XIII
Ruth had not learnt to accept imperfection. She saw it all round her and she was in a constant state of rebellion against it. She saw it in herself, in her father, in Ethel, in the house and in her circumstances. Nothing, to her mind, was what it should have been. The loss of her mother was not included in this criticism. That was a disaster for which there was no expression. She did not join it to these minor but persistent frets as a cause for discontent. It was too big for comparison or connection with anything else she knew. It came from outside and, in a way, it remained outside, as a black, cold cloud would have been outside her body, but it had emptied her life of all that had been soft and gracious and amusing in it. Her father had told her that God, for His own good purposes, had taken her mother to Himself and, unwilling as she always was to believe in His decisions, she had to submit to this one. No power but God’s was great enough to bring about so terrible a catastrophe, and she did not wonder that He wanted her for Himself. It was selfish to take her, but it was natural, and she had to endure the loss patiently because she was helpless under it. The things against which Ruth rebelled were those which might so easily have been different, and her mother’s death had not created them; they had merely become more apparent and some of them were actually easier to bear without her. The closeness of her contact with her mother’s mind had doubled her embarrassment when her father was didactic or petty and Ethel was unreasonable: the quick sympathy which both tried to hide had magnified the importance of what they both deplored: they suffered for and wanted to protect each other, and Ruth could be more stoical when it was only her father and sister and not her mother’s husband and daughter who offended her. The tension of one side of Ruth’s life had slackened a little when her mother died, while, on another, it had tightened. Now that she need not be careful to pretend, now that she could neither love nor laugh—and it would have surprised Mrs. Corder’s acquaintances and, perhaps, her husband, to know how often she had made Ruth laugh—she could concentrate on her dissatisfactions. She had her ideal of what a home should be. The mother in it would be her mother, but the father would be different. If it was necessary for him to be a minister of religion, he would be the vicar of the Established Church, and the church itself would be old and dim and beautiful and people would not shake hands across the yellow pews and talk intimately about their ailments and their children. They would do that, if they must, in the sunny churchyard, and quietly, with the hush of the service on them and the influence of stained glass and carved stone. The house would be old too, with a cedar on the lawn, and several dogs, and inside there would be pretty and precious things, things which had belonged to ancestors, portraits and old silver, and the ancestors would be admirals and generals and judges. The sons of that house would go to public schools and universities and no one would think it necessary to mention it; the girls would have beauty and beautiful clothes and gracious love affairs: they would not giggle with young men, like Ethel, or be cross with everybody, like Ruth: there would be order in that household and quiet servants. She was not sure whether the father would be more like a country gentleman than a vicar, interested in agriculture and sport, or whether he would be vague and gentle, with some absorbing hobby which made him lovably absentminded, but she knew he would never embarrass his wife and children, he would neither be effusive nor condescending with his parishioners, and his children need not hesitate to ask anyone to tea. School life and home life could merge into each other safely and though, like all vicars, he would be more or less of a public character, he could be trusted not to say things at which his children’s friends could sneer.
These were the surroundings and the conditions Ruth wanted and her mother had not taken them with her. Ruth had wanted them almost as much while she lived, and in default of the unattainable, she posed at school as a stout Nonconformist and a despiser of aristocracy who was fiercely loyal to her humble Puritan forebears. There were girls in her form who went to Beresford Road Chapel and, while her father preached, Ruth was listening with those girls’ ears and framing replies to criticism, though with much criticism she had not to deal. The girls were as ready as their parents to admire, Ruth had her reflected glory, but she could not risk the loss of it by introducing these admirers into the home. Her father had his place in the pulpit, Ruth had hers in the school, where, with her defiances and the humour her family never saw, she was considered an amusing and original character by her contemporaries, but how would she appear to them when her father called her Ruthie and teased her and made rather foolish jokes in his desire to put the young people at their ease and to show that he could be a jolly, ordinary man? Their conception of her would be changed; she would be different, too, and she could never again be the self which came most naturally to her at school.
It would have been simple in the old Vicarage; in Beresford Road it was impossible. She kept her two lives apart, despising herself for snobbishness and lack of courage, but keeping the place she had made for herself and living almost freely for half her time. No one there would have suspected her of the fears that assailed her at night or of yearnings for beauty within and without. She was a hard worker and though this keenness and an odd sense of fair play constrained her from being tiresome in class, these virtues were forgiven for the sake of her readiness to see and mimic the peculiarities of her superiors; the Ruth who strolled homewards with her friends was gay and impudent, or downright and cynical according to her mood and the impression she wished to make, and very different from the one who, later on, brooded over the supper-table, and to a Ruth who, one day, was showing off more successfully than usual, it was terrible to turn and see the approaching figure of Miss Mole, clad in a very old-fashioned ulster. It might have been a handsome, and it must have been a sturdy garment when it was bought: it had a character which the oncoming of dusk and the drizzling rain could not disguise: it gave Miss Mole a waist where waists no longer existed and a breadth of shoulder out of all proportion to her thin frame; it was impossible not to notice it and it was all Ruth could do to sustain her mirth under the sound of those rapidly-approaching footsteps.
The figure passed; Ruth felt a nudge at each side of her; someone giggled and Ruth continued her chatter, but when she parted from her companions, she began to run, drawing sharp breaths through her piteously-parted lips. She was like Peter: she had denied her friend, and if those girls ever saw the ulster again and recognised Miss Mole as the wearer, what would they think of Ruth? They had nudged and giggled and she had not said a word. She ought to have called out to Miss Mole and stopped her, but she had been afraid of ridicule. She had not only committed a disloyal act, but one which might be discovered, and in that bitter moment she learnt that secret sin could be forgotten, while sin revealed to the world could be remembered forever. All she could do now was to hurry and wipe away some of the stain.
Going home was not quite as bad as it had been for the last two years, she was not so anxious to linger in the streets, her habit of running past the next-door house and entering her own with a rush, was an old one, and Miss Mole, lighting the hall gas, showed no surprise at Ruth’s breathless entrance, though her sharply benevolent eyes may have seen more than the dampness of Ruth’s clothes as she said briskly, “Don’t stand about in your coat. And you’ll change your stockings, won’t you?”
“What about you, Miss Mole?” Ruth said faintly. “You’re wet, too.”
Miss Mole patted the abominable ulster. “It can’t get through this. Do go and change or you’ll have a cold and it seems a pity to waste one when there isn’t a party to dodge.”
Ruth’s smile was wan. Miss Mole, revealing herself as a person of humour and understanding, was simply making things worse for her. She went towards the stairs where there was more shadow. “Did you come across Regent Square?”
“Yes. I’d been for a walk round the hill to look at the river. Lovely it was, too, in the rain. The mist was thick on the water and there was a tree on the other side like a torch blazing through a fog. But the leaves will be dropping under this rain.”
For a moment, Ruth was held from her purpose. She wished Miss Mole would go on talking like that. She said things differently, in Ruth’s experience, from other people and in a different voice. She had spoken of a moony night, and beauty and peace had stolen over her listener, and now Ruth felt the chill danger of thick mist and the joy of seeing light ahead. The necessity for confession seemed less pressing, the world of vision became of more importance than the one of facts, and while she was persuading herself that it would be easy and kinder to be silent, she began to speak.
“Miss Mole,” she said, “I think I saw you. I mean—I saw you. But you went past so quickly and I was too late. You know how things happen. I ought to have shouted to you at once, but it would have looked so funny to the other girls if I’d recognised you when you were nearly out of sight, so I didn’t—but I feel so mean.”
“Mean?” said Hannah. “I’m grateful. When I’m in this ulster, I’m supposed to be invisible. I know what it’s like. I ought not to wear it at all, but it’s thick and it’s an old friend. If you’d stopped me I should have died of shame. Thank goodness you didn’t. I won’t run the risk again, except in the dark. Now will you kindly go and change those clothes? You ought to have worn your mackintosh. It’s high-tea night and when I was up on the hill I suddenly thought of mushrooms and I bought some on the way home. We’ll have them with scrambled eggs and you can come and help me if you like.”
Ruth was childish in some ways, but she was not stupid. She could see that Miss Mole’s words might be tactful as well as true. She had not dared to ask whether Miss Mole had seen and avoided her and, if so, whether it was for her own sake or for Ruth’s. The confession had not been a full one, but, after Miss Mole’s expressed horror of the ulster, how could she mention it? That would have been easing her soul at the cost of Miss Mole’s feelings and though it was convenient to say no more, it was not necessarily wrong. Less and less, as she grew older, did she believe that the unpleasant things were the good ones and, as she slowly changed her stockings, she gave way willingly to the belief, which had been reluctant until today, that Miss Mole could be trusted with her omissions as safely as with her fears. She felt, rather than thought, that Miss Mole’s mind could overleap gaps and understand how they came there, and when she went down to the kitchen, she felt stiff and awkward in the consciousness of a surrender she had been determined not to make.
Miss Mole was skinning the mushrooms, and when she had shown Ruth how to do it they sat at the kitchen table together and worked busily.
“I’ve been thinking about clothes,” Hannah said, and Ruth, though she turned red, decided that it was a good thing to talk about them at once, before the thought of the ulster became a solid barrier against the subject. “I’ve always liked them, and never had what I wanted. When I went to school, we weren’t all dressed alike, and I was a scarecrow—but much more noticeable. The only thing to do was to pretend I had an original taste in dress and the other poor things hadn’t, and I’ve done that ever since, except about my shoes and stockings. I’m extravagant about them, so I have to go short elsewhere.” She glanced down at the shoes she had been too hurried to change. “There isn’t a better pair in Radstowe, but I broke a window with this one once,” she said carelessly.
Ruth looked up. “What did you do that for?”
“It’s one of the stories I can’t tell you, but it was very sad—and exciting.”
“Can’t you tell me, really? You’re always talking about stories and not telling them. There’s the one about the burglar—”
“Ah yes, but there’s so little time. You have to work in the evenings and then you have to go to bed, or there’s someone else in the room.”
“Tonight would be a good night,” Ruth suggested, “and I haven’t so very much to do. Unless Wilfrid’s going to be in?”
“No, he’ll be out.”
“Oh well, then—!” Ruth exclaimed.
“We’ll see. You have to be in the right mood for telling stories. But do remind me to ask Ethel if she knows any old woman who would condescend to wear that ulster.”
“Oh, Miss Mole,” Ruth almost pleaded, “I shouldn’t give it away, if you like it.”
“I don’t. I merely master it.”
“But you said it was an old friend, and there must be yards and yards of stuff in it. Perhaps you could have it altered.”
“No, I’m not brave enough to show it to a tailor. But I think I’ll keep it. It’s good enough for wearing to the pillar-box on a dark night, but I won’t wear it anywhere else,” she said, and now Ruth knew that Miss Mole could forgive everything she understood, and that she probably understood everything.