Miss Mole was skinning the mushrooms, and when she had shown Ruth how to do it they sat at the kitchen table together and worked busily.
“I’ve been thinking about clothes,” Hannah said, and Ruth, though she turned red, decided that it was a good thing to talk about them at once, before the thought of the ulster became a solid barrier against the subject. “I’ve always liked them, and never had what I wanted. When I went to school, we weren’t all dressed alike, and I was a scarecrow—but much more noticeable. The only thing to do was to pretend I had an original taste in dress and the other poor things hadn’t, and I’ve done that ever since, except about my shoes and stockings. I’m extravagant about them, so I have to go short elsewhere.” She glanced down at the shoes she had been too hurried to change. “There isn’t a better pair in Radstowe, but I broke a window with this one once,” she said carelessly.
Ruth looked up. “What did you do that for?”
“It’s one of the stories I can’t tell you, but it was very sad—and exciting.”
“Can’t you tell me, really? You’re always talking about stories and not telling them. There’s the one about the burglar—”
“Ah yes, but there’s so little time. You have to work in the evenings and then you have to go to bed, or there’s someone else in the room.”
“Tonight would be a good night,” Ruth suggested, “and I haven’t so very much to do. Unless Wilfrid’s going to be in?”
“No, he’ll be out.”
“Oh well, then—!” Ruth exclaimed.
“We’ll see. You have to be in the right mood for telling stories. But do remind me to ask Ethel if she knows any old woman who would condescend to wear that ulster.”
“Oh, Miss Mole,” Ruth almost pleaded, “I shouldn’t give it away, if you like it.”
“I don’t. I merely master it.”
“But you said it was an old friend, and there must be yards and yards of stuff in it. Perhaps you could have it altered.”
“No, I’m not brave enough to show it to a tailor. But I think I’ll keep it. It’s good enough for wearing to the pillar-box on a dark night, but I won’t wear it anywhere else,” she said, and now Ruth knew that Miss Mole could forgive everything she understood, and that she probably understood everything.
XIV
For once, Hannah’s hands were idle. She lay back in the armchair by the dining-room fire with a book on her knee, and Ruth, glancing up from her work, now and then, saw that her eyes were often shut. She looked different like that; younger and, though Ruth did not find words for her thought, more vulnerable. Her dress of dark red silk was not fashionable and it was old, but the skirt of it and her silk stockings shimmered in the firelight, the buckles on her slippers sparkled, and her idleness and her elegant feet gave Ruth a feeling of satisfaction and of approach to the ideal life in the Vicarage, where everybody changed for dinner, and no one was in a hurry. Her mother, whose resistance to evening meetings had not been complete and who might be called out at any hour on missions of mercy, had seldom worn a dress unsuitable for sudden excursions, and this had offended Ruth’s sense of fitness and added to the restlessness of a home in which everybody was expected to be doing good outside it.
All stuffy things had been implied, for Ruth, in the name of housekeeper; stuffy frocks, thick stockings, a prim face and an oppressive sense of duty, yet here was Miss Mole looking, for all her lack of fashion, like a lady who belonged to a world unconnected with chapels, where beauty and leisure were expected and attained. It was a peep through a door Ruth had always wanted to open, and she said quietly, “I like it when you’re not darning.”
Hannah opened her eyes for a moment. “Half asleep,” she said drowsily and shut them again. This was not the truth, for her mind was busy, but Hannah was not scrupulous about truth. She was not convinced of its positive value as human beings knew it, she considered it a limiting and an embarrassing convention. The bare truth was often dull and more often awkward, while lies were a form of imagination and a protection for the privacy of her thoughts and, in a life lived in houses which were not her own and where she was never safe from intrusion, it was necessary to have this retreat.
Now, behind the veil of her sleepiness, she was wondering if she was altogether glad of Ruth’s change of front. It was what she had been working for and she found, once more, that gain was often loss. She had won Ruth and that exciting campaign was over.
