“I’ve cut you some sandwiches,” she said, “as you didn’t have much supper.”
“That is very kind.”
“And I hope you’ll eat them.” She was pouring out his tea and remembering that he liked one big and one small lump of sugar.
“This is a bad business, Miss Mole,” he said.
“Yes,” she agreed. She was, indeed, sorry for him and thought he had been unfairly treated. She was sorry for Howard too, for Ethel and for Ruth: she was suffering the discomfort of seeing everybody’s point of view and the impatience of considering it all unnecessary. “But when you think of the sun and the moon and the stars—”
“What have they to do with it?”
“Nobody knows,” she replied, “but they do make our affairs seem rather small beer, don’t they? And if you compare infinity—whatever that is—with three weeks, for in about three weeks all this will be forgotten—”
“I shall never forget it,” he said, his head in his hands.
“No, but other people will, and that’s what really matters. That’s our weakness—and our strength. There’s no shame,” she said, as though to herself, “no disappointment, no disillusionment, we can’t bear if we can keep it to ourselves. It’s the beastly curiosity and the beastly speculations of other people that get one on the raw. But no,” she was faithful to her creed, “it’s not beastly. It’s natural. I’d do it myself.”
“Then,” he said, forgetting, in the relief of speech, to be superior, “you can understand how I feel.”
“I do!” she cried, and he said sadly, from the depths of an experience denied to her. “But no. You are not a parent, Miss Mole.”
She gave him one of her sidelong glances. “You take a good deal for granted,” she said, trying to control the upward tilt of her lips. “But you happen to be right,” she went on with a calmness which left him displeased, but dumb, “I’m not a parent. I’m not a minister, either, or a son, and yet, somehow … Please eat these sandwiches. Minced ham and turkey. They’re very good. And it isn’t so difficult for you as it seems.” She spoke to him quietly, as though she persuaded a child to its good. “Your son had a sudden offer in South Africa, an out-of-door life is really what he is fitted for, he had to take it or leave it, so he cabled his reply and went off at once and there was no time for explanations.”
“So that was what cost fifteen shillings,” Robert Corder muttered. “And Mrs. Spenser-Smith, who has been so generous?”
“I should tell her as much of the truth as is good for her—and you. That’s only fair to yourself.”
“I shall pay back the money!” he said loudly and with determination.
“Then she can’t complain, and I don’t believe she will. Good night, Mr. Corder.”
“Good night, Miss Mole.”
This time, he did not call her back, but she returned. She stood with her hands clasped in front of her, smiling timidly and looking pleasingly diffident, and more like his idea of what a woman should be than he had ever seen her.
“I wonder …” she began, and he said briskly, with a defensive caution at the back of his mind. “Well, Miss Mole, what is it?”
“Could you pretend,” she said, “not to be as angry as you are?”
“I’m not angry, but deeply hurt.” Her silence accepted the paraphrase and he added, with his usual authority, “And pretence of any kind is against my rule.”
Her eyes widened, she looked remarkably childlike and that gaze made him uneasy. He was beginning to know her well enough to expect some retort in violent contrast to the expression of her odd, mobile face, but it did not come.
“I was thinking of Ruth,” she said. “And Ethel. Yes, she has asked me to call her Ethel,” she said quickly, in answer to the slight contraction of his brows. “They are very unhappy.”
“That is my son’s responsibility. We must all suffer together.”
“But don’t suffer at all,” she suggested. “If you can’t pretend, the only thing to do is not to feel. You can’t have people thinking your son has done something wrong. In your position,” she added softly. “And Ethel and Ruth are very much worried about you.”
“They’ve shown no signs of it.”
“Ah,” she said, “they’re a little afraid of you. You can be rather terrible, Mr. Corder, if you’ll forgive my saying so. They are sitting in there, shivering and trying not to cry. Could you make them realise that you have the situation in hand, that there’ll be nothing for them to do but follow your lead? Ethel is troubling herself about Mrs. Spenser-Smith and wondering what she is to say to her—and to everybody else.”
Robert Corder did not fail in his response. “There is no need for Ethel to distress herself,” he said. “She can leave it to me. I shall go and see Mrs. Spenser-Smith tomorrow. I suppose there are troubles in every family and some day she may have some of her own.”
“I should think it’s more than likely,” Hannah said. She glanced at the clock. “I must write a letter before I go to bed. I shall just have time to catch the post. Good night, Mr. Corder.” She hesitated and said, with the timidity he found very becoming in her, “I shall tell your daughters they must try to be as brave as you are,” but as she left the study, she was telling herself that one of his children was free and she must do what she could to secure liberty for the others.
XXXI
To see Robert Corder reassuring his children,
