In her other situations where there was a man of the house, he had left it at a reasonable hour in the morning and could be trusted not to reappear until the evening: there was no such regularity in the movements of Mr. Corder. The absence or presence of his hat and coat was the only surety that he was out or in, and it became a habit with Hannah to glance at the pegs as she went through the hall and to feel her spirits rising or falling with what she saw there, another unwilling confession that his personality was not negligible. Hannah’s somewhat toneless singing, which contrasted so strangely with the quality of her speaking voice, was generally silenced when he was in the house; he damped down the tempers of his daughters and Hannah wondered if he knew they had them; he stifled conversation, for he was ready with information on all subjects, and opinions which differed from his own either amused or angered him, yet hardly a day passed without a caller, someone needing help or advice, an ardent chapel worker with some difficulty to be solved, a deacon on a mission of importance, and the voice which came from the study was not always Robert Corder’s, and though he might lead the laughter, there was response to it, and people went away looking happier than they had come. Nevertheless, Hannah would make a grimace at the study door as she passed. She was sure Mrs. Corder, from her place on the great man’s desk, was listening gravely to what he said and making her acute, silent comments, balancing the counsels he gave against what she knew of him and yet, more tolerant than Hannah, refusing to judge him harshly.
She had made of Mrs. Corder a person like herself, with more wisdom, more kindness and more patience, qualities she must have needed in excess, Hannah thought grimly, for she who prided herself on her willingness to accept the good and bad in men and women as easily as she accepted their physical and mental parts, was deliberately antagonistic to Robert Corder. The swing of his coat tails vexed her as probably the swing of her skirts vexed him; she would not believe in the boasted broad-mindedness of a man who sneered at opposing views or waved them aside, and whose small, tight mouth she could discern under the moustache which masked it. Like most childless women, she exaggerated the joys and privileges of possessing offspring and Robert Corder seemed unaware of them. He was not an unkind father; he was amiable enough and ready to expand under the affection he had made it impossible for them to show him, but he seemed to Hannah to treat his daughters as an audience for his sentiments and the record of his doings and to forget that these girls had characters, unless they happened to annoy him. While Hannah chafed under his bland assumptions, she enjoyed watching for corroborative evidence of the estimate she had made of him and he rarely disappointed her, for, when things went well with him, he had to talk, and it was then that Wilfrid’s eyes sought hers and with the tiniest droop of an eyelid, lift of an eyebrow or face of unnatural solemnity, sent his message to her across the table.
Hannah took a penitential pleasure in controlling herself. If she asserted her personality before she had established herself firmly, even Lilla’s patronage would not save her. She had to persuade Robert Corder that she was useful before she let him suspect her of a mind quicker than his own, and she behaved discreetly, for she had her compact with Mrs. Corder to keep, she had her own powers to prove and, though she would have laughed at the idea, she had the zeal of a reformer under her thin crust of cynicism. She wanted to fatten Ruth and see an occasional look of happiness on her face, to ease Ethel’s restlessness and get some sort of beauty into the house. She could not change the ugly furniture—and there Mrs. Corder had badly failed—but friendliness and humour and gaiety cost no money; they were, in fact, in the penniless Hannah’s pocket, waiting for these difficult people to take them, and Hannah bided their time and her own.
She found that Ethel’s labours at the Mission were not so arduous as the state of the house implied. She had bursts of feverish activity, she was constant in her attendance at the Girls’ Club and she sometimes helped her father with his correspondence, and then, for a whole day, it would seem she had nothing to do, and she would shadow Hannah about the house, as though she dreaded loneliness, watch her as she worked, without offering to help, and spend the evening turning the pages of a book, making fitful conversation, repairing, or making changes in her rather tawdry clothes. She had a misguided passion for colour and for ornaments, and the jingling of her beads was the constant accompaniment to her restless movements. Ruth, frowning
