah,” said Hannah weightily. Her thoughts, straying from Mrs. Gibson’s problem, were pursuing this idea. She had believed it was her own and she was surprised to find that it was also Mrs. Gibson’s. “But you had a husband,” she said. + 

“Well, of course, dear. And I was a good wife to him. Those are his own words.” + 

“I was wondering,” Hannah said, “if the best wives are the ones who are not married.” + 

“Oh, my dear, I don’t hold with that kind of thing!” + 

But Hannah was trying to find proofs for her theory that non-realization was the highest good. + 

“I don’t mean what you mean,” she said. + 

“I’m glad of that,” said Mrs. Gibson. “There’s too much of that kind of thing nowadays⁠—so I’m told.” + 

“Dreadful, isn’t it?” Hannah murmured back. + 

“And anyhow, there’s no question of that here, I’m thankful to say, but he tells me there’ll be trouble again; he says he doesn’t feel the same about the place. He says he needs quiet after his day’s work.” + 

Hannah made a loud, derisive noise. “Work! Chasing money with a little shovel! It’s like playing tiddleywinks! And quiet!” She held up a hand. “Listen, Mrs. Gibson. There’s not a sound.” + 

Mrs. Gibson nodded complaisantly. “A well-built house. I don’t know where he’d find a better. And then, you see, I knew his ma. At the sewing-meeting. I don’t go now, dear. I’ve enough to do with the mending at home and Mr. Blenkinsop’s very hard on his socks, but in the old days, with Mrs. Blenkinsop and Mrs. Corder, I went. And now she’s passed away and little did I think then I’d ever have her son for a lodger. She was a gloomy woman, I must say, but all the same, there it is.” + 

“And Mrs. Corder⁠—what’s she like?” + 

“Dead, too, dear. Yes. Pneumonia. It’s a terrible thing. Here today and gone tomorrow. Only ill for a week. Poor man! I’ll never forget the funeral.” + 

Now Hannah made a vague sound of sympathy. “A loss to the chapel,” she suggested. + 

“Well”⁠—Mrs. Gibson, who had been growing drowsy over the fire and her reminiscences, tried to sit more upright and her voice was almost a whisper⁠—“well, I don’t know about that. People used to say things. She was never at the Sunday evening service, and that didn’t look well, did it?” + 

“Tired of hearing him talk, perhaps.” + 

“That might have been it,” Mrs. Gibson said with unexpected tolerance. “A wife feels different to anybody else. But at the sewing-meeting, now and then, she’d be funny rather. Absentminded,” she added, triumphant at finding the right word. + 

“Thinking of him,” Hannah suggested again. + 

“Ah, now, you can’t have it both ways!” Mrs. Gibson cried cunningly. + 

“No, but you can think in heaps of them,” Hannah said, and she gave her nose the twist which could mean disgust or a bitter kind of satisfaction. + 

Mrs. Gibson wisely ignored these possibilities. “And then, he’d come in and give us a look round, as cheery as you could want.” + 

“I know,” said Hannah. + 

“And laugh! He was full of his jokes.” + 

“I know,” Hannah repeated grimly. How was she going to meet those jokes, or were they less frequent in the family circle? She was convinced that his wife had hated him, and while Mrs. Gibson rambled on, Hannah was either gazing into a future full of dislike for that hearty man or reconstructing the married misery of Mrs. Corder. + 

“How I’ve been talking!” Mrs. Gibson said at last. “And you haven’t told me what I’m to do about Mr. Blenkinsop.” + 

“Tell him he ought to be ashamed of himself,” Hannah said, rising from the hearthrug, and she went away, leaving Mrs. Gibson disappointed, for the first time, in the resourcefulness of Miss Mole. + 