“It’s only me, Miss Mole. I thought I heard funny noises.”
Hannah fumbled for the matches and lit the candle by her bed. Ruth stood in the doorway, clad only in her nightgown, with her feet bare, and in the uncertain light she looked like a little wraith with frightened eyes.
Hannah swung herself out of bed. “Get in, quick!” she cried. She threw the bedclothes over Ruth and put on her own dressing-gown. “What is it?” she asked briskly. “Burglars?”
“I don’t know.” Ruth’s teeth were chattering. “I’d been dreaming.”
“Ah—so had I,” Hannah said.
“I’d been dreaming—and I expect I’m being silly, but I wish I needn’t sleep in that dressing-room. It’s bad enough when Father’s there, but tonight his room was so empty or so—or so full. And I couldn’t find the matches to light the gas, and I thought I heard someone moving, so I ran up here. I’m sorry, Miss Mole.”
“Don’t mention it!” Hannah said, making a funny face and sitting on the bed. “If it’s burglars, I propose to stay here. No good interfering with them. Might cause bad feeling. We’ll give them a few minutes to help themselves, and when I think they’ve gone I’ll go and look for them.”
Ruth laughed, and it was the first time Hannah had heard her do it naturally. “I don’t suppose it was burglars at all. They wouldn’t come to a house like this, would they? But I don’t want to go back to that room, Miss Mole.”
“You shan’t. I’ll go. We don’t mind each other’s sheets, do we? And you’ll feel happy up here, won’t you, with my little ship on the mantelpiece, and you’ll go to sleep?”
Ruth nodded. “Where did you get your little ship?”
“Off the mantelpiece in my old home in the country. I’ll tell you about it some day.”
“Whereabouts in the country?”
“Over the hills—but not very far away.” She was silent for a minute or two, looking down. “Well,” she said, “I should think they’ve gone by this time. Good night. Promise you’ll go to sleep.”
“Won’t you be frightened yourself?”
“Not a bit. I met a burglar once and liked him. I’ll tell you about that, too, in the daytime. I shall have to put out the candle, you know.”
“I know. I don’t mind. Miss Mole—” darkness made this confession easier—“I don’t believe I really believed there were burglars at all.”
“No. It was a bad dream. I was having one myself. I’m glad you woke me. I’ll buy some night-lights tomorrow. The matches are never where you want them.”
“And they go out when you’re in a hurry. And Miss Mole—” this was still more difficult—“you won’t tell anybody, will you?”
“But, of course I shall!” Hannah said with a mocking seriousness. “The first thing I shall do in the morning is to tell Doris, then your sister, then your cousin, and when your father comes home he shall hear all about it.”
Ruth laughed again, a little ghostly sound, and Hannah, as she went down the dark stairs, said to herself triumphantly, “I’ve got her now!” but with her triumph a little dismay was mixed. She knew the hampering nature of possessions.
X
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
