Miss Mole

The crowded little sitting-room had been unbearably hot. A large fire blazed and crackled, the canary made sad, subdued movements in its cage, Mrs. Widdows’ corsets creaked regularly, her large knees almost touched Hannah’s own, for the two women sat near each other to share the lamplight, and Hannah, luckier than the canary, had found a means of escape. Too wise to suggest that she should go out and buy the necessary silk, she had merely remarked with regret that it would be impossible for Mrs. Widdows to wear the second best dress on the morrow, and, at once, Mrs. Widdows had indignantly driven her forth with orders to return quickly. And nearly two hours had passed and the silk was still in the shop. Hannah was indifferent about the silk, for the reel she had removed from the workbasket was in the pocket of her coat, and she was twopence halfpenny and an adventure to the good, but the passage of time was a serious matter, so serious that another hour or two would make no difference. She glanced up the street, and then down, and while she seemed to hesitate between duty and desire, she had already made her choice. She would go down, towards the traffic and the shops. By the light of the street lamp, she looked at the old-fashioned flat watch she carried in her handbag. It was six o’clock. Most of the shops would be shut, but there would be light and movement; tramcars full of passengers would be leaping in their advance, like strange beasts rejoicing in their strength; people on foot would be streaming homewards from the city of Radstowe, and Miss Hannah Mole, who had no home of her own, would look at these people with envy but with the cynical reflection that some of those homes might be comparable to that of Mrs. Widdows—stuffy and unkind, or to the one she had just left—holding tragedy maliciously streaked with humour. In nearly twenty years of earning her living, as companion, nursery governess or useful help, she had lost all illusions except those she created for herself, but these appeared at her command and, stirred by her late adventure, she was ready to find another in the approach of each person she met. In Prince’s Road, however, there were not many people and such as there were walked quietly, as though the influence of the old terraced houses on one side of the road were stronger than that of the later buildings on the other. It was the old houses that gave its character to the street and here, as elsewhere in Upper Radstowe, the gently persistent personality of the place remained, unmoved by any material or spiritual changes since the first red bricks were well and truly laid. It was like a masterpiece of portrait painting in which a person of another generation looks down on his descendants and dominates them through the union of the painter’s art and something permanent in himself. Even where the old houses had disappeared, their ghosts seemed to hover over the streets and Hannah, too, walked quietly, careful not to disturb them. In no other place of her acquaintance did the trees cast such lovely shadows in the lamplight, and on this windless night the leaves were patterned with extraordinary, ethereal clearness on the pavement. Now and then she paused to look at them, puzzled that the reflected object should always seem more beautiful than the original, and eager to find some analogy to this experience in her mental processes.

“Not the thing itself, but its shadow,” she murmured, as she saw her own shadow going before her, and she nodded as though she had solved a problem. She judged herself by the shadow she chose to project for her own pleasure and it was her business in life—and one in which she usually failed—to make other people accept her creation. Yes, she failed, she failed! They would not look at the beautiful, the valuable Hannah Mole: they saw the substance and disapproved of it and she did not blame them: it was what she would have done herself and in the one case when she had concentrated on the fine shadow presented to her, she had been mistaken.