Hilda Lessways | Page 2

what it is will make you a bit
more contented, and you shall have it even if it kills me!" Hilda could
only have answered with the fervour of despair, "I don't know! I don't
know!"
Her mother was a creature contented enough. And why not--with a
sufficient income, a comfortable home, and fair health? At the end of a
day devoted partly to sheer vacuous idleness and partly to the

monotonous simple 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 era dawn?" Not a bit! Mrs. Lessways went to bed in
the placid expectancy of a very similar day on the morrow, and of an
interminable succession of such days. The which was incomprehensible
and offensive to Hilda.
She was in a prison with her mother, and saw no method of escape, saw
not so much as a locked door, saw nothing but blank walls. Even could
she by a miracle break prison, where should she look for the unknown
object of her desire, and for what should she look? Enigmas! It is true
that she read, occasionally with feverish enjoyment, especially verse.
But she did not and could not read enough. Of the shelf-ful of books
which in thirty years had drifted by one accident or another into the
Lessways household, she had read every volume, except Cruden's
Concordance. A heterogeneous and forlorn assemblage! Lavater's
Physiognomy, in a translation 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 quotation
from it in a ladies' magazine. At that date in Turnhill, as in many other
towns of England, the poem had not yet lived down a reputation for
immorality; but fortunately Mrs. Lessways had only the vaguest notion
of its dangerousness, and was indeed a negligent kind of woman.
Dangerous the book was! Once in reciting it aloud in her room, Hilda
had come so near to fainting that she had had to stop and lie down on
the bed, until she could convince herself that she was not the male lover
crying to his beloved. An astounding and fearful experience, and not to
be too lightly renewed! For Hilda, Maud was a source of lovely and
exquisite pain.

Why had she not used her force of character to obtain more books? One
reason lay in the excessive difficulty to be faced. Birthdays are
infrequent; and besides, the enterprise of purchasing Maud had proved
so complicated and tedious that Mrs. Lessways, with that curious
stiffness which marked her sometimes, had sworn never to attempt to
buy 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
London; and on her second excursion to Oldcastle Mrs. Lessways had
been caught by the rain in the middle of Hillport Marsh. No! Hilda
could not easily demand the gift of another book, when all sorts of nice,
really useful presents could be bought in the High Street. Nor was there
in Turnhill a Municipal Library, nor any public lending-library.
Yet possibly Hilda's terrific egoism might have got fresh books
somehow from somewhere, had she really believed in the virtue of
books. Thus far, however, books had not furnished her with what she
wanted, and her faith in their promise was insecure.
Books failing, might she not have escaped into some vocation? The
sole vocation conceivable for her was that of teaching, and she knew,
without having tried it, that she abhorred teaching. Further, there was
no economical reason why she should work. In 1878, unless pushed by
necessity, no girl might dream of a vocation: the idea was monstrous; it
was almost unmentionable. Still further, she had no wish to work for
work's sake. Marriage remained. But she felt herself a child, ages short
of marriage. And she never met a man. It was literally a fact that,
except Mr. Skellorn, a few tradesmen, the