“Think of that!” Hannah said, concealing her pleasure under this light retort. “But you might have been drowned on your next voyage and Ruth wouldn’t have liked that. The reason she looks so happy is because you’re here.”
“No, she’s different. Not so jumpy. I’m grateful to you.”
“Well, I’m not a permanency,” Hannah said rather tartly, “and she must learn to rely on herself.”
“You’re not going to leave them, are you?”
“I don’t know.”
“I shouldn’t blame you,” Uncle Jim muttered indiscreetly. He put on his coat and Hannah felt that he would have said more if he had remained without it. She had lost her buccaneer, but the brother of Mrs. Corder, the brother-in-law of the Reverend Robert was still there and her desire to know what the feelings of these three had been in connection with each other, was almost a pain.
She took a step at a venture. “Is that a good photograph of Mrs. Corder, in the study?”
“It depends who’s looking at it. My brother-in-law would say no, I should say no, and so would Ruth, but we’d all mean something different. She was something different with all of us, I suppose.”
“And what would Mr. Samson say?”
“Who’s he? I’ve never heard of him.” He made a grimace. “One of the deacons?”
Hannah laughed and did not answer. She had learnt another thing she wished to know, but she had not finished yet. “You can’t have had time to see much of your nephew.”
“Well, we stayed up rather late last night,” he said, and he and Hannah eyed each other calculatingly; he measured her trustworthiness and she his willingness to trust.
“I’m not supposed to know about him,” she said at last. “I’m surprised Ethel hasn’t told me, but she’s rather preoccupied, perhaps.” She gave him a sidelong look out of eyes in which green was the predominating colour, but these words struck no response from Uncle Jim; he had not received Ethel’s confidences as well as Howard’s, and Hannah left this side issue. “Family disturbances are very bad for Ruth,” she said.
“I’d like to adopt her,” Uncle Jim said suddenly, and, just as suddenly, Hannah felt a rush of enmity towards him.
“But that,” she said coldly, “could not be arranged in a few days, within which time we’re going to have trouble.”
“And I don’t see how it’s to be avoided.”
“The right words in the right quarter—” Hannah said thoughtfully. She did not believe that Robert Corder had any great desire to see his son a minister with a more valuable degree than his own and a social distinction he had missed. He would, of course, be able to make Howard feel his inferiority, but it would be less easy to suggest it, allied with fatherly love, to other people, and nothing else would satisfy him. A little flattery, a little comparative disparagement of Howard, would do much to mollify him, but who was going to offer it? There was no hope of that from Uncle Jim and it would come somewhat startlingly from Miss Mole. Even Robert Corder might suspect some motive in her admiration, and Hannah sighed audibly at the difficulty, the impossibility, of acting wisely for the future.
“The right quarter,” said Uncle Jim, “seems to be this Mrs. Somebody who’s financing the boy. It’s very awkward for him. He’s had two years of her patronage and that’s what’s going to worry his father most. Throwing her money in her face! And I gather she’s a lady of some importance.”
A slow smile curved Hannah’s lips. She had a sense of power which affected her physically, with a tickling feeling of pleasure. She was in haste to use that power, her mission to the Corder family enlarged its sphere, she saw herself as an appointed agent, and, for the moment, she had finished with Uncle Jim.
“You’ll see Mrs. Spenser-Smith at the party,” she said.
“Must I go to the party?” he asked in dismay. “I haven’t got any evening clothes.”
“They won’t be missed,” Hannah assured him.
She dusted the table on which she meant to cut out Ruth’s silk dress, and, looking busy, she spread out the material and fetched her pins and scissors, and Uncle Jim watched these preparations critically, for a few minutes, before he rolled away. Then Hannah ran upstairs to her room, enjoying her unnecessary stealth. She sat down by the wide-opened window with a pad of note paper on her knee, and the energy she had meant to concentrate on a letter to Lilla was dissipated through the eyes which could see the coloured roofs of Radstowe, the plumes of smoke, the spires, the factory chimneys, the distant fields sweeping up to the high ground which blocked the view of her own country. For her, much as she disliked the day itself, the approach of Christmas was the approach of spring in the West country. There might be snow and frosts later, but always, at this season, there was a damp mildness in the air, a message telling her that the earth was being stirred by tiny pushing feet, pressing downwards so that spikes, eager to be green, might reach upwards, and she fancied she could smell primroses, that scent delicate as the flower’s colour, soft as its pale cup. She knew a place where she thought primroses might be blooming even now, standing up among their strong crinkled leaves like some marvellously fine work on the rough palm of its maker, but from that thought and the view of Radstowe she turned aside. The primroses grew too near her cottage and innumerable reminders of other lives lessened the urgency of the task she had set herself.
This
