Miss Mole

She had told him about her childhood in the country, about her situations and the kind of books she liked and what she would do if she had a lot of money. She felt tired by her own eloquence, but relieved, and she did not think she had given him cause to doubt her discretion. It would be a pity if she had. She liked Mr. Blenkinsop and she wanted to know whether the stories she had made about him would come true, and when she looked back at her past and the men she had met, as her employers and their relatives and friends⁠—for her life had been singularly barren of closer relationships with men and women⁠—she decided that Mr. Blenkinsop was the one to whom she would tell a secret or go for help, and when, in a quick, frightened thought, she remembered Mr. Pilgrim, it did not need a great effort of her imagination to see the solid, bulky form of Mr. Blenkinsop overshadowing the narrow-shouldered, somewhat slinking figure of the other, like a policeman keeping an eye on a suspicious character.

Mr. Pilgrim, however, had come no nearer; Mr. Blenkinsop had given her nothing new to consider except a feeling of safety, and her mind was free to receive the impression of Uncle Jim. As Hannah always had her tongue in her cheek when she created romantic stories about herself, she could make them as extravagant as she chose, and she was hardly disappointed when she saw a man, in clothes which looked too tight for him, who had no likeness to her buccaneer. It was just as well, she thought, when she remembered the difference between the Miss Mole she had fitted to him and the one with which this plain Uncle Jim, who might have been a tax collector, was shaking hands. He had a close-clipped fair moustache in a short face, a pucker of wrinkles round his eyes which gave him an amused rather than a worried expression, and though he was bronzed enough to make Robert Corder look hectic with the colour on his cheekbones, he was not immediately suggestive of hurricanes and tropic sun. He was an ordinary looking man yet, in the slowness of his movements and speech and in his calm, apparently uncritical regard, there was something to make Hannah feel that here was another person who could be relied on. He had a dwarfing effect on Robert Corder, but this was Hannah’s first opportunity of comparing the minister with a man who belonged to a wider world than that of Beresford Road Chapel, and it seemed to her that Uncle Jim in the pulpit would be less incongruous than Robert Corder on the bridge of a ship. Uncle Jim’s authority was that of the man who knew his trade and had his position as a consequence and a matter of course, while, with Robert Corder, the position came first, and the authority derived from it was a constant source of gratification and made a constant demand for recognition. Hannah thought sadly that she was rather like him herself; she had no position to give her a fair start, but she was not content to let her personality make what mark it could, without assistance; a sign, she feared, of a weak character.

She made another of her good resolutions and remained silent and observant. She saw Ruth looking with shining eyes at the imperturbable face of her uncle and glancing from him to Hannah, as though she wished to connect them in her happiness and to know what each thought of the other. Ethel, wearing an extra necklace in honour of the occasion, and a bright blue frock, rattled her beads and jerked in her seat at the supper table, but her glances had not the confidence of Ruth’s. She could never forget the presence of her father, and her anxiety was that conversation should go amicably between him and Uncle Jim. Robert Corder did his best as host. He invited his brother-in-law to talk of his experiences and Uncle Jim was as unresponsive as Howard had been on the night of his return. He said something about the weather and Robert Corder lifted his eyebrows patiently. He was not really eager to hear another person talk, but it was exasperating to see such a waste of opportunity. A single voyage would have supplied the minister with anecdotes for countless supper tables and sewing-meetings, with texts and illustrations for innumerable sermons, and this man, who had followed the sea since he was a boy and knew all the ports of the world, could produce nothing more illuminating than a casual reference to the weather. Opportunities did not come to those who could use them. Howard and Jim were alike in their dumb obtuseness, and what sort of minister Howard would make, his father feared to prophesy. He sank back in his chair and resigned his duties. He had done all he could.

Then Uncle Jim volunteered a remark.

“What’s the matter with the gas?” he said, looking at the pendant light. “It oughtn’t to make a noise like that. I’ll have a look at it tomorrow.”

“I’ve been looking at it for more than two months and it doesn’t take the slightest notice,” Hannah said mournfully.

Ruth laughed and looked at her uncle. She had been hoping Miss Mole would say something to show she was not just an ordinary housekeeper who was afraid to speak.

Robert Corder frowned. “Then, Miss Mole,” he said sharply, “you should have called in the plumber.”

“But would he come, if I did call to him? And would he go, if once he came? Plumbers,” she said, “are like everything else. You want them badly and, when you get them, you’re sorry.”

“I think,” Robert Corder said in the bland manner of his annoyance, “you must make a point of wanting the things you should not have.”

“That was implied,” Hannah said brightly. She had broken her good resolution and Uncle Jim