women had yet scarcely taken to horse-racing; they would gamble upon rabbits, cocks, pigeons, and their own fists, without the mediation of the Signal. The one noise in the Market Square was the bell of a hawker selling warm pikelets at a penny each for the high tea of the tradesmen. The hawker was a deathless institution, a living proof that withdrawn Turnhill would continue always to be exactly what it always had been. Still, to the east of the Square, across the High Street, a vast space was being cleared of hovels for the erection of a new town hall daringly magnificent.
Hilda crossed the Square, scorning it.
She said to herself: “I’d better get the thing over before I buy the thread. I should never be able to stand Miss Dayson’s finicking! I should scream out!” But the next instant, with her passion for proving to herself how strong she could be, she added: “Well, I just will buy the thread first!” And she went straight into Dayson’s little fancy shop, which was full of counter and cardboard boxes and Miss Dayson, and stayed therein for at least five minutes, emerging with a miraculously achieved leisureliness. A few doors away was a somewhat new building, of three storeys—the highest in the Square. The ground floor was an ironmongery; it comprised also a side entrance, of which the door was always open. This side entrance showed a brass-plate, “Q. Karkeek, Solicitor.” And the wire-blinds of the two windows of the first floor also bore the words: “Q. Karkeek, Solicitor. Q. Karkeek, Solicitor.” The queerness of the name had attracted Hilda’s attention several years earlier, when the signs were fresh. It was an accident that she had noticed it; she had not noticed the door-plates or the wire-blinds of other solicitors. She did not know Mr. Q. Karkeek by sight, nor even whether he was old or young, married or single, agreeable or repulsive.
The side entrance gave directly on to a long flight of naked stairs, and up these stairs Hilda climbed into the unknown, towards the redoubtable and the perilous. “I’m bound to be seen,” she said to herself, “but I don’t care, and I don’t care!” At the top of the stairs was a passage, at right angles, and then a glazed door with the legend in black letters, “Q. Karkeek, Solicitor,” and two other doors mysteriously labelled “Private.” She opened the glazed door, and saw a dirty middle-aged man on a stool, and she said at once to him, in a harsh, clear, deliberate voice, without giving herself time to reflect:
“I want to see Mr. Karkeek.”
The man stared at her sourly, as if bewildered.
She said to herself: “I shan’t be able to stand this excitement much longer.”
“You can’t see Mr. Karkeek,” said the man. “Mr. Karkeek’s detained at Hanbridge County Court. But if you’re in such a hurry like, you’d better see Mr. Cannon. It’s Mr. Cannon as they generally do see. Who d’ye come from, miss?”
“Come from?” Hilda repeated, unnerved.
“What name?”
She had not expected this. “I suppose I shall have to tell him!” she said to herself, and aloud: “Lessways.”
“Oh! Ah!” exclaimed the man. “Bless us! Yes!” It was as if he had said: “Of course it’s Lessways! And don’t I know all about you!” And Hilda was overwhelmed by the sense of the enormity of the folly which she was committing.
The man swung half round on his stool, and seized the end of an india-rubber tube which hung at the side of the battered and littered desk, just under a gas-jet. He spoke low, like a conspirator, into the mouthpiece of the tube. “Miss Lessways—to see you, sir.” Then very quickly he clapped the tube to his ear and listened. And then he put it to his mouth again and repeated: “Lessways.” Hilda was agonized.
“I’ll ask ye to step this way, miss,” said the man, slipping off his stool. At the same time he put a long inky penholder, which he had been holding in his wrinkled right hand, between his teeth.
“Never,” thought Hilda as she followed the clerk, in a whirl of horrible misgivings, “never have I done anything as mad as this before! I’m under twenty-one!”
III
There she was at last, seated in front of a lawyer in a lawyer’s office—her ladyship consulting her own lawyer! It seemed incredible! A few minutes ago she had been at home, and now she was in a world unfamiliar and alarming. Perhaps it was a pity that her mother had unsuspectingly put the scheme into her head!
However, the deed was done. Hilda generally acted first and reflected afterwards. She was frightened, but rather by the unknown than by anything she could define.
“You’ve come about the property?” said Mr. Cannon amiably, in a matter-of-fact tone.
He had deep black eyes, and black hair, like Hilda’s; good, regular teeth, and a clear complexion; perhaps his nose was rather large, but it was straight. With his large pale hands he occasionally stroked his long soft moustache; the chin was blue. He was smartly dressed in dark blue; he had a beautiful neck-tie, and the genuine whiteness of his wristbands was remarkable in a district where starched linen was usually either grey or bluish. He was not a dandy, but he respected his person; he evidently gave careful attention to his body; and this trait alone set him apart among the citizens of Turnhill.
“Yes,” said Hilda. She thought: “He’s a very handsome man! How strange I don’t remember seeing him in the streets!” She was in awe of him. He was indefinitely older than herself; and she felt like a child, out of place in the easy-chair.
“I suppose it’s about the rent-collecting?” he pursued.
“Yes—it is,” she answered, astonished that he could thus divine her purpose. “I mean—”
“What does your mother want to do?”
“Oh!” said Hilda, speaking low. “It’s not mother. I’ve come to consult you myself. Mother doesn’t know. I’m nearly twenty-one, and it’s really my property, you know!” She blushed with shame.
“Ah!” he exclaimed. He tried to disguise his astonishment in an easy, friendly smile. But he was most obviously startled. He looked at Hilda in a different way, with a much intensified curiosity.
“Yes,” she resumed. He now seemed to her more like a fellow-creature, and less like a member of the inimical older generation.
“So you’re nearly twenty-one?”
“In December,” she said. “And I think under my father’s will—” She stopped, at a loss. “The fact is, I don’t think mother will be quite able to look after the property properly, and I’m afraid—you see, now that Mr. Skellorn has had this stroke—”
“Yes,” said Mr. Cannon, “I heard about that, and I was thinking perhaps Mrs. Lessways had sent you.... We collect rents, you know.”
“I see!” Hilda murmured. “Well, the truth is, mother hasn’t the slightest idea I’m here. Not the slightest! And I wouldn’t hurt her feelings for anything.” He nodded sympathetically. “But I thought something ought to be done. She’s decided to collect our Calder Street rents herself, and she isn’t fitted to do it. And then there’s the question of the repairs.... I know the rents are going down. I expect it’s all mother’s for life, but I want there to be something left for me when she’s gone, you see! And if—I’ve never seen the will. I suppose there’s no way of seeing a copy of it, somewhere?... I can’t very well ask mother
