Hilda Lessways | Page 5

the
overwhelming grandeur of the disaster that had happened to her father.
The active old man, a continual figure of the streets, had been cut off in
a moment from the world and condemned for life to a mattress. She
sincerely imagined herself to be filled with proper grief; but an
aesthetic appreciation of the theatrical effectiveness of the misfortune
was certainly stronger in her than any other feeling. Observing that Mrs.
Lessways wept, she also drew out a handkerchief.
"I'm wishful for you to count the money," said Mrs. Grant. "I wouldn't
like there to be any--"
"Nay, that I'll not!" protested Mrs. Lessways.
Mrs. Grant's pressing duties necessitated her immediate departure. Mrs.
Lessways ceremoniously insisted on her leaving by the front door.
"I don't know where you'll find another rent-collector that's worth his
salt--in this town," observed Mrs. Grant, on the doorstep. "I can't think
what you'll do, Mrs. Lessways!"
"I shall collect my rents myself," was the answer.

When Mrs. Grant had crossed the road and taken the bricked path
leading to the paralytic's house, Mrs. Lessways slowly shut the door
and bolted it, and then said to Hilda:
"Well, my girl, I do think you might have tried to show just a little
more feeling!"
They were close together in the narrow lobby, of which the heavy pulse
was the clock's ticking.
Hilda replied:
"You surely aren't serious about collecting those rents yourself, are you,
mother?"
"Serious? Of course I'm serious!" said Mrs. Lessways.
II
"Why shouldn't I collect the rents myself?" asked Mrs. Lessways.
This half-defiant question was put about two hours later. In the
meantime no remark had been made about the rents. Mother and
daughter were now at tea in the sitting-room. Hilda had passed the
greater part of those two hours upstairs in her bedroom, pondering on
her mother's preposterous notion of collecting the rents herself. Alone,
she would invent conversations with her mother, silencing the foolish
woman with unanswerable sarcastic phrases that utterly destroyed her
illogical arguments. She would repeat these phrases, repeat even entire
conversations, with pleasure; and, dwelling also with pleasure upon her
grievances against her mother, would gradually arrive at a state of
dull-glowing resentment. She could, if she chose, easily free her brain
from the obsession either by reading or by a sharp jerk of volition; but
often she preferred not to do so, saying to herself voluptuously: "No, I
will nurse my grievance; I'll nurse it and nurse it and nurse it! It is mine,
and it is just, and anybody with any sense at all would admit instantly
that I am absolutely right." Thus it was on this afternoon. When she
came to tea her face was formidably expressive, nor would she attempt

to modify the rancour of those uncompromising features. On the
contrary, as soon as she saw that her mother had noticed her condition,
she deliberately intensified it.
Mrs. Lessways, who was incapable of sustained thought, and who had
completely forgotten and recalled the subject of the cottage-rents
several times since the departure of Mrs. Grant, nevertheless at once
diagnosed the cause of the trouble; and with her usual precipitancy
began to repulse an attack which had not even been opened. Mrs.
Lessways was not good at strategy, especially in conflicts with her
daughter. She was an ingenuous, hasty thing, and much too candidly
human. And not only was she deficient in practical common sense and
most absurdly unable to learn from experience, but she had not even the
wit to cover her shortcomings by resorting to the traditional
authoritativeness of the mother. Her brief, rare efforts to play the
mother were ludicrous. She was too simply honest to acquire stature by
standing on her maternal dignity. By a profound instinct she wistfully
treated everybody as an equal, as a fellow-creature; even her own
daughter. It was not the way to come with credit out of the threatened
altercation about rent-collecting.
As Hilda offered no reply, Mrs. Lessways said reproachfully:
"Hilda, you're too bad sometimes!" And then, after a further silence:
"Anyhow, I'm quite decided."
"Then what's the good of talking about it?" said the merciless child.
"But why shouldn't I collect the rents myself? I'm not asking you to
collect them. And I shall save the five per cent., and goodness knows
we need it."
"You're more likely to lose twenty-five per cent.," said Hilda. "I'll have
some more tea, please."
Mrs. Lessways was quite genuinely scandalized. "You needn't think I
shall be easy with those Calder Street tenants, because I shan't! Not me!
I'm more likely to be too hard!"

"You'll be too hard, and you'll be too easy, too," said Hilda savagely.
"You'll lose the good tenants and you'll keep the bad ones, and the
houses will all go to rack and ruin,