Hilda Lessways

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Hilda Lessways

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Title: Hilda Lessways
Author: Arnold Bennett
Release Date: January 9, 2004 [EBook #10658]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
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HILDA LESSWAYS
BY ARNOLD BENNETT

1911

CONTENTS
BOOK I HER START IN LIFE
I AN EVENT IN MR. SKELLORN'S LIFE II THE END OF THE
SCENE III MR. CANNON IV DOMESTICITY INVADED V MRS.
LESSWAYS' SHREWDNESS VI VICTOR HUGO AND ISAAC
PITMAN VII THE EDITORIAL SECRETARY VIII JANET
ORGREAVE IX IN THE STREET X MISS GAILEY IN
DECLENSION XI DISILLUSION XII THE TELEGRAM XIII
HILDA'S WORLD XIV TO LONDON
BOOK II HER RECOVERY
I SIN II THE LITTLE ROOM III JOURNEY TO BLEAKRIDGE IV
WITH THE ORGREAVES V EDWIN CLAYHANGER VI IN THE
GARDEN VII THE NEXT MEETING
BOOK III HER BURDEN
I HILDA INDISPENSABLE II SARAH'S BENEFACTOR III AT
BRIGHTON IV THE SEA
BOOK IV HER FALL
I THE GOING CONCERN II THE UNKNOWN ADVENTURE III
FLORRIE AGAIN
BOOK V HER DELIVERANCE
I LOUISA UNCONTROLLED II SOME SECRET HISTORY
BOOK VI HER PUNISHMENT
I EVENING AT BLEAKRIDGE II A RENDEZVOUS III AT THE

WORKS IV THE CALL FROM BRIGHTON V THURSDAY
AFTERNOON VI MISCHANCE
* * * * *

BOOK I HER START IN LIFE
CHAPTER I
AN EVENT IN MR. SKELLORN'S LIFE
I
The Lessways household, consisting of Hilda and her widowed mother,
was temporarily without a servant. Hilda hated domestic work, and
because she hated it she often did it passionately and thoroughly. That
afternoon, as she emerged from the kitchen, her dark, defiant face was
full of grim satisfaction in the fact that she had left a kitchen 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 every night by hauling on a
rope, was noisily getting ready to strike two. But for Mrs. Lessways'
disorderly and undesired assistance, Hilda's task might have been
finished a quarter of an hour earlier. She passed quietly up the stairs.
When she was near the top, her mother's voice, at once querulous and
amiable, came from the sitting-room:
"Where are you going to?"
There was a pause, dramatic for both of them, and in that minute pause
the very life of the house seemed for an instant to be suspended, and
then the waves of the hostile love that united these two women resumed
their beating, and Hilda's lips hardened.
"Upstairs," she answered callously.

No reply from the sitting-room!
At two o'clock on the last Wednesday of every month, old Mr. Skellorn,
employed by Mrs. Lessways to collect her cottage-rents, called with a
statement of account, and cash in a linen bag. He was now due. During
his previous visit Hilda had sought to instil some common sense into
her mother on the subject of repairs, and there had ensued an altercation
which had never been settled.
"If I stayed down, she wouldn't like it," Hilda complained fiercely
within herself, "and if I keep away she doesn't like that either! That's
mother all over!"
She went to her bedroom. And into the soft, controlled shutting of the
door she put more exasperated vehemence than would have sufficed to
bang it off its hinges.
II
At this date, late October in 1878, Hilda was within a few weeks of
twenty-one. She was a woman, but she could not realize that she was a
woman. She remembered that when she first went to school, at the age
of eight, an assistant teacher aged nineteen had seemed to her to be
unquestionably and absolutely a woman, had seemed 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; the trouble grew daily more and more
tragic; and the trouble was that she wanted she knew not what. If her
mother had said to her squarely, "Tell me