XXXVI

Sitting by the fire and waiting for Ethel’s arrival, Hannah was almost annoyed to find that the acute stage of her suffering had passed before she had had an opportunity to lie on her bed and cry until she could cry no longer. That was what she had meant to do, but first Ruth and then Robert Corder had made demands on her and the contact with their minds and Wilfrid’s, had diverted her thoughts into several channels and the strength had gone from the main one. “And a good thing, too!” Hannah said to herself. She was able to analyse the emotions she had no need to control and did not wish to express in an extravagance of weeping, and she could wonder how much the presence of Mr. Blenkinsop had contributed to her pain and whether, meeting the circumstances alone, she could have dealt with them more sanely, with her usual acceptance of human frailty. She ought to have gone on and got what humour she could out of a situation in which her lover offered her house to Mr. Blenkinsop, but she was not callous enough for that, nor cruel enough to put the offerer to such confusion. And his shame would have been hers; the worse he proved himself, the greater was her folly and, at once, she began to find excuses for him. Perhaps he wanted to let the house for her sake and intended to send her the money; perhaps his conscience had begun to prick him after ten years of somnolence, but even to Hannah’s eagerness, these explanations were unsatisfactory, and she knew it was more likely that he was weary of the place and wanted to get rid of it, and saw no difference between living there for nothing and taking the proceeds of someone else’s tenancy. There was the chance, and Hannah unwisely clung to it, that Mr. Blenkinsop’s information, received in such a roundabout fashion, had been distorted in transit, but all these speculations were useless. Though she had cured Mr. Blenkinsop of wishing to see her again, though she had given him food for curious thought, she was not otherwise much worse off than she had been before, and she would be actually better off if she could be ruthless with her memories and face the fact that the man she had loved, with a recklessness due to a hero who had risked death and been grievously wounded, had not been worth loving at all; that he, at least, had had no romantic notions of a lifelong attachment; that he had merely seen her as a young woman, enamoured, like many others, of a soldier, who had offered him a home when he had none. He had taken her as part of the house, like the furniture and the fowls, and it was horrible to think that probably at no stage of their intercourse had he considered her as more than a temporary and amusing convenience. If there had been any other sentiment, at any time, any realisation that a woman of her character was not one for easy alliances, or that she had imperilled her future while she made the present secure for him, he could not have treated her to years of silence and to this final insult.

Yet it was well that this had happened, Hannah thought. She was bare, she was bereft, but she was no longer trying to be blind, and she was the stronger to meet Mr. Pilgrim. She could transform herself into cousin Hilda without any sickening qualms of disloyalty to a memory and, given a little time, she could put these hurts so far from her that she would persuade herself it was really cousin Hilda who had endured them.

The expedition to her house had been an odd coincidence and, with the imminence of Mr. Pilgrim, it would have persuaded some people that God approved of the laws men had made, and ratified them with cunningly contrived punishments for offenders, but this would be to make God responsible for Mr. Pilgrim, who had spared a little time from his exhortations to the troops encamped near Hannah’s cottage, for reproaching a woman for her care of a man broken in doing what Mr. Pilgrim had no intention of doing himself: it made God responsible for Mr. Pilgrim’s conscience, then and now, a state of things inconsistent with Hannah’s conception of her Deity. No, no, men made the laws and, impatient at seeing them broken, they devised the punishments, and their representatives, in the persons of Mr. Pilgrim, Robert Corder and Ethel, in Hannah’s case, would see that the penalties were rigorously administered. And no doubt it was God who suffered most, at the sight of His creatures making each other miserable. Hannah was sure He was more tenderly tolerant of her than she was herself, that He grieved for her in having mistaken her man, but knew her love had been largely compounded of pity, like God’s own; that, in her act, he saw a rashness emulative of deeds of another kind, not permitted to her sex, and, as he had watched, presumably in some wise helplessness, the torture of brave men, so he observed her lesser agonies, so small compared with theirs that Hannah was ashamed to dwell on them.

It was comforting to know that God and she understood each other, she told herself, with a cynical smile for her presumption, and it was strange to think that Mr. Pilgrim was probably as sure of God’s nature as she was, and, like her, made it fit his prejudices; strange that a God who had as many characters as the men and women who sought Him in times of trouble and forgot Him in their happiness, should yet have the power of giving peace to bewildered spirits; strange, too, that the dreary dining-room felt like a home. The resuscitated fire babbled its cheerful inanities, Uncle Jim’s corrected gas did its best to do as it had been told, the almost inaudible ticking of the marble clock had a faintly friendly sound. Hannah’s peace might only have been that of exhaustion, but she believed it was something more and, in any case, it would serve her turn which was to fit her to waylay Ethel before she could rush upstairs and begin the process known to Ruth as banging, and persuade her to accept her father’s bargain.

In the meantime, Hannah likened herself again to her little ship, becalmed after a storm, and using the calm for overhauling her condition, in readiness for the next misadventure. The misadventure would come. Small lonely ships which set out on perilous voyages, must be prepared for worse treatment than bigger ones receive, especially when they are hampered by bad records, but, changing the metaphor, Hannah refused to be the dog with a bad name who, foreseeing hanging, waits passively for his punishment. There was work for her to do, and though there was humour in the thought that she would not be allowed to do it if Robert Corder knew about her past, and that the time might yet come when he would look back with horror at the confidences he had made to the unscrupulous Miss Mole, she was not going to lose her pleasure while it lasted, and she was proud of her little triumphs, culminating, on this day which had seemed so unrelievedly black, in Robert Corder’s asking of a favour, and its inevitable effect of making Hannah like him rather better.

She was thinking that she might even learn to like Mr. Pilgrim, when a sound at the front door drove her into the hall, and there was Ethel, with a new stubborn look on her face. The study door opened a minute later, but it was discreetly shut by an unseen hand, for Hannah was asking Ethel if she had had any supper, saying she had fasted herself since five o’clock, and proposing that they should go into the larder and see what they could find.

This was the sort of greeting Ethel had not looked for and, braced to meet abuse, she collapsed under kindness to the extent of accompanying Miss Mole into the kitchen. “I’ve been to Highfields Chapel,” she said, anxious to sustain her attitude of independence, “and then I went to see Patsy Withers.”

“But she’s the one who’s been telling tales about you.”

“That’s why I went.”

“H’m,” said Hannah, “people who tell tales seem to have an attraction for you. And just look what they’ve done to the joint while I was out! Mangled it! And wasted,” she eyed it calculatingly, “at least half a pound, I should say.”

“It may have been wasted, but it wasn’t eaten,” Ethel said, and Hannah looked at her with quick appreciation, but Ethel was not trying to be funny, she was merely stating a fact. “And that reminds me,” she went on, and now it was she who looked at Hannah, “I met Mr. Blenkinsop just now.”

“Why does it remind you? Oh, I suppose he made part of the midday meal. Well, what was he doing?”

“Having a walk, he said.”

“I should have thought he’d walked enough.”

“You never told us you were going out with him.”

“You never told us you were going to Mr. Pilgrim’s chapel. I don’t think we’ll have any of this reminiscent mutton. I’ll warm some soup. And was Miss Withers pleased to see you?”

“She was more pleased to see me go,” Ethel said with her unconscious humour. “Mr. Blenkinsop was walking up and down on the other side of the road.”

“Dear me! I’m afraid I’ve wound him up and he can’t run down. And did Mr. Pilgrim preach a good sermon?”

“Yes,” Ethel said unwillingly, “but that’s quite a different thing.”

“I don’t follow you,” Hannah said politely as she stirred the soup.

“I mean, going out with Mr. Blenkinsop is quite different from going to a service.”

“That was what I hoped,” Hannah admitted.

“And I don’t see why I shouldn’t go where I can get⁠—get what I want.”

“Ah, don’t try too hard for it,” Hannah said, and she spoke dreamily because she was thinking of Mr. Blenkinsop, walking up and down the road. Did he think she meant to do something desperate? And would he walk up and down all night? It seemed to her that the kindest, the most painful, and yet the pleasantest thing she could do was to run out and tell him all was well.

She put a bowl of steaming soup in front of Ethel. “Drink that,” she said. “I shall be back in a minute.”

Mr. Blenkinsop was turning slowly and coming towards her when she reached the pavement, and she hurried across the road to him.

“It’s all right, it’s all right!” she exclaimed, half laughing, and putting out a hand, she said, “Forgive me. I’ve spoilt your day, I’ve spoilt everything, but it was only a temporary insanity. Now I’m in as right a mind as I ever had.”

“I can’t leave it at that,” Mr. Blenkinsop muttered, holding her hand firmly.

“But it’s too late to get me certified tonight.”

“Can’t you be serious, just for once?” he begged.

“I’ve been serious for hours. That was the mistake. One’s self is the wrong subject for seriousness, Mr. Blenkinsop.”

“But I’m serious for you.”

“I was afraid so. That was why I came out. To tell you there was no need, and to say good night.”

“I shan’t have a good night,” he said testily.

“That will be a change, won’t it?” she asked, and giving his hand a parting pressure and freeing it with some difficulty, she went back into the house.

Ethel was making large eyes over the bowl of soup. “Wherever have you been, Miss Mole?”

“Turning policeman X off his beat. It’s time the poor man had some supper, and I’m hungry, too. Didn’t Miss Withers offer you anything to eat?”

“Yes, she did, but I wouldn’t have it. Of course I wouldn’t! What did she want to interfere for?”

“Why does anyone want to interfere? If we could all live and let live, we should be happier.”

Ethel grew restive. “I know what you’re hinting at, and nobody wants to do you any harm, Miss Mole.”

“They can’t,” Hannah said stoutly.

“But we have to do what’s right.”

“I’m sure Miss Withers used those very words.”

“But it’s so different! I’ve done nothing to be ashamed of. It’s not wrong just because it vexes Father.”

“That’s true,” Hannah said, “but what does Mr. Pilgrim think about it?”

“He says it helps him to have me there.”

“So you’re trying to help him, and Miss Withers is trying to help your father.”

“No she isn’t. She’s trying to make him think we need somebody to look after us. She said she felt like a mother towards us, Miss Mole, and that’s what she’d like to be. I told her you could do everything we needed, and we didn’t want anybody else.”

“That was very nice of you,” Hannah said, “and one in the eye for Patsy!”

“And that’s what worries me,” Ethel said. “One of the things. You’re so kind, Miss Mole, and so unselfish, but Mr. Pilgrim says he doesn’t see how you could have a cousin so exactly like you. And there’s Ruth to be thought of.”

“Ruth!” Hannah controlled herself and waited.

“He says you and your cousin would have to be twins.”

“So we are⁠—spiritually. Poor Mr. Pilgrim! Poor Miss Withers! How anxious some people are for the welfare of some of the others! And I’m anxious about yours and that’s enough to make you suspicious, I’ll admit, but I really mean it. Listen. If Mr. Pilgrim finds you such a help, he’ll come and look for you when he wants you.”

“But Father doesn’t like him.”

“Perhaps he’ll learn to,” Hannah said hopefully, “but he won’t if you desert the chapel. It really isn’t quite fair to him you know. Now, don’t start crying! What are you crying for?” she asked and she regretted the sharpness of her voice when she heard Ethel’s answer, pathetic in its distrust of herself and in her helpless readiness to confess it.

“Because Mr. Pilgrim may not come.”

“Oh, he’ll come,” Hannah said. “Why, he’ll come if it’s only to have another look at me! Has he told you why he’s so curious about me?”

“No, he says it isn’t fit for me to hear.”

“Then you may be sure he’ll tell you,” Hannah said encouragingly.