Looking at the young Corders, at Ethel with the flush of excitement on her cheeks and gleams of resentment in her eyes, and yet with a mouth willing to smile, at Ruth, tired and leaning contentedly against her uncle, and at Howard, sitting in the far corner of the tramcar, as though to mark his spiritual distance from his father, Hannah renewed her unreasonable feeling of responsibility for them all, and now it was not Ruth, but Ethel, who demanded most of her. This change might have been due to the knowledge that Ruth was safely hers and Ethel was still a half-conquered country, and Hannah would have been ready enough to accept this less creditable explanation if the truth had not lain in her conviction that Ruth was fundamentally less helpless than Ethel. She had some of Hannah’s own qualities under the layer of nervousness her conditions had imposed on her, and Hannah could liken her, as she had so often likened herself, to the little ship in the bottle, sailing gallantly and alone, but towards a surer harbour than Hannah’s, with her Uncle Jim for port in a storm, while Ethel rolled helplessly at the mercy of winds and tides, defenceless against piracy, starvation, thirst, and all those Acts of God which would be no less lamentable on account of their name. Hannah wondered if Mr. Pilgrim was a pirate or a pilot. Probably, he intended to be neither, but his intentions counted for little, in their emotional effect, compared with Ethel’s wishes and ready credence. Poor Ethel, ready to make a hero of Mr. Pilgrim, Hannah thought, and her compassion turned suddenly against herself, and changed to scorn, for she had been as foolish and as pitiable as Ethel and she was as much Mr. Pilgrim’s prey, and a little panic came over her, not for her future, though that was desperate enough, but for her sad little past, held and turned over in Mr. Pilgrim’s soft, damp hands.
Nevertheless, her future had to be thought of and when they alighted at the end of Beresford Road, and the same procession walked up the street, she took advantage of Robert Corder’s restrained but evident approval of the woman who had laughed at Mr. Pilgrim, to make her first request. She hoped Mr. Corder would be able to spare her for a whole day, before long; she had business to do in the country.
“Why, certainly, Miss Mole. We must manage as best we can without you, and if I can be of any help—But if your business has to do with the tenancy of your farm, you should consult a lawyer. Mr. Wyatt, one of my deacons, is a sound lawyer and he tells me ladies are generally too trustful in business dealings.”
“Yes, I suppose we are,” Hannah said, including herself among the trustful ladies.
“Too ready to make arrangements by word of mouth, and he would advise you well, I am sure, and make a nominal charge, at my request.”
“Thank you,” Hannah said. She had seen Mr. Wyatt, taking round the offertory plate: he did not slip past the poorer members of the congregation, as Ernest Spenser-Smith took care to do; she doubted his liberality of pocket or opinion and, as she glanced up at Robert Corder, striding beside her, sure of himself and his little world, stepping over crevasses he did not see, blind to the clouds confronting him, amiably companioning the woman whose virtue he took for granted, because all decent, useful women were virtuous, Hannah’s long nose took on its derisive twist. There were several shocks awaiting Robert Corder, but she thought his chief suffering would come from the memory of his gradual softening towards the bad Miss Mole.
XXX
Hannah’s cousin Hilda had developed into a definite person before Hannah went to bed, but it was just as well to know everything about her and, when it was all settled, Hannah liked her very much and as good as believed in her existence. She had some of the characteristics of the people who used to live in the kitchen cupboard; she would come out when she was wanted and, in the meantime, it was nice to feel that she was there, for her own sake as well as for her possible uses, and as the creator is not satisfied until someone else has seen his work, so Hannah longed to produce her cousin for inspection. By the time she had dressed, the next morning, Hilda, that wayward, charming girl, impulsive, but sound at heart, was woven into the substance of Hannah’s youth and it seemed a pity not to entertain Ruth with stories of their escapades: there was the time when they were chased by the bull, for instance, and Hilda had nobly diverted his attention from Hannah, but, as it happened, Ruth was in no need of entertainment that day, for she was confronted with an event which demanded all her horrified, trembling attention.
It was on this day that Howard vanished like a shadow, without a sound, or like some wild beast slipping into the forest without the snap of a twig for warning, and in the excitement that followed, the rage, the bewilderment, the demands for explanations, the grief and tears, Uncle Jim stood calm and stolid in his certainty that he had done right to let the animal escape. There was a story Hannah had often heard told in her childhood about some resident in their countryside—dead before her time—who had made himself famous and infamous
