Yet she wished she could have had a little longer with Mrs. Gibson, for Mrs. Ridding was still unfriendly and Mr. Blenkinsop was still the fortified place she had left behind her. She understood the nature of Mrs. Ridding’s defences and respected them, but she itched to tease Mr. Blenkinsop with feints of attack. In daily expectation of another ultimatum, Mrs. Gibson was treating him as though he were seriously ill: she whispered if she encountered Hannah on the landing outside his rooms, took special pains with the cooking of his food and carried it to him herself lest the blundering of the little servant should distress him, and this both angered Hannah and gave her the opportunity she wanted.
On her last evening, she went into the kitchen and picked up the tray.
“He won’t like it!” Mrs. Gibson gasped.
“He’ll have to lump it,” Hannah said vulgarly. “What about your poor legs, as you call them?”
There were no limits to Miss Mole’s audacity: Mrs. Gibson could not cope with it and she looked at Hannah with the mournful, helpless interest she had once experienced when she saw a man go into a cage of lions.
Mr. Blenkinsop was sitting by the fire in a large sitting-room heavily furnished with his mother’s mahogany. In front of him was a chessboard on a stool and his hand was poised above one of the pieces. He did not look up and Hannah felt as if she had carelessly entered a church while a service was in progress. The proper thing was to slip away and trust the appetising smell of cooked meats to creep through Mr. Blenkinsop’s absorption, but, instead of doing that, she said crisply, “Dinner is served, sir!” and taking a step forward, she added, “So that’s what you do in the evenings! It must be a great resource.”
Mr. Blenkinsop looked astonished and then frowned. “It needs concentration,” he said pointedly.
“That’s what I mean,” Hannah replied obtusely. “I’ve brought up your dinner because Mrs. Gibson’s legs ache.”
“There’s no reason why Mrs. Gibson should do it.”
“Fear,” said Hannah, “is one of the strongest human emotions.”
“I’m afraid I don’t follow you,” Mr. Blenkinsop said with marked politeness.
“The poor dear is afraid of losing you.”
“She knows how to keep me.” Mr. Blenkinsop took his seat at the table and unfolded his napkin. “And really,” he went on, indignation mastering courtesy, “I don’t quite understand why you should interest yourself in the question.”
“No, you don’t understand,” Hannah said gently. “And I make no apology. I’m speaking, as it were, from my deathbed. Moriturus te saluto! Tomorrow, you’ll be glad to know, I’m moving on. I’m going to live with Mr. Corder—as his housekeeper—oh Lord!” A faint gleam of interest passed across Mr. Blenkinsop’s face and she took advantage of it. “Yes, think of that!” she cried, “I’d rather live with the Riddings. Why don’t you teach Mr. Ridding to play chess? That would keep him out of the oven! And what an inconvenience for you to find new lodgings! And Mrs. Gibson’s heart will break! Stay where you are, Mr. Blenkinsop, and think of me tomorrow at this time, when you’re here in your comfortable room and I’m in a strange land. But perhaps I shall see you sometimes at the chapel. That will cheer me up.”
“Not very likely,” Mr. Blenkinsop said, firmly nipping this bud of hope, and he applied himself to his dinner with an unmistakable air of dismissal.
VII
Mrs. Gibson’s greengrocer undertook to deliver Miss Mole’s box at the house in Beresford Road and thither, in the dusk, Miss Mole walked, following the cart and feeling that this was her own funeral and she the solitary mourner. Slowly the cart creaked down the road and slowly Miss Mole walked after it, and it seemed to her that her old trunk was her coffin and that the solitary mourner was her own ghost. A little wind was driving the fallen leaves along the pavement, there was a rustling of the bushes in the gardens, the tired pony’s steps and the turning of the wheels were dismal sounds, and she wished she had gone to the expense of hiring a cab and arriving with some appearance of eagerness. This was a very melancholy procession, a detachment of an army of women like herself who went from house to house behind their boxes, a sad multitude of women with carefully pleasant faces, hiding their ailments, lowering their ages and thankfully accepting less than they earned. What became of them all? What was to become of herself? Age was creeping on her all the time and she had saved nothing, she would soon be told she was too old for this post or that, and, for a second, fear took hold of her with a cold hand and the whispering of the dead leaves warned her that, like them, she would be swept into the gutter and no one would ask where she had gone, and her fear changed into a craving that there should be at least one person to whom her disappearance would be a calamity. “No one!” the leaves whispered maliciously, while a little gust of laughter came from the bushes, and at that, Hannah paused and looked disdainfully in their direction. She was not to be laughed at! She was not
