XXIX
After supper, one of those little rumours, which start mysteriously and surprise no one so much as the people to whom they refer, began running about Mrs. Spenser-Smith’s drawing-room. For a skilfully long time she pretended not to hear it, but the moment arrived, and it was hastened by Ernest’s clumsy kindness, when it was impossible to resist the knowledge that Mr. Pilgrim could recite. Solo performances were against her rule. She knew what sort of talent the members of the chapel possessed, its devastating effect on the gaiety of her parties and the little jealousies that could arise, but Mr. Pilgrim was a newcomer, invited, as a lonely bachelor, at Ernest’s particular desire, and though she doubted his ability and disliked singling him out for honour, she could not refuse the eager requests of those ladies, of all ages, who were thrilled by the presence of another and a new minister and begged her to let him recite, nor could she ignore Ernest’s open persuasions of the apparently reluctant Mr. Pilgrim. It was noticeable that no other male voice joined in the solicitations, and that even the thinnest-necked of the young men, to whom a minister was a natural object of veneration, put his back against the wall and settled his features into an expression he hoped they would be able to maintain.
Hannah longed for Wilfrid but, lacking him, she found some consolation in watching Uncle Jim’s unguarded look of amazement and Robert Corder’s earnestness to do as he would be done by, and when she met the eyes of Samuel Blenkinsop, who stood among the other young men against the opposite wall, she felt that she was more than compensated for the loss of Wilfrid. Mr. Blenkinsop was looking at her with a solemn dismay, as though she was his only hope in this calamity, and though she had not much time to give to anyone, being anxious not to miss a word or a gesture of Mr. Pilgrim’s performance, or to lose one drop of her revenge for his persistence in dogging her with glances all the evening, it was very pleasant to know that it was her eye Mr. Blenkinsop had sought.
Mr. Pilgrim was a tragedian and he did not spare himself. The long poem he recited was all too short for the enraptured Hannah, and if the clapping at the end did not express a correspondence with her own feelings, Mr. Pilgrim was not a prey to doubts. He wiped his face with the freedom of the man who has obviously done his utmost, and Mrs. Spenser-Smith managed, with great adroitness, to start another game as she went forward to thank him. Ethel was thanking him already; she had no doubts either, but, for the first time in the history of Mrs. Spenser-Smith’s parties, there were no charades. The games went merrily on until Miss Patsy Withers’s elder sister was whispered towards the piano and the opening bars of Sir Roger de Coverley were played. Robert Corder partnered Mrs. Spenser-Smith, Ernest tucked the hand of the shabbiest of the spinsters under his kind arm and seemed to regret that he could not take care of all the other women who were not wanted, and Hannah, smiling gaily at him as he passed and trying to look as though she did not want to dance, saw Ethel beaming in her place opposite to Mr. Pilgrim and Ruth happy with her Uncle Jim.
“Could you bear it?” Mr. Blenkinsop asked her crossly.
“I should love it.”
“I generally get away before this begins, I feel such a fool, capering down the room with my hands out.”
“From capra, a goat,” Hannah murmured to herself. “But if we’re capering together—”
“That’s what I thought,” he admitted gloomily. “Is there any chance of walking home with you? It would do me good to talk to somebody about that recitation.”
“Somebody?” Hannah said sharply. “Try Mrs. Ridding. Yes, try her as a sort of test. There ought to be a preliminary examination for every vocation, you know, and if she fails in the subject of Mr. Pilgrim, I should plough her altogether.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Mr. Blenkinsop said with a trace of sulkiness, as they took their places for the dance.
“And anyhow,” Hannah bent towards him to whisper, “Mr. Corder doesn’t approve of followers. It would embarrass me to be escorted across the Downs by a single gent. I have to pay for my pleasures, Mr. Blenkinsop!”
There was more annoyance than amusement in his smile. Apparently this sort of banter was not to his taste and, either in expression of his disapproval, or in deference to her wish, there was no sign of him when the Beresford Road party started across the Downs followed by Mrs. Spenser-Smith’s regret that, for some unexplained reason, she could not send them in the car.
They went in pairs, like a girls’ school; Uncle Jim with Howard, and Ethel and Ruth in an accidental companionship which left their father with Miss Mole.
“This is the first time we have not had charades,” he burst out, like a disappointed child. “I can’t remember one of Mrs. Spenser-Smith’s parties when we haven’t had charades after supper. We choose a word, Miss Mole, and as I am always expected to be the leader of one of the sides, I’d given a little thought to the matter, to save time. I don’t grudge that and the whole thing is of no importance, but I must say I think the party was not quite so successful this year.”
“Mrs. Spenser-Smith is a clever woman,” Hannah said.
“Certainly. Yes. But I think she showed less cleverness than usual.”
“Clever—and considerate, to us and to Mr. Pilgrim. He would have expected to be the leader of the other side. We had seen him as a tragedian; we might have had to listen to him being funny. Considerate to all of us, but more considerate to him,” she added in a slow, droll tone, and Mr. Corder laughed so suddenly and loudly that his daughters looked round as they walked in front, and Howard and Uncle Jim, still further ahead, slackened their pace and turned to see who had joined the little company and made Robert Corder laugh as he seldom laughed in the family.
“So you didn’t enjoy the recitation?” he asked with some eagerness.
“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 tonight. 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 his 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.