Albert Square, and as they are both on the western side of Nunnery Road, where the tramcars go up to the Downs and down to the city, they can claim to be in Upper Radstowe, but, except for that terraced row of houses on one side of what the errand boys call Prince’s, they might belong to any other mid-Victorian suburb. The houses in Beresford Road are just emerging from the basement era. Their kitchens are still a few steps below the level of the sitting-rooms, but they have been raised from the cellarage whence a sturdier, or dumber, race of servants was content to ascend a long flight of stairs an innumerable number of times a day. Some of the houses are surrounded by their own gardens; others look like one house and are really two, with their entrances deceptively placed at the side; they give, and want to give, the impression that nothing unusual or indecorous can happen within their walls, and the red bulk of Beresford Road Congregational Chapel proclaims that Nonconformity has been received into the bosom of respectability. Perhaps the great days of the chapel are over. It was built for the benefit of those rising families whose incomes permitted a removal to this part of Radstowe and whose religious convictions had not changed with their fortunes; at a time when there was still something faintly defiant in marching a large, decently clad family to chapel in the face of churchgoers who had never dared anything for freedom, but now that the church had amiably acknowledged dissenters as men and brothers, the only flavour left in Nonconformity was the unpleasant knowledge that its supporters were still considered socially doubtful. Big families were now out of fashion: many of those girls and boys who had regarded Sundays as half festival, half penance, who had been glad to wear their best clothes over the prickly discomfort of their clean under garments, and to watch their acquaintances through the boredom of the services, had moved on to what was called a better part of Upper Radstowe, reared two or three children and quietly seceded from the faith of their fathers. The bolder spirits, who still went anywhere, went to the Unitarian Church, but Upper Radstowe was not the right soil for Nonconformity, which flourished more abundantly on the other side of Nunnery Road, and the appointment of Robert Corder to Beresford Road Chapel, fifteen years ago, had been an attempt to stir the sluggish ground with the chemical of a vigorous personality. His predecessor had been a gentle old man who preached patiently to the shining empty pews and could not be expected to lure young people to hear him, while Robert Corder was a bold, upstanding figure and the sight and sound of him advertised the vitality of his faith. He could be seen, striding about the streets, leaping on to moving tramcars and off them, rushing to and from committee meetings, always in a hurry, yet always willing to check his speed for a few words with his acquaintances, and these words were cheery, optimistic and delivered in a loud voice, unless a quieter sympathy was called for. A member of his chapel brought him to a halt; a deacon could divert him from his course, and then he would stride on, still faster, making up for time which, as he often and merrily told these waylayers, was not lost, but had gone, before he knew it.
These were habits and occupations with which Miss Mole was not yet acquainted. From the window of her bed-sitting room she could see the roof of the chapel and she had noticed it as a warm patch of red among the other roofs and the trees. She was a specialist in roofs and from many high windows in Upper Radstowe they could be seen in every shape and colour. They slid down the steep slope to Lower Radstowe, red, grey, blue and green, and spread like a flower garden over the city. There were old red tiles in close neighbourhood to shining slates, there were mossy green roofs squeezed between the walls of higher houses and, with all these variations in height, there were trees overtopping chimneys and chimneys sending their smoke into other people’s windows, but this could not be seen from Hannah’s room. Her view of the newer part of Upper Radstowe was ordinary enough, and she had made the most of the chapel roof until it had suddenly changed into a portent. She liked it no longer, yet she looked at it more often: she imagined herself sitting under it, a small drab speck against the varnish, and, during the days which passed before she heard from Lilla, she spent some time in Beresford Road, feeling like a conspirator or a private detective. She tried to get into the chapel and found, as she expected, that the doors were locked. “This,” she said, addressing the ivy which grew round the porch, “is enough to drive anybody to Rome, and I’ve a good mind to go there. I suppose the place is so ugly that they daren’t let anyone see it unless there’s one of their entertainments going on, and then they’ve got each other’s hats to look at. Not,” she added, “that there can be anything much in the way of hats.”
She would have been very gloomy if she had not been enjoying her prejudices and her prophetic powers. She was sure the red roof was painted blue on the inside, like the firmament, and sprinkled with opaque golden stars: she had seen Mr. Corder’s house, No. 14—a long stone’s throw from the chapel and on the other side of the road—and her forebodings had been justified. It was one of the coupled houses, with an asphalt path running up to the inconspicuous door. There were a bow and a flat window on each of two floors and a small one, like an eye, in the gable. Hannah
