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Seeing those two at breakfast, the next morning, no one would have guessed that their relationships had changed. Ruth was too shy, Hannah was too wily, and they were both too cautious, to behave differently. Hannah did not want to press her victory home. The enemy would surrender unconditionally before long, and there was no need to augment Ethel’s jealousy. In Ethel’s view, Wilfrid, of course, had been talking nonsense when he implied that Miss Mole was the most fascinating woman in the world, but his nonsense usually had enough truth in it to make it sting or soothe, and poor Ethel, who could not hide her feelings, was hurt and puzzled. What made a woman fascinating to Wilfrid? she seemed to ask, as she looked from one to the other. To Ethel, at twenty-three, Miss Mole was almost old and had certainly passed the age when she could hope to be attractive. She was not good-looking, yet when she was in the room Wilfrid always watched her. Ethel liked Miss Mole and would have liked her better if Wilfrid had not liked her at all: she gave the house a feeling of safety: if it caught fire, if anybody was ill, Miss Mole would know what to do, and things had been more comfortable since she came. Ethel was grateful for her freedom from the harassing business of planning meals and trying to make Doris do her duty without disturbing their common bond in the Mission, and being reported as a stern mistress to other members of the Girls’ Club. There was every reason why Ethel should have been an inefficient housekeeper, and every reason why Miss Mole should be a good one. At forty, all distracting desires, ambitions, hopes and disappointments must have passed away, leaving the mind calm and satisfied with the affairs of every day, a state for which Ethel sometimes envied Miss Mole, more often pitied her, while always she tried to believe that Wilfrid’s flattery was a new way of winning Ethel’s attention to himself.
Naturally, no one saw Miss Mole when she was alone in her dovecot and no one was privy to her sleeping or her waking dreams. They were all too young or too self-absorbed to understand that her life was as important to her as theirs to them and had the same possibilities of adventure and romance; that, with her, to accept the present as the pattern of the future would have been to die. This was the attitude of hope and not of discontent and what Ethel saw as the resignation of middle-age was the capacity to make drama out of humdrum things. Here was a little society, in itself commonplace enough, but a miniature of all societies, with the same intrigues within and the same threatenings of danger from outside. It had its acknowledged head in Robert Corder who, sure of himself and his position, had no suspicion that his rule was criticised by his second-in-command, or that his subjects might rebel. In one of his public speeches, or in a sermon, he would have described the home just as Hannah saw it, as a small community in which personalities were stronger than theories of conduct, resilience more enduring than rigidity; he would have said there was no life without change and struggle, and, becoming metaphorical—Hannah enjoyed composing sermons for him—he would have likened young people to plants which must be given space and air, and their elders to the wise gardeners who would not confine or clip until the growth had attained a certain sturdiness, and he would have meant everything he said, and believed he followed his own counsels, but in his home he had planted his seedlings within a narrow compass and assumed that all was well with them. It was enough that he had given them good ground and it was their privilege and duty to prosper. He cast an eye on them, now and then, saw they were still where he had put them, took submission for content and closeness for companionship. Doubtless, he wanted them to grow—Hannah gave him credit for that—but he would have resented any divergence from the shape he liked himself and though he did not flourish his shears openly, everyone knew they were in his pocket. There was a general conspiracy to keep them there; and the struggles took place underground. He was a busy man and he was not likely to look for what was hidden.
Other people, as usual, knew more about his family than he did, and he took his place at the supper-table one evening, wearing an expression that boded trouble. He always tried to translate his anger into grief and this produced a look which demanded recognition, or threatened to turn sour and, as it was better to meet him halfway than to sit in an awed silence, Ethel asked anxiously if he felt unwell.
“If I did,” he said, “I hope I should be able to hide it. I have had a distressing experience. Two, in fact.”
“But it was the Education Committee Meeting this evening, wasn’t it?” Ethel asked.
“Exactly,” he said. He looked coldly at Wilfrid. “I want to talk to you after supper. And as though one misfortune were not enough, I met Samuel Blenkinsop on my way home. I had not seen him since he gave his very dull paper on Charles Lamb, and I must own that he had the decency to seem embarrassed.” He looked round the table, waiting for his cue, but no one risked a question or a comment. To ask why Mr. Blenkinsop looked embarrassed would be to admit stupidity: a comment made at this dangerous moment when some disaster was hanging over Wilfrid’s handsome head, would certainly be the wrong one, to be silent was almost an affront, and if the younger people heard, in Hannah’s voice, a gallant attempt to save the situation, she knew it herself as the result of an irresistible curiosity.
“You mean,” she suggested, “he was ashamed of his paper. He’d been trying to forget it and when he saw you the horror swooped on him. I know the feeling.”
“I mean nothing of the sort, Miss Mole.” He paused to look a little inquisitively, but more repressingly, at the maker of this rather surprising speech. “He would be fortunate if he had nothing else to be ashamed of.”
Swiftly she had to readjust her view of that stolid young man, working out chess problems in his quiet room, and, before she knew it, she had said incredulously, not unhopefully, “Has he robbed the bank?”
She was conscious, at once, of consternation in the room, like a thin fog through which the familiar appeared slightly distorted. With a stealthy movement, Wilfrid had taken his handkerchief from his sleeve and was wiping his nose very thoroughly and Ethel was looking from her father to Miss Mole, uncertain and frightened of his reaction, half-suspicious of her intention; the quick little frown of Ruth’s anxieties had come and gone. Evidently, this was considered a frivolous question to ask of a man who was in earnest; it had a levity unsuitable in Miss Mole and to the occasion and all she could do now was to look enquiringly stupid.
Mr. Corder’s grief had been retranslated into an astonished anger. “If that was meant to be humorous, Miss Mole, I’m afraid it is not successful.”
“No, no, it wasn’t!” Hannah protested. “But—” now that she was attacked, she was at liberty to strike back and there was a gurgle of laughter under her voice, “it would have been funny if he’d really done it!”
“Oh, Miss Mole!” Ethel gasped.
“Out of character,” Miss Mole explained neatly, holding up her small head.
“So you are acquainted with Mr. Blenkinsop?” Robert Corder asked slowly, as though he were on the track of a crime.
“I’ve seen him—” Hannah began, and Robert Corder interrupted her with a betraying sharpness.
“Not in the chapel!” he said, and she knew it was only pride that prevented him from asking the questions she did not mean to answer.
She had had her little fling and it had done her good, though she feared Wilfrid would suffer for it, and while the interview in the study was taking place Ethel was looking at her resentfully.
“You shouldn’t make Father angry!” she exclaimed.
“Did I?” said Hannah. She was holding out a spoonful of a treacly concoction of malt she had persuaded Ruth to take and, under her little air of command, she was afraid Ruth would refuse it, in token of loyalty to her father. She was wonderfully relieved when Ruth docilely put her lips to the spoon. “Good girl!” she said. “I always used to spit it out. Dozens of bottles were bought for me and not a speck of it did I swallow. Kept it in my mouth—and ran.”
“If Wilfrid gets into trouble with Father, he’ll be sent home,” Ethel mourned, “and he isn’t happy there. His mother doesn’t understand him.”
“I shouldn’t think she understands anything—except prayer meetings.”
“Ruth! How can you be so naughty?”
“I don’t care. She’s a horrible old woman and she smells of camphor. All Father’s relations are horrible, and Uncle Jim’s the only decent one we’ve got.”
This diverted Ethel. “Wouldn’t it be lovely if he came for Christmas!” she cried, but Ruth would never share her raptures, and Ethel began pacing the room again in her suspense.
Wilfrid, however, returned cheerfully. “It’s all right!” he said, “nothing worse than idleness. No lies necessary. But it’s confoundedly awkward to have the uncle on all these committees. He’d met the Dean—as well as Mr. Blenkinsop. What’s old Blenkinsop done? You weren’t tactful, Mona Lisa, but you were funny.”
“Was I?” Hannah said. “It was Mr. Blenkinsop who seemed funny to me—picking the locks, running off with the bags of money—”
“But he hasn’t!” Ethel exclaimed. “I don’t think you ought to say such things.”
“If he had,” said Hannah, solemnly, “I should be the last person to breathe a word of it.”
“Then you’d be quite wrong!”
“Poor Ethel!” Wilfrid said tenderly. “It’s no good crossing swords with Mona Lisa.”
“You’re all very unkind!” Ethel cried. “Making fun of everything, when Father’s so upset. You don’t know how he feels it when anyone leaves the chapel. It’s like—like a personal insult.”
“Ah, yes,” Wilfrid said sympathetically, “he’d take it like that, of course,” and he looked at Hannah who was cautiously unresponsive. “But is that all poor old Blenkinsop’s done? Lucky fellar! Still, it’s a poor heart that never rejoices and a dull one that doesn’t take the chance, and I find the chapel distinctly entertaining. I love hearing Mrs. Spenser-Smith telling everybody she’s got a silk petticoat when she swishes down the aisle, and seeing poor old Ernest’s agonies when the widows drop their mites into the plate, and many a time I’ve seen him slip past them before they could do it. I like old Ernest.”
“I like them both,” Ethel said, and, forgetting her grievances, she added eagerly, “I wonder if they’ll have a party this Christmas.”
“If they do,” said Ruth, “I’m going to have a bad cold in the head. I hate their parties.”
“And my duty to my mother will keep me at her side during the festive season. Honestly, I’d rather see her crying over the Christmas pudding and hear her telling fibs about my father and wishing I were like him—and we all know he was a bit of a scamp, and that’s why I hold his memory dear—than go to one of those, you know the word I want to use, Mona Lisa—well, one of those parties.”
“Miss Mole won’t believe you. She knows Mrs. Spenser-Smith.”
“But I’ve never been to one of her parties,” Hannah said.
“I wonder if she’ll ask you!”
“I should hardly think so, and I should have to stay at home and look after Ruth.”
“Which is far better,” Wilfrid murmured. “Well, I’ve promised to turn over a new leaf and I’m going to do it, beside my cheery little gas fire, so farewell! But I’m always forgetting to ask you something. Who makes my bed?”
“I do,” said Hannah.
“Then, what’s happened to my mattress?”
“It was there this morning.”
“I know it’s there, but it’s different. It’s lumpy.”
“They get lumpy in time,” Hannah said.
“It’s done it in jolly quick time, then.”
“But it’s a new one!” Ethel said. “It’s got a red and fawn ticking, hasn’t it, Miss Mole?”
“Green,” said Hannah. “Mine’s red and fawn.”
“Then you’ve got the wrong one. We’ll have to change them.”
“And give Mona Lisa the lumps! What are you talking about?”
“I’ll go and look at them now,” Ethel said.
“Miss Mole’s the housekeeper!” Ruth cried hastily.
“But I bought that mattress,” Ethel said, going off with a jingle.
“She’ll pull the bedclothes off and forget to put them on again!” Wilfrid exclaimed, going after her.
“Did you change them?” Ruth asked softly, and Hannah nodded. “I thought so!” Ruth said with a chuckle.