Читать книгу Hilda Lessways (Unabridged) - Arnold Bennett - Страница 22

“Well, you’ve got your way!” said Mrs. Lessways, with a certain grim, disdainful cheerfulness, from which benevolence was not quite absent. The drastic treatment accorded to her cold seemed to have done it good. At any rate she had not resumed the flannel petticoat, and the nasal symptoms were much less pronounced.

“Got my way?” Hilda repeated, at a loss and newly apprehensive.

Mother and daughter were setting tea. Florrie had been doing very well, but she was not yet quite equal to her situation, and the mistresses were now performing her lighter duties while she changed from the offensive drudge to the neat parlour-maid. Throughout the afternoon Hilda had avoided her mother’s sight; partly because she wanted to be alone (without knowing why), and partly because she was afraid lest Mr. Cannon, as a member of the older generation, might have betrayed her to her mother. This fear was not very genuine, though she pretended that it was and enjoyed playing with it: as if she really desired a catastrophe for the outcome of her adventure. She had only come downstairs in response to her mother’s direct summons, and instantly on seeing her she had known that Mr. Cannon was not a traitor. Which knowledge somehow rendered her gay in spite of herself. So that, what with this gaiety, and the stimulation produced in Mrs. Lessways by the visit of Mr. Cannon, and the general household relief at the obvious fact that Florrie would rather more than ‘do,’ the atmosphere around the tinkling tea-table in the half-light was decidedly pleasant.

Nevertheless the singular turn of Mrs. Lessways’ phrase,—“You’ve got your way,”—had startled the guilty Hilda.

“Mr. Cannon’s going to see to the collecting of the Calder Street rents,” explained Mrs. Lessways. “So I hope you’re satisfied, miss.”

Hilda was aware of self-consciousness.

“Yes, you may well colour up!” Mrs. Lessways pursued, genial but malicious. “You’re as pleased as Punch, and you’re saying to yourself you’ve made your old mother give way to ye again! And so you needn’t tell me!”

“I thought,” said Hilda, with all possible prim worldliness,—“I thought I heard him saying something about buying the property?”

Mrs. Lessways laughed, sceptically, confidently, as one who could not be deceived. “Pooh!” she said. “That was only a try-on. That was only so that he could begin his palaver! Don’t tell me! I may be a simpleton, but I’m not such a simpleton as he thinks for, nor as some other folks think for, either!” (At this point Hilda had to admit that in truth her mother was not completely a simpleton. In her mother was a vein of perceptive shrewdness that occasionally cropped out and made all Hilda’s critical philosophy seem school-girlish.) “Do you think I don’t know George Cannon? He came here o’ purpose to get that rent-collecting. Well, he’s got it, and he’s welcome to it, for I doubt not he’ll do it a sight better than poor Mr. Skellorn! But he needn’t hug himself that he’s been too clever for me, because he hasn’t. I gave him the rent-collecting because I thought I would!... Buy! He’s no more got a good customer for Calder Street than he’s got a good customer for this slop-bowl!”

Hilda resented this casual detraction of a being who had so deeply impressed her. And moreover she was convinced that her mother, secretly very flattered and delighted by the visit, was adopting a derisive attitude in order to ‘show off’ before her daughter. Parents are thus ingenuous! But she was so shocked and sneaped that she found it more convenient to say nothing.

“George Cannon could talk the hind leg off a horse,” Mrs. Lessways continued quite happily. “And yet it isn’t as if he said a great deal. He doesn’t. I’ll say this for him. He’s always the gentleman. And I couldn’t say as much for his sister being a lady, and I’m sorry for it. He’s the most gentlemanly man in Turnhill, and always so spruce, too!”

“His sister?”

“Well, his half-sister, since you’re so particular, Miss Precise!”

“Not Miss Gailey?” said Hilda, who began faintly to recall a forgotten fact of which she thought she had once been cognizant.

“Yes, Miss Gailey,” Mrs. Lessways snapped, still very genial and content. “I did hear she’s quarrelled out and out with him, too, at last!” She tightened her lips. “Draw the blind down.”

Miss Gailey, a spinster of superior breeding and a teacher of dancing, had in the distant past been an intimate friend of Mrs. Lessways. The friendship was legendary in the house, and the grand quarrel which had finally put an end to it dated in Hilda’s early memories like a historical event. For many years the two had not exchanged a word.

Mrs. Lessways lit the gas, and the china and the white cloth and the coloured fruit-jelly and the silver spoons caught the light and threw it off again, with gaiety.

“Has she swept the hearth? Yes, she has,” said Mrs. Lessways, glancing round at the red fire.

Hilda sat down to wait, folding her hands as it were in meekness. In a few moments Florrie entered with the teapot and the hot-water jug. The child wore proudly a new white apron that was a little too long for her, and she smiled happily at Mrs. Lessways’ brief compliment on her appearance and her briskness. She might have been in paradise.

“Come in for your cup in three minutes,” said Mrs. Lessways; and to Hilda when Florrie had whispered and gone: “Now we shall see if she can make tea. I told her very particularly this morning, and she seems quick enough.”

And when three minutes had expired Mrs. Lessways tasted the tea. Yes, it was good. It was quite good. Undeniably the water had boiled within five seconds of being poured on the leaves. There was something in this Florrie. Already she was exhibiting the mysterious quality of efficiency. The first day, being the first day, had of course not been without its discouraging moments, but on the whole Florrie had proved that she could be trusted to understand, and to do things.

“Here’s an extra piece of sugar for you,” said Mrs. Lessways, beaming, as Florrie left the parlour with her big breakfast-cup full of steaming tea, to drink with the thick bread-and-butter on the scrubbed kitchen-table, all by herself. “And don’t touch the gas in the kitchen—it’s quite high enough for young eyes,” Mrs. Lessways cried out after her.

“Little poppet!” she murmured to herself, maternally reflecting upon Florence’s tender youth.