Hilda Lessways

n Mr. Skel

tchen polished and irreproachable, a kitchen without the slightest indication that it ever had been or ever would be used for preparing human nature’s daily food; a show kitchen. Even the apron which she had worn was hung in concealment behind the scullery door. The lobby clock, which stood over six feet high and had to be wound up eve

re you g

of the house seemed for an instant to be suspended, and then the waves of the hosti

she answer

rom the si

called with a statement of account, and cash in a linen bag. He was now due. During his previous visit Hilda had sought to inst

lained fiercely within herself, “and if I keep away

shutting of the door she put more exasperated vehemen

to belong definitely to a previous generation. The years had passed, and Hilda was now older than that mature woman was then; and yet she could not feel adult, though her childhood gleamed dimly afar off, and though the intervening expanse of ten years stretched out like a hundred years, like eternity. She was in trouble; th

mple machinery of physical existence—everlasting cookery, everlasting cleanliness, everlasting stitchery—her mother did not with a yearning sigh demand, “Must this sort of thing continue for ever, or will a new

ion and in full calf! Thomson’s Seasons, which had thrilled her by its romantic beauty! Mrs. Henry Wood’s Danesbury House, and one or two novels by Charlotte M. Yonge and Dinah Maria Craik, which she had gulped eagerly down for the mere interest of their stories. Disraeli’s Ixion, which she had admired without understanding it. A History of the North American Indians! These were the more exciting items of the set. The most exciting of all was a green volume of Tennyson’s containing Maud. She knew Maud by heart. By simple unpleasant obstinacy she had forced her mother to give her this volume for a birthday present, having seen a quotati

another book. Turnhill, a town of fifteen thousand persons, had no bookseller; the only bookseller that Mrs. Lessways had ever heard of did business at Oldcastle. Mrs. Lessways had journeyed twice over the Hillport ridge to Oldcastle, in the odd quest of a book called Maud by “Tennyson—the poet laureate”; the book had had to be sent from L

ere, had she really believed in the virtue of books. Thus far, however, books had n

ges short of marriage. And she never met a man. It was literally a fact that, except Mr. Skellorn, a few tradesmen, the vicar, the curate, and a sidesman or so, she never even spoke to a man from one month’s end to the next. The Church choir had its annual dance, to which she was invited; but the perverse creature cared not for dancing. Her mother did not seek society, did not appear to require it. Nor did Hilda acutely feel the lack of it. She could not define her need. All s

stence. Sometimes this profound infelicity of hers changed its hues for an instant, and lo! it was bliss that she was bathed in.

i

ot come; he was mo

ich Turnhill is the northern outpost, lay to the south. At the foot of Chatterley Wood the canal wound in large curves on its way towards the undefiled plains of Cheshire and the sea. On the canal-side, exactly opposite to Hilda’s window, was a flour-mill, that sometimes made nearly as much smoke as the kilns and chimn

uch of the land was copyhold and could only change owners subject to the payment of ‘fines’ and to the feudal consent of a ‘court’ presided over by the agent of a lord of the manor. Most of the dwellings were owned by their occupiers, who, each an absolute monarch of the soil, niggled in his sooty garden of an evening amid the flutter of drying shirts and towels. Freehold Villas symbolized the final triumph of Victorian economics, the apotheosis

itation of the proprietor of the terrace. One of the corner houses comprised a grocer’s shop, and this house had been robbed of its just proportion of garden so that the seigneurial garden-plot might be triflingly larger than the others. The terrace was not a terrace of cottages, but of houses rated at from twenty-six to thirty-six pounds a year; beyond the means of artisans

opened the back door to somebody, and taken her at once into the sitting-room. The occurrence was unusual. Hilda went softly out on to the landing and listened, but she

long before Hilda could possibly have appeared in response, had

rom below in an expression of tragic fretfulness. It was the uncontrolled face, shamelessly expressive, of one who thinks himself unwatched. H

s the

d like a flash her features changed in

but when the least thing happens out of the way, she runs to me for all the world like a child.” And as

amentably. “It’s Mr. Skel

of scorn, although she knew perfectly well that

oor of the sitting-room. “You know Mrs. Grant! It seems Mr

cend the stairs, and followed h