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Title: Anna of the Five Towns

Author: Arnold Bennett

Release date: March 6, 2011 [eBook #35505]
                Most recently updated: January 7, 2021

Language: English

Credits: Produced by Al Haines


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ANNA OF THE FIVE TOWNS ***




Produced by Al Haines









ANNA OF THE FIVE TOWNS


BY

ARNOLD BENNETT




THIRTEENTH EDITION




METHUEN & CO. LTD.

36 ESSEX STREET W.C.

LONDON




  First issued in this Cheap Form (Third Edition) - September 5th 1912
  Fourth Edition  - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - September     1912
  Fifth Edition - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - February      1913
  Sixth Edition - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - July          1913
  Seventh Edition - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - April         1914
  Eighth Edition  - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - September     1914
  Ninth Edition - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - November      1915
  Tenth Edition - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - July          1916
  Eleventh Edition  - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - March         1917
  Twelfth Edition - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - February      1918
  Thirteenth Edition  - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -       1919



  This Book was First Published by Messrs Chatto &
    Windus  - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - September 11th, 1902
  Second Edition  - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - November        1902




I DEDICATE THIS BOOK

WITH AFFECTION AND ADMIRATION

TO

HERBERT SHARPE

AN ARTIST

WHOSE INDIVIDUALITY AND ACHIEVEMENT

HAVE CONTINUALLY INSPIRED ME




  'Therefore, although it be a history
  Homely and rude, I will relate the same
  For the delight of a few natural hearts.'




CONTENTS

CHAPTER

    I. THE KINDLING OF LOVE
   II. THE MISER'S DAUGHTER
  III. THE BIRTHDAY
   IV. A VISIT
    V. THE REVIVAL
   VI. WILLIE
  VII. THE SEWING MEETING
 VIII. ON THE BANK
   IX. THE TREAT
    X. THE ISLE
   XI. THE DOWNFALL
  XII. AT THE PRIORY
 XIII. THE BAZAAR
  XIV. END OF A SIMPLE SOUL




ANNA OF THE FIVE TOWNS




CHAPTER I

THE KINDLING OF LOVE

The yard was all silent and empty under the burning afternoon heat,
which had made its asphalt springy like turf, when suddenly the
children threw themselves out of the great doors at either end of the
Sunday-school--boys from the right, girls from the left--in two
howling, impetuous streams, that widened, eddied, intermingled and
formed backwaters until the whole quadrangle was full of clamour and
movement.  Many of the scholars carried prize-books bound in vivid
tints, and proudly exhibited these volumes to their companions and to
the teachers, who, tall, languid, and condescending, soon began to
appear amid the restless throng.  Near the left-hand door a little girl
of twelve years, dressed in a cream coloured frock, with a wide and
heavy straw hat, stood quietly kicking her foal-like legs against the
wall.  She was one of those who had won a prize, and once or twice she
took the treasure from under her arm to glance at its frontispiece with
a vague smile of satisfaction.  For a time her bright eyes were fixed
expectantly on the doorway; then they would wander, and she started to
count the windows of the various Connexional buildings which on three
sides enclosed the yard--chapel, school, lecture-hall, and
chapel-keeper's house.  Most of the children had already squeezed
through the narrow iron gate into the street beyond, where a steam-car
was rumbling and clattering up Duck Bank, attended by its immense
shadow.  The teachers remained a little behind.  Gradually dropping the
pedagogic pose, and happy in the virtuous sensation of duty
accomplished, they forgot the frets and fatigues of the day, and grew
amiably vivacious among themselves.  With an instinctive mutual
complacency the two sexes mixed again after separation.  Greetings and
pleasantries were exchanged, and intimate conversations begun; and
then, dividing into small familiar groups, the young men and women
slowly followed their pupils out of the gate.  The chapel-keeper, who
always had an injured expression, left the white step of his residence,
and, walking with official dignity across the yard, drew down the
side-windows of the chapel one after another.  As he approached the
little solitary girl in his course he gave her a reluctant acid
recognition; then he returned to his hearth.  Agnes was alone.

'Well, young lady?'

She looked round with a jump, and blushed, smiling and screwing up her
little shoulders, when she recognised the two men who were coming
towards her from the door of the lecture-hall.  The one who had called
out was Henry Mynors, morning superintendent of the Sunday-school and
conductor of the men's Bible-class held in the lecture-hall on Sunday
afternoons.  The other was William Price, usually styled Willie Price,
secretary of the same Bible-class, and son of Titus Price, the
afternoon superintendent.

'I'm sure you don't deserve that prize.  Let me see if it isn't too
good for you.'  Mynors smiled playfully down upon Agnes Tellwright as
he idly turned the leaves of the book which she handed to him.  'Now,
do you deserve it?  Tell me honestly.'

She scrutinised those sparkling and vehement black eyes with the
fearless calm of infancy.  'Yes, I do,' she answered in her high, thin
voice, having at length decided within herself that Mr. Mynors was
joking.

'Then I suppose you must have it,' he admitted, with a fine air of
giving way.

As Agnes took the volume from him she thought how perfect a man Mr.
Mynors was.  His eyes, so kind and sincere, and that mysterious,
delicious, inexpressible something which dwelt behind his eyes: these
constituted an ideal for her.

Willie Price stood somewhat apart, grinning, and pulling a thin
honey-coloured moustache.  He was at the uncouth, disjointed age,
twenty-one, and nine years younger than Henry Mynors.  Despite a
continual effort after ease of manner, he was often sheepish and
self-conscious, even, as now, when he could discover no reason for such
a condition of mind.  But Agnes liked him too.  His simple, pale blue
eyes had a wistfulness which made her feel towards him as she felt
towards her doll when she happened to find it lying neglected on the
floor.

'Your big sister isn't out of school yet?' Mynors remarked.

Agnes shook her head.  'I've been waiting ever so long,' she said
plaintively.

At that moment a grey-haired woman with a benevolent but rather pinched
face emerged with much briskness from the girls' door.  This was Mrs.
Sutton, a distant relative of Mynors'--his mother had been her second
cousin.  The men raised their hats.

'I've just been down to make sure of some of you slippery folks for the
sewing-meeting,' she said, shaking hands with Mynors, and including
both him and Willie Price in an embracing maternal smile.  She was
short-sighted and did not perceive Agnes, who had fallen back.

'Had a good class this afternoon, Henry?'  Mrs. Sutton's breathing was
short and quick.

'Oh, yes,' he said, 'very good indeed.'

'You're doing a grand work.'

'We had over seventy present,' he added.

'Eh!' she said, 'I make nothing of numbers.  Henry.  I meant a _good_
class.  Doesn't it say--Where _two or three_ are gathered together...?
But I must be getting on.  The horse will be restless.  I've to go up
to Hillport before tea.  Mrs. Clayton Vernon is ill.'

Scarcely having stopped in her active course, Mrs. Sutton drew the men
along with her down the yard, she and Mynors in rapid talk: Willie
Price fell a little to the rear, his big hands half-way into his
pockets and his eyes diffidently roving.  It appeared as though he
could not find courage to take a share in the conversation, yet was
anxious to convince himself of his right to do so.

Mynors helped Mrs. Sutton into her carriage, which had been drawn up
outside the gate of the school yard.  Only two families of the Bursley
Wesleyan Methodists kept a carriage, the Suttons and the Clayton
Vernons.  The latter, boasting lineage and a large house in the
aristocratic suburb of Hillport, gave to the society monetary aid and a
gracious condescension.  But though indubitably above the operation of
any unwritten sumptuary law, even the Clayton Vernons ventured only in
wet weather to bring their carriage to chapel.  Yet Mrs. Sutton, who
was a plain woman, might with impunity use her equipage on Sundays.
This license granted by Connexional opinion was due to the fact that
she so obviously regarded her carriage, not as a carriage, but as a
contrivance on four wheels for enabling an infirm creature to move
rapidly from place to place.  When she got into it she had exactly the
air of a doctor on his rounds.  Mrs. Sutton's bodily frame had long ago
proved inadequate to the ceaseless demands of a spirit indefatigably
altruistic, and her continuance in activity was a notable illustration
of the dominion of mind over matter.  Her husband, a potter's valuer
and commission agent, made money with facility in that lucrative
vocation, and his wife's charities were famous, notwithstanding her
attempts to hide them.  Neither husband nor wife had allowed riches to
put a factitious gloss upon their primal simplicity.  They were as they
were, save that Mr. Sutton had joined the Five Towns Field Club and
acquired some of the habits of an archaeologist.  The influence of
wealth on manners was to be observed only in their daughter Beatrice,
who, while favouring her mother, dressed at considerable expense, and
at intervals gave much time to the arts of music and painting.  Agnes
watched the carriage drive away, and then turned to look up the stairs
within the school doorway.  She sighed, scowled, and sighed again,
murmured something to herself, and finally began to read her book.

'Not come out yet?'  Mynors was at her side once more, alone this time.

'No, not yet,' said Agnes, wearied.  'Yes.  Here she is.  Anna, what
ages you've been!'

Anna Tellwright stood motionless for a second in the shadow of the
doorway.  She was tall, but not unusually so, and sturdily built up.
Her figure, though the bust was a little flat, had the lenient curves
of absolute maturity.  Anna had been a woman since seventeen, and she
was now on the eve of her twenty-first birthday.  She wore a plain,
home-made light frock checked with brown and edged with brown velvet,
thin cotton gloves of cream colour, and a broad straw hat like her
sister's.  Her grave face, owing to the prominence of the cheekbones
and the width of the jaw, had a slight angularity; the lips were thin,
the brown eyes rather large, the eyebrows level, the nose fine and
delicate; the ears could scarcely be seen for the dark brown hair which
was brushed diagonally across the temples, leaving of the forehead only
a pale triangle.  It seemed a face for the cloister, austere in
contour, fervent in expression, the severity of it mollified by that
resigned and spiritual melancholy peculiar to women who through the
error of destiny have been born into a wrong environment.

As if charmed forward by Mynors' compelling eyes, Anna stepped into the
sunlight, at the same time putting up her parasol.  'How calm and
stately she is,' he thought, as she gave him her cool hand and murmured
a reply to his salutation.  But even his aquiline gaze could not
surprise the secrets of that concealing breast: this was one of the
three great tumultuous moments of her life--she realised for the first
time that she was loved.

'You are late this afternoon, Miss Tellwright,' Mynors began, with the
easy inflections of a man well accustomed to prominence in the society
of women.  Little Agnes seized Anna's left arm, silently holding up the
prize, and Anna nodded appreciation.

'Yes,' she said as they walked across the yard, 'one of my girls has
been doing wrong.  She stole a Bible from another girl, so of course I
had to mention it to the superintendent.  Mr. Price gave her a long
lecture, and now she is waiting upstairs till he is ready to go with
her to her home and talk to her parents.  He says she must be
dismissed.'

'Dismissed!'

Anna's look flashed a grateful response to him.  By the least possible
emphasis he had expressed a complete disagreement with his senior
colleague which etiquette forbade him to utter in words.

'I think it's a very great pity,' Anna said firmly.  'I rather like the
girl,' she ventured in haste; 'you might speak to Mr. Price about it.'

'If he mentions it to me.'

'Yes, I meant that.  Mr. Price said--if it had been anything else but a
_Bible_----'

'Um!' he murmured very low, but she caught the significance of his
intonation.  They did not glance at each other: it was unnecessary.
Anna felt that comfortable easement of the spirit which springs from
the recognition of another spirit capable of understanding without
explanations and of sympathising without a phrase.  Under that calm
mask a strange and sweet satisfaction thrilled through her as her
precious instinct of common sense--rarest of good qualities, and pining
always for fellowship--found a companion in his own.  She had dreaded
the overtures which for a fortnight past she had foreseen were
inevitably to come from Mynors: he was a stranger, whom she merely
respected.  Now in a sudden disclosure she knew him and liked him.  The
dire apprehension of those formal 'advances' which she had watched
other men make to other women faded away.  It was at once a release and
a reassurance.

They were passing through the gate, Agnes skipping round her sister's
skirts, when Willie Price reappeared front the direction of the chapel.

'Forgotten something?' Mynors inquired of him blandly.

'Ye-es,' he stammered, clumsily raising his hat to Anna.  She thought
of him exactly as Agnes had done.  He hesitated for a fraction of time,
and then went up the yard towards the lecture-hall.

'Agnes has been showing me her prize,' said Mynors, as the three stood
together outside the gate.  'I ask her if she thinks she really
deserves it, and she says she does.  What do you think, Miss Big
Sister?'

Anna gave the little girl an affectionate smile of comprehension.
'What is it called, dear?'

'"Janey's Sacrifice or the Spool of Cotton, and other stories for
children,"' Agnes read out in a monotone: then she clutched Anna's
elbow and aimed a whisper at her ear.

'Very well, dear,' Anna answered aloud, 'but we must be back by a
quarter-past four.'  And turning to Mynors: 'Agnes wants to go up to
the Park to hear the band play.'

'I'm going up there, too,' he said.  'Come along, Agnes, take my arm
and show me the way.'  Shyly Agnes left her sister's side and put a
pink finger into Mynors' hand.

Moor Road, which climbs over the ridge to the mining village of
Moorthorne and passes the new Park on its way, was crowded with people
going up to criticise and enjoy this latest outcome of municipal
enterprise in Bursley: sedate elders of the borough who smiled grimly
to see one another on Sunday afternoon in that undignified, idly
curious throng; white-skinned potters, and miners with the swarthy
pallor of subterranean toil; untidy Sabbath loafers whom neither church
nor chapel could entice, and the primly-clad respectable who had not
only clothes but a separate deportment for the seventh day; house-wives
whose pale faces, as of prisoners free only for a while, showed a naïve
and timorous pleasure in the unusual diversion; young women made
glorious by richly-coloured stuffs and carrying themselves with the
defiant independence of good wages earned in warehouse or
painting-shop; youths oppressed by stiff new clothes bought at
Whitsuntide, in which the bright necktie and the nosegay revealed a
thousand secret aspirations; young children running and yelling with
the marvellous energy of their years; here and there a small
well-dressed group whose studious repudiation of the crowd betrayed a
conscious eminence of rank; louts, drunkards, idiots, beggars, waifs,
outcasts, and every oddity of the town: all were more or less under the
influence of a new excitement, and all with the same face of pleased
expectancy looked towards the spot where, half-way up the hill, a
denser mass of sightseers indicated the grand entrance to the Park.

'What stacks of folks!' Agnes exclaimed.  'It's like going to a
football match.'

'Do you go to football matches, Agnes?' Mynors asked.  The child gave a
giggle.

Anna was relieved when these two began to chatter.  She had at once, by
a firm natural impulse, subdued the agitation which seized her when she
found Mynors waiting with such an obvious intention at the school door;
she had conversed with him in tones of quiet ease; his attitude had
even enabled her in a few moments to establish a pleasant familiarity
with him.  Nevertheless, as they joined the stream of people in Moor
Road, she longed to be at home, in her kitchen, in order to examine
herself and the new situation thus created by Mynors.  And yet also she
was glad that she must remain at his side, but it was a fluttered joy
that his presence gave her, too strange for immediate appreciation.  As
her eye, without directly looking at him, embraced the suave and
admirable male creature within its field of vision, she became aware
that he was quite inscrutable to her.  What were his inmost thoughts,
his ideals, the histories of his heart?  Surely it was impossible that
she should ever know these secrets!  He--and she: they were utterly
foreign to each other.  So the primary dissonances of sex vibrated
within her, and her own feelings puzzled her.  Still, there was an
instant pleasure, delightful, if disturbing and inexplicable.  And also
there was a sensation of triumph, which, though she tried to scorn it,
she could not banish.  That a man and a woman should saunter together
on that road was nothing; but the circumstance acquired tremendous
importance when the man happened to be Henry Mynors and the woman Anna
Tellwright.  Mynors--handsome, dark, accomplished, exemplary and
prosperous--had walked for ten years circumspect and unscathed amid the
glances of a whole legion of maids.  As for Anna, the peculiarity of
her position had always marked her for special attention: ever since
her father settled in Bursley, she had felt herself to be the object of
an interest in which awe and pity were equally mingled.  She guessed
that the fact of her going to the Park with Mynors that afternoon would
pass swiftly from mouth to mouth like the rumour of a decisive event.
She had no friends; her innate reserve had been misinterpreted, and she
was not popular among the Wesleyan community.  Many people would say,
and more would think, that it was her money which was drawing Mynors
from the narrow path of his celibate discretion.  She could imagine all
the innuendoes, the expressive nods, the pursing of lips, the lifting
of shoulders and of eyebrows.  'Money 'll do owt': that was the
proverb.  But she cared not.  She had the just and unshakable
self-esteem which is fundamental in all strong and righteous natures;
and she knew beyond the possibility of doubt that, though Mynors might
have no incurable aversion to a fortune, she herself, the spirit and
body of her, had been the sole awakener of his desire.

By a common instinct, Mynors and Anna made little Agnes the centre of
attraction.  Mynors continued to tease her, and Agnes growing
courageous, began to retort.  She was now walking between them, and the
other two smiled to each other at the child's sayings over her head,
interchanging thus messages too subtle and delicate for the coarse
medium of words.

As they approached the Park the bandstand came into sight over the
railway cutting, and they could hear the music of 'The Emperor's Hymn.'
The crude, brazen sounds were tempered in their passage through the
warm, still air, and fell gently on the ear in soft waves, quickening
every heart to unaccustomed emotions.  Children leaped forward, and old
people unconsciously assumed a lightsome vigour.

The Park rose in
terraces from the railway station to a street of small villas almost on
the ridge of the hill.  From its gilded gates to its smallest
geranium-slips it was brand-new, and most of it was red.  The keeper's
house, the bandstand, the kiosks, the balustrades, the shelters--all
these assailed the eye with a uniform redness of brick and tile which
nullified the pallid greens of the turf and the frail trees.  The
immense crowd, in order to circulate, moved along in tight processions,
inspecting one after another the various features of which they had
read full descriptions in the 'Staffordshire Signal'--waterfall,
grotto, lake, swans, boat, seats, faïence, statues--and scanning with
interest the names of the donors so clearly inscribed on such objects
of art and craft as from divers motives had been presented to the town
by its citizens.  Mynors, as he manoeuvred a way for the two girls
through the main avenue up to the topmost terrace, gravely judged each
thing upon its merits, approving this, condemning that.  In deciding
that under all the circumstances the Park made a very creditable
appearance he only reflected the best local opinion.  The town was
proud of its achievement, and it had the right to be; for, though this
narrow pleasaunce was in itself unlovely, it symbolised the first faint
renascence of the longing for beauty in a district long given up to
unredeemed ugliness.

At length, Mynors having encountered many acquaintances, they got past
the bandstand and stood on the highest terrace, which was almost
deserted.  Beneath them, in front, stretched a maze of roofs, dominated
by the gold angel of the Town Hall spire.  Bursley, the ancient home of
the potter, has an antiquity of a thousand years.  It lies towards the
north end of an extensive valley, which must have been one of the
fairest spots in Alfred's England, but which is now defaced by the
activities of a quarter of a million of people.  Five contiguous
towns--Turnhill, Bursley, Hanbridge, Knype, and Longshaw--united by a
single winding thoroughfare some eight miles in length, have inundated
the valley like a succession of great lakes.  Of these five Bursley is
the mother, but Hanbridge is the largest.  They are mean and forbidding
of aspect--sombre, hard-featured, uncouth; and the vaporous poison of
their ovens and chimneys has soiled and shrivelled the surrounding
country till there is no village lane within a league but what offers a
gaunt and ludicrous travesty of rural charms.  Nothing could be more
prosaic than the huddled, red-brown streets; nothing more seemingly
remote from romance.  Yet be it said that romance is even here--the
romance which, for those who have an eye to perceive it, ever dwells
amid the seats of industrial manufacture, softening the coarseness,
transfiguring the squalor, of these mighty alchemic operations.  Look
down into the valley from this terrace-height where love is kindling,
embrace the whole smoke-girt amphitheatre in a glance, and it may be
that you will suddenly comprehend the secret and superb significance of
the vast Doing which goes forward below.  Because they seldom think,
the townsmen take shame when indicted for having disfigured half a
county in order to live.  They have not understood that this
disfigurement is merely an episode in the unending warfare of man and
nature, and calls for no contrition.  Here, indeed, is nature repaid
for some of her notorious cruelties.  She imperiously bids man sustain
and reproduce himself, and this is one of the places where in the very
act of obedience he wounds and maltreats her.  Out beyond the municipal
confines, where the subsidiary industries of coal and iron prosper amid
a wreck of verdure, the struggle is grim, appalling, heroic--so
ruthless is his havoc of her, so indomitable her ceaseless
recuperation.  On the one side is a wresting from nature's own bowels
of the means to waste her; on the other, an undismayed, enduring
fortitude.  The grass grows; though it is not green, it grows.  In the
very heart of the valley, hedged about with furnaces, a farm still
stands, and at harvest-time the sooty sheaves are gathered in.

The band stopped playing.  A whole population was idle in the Park, and
it seemed, in the fierce calm of the sunlight, that of all the
strenuous weekday vitality of the district only a murmurous hush
remained.  But everywhere on the horizon, and nearer, furnaces cast
their heavy smoke across the borders of the sky: the Doing was never
suspended.

'Mr. Mynors,' said Agnes, still holding his hand, when they had been
silent a moment, 'when do those furnaces go out?'

'They don't go out,' he answered, 'unless there is a strike.  It costs
hundreds and hundreds of pounds to light them again.'

'Does it?' she said vaguely.  'Father says it's the smoke that stops my
gilliflowers from growing.'

Mynors turned to Anna.  'Your father seems the picture of health.  I
saw him out this morning at a quarter to seven, as brisk as a boy.
What a constitution!'

'Yes,' Anna replied, 'he is always up at six.'

'But you aren't, I suppose?'

'Yes, I too.'

'And me too,' Agnes interjected.

'And how does Bursley compare with Hanbridge?' Mynors continued.  Anna
paused before replying.

'I like it better,' she said.  'At first--last year--I thought I
shouldn't.'

'By the way, your father used to preach in Hanbridge circuit-----'

'That was years ago,' she said quickly.

'But why won't he preach here?  I dare say you know that we are rather
short of local preachers--good ones, that is.'

'I can't say why father doesn't preach now:' Anna flushed as she spoke.
'You had better ask him that.'

'Well, I will do,' he laughed.  'I am coming to see him soon--perhaps
one night next week.'

Anna looked at Henry Mynors as he uttered the astonishing words.  The
Tellwrights had been in Bursley a year, but no visitor had crossed
their doorsteps except the minister, once, and such poor defaulters as
came, full of excuse and obsequious conciliation, to pay rent overdue.

'Business, I suppose?' she said, and prayed that he might not be
intending to make a mere call of ceremony.

'Yes, business,' he answered lightly.  'But you will be in?'

'I am always in,' she said.  She wondered what the business could be,
and felt relieved to know that his visit would have at least some
assigned pretext; but already her heart beat with apprehensive
perturbation at the thought of his presence in their household.

'See!' said Agnes, whose eyes were everywhere, 'There's Miss Sutton.'

Both Mynors and Anna looked sharply round.  Beatrice Sutton was coming
towards them along the terrace.  Stylishly clad in a dress of pink
muslin, with harmonious hat, gloves, and sunshade, she made an
agreeable and rather effective picture, despite her plain, round face
and stoutish figure.  She had the air of being a leader.  Grafted on to
the original simple honesty of her eyes there was the
unconsciously-acquired arrogance of one who had always been accustomed
to deference.  Socially, Beatrice had no peer among the young women who
were active in the Wesleyan Sunday-school.  Beatrice had been used to
teach in the afternoon school, but she had recently advanced her
labours from the afternoon to the morning in response to a hint that if
she did so the force of her influence and example might lessen the
chronic dearth of morning teachers.

'Good afternoon, Miss Tellwright,' Beatrice said as she came up.  'So
you have come to look at the Park.'

'Yes,' said Anna, and then stopped awkwardly.  In the tone of each
there was an obscure constraint, and something in Mynors' smile of
salute to Beatrice showed that he too shared it.

'Seen you before,' Beatrice said to him familiarly, without taking his
hand; then she bent down and kissed Agnes.

'What are you doing here, mademoiselle?' Mynors asked her.

'Father's just down below, near the lake.  He caught sight of you, and
sent me up to say that you were to be sure to come in to supper
to-night.  You will, won't you?'

'Yes, thanks.  I had meant to.'

Anna knew that they were related, and also that Mynors was constantly
at the Suttons' house, but the close intimacy between these two came
nevertheless like a shock to her.  She could not conquer a certain
resentment of it, however absurd such a feeling might seem to her
intelligence.  And this attitude extended not only to the intimacy, but
to Beatrice's handsome clothes and facile urbanity, which by contrast
emphasised her own poor little frock and tongue-tied manner.  The mere
existence of Beatrice so near to Mynors was like an affront to her.
Yet at heart, and even while admiring this shining daughter of success,
she was conscious within herself of a fundamental superiority.  The
soul of her condescended to the soul of the other one.

They began to discuss the Park.

'Papa says it will send up the value of that land over there
enormously,' said Beatrice, pointing with her ribboned sunshade to some
building plots which lay to the north, high up the hill.  'Mr.
Tellwright owns most of that, doesn't he?' she added to Anna.

'I dare say he does,' said Anna.  It was torture to her to refer to her
father's possessions.

'Of course it will be covered with streets in a few months.  Will he
build himself, or will he sell it?'

'I haven't the least idea,' Anna answered, with an effort after gaiety
of tone, and then turned aside to look at the crowd.  There, close
against the bandstand, stood her father, a short, stout, ruddy,
middle-aged man in a shabby brown suit.  He recognised her, stared
fixedly, and nodded with his grotesque and ambiguous grin.  Then he
sidled off towards the entrance of the Park.  None of the others had
seen him.  'Agnes dear,' she said abruptly, 'we must go now, or we
shall be late for tea.'

As the two women said good-bye their eyes met, and in the brief second
of that encounter each tried to wring from the other the true answer to
a question which lay unuttered in her heart.  Then, having bidden adieu
to Mynors, whose parting glance sang its own song to her, Anna took
Agnes by the hand and left him and Beatrice together.




CHAPTER II

THE MISER'S DAUGHTER

Anna sat in the bay-window of the front parlour, her accustomed place
on Sunday evenings in summer, and watched Mr. Tellwright and Agnes
disappear down the slope of Trafalgar Road on their way to chapel.
Trafalgar Road is the long thoroughfare which, under many aliases, runs
through the Five Towns from end to end, uniting them as a river might
unite them.  Ephraim Tellwright could remember the time when this part
of it was a country lane, flanked by meadows and market gardens.  Now
it was a street of houses up to and beyond Bleakridge, where the
Tellwrights lived; on the other side of the hill the houses came only
in patches until the far-stretching borders of Hanbridge were reached.
Within the municipal limits Bleakridge was the pleasantest quarter of
Bursley--Hillport, abode of the highest fashion, had its own government
and authority--and to reside 'at the top of Trafalgar Road' was still
the final ambition of many citizens, though the natural growth of the
town had robbed Bleakridge of some of that exclusive distinction which
it once possessed.  Trafalgar Road, in its journey to Bleakridge from
the centre of the town, underwent certain changes of character.  First
came a succession of manufactories and small shops; then, at the
beginning of the rise, a quarter of a mile of superior cottages; and
lastly, on the brow, occurred the houses of the comfortable-detached,
semi-detached, and in terraces, with rentals from 25_l._ to 60_l._ a
year.  The Tellwrights lived in Manor Terrace (the name being a last
reminder of the great farmstead which formerly occupied the western
hill side): their house, of light yellow brick, was two-storied, with a
long narrow garden behind, and the rent 30_l_.  Exactly opposite was an
antique red mansion, standing back in its own ground--home of the
Mynors family for two generations, but now a school, the Mynors family
being extinct in the district save for one member.  Somewhat higher up,
still on the opposite side to Manor Terrace, came an imposing row of
four new houses, said to be the best planned and best built in the
town, each erected separately and occupied by its owner.  The nearest
of these four was Councillor Sutton's, valued at 60_l._ a year.  Lower
down, below Manor Terrace and on the same side, lived the Wesleyan
superintendent minister, the vicar of St. Luke's Church, an alderman,
and a doctor.

It was nearly six o'clock.  The sun shone, but gentlier; and the earth
lay cooling in the mild, pensive effulgence of a summer evening.  Even
the onrush of the steam-car, as it swept with a gay load of passengers
to Hanbridge, seemed to be chastened; the bell of the Roman Catholic
chapel sounded like the bell of some village church heard in the
distance; the quick but sober tramp of the chapel-goers fell peacefully
on the ear.  The sense of calm increased, and, steeped in this
meditative calm, Anna from the open window gazed idly down the
perspective of the road, which ended a mile away in the dim concave
forms of ovens suffused in a pale mist.  A book from the Free Library
lay on her lap; she could not read it.  She was conscious of nothing
save the quiet enchantment of reverie.  Her mind, stimulated by the
emotions of the afternoon, broke the fetters of habitual
self-discipline, and ranged voluptuously free over the whole field of
recollection and anticipation.  To remember, to hope: that was
sufficient joy.

In the dissolving views of her own past, from which the rigour and pain
seemed to have mysteriously departed, the chief figure was always her
father--that sinister and formidable individuality, whom her mind hated
but her heart disobediently loved.  Ephraim Tellwright[1] was one of
the most extraordinary and most mysterious men in the Five Towns.  The
outer facts of his career were known to all, for his riches made him
notorious; but of the secret and intimate man none knew anything except
Anna, and what little Anna knew had come to her by divination rather
than discernment.  A native of Hanbridge, he had inherited a small
fortune from his father, who was a prominent Wesleyan Methodist.  At
thirty, owing mainly to investments in property which his calling of
potter's valuer had helped him to choose with advantage, he was worth
twenty thousand pounds, and he lived in lodgings on a total expenditure
of about a hundred a year.  When he was thirty-five he suddenly
married, without any perceptible public wooing, the daughter of a wood
merchant at Oldcastle, and shortly after the marriage his wife
inherited from her father a sum of eighteen thousand pounds.  The pair
lived narrowly in a small house up at Pireford, between Hanbridge and
Oldcastle.  They visited no one, and were never seen together except on
Sundays.  She was a rosy-cheeked, very unassuming and simple woman, who
smiled easily and talked with difficulty, and for the rest lived
apparently a servile life of satisfaction and content.  After five
years Anna was born, and in another five years Mrs. Tellwright died of
erysipelas.  The widower engaged a housekeeper: otherwise his existence
proceeded without change.  No stranger visited the house, the
housekeeper never gossiped; but tales will spread, and people fell into
the habit of regarding Tellwright's child and his housekeeper with
commiseration.

During all this period he was what is termed 'a good Wesleyan,'
preaching and teaching, and spending himself in the various activities
of Hanbridge chapel.  For many years he had been circuit treasurer.
Among Anna's earliest memories was a picture of her father arriving
late for supper one Sunday night in autumn after an anniversary
service, and pouring out on the white tablecloth the contents of
numerous chamois-leather money-bags.  She recalled the surprising
dexterity with which he counted the coins, the peculiar smell of the
bags, and her mother's bland exclamation, 'Eh, Ephraim!' Tellwright
belonged by birth to the Old Guard of Methodism; there was in his
family a tradition of holy valour for the pure doctrine: his father, a
Bursley man, had fought in the fight which preceded the famous
Primitive Methodist Secession of 1808 at Bursley, and had also borne a
notable part in the Warren affrays of '28, and the disastrous trouble
of the Fly-Sheets in '49, when Methodism lost a hundred thousand
members.  As for Ephraim, he expounded the mystery of the Atonement in
village conventicles and grew garrulous with God at prayer-meetings in
the big Bethesda chapel; but he did these things as routine, without
skill and without enthusiasm, because they gave him an unassailable
position within the central group of the society.  He was not, in fact,
much smitten with either the doctrinal or the spiritual side of
Methodism.  His chief interest lay in those fiscal schemes of
organisation without whose aid no religious propaganda can possibly
succeed.  It was in the finance of salvation that he rose supreme--the
interminable alternation of debt-raising and new liability which
provides a lasting excitement for Nonconformists.  In the negotiation
of mortgages, the artful arrangement of appeals, the planning of
anniversaries and of mighty revivals, he was an undisputed leader.  To
him the circuit was a 'going concern,' and he kept it in motion,
serving the Lord in committee and over statements of account.  The
minister by his pleading might bring sinners to the penitent form, but
it was Ephraim Tellwright who reduced the cost per head of souls saved,
and so widened the frontiers of the Kingdom of Heaven.

Three years after the death of his first wife it was rumoured that he
would marry again, and that his choice had fallen on a young orphan
girl, thirty years his junior, who 'assisted' at the stationer's shop
where he bought his daily newspaper.  The rumour was well-founded.
Anna, then eight years of age, vividly remembered the home-coming of
the pale wife, and her own sturdy attempts to explain, excuse, or
assuage to this wistful and fragile creature the implacable harshness
of her father's temper.  Agnes was born within a year, and the pale
girl died of puerperal fever.  In that year lay a whole tragedy, which
could not have been more poignant in its perfection if the year had
been a thousand years.  Ephraim promptly re-engaged the old
housekeeper, a course which filled Anna with secret childish revolt,
for Anna was now nine, and accomplished in all domesticity.  In another
seven years the housekeeper died, a gaunt grey ruin, and Anna at
sixteen became mistress of the household, with a small sister to
cherish and control.  About this time Anna began to perceive that her
father was generally regarded as a man of great wealth, having few
rivals in the entire region of the Five Towns, Definite knowledge,
however, she had none: he never spoke of his affairs; she knew only
that he possessed houses and other property in various places, that he
always turned first to the money article in the newspaper, and that
long envelopes arrived for him by post almost daily.  But she had once
heard the surmise that he was worth sixty thousand of his own, apart
from the fortune of his first wife, Anna's mother.  Nevertheless, it
did not occur to her to think of her father, in plain terms, as a
miser, until one day she happened to read in the 'Staffordshire Signal'
some particulars of the last will and testament of William Wilbraham,
J.P., who had just died.  Mr. Wilbraham had been a famous magnate and
benefactor of the Five Towns; his revered name was in every mouth; he
had a fine seat, Hillport House, at Hillport; and his superb horses
were constantly seen, winged and nervous, in the streets of Bursley and
Hanbridge.  The 'Signal' said that the net value of his estate was
sworn at fifty-nine thousand pounds.  This single fact added a definite
and startling significance to figures which had previously conveyed
nothing to Anna except an idea of vastness.  The crude contrast between
the things of Hillport House and the things of the six-roomed abode in
Manor Terrace gave food for reflection, silent but profound.

Tellwright had long ago retired from business, and three years after
the housekeeper died he retired, practically, from religious work, to
the grave detriment of the Hanbridge circuit.  In reply to sorrowful
questioners, he said merely that he was getting old and needed rest,
and that there ought to be plenty of younger men to fill his shoes.  He
gave up everything except his pew in the chapel.  The circuit was
astounded by this sudden defection of a class-leader, a local preacher,
and an officer.  It was an inexplicable fall from grace.  Yet the
solution of the problem was quite simple.  Ephraim had lost interest in
his religious avocations; they had ceased to amuse him, the old ardour
had cooled.  The phenomenon is a common enough experience with men who
have passed their fiftieth year--men, too, who began with the true and
sacred zeal, which Tellwright never felt.  The difference in
Tellwright's case was that, characteristically, he at once yielded to
the new instinct, caring naught for public opinion.  Soon afterwards,
having purchased a lot of cottage property in Bursley, he decided to
migrate to the town of his fathers.  He had more than one reason for
doing so, but perhaps the chief was that he found the atmosphere of
Hanbridge Wesleyan chapel rather uncongenial.  The exodus from it was
his silent and malicious retort to a silent rebuke.

He appeared now to grow younger, discarding in some measure a certain
morose taciturnity which had hitherto marked his demeanour.  He went
amiably about in the manner of a veteran determined to enjoy the brief
existence of life's winter.  His stout, stiff, deliberate yet alert
figure became a familiar object to Bursley: that ruddy face, with its
small blue eyes, smooth upper lip, and short grey beard under the
smooth chin, seemed to pervade the streets, offering everywhere the
conundrum of its vague smile.  Though no friend ever crossed his
doorstep, he had dozens of acquaintances of the footpath.  He was not,
however, a facile talker, and he seldom gave an opinion; nor were his
remarks often noticeably shrewd.  He existed within himself,
unrevealed.  To the crowd, of course, he was a marvellous legend, and
moving always in the glory of that legend he received their wondering
awe--an awe tinged with contempt for his lack of ostentation and public
splendour.  Commercial men with whom he had transacted business liked
to discuss his abilities, thus disseminating that solid respect for him
which had sprung from a personal experience of those abilities, and
which not even the shabbiness of his clothes could weaken.

Anna was disturbed by the arrival at the front door of the milk-girl.
Alternately with her father, she stayed at home on Sunday evenings,
partly to receive the evening milk and partly to guard the house.  The
Persian cat with one ear preceded her to the door as soon as he heard
the clatter of the can.  The stout little milk-girl dispensed one pint
of milk into Anna's jug, and spilt an eleemosynary supply on the step
for the cat.  'He does like it fresh, Miss,' said the milk-girl,
smiling at the greedy cat, and then, with a 'Lovely evenin',' departed
down the street, one fat red arm stretched horizontally out to balance
the weight of the can in the other.  Anna leaned idly against the
doorpost, waiting while the cat finished, until at length the swaying
figure of the milk-girl disappeared in the dip of the road.  Suddenly
she darted within, shutting the door, and stood on the hall-mat in a
startled attitude of dismay.  She had caught sight of Henry Mynors in
the distance, approaching the house.  At that moment the kitchen clock
struck seven, and Mynors, according to the rule of a lifetime, should
have been in his place in the 'orchestra' (or, as some term it, the
'singing-seat') of the chapel, where he was an admired baritone.  Anna
dared not conjecture what impulse had led him into this extraordinary,
incredible deviation.  She dared not conjecture, but despite herself
she knew, and the knowledge shocked her sensitive and peremptory
conscience.  Her heart began to beat rapidly; she was in distress.
Aware that her father and sister had left her alone, did he mean to
call?  It was absolutely impossible, yet she feared it, and blushed,
all solitary there in the passage, for shame.  Now she heard his sharp,
decided footsteps, and through the glazed panels of the door she could
see the outline of his form.  He stopped; his hand was on the gate, and
she ceased to breathe.  He pushed the gate open, and then, at the
whisper of some blessed angel, he closed it again and continued his way
up the street.  After a few moments Anna carried the milk into the
kitchen, and stood by the dresser, moveless, each muscle braced in the
intensity of profound contemplation.  Gradually the tears rose to her
eyes and fell; they were the tincture of a strange and mystic joy, too
poignant to be endured.  As it were under compulsion she ran outside,
and down the garden path to the low wall which looked over the grey
fields of the valley up to Hillport.  Exactly opposite, a mile and a
half away, on the ridge, was Hillport Church, dark and clear against
the orange sky.  To the right, and nearer, lay the central masses of
the town, tier on tier of richly-coloured ovens and chimneys.  Along
the field-paths couples moved slowly.  All was quiescent, languorous,
beautiful in the glow of the sun's stately declension.  Anna put her
arms on the wall.  Far more impressively than in the afternoon she
realised that this was the end of one epoch in her career and the
beginning of another.  Enthralled by austere traditions and that stern
conscience of hers, she had never permitted herself to dream of the
possibility of an escape from the parental servitude.  She had never
looked beyond the horizons of her present world, but had sought
spiritual satisfaction in the ideas of duty and sacrifice.  The worst
tyrannies of her father never dulled the sense of her duty to him; and,
without perhaps being aware of it, she had rather despised love and the
dalliance of the sexes.  In her attitude towards such things there had
been not only a little contempt but also some disapproval, as though
man were destined for higher ends.  Now she saw, in a quick revelation,
that it was the lovers, and not she, who had the right to scorn.  She
saw how miserably narrow, tepid, and trickling the stream of her life
had been, and had threatened to be.  Now it gushed forth warm,
impetuous, and full, opening out new and delicious vistas.  She lived;
and she was finding the sight to see, the courage to enjoy.  Now, as
she leaned over the wall, she would not have cared if Henry Mynors
indeed had called that night.  She perceived something splendid and
free in his abandonment of habit and discretion at the bidding of a
desire.  To be the magnet which could draw that pattern and exemplar of
seemliness from the strict orbit of virtuous custom!  It was she, the
miser's shabby daughter, who had caused this amazing phenomenon.  The
thought intoxicated her.  Without the support of the wall she might
have fallen.  In a sort of trance she murmured these words: 'He loves
me.'

This was Anna Tellwright, the ascetic, the prosaic, the impassive.

After an interval which to her was as much like a minute as a century,
she went back into the house.  As she entered by the kitchen she heard
an impatient knocking at the front door.

'At last,' said her father grimly, when she opened the door.  In two
words he had resumed his terrible sway over her.  Agnes looked timidly
from one to the other and slipped past them into the house.

'I was in the garden,' Anna explained.  'Have you been here long?'  She
tried to smile apologetically.

'Only about a quarter of an hour,' he answered, with a grimness still
more portentous.

'He won't speak again to-night,' she thought fearfully.  But she was
mistaken.  After he had carefully hung his best hat on the hat-rack, he
turned towards her, and said, with a queer smile:

'Ye've been day-dreaming, eh, Sis?'

'Sis' was her pet name, used often by Agnes, but by her father only at
the very rarest intervals.  She was staggered at this change of front,
so unaccountable in this man, who, when she had unwittingly annoyed
him, was capable of keeping an awful silence for days together.  What
did he know?  What had those old eyes seen?

'I forgot,' she stammered, gathering herself together happily, 'I
forgot the time.'  She felt that after all there was a bond between
them which nothing could break--the tie of blood.  They were father and
daughter, united by sympathies obscure but fundamental.  Kissing was
not in the Tellwright blood, but she had a fleeting wish to hug the
tyrant.



[1] Tellwright: tile-wright, a name specially characteristic of, and
possibly originating in, this clay-manufacturing district.




CHAPTER III

THE BIRTHDAY

The next morning there was no outward sign that anything unusual had
occurred.  As the clock in the kitchen struck eight Anna carried to the
back parlour a tray on which were a dish of bacon and a coffee-pot.
Breakfast was already laid for three.  She threw a housekeeper's glance
over the table, and called: 'Father!'  Mr. Tellwright was re-setting
some encaustic tiles in the lobby.  He came in, coatless, and, dropping
a trowel on the hearth, sat down at the end of the table nearest the
fireplace.  Anna sat opposite to him, and poured out the coffee.

On the dish were six pieces of bacon.  He put one piece on a plate, and
set it carefully in front of Agnes's vacant chair, two he passed to
Anna, three he kept for himself.

'Where's Agnes?' he inquired.

'Coming--she's finishing her arithmetic.'

In the middle of the table was an unaccustomed small jug containing
gilly-flowers.  Mr. Tellwright noticed it instantly.

'What an we gotten here?' he said, indicating the jug.

'Agnes gave me them first thing when she got up.  She's grown them
herself, you know,' Anna said, and then added: 'It's my birthday.'

'Ay!' he exclaimed, with a trace of satire in his voice.  'Thou'rt a
woman now, lass.'

No further remark on that matter was made during the meal.

Agnes ran in, all pinafore and legs.  With a toss backwards of her
light golden hair she slipped silently into her seat, cautiously
glancing at the master of the house.  Then she began to stir her coffee.

'Now, young woman,' Tellwright said curtly.

She looked a startled interrogative.

'We're waiting,' he explained.

'Oh!' said Agnes, confused.  'I thought you'd said it.  "God sanctify
this food to our use and us to His service for Christ's sake, Amen."'

The breakfast proceeded in silence.  Breakfast at eight, dinner at
noon, tea at four, supper at eight: all the meals in this house
occurred with absolute precision and sameness.  Mr. Tellwright seldom
spoke, and his example imposed silence on the girls, who felt as nuns
feel when assisting at some grave but monotonous and perfunctory rite.
The room was not a cheerful one in the morning, since the window was
small and the aspect westerly.  Besides the table and three horse-hair
chairs, the furniture consisted of an arm-chair, a bent-wood rocking
chair, and a sewing-machine.  A fatigued Brussels carpet covered the
floor.  Over the mantelpiece was an engraving of 'The Light of the
World,' in a frame of polished brown wood.  On the other walls were
some family photographs in black frames.  A two-light chandelier hung
from the ceiling, weighed down on one side by a patent gas-saving
mantle and a glass shade; over this the ceiling was deeply discoloured.
On either side of the chimney-breast were cupboards about three feet
high; some cardboard boxes, a work-basket, and Agnes's school books lay
on the tops of these cupboards.  On the window-sill was a pot of
mignonette in a saucer.  The window was wide open, and flies buzzed to
and fro, constantly rebounding from the window panes with terrible
thuds.  In the blue-paved yard beyond the cat was licking himself in
the sunlight with an air of being wholly absorbed in his task.

Mr. Tellwright demanded a second and last cup of coffee, and having
drunk it pushed away his plate as a sign that he had finished.  Then he
took from the mantelpiece at his right hand a bundle of letters and
opened them methodically.  When he had arranged the correspondence in a
flattened pile, he put on his steel-rimmed spectacles and began to read.

'Can I return thanks, father?' Agnes asked, and he nodded, looking at
her fixedly over his spectacles.

'Thank God for our good breakfast, Amen.'

In two minutes the table was cleared, and Mr. Tellwright was alone.  As
he read laboriously through communications from solicitors, secretaries
of companies, and tenants, he could hear his daughters talking together
in the kitchen.  Anna was washing the breakfast things while Agnes
wiped.  Then there were flying steps across the yard: Agnes had gone to
school.

After he had mastered his correspondence, Mr. Tellwright took up the
trowel again and finished the tile-setting in the lobby.  Then he
resumed his coat, and, gathering together the letters from the table in
the back parlour, went into the front parlour and shut the door.  This
room was his office.  The principal things in it were an old oak bureau
and an old oak desk-chair which had come to him from his first wife's
father; on the walls were some sombre landscapes in oil, received from
the same source; there was no carpet on the floor, and only one other
chair.  A safe stood in the corner opposite the door.  On the
mantelpiece were some books--Woodfall's 'Landlord and Tenant,' Jordan's
'Guide to Company Law,' Whitaker's Almanack, and a Gazetteer of the
Five Towns.  Several wire files, loaded with papers, hung from the
mantelpiece.  With the exception of a mahogany what-not with a Bible on
it, which stood in front of the window, there was nothing else whatever
in the room.  He sat down to the bureau and opened it, and took from
one of the pigeon-holes a packet of various documents: these he
examined one by one, from time to time referring to a list.  Then he
unlocked the safe and extracted from it another bundle of documents
which had evidently been placed ready.  With these in his hand, he
opened the door, and called out:

'Anna.'

'Yes, father;' her voice came from the kitchen.

'I want ye.'

'In a minute.  I'm peeling potatoes.'

When she came in, she found him seated at the bureau as usual.  He did
not look round.

'Yes, father.'

She stood there in her print dress and white apron, full in the eye of
the sun, waiting for him.  She could not guess what she had been
summoned for.  As a rule, she never saw her father between breakfast
and dinner.  At length he turned.

'Anna,' he said in his harsh, abrupt tones, and then stopped for a
moment before continuing.  His thick, short fingers held the list which
he had previously been consulting.  She waited in bewilderment.  'It's
your birthday, ye told me. I hadna' forgotten.  Ye're of age to-day,
and there's summat for ye.  Your mother had a fortune of her own, and
under your grandfeyther's will it comes to you when you're twenty-one.
I'm the trustee.  Your mother had eighteen thousand pounds i'
Government stock.'  He laid a slight sneering emphasis on the last two
words.  'That was near twenty-five year ago.  I've nigh on trebled it
for ye, what wi' good investments and interest accumulating.  Thou'rt
worth'--here he changed to the second personal singular, a habit with
him--'thou'rt worth this day as near fifty thousand as makes no matter,
Anna.  And that's a tidy bit.'

'Fifty thousand--_pounds_!' she exclaimed aghast.

'Ay, lass.'

She tried to speak calmly.  'Do you mean it's mine, father?'

'It's thine, under thy grandfeyther's will--haven't I told thee?  I'm
bound by law for to give it to thee this day, and thou mun give me a
receipt in due form for the securities.  Here they are, and here's the
list.  Tak' the list, Anna, and read it to me while I check off.'

She mechanically took the blue paper and read: 'Toft End Colliery and
Brickworks Limited, five hundred shares of ten pounds.'

'They paid ten per cent. last year,' he said, 'and with coal up as it
is they'll pay fiftane this.  Let's see what thy arithmetic is worth,
lass.  How much is fiftane per cent. on five thousand pun?'

'Seven hundred and fifty pounds,' she said, getting the correct answer
by a superhuman effort worthy of that occasion.

'Right,' said her father, pleased.  'Recollect that's more till two pun
a day.  Go on.'

'North Staffordshire Railway Company ordinary stock, ten thousand and
two hundred pounds.'

'Right.  Th' owd North Stafford's getting up i' th' world.  It'll be a
five per cent. line yet.  Then thou mun sell out.'

She had only a vague idea of his meaning, and continued: 'Five Towns
Waterworks Company Limited consolidated stock, eight thousand five
hundred pounds.'

'That's a tit-bit, lass,' he interjected, looking absently over his
spectacles at something outside in the road.  'You canna' pick that up
on shardrucks.'

'Norris's Brewery Limited, six hundred ordinary shares of ten pounds.'

'Twenty per cent.,' said the old man.  'Twenty per cent. regular.'  He
made no attempt to conceal his pride in these investments.  And he had
the right to be proud of them.  They were the finest in the market, the
aristocracy of investments, based on commercial enterprises of which
every business man in the Five Towns knew the entire soundness.  They
conferred distinction on the possessor, like a great picture or a rare
volume.  They stifled all questions and insinuations.  Put before any
jury of the Five Towns as evidence of character, they would almost have
exculpated a murderer.

Anna continued reading the list, which seemed endless: long before she
had reached the last item her brain was a menagerie of monstrous
figures.  The list included, besides all sorts of shares English and
American, sundry properties in the Five Towns, and among these was the
earthenware manufactory in Edward Street occupied by Titus Price, the
Sunday-school superintendent.  Anna was a little alarmed to find
herself the owner of this works; she knew that her father had had some
difficult moments with Titus Price, and that the property was not
without grave disadvantages.

'That all!' Tellwright asked, at length.

'That's all.'

'Total face value,' he went on, 'as I value it, forty-eight thousand
and fifty pounds, producing a net annual income of three thousand two
hundred and ninety pounds or thereabouts.  There's not many in this
district as 'as gotten that to their names, Anna--no, nor half
that--let 'em be who they will.'

Anna had sensations such as a child might have who has received a
traction-engine to play with in a back yard.  'What am I to do with
it?' she asked plaintively.

'Do wi' it?' he repeated, and stood up and faced her, putting his lips
together: 'Do wi' it, did ye say?'

'Yes.'

'Tak' care on it, my girl.  Tak' care on it.  And remember it's thine.
Thou mun sign this list, and all these transfers and fal-lals, and then
thou mun go to th' Bank, and tell Mester Lovatt I've sent thee.
There's four hundred pound there.  He'll give thee a cheque-book.  I've
told him all about it.  Thou'll have thy own account, and be sure thou
keeps it straight.'

'I shan't know a bit what to do, father, and so it's no use talking,'
she said quietly.

'I'll learn ye,' he replied.  'Here, tak' th' pen, and let's have thy
signature.'

She signed her name many times and put her finger on many seals.  Then
Tellwright gathered up everything into a bundle, and gave it to her to
hold.

'That's the lot,' he said.  'Have ye gotten 'em?'

'Yes,' she said.

They both smiled, self-consciously.  As for Tellwright, he was
evidently impressed by the grandeur of this superb renunciation on his
part.  'Shall I keep 'em for ye?'

'Yes, please.'

'Then give 'em me.'

He took back all the documents.

'When shall I call at the Bank, father?'

'Better call this afternoon--afore three, mind ye.'

'Very well.  But I shan't know what to do.'

'You've gotten a tongue in that noddle of yours, haven't ye?' he said.
'Now go and get along wi' them potatoes.'

Anna returned to the kitchen.  She felt no elation or ferment of any
kind; she had not begun to realise the significance of what had
occurred.  Like the soldier whom a bullet has struck, she only knew
vaguely that something had occurred.  She peeled the potatoes with more
than her usual thrifty care; the peel was so thin as to be almost
transparent.  It seemed to her that she could not arrange or examine
her emotions until after she had met Henry Mynors again.  More than
anything else she wished to see him: it was as if out of the mere sight
of him something definite might emerge, as if when her eyes had rested
on him, and not before, she might perceive some simple solution of the
problems which she had obscurely discerned ahead of her.

During dinner a boy brought a note for her father.  He read it,
snorted, and threw it across the table to Anna.

'Here,' he said, 'that's your affair.'

The letter was from Titus Price: it said that he was sorry to be
compelled to break his promise, but it was quite impossible for him to
pay twenty pounds on account of rent that day; he would endeavour to
pay at least twenty pounds in a week's time.

'You'd better call there, after you've been to th' Bank,' said
Tellwright, 'and get summat out of him, if it's only ten pun.'

'Must I go to Edward Street?'

'Yes.'

'What am I to say?  I've never been there before.'

'Well, it's high time as ye began to look after your own property.  You
mun see owd Price, and tell him ye canna accept any excuses.'

'How much does he owe?'

'He owes ye a hundred and twenty-five pun altogether--he's five
quarters in arrear.'

'A hundred and----!  Well, I never!'  Anna was aghast.  The sum
appeared larger to her than all the thousands and tens of thousands
which she had received in the morning.  She reflected that the weekly
bills of the household amounted to about a sovereign, and that the
total of this debt of Price's would therefore keep them in food for two
years.  The idea of being in debt was abhorrent to her.  She could not
conceive how a man who was in debt could sleep at nights.  'Mr. Price
ought to be ashamed of himself,' she said warmly.  'I'm sure he's quite
able to pay.'  The image of the sleek and stout superintendent of the
Sunday-school, arrayed in his rich, almost voluptuous, broadcloth,
offended her profoundly.  That he, debtor and promise-breaker, should
have the effrontery to pray for the souls of children, to chastise
their petty furtive crimes, was nearly incredible.

'Oh!  Price is all _right_,' her father remarked, with an apparent
benignity which surprised her.  'He'll pay when he can.'

'I think it's a shame,' she repeated emphatically.

Agnes looked with a mystified air from one to the other, instinctively
divining that something very extraordinary had happened during her
absence at school.

'Ye mun'na be too hard, Anna,' said Tellwright.  'Supposing ye sold owd
Titus up?  What then?  D'ye reckon ye'd get a tenant for them
ramshackle works?  A thousand pound spent wouldn't 'tice a tenant.
That Edward Street property was one o' ye grandfeyther's specs; 'twere
none o' mine.  You'd best tak' what ye can get.'

Anna felt a little ashamed of herself, not because of her bad policy,
but because she saw that Mr. Price might have been handicapped by the
faults of her property.

That afternoon it was a shy and timid Anna who swung back the heavy
polished and glazed portals of the Bursley branch of the Birmingham,
Sheffield and district Bank, the opulent and spacious erection which
stands commandingly at the top of St. Luke's Square.  She looked about
her, across broad counters, enormous ledgers, and rows of bent heads,
and wondered whom she should address.  Then a bearded gentleman, who
was weighing gold in a balance, caught sight of her: he slid the gold
into a drawer, and whisked round the end of the counter with a celerity
which was, at any rate, not born of practice, for he, the cashier, had
not done such a thing for years.

'Good afternoon, Miss Tellwright.'

'Good afternoon.  I----'

'May I trouble you to step into the manager's room?' and he drew her
forward, while every clerk's eye watched.  Anna tried not to blush, but
she could feel the red mounting even to her temples.

'Delightful weather we're having.  But of course we've the right to
expect it at this time of year.'  He opened a door on the glass of
which was painted 'Manager,' and bowed.  'Mr. Lovatt--Miss Tellwright.'

Mr. Lovatt greeted his new customer with a formal and rather fatigued
politeness, and invited her to sit in a large leather armchair in front
of a large table; on this table lay a large open book.  Anna had once
in her life been to the dentist's; this interview reminded her of that
experience.

'Your father told me I might expect you to-day,' said Mr. Lovatt in his
high-pitched, perfunctory tones.  Richard Lovatt was probably the most
influential man in Bursley.  Every Saturday morning he irrigated the
whole town with fertilising gold.  By a single negative he could have
ruined scores of upright merchants and manufacturers.  He had only to
stop a man in the street and murmur, 'By the way, your overdraft----,'
in order to spread discord and desolation through a refined and pious
home.  His estimate of human nature was falsified by no common
illusions; he had the impassive and frosty gaze of a criminal judge.
Many men deemed they had cause to hate him, but no one did hate him:
all recognised that he was set far above hatred.

'Kindly sign your full name here,' he said, pointing to a spot on the
large open page of the book, 'and your ordinary signature, which you
will attach to cheques, here.'

Anna wrote, but in doing so she became aware that she had no ordinary
signature; she was obliged to invent one.

'Do you wish to draw anything out now?  There is already a credit of
four hundred and twenty pounds in your favour,' said Mr. Lovatt, after
he had handed her a cheque-book, a deposit-book, and a pass-book.

'Oh, no, thank you,' Anna answered quickly.  She keenly desired some
money, but she well knew that courage would fail her to demand it
without her father's consent; moreover, she was in a whirl of
uncertainty as to the uses of the three books, though Mr. Lovatt had
expounded them severally to her in simple language.

'Good-day.'

'Good-day, Miss Tellwright.'

'My compliments to your father.'

His final glance said half cynically, half in pity: 'You are naïve and
unspoilt now, but these eyes will see yours harden like the rest.
Wretched victim of gold, you are only one in a procession, after all.'

Outside, Anna thought that everyone had been very agreeable to her.
Her complacency increased at a bound.  She no longer felt ashamed of
her shabby cotton dress.  She surmised that people would find it
convenient to ignore any difference which might exist between her
costume and that of other girls.

She went on to Edward Street, a short steep thoroughfare at the eastern
extremity of the town, leading into a rough road across unoccupied land
dotted with the mouths of abandoned pits: this road climbed up to Toft
End, a mean annexe of the town about half a mile east of Bleakridge.
From Toft End, lying on the highest hill in the district, one had a
panoramic view of Hanbridge and Bursley, with Hillport to the west, and
all the moorland and mining villages to the north and north-east.
Titus Price and his son lived in what had once been a farm-house at
Toft End; every morning and evening they traversed the desolate and
featureless grey road between their dwelling and the works.

Anna had never been in Edward Street before.  It was a miserable
quarter--two rows of blackened infinitesimal cottages, and her
manufactory at the end--a frontier post of the town.  Price's works was
small, old-fashioned, and out of repair--one of those properties which
are forlorn from the beginning, which bring despair into the hearts of
a succession of owners, and which, being ultimately deserted, seem to
stand for ever in pitiable ruin.  The arched entrance for carts into
the yard was at the top of the steepest rise of the street, when it
might as well have been at the bottom; and this was but one example of
the architect's fine disregard for the principle of economy in
working--that principle to which in the scheming of manufactories
everything else is now so strictly subordinated.  Ephraim Tellwright
used to say (but not to Titus Price) that the situation of that archway
cost five pounds a year in horseflesh, and that five pounds was the
interest on a hundred.  The place was badly located, badly planned and
badly constructed.  Its faults defied improvement.  Titus Price
remained in it only because he was chained there by arrears of rent;
Tellwright hesitated to sell it only because the rent was a hundred a
year, and the whole freehold would not have fetched eight hundred.  He
promised repairs in exchange for payment of arrears which he knew would
never be paid, and his policy was to squeeze the last penny out of
Price without forcing him into bankruptcy.  Such was the predicament
when Anna assumed ownership.  As she surveyed the irregular and huddled
frontage from the opposite side of the street, her first feeling was
one of depression at the broken and dirty panes of the windows.  A man
in shirt-sleeves was standing on the weighing platform under the
archway; his back was towards her, but she could see the smoke issuing
in puffs from his pipe.  She crossed the road.  Hearing her footfalls,
the man turned round: it was Titus Price himself.  He was wearing an
apron, but no cap; the sleeves of his shirt were rolled up, exposing
forearms covered with auburn hair.  His puffed, heavy face, and general
bigness and untidiness, gave the idea of a vast and torpid male
slattern.  Anna was astounded by the contrast between the Titus of
Sunday and the Titus of Monday: a single glance compelled her to
readjust all her notions of the man.  She stammered a greeting, and he
replied, and then they were both silent for a moment: in the pause Mr.
Price thrust his pipe between apron and waistcoat.

'Come inside, Miss Tellwright,' he said, with a sickly, conciliatory
smile.  'Come into the office, will ye?'

She followed him without a word through the archway.  To the right was
an open door into the packing-house, where a man surrounded by straw
was packing basins in a crate: with swift, precise movements, twisting
straw between basin and basin, he forced piles of ware into a space
inconceivably small.  Mr. Price lingered to watch him for a few
seconds, and passed on.  They were in the yard, a small quadrangle
paved with black, greasy mud.  In one corner a load of coal had been
cast; in another lay a heap of broken saggars.  Decrepit doorways led
to the various 'shops' on the ground floor; those on the upper floor
were reached by narrow wooden stairs, which seemed to cling insecurely
to the exterior walls.  Up one of these stairways Mr. Price climbed
with heavy, elephantine movements: Anna prudently waited till he had
reached the top before beginning to ascend.  He pushed open a flimsy
door, and with a nod bade her enter.  The office was a long narrow
room, the dirtiest that Anna had ever seen.  If such was the condition
of the master's quarters, she thought, what must the workshops be like?
The ceiling, which bulged downwards, was as black as the floor, which
sank away in the middle till it was hollow like a saucer.  The
revolution of an engine somewhere below shook everything with a
periodic muffled thud.  A greyish light came through one small window.
By the window was a large double desk, with chairs facing each other.
One of these chairs was occupied by Willie Price.  The youth did not
observe at first that another person had come in with his father.  He
was casting up figures in an account book, and murmuring numbers to
himself.  He wore an office coat, short at the wrists and torn at the
elbows, and a battered felt hat was thrust far back over his head so
that the brim rested on his dirty collar.  He turned round at length,
and, on seeing Anna, blushed brilliant crimson, and rose, scraping the
legs of his chair horribly across the floor.  Tall, thin, and ungainly
in every motion, he had the look of a ninny: it was the fact that at
school all the boys by a common instinct had combined to tease him, and
that on the works the young paintresses continually made private sport
of him.  Anna, however, had not the least impulse to mock him in her
thoughts.  For her there was nothing in his blue eyes but simplicity
and good intentions.  Beside him she felt old, sagacious, crafty: it
seemed to her that some one ought to shield that transparent and
confiding soul from his father and the intriguing world.

He spoke to her and lifted his hat, holding it afterwards in his great
bony hand.

'Get down to th' entry, Will,' said his father, and Willie, with an
apologetic sort of cough, slipped silently away through the door.

'Sit down, Miss Tellwright,' said old Price, and she took the Windsor
chair that had been occupied by Willie.  Her tenant fell into the seat
opposite--a leathern chair from which the stuffing had exuded, and with
one of its arms broken.  'I hear as ye father is going into partnership
with young Mynors--Henry Mynors.'

Anna started at this surprising item of news, which was entirely fresh
to her.  'Father has said nothing to me about it,' she replied, coldly.

'Oh!  Happen I've said too much.  If so, you'll excuse me, Miss.  A
smart fellow, Mynors.  Now you should see _his_ little works: not very
much bigger than this, but there's everything you can think of
there--all the latest machinery and dodges, and not over-rented, I'm
told.  The biggest fool i' Bursley couldn't help but make money there.
This 'ere works 'ere, Miss Tellwright, wants mendin' with a new 'un.'

'It looks very dirty, I must say,' said Anna.

'Dirty!' he laughed--a short, acrid laugh--'I suppose you've called
about the rent.'

'Yes, father asked me to call.'

'Let me see, this place belongs to you i' your own right, doesn't it,
Miss?'

'Yes,' said Anna.  'It's mine--from my grandfather, you know.'

'Ah!  Well, I'm sorry for to tell ye as I can't pay anything now--no,
not a cent.  But I'll pay twenty pounds in a week.  Tell ye father I'll
pay twenty pound in a week.'

'That's what you said last week,' Anna remarked, with more brusqueness
than she had intended.  At first she was fearful at her own temerity in
thus addressing a superintendent of the Sunday-school; then, as nothing
happened, she felt reassured, and strong in the justice of her position.

'Yes,' he admitted obsequiously.  'But I've been disappointed.  One of
our best customers put us off, to tell ye the truth.  Money's tight,
very tight.  It's got to be give and take in these days, as ye father
knows.  And I may as well speak plain to ye, Miss Tellwright.  We
canna' stay here; we shall be compelled to give ye notice.  What's
amiss with this bank[1] is that it wants pullin' down.'  He went off
into a rapid enumeration of ninety-and-nine alterations and repairs
that must be done without the loss of a moment, and concluded: 'You
tell ye father what I've told ye, and say as I'll send up twenty pounds
next week.  I can't pay anything now; I've nothing by me at all.'

'Father said particularly I was to be sure and get something on
account.'  There was a flinty hardness in her tone which astonished
herself perhaps more than Titus Price.  A long pause followed, and then
Mr. Price drew a breath, seeming to nerve himself to a tremendous
sacrificial deed.

'I tell ye what I'll do.  I'll give ye ten pounds now, and I'll do what
I can next week.  I'll do what I can.  There!'

'Thank you,' said Anna.  She was amazed at her success.

He unlocked the desk, and his head disappeared under the lifted lid.
Anna gazed through the window.  Like many women, and not a few men, in
the Five Towns, she was wholly ignorant of the staple manufacture.  The
interior of a works was almost as strange to her as it would have been
to a farm-hand from Sussex.  A girl came out of a door on the opposite
side of the quadrangle: the creature was clothed in clayey rags, and
carried on her right shoulder a board laden with biscuit[2] cups.  She
began to mount one of the wooden stairways, and as she did so the
board, six feet in length, swayed alarmingly to and fro.  Anna expected
to see it fall with a destructive crash, but the girl went up in
safety, and with a nonchalant jerk of the shoulder aimed the end of the
board through another door and vanished from sight.  To Anna it was a
thrilling feat, but she noticed that a man who stood in the yard did
not even turn his head to watch it.  Mr. Price recalled her to the
business of her errand.

'Here's two fives,' he said, shutting down the desk with the sigh of a
crocodile.

'Liar!  You said you had nothing!' her unspoken thought ran, and at the
same instant the Sunday-school and everything connected with it
grievously sank in her estimation; she contrasted this scene with that
on the previous day with the peccant schoolgirl: it was an hour of
disillusion.  Taking the notes, she gave a receipt and rose to go.

'Tell ye father'--it seemed to Anna that this phrase was always on his
lips--'tell ye father he must come down and look at the state this
place is in,' said Mr. Price, enheartened by the heroic payment of ten
pounds.  Anna said nothing; she thought a fire would do more good than
anything else to the foul, squalid buildings: the passing fancy
coincided with Mr. Price's secret and most intense desire.

Outside she saw Willie Price superintending the lifting of a crate on
to a railway lorry.  After twirling in the air, the crate sank safely
into the waggon.  Young Price was perspiring.

'Warm afternoon, Miss Tellwright,' he called to her as she passed, with
his pleasant bashful smile.  She gave an affirmative.  Then he came to
her, still smiling, his face full of an intention to say something,
however insignificant.

'I suppose you'll be at the Special Teachers' Meeting to-morrow night,'
he remarked.

'I hope to be,' she said.  That was all: William had achieved his
small-talk: they parted.

'So father and Mr. Mynors are going into partnership,' she kept saying
to herself on the way home.



[1] Bank: manufactory.

[2] Biscuit: a term applied to ware which has been fired only once.




CHAPTER IV

A VISIT

The Special Teachers' Meeting to which Willie Price had referred was
one of the final preliminaries to a Revival--that is, a revival of
godliness and Christian grace--about to be undertaken by the Wesleyan
Methodist Society in Bursley.  Its object was to arrange for a personal
visitation of the parents of Sunday-school scholars in their homes.
Hitherto Anna had felt but little interest in the Revival: it had
several times been brought indirectly before her notice, but she had
regarded it as a phenomenon which recurred at intervals in the cycle of
religious activity, and as not in any way affecting herself.  The
gradual centring of public interest, however--that mysterious movement
which, defying analysis, gathers force as it proceeds, and ends by
coercing the most indifferent--had already modified her attitude
towards this forthcoming event.  It got about that the preacher who had
been engaged, a specialist in revivals, was a man of miraculous powers:
the number of souls which he had snatched from eternal torment was
precisely stated, and it amounted to tens of thousands.  He played the
cornet to the glory of God, and his cornet was of silver: his more
distant past had been ineffably wicked, and the faint rumour of that
dead wickedness clung to his name like a piquant odour.  As Anna walked
up Trafalgar Road from Price's she observed that the hoardings had been
billed with great posters announcing the Revival and the revivalist,
who was to commence his work on Friday night.

During tea Mr. Tellwright interrupted his perusal of the evening
'Signal' to give utterance to a rather remarkable speech.

'Bless us!' he said.  'Th' old trumpeter 'll turn the town upside down!'

'Do you mean the revivalist, father?' Anna asked.

'Ay!'

'He's a beautiful man,' Agnes exclaimed with enthusiasm.  'Our teacher
showed us his portrait after school this afternoon.  I never saw such a
beautiful man.'

Her father gazed hard at the child for an instant, cup in hand, and
then turned to Anna with a slightly sardonic air.

'What are you doing i' this Revival, Anna?'

'Nothing,' she said.  'Only there's a teachers' meeting about it
to-morrow night, and I have to go to that.  Young Mr. Price mentioned
it to me specially to-day.'

A pause followed.

'Didst get anything out o' Price?' Tellwright asked.

'Yes; he gave me ten pounds.  He wants you to go and look over the
works--says they're falling to pieces.'

'Cheque, I reckon?'

She corrected the surmise.

'Better give me them notes, Anna,' he said after tea.  'I'm going to
th' Bank i' th' morning, and I'll pay 'em in to your account.'

There was no reason why she should not have suggested the propriety of
keeping at least one of the notes for her private use.  But she dared
not.  She had never any money of her own, not a penny; and the
effective possession of five pounds seemed far too audacious a dream.
She hesitated to imagine her father's reply to such a request, even to
frame the request to herself.  The thing, viewed close, was utterly
impossible.  And when she relinquished the notes she also, without
being asked, gave up her cheque-book, deposit-book, and pass-book.  She
did this while ardently desiring to refrain from doing it, as it were
under the compulsion of an invincible instinct.  Afterwards she felt
more at ease, as though some disturbing question had been settled once
and for all.

During the whole of that evening she timorously expected Mynors, saying
to herself however that he certainly would not call before Thursday.
On Tuesday evening she started early for the teachers' meeting.  Her
intention was to arrive among the first and to choose a seat in
obscurity, since she knew well that every eye would be upon her.  She
was divided between the desire to see Mynors and the desire to avoid
the ordeal of being seen by her colleagues in his presence.  She
trembled lest she should be incapable of commanding her mien so as to
appear unconscious of this inspection by curious eyes.

The meeting was held in a large class-room, furnished with wooden
seats, a chair and a small table.  On the grey distempered walls hung a
few Biblical cartoons depicting scenes in the life of Joseph and his
brethren--but without reference to Potiphar's wife.  From the
whitewashed ceiling depended a T-shaped gas-fitting, one burner of
which showed a glimmer, though the sun had not yet set.  The evening
was oppressively warm, and through the wide-open window came the faint
effluvium of populous cottages and the distant but raucous cries of
children at play.  When Anna entered a group of young men were talking
eagerly round the table; among these was Willie Price, who greeted her.
No others had come: she sat down in a corner by the door, invisible
except from within the room.  Gradually the place began to fill.  Then
at last Mynors entered: Anna recognised his authoritative step before
she saw him.  He walked quickly to the chair in front of the table,
and, including all in a friendly and generous smile, said that in the
absence of Mr. Titus Price it fell to him to take the chair; he was
glad that so many had made a point of being present.  Everyone sat
down.  He gave out a hymn, and led the singing himself, attacking the
first note with an assurance born of practice.  Then he prayed, and as
he prayed Anna gazed at him intently.  He was standing up, the ends of
his fingers pressed against the top of the table.  Very carefully
dressed as usual, he wore a brilliant new red necktie, and a gardenia
in his button-hole.  He seemed happy, wholesome, earnest, and
unaffected.  He had the elasticity of youth with the firm wisdom of
age.  And it was as if he had never been younger and would never grow
older, remaining always at just thirty and in his prime.  Incomparable
to the rest, he was clearly born to lead.  He fulfilled his functions
with tact, grace, and dignity.  In such an affair as this present he
disclosed the attributes of the skilled workman, whose easy and exact
movements are a joy and wonder to the beholder.  And behind all was the
man, his excellent and strong nature, his kindliness, his sincerity.
Yes, to Anna, Mynors was perfect that night; the reality of him
exceeded her dreamy meditations.  Fearful on the brink of an ecstatic
bliss, she could scarcely believe that from the enticements of a
thousand women this paragon had been preserved for her.  Like most of
us, she lacked the high courage to grasp happiness boldly and without
apprehension; she had not learnt that nothing is too good to be true.

Mynors' prayer was a cogent appeal for the success of the Revival.  He
knew what he wanted, and confidently asked for it, approaching God with
humility but with self-respect.  The prayer was punctuated by Amens
from various parts of the room.  The atmosphere became suddenly
fervent, emotional and devout.  Here was lofty endeavour, idealism, a
burning spirituality; and not all the pettinesses unavoidable in such
an organisation as a Sunday-school could hide the difference between
this impassioned altruism and the ignoble selfishness of the worldly.
Anna felt, as she had often felt before, but more acutely now, that she
existed only on the fringe of the Methodist society.  She had not been
converted; technically she was a lost creature: the converted knew it,
and in some subtle way their bearing towards her, and others in her
case, always showed that they knew it.  Why did she teach?  Not from
the impulse of religious zeal.  Why was she allowed to have charge of a
class of immortal souls?  The blind could not lead the blind, nor the
lost save the lost.  These considerations troubled her.  Conscience
pricked, accusing her of a continual pretence.  The _rôle_ of
professing Christian, through false shame, had seemed distasteful to
her: she had said that she could never stand up and say, 'I am for
Christ,' without being uncomfortable.  But now she was ashamed of her
inability to profess Christ.  She could conceive herself proud and
happy in the very part which formerly she had despised.  It was these
believers, workers, exhorters, wrestlers with Satan, who had the right
to disdain; not she.  At that moment, as if divining her thoughts,
Mynors prayed for those among them who were not converted.  She
blushed, and when the prayer was finished she feared lest every eye
might seek hers in inquiry; but no one seemed to notice her.

Mynors sat down, and, seated, began to explain the arrangements for the
Revival.  He made it plain that prayers without industry would not
achieve success.  His remarks revealed the fact that underneath the
broad religious structure of the enterprise, and supporting it, there
was a basis of individual diplomacy and solicitation.  The town had
been mapped out into districts, and each of these was being importuned,
as at an election: by the thoroughness and instancy of this canvass,
quite as much as by the intensity of prayerful desire, would Christ
conquer.  The affair was a campaign before it was a prostration at the
Throne of Grace.  He spoke of the children, saying that in connection
with these they, the teachers, had at once the highest privilege and
the most sacred responsibility.  He told of a special service for the
children, and the need of visiting them in their homes and inviting the
parents also to this feast of God.  He wished every teacher during
to-morrow and the next day and the next day to go through the list of
his or her scholars' names, and call if possible at every house.  There
must be no shirking.  'Will you ladies do that?' he exclaimed with an
appealing, serious smile.  'Will you, Miss Dickinson?  Will you, Miss
Machin?  Will you, Mrs. Salt?  Will you, Miss Sutton?  Will you----'
Until at last it came: 'Will you, Miss Tellwright?'  'I will,' she
answered, with averted eyes.  'Thank you.  Thank you all.'

Some others spoke, hopefully, enthusiastically, and one or two prayed.
Then Mynors rose: 'May the blessing of God the Father, the Son, and the
Holy Ghost rest upon us now and for ever.'  'Amen,' someone ejaculated.
The meeting was over.

Anna passed rapidly out of he door, down the Quadrangle, and into
Trafalgar Road.  She was the first to leave, daring not to stay in the
room a moment.  She had seen him; he had not altered since Sunday;
there was no disillusion, but a deepening of the original impression.
Caught up by the soaring of his spirit, her spirit lifted, and she was
conscious of vague but intense longing skyward.  She could not reason
or think in that dizzying hour, but she made resolutions which had no
verbal form, yielding eagerly to his influence and his appeal.  Not
till she had reached the bottom of Duck Bank and was breasting the
first rise towards Bleakridge did her pace slacken.  Then a voice
called to her from behind.  She recognised it, and turned sharply
beneath the shock.  Mynors raised his hat and greeted her.

'I'm coming to see your father,' he said.

'Yes?' she said, and gave him her hand.

'It was a very satisfactory meeting to-night,' he began, and in a
moment they were talking seriously of the Revival.  With the most
oblique delicacy, the most perfect assumption of equality between them,
he allowed her to perceive his genuine and profound anxiety for her
spiritual welfare.  The atmosphere of the meeting was still round about
him, the divine fire still uncooled.  'I hope you will come to the
first service on Friday night,' he pleaded.

'I must,' she replied.  'Oh, yes.  I shall come.'

'That is good,' he said.  'I particularly wanted your promise.'

They were at the door of the house.  Agnes, obviously expectant and
excited, answered the bell.  With an effort Anna and Mynors passed into
a lighter mood.

'Father said you were coming, Mr. Mynors,' said Agnes, and, turning to
Anna, 'I've set supper all myself.'

'Have you?'  Mynors laughed.  'Capital!  You must let me give you a
kiss for that.'  He bent down and kissed her, she holding up her face
to his with no reluctance.  Anna looked on, smiling.

Mr. Tellwright sat near the window of the back parlour, reading the
paper.  Twilight was at hand.  He lowered his head as Mynors entered
with Agnes in train, so as to see over his spectacles, which were
half-way down his nose.

'How d'ye do, Mr. Mynors?  I was just going to begin my supper.  I
don't wait, you know,' and he glanced at the table.

'Quite right,' said Mynors, 'so long as you wouldn't eat it all.  Would
he have eaten it all, Agnes, do you think?'  Agnes pressed her head
against Mynors' arm and laughed shyly.  The old man sardonically
chuckled.

Anna, who was still in the passage, wondered what could be on the
table.  If it was only the usual morsel of cheese she felt that she
should expire of mortification.  She peeped: the cheese was at one end,
and at the other a joint of beef, scarcely touched.

'Nay, nay,' said Tellwright, as if he had been engaged some seconds
upon the joke, 'I'd have saved ye the bone.'

Anna went upstairs to take off her hat, and immediately Agnes flew
after her.  The child was breathless with news.

'Oh, Anna!  As soon as you'd gone out father told me that Mr. Mynors
was coming for supper.  Did you know before?'

'Not till Mr. Mynors told me, dear.'  It was characteristic of her
father to say nothing until the last moment.

'Yes, and he told me to put an extra plate, and I asked him if I had
better put the beef on the table, and first he said "No," cross--you
know--and then he said I could please myself, so I put it on.  Why has
Mr. Mynors come, Anna?'

'How should I know?  Some business between him and father, I expect.'

'It's very _queer_,' said Agnes positively, with the child's aptitude
for looking a fact squarely in the face.

'Why "queer"?'

'You know it is, Anna,' she frowned, and then breaking into a joyous
anile: 'But isn't he nice?  I think he's lovely.'

'Yes,' Anna assented coldly.

'But really?' Agnes persisted.

Anna brushed her hair and determined not to put on the apron which she
usually wore in the house.

'Am I tidy, Anna?'

'Yes.  Run downstairs now.  I am coming directly.'

'I want to wait for you,' Agnes pouted.

'Very well, dear.'

They entered the parlour together, and Henry Mynors jumped up from his
chair, and would not sit at table until they were seated.  Then Mr.
Tellwright carved the beef, giving each of them a very small piece, and
taking only cheese for himself.  Agnes handed the water-jug and the
bread.  Mynors talked about nothing in especial, but he talked and
laughed the whole time; he even made the old man laugh, by a comical
phrase aimed at Agnes's mad passion for gilly-flowers.  He seemed not
to have detected any shortcomings in the table appointments--the coarse
cloth and plates, the chipped tumblers, the pewter cruet, and the
stumpy knives--which caused anguish in the heart of the housewife.  He
might have sat at such a table every night of his life.

'May I trouble you for a little more beef?' he asked presently, and
Anna fancied a shade of mischief in his tone as he thus forced the old
man into a tardy hospitality.  'Thanks.  _And_ a morsel of fat.'

She wondered whether he guessed that she was worth fifty thousand
pounds, and her father worth perhaps more.

But on the whole Anna enjoyed the meal.  She was sorry when they had
finished and Agnes had thanked God for the beef.  It was not without
considerable reluctance that she rose and left the side of the man
whose arm she could have touched at any time during the previous twenty
minutes.  She had felt happy and perturbed in being so near to him, so
intimate and free; already she knew his face by heart.  The two girls
carried the plates and dishes into the kitchen, Agnes making the last
journey with the tablecloth, which Mynors had assisted her to fold.

'Shut the door, Agnes,' said the old man, getting up to light the gas.
It was an order of dismissal to both his daughters.  'Let me light
that,' Mynors exclaimed, and the gas was lighted before Mr. Tellwright
had struck a match.  Mynors turned on the full force of gas.  Then Mr.
Tellwright carefully lowered it.  The summer quarter's gas-bill at that
house did not exceed five shillings.

Through the open windows of the kitchen and parlour, Anna could hear
the voices of the two men in conversation, Mynors' vivacious and
changeful, her father's monotonous, curt, and heavy.  Once she caught
the old man's hard dry chuckle.  The washing-up was done, Agnes had
accomplished her home-lessons; the grandfather's clock chimed the
half-hour after nine.

'You must go to bed, Agnes.'

'Mustn't I say good-night to him?'

'No, I will say good-night for you.'

'Don't forget to.  I shall ask you in the morning.'

The regular sound of talk still came from the parlour.  A full moon
passed along the cloudless sky.  By its light and that of a glimmer of
gas, Anna sat cleaning silver, or rather nickel, at the kitchen table.
The spoons and forks were already clean, but she felt compelled to busy
herself with something.  At length the talk stopped and she heard the
scraping of chair-legs.  Should she return to the parlour?  Or should
she----?  Even while she hesitated, the kitchen door opened.

'Excuse me coming in here,' said Mynors.  'I wanted to say good-night
to you.'

She sprang up and he took her hand.  Could he feel the agitation of
that hand?

'Good-night.'

'Good-night.'  He said it again.

'And Agnes wished me to say good-night to you for her.'

'Did she?'  He smiled; till then his face had been serious.  'You won't
forget Friday?'

'As if I could!' she murmured after he had gone.




CHAPTER V

THE REVIVAL

Anna spent the two following afternoons in visiting the houses of her
school-children.  She had no talent for such work, which demands the
vocal rather than the meditative temperament, and the apparent futility
of her labours would have disgusted and disheartened her had she not
been sustained and urged forward by the still active influence of
Mynors and the teachers' meeting.  There were fifteen names in her
class-book, and she went to each house, except four whose tenants were
impeccable Wesleyan families and would have considered themselves
insulted by a quasi-didactic visit from an upstart like Anna.  Of the
eleven, some parents were rude to her; others begged, and she had
nothing to give; others made perfunctory promises; only two seemed to
regard her as anything but a somewhat tiresome impertinence.  The fault
was doubtless her own.  Nevertheless she found joy in the uncongenial
and ill-performed task--the cold, fierce joy of the nun in her penance.
When it was done she said 'I have done it,' as one who has sworn to do
it come what might, yet without quite expecting to succeed.

On the Friday afternoon, during tea, a boy brought up a large foolscap
packet addressed to Mr. Tellwright.  'From Mr. Mynors,' the boy said.
Tellwright opened it leisurely after the boy had gone, and took out
some sheets covered with figures which he carefully examined.  'Anna,'
he said, as she was clearing away the tea things, 'I understand thou'rt
going to the Revival meeting to-night.  I shall have a message as thou
mun give to Mr. Mynors.'

When she went upstairs to dress, she saw the Suttons' landau standing
outside their house on the opposite side of the road.  Mrs. Sutton came
down the front steps and got into the carriage, and was followed by a
little restless, nervous, alert man who carried in his hand a black
case of peculiar form.  'The Revivalist!' Anna exclaimed, remembering
that he was to stay with the Suttons during the Revival week.  Then
this was the renowned crusader, and the case held his renowned cornet!
The carriage drove off down Trafalgar Road, and Anna could see that the
little man was talking vehemently and incessantly to Mrs. Sutton, who
listened with evident interest; at the same time the man's eyes were
everywhere, absorbing all details of the street and houses with
unquenchable curiosity.

'What is the message for Mr. Mynors, father?' she asked in the parlour,
putting on her cotton gloves.

'Oh!' he said, and then paused.  'Shut th' door, lass.'

She shut it, not knowing what this cautiousness foreshadowed.  Agnes
was in the kitchen.

'It's o' this'n,' Tellwright began.  'Young Mynors wants a partner wi'
a couple o' thousand pounds, and he come to me.  Ye understand; 'tis
what they call a sleeping partner he's after.  He'll give a third share
in his concern for two thousand pound now.  I've looked into it and
there's money in it.  He's no fool and he's gotten hold of a good
thing.  He sent me up his stock-taking and balance sheet to-day, and
I've been o'er the place mysen.  I'm telling thee this, lass, because I
have na' two thousand o' my own idle just now, and I thought as thou
might happen like th' investment.'

'But father----'

'Listen.  I know as there's only four hundred o' thine in th' Bank now,
but next week 'll see the beginning o' July and dividends coming in.
I've reckoned as ye'll have nigh on fourteen hundred i' dividends and
interests, and I can lend ye a couple o' hundred in case o' necessity.
It's a rare chance; thou's best tak' it.'

'Of course, if you think it's all right, father, that's enough,' she
said without animation.

'Am' na I telling thee I think it's all right?' he remarked sharply.
'You mun tell Mynors as I say it's satisfactory.  Tell him that, see?
I say it's satisfactory.  I shall want for to see him later on.  He
told me he couldna' come up any night next week, so ask him to make it
the week after.  There's no hurry.  Dunna' forget.'

What surprised Anna most in the affair was that Henry Mynors should
have been able to tempt her father into a speculation.  Ephraim
Tellwright the investor was usually as shy as a well-fed trout, and
this capture of him by a youngster only two years established in
business might fairly be regarded as a prodigious feat.  It was indeed
the highest distinction of Mynors' commercial career.  Henry was so
prominently active in the Wesleyan Society that the members of that
society, especially the women, were apt to ignore the other side of his
individuality.  They knew him supreme as a religious worker; they did
not realise the likelihood of his becoming supreme in the staple
manufacture.  Left an orphan at seventeen, Mynors belonged to a family
now otherwise extinct in the Five Towns--one of those families which by
virtue of numbers, variety, and personal force seem to permeate a whole
district, to be a calculable item of it, an essential part of its
identity.  The elders of the Mynors blood had once occupied the red
house opposite Tellwright's, now used as a school, and had there reared
many children: the school building was still known as 'Mynors's' by
old-fashioned people.  Then the parents died in middle age: one
daughter married in the North, another in the South; a third went to
China as a missionary and died of fever; the eldest son died; the
second had vanished into Canada and was reported a scapegrace; the
third was a sea-captain.  Henry (the youngest) alone was left, and of
all the family Henry was the only one to be connected with the
earthenware trade.  There was no inherited money, and during ten years
he had worked for a large firm in Turnhill, as clerk, as traveller, and
last as manager, living always quietly in lodgings.  In the fullness of
time he gave notice to leave, was offered a partnership, and refused
it.  Taking a newly erected manufactory in Bursley near the canal, he
started in business for himself, and it became known that, at the age
of twenty-eight, he had saved fifteen hundred pounds.  Equally expert
in the labyrinths of manufacture and in the niceties of the markets (he
was reckoned a peerless traveller), Mynors inevitably flourished.  His
order-books were filled and flowing over at remunerative prices, and
insufficiency of capital was the sole peril to which he was exposed.
By the raising of a finger he could have had a dozen working and
moneyed partners, but he had no desire for a working partner.  What he
wanted was a capitalist who had confidence in him, Mynors.  In Ephraim
Tellwright he found the man.  Whether it was by instinct, good luck, or
skilful diplomacy that Mynors secured this invaluable prize no one
could positively say, and perhaps even he himself could not have
catalogued all the obscure motives that had guided him to the shrewd
miser of Manor Terrace.

Anna had meant to reach chapel before the commencement of the meeting,
but the interview with her father threw her late.  As she entered the
porch an officer told her that the body of the chapel was quite full
and that she should go into the gallery, where a few seats were left
near the choir.  She obeyed: pew-holders had no rights at that service.
The scene in the auditorium astonished her, effectually putting an end
to the worldly preoccupation caused by her father's news.  The historic
chapel was crowded almost in every part, and the
congregation--impressed, excited, eager--sang the opening hymn with
unprecedented vigour and sincerity; above the rest could be heard the
trained voices of a large choir, and even the choir, usually
perfunctory, seemed to share the general fervour.  In the vast mahogany
pulpit the Reverend Reginald Banks, the superintendent minister, a
stout pale-faced man with pendent cheeks and cold grey eyes, stood
impassively regarding the assemblage, and by his side was the
revivalist, a manikin in comparison with his colleague; on the broad
balustrade of the pulpit lay the cornet.  The fiery and inquisitive
eyes of the revivalist probed into the furthest corners of the chapel;
apparently no detail of any single face or of the florid decoration
escaped him, and as Anna crept into a small empty pew next to the east
wall she felt that she too had been separately observed.  Mr. Banks
gave out the last verse of the hymn, and simultaneously with the
leading chord from the organ the revivalist seized his cornet and
joined the melody.  Massive yet exultant, the tones rose clear over the
mighty volume of vocal sound, an incitement to victorious effort.  The
effect was instant: an ecstatic tremor seemed to pass through the
congregation, like wind through ripe corn, and at the close of the hymn
it was not until the revivalist had put down his cornet that the people
resumed their seats.  Amid the _frou-frou_ of dresses and subdued
clearing of throats, Mr. Banks retired softly to the back of the
pulpit, and the revivalist, mounting a stool, suddenly dominated the
congregation.  His glance swept masterfully across the chapel and round
the gallery.  He raised one hand with the stilling action of a
mesmerist, and the people, either kneeling or inclined against the
front of the pews, hid their faces from those eyes.  It was as though
the man had in a moment measured their iniquities, and had courageously
resolved to intercede for them with God, but was not very sanguine as
to the result.  Everyone except the organist, who was searching his
tune-book for the next tune, seemed to feel humbled, bitterly ashamed,
as it were caught in the act of sin.  There was a solemn and terrible
pause.

Then the revivalist began:

'Behold us, O dread God, suppliants for Thy mercy--'

His voice was rich and full, but at the same time sharp and decisive.
The burning eyes were shut tight, and Anna, who had a profile view of
his face, saw that every muscle of it was drawn tense.  The man
possessed an extraordinary histrionic gift, and he used it with
imagination.  He had two audiences, God and the congregation.  God was
not more distant from him than the congregation, or less real to him,
or less a heart to be influenced.  Declamatory and full of effects
carefully calculated--a work of art, in fact--his appeal showed no
error of discretion in its approach to the Eternal.  There was no
minimising of committed sin, nor yet an insincere and grovelling
self-accusation.  A tyrant could not have taken offence at its tone,
which seemed to pacify God while rendering the human audience still
more contrite.  The conclusion of the catalogue of wickedness and swift
confident turn to Christ's Cross was marvellously impressive.  The
congregation burst out into sighs, groans, blessings, and Amens; and
the pillars of distant rural conventicles who had travelled from the
confines of the circuit to its centre in order to partake of this
spiritual excitation began to feel that they would not be disappointed.

'Let the Holy Ghost descend upon us now,' the revivalist pleaded with
restrained passion; and then, opening his eyes and looking at the clock
in front of the gallery, he repeated, 'Now, now, at twenty-one minutes
past seven.'  Then his eyes, without shifting, seemed to ignore the
clock, to gaze through it into some unworldly dimension, and he
murmured in a soft dramatic whisper: 'I see the Divine Dove!----'

The doors, closed during prayer, were opened, and more people entered.
A youth came into Anna's pew.

The superintendent minister gave out another hymn, and when this was
finished the revivalist, who had been resting in a chair, came forward
again.  'Friends and fellow-sinners,' he said, 'a lot of you, fools
that you are, have come here to-night to hear me play my cornet.  Well,
you have heard me.  I have played the cornet, and I will play it again.
I would play it on my head if by so doing I could bring sinners to
Christ.  I have been called a mountebank.  I am one.  I glory in it.  I
am God's mountebank, doing God's precious business in my own way.  But
God's precious business cannot be carried on, even by a mountebank,
without money, and there will be a collection towards the expenses of
the Revival.  During the collection we will sing "Rock of Ages," and
you shall hear my cornet again.  If you feel willing to give us your
sixpences, give; but if you resent a collection,' here he adopted a
tone of ferocious sarcasm, 'keep your miserable sixpences and get
sixpenny-worth of miserable enjoyment out of them elsewhere.'

As the meeting proceeded, submitting itself more and more to the
imperious hypnotism of the revivalist, Anna gradually became oppressed
by a vague sensation which was partly sorrow and partly an inexplicable
dull anger--anger at her own penitence.  She felt as if everything was
wrong and could never by any possibility be righted.  After two
exhortations, from the minister and the revivalist, and another hymn,
the revivalist once more prayed, and as he did so Anna looked
stealthily about in a sick, preoccupied way.  The youth at her side
stared glumly in front of him.  In the orchestra Henry Mynors was
whispering to the organist.  Down in the body of the chapel the
atmosphere was electric, perilous, overcharged with spiritual emotion.
She was glad she was not down there.  The voice of the revivalist
ceased, but he kept the attitude of supplication.  Sobs were heard in
various quarters, and here and there an elder of the chapel could be
seen talking quietly to some convicted sinner.  The revivalist began
softly to sing 'Jesu, lover of my soul,' and most of the congregation,
standing up, joined him; but the sinners stricken of the Spirit
remained abjectly bent, tortured by conscience, pulled this way by
Christ and that by Satan.  A few rose and went to the Communion rails,
there to kneel in the sight of all.  Mr. Banks descended from the
pulpit and opening the wicket which led to the Communion table spoke to
these over the rails, reassuringly, as a nurse to a child.  Other
sinners, desirous of fuller and more intimate guidance, passed down the
aisles and so into the preacher's vestry at the eastern end of the
chapel, and were followed thither by class-leaders and other proved
servants of God: among these last were Titus Price and Mr. Sutton.

'The blood of Christ atones,' said the revivalist solemnly at the end
of the hymn.  'The spirit of Christ is working among us.  Let us engage
in private prayer.  Let us drive the devil out of this chapel.'

More sighs and groans followed.  Then someone cried out in sharp,
shrill tones, 'Praise Him;' and another cried, 'Praise Him;' and an old
woman's quavering voice sang the words, 'I know that my Redeemer
liveth.'  Anna was in despair at her own predicament, and the sense of
sin was not more strong than the sense of being confused and publicly
shamed.  A man opened the pew-door, and sitting down by the youth's
side began to talk with him.  It was Henry Mynors.  Anna looked
steadily away, at the wall, fearful lest he should address her too.
Presently the youth got up with a frenzied gesture and walked out of
the gallery, followed by Mynors.  In a moment she saw the youth
stepping awkwardly along the aisle beneath, towards the inquiry room,
his head forward, and the lower lip hanging as though he were sulky.

Anna was now in the profoundest misery.  The weight of her sins, of her
ingratitude to God, lay on her like a physical and intolerable load,
and she lost all feeling of shame, as a sea-sick voyager loses shame
after an hour of nausea.  She knew then that she could no longer go on
living as aforetime.  She shuddered at the thought of her tremendous
responsibility to Agnes--Agnes who took her for perfection.  She
recollected all her sins individually--lies, sloth, envy, vanity, even
theft in her infancy.  She heaped up all the wickedness of a lifetime,
hysterically augmented it, and found a horrid pleasure in the
exaggeration.  Her virtuous acts shrank into nothingness.

A man, and then another, emerged from the vestry door with beaming,
happy face.  These were saved; they had yielded to Christ's persuasive
invitation.  Anna tried to imagine herself converted, or in the process
of being converted.  She could not.  She could only sit moveless, dull,
and abject.  She did not stir, even when the congregation rose for
another hymn.  In what did conversion consist?  Was it to say the
words, 'I believe'?  She repeated to herself softly, 'I believe; I
believe.'  But nothing happened.  Of course she believed.  She had
never doubted, or dreamed of doubting, that Jesus died on the Cross to
save her soul--_her_ soul--from eternal damnation.  She was probably
unaware that any person in Christendom had doubted that fact so
fundamental to her.  What, then, was lacking?  What was belief?  What
was faith?

A venerable class-leader came from the vestry, and, slowly climbing the
pulpit stairs, whispered in the ear of the revivalist.  The latter
faced the congregation with a cry of joy.  'Lord,' he exclaimed, 'we
bless Thee that seventeen souls have found Thee!  Lord, let the full
crop be gathered, for the fields are white unto harvest.'  There was an
exuberant chorus of praise to God.

The door of the pew was opened gently, and Anna started to see Mrs.
Sutton at her side.  She at once guessed that Mynors had sent to her
this angel of consolation.

'Are you near the light, dear Anna?' Mrs. Sutton began.

Anna searched for an answer.  She now sat huddled up in the corner of
the pew, her face partially turned towards Mrs. Sutton, who looked
mildly into her eyes.  'I don't know,' Anna stammered, feeling like a
naughty school-girl.  A doubt whether the whole affair was not after
all absurd flashed through her, and was gone.

'But it is quite simple,' said Mrs. Sutton.  'I cannot tell you
anything that you do not know.  Cast out pride.  Cast out pride--that
is it.  Nothing but earthly pride prevents you from realising the
saving power of Christ.  You are afraid, Anna, afraid to be humble.  Be
brave.  It is so simple, so easy.  If one will but submit.'

Anna said nothing, had nothing to say, was conscious of nothing save
excessive discomfort.

'Where do you feel your difficulty to be?' asked Mrs. Sutton.

'I don't know,' she answered wearily.

'The happiness that awaits you is unspeakable.  I have followed Christ
for nearly fifty years, and my happiness increases daily.  Sometimes I
do not know how to contain it all.  It surges above all the trials and
disappointments of this world.  Oh, Anna, if you will but believe!'

The ageing woman's thin, distinguished face, crowned with abundant grey
hair, glistened with love and compassion, and as Anna's eyes rested
upon it Anna felt that here was something tangible, something to lay
hold on.

'I think I do believe,' she said weakly.

'You "think"?  Are you sure?  Are you not deceiving yourself?  Belief
is not with the lips: it is with the heart.'

There was a pause.  Mr. Banks could be heard praying.

'I will go home,' Anna whispered at length, 'and think it out for
myself.'

'Do, my dear girl, and God will help you.'

Mrs. Sutton bent and kissed Anna affectionately, and then hurried away
to offer her ministrations elsewhere.  As Anna left the chapel, she
encountered the chapel-keeper pacing regularly to and fro across the
length of the broad steps.  In the porch was a notice that cabinet
photographs of the revivalist could be purchased on application, at one
shilling each.




CHAPTER VI

WILLIE

Anna closed the bedroom door softly; through the open window came the
tones of Cauldon Church clock, famous for their sonority, and richness,
announcing eleven.  Agnes lay asleep under the blue-and-white
counterpane, on the side of the bed next the wall, the bed-clothes
pushed down and disclosing the upper half of her night-gowned figure.
She slept in absolute repose, with flushed cheek and every muscle lax,
her hair by some chance drawn in a perfect straight line diagonally
across the pillow.  Anna glanced at her sister, the image of physical
innocence and childish security, and then, depositing the candle, went
to the window and looked out.

The bedroom was over the kitchen and faced south.  The moon was hidden
by clouds, but clear stretches of sky showed thick-studded clusters of
stars brightly winking.  To the far right across the fields the
silhouette of Hillport Church could just be discerned on the ridge.  In
front, several miles away, the blast-furnaces of Cauldon Bar Ironworks
shot up vast wreaths of yellow flame with canopies of tinted smoke.
Still more distant were a thousand other lights crowning chimney and
kiln, and nearer, on the waste lands west of Bleakridge, long fields of
burning ironstone glowed with all the strange colours of decadence.
The entire landscape was illuminated and transformed by these unique
pyrotechnics of labour atoning for its grime, and dull, weird sounds,
as of the breathings and sighings of gigantic nocturnal creatures,
filled the enchanted air.  It was a romantic scene, a romantic summer
night, balmy, delicate, and wrapped in meditation.  But Anna saw
nothing there save the repulsive evidences of manufacture, had never
seen anything else.

She was still horribly, acutely miserable, exhausted by the fruitless
search for some solution of the enigma of sin--her sin in
particular--and of redemption.  She had cogitated in a vain circle
until she was no longer capable of reasoned ideas.  She gazed at the
stars and into the illimitable spaces beyond them, and thought of life
and its inconceivable littleness, as millions had done before in the
presence of that same firmament.  Then, after a time, her brain resumed
its nightmare-like task.  She began to probe herself anew.  Would it
have availed if she had walked publicly to the penitential form at the
Communion rail, and, ranging herself with the working men and women,
proved by that overt deed the sincerity of her contrition?  She wished
ardently that she had done so, yet knew well that such an act would
always be impossible for her, even though the evasion of it meant
eternal torture.  Undoubtedly, as Mrs. Sutton had implied, she was
proud, stiff-necked, obstinate in iniquity.

Agnes stirred slightly in her sleep, and Anna, aroused, dropped the
blind, turned towards the room and began to undress, slowly, with
reflective pauses.  Her melancholy became grim, sardonic; if she was
doomed to destruction, so let it be.  Suddenly, half-glad, she knelt
down and prayed, prayed that pride might be cast out, burying her face
in the coverlet and caging the passionate effusion in a whisper lest
Agnes should be disturbed.  Having prayed, she still knelt quiescent;
her eyes were dry and burning.  The last car thundered up the road,
shaking the house, and she rose, finished undressing, blew out the
candle, and slipped into bed by Agnes's side.

She could not sleep, did not attempt to sleep, but abandoned herself
meekly to despair.  Her thoughts covered again the interminable round,
and again, and yet again.  In the twilight of the brief summer night
her accustomed eyes could distinguish every object in the room, all the
bits of furniture which had been bought from Hanbridge and with which
she had been familiar since her memory began: everything appeared mean,
despicable, cheerless; there was nothing to inspire.  She dreamed
impossibly of a high spirituality which should metamorphose all, change
her life, lend glamour to the most pitiful surroundings, ennoble the
most ignominious burdens--a spirituality never to be hers.

At any rate she would tell her father in the morning that she was
convicted of sin, and, however hopelessly, seeking salvation; she would
tell both her father and Agnes at breakfast.  The task would be
difficult, but she swore to do it.  She resolved, she endeavoured to
sleep, and did sleep uneasily for a short period.  When she woke the
great business of the dawn had begun.  She left the bed, and drawing up
the blind looked forth.  The furnace fires were paling; a few milky
clouds sailed in the vast pallid blue.  It was cool just then, and she
shivered.  She went to the glass, and examined her face carefully, but
it gave no signs whatever of the inward warfare.  She saw her plain and
mended night-gown.  Suppose she were married to Mynors!  Suppose he lay
asleep in the bed where Agnes lay asleep!  Involuntarily she glanced at
Agnes to certify that the child and none else was indeed there, and got
into bed hurriedly and hid herself because she was ashamed to have had
such a fancy.  But she continued to think of Mynors.  She envied him
for his cheerfulness, his joy, his goodness, his dignity, his tact, his
sex.  She envied every man.  Even in the sphere of religion, men were
not fettered like women.  No man, she thought, would acquiesce in the
futility to which she was already half resigned; a man would either
wring salvation from the heavenly powers or race gloriously to hell.
Mynors--Mynors was a god!

She recollected her resolution to speak to her father and Agnes at
breakfast, and shudderingly confirmed it, but less stoutly than before.
Then an announcement made by Mr. Banks in chapel on the previous
evening presented itself, as though she was listening to it for the
first time.  It was the announcement of a prayer-meeting for workers in
the Revival, to be held that (Saturday) morning at seven o'clock.  She
instantly decided to go to the meeting, and the decision seemed to give
her new hope.  Perhaps there she might find peace.  On that faint
expectancy she fell asleep again and did not wake till half-past six,
after her usual hour.  She heard noises in the yard; it was her father
going towards the garden with a wheelbarrow.  She dressed quickly, and
when she had pinned on her hat she woke Agnes.

'Going out, Sis?' the child asked sleepily, seeing her attire.

'Yes, dear.  I am going to the seven o'clock prayer-meeting.  And you
must get breakfast.  You can--can't you?'

The child assented, glad of the chance.

'But what are you going to the prayer-meeting for?'

Anna hesitated.  Why not confess?  No.  'I must go,' she said quietly
at length.  'I shall be back before eight.'

'Does father know?' Agnes enquired apprehensively.

'No, dear.'

Anna shut the door quickly, went softly downstairs and along the
passage, and crept into the street like a thief.

Men and women and boys and girls were on their way to work, with
hurried clattering steps, some munching thick pieces of bread as they
went, all self-centred, apparently morose and not quite awake.  The
dust lay thick in the arid gutters, and in drifts across the pavement;
as the night-wind had blown it.  Vehicular traffic had not begun, and
blinds were still drawn; and though the footpaths were busy the street
had a deserted and forlorn aspect.  Anna walked hastily down the road,
avoiding the glances of such as looked at her, but peering furtively at
the faces of those who ignored her.  All seemed callous--hoggishly
careless of the everlasting verities.  At first it appeared strange to
her that the potent revival in the Wesleyan chapel had produced no
effect on these preoccupied people.  Bursley, then, continued its dull
and even course.  She wondered whether any of them guessed that she was
going to the prayer-meeting and secretly sneered at her therefore.

When she had climbed Duck Bank she found to her surprise that the doors
of the chapel were fast closed, though it was ten minutes past seven.
Was there to be no prayer-meeting?  A momentary sensation of relief
flashed through her, and then she saw that the gate of the school-yard
was open.  She should have known that early morning prayers were never
offered up in the chapel, but in the lecture-hall.  She crossed the
quadrangle with beating heart, feeling now that she had embarked on a
frightful enterprise.  The door of the lecture-hall was ajar; she
pushed it and went in.  At the other end of the hall a meagre handful
of worshippers were collected, and on the raised platform stood Mr.
Banks, vapid, perfunctory and fatigued.  He gave out a verse, and
pitched the tune--too high, but the singers with a heroic effect
accomplished the verse without breaking down.  The singing was thin and
feeble, and the eagerness of one or two voices seemed strained, as
though with a determination to make the best of things.  Mynors was not
present, and Anna did not know whether to be sorry or glad at this.
She recognised that save herself all present were old believers, tried
warriors of the Lord.  There was only one other woman, Miss Sarah
Vodrey, an aged spinster who kept house for Titus Price and his son,
and found her sole diversion in the variety of her religious
experiences.  Before the hymn was finished a young man joined the
assembly; it was the youth who had sat near Anna on the previous night,
an ecstatic and naïve bliss shone from his face.  In his prayer the
minister drew the attention of the Deity to the fact that although a
score or more of souls had been ingathered at the first service, the
Methodists of Bursley were by no means satisfied.  They wanted more;
they wanted the whole of Bursley; and they would be content with no
less.  He begged that their earnest work might not be shamed before the
world by a partial success.  In conclusion he sought the blessing of
God on the revivalist and asked that this tireless enthusiast might be
led to husband his strength: at which there was a fervent Amen.

Several men prayed, and a pause ensued, all still kneeling.

Then the minister said in a tone of oily politeness:

'Will a sister pray?'

Another pause followed.

'Sister Tellwright?'

Anna would have welcomed death and damnation.  She clasped her hands
tightly, and longed for the endless moment to pass.  At last Sarah
Vodrey gave a preliminary cough.  Miss Vodrey was always happy to pray
aloud, and her invocations usually began with the same phrase: 'Lord,
we thank Thee that this day finds us with our bodies out of the grave
and our souls out of hell.'

Afterwards the minister gave out another hymn, and as soon as the
singing commenced Anna slipped away.  Once in the yard, she breathed a
sigh of relief.  Peace at the prayer-meeting?  It was like coming out
of prison.  Peace was farther off than ever.  Nay, she had actually
forgotten her soul in the sensations of shame and discomfort.  She had
contrived only to make herself ridiculous, and perhaps the pious at
their breakfast-tables would discuss her and her father, and their
money, and the queer life they led.

If Mynors had but been present!

She walked out into the street.  It was twenty minutes to eight by the
town-hall clock.  The last workmen's car of the morning was just
leaving Bursley: it was packed inside and outside, and the conductor
hung insecurely on the step.  At the gates of the manufactory opposite
the chapel, a man in a white smock stood placidly smoking a pipe.  A
prayer-meeting was a little thing, a trifle in the immense and regular
activity of the town: this thought necessarily occurred to Anna.  She
hurried homewards, wondering what her father would say about that
morning's unusual excursion.  A couple of hundred yards distant from
home she saw, to her astonishment, Agnes emerging from the front-door
of the house.  The child ran rapidly down the street, not observing
Anna till they were close upon each other.

'Oh, Anna!  You forgot to buy the bacon yesterday.  There isn't a
_scrap_, and father's fearfully angry.  He gave me sixpence, and I'm
going down to Leal's to get some as quick as ever I can.'

It was a thunderbolt to Anna, this seemingly petty misadventure.  As
she entered the house she felt a tear on her cheek.  She was ashamed to
weep, but she wept.  This, after the fiasco of the prayer-meeting, was
a climax of woe; it overtopped and extinguished all the rest; her soul
was nothing to her now.  She quickly took off her hat and ran to the
kitchen.  Agnes had put the breakfast-things on the tray ready for
setting; the bread was cut, the coffee portioned into the jug; the fire
burned bright, and the kettle sang.  Anna took the cloth from the
drawer in the oak dresser, and went to the parlour to lay the table.
Mr. Tellwright was at the end of the garden, pointing the wall, his
back to the house.  The table set, Anna observed that the room was only
partly dusted: there was a duster on the mantelpiece; she seized it to
finish, and at that moment the kitchen clock struck eight.
Simultaneously Mr. Tellwright dropped his trowel, and came towards the
house.  She doggedly dusted one chair, and then, turning coward, flew
away upstairs; the kitchen was barred to her since her father would
enter by the kitchen door.

She had forgotten to buy bacon, and breakfast would be late: it was a
calamity unique in her experience!  She stood at the door of her
bedroom, and waited, vehemently, for Agnes's return.  At last the child
raced breathlessly in; Anna flew to meet her.  With incredible speed
the bacon was whipped out of its wrapper, and Anna picked up the knife.
At the first stroke she cut herself, and Agnes was obliged to bind the
finger with rag.  The clock struck the half-hour like a knell.  It was
twenty minutes to nine, forty minutes behind time, when the two girls
hurried into the parlour, Anna bearing the bacon and hot plates, Agnes
the bread and coffee.  Mr. Tellwright sat upright and ferocious in his
chair, the image of offence and wrath.  Instead of reading his letters
he had fed full of this ineffable grievance.  The meal began in a
desolating silence.  The male creature's terrible displeasure permeated
the whole room like an ether, invisible but carrying vibrations to the
heart.  Then, when he had eaten one piece of bacon, and cut his
envelopes, the miser began to empty himself of some of his anger in
stormy tones that might have uprooted trees.  Anna ought to feel
thoroughly ashamed.  He could not imagine what she had been thinking
of.  Why didn't she tell him she was going to the prayer-meeting?  Why
did she go to the prayer-meeting, disarranging the whole household?
How came she to forget the bacon?  It was gross carelessness.  A pretty
example to her little sister!  The fact was that _since her birthday_
she had gotten above hersen.  She was careless and extravagant.  Look
how thick the bacon was cut.  He should not stand it much longer.  And
her finger all red, and the blood dropping on the cloth: a nice sight
at a meal!  Go and tie it up again.

Without a word she left the room to obey.  Of course she had no
defence.  Agnes, her tears falling, pecked her food timidly like a
bird, not daring to stir from her chair, even to assist at the finger.

'What did Mr. Mynors say?' Tellwright inquired fiercely when Anna had
come back into the room.

'Mr. Mynors?' she murmured, at a loss, but vaguely apprehending further
trouble.

'Did ye see him?'

'Yes, father.'

'Did ye give him my message?'

'I forgot it.'  God in heaven!  She had forgotten the message!

With a devastating grunt Mr. Tellwright walked speechless out of the
room.  The girls cleared the table, exchanging sympathy with a single
mute glance.  Anna's one satisfaction was that, even if she had
remembered the message, she could not possibly have delivered it.

Ephraim Tellwright stayed in the front parlour till half-past ten
o'clock, unseen but felt, like an angry god behind a cloud.  The
consciousness that he was there, unappeased and dangerous, remained
uppermost in the minds of the two girls during the morning.  At
half-past ten he opened the door.

'Agnes!' he commanded, and Agnes ran to him from the kitchen with the
speed of propitiation.

'Yes, father.'

'Take this note down to Price's, and don't wait for an answer.'

'Yes, father.'

She was back in twenty minutes.  Anna was sweeping the lobby.

'If Mr. Mynors calls while I'm out, you mun tell him to wait,' Mr.
Tellwright said to Agnes, pointedly ignoring Anna's presence.  Then,
having brushed his greenish hat on his sleeve he went off towards town
to buy meat and vegetables.  He always did Saturday's marketing
himself.  At the butcher's and in the St. Luke's covered market he was
a familiar and redoubtable figure.  Among the salespeople who stood the
market was a wrinkled, hardy old potato-woman from the other side of
Moorthorne: every Saturday the miser bested her in their
higgling-match, and nearly every Saturday she scornfully threw at him
the same joke: 'Get thee along to th' post-office, Master Terrick:[1]
happen they'll give thee sixpenn'orth o' stamps for fivepence
ha'penny.'  He seldom failed to laugh heartily at this.

At dinner the girls could perceive that the shadow of his displeasure
had slightly lifted, though he kept a frowning silence.  Expert in all
the symptoms of his moods, they knew that in a few hours he would begin
to talk again, at first in monosyllables, and then in short detached
sentences.  An intimation of relief diffused itself through the house
like a hint of spring in February.

These domestic upheavals followed always the same course, and Anna had
learnt to suffer the later stages of them with calmness and even with
impassivity.  Henry Mynors had not called.  She supposed that her
father had expected him to call for the answer which she had forgotten
to give him, and she had a hope that he would come in the afternoon:
once again she had the idea that something definite and satisfactory
might result if she could only see him--that she might, as it were,
gather inspiration from the mere sight of his face.  After dinner,
while the girls were washing the dinner things in the scullery, Agnes's
quick ear caught the sound of voices in the parlour.  They listened.
Mynors had come.  Mr. Tellwright must have seen him from the front
window and opened the door to him before he could ring.

'It's him,' said Agnes, excited.

'Who?' Anna asked, self-consciously.

'Mr. Mynors, of course,' said the child sharply, making it quite plain
that this affectation could not impose on her for a single instant.

'Anna!'  It was Mr. Tellwright's summons, through the parlour window.
She dried her hands, doffed her apron, and went to the parlour,
animated by a thousand fears and expectations.  Why was she to be
included in the colloquy?

Mynors rose at her entrance and greeted her with conspicuous deference,
a deference which made her feel ashamed.

'Hum!' the old man growled, but he was obviously content.  'I gave Anna
a message for ye yesterday, Mr. Mynors, but her forgot to deliver it,
wench-like.  Ye might ha' been saved th' trouble o' calling.  Now as
ye're here, I've summat for tell ye.  It 'll be Anna's money as 'll go
into that concern o' yours.  I've none by me; in fact, I'm a'most fast
for brass, but her 'll have as near two thousand as makes no matter in
a month's time, and her says her 'll go in wi' you on th' strength o'
my recommendation.'

This speech was evidently a perfect surprise for Henry Mynors.  For a
moment he seemed to be at a loss; then his face gave candid expression
to a feeling of intense pleasure.

'You know all about this business then, Miss Tellwright?'

She blushed.  'Father has told me something about it.'

'And are you willing to be my partner?'

'Nay, I did na' say that,' Tellwright interrupted.  'It 'll be Anna's
money, but i' my name.'

'I see,' said Mynors gravely.  'But if it is Miss Anna's money, why
should not she be the partner?'  He offered one of his courtly
diplomatic smiles.

'Oh--but----' Anna began in deprecation.

Tellwright laughed.  'Ay!' he said, 'why not?  It 'll be experience for
th' lass.'

'Just so,' said Mynors.

Anna stood silent, like a child who is being talked about.  There was a
pause.

'Would you care for that arrangement, Miss Tellwright?'

'Oh, yes,' she said.

'I shall try to justify your confidence.  I needn't say that I think
you and your father will have no reason to be disappointed.  Two
thousand pounds is of course only a trifle to you, but it is a great
deal to me, and--and----'  He hesitated.  Anna did not surmise that he
was too much moved by the sight of her, and the situation, to continue,
but this was the fact.

'There's nobbut one point, Mr. Mynors,' Tellwright said bluntly, 'and
that's the interest on th' capital, as must be deducted before
reckoning profits.  Us must have six per cent.'

'But I thought we had settled it at five,' said Mynors with sudden
firmness.

'We 'n settled as you shall have five on your fifteen hundred,' the
miser replied with imperturbable audacity, 'but us mun have our six.'

'I certainly thought we had thrashed that out fully, and agreed that
the interest should be the same on each side.'  Mynors was alert and
defensive.

'Nay, young man.  Us mun have our six.  We're takkin' a risk.'

Mynors pressed his lips together.  He was taken at a disadvantage.  Mr.
Tellwright, with unscrupulous cleverness, had utilized the effect on
Mynors of his daughter's presence to regain a position from which the
younger man had definitely ousted him a few days before.  Mynors was
annoyed, but he gave no sign of his annoyance.

'Very well,' he said at length, with a private smile at Anna to
indicate that it was out of regard for her that he yielded.

Mr. Tellwright made no pretence of concealing his satisfaction.  He,
too, smiled at Anna, sardonically: the last vestige of the morning's
irritation vanished in a glow of triumph.

'I'm afraid I must go,' said Mynors, looking at his watch.  'There is a
service at chapel at three.  Our Revivalist came down with Mrs. Sutton
to look over the works this morning, and I told him I should be at the
service.  So I must.  You coming, Mr. Tellwright?'

'Nay, my lad.  I'm owd enough to leave it to young uns.'

Anna forced her courage to the verge of rashness, moved by a swift
impulse.

'Will you wait one minute?' she said to Mynors.  'I am going to the
service.  If I'm late back, father, Agnes will see to the tea.  Don't
wait for me.'  She looked him straight in the face.  It was one of the
bravest acts of her life.  After the episode of breakfast, to suggest a
procedure which might entail any risk upon another meal was absolutely
heroic.  Tellwright glanced away from his daughter, and at Mynors.
Anna hurried upstairs.

'Who's thy lawyer, Mr. Mynors?' Tellwright asked.

'Dane,' said Mynors.

'That 'll be convenient.  Dane does my bit o' business, too.  I'll see
him, and make a bargain wi' him for th' partnership deed.  He always
works by contract for me.  I've no patience wi' six-and-eight-pences.'

Mynors assented.

'You must come down some afternoon and look over the works,' he said to
Anna as they were walking down Trafalgar Road towards chapel.

'I should like to,' Anna replied.  'I've never been over a works in my
life.'

'No?  You are going to be a partner in the best works of its size in
Bursley,' Mynors said enthusiastically.

'I'm glad of that,' she smiled, 'for I do believe I own the worst.'

'What--Price's do you mean?'

She nodded.

'Ah!' he exclaimed, and seemed to be thinking.  'I wasn't sure whether
that belonged to you or your father.  I'm afraid it isn't quite the
best of properties.  But perhaps I'd better say nothing about that.  We
had a grand meeting last night.  Our little cornet-player quite lived
up to his reputation, don't you think?'

'Quite,' she said faintly.

'You enjoyed the meeting?'

'No,' she blurted out, dismayed but resolute to be honest.

There was a silence.

'But you were at the early prayer-meeting this morning, I hear.'

She said nothing while they took a dozen paces, and then murmured,
'Yes.'

Their eyes met for a second, hers full of trouble.

'Perhaps,' he said at length, 'perhaps--excuse me saying this--but you
may be expecting too much----'

'Well?' she encouraged him, prepared now to finish what had been begun.

'I mean,' he said, earnestly, 'that I--we--cannot promise you any
sudden change of feeling, any sudden relief and certainty, such as some
people experience.  At least, I never had it.  What is called
conversion can happen in various ways.  It is a question of living, of
constant endeavour, with the example of Christ always before us.  It
need not always be a sudden wrench, you know, from the world.  Perhaps
you have been expecting too much,' he repeated, as though offering balm
with that phrase.

She thanked him sincerely, but not with her lips, only with the heart.
He had revealed to her an avenue of release from a situation which had
seemed on all sides fatally closed.  She sprang eagerly towards it.
She realised afresh how frightful was the dilemma from which there was
now a hope of escape, and she was grateful accordingly.  Before, she
had not dared steadily to face its terrors.  She wondered that even her
father's displeasure or the project of the partnership had been able to
divert her from the plight of her soul.  Putting these mundane things
firmly behind her, she concentrated the activities of her brain on that
idea of Christ-like living, day by day, hour by hour, of a gradual
aspiration towards Christ and thereby an ultimate arrival at the state
of being saved.  This she thought she might accomplish; this gave
opportunity of immediate effort, dispensing with the necessity of an
impossible violent spiritual metamorphosis.  They did not speak again
until they had reached the gates of the chapel, when Mynors, who had to
enter the choir from the back, bade her a quiet adieu.  Anna enjoyed
the service, which passed smoothly and uneventfully.  At a Revival,
night is the time of ecstasy and fervour and salvation; in the
afternoon one must be content with preparatory praise and prayer.

That evening, while father and daughters sat in the parlour after
supper, there was a ring at the door.  Agnes ran to open, and found
Willie Price.  It had begun to rain, and the visitor, his jacket-collar
turned up, was wet and draggled.  Agnes left him on the mat and ran
back to the parlour.

'Young Mr. Price wants to see you, father.'

Tellwright motioned to her to shut the door.

'You'd best see him, Anna,' he said.  'It's none my business.'

'But what has he come about, father?'

'That note as I sent down this morning.  I told owd Titus as he mun pay
us twenty pun' on Monday morning certain, or us should distrain.  Them
as can pay ten pun, especially in bank notes, can pay twenty pun, and
thirty.'

'And suppose he says he can't?'

'Tell him he must.  I've figured it out and changed my mind about that
works.  Owd Titus isna' done for yet, though he's getting on that road.
Us can screw another fifty out o' him, that 'll only leave six months
rent owing; then us can turn him out.  He'll go bankrupt; us can claim
for our rent afore th' other creditors, and us 'll have a hundred or a
hundred and twenty in hand towards doing the owd place up a bit for a
new tenant.'

'Make him bankrupt, father?' Anna exclaimed.  It was the only part of
the ingenious scheme which she had understood.

'Ay!' he said laconically.

'But----'  (Would Christ have driven Titus Price into the bankruptcy
court?)

'If he pays, well and good.'

'Hadn't you better see Mr. William, father?'

'Whose property is it, mine or thine?' Tellwright growled.  His good
humour was still precarious, insecurely re-established, and Anna
obediently left the room.  After all, she said to herself, a debt is a
debt, and honest people pay what they owe.

It was in an uncomplaisant tone that Anna invited Willie Price to the
front parlour: nervousness always made her seem harsh and moreover she
had not the trick of hiding firmness under suavity.

'Will you come this way, Mr. Price?'

'Yes,' he said with ingratiating, eager compliance.  Dusk was falling,
and the room in shadow.  She forgot to ask him to take a chair, so they
both stood up during the interview.

'A grand meeting we had last night,' he began, twisting his hat.  'I
saw you there, Miss Tellwright.'

'Yes.'

'Yes.  There was a splendid muster of teachers.  I wanted to be at the
prayer-meeting this morning, but couldn't get away.  Did you happen to
go, Miss Tellwright?'

She saw that he knew that she had been present, and gave him another
curt monosyllable.  She would have liked to be kind to him, to reassure
him, to make him happy and comfortable, so ludicrous and touching were
his efforts after a social urbanity which should appease; but, just as
much as he, she was unskilled in the subtle arts of converse.

'Yes,' he continued, 'and I was anxious to be at to-night's meeting,
but the dad asked me to come up here.  He said I'd better.'  That term,
'the dad,' uttered in William's slow, drawling voice, seemed to show
Titus Price in a new light to Anna, as a human creature loved, not as a
mere gross physical organism: the effect was quite surprising.  William
went on: 'Can I see your father, Miss Tellwright?'

'Is it about the rent?'

'Yes,' he said.

'Well, if you will tell me----'

'Oh!  I beg pardon,' he said quickly.  'Of course I know it's your
property, but I thought Mr. Tellwright always saw after it for you.  It
was he that wrote that letter this morning, wasn't it?'

'Yes,' Anna replied.  She did not explain the situation.

'You insist on another twenty pounds on Monday?'

'Yes,' she said.

'We paid ten last Monday.'

'But there is still over a hundred owing.'

'I know, but--oh, Miss Tellwright, you mustn't be hard on us.  Trade's
bad.'

'It says in the "Signal" that trade is improving,' she interrupted
sharply.

'Does it?' he said.  'But look at prices; they're cut till there's no
profit left.  I assure you, Miss Tellwright, my father and me are
having a hard struggle.  Everything's against us, and the works in
particular, as you know.'

His tone was so earnest, so pathetic, that tears of compassion almost
rose to her eyes as she looked at those simple naïve blue eyes of his.
His lanky figure and clumsily-fitting clothes, his feeble placatory
smile, the twitching movements of his long red hands, all contributed
to the effect of his defencelessness.  She thought of the test:
'Blessed are the meek,' and saw in a flash the deep truth of it.  Here
were she and her father, rich, powerful, autocratic; and there were
Willie Price and his father, commercial hares hunted by hounds of
creditors, hares that turned in plaintive appeal to those greedy jaws
for mercy.  And yet, she, a hound, envied at that moment the hares.
Blessed are the meek, blessed are the failures, blessed are the stupid,
for they, unknown to themselves, have a grace which is denied to the
haughty, the successful, and the wise.  The very repulsiveness of old
Titus, his underhand methods, his insincerities, only served to
increase her sympathy for the pair.  How could Titus help being himself
any more than Henry Mynors could help being himself?  And that idea led
her to think of the prospective partnership, destined by every
favourable sign to brilliant success, and to contrast it with the
ignoble and forlorn undertaking in Edward Street.

She tried to discover some method of soothing the young man's fears, of
being considerate to him without injuring her father's scheme.

'If you will pay what you owe,' she said, 'we will spend it all, every
penny, on improving the works.'

'Miss Tellwright,' he answered with fatal emphasis, 'we cannot pay.'

Ah!  She wished to follow Christ day by day, hour by hour--constantly
to endeavour after saintliness.  What was she to do now?  Left to
herself, she might have said in a burst of impulsive generosity, 'I
forgive you all arrears.  Start afresh.'  But her father had to be
reckoned with.......

'How much do you think you can pay on Monday?' she asked coldly.

At that moment her father entered the room.  His first act was to light
the gas.  Willie Price's eyes blinked at the glare, as though he were
trembling before the anticipated decree of this implacable old man.
Anna's heart beat with sympathetic apprehension.  Tellwright shook
hands grimly with the youth, who re-stated hurriedly what he had said
to Anna.

'It's o' this'n,' the old man began with finality, and stopped.  Anna
caught a glance from him dismissing her.  She went out in silence.  On
the Monday Titus Price paid another twenty pounds.



[1] _Terrick_: a corruption of Tellwright.




CHAPTER VII

THE SEWING MEETING

On an afternoon ten days later, Mr. Sutton's coachman, Barrett by name,
arrived at Ephraim Tellwright's back-door with a note.  The Tellwrights
were having tea.  The note could be seen in his enormous hand, and
Agnes went out.

'An answer, if you please, Miss,' he said to her, touching his hat, and
giving a pull to the leathern belt which, surrounding his waist, alone
seemed to hold his frame together.  Agnes, much impressed, took the
note.  She had never before seen that resplendent automaton apart from
the equipage which he directed.  Always afterwards, Barrett formally
saluted her in the streets, affording her thus, every time, a thrilling
moment of delicious joy.

'A letter, and there's an answer, and he's waiting,' she cried, running
into the parlour.

'Less row!' said her father.  'Here, give it me.'

'It's for Miss Tellwright--that's Anna, isn't it?  Oh!  Scent!'  She
put the grey envelope to her nose like a flower.

Anna, secretly as excited as her sister, opened the note and
read:--'Lansdowne House, Wednesday.  Dear Miss Tellwright,--Mother
gives tea to the Sunday-school Sewing Meeting here _to-morrow_.  Will
you give us the pleasure of your company?  I do not think you have been
to any of the S.S.S. meetings yet, but we should all be glad to see you
and have your assistance.  Everyone is working very hard for the Autumn
Bazaar, and mother has set her mind on the Sunday-school stall being
the best.  Do come, will you?  Excuse this short notice.  Yours
sincerely, BEATRICE SUTTON.  P.S.--We begin at 3.30.'

'They want me to go to their sewing meeting to-morrow,' she exclaimed
timidly to her father, pushing the note towards him across the table.
'Must I go, father?'

'What dost ask me for?  Please thysen.  I've nowt do wi' it.'

'I don't want to go----'

'Oh!  Sis, _do_ go,' Agnes pleaded.

'Perhaps I'd better,' she agreed, but with the misgivings of
diffidence.  'I haven't a rag to wear.  I really must have a new dress,
father, at once.'

'Hast forgotten as that there coachman's waiting?' he remarked curtly.

'Shall I run and tell him you'll go?' Agnes suggested.  'It 'll be
splendid for you.'

'Don't be silly, dear.  I must write.'

'Well, write then,' said the child energetically.  'I'll get you the
ink and paper.'  She flew about and hovered over Anna while the answer
to the invitation was being written.  Anna made her reply as short and
simple as possible, and then tendered it for her father's inspection.
'Will that do?'

He pretended to be nonchalant, but in fact he was somewhat interested.

'Thou's forgotten to put th' date in,' was all his comment, and he
threw the note back.

'I've put Wednesday.'

'That's not the date.'

'Does it matter?  Beatrice Sutton only puts Wednesday.'

His response was to walk out of the room.

'Is he vexed?' Agnes asked anxiously.  There had been a whole week of
almost perfect amenity.


The next day at half-past three Anna, having put on her best clothes,
was ready to start.  She had seen almost nothing of social life, and
the prospect of taking part in this entertainment of the Suttons filled
her with trepidation.  Should she arrive early, in which case she would
have to talk more, or late, in which case there would be the ordeal of
entering a crowded room?  She could not decide.  She went into her
father's bedroom, whose window overlooked Trafalgar Road, and saw from
behind a curtain that small groups of ladies were continually passing
up the street to disappear into Alderman Sutton's house.  Most of the
women she recognised; others she knew but vaguely by sight.  Then the
stream ceased, and suddenly she heard the kitchen clock strike four.
She ran downstairs--Agnes, swollen by importance, was carrying her
father's tea into the parlour--and hastened out the back way.  In
another moment she was at the Suttons' front-door.  A servant in black
alpaca, with white wristbands, cap, streams, and embroidered apron
(each article a _dernier cri_ from Bostock's great shop at Hanbridge),
asked her in a subdued and respectful tone to step within.  Externally
there had been no sign of the unusual, but once inside the house Anna
found it a humming hive of activity.  Women laden with stuffs and
implements were crossing the picture-hung hall, their footsteps
noiseless on the thick rugs which lay about in rich confusion.  On
either hand was an open door, and from each door came the sound of many
eager voices.  Beyond these doors a broad staircase rose majestically
to unseen heights, closing the vista of the hall.  As the servant was
demanding Anna's name, Beatrice Sutton, radiant and gorgeous, came with
a rush out of the room to the left, the dining-room, and, taking her by
both hands, kissed her.

'My dear, we thought you were never coming.  Everyone's here, except
the men, of course.  Come along upstairs and take your things off.  I'm
so glad you've kept your promise.'

'Did you think I should break it?' said Anna, as they ascended the easy
gradient of the stairs.

'Oh, no, my dear.  But you're such a shy little bird.'

The conception of herself as a shy little bird amused Anna.  By a
curious chain of ideas she came to wonder who could clean those stairs
the better, she or this gay and flitting butterfly in a pale green
tea-gown.  Beatrice led the way to a large bedroom, crammed with
furniture and knick-knacks.  There were three mirrors in this spacious
apartment--one in the wardrobe, a cheval-glass, and a third over the
mantelpiece; the frame of the last was bordered with photographs.

'This is my room,' said Beatrice.  'Will you put your things on the
bed?'  The bed was already laden with hats, bonnets, jackets, and wraps.

'I hope your mother won't give me anything fancy to do,' Anna said.
'I'm no good at anything except plain sewing.'

'Oh, that's all right,' Beatrice answered carelessly.  'It's all plain
sewing.'  She drew a cardboard box from her pocket, and offered it to
Anna.  'Here, have one.'  They were chocolate creams.

'Thanks,' said Anna, taking one.  'Aren't they very expensive?  I've
never seen any like these before.'

'Oh!  Just ordinary.  Four shillings a pound.  Papa buys them for me: I
simply dote on them.  I love to eat them in bed, if I can't sleep.'
Beatrice made these statements with her mouth full.  'Don't you adore
chocolates?' she added.

'I don't know,' Anna lamely replied.  'Yes, I like them.'  She only
adored her sister, and perhaps God; and this was the first time she had
tasted chocolate.

'I couldn't _live_ without them,' said Beatrice.  'Your hair is lovely.
I never saw such a brown.  What wash do you use?'

'Wash?' Anna repeated.

'Yes, don't you put anything on it?'

'No, never.'

'Well!  Take care you don't lose it, that's all.  Now, will you come
and have just a peep at my studio--where I paint, you know?  I'd like
you to see it before we go down.'

They proceeded to a small room on the second floor, with a sloping
ceiling and a dormer window.

'I'm obliged to have this room,' Beatrice explained, 'because it's the
only one in the house with a north light, and of course you can't do
without that.  How do you like it?'

Anna said that she liked it very much.

The walls of the room were hung with various odd curtains of Eastern
design.  Attached somehow to these curtains some coloured plates, bits
of pewter, and a few fans were hung high in apparently precarious
suspense.  Lower down on the walls were pictures and sketches, chiefly
unframed, of flowers, fishes, loaves of bread, candlesticks, mugs,
oranges and tea-trays.  On an immense easel in the middle of the room
was an unfinished portrait of a man.

'Who's that?' Anna asked, ignorant of those rules of caution which are
observed by the practised frequenter of studios.

'Don't you know?' Beatrice exclaimed, shocked.  'That's papa; I'm doing
his portrait; he sits in that chair there.  The silly old master at the
school won't let me draw from life yet--he keeps me to the antique--so
I said to myself I would study the living model at home.  I'm
dreadfully in earnest about it, you know--I really am.  Mother says I
work far too long up here.'

Anna was unable to perceive that the picture bore any resemblance to
Alderman Sutton, except in the matter of the aldermanic robe, which she
could now trace beneath the portrait's neck.  The studies on the walls
pleased her much better.  Their realism amazed her.  One could make out
not only that here for instance, was a fish--there was no doubt that it
was a hallibut; the solid roundness of the oranges and the glitter on
the tea-trays seemed miraculously achieved.  'Have you actually done
all these?' she asked, in genuine admiration.  'I think they're
splendid.'

'Oh, yes, they're all mine; they're only still-life studies,' Beatrice
said contemptuously of them, but she was nevertheless flattered.

'I see now that that _is_ Mr. Sutton,' Anna said, pointing to the easel
picture.

'Yes, it's pa right enough.  But I'm sure I'm boring you.  Let's go
down now, or perhaps we shall catch it from mother.'

As Anna, in the wake of Beatrice, entered the drawing-room, a dozen or
more women glanced at her with keen curiosity, and the even flow of
conversation ceased for a moment, to be immediately resumed.  In the
centre of the room, with her back to the fire-place, Mrs. Sutton was
seated at a square table, cutting out.  Although the afternoon was warm
she had a white woollen wrap over her shoulders; for the rest she was
attired in plain black silk, with a large stuff apron containing a
pocket for scissors and chalk.  She jumped up with the activity of
which Beatrice had inherited a part, and greeted Anna, kissing her
heartily.

'How are you, my dear?  So pleased you have come.'  The time-worn
phrases came from her thin, nervous lips full of sincere and kindly
welcome.  Her wrinkled face broke into a warm, life-giving smile.
'Beatrice, find Miss Anna a chair.'  There were two chairs in the bay
of the window, and one of them was occupied by Miss Dickinson, whom
Anna slightly knew.  The other, being empty, was assigned to the
late-comer.

'Now you want something to do, I suppose,' said Beatrice.

'Please.'

'Mother, let Miss Tellwright have something to get on with at once.
She has a lot of time to make up.'

Mrs. Sutton, who had sat down again, smiled across at Anna.  'Let me
see, now, what can we give her?'

'There's several of those boys' nightgowns ready tacked,' said Miss
Dickinson, who was stitching at a boy's nightgown.  'Here's one
half-finished,' and she picked up an inchoate garment from the floor.
'Perhaps Miss Tellwright wouldn't mind finishing it.'

'Yes, I will do my best at it,' said Anna.

The thoughtless girl had arrived at the sewing meeting without needles
or thimble or scissors, but one lady or another supplied these
deficiencies, and soon she was at work.  She stitched her best and her
hardest, with head bent, and all her wits concentrated on the task.
Most of the others seemed to be doing likewise, though not to the
detriment of conversation.  Beatrice sank down on a stool near her
mother, and, threading a needle with coloured silk, took up a long
piece of elaborate embroidery.

The general subjects of talk were the Revival, now over, with a superb
record of seventy saved souls, the school-treat shortly to occur, the
summer holidays, the fashions, and the change of ministers which would
take place in August.  The talkers were the wives and daughters of
tradesmen and small manufacturers, together with a few girls of a
somewhat lower status, employed in shops: it was for the sake of these
latter that the sewing meeting was always fixed for the weekly
half-holiday.  The splendour of Mrs. Sutton's drawing-room was a little
dazzling to most of the guests, and Mrs. Sutton herself seemed scarcely
of a piece with it.  The fact was that the luxury of the abode was
mainly due to Alderman Sutton's inability to refuse anything to his
daughter, whose tastes lay in the direction of rich draperies, large or
quaint chairs, occasional tables, dwarf screens, hand-painted mirrors,
and an opulence of bric-à-brac.  The hand of Beatrice might be
perceived everywhere, even in the position of the piano, whose back,
adorned with carelessly-flung silks and photographs, was turned away
from the wall.  The pictures on the walls had been acquired gradually
by Mr. Sutton at auction sales: it was commonly held that he had an
excellent taste in pictures, and that his daughter's aptitude for the
arts came from him, and not from her mother.  The gilt clock and side
pieces on the mantelpiece were also peculiarly Mr. Sutton's, having
been publicly presented to him by the directors of a local building
society of which he had been chairman for many years.

Less intimidated by all this unexampled luxury than she was reassured
by the atmosphere of combined and homely effort, the lowliness of
several of her companions, and the kind, simple face of Mrs. Sutton,
Anna quickly began to feel at ease.  She paused in her work, and,
glancing around her, happened to catch the eye of Miss Dickinson, who
offered a remark about the weather.  Miss Dickinson was head-assistant
at a draper's in St. Luke's Square, and a pillar of the Sunday-school,
which Sunday by Sunday and year by year had watched her develop from a
rosy-cheeked girl into a confirmed spinster with sallow and warted
face.  Miss Dickinson supported her mother, and was a pattern to her
sex.  She was lovable, but had never been loved.  She would have made
an admirable wife and mother, but fate had decided that this material
was to be wasted.  Miss Dickinson found compensation for the rigour of
destiny in gossip, as innocent as indiscreet.  It was said that she had
a tongue.

'I hear,' said Miss Dickinson, lowering her contralto voice to a
confidential tone, 'that you are going into partnership with Mr.
Mynors, Miss Tellwright.'

The suddenness of the attack took Anna by surprise.  Her first
defensive impulse was boldly to deny the statement, or at the least to
say that it was premature.  A fortnight ago, under similar
circumstances, she would not have hesitated to do so.  But for more
than a week Anna had been 'leading a new life,' which chiefly meant a
meticulous avoidance of the sins of speech.  Never to deviate from the
truth, never to utter an unkind or a thoughtless word, under whatever
provocation: these were two of her self-imposed rules.  'Yes,' she
answered Miss Dickinson, 'I am.'

'Rather a novelty, isn't it?'  Miss Dickinson smiled amiably.

'I don't know,' said Anna.  'It's only a business arrangement; father
arranged it.  Really I have nothing to do with it, and I had no idea
that people were talking about it.'

'Oh!  Of course _I_ should never breathe a syllable,' Miss Dickinson
said with emphasis.  'I make a practice of never talking about other
people's affairs.  I always find that best, don't you?  But I happened
to hear it mentioned in the shop.'

'It's very funny how things get abroad, isn't it?' said Anna.

'Yes, indeed,' Miss Dickinson concurred.  'Mr. Mynors hasn't been to
our sewing meetings for quite a long time, but I expect he'll turn up
to-day.'

Anna took thought.  'Is this a sort of special meeting, then?'

'Oh, not at all.  But we all of us said just now, while you were
upstairs, that he would be sure to come,' Miss Dickinson's features,
skilled in innuendo, conveyed that which was too delicate for
utterance.  Anna said nothing.

'You see a good deal of him at your house, don't you?' Miss Dickinson
continued.

'He comes sometimes to see father on business,' Anna replied sharply,
breaking one of her rules.

'Oh!  Of course I meant that.  You didn't suppose I meant anything
else, did you?'  Miss Dickinson smiled pleasantly.  She was thirty-five
years of age.  Twenty of those years she had passed in a desolating
routine; she had existed in the midst of life and never lived; she knew
no finer joy than that which she at that moment experienced.

Again Anna offered no reply.  The door opened, and every eye was
centred on the stately Mrs. Clayton Vernon, who, with Mrs. Banks, the
minister's wife, was in charge of the other half of the sewing party in
the dining-room.  Mrs. Clayton Vernon had heroic proportions, a nose
which everyone admitted to be aristocratic, exquisite tact, and the
calm consciousness of social superiority.  In Bursley she was a great
lady: her instincts were those of a great lady; and she would have been
a great lady no matter to what sphere her God had called her.  She had
abundant white hair, and wore a flowered purple silk, in the antique
taste.

'Beatrice, my dear,' she began, 'you have deserted us.'

'Have I, Mrs. Vernon?' the girl answered with involuntary deference.
'I was just coming in.'

'Well, I am sent as a deputation from the other room to ask you to sing
something.'

'I'm very busy, Mrs. Vernon.  I shall never get this mantel-cloth
finished in time.'

'We shall all work better for a little music,' Mrs. Clayton Vernon
urged.  'Your voice is a precious gift, and should be used for the
benefit of all.  We entreat, my dear girl.'

Beatrice arose from the footstool and dropped her embroidery.

'Thank you,' said Mrs. Clayton Vernon.  'If both doors are left open we
shall hear nicely.'

'What would you like?' Beatrice asked.

'I once heard you sing "Nazareth," and I shall never forget it.  Sing
that.  It will do us all good.'

Mrs. Clayton Vernon departed with the large movement of an argosy, and
Beatrice sat down to the piano and removed her bracelets.  'The
accompaniment is simply frightful towards the end,' she said, looking
at Anna with a grimace.  'Excuse mistakes.'

During the song, Mrs. Sutton beckoned with her finger to Anna to come
and occupy the stool vacated by Beatrice.  Glad to leave the vicinity
of Miss Dickinson, Anna obeyed, creeping on tiptoe across the
intervening space.  'I thought I would like to have you near me, my
dear,' she whispered maternally.  When Beatrice had sung the song and
somehow executed that accompaniment which has terrorised whole
multitudes of drawing-room pianists, there was a great deal of applause
from both rooms.  Mrs. Sutton bent down and whispered in Anna's ear:
'Her voice has been very well trained, has it not?' 'Yes, very,' Anna
replied.  But, though 'Nazareth' had seemed to her wonderful, she had
neither understood it nor enjoyed it.  She tried to like it, but the
effect of it on her was bizarre rather than pleasing.

Shortly after half-past five the gong sounded for tea, and the ladies,
bidden by Mrs. Sutton, unanimously thronged into the hall and towards a
room at the back of the house.  Beatrice came and took Anna by the arm.
As they were crossing the hall there was a ring at the door.  'There's
father--and Mr. Banks, too,' Beatrice exclaimed, opening to them.
Everyone in the vicinity, animated suddenly by this appearance of the
male sex, turned with welcoming smiles.  'A greeting to you all,' the
minister ejaculated with formal suavity as he removed his low hat.  The
Alderman beamed a rather absent-minded goodwill on the entire company,
and said: 'Well!  I see we're just in time for tea.'  Then he kissed
his daughter, and she accepted from him his hat and stick.  'Miss
Tellwright, pa,' Beatrice said, drawing Anna forward: he shook hands
with her heartily, emerging for a moment from the benignant dream in
which he seemed usually to exist.

That air of being rapt by some inward vision, common in very old men,
probably signified nothing in the case of William Sutton: it was a
habitual pose into which he had perhaps unconsciously fallen.  But
people connected it with his humble archæological, geological, and
zoological hobbies, which had sprung from his membership of the Five
Towns Field Club, and which most of his acquaintances regarded with
amiable secret disdain.  At a school-treat once, held at a popular
rural resort, he had taken some of the teachers to a cave, and pointing
out the wave-like formation of its roof had told them that this
peculiar phenomenon had actually been caused by waves of the sea.  The
discovery, valid enough and perfectly substantiated by an inquiry into
the levels, was extremely creditable to the amateur geologist, but it
seriously impaired his reputation among the Wesleyan community as a
shrewd man of the world.  Few believed the statement, or even tried to
believe it, and nearly all thenceforth looked on him as a man who must
be humoured in his harmless hallucinations and inexplicable
curiosities.  On the other hand, the collection of arrowheads, Roman
pottery, fossils and birds' eggs which he had given to the Museum in
the Wedgwood Institution was always viewed with municipal pride.

The tea-room opened by a large French window into a conservatory, and a
table was laid down the whole length of the room and the conservatory.
Mr. Sutton sat at one end and the minister at the other, but neither
Mrs. Sutton nor Beatrice occupied a distinctive place.  The ancient
clumsy custom of having tea-urns on the table itself had been abolished
by Beatrice, who had read in a paper that carving was now never done at
table, but by a neatly-dressed parlour-maid at the sideboard.
Consequently the tea-urns were exiled to the sideboard, and the tea
dispensed by a couple of maids.  Thus, as Beatrice had explained to her
mother, the hostess was left free to devote herself to the social arts.
The board was richly spread with fancy breads and cakes, jams of Mrs.
Sutton's own celebrated preserving, diverse sandwiches compiled by
Beatrice, and one or two large examples of the famous Bursley pork-pie.
Numerous as the company was, several chairs remained empty after
everyone was seated.  Anna found herself again next to Miss Dickinson,
and five places from the minister, in the conservatory.  Beatrice and
her mother were higher up, in the room.  Grace was sung, by request of
Mrs. Sutton.  At first, silence prevailed among the guests, and the
inquiries of the maids about milk and sugar were almost painfully
audible.  Then Mr. Banks, glancing up the long vista of the table and
pretending to descry some object in the distance, called out:

'Worthy host, I doubt not you are there, but I can only see you with
the eye of faith.'

At this all laughed, and a natural ease was established.  The minister
and Mrs. Clayton Vernon, who sat on his right, exchanged badinage on
the merits and demerits of pork-pies, and their neighbours formed an
appreciative audience.  Then there was a sharp ring at the front door,
and one of the maids went out.

'Didn't I tell you?' Miss Dickinson whispered to Anna.

'What?' asked Anna.

'That he would come to-day--Mr. Mynors, I mean.'

'Who can that be?' Mrs. Sutton's voice was heard from the room.

'I dare say it's Henry, mother,' Beatrice answered.

Mynors entered, joyous and self-possessed, a white rose in his coat: he
shook hands with Mr. and Mrs. Sutton, sent a greeting down the table to
Mr. Banks and Mrs. Clayton Vernon, and offered a general apology for
being late.

'Sit here,' said Beatrice to him, sharply, indicating a chair between
Mrs. Banks and herself.  'Mrs. Banks has a word to say to you about the
singing of that anthem last Sunday.'

Mynors made some laughing rejoinder, and the voices sank so that Anna
could not catch what was said.

'That's a new frock that Miss Sutton is wearing to-day,' Miss Dickinson
remarked in an undertone.

'It looks new,' Anna agreed.

'Do you like it?'

'Yes.  Don't you?'

'Hum!  Yes.  It was made at Brunt's at Hanbridge.  It's quite the
fashion to go there now,' said Miss Dickinson, and added, almost
inaudibly, 'She's put it on for Mr. Mynors.  You saw how she saved that
chair for him.'

Anna made no reply.

'Did you know they were engaged once?' Miss Dickinson resumed.

'No,' said Anna.

'At least people said they were.  It was all over the town--oh! let me
see, three years ago.'

'I had not heard,' said Anna.

During the rest of the meal she said little.  On some natures Miss
Dickinson's gossip had the effect of bringing them to silence.  Anna
had not seen Mynors since the previous Sunday, and now she was
apparently unperceived by him.  He talked gaily with Beatrice and Mrs.
Banks: that group was a centre of animation.  Anna envied their ease of
manner, their smooth and sparkling flow of conversation.  She had the
sensation of feeling vulgar, clumsy, tongue-tied; Mynors and Beatrice
possessed something which she would never possess.  So they had been
engaged!  But had they?  Or was it an idle rumour, manufactured by one
who spent her life in such creations?  Anna was conscious of
misgivings.  She had despised Beatrice once, but now it seemed that
after all Beatrice was the natural equal of Henry Mynors.  Was it more
likely that Mynors or she, Anna, should be mistaken in Beatrice?  That
Beatrice had generous instincts she was sure.  Anna lost confidence in
herself; she felt humbled, out-of-place, and shamed.

'If our hostess and the company will kindly excuse me,' said the
minister with a pompous air, looking at his watch, 'I must go.  I have
an important appointment, or an appointment which some people think is
important.'

He got up and made various adieux.  The elaborate meal, complex with
fifty dainties each of which had to be savoured, was not nearly over.
The parson stopped in his course up the room to speak with Mrs. Sutton.
After he had shaken hands with her, he caught the admired violet eyes
of his slim wife, a lady of independent fortune whom the wives of
circuit stewards found it difficult to please in the matter of
furniture, and who despite her forty years still kept something of the
pose of a spoiled beauty.  As a minister's spouse this languishing but
impeccable and invariably correct dame was unique even in the
experience of Mrs. Clayton Vernon.

'Shall you not be home early, Rex?' she asked in the tone of a young
wife lounging amid the delicate odours of a boudoir.

'My love,' he replied with the stern fixity of a histrionic martyr,
'did you ever know me have a free evening?'

The Alderman accompanied his pastor to the door.

After tea, Mynors was one of the first to leave the room, and Anna one
of the last, but he accosted her in the hall, on the way back to the
drawing-room, and asked how she was, and how Agnes was, with such
deference and sincerity of regard for herself and everything that was
hers that she could not fail to be impressed.  Her sense of humiliation
and of uncertainty was effaced by a single word, a single glance.
Uplifted by a delicious reassurance, she passed into the drawing-room,
expecting him to follow: strange to say, he did not do so.  Work was
resumed, but with less ardour than before.  It was in fact impossible
to be strenuously diligent after one of Mrs. Sutton's teas, and in
every heart, save those which beat over the most perfect and vigorous
digestive organs, there was a feeling of repentance.  The
building-society's clock on the mantel-piece intoned seven: all
expressed surprise at the lateness of the hour, and Mrs. Clayton
Vernon, pleading fatigue after her recent indisposition, quietly
departed.  As soon as she was gone, Anna said to Mrs. Sutton that she
too must go.

'Why, my dear?' Mrs. Sutton asked.

'I shall be needed at home,' Anna replied.

'Ah! In that case----  I will come upstairs with you, my dear,' said
Mrs. Sutton.

When they were in the bedroom, Mrs. Sutton suddenly clasped her hand.
'How is it with you, dear Anna?' she said, gazing anxiously into the
girl's eyes.  Anna knew what she meant, but made no answer.  'Is it
well?' the earnest old woman asked.

'I hope so,' said Anna, averting her eyes, 'I am trying.'

Mrs. Sutton kissed her almost passionately.  'Ah! my dear,' she
exclaimed with an impulsive gesture, 'I am glad, so glad.  I did so
want to have a word with you.  You must "lean hard," as Miss Havergal
says.  "Lean hard" on Him.  Do not be afraid.'  And then, changing her
tone: 'You are looking pale, Anna.  You want a holiday.  We shall be
going to the Isle of Man in August or September.  Would your father let
you come with us?'

'I don't know,' said Anna.  She knew, however, that he would not.
Nevertheless the suggestion gave her much pleasure.

'We must see about that later,' said Mrs. Sutton, and they went
downstairs.

'I must say good-bye to Beatrice.  Where is she?' Anna said in the
hall.  One of the servants directed them to the dining-room.  The
Alderman and Henry Mynors were looking together at a large photogravure
of Sant's 'The Soul's Awakening,' which Mr. Sutton had recently bought,
and Beatrice was exhibiting her embroidery to a group of ladies: sundry
stitchers were scattered about, including Miss Dickinson.

'It is a great picture--a picture that makes you think,' Henry was
saying, seriously, and the Alderman, feeling as the artist might have
felt, was obviously flattered by this sagacious praise.

Anna said good-night to Miss Dickinson and then to Beatrice.  Mynors,
hearing the words, turned round.  'Well, I must go.  Good evening,' he
said suddenly to the astonished Alderman.

'What?  Now?' the latter inquired, scarcely pleased to find that Mynors
could tear himself away from the picture with so little difficulty.

'Yes.'

'Good-night, Mr. Mynors,' said Anna.

'If I may I will walk down with you,' Mynors imperturbably answered.

It was one of those dramatic moments which arrive without the slightest
warning.  The gleam of joyous satisfaction in Miss Dickinson's eyes
showed that she alone had foreseen this declaration.  For a declaration
it was, and a formal declaration.  Mynors stood there calm, confident
with masculine superiority, and his glance seemed to say to those
swiftly alert women, whose faces could not disguise a thrilling
excitation: 'Yes.  Let all know that I, Henry Mynors, the desired of
all, am honourably captive to this shy and perfect creature who is
blushing because I have said what I have said.'  Even the Alderman
forgot his photogravure.  Beatrice hurriedly resumed her explanation of
the embroidery.

'How did you like the sewing meeting?' Mynors asked Anna when they were
on the pavement.

Anna paused.  'I think Mrs. Sutton is simply a splendid woman,' she
said enthusiastically.

When, in a moment far too short, they reached Tellwright's house,
Mynors, obeying a mutual wish to which neither had given expression,
followed Anna up the side entry, and so into the yard, where they
lingered for a few seconds.  Old Tellwright could be seen at the
extremity of the long narrow garden--a garden which consisted chiefly
of a grass-plot sown with clothes-props and a narrow bordering of
flower beds without flowers.  Agnes was invisible.  The kitchen-door
stood ajar, and as this was the sole means of ingress from the yard
Anna, humming an air, pushed it open and entered, Mynors in her wake.
They stood on the threshold, happy, hesitating, confused, and looked at
the kitchen as at something which they had not seen before.  Anna's
kitchen was the only satisfactory apartment in the house.  Its
furniture included a dresser of the simple and dignified kind which is
now assiduously collected by amateurs of old oak.  It had four long
narrow shelves holding plates and saucers; the cups were hung in a row
on small brass hooks screwed into the fronts of the shelves.  Below the
shelves were three drawers in a line, with brass handles, and below the
drawers was a large recess which held stone jars, a copper
preserving-saucepan, and other receptacles.  Seventy years of
continuous polishing by a dynasty of priestesses of cleanliness had
given to this dresser a rich ripe tone which the cleverest
trade-trickster could not have imitated.  In it was reflected the
conscientious labour of generations.  It had a soft and assuaged
appearance, as though it had never been new and could never have been
new.  All its corners and edges had long lost the asperities of
manufacture, and its smooth surfaces were marked by slight hollows
similar in spirit to those worn by the naked feet of pilgrims into the
marble steps of a shrine.  The flat portion over the drawers was
scarred with hundreds of scratches, and yet even all these seemed to be
incredibly ancient, and in some distant past to have partaken of the
mellowness of the whole.  The dark woodwork formed an admirable
background for the crockery on the shelves, and a few of the old
plates, hand-painted according to some vanished secret in pigments
which time could only improve, had the look of relationship by birth to
the dresser.  There must still be thousands of exactly similar dressers
in the kitchens of the people, but they are gradually being transferred
to the dining rooms of curiosity-hunters.  To Anna this piece of
furniture, which would have made the most taciturn collector vocal with
joy, was merely 'the dresser.'  She had always lamented that it
contained no cupboard.  In front of the fireless range was an old steel
kitchen fender with heavy fire-irons.  It had in the middle of its flat
top a circular lodgment for saucepans, but on this polished disc no
saucepan was ever placed.  The fender was perhaps as old as the
dresser, and the profound depths of its polish served to mitigate
somewhat the newness of the patent coal-economising range which
Tellwright had had put in when he took the house.  On the high
mantelpiece were four tall brass candlesticks which, like the dresser,
were silently awaiting their apotheosis at the hands of some collector.
Beside these were two or three common mustard tins, polished to
counterfeit silver, containing spices; also an abandoned coffee-mill
and two flat-irons.  A grandfather's clock of oak to match the dresser
stood to the left of the fireplace; it had a very large white dial with
a grinning face in the centre.  Though it would only run for
twenty-four hours, its leisured movement seemed to have the certainty
of a natural law, especially to Agnes, for Mr. Tellwright never forgot
to wind it before going to bed.  Under the window was a plain deal
table, with white top and stained legs.  Two Windsor chairs completed
the catalogue of furniture.  The glistening floor was of red and black
tiles, and in front of the fender lay a list hearthrug made by
attaching innumerable bits of black cloth to a canvas base.  On the
painted walls were several grocers' almanacs, depicting sailors in the
arms of lovers, children crossing brooks, or monks swelling themselves
with Gargantuan repasts.  Everything in this kitchen was absolutely
bright and spotless, as clean as a cat in pattens, except the ceiling,
darkened by fumes of gas.  Everything was in perfect order, and had the
humanised air of use and occupation which nothing but use and
occupation can impart to senseless objects.  It was a kitchen where, in
the housewife's phrase, you might eat off the floor, and to any Bursley
matron it would have constituted the highest possible certificate of
Anna's character, not only as housewife but as elder sister--for in her
absence Agnes had washed the tea-things and put them away.

'This is the nicest room, I know,' said Mynors at length.

'Whatever do you mean?' Anna smiled, incapable of course of seeing the
place with his eye.

'I mean there is nothing to beat a clean, straight kitchen,' Mynors
replied, 'and there never will be.  It wants only the mistress in a
white apron to make it complete.  Do you know, when I came in here the
other night, and you were sitting at the table there, I thought the
place was like a picture.'

'How funny!' said Anna, puzzled but well satisfied.  'But won't you
come into the parlour?'

The Persian with one ear met them in the lobby, his tail flying, but
cautiously sidled upstairs at sight of Mynors.  When Anna opened the
door of the parlour she saw Agnes seated at the table over her lessons,
frowning and preoccupied.  Tears were in her eyes.

'Why, what's the matter, Agnes?' she exclaimed.

'Oh!  Go away,' said the child crossly.  'Don't bother.'

'But what's the matter?  You're crying.'

'No, I'm not.  I'm doing my sums, and I can't get it--can't---'  The
child burst into tears just as Mynors entered.  His presence was a
complete surprise to her.  She hid her face in her pinafore, ashamed to
be thus caught.

'Where is it?' said Mynors.  'Where is this sum that won't come right?'
He picked up the slate and examined it while Agnes was finding herself
again.  'Practice!' he exclaimed.  'Has Agnes got as far as practice?'
She gave him an instant's glance and murmured 'Yes.'  Before she could
shelter her face he had kissed her.  Anna was enchanted by his manner,
and as for Agnes, she surrendered happily to him at once.  He worked
the sum, and she copied the figures into her exercise-book.  Anna sat
and watched.

'Now I must go,' said Mynors.

'But surely you'll stay and see father,' Anna urged.

'No.  I really had not meant to call.  Good-night, Agnes.'  In a moment
he was gone out of the room and the house.  It was as if, in obedience
to a sudden impulse, he had forcibly torn himself away.

'Was _he_ at the sewing meeting?' Agnes asked, adding in parenthesis,
'I never dreamt he was here, and I was frightfully vexed.  I felt such
a baby.'

'Yes.  At least, he came for tea.'

'Why did he call here like that?'

'How can I tell?' Anna said.  The child looked at her.

'It's awfully queer, isn't it?' she said slowly.  'Tell me all about
the sewing meeting.  Did they have cakes or was it a plain tea?  And
did you go into Beatrice Sutton's bedroom?'




CHAPTER VIII

ON THE BANK

Anna began to receive her July interest and dividends.  During a
fortnight remittances, varying from a few pounds to a few hundred of
pounds, arrived by post almost daily.  They were all addressed to her,
since the securities now stood in her own name; and upon her, under the
miser's superintendence, fell the new task of entering them in a book
and paying them into the Bank.  This mysterious begetting of money by
money--a strange process continually going forward for her benefit, in
various parts of the world, far and near, by means of activities of
which she was completely ignorant and would always be completely
ignorant--bewildered her and gave her a feeling of its unreality.  The
elaborate mechanism by which capital yields interest without suffering
diminution from its original bulk is one of the commonest phenomena of
modern life, and one of the least understood.  Many capitalists never
grasp it, nor experience the slightest curiosity about it until the
mechanism through some defect ceases to revolve.  Tellwright was of
these; for him the interval between the outlay of capital and the
receipt of interest was nothing but an efflux of time: he planted
capital as a gardener plants rhubarb, tolerably certain of a particular
result, but not dwelling even in thought on that which is hidden.  The
productivity of capital was to him the greatest achievement of social
progress--indeed, the social organism justified its existence by that
achievement; nothing could be more equitable than this productivity,
nothing more natural.  He would as soon have inquired into it as Agnes
would have inquired into the ticking of the grandfather's clock.  But
to Anna, who had some imagination, and whose imagination had been
stirred by recent events, the arrival of moneys out of space, unearned,
unasked, was a disturbing experience, affecting her as a conjuring
trick affects a child, whose sensations hesitate between pleasure and
apprehension.  Practically, Anna could not believe that she was rich;
and in fact she was not rich--she was merely a fixed point through
which moneys that she was unable to arrest passed with the rapidity of
trains.  If money is a token, Anna was denied the satisfaction of
fingering even the token: drafts and cheques were all that she touched
(touched only to abandon)--the doubly tantalising and insubstantial
tokens of a token.  She wanted to test the actuality of this apparent
dream by handling coin and causing it to vanish over counters and into
the palms of the necessitous.  And moreover, quite apart from this
curiosity, she really needed money for pressing requirements of Agnes
and herself.  They had yet had no new summer clothes, and Whitsuntide,
the time prescribed by custom for the refurnishing of wardrobes, was
long since past.  The intercourse with Henry Mynors, the visit to the
Suttons, had revealed to her more plainly than ever the intolerable
shortcomings of her wardrobe, and similar imperfections.  She was more
painfully awake to these, and yet, by an unhappy paradox, she was even
less in a position to remedy them, than in previous years.  For now,
she possessed her own fortune; to ask her father's bounty was
therefore, she divined, a sure way of inviting a rebuff.  But, even if
she had dared, she might not use the income that was privately hers,
for was not every penny of it already allocated to the partnership with
Mynors!  So it happened that she never once mentioned the matter to her
father; she lacked the courage, since by whatever avenue she approached
it circumstances would add an illogical and adventitious force to the
brutal snubs which he invariably dealt out when petitioned for money.
To demand his money, having fifty thousand of her own!  To spend her
own in the face of that agreement with Mynors!  She could too easily
guess his bitter and humiliating retorts to either proposition, and she
kept silence, comforting herself with timid visions of a far distant
future.  The balance at the bank crept up to sixteen hundred pounds.
The deed of partnership was drawn; her father pored over the blue
draft, and several times Mynors called and the two men discussed it
together.  Then one morning her father summoned her into the front
parlour, and handed to her a piece of parchment on which she dimly
deciphered her own name coupled with that of Henry Mynors, in large
letters.

'You mun sign, seal, and deliver this,' he said, putting a pen in her
hand.

She sat down obediently to write, but he stopped her with a scornful
gesture.

'Thou 'lt sign blind then, eh?  Just like a woman!'

'I left it to you,' she said.

'Left it to me!  Read it.'

She read through the deed, and after she had accomplished the feat one
fact only stood clear in her mind, that the partnership was for seven
years, a period extensible by consent of both parties to fourteen or
twenty-one years.  Then she affixed her signature, the pen moving
awkwardly over the rough surface of the parchment.

'Now put thy finger on that bit o' wax, and say; "I deliver this as my
act and deed."'

'I deliver this as my act and deed.'

The old man signed as witness.  'Soon as I give this to Lawyer Dane,'
he remarked, 'thou'rt bound, willy-nilly.  Law's law, and thou'rt
bound.'

On the following day she had to sign a cheque which reduced her
bank-balance to about three pounds.  Perhaps it was the knowledge of
this reduction that led Ephraim Tellwright to resume at once and with
fresh rigour his new policy of 'squeezing the last penny' out of Titus
Price (despite the fact that the latter had already achieved the
incredible by paying thirty pounds in little more than a month), thus
causing the catastrophe which soon afterwards befell.  What methods her
father was adopting Anna did not know, since he said no word to her
about the matter: she only knew that Agnes had twice been dispatched
with notes to Edward Street.  One day, about noon, a clay-soiled urchin
brought a letter addressed to herself: she guessed that it was some
appeal for mercy from the Prices, and wished that her father had been
at home.  The old man was away for the whole day, attending a sale of
property at Axe, the agricultural town in the north of the county,
locally styled 'the metropolis of the moorlands.'  Anna read:--'My dear
Miss Tellwright,--Now that our partnership is an accomplished fact,
will you not come and look over the works?  I should much like you to
do so.  I shall be passing your house this afternoon about two, and
will call on the chance of being able to take you down with me to the
works.  If you are unable to come no harm will be done, and some other
day can be arranged; but of course I shall be disappointed.--Believe
me, yours most sincerely, HY. MYNORS.'

She was charmed with the idea--to her so audacious--and relieved that
the note was not after all from Titus or Willie Price: but again she
had to regret that her father was not at home.  He would be capable of
thinking and saying that the projected expedition was a truancy,
contrived to occur in his absence.  He might grumble at the house being
left without a keeper.  Moreover, according to a tacit law, she never
departed from the fixed routine of her existence without first
obtaining Ephraim's approval, or at least being sure that such a
departure would not make him violently angry.  She wondered whether
Mynors knew that her father was away, and, if so, whether he had chosen
that afternoon purposely.  She did not care that Mynors should call for
her--it made the visit seem so formal; and as in order to reach the
works, down at Shawport by the canal-side, they would necessarily go
through the middle of the town, she foresaw infinite gossip and rumour
as one result.  Already, she knew, the names of herself and Mynors were
everywhere coupled, and she could not even enter a shop without being
made aware, more or less delicately, that she was an object of piquant
curiosity.  A woman is profoundly interesting to women at two periods
only--before she is betrothed and before she becomes the mother of her
firstborn.  Anna was in the first period; her life did not comprise the
second.  When Agnes came home to dinner from school, Anna said nothing
of Mynors' note until they had begun to wash up the dinner-things, when
she suggested that Agnes should finish this operation alone.

'Yes,' said Agnes, ever compliant.  'But why?'

'I'm going out, and I must get ready.'

'Going out?  And shall you leave the house all empty?  What will father
say?  Where are you going to?'

Agnes's tendency to anticipate the worst, and never to blink their
father's tyranny, always annoyed Anna, and she answered rather curtly:
'I'm going to the works--Mr. Mynors' works.  He's sent word he wants me
to.'  She despised herself for wishing to hide anything, and added, 'He
will call here for me about two o'clock.'

'Mr. Mynors!  How splendid!'  And then Agnes's face fell somewhat.  'I
suppose he won't call before two?  If he doesn't, I shall be gone to
school.'

'Do you want to see him?'

'Oh, no!  I don't want to see him.  But--I suppose you'll be out a long
time, and he'll bring you back.'

'Of course he won't, you silly girl.  And I shan't be out long.  I
shall be back for tea.'

Anna ran upstairs to dress.  At ten minutes to two she was ready.
Agnes usually left at a quarter to two, but the child had not yet gone.
At five minutes to two, Anna called downstairs to her to ask her when
she meant to depart.

'I'm just going now,' Agnes shouted back.  She opened the front door
and then returned to the foot of the stairs.  'Anna, if I meet him down
the road shall I tell him you're ready waiting for him?'

'Certainly not.  Whatever are you dreaming of?' the elder sister
reproved.  'Besides, he isn't coming from the town.'

'Oh!  All right.  Good-bye.'  And the child at last went.

It was something after two--every siren and hooter had long since
finished the summons to work--when Mynors rang the bell.  Anna was
still upstairs.  She examined herself in the glass, and then descended
slowly.

'Good afternoon,' he said.  'I see you are ready to come.  I'm very
glad.  I hope I haven't inconvenienced you, but just this afternoon
seemed to be a good opportunity for you to see the works, and, you
know, you ought to see it.  Father in?'

'No,' she said.  'I shall leave the house to take care of itself.  Do
you want to see him?'

'Not specially,' he replied.  'I think we have settled everything.'

She banged the door behind her, and they started.  As he held open the
gate for her exit, she could not ignore the look of passionate
admiration on his face.  It was a look disconcerting by its mere
intensity.  The man could control his tongue, but not his eyes.  His
demeanour, as she viewed it, aggravated her self-consciousness as they
braved the streets.  But she was happy in her perturbation.  When they
reached Duck Bank, Mynors asked her whether they should go through the
market-place or along King Street, by the bottom of St. Luke's Square.
'By the market-place,' she said.  The shop where Miss Dickinson was
employed was at the bottom of St. Luke's Square, and all the eyes of
the marketplace was preferable to the chance of those eyes.


Probably no one in the Five Towns takes a conscious pride in the
antiquity of the potter's craft, nor in its unique and intimate
relation to human life, alike civilised and uncivilised.  Man hardened
clay into a bowl before he spun flax and made a garment, and the last
lone man will want an earthen vessel after he has abandoned his ruined
house for a cave, and his woven rags for an animal's skin.  This
supremacy of the most ancient of crafts is in the secret nature of
things, and cannot be explained.  History begins long after the period
when Bursley was first the central seat of that honoured manufacture:
it is the central seat still--'the mother of the Five Towns,' in our
local phrase--and though the townsmen, absorbed in a strenuous daily
struggle, may forget their heirship to an unbroken tradition of
countless centuries, the seal of their venerable calling is upon their
foreheads.  If no other relic of an immemorial past is to be seen in
these modernised sordid streets, there is at least the living legacy of
that extraordinary kinship between workman and work, that instinctive
mastery of clay which the past has bestowed upon the present.  The
horse is less to the Arab than clay is to the Bursley man.  He exists
in it and by it; it fills his lungs and blanches his cheek; it keeps
him alive and it kills him.  His fingers close round it as round the
hand of a friend.  He knows all its tricks and aptitudes; when to coax
and when to force it, when to rely on it and when to distrust it.  The
weavers of Lancashire have dubbed him with an obscene epithet on
account of it, an epithet whose hasty use has led to many a fight, but
nothing could be more illuminatively descriptive than that epithet,
which names his vocation in terms of another vocation.  A dozen decades
of applied science have of course resulted in the interposition of
elaborate machinery between the clay and the man; but no great vulgar
handicraft has lost less of the human than potting.  Clay is always
clay, and the steam-driven contrivance that will mould a basin while a
man sits and watches has yet to be invented.  Moreover, if in some
coarser process the hands are superseded, the number of processes has
been multiplied tenfold: the ware in which six men formerly
collaborated is now produced by sixty; and thus, in one sense, the
touch of finger on clay is more pervasive than ever before.

Mynors' works was acknowledged to be one of the best, of its size, in
the district--a model three-oven bank, and it must be remembered that
of the hundreds of banks in the Five Towns the vast majority are small,
like this: the large manufactory with its corps of jacket-men,[1] one
of whom is detached to show visitors round so much of the works as is
deemed advisable for them to see, is the exception.  Mynors paid three
hundred pounds a year in rent, and produced nearly three hundred pounds
worth of work a week.  He was his own manager, and there was only one
jacket-man on the place, a clerk at eighteen shillings.  He employed
about a hundred hands, and devoted all his ingenuity to prevent that
wastage which is at once the easiest to overlook and the most difficult
to check, the wastage of labour.  No pains were spared to keep all
departments in full and regular activity, and owing to his judicious
firmness the feast of St. Monday, that canker eternally eating at the
root of the prosperity of the Five Towns, was less religiously observed
on his bank than perhaps anywhere else in Bursley.  He had realised
that when a workshop stands empty the employer has not only ceased to
make money, but has begun to lose it.  The architect of 'Providence
Works' (Providence stands godfather to many commercial enterprises in
the Five Towns) knew his business and the business of the potter, and
he had designed the works with a view to the strictest economy of
labour.  The various shops were so arranged that in the course of its
metamorphosis the clay travelled naturally in a circle from the
slip-house by the canal to the packing-house by the canal: there was no
carrying to and fro.  The steam installation was complete: steam once
generated had no respite; after it had exhausted itself in vitalising
fifty machines, it was killed by inches in order to dry the unfired
ware and warm the dinners of the workpeople.

Henry took Anna to the canal-entrance, because the buildings looked
best from that side.

'Now how much is a crate worth?' she asked, pointing to a crate which
was being swung on a crane direct from the packing-house into a boat.

'That?' Mynors answered.  'A crateful of ware may be worth anything.
At Minton's I have seen a crate worth three hundred pounds.  But that
one there is only worth eight or nine pounds.  You see you and I make
cheap stuff.'

'But don't you make any really good pots--are they all cheap?'

'All cheap,' he said.

'I suppose that's business?'  He detected a note of regret in her voice.

'I don't know,' he said, with the slightest impatient warmth.  'We make
the stuff as good as we can for the money.  We supply what everyone
wants.  Don't you think it's better to please a thousand folks than to
please ten?  I like to feel that my ware is used all over the country
and the colonies.  I would sooner do as I do than make swagger ware for
a handful of rich people.'

'Oh, yes,' she exclaimed, eagerly accepting the point of view, 'I quite
agree with you.'  She had never heard him in that vein before, and was
struck by his enthusiasm.  And Mynors was in fact always very
enthusiastic concerning the virtues of the general markets.  He had no
sympathy with specialities, artistic or otherwise.  He found his
satisfaction in honestly meeting the public taste.  He was born to be a
manufacturer of cheap goods on a colossal scale.  He could dream of
fifty ovens, and his ambition blinded him to the present absurdity of
talking about a three-oven bank spreading its productions all over the
country and the colonies; it did not occur to him that there were yet
scarcely enough plates to go round.

'I suppose we had better start at the start,' he said, leading the way
to the slip-house.  He did not need to be told that Anna was perfectly
ignorant of the craft of pottery, and that every detail of it, so stale
to him, would acquire freshness under her naïve and inquiring gaze.

In the slip-house begins the long manipulation which transforms raw
porous friable clay into the moulded, decorated and glazed vessel.  The
large whitewashed place was occupied by ungainly machines and
receptacles through which the four sorts of clay used in the common
'body'--ball clay, China clay, flint clay and stone clay--were
compelled to pass before they became a white putty-like mixture meet
for shaping by human hands.  The blunger crushed the clay, the sifter
extracted the iron from it by means of a magnet, the press expelled the
water, and the pug-mill expelled the air.  From the last reluctant
mouth slowly emerged a solid stream nearly a foot in diameter, like a
huge white snake.  Already the clay had acquired the uniformity
characteristic of a manufactured product.

Anna moved to touch the bolts of the enormous twenty-four-chambered
press.

'Don't stand there,' said Mynors.  'The pressure is tremendous, and if
the thing were to burst----'

She fled hastily.  'But isn't it dangerous for the workmen?' she asked.

Eli Machin, the engineman, the oldest employee on the works, a moneyed
man and the pattern of reliability, allowed a vague smile to flit
across his face at this remark.  He had ascended from the engine-house
below in order to exhibit the tricks of the various machines, and that
done he disappeared.  Anna was awed by the sensation of being
surrounded by terrific forces always straining for release and held in
check by the power of a single wall.

'Come and see a plate made: that is one of the simplest things, and the
batting-machine is worth looking at,' said Mynors, and they went into
the nearest shop, a hot interior in the shape of four corridors round a
solid square middle.  Here men and women were working side by side, the
women subordinate to the men.  All were preoccupied, wrapped up in
their respective operations, and there was the sound of irregular
whirring movements from every part of the big room.  The air was laden
with whitish dust, and clay was omnipresent--on the floor, the walls,
the benches, the windows, on clothes, hands and faces.  It was in this
shop, where both hollow-ware pressers and flat pressers were busy as
only craftsmen on piecework can be busy, that more than anywhere else
clay was to be seen 'in the hand of the potter.'  Near the door a stout
man with a good-humoured face flung some clay on to a revolving disc,
and even as Anna passed a jar sprang into existence.  One instant the
clay was an amorphous mass, the next it was a vessel perfectly
circular, of a prescribed width and a prescribed depth; the flat and
apparently clumsy fingers of the craftsman had seemed to lose
themselves in the clay for a fraction of time, and the miracle was
accomplished.  The man threw these vessels with the rapidity of a Roman
candle throwing off coloured stars, and one woman was kept busy in
supplying him with material and relieving his bench of the finished
articles.  Mynors drew Anna along to the batting-machines for plate
makers, at that period rather a novelty and the latest invention of the
dead genius whose brain has reconstituted a whole industry on new
lines.  Confronted with a piece of clay, the batting-machine descended
upon it with the ferocity of a wild animal, worried it, stretched it,
smoothed it into the width and thickness of a plate, and then desisted
of itself and waited inactive for the flat presser to remove its victim
to his more exact shaping machine.  Several men were producing plates,
but their rapid labours seemed less astonishing than the preliminary
feat of the batting-machine.  All the ware as it was moulded
disappeared into the vast cupboards occupying the centre of the shop,
where Mynors showed Anna innumerable rows of shelves full of pots in
process of steam-drying.  Neither time nor space nor material was
wasted in this ant-heap of industry.  In order to move to and fro, the
women were compelled to insinuate themselves past the stationary bodies
of the men.  Anna marvelled at the careless accuracy with which they
fed the batting-machines with lumps precisely calculated to form a
plate of a given diameter.  Everyone exerted himself as though the
salvation of the world hung on the production of so much stuff by a
certain hour; dust, heat, and the presence of a stranger were alike
unheeded in the mad creative passion.

'Now,' said Mynors the cicerone, opening another door which gave into
the yard, 'when all that stuff is dried and fettled--smoothed, you
know--it goes into the biscuit oven: that's the first firing.  There's
the biscuit oven, but we can't inspect it because it's just being
drawn.'

He pointed to the oven near by, in whose dark interior the forms of
men, naked to the waist, could dimly be seen struggling with the weight
of saggars[2] full of ware.  It seemed like some release of martyrs,
this unpacking of the immense oven, which, after being flooded with a
sea of flame for fifty-four hours, had cooled for two days, and was yet
hotter than the Equator.  The inertness and pallor of the saggars
seemed to be the physical result of their fiery trial, and one wondered
that they should have survived the trial.  Mynors went into the place
adjoining the oven and brought back a plate out of an open saggar; it
was still quite warm.  It had the _matt_ surface of a biscuit, and
adhered slightly to the fingers: it was now a 'crook'; it had exchanged
malleability for brittleness, and nothing mortal could undo what the
fire had done.  Mynors took the plate with him to the
biscuit-warehouse, a long room where one was forced to keep to narrow
alleys amid parterres of pots.  A solitary biscuit-warehouseman was
examining the ware in order to determine the remuneration of the
pressers.

They climbed a flight of steps to the printing-shop, where, by means of
copper-plates, printing-presses, mineral colours, and transfer-papers,
most of the decoration was done.  The room was filled by a little crowd
of people--oldish men, women and girls, divided into printers, cutters,
transferors and apprentices.  Each interminably repeated some trifling
process, and every article passed through a succession of hands until
at length it was washed in a tank and rose dripping therefrom with its
ornament of flowers and scrolls fully revealed.  The room smelt of oil
and flannel and humanity; the atmosphere was more languid, more like
that of a family party, than in the pressers' shop: the old women
looked stern and shrewish, the pretty young women pert and defiant, the
younger girls meek.  The few men seemed out of place.  By what trick
had they crept into the very centre of that mass of femineity?  It
seemed wrong, scandalous that they should remain.  Contiguous with the
printing-shop was the painting-shop, in which the labours of the former
were taken to a finish by the brush of the paintress, who filled in
outlines with flat colour, and thus converted mechanical printing into
handiwork.  The paintresses form the _noblesse_ of the banks.  Their
task is a light one, demanding deftness first of all; they have
delicate fingers, and enjoy a general reputation for beauty: the wages
they earn may be estimated from their finery on Sundays.  They come to
business in cloth jackets, carry dinner in little satchels; in the shop
they wear white aprons, and look startlingly neat and tidy.  Across the
benches over which they bend their coquettish heads gossip flies and
returns like a shuttle; they are the source of a thousand intrigues,
and one or other of them is continually getting married or omitting to
get married.  On the bank they constitute 'the sex.'  An infinitesimal
proportion of them, from among the branch known as ground-layers, die
of lead-poisoning--a fact which adds pathos to their frivolous charm.
In a subsidiary room off the painting-shop a single girl was seated at
a revolving table actuated by a treadle.  She was doing the
'band-and-line' on the rims of saucers.  Mynors and Anna watched her as
with her left hand she flicked saucer after saucer into the exact
centre of the table, moved the treadle, and, holding a brush firmly
against the rim of the piece, produced with infallible exactitude the
band and the line.  She was a brunette, about twenty-eight: she had a
calm, vacuously contemplative face; but God alone knew whether she
thought.  Her work represented the summit of monotony; the regularity
of it hypnotised the observer, and Mynors himself was impressed by this
stupendous phenomenon of absolute sameness, involuntarily assuming
towards it the attitude of a showman.

'She earns as much as eighteen shillings a week sometimes,' he
whispered.

'May I try?' Anna timidly asked of a sudden, curious to experience what
the trick was like.

'Certainly,' said Mynors, in eager assent.  'Priscilla, let this lady
have your seat a moment, please.'

The girl got up, smiling politely.  Anna took her place.

'Here, try on this,' said Mynors, putting on the table the plate which
he still carried.

'Take a full brush,' the paintress suggested, not attempting to hide
her amusement at Anna's unaccustomed efforts.  'Now push the treadle.
There!  It isn't in the middle yet.  Now!'

Anna produced a most creditable band, and a trembling but passable
line, and rose flushed with the small triumph.

'You have the gift,' said Mynors; and the paintress respectfully
applauded.

'I felt I could do it,' Anna responded.  'My mother's mother was a
paintress, and it must be in the blood.'

Mynors smiled indulgently.  They descended again to the ground floor,
and following the course of manufacture came to the 'hardening-on'
kiln, a minor oven where for twelve hours the oil is burnt out of the
colour in decorated ware.  A huge, jolly man in shirt and trousers,
with an enormous apron, was in the act of drawing the kiln, assisted by
two thin boys.  He nodded a greeting to Mynors and exclaimed, 'Warm!'
The kiln was nearly emptied.  As Anna stopped at the door, the man
addressed her.

'Step inside, miss, and try it.'

'No, thanks!' she laughed.

'Come now,' he insisted, as if despising this hesitation.  'An ounce of
experience----'  The two boys grinned and wiped their foreheads with
their bare skeleton-like arms.  Anna, challenged by the man's look,
walked quickly into the kiln.  A blasting heat seemed to assault her on
every side, driving her back; it was incredible that any human being
could support such a temperature.

'There!' said the jovial man, apparently summing her up with his
bright, quizzical eyes.  'You know summat as you didn't know afore,
miss.  Come along, lads,' he added with brisk heartiness to the boys,
and the drawing of the kiln proceeded.

Next came the dipping-house, where a middle-aged woman, enveloped in a
protective garment from head to foot, was dipping jugs into a vat of
lead-glaze, a boy assisting her.  The woman's hands were covered with
the grey, slimy glaze.  She alone of all the employees appeared to be
cool.

'That is the last stage but one,' said Mynors.  'There is only the
glost-firing,' and they passed out into the yard once more.  One of the
glost-ovens was empty; they entered it and peered into the lofty inner
chamber, which seemed like the cold crater of an exhausted volcano, or
like a vault, or like the ruined seat of some forgotten activity.  The
other oven was firing, and Anna could only look at its exterior,
catching glimpses of the red glow at its twelve mouths, and guess at
the Tophet, within, where the lead was being fused into glass.

'Now for the glost-warehouse, and you will have seen all,' said Mynors,
'except the mould-shop, and that doesn't matter.'

The warehouse was the largest place on the works, a room sixty-feet
long and twenty broad, low, whitewashed, bare and clean.  Piles of ware
occupied the whole of the walls and of the immense floorspace, but
there was no trace here of the soilure and untidiness incident to
manufacture; all processes were at an end, clay had vanished into
crock: and the calmness and the whiteness atoned for the disorder,
noise and squalor which had preceded.  Here was a sample of the total
and final achievement towards which the thousands of small, disjointed
efforts that Anna had witnessed, were directed.  And it seemed a
miraculous, almost impossible, result; so definite, precise and regular
after a series of acts apparently variable, inexact and casual; so
inhuman after all that intensely inhuman labour; so vast in comparison
with the minuteness of the separate endeavours.  As Anna looked, for
instance, at a pile of tea-sets, she found it difficult even to
conceive that, a fortnight or so before, they had been nothing but
lumps of dirty clay.  No stage of the manufacture was incredible by
itself, but the result was incredible.  It was the result that appealed
to the imagination, authenticating the adage that fools and children
should never see anything till it is done.

Anna pondered over the organising power, the forethought, the wide
vision, and the sheer ingenuity and cleverness which were implied by
the contents of this warehouse.  'What brains!' she thought, of Mynors;
'what quantities of all sorts of things he must know!'  It was a humble
and deeply-felt admiration.

Her spoken words gave no clue to her thoughts.  'You seem to make a
fine lot of tea-sets,' she remarked.

'Oh, no,' he said carelessly.  'These few that you see here are a
special order.  I don't go in much for tea-sets: they don't pay; we
lose fifteen per cent. of the pieces in making.  It's toilet-ware that
pays, and that is our leading line.'  He waved an arm vaguely towards
rows and rows of ewers and basins in the distance.  They walked to the
end of the warehouse, glancing at everything.

'See here,' said Mynors, 'isn't that pretty?'  He pointed through the
last window to a view of the canal, which could be seen thence in
perspective, finishing in a curve.  On one side, close to the water's
edge, was a ruined and fragmentary building, its rich browns reflected
in the smooth surface of the canal.  On the other side were a few grim,
grey trees bordering the towpath.  Down the vista moved a boat steered
by a woman in a large mob-cap.  'Isn't that picturesque?' he said.

'Very,' Anna assented willingly.  'It's really quite strange, such a
scene right in the middle of Bursley.'

'Oh!  There are others,' he said.  'But I always take a peep at that
whenever I come into the warehouse.'

'I wonder you find time to notice it--with all this place to see
after,' she said.  'It's a splendid works!'

'It will do--to be going on with,' he answered, satisfied.  'I'm very
glad you've been down.  You must come again.  I can see you would be
interested in it, and there are plenty of things you haven't looked at
yet, you know.'

He smiled at her.  They were alone in the warehouse.

'Yes,' she said; 'I expect so.  Well, I must go, at once; I'm afraid
it's very late now.  Thank you for showing me round, and explaining,
and--I'm frightfully stupid and ignorant.  Good-bye.'

Vapid and trite phrases: what unimaginable messages the hearer heard in
you!

Anna held out her hand, and he seized it almost convulsively, his
incendiary eyes fastened on her face.

'I must see you out,' he said, dropping that ungloved hand.

It was ten o'clock that night before Ephraim Tellwright returned home
from Axe.  He appeared to be in a bad temper.  Agnes had gone to bed.
His supper of bread-and-cheese and water was waiting for him, and Anna
sat at the table while he consumed it.  He ate in silence, somewhat
hungrily, and she did not deem the moment propitious for telling him
about her visit to Mynors' works.

'Has Titus Price sent up?' he asked at length, gulping down the last of
the water.

'Sent up?'

'Yes.  Art fond, lass?  I told him as he mun send up some more o' thy
rent to-day--twenty-five pun.  He's not sent?'

'I don't know,' she said timidly.  'I was out this afternoon.'

'Out, wast?'

'Mr. Mynors sent word to ask me to go down and look over the works; so
I went.  I thought it would be all right.'

'Well, it was'na all right.  And I'd like to know what business thou
hast gadding out, as soon as my back's turned.  How can I tell whether
Price sent up or not?  And what's more, thou know's as th' house hadn't
ought to be left.'

'I'm sorry,' she said pleasantly, with a determination to be meek and
dutiful.

He grunted.  'Happen he didna' send.  And if he did, and found th'
house locked up, he should ha' sent again.  Bring me th' inkpot, and
I'll write a note as Agnes must take when her goes to school to-morrow
morning.'

Anna obeyed.  'They'll never be able to pay twenty-five pounds,
father,' she ventured.  'They've paid thirty already, you know.'

'Less gab,' he said shortly, taking up the pen.  'Here--write it
thysen.'  He threw the pen towards her.  'Tell Titus if he doesn't pay
five-and-twenty this wik, us'll put bailiffs in.'

'Won't it come better from you, father?' she pleaded.

'Whose property is it?'  The laconic question was final.  She knew she
must obey, and began to write.  But, realising that she would perforce
meet both Titus Price and Willie on Sunday, she merely demanded the
money, omitting the threat.  Her hand trembled as she passed the note
to him to read.

'Will that do?'

His reply was to tear the paper across.  'Put down what I tell ye,' he
ordered, 'and don't let's have any more paper wasted.'  Then he
dictated a letter which was an ultimatum in three lines.  'Sign it,' he
said.

She signed it, weeping.  She could see the wistful reproach in Willie
Price's eyes.

'I suppose,' her father said, when she bade him 'Good-night,' 'I
suppose if I hadn't asked, I should ha' heard nowt o' this
gadding-about wi' Mynors?'

'I was going to tell you I had been to the works, father,' she said.

'Going to!'  That was his final blow, and having delivered it, he
loosed the victim.  'Go to bed,' he said.

She went upstairs, resolutely read her Bible, and resolutely prayed.



[1] _Jacket-man_: the artisan's satiric term for anyone who does not
work in shirt-sleeves, who is not actually a producer, such as a clerk
or a pretentious foreman.

[2] _Saggars_: large oval receptacles of coarse clay, in which the ware
is placed for firing.




CHAPTER IX

THE TREAT

This surly and terrorising ferocity of Tellwright's was as instinctive
as the growl and spring of a beast of prey.  He never considered his
attitude towards the women of his household as an unusual phenomenon
which needed justification, or as being in the least abnormal.  The
women of a household were the natural victims of their master: in his
experience it had always been so.  In his experience the master had
always, by universal consent, possessed certain rights over the
self-respect, the happiness and the peace of the defenceless souls set
under him--rights as unquestioned as those exercised by Ivan the
Terrible.  Such rights were rooted in the secret nature of things.  It
was futile to discuss them, because their necessity and their propriety
were equally obvious.  Tellwright would not have been angry with any
man who impugned them: he would merely have regarded the fellow as a
crank and a born fool, on whom logic or indignation would be entirely
wasted.  He did as his father and uncles had done.  He still thought of
his father as a grim customer, infinitely more redoubtable than
himself.  He really believed that parents spoiled their children
nowadays: to be knocked down by a single blow was one of the
punishments of his own generation.  He could recall the fearful
timidity of his mother's eyes without a trace of compassion.  His
treatment of his daughters was no part of a system, nor obedient to any
defined principles, nor the expression of a brutal disposition, nor the
result of gradually-acquired habit.  It came to him like eating, and
like parsimony.  He belonged to the great and powerful class of
house-tyrants, the backbone of the British nation, whose views on
income-tax cause ministries to tremble.  If you had talked to him of
the domestic graces of life, your words would have conveyed to him no
meaning.  If you had indicted him for simple unprovoked rudeness, he
would have grinned, well knowing that, as the King can do no wrong, so
a man cannot be rude in his own house.  If you had told him that he
inflicted purposeless misery not only on others but on himself, he
would have grinned again, vaguely aware that he had not tried to be
happy, and rather despising happiness as a sort of childish gewgaw.  He
had, in fact, never been happy at home: he had never known that
expansion of the spirit which is called joy; he existed continually
under a grievance.  The atmosphere of Manor Terrace afflicted him, too,
with a melancholy gloom--him, who had created it.  Had he been capable
of self-analysis, he would have discovered that his heart lightened
whenever he left the house, and grew dark whenever he returned; but he
was incapable of the feat.  His case, like every similar case, was
irremediable.

The next morning his preposterous displeasure lay like a curse on the
house; Anna was silent, and Agnes moved on timid feet.  In the
afternoon Willie Price called in answer to the note.  The miser was in
the garden, and Agnes at school.  Willie's craven and fawning humility
was inexpressibly touching and shameful to Anna.  She longed to say to
him, as he stood hesitant and confused in the parlour: 'Go in peace.
Forget this despicable rent.  It sickens me to see you so.'  She
foresaw, as the effect of her father's vindictive pursuit of her
tenants, an interminable succession of these mortifying interviews.

'You're rather hard on us,' Willie Price began, using the old phrases,
but in a tone of forced and propitiatory cheerfulness, as though he
feared to bring down a storm of anger which should ruin all.  'You'll
not deny that we've been doing our best.'

'The rent is due, you know, Mr. William,' she replied, blushing.

'Oh, yes,' he said quickly.  'I don't deny that.  I admit that.  I--did
you happen to see Mr. Tellwright's postscript to your letter?'

'No,' she answered, without thinking.

He drew the letter, soiled and creased, from his pocket, and displayed
it to her.  At the foot of the page she read, in Ephraim's thick and
clumsy characters: 'P.S.  This is final.'

'My father,' said Willie, 'was a little put about.  He said he'd never
received such a letter before in the whole of his business career.  It
isn't as if----'

'I needn't tell you,' she interrupted, with a sudden determination to
get to the worst without more suspense, 'that of course I am in
father's hands.'

'Oh!  Of course, Miss Tellwright; we quite understand that--quite.
It's just a matter of business.  We owe a debt and we must pay it.  All
we want is time.'  He smiled piteously at her, his blue eyes full of
appeal.  She was obliged to gaze at the floor.

'Yes,' she said, tapping her foot on the rug.  'But father means what
he says.'  She looked up at him again, trying to soften her words by
means of something more subtle than a smile.

'He means what he says,' Willie agreed; 'and I admire him for it.'

The obsequious, truckling lie was odious to her.

'Perhaps I could see him,' he ventured.

'I wish you would,' Anna said, sincerely.  'Father, you're wanted,' she
called curtly through the window.

'I've got a proposal to make to him,' Price continued, while they
awaited the presence of the miser, 'and I can't hardly think he'll
refuse it.'

'Well, young sir,' Tellwright said blandly, with an air almost
insinuating, as he entered.  Willie Price, the simpleton, was deceived
by it, and, taking courage, adopted another line of defence.  He
thought the miser was a little ashamed of his postscript.

'About your note, Mr. Tellwright; I was just telling Miss Tellwright
that my father said he had never received such a letter in the whole of
his business career.'  The youth assumed a discreet indignation.

'Thy feyther's had dozens o' such letters, lad,' the miser said with
cold emphasis, 'or my name's not Tellwright.  Dunna tell me as Titus
Price's never heard of a bumbailiff afore.'

Willie was crushed at a blow, and obliged to retreat.  He smiled
painfully.  'Come, Mr. Tellwright.  Don't talk like that.  All we want
is time.'

'Time is money,' said Tellwright, 'and if us give you time us give you
money.  'Stead o' that, it's you as mun give us money.  That's right
reason.'

Willie laughed with difficulty.  'See here, Mr. Tellwright.  To cut a
long story short, it's like this.  You ask for twenty-five pounds.
I've got in my pocket a bill of exchange drawn by us on Mr. Sutton and
endorsed by him, for thirty pounds, payable in three months.  Will you
take that?  Remember it's for thirty, and you only ask for twenty-five.'

'So Mr. Sutton has dealings with ye, eh?' Tellwright remarked.

'Oh, yes,' Willie answered proudly.  'He buys off us regularly.  We've
done business for years.'

'And pays i' bills at three months, eh?'  The miser grinned.

'Sometimes,' said Willie.

'Let's see it,' said the miser.

'What--the bill?'

'Ay!'

'Oh!  The bill's all right.'  Willie took it from his pocket, and
opening out the blue paper, gave it to old Tellwright.  Anna perceived
the anxiety on the youth's face.  He flushed and his hand trembled.
She dared not speak, but she wished to tell him to be at ease.  She
knew from infallible signs that her father would take the bill.
Ephraim gazed at the stamped paper as at something strange and
unprecedented in his experience.

'Father would want you not to negotiate that bill,' said Willie.  'The
fact is, we promised Mr. Sutton that that particular bill should not
leave our hands--unless it was absolutely necessary.  So father would
like you not to discount it, and he will redeem it before it matures.
You quite understand--we don't care to offend an old customer like Mr.
Sutton.'

'Then this bit o' paper's worth nowt for welly[1] three months?' the
old man said, with an affectation of bewildered simplicity.

Happily inspired for once, Willie made no answer, but put the question:
'Will you take it?'

'Ay!  Us'll tak' it,' said Tellwright, 'though it is but a promise.'
He was well pleased.

Young Price's face showed his relief.  It was now evident that he had
been passing through an ordeal.  Anna guessed that perhaps everything
had depended on the acceptance by Tellwright of that bill.  Had he
refused it, Prices, she thought, might have come to sudden disaster.
She felt glad and disburdened for the moment; but immediately it
occurred to her that her father would not rest satisfied for long; a
few weeks, and he would give another turn to the screw.


The Tellwrights were destined to have other visitors that afternoon.
Agnes, coming from school, was accompanied by a lady.  Anna, who was
setting the tea-table, saw a double shadow pass the window, and heard
voices.  She ran into the kitchen, and found Mrs. Sutton seated on a
chair, breathing quickly.

'You'll excuse me coming in so unceremoniously, Anna,' she said, after
having kissed her heartily.  'But Agnes said that she always came in by
the back way, so I came that way too.  Now I'm resting a minute.  I've
had to walk to-day.  Our horse has gone lame.'

This kind heart radiated a heavenly goodwill, even in the most ordinary
phrases.  Anna began to expand at once.

'Now do come into the parlour,' she said, 'and let me make you
comfortable.'

'Just a minute, my dear,' Mrs. Sutton begged, fanning herself with her
handkerchief, 'Agnes's legs are so long.'

'Oh, Mrs. Sutton,' Agnes protested, laughing, 'how can you?  I could
scarcely keep up with you!'

'Well, my dear, I never could walk slowly.  I'm one of them that go
till they drop.  It's very silly.'  She smiled, and the two girls
smiled happily in return.

'Agnes,' said the housewife, 'set another cup and saucer and plate.'
Agnes threw down her hat and satchel of books, eager to show
hospitality.

'It still keeps very warm,' Anna remarked, as Mrs. Sutton was silent.

'It's beautifully cool here,' said Mrs. Sutton.  'I see you've got your
kitchen like a new pin, Anna, if you'll excuse me saying so.  Henry was
very enthusiastic about this kitchen the other night, at our house.'

'What!  Mr. Mynors?'  Anna reddened to the eyes.

'Yes, my dear; and he's a very particular young man, you know.'

The kettle conveniently boiled at that moment, and Anna went to the
range to make the tea.

'Tea is all ready, Mrs. Sutton,' she said at length.  'I'm sure you
could do with a cup.'

'That I could,' said Mrs. Sutton.  'It's what I've come for.'

'We have tea at four.  Father will be glad to see you.'  The clock
struck, and they went into the parlour, Anna carrying the tea-pot and
the hot-water jug.  Agnes had preceded them.  The old man was sitting
expectant in his chair.

'Well, Mr. Tellwright,' said the visitor, 'you see I've called to see
you, and to beg a cup of tea.  I overtook Agnes coming home from
school--overtook her, mind--me, at my age!'  Ephraim rose slowly and
shook hands.

'You're welcome,' he said curtly, but with a kindliness that amazed
Anna.  She was unaware that in past days he had known Mrs. Sutton as a
young and charming girl, a vision that had stirred poetic ideas in
hundreds of prosaic breasts, Tellwright's included.  There was scarcely
a middle-aged male Wesleyan in Bursley and Hanbridge who had not a
peculiar regard for Mrs. Sutton, and who did not think that he alone
truly appreciated her.

'What an' you bin tiring yourself with this afternoon?' he asked, when
they had begun tea, and Mrs. Sutton had refused a second piece of
bread-and-butter.

'What have I been doing?  I've been seeing to some inside repairs to
the superintendent's house.  Be thankful you aren't a circuit-steward's
wife, Anna.'

'Why, does she have to see to the repairs of the minister's house?'
Anna asked, surprised.

'I should just think she does.  She has to stand between the minister's
wife and the funds of the society.  And Mrs. Reginald Banks has been
used to the very best of everything.  She's just a bit exacting, though
I must say she's willing enough to spend her own money too.  She wants
a new boiler in the scullery now, and I'm sure her boiler is a great
deal better than ours.  But we must try to please her.  She isn't used
to us rough folks and our ways.  Mr. Banks said to me this afternoon
that he tried always to shield her from the worries of this world.'
She smiled almost imperceptibly.

There was a ring at the bell, and Agnes, much perturbed by the august
arrival, let in Mr. Banks himself.

'Shall I enter, my little dear?' said Mr. Banks.  'Your father, your
sister, in?'

'It ne'er rains but it pours,' said Tellwright, who had caught the
minister's voice.

'Speak of angels----' said Mrs. Sutton, laughing quietly.

The minister came grandly into the parlour.  'Ah!  How do you do,
brother Tellwright, and you, Miss Tellwright?  Mrs. Sutton, we two seem
happily fated to meet this afternoon.  Don't let me disturb you, I
beg--I cannot stay.  My time is very limited.  I wish I could call
oftener, brother Tellwright; but really the new _régime_ leaves no time
for pastoral visits.  I was saying to my wife only this morning that I
haven't had a free afternoon for a month.'  He accepted a cup of tea.

'Us'n have a tea-party this afternoon,' said Tellwright
_quasi_-privately to Mrs. Sutton.

'And now,' the minister resumed, 'I've come to beg.  The special fund,
you know, Mr. Tellwright, to clear off the debt on the new
school-buildings.  I referred to it from the pulpit last Sabbath.  It's
not in my province to go round begging, but someone must do it.'

'Well, for me, I'm beforehand with you, Mr. Banks,' said Mrs. Sutton,
'for it's on that very errand I've called to see Mr. Tellwright this
afternoon.  His name is on my list.'

'Ah!  Then I leave our brother to your superior persuasions.'

'Come, Mr. Tellwright,' said Mrs. Sutton, 'you're between two fires,
and you'll get no mercy.  What will you give?'

The miser foresaw a probable discomfiture, and sought for some means of
escape.

'What are others giving?' he asked.

'My husband is giving fifty pounds, and you could buy him up, lock,
stock, and barrel.'

'Nay, nay!' said Tellwright, aghast at this sum.  He had underrated the
importance of the Building Fund.

'And I,' said the parson solemnly, 'I have but fifty pounds in the
world, but I am giving twenty to this fund.'

'Then you're giving too much,' said Tellwright with quick brusqueness.
'You canna' afford it.'

'The Lord will provide,' said the parson.

'Happen He will, happen not.  It's as well you've gotten a rich wife,
Mr. Banks.'

The parson's dignity was obviously wounded, and Anna wondered timidly
what would occur next.  Mrs. Sutton interposed.  'Come now, Mr.
Tellwright,' she said again, 'to the point: what will you give?'

'I'll think it over and let you hear,' said Ephraim.

'Oh, no!  That won't do at all, will it, Mr. Banks?  I, at any rate, am
not going away without a definite promise.  As an old and good
Wesleyan, of course you will feel it your duty to be generous with us.'

'You used to be a pillar of the Hanbridge circuit--was it not so?' said
Mr. Banks to the miser, recovering himself.

'So they used to say,' Tellwright replied grimly.  'That was because I
cleared 'em of debt in ten years.  But they've slipped into th' ditch
again sin' I left 'em.'

'But if I am right, you do not meet[2] with us,' the minister pursued
imperturbably.

'No.'

'My own class is at three on Saturdays,' said the minister.  'I should
be glad to see you.'

'I tell you what I'll do,' said the miser to Mrs. Sutton.  'Titus Price
is a big man at th' Sunday-school.  I'll give as much as he gives to
th' school buildings.  That's fair.'

'Do you know what Mr. Price is giving?' Mrs. Sutton asked the minister.

'I saw Mr. Price yesterday.  He is giving twenty-five pounds.'

'Very well, that's a bargain,' said Mrs. Sutton, who had succeeded
beyond her expectations.

Ephraim was the dupe of his own scheming.  He had made sure that
Price's contribution would be a small one.  This ostentatious
munificence on the part of the beggared Titus filled him with secret
anger.  He determined to demand more rent at a very early date.

'I'll put you down for twenty-five pounds as a first subscription,'
said the minister, taking out a pocket-book.  Perhaps you will give
Mrs. Sutton or myself the cheque to-day?'

'Has Mr. Price paid?' the miser asked, warily.

'Not yet.'

'Then come to me when he has.'  Ephraim perceived the way of escape.

When the minister was gone, as Mrs. Sutton seemed in no hurry to
depart, Anna and Agnes cleared the table.

'I've just been telling your father, Anna,' said Mrs. Sutton, when Anna
returned to the room, 'that Mr. Sutton and myself and Beatrice are
going to the Isle of Man soon for a fortnight or so, and we should very
much like you to come with us.'

Anna's heart began to beat violently, though she knew there was no hope
for her.  This, then, doubtless, was the main object of Mrs. Sutton's
visit!  'Oh!  But I couldn't, really!' said Anna, scarcely aware what
she did say.

'Why not?' asked Mrs. Sutton.

'Well--the house.'

'The house?  Agnes could see to what little housekeeping your father
would want.  The schools will break up next week.'

'What do these young folks want holidays for?' Tellwright inquired with
philosophic gruffness.  'I never had one.  And what's more, I wouldn't
thank ye for one.  I'll pig on at Bursley.  When ye've gotten a roof of
your own, where's the sense o' going elsewhere and pigging?'

'But we really want Anna to go,' Mrs. Sutton went on.  'Beatrice is
very anxious about it.  Beatrice is very short of suitable friends.'

'I should na' ha' thought it,' said Tellwright.  'Her seems to know
everyone.'

'But she is,' Mrs. Sutton insisted.

'I think as you'd better leave Anna out this year,' said the miser
stubbornly.

Anna wished profoundly that Mrs. Sutton would abandon the futile
attempt.  Then she perceived that the visitor was signalling to her to
leave the room.  Anna obeyed, going into the kitchen to give an eye to
Agnes, who was washing up.

'It's all right,' said Mrs. Sutton contentedly, when Anna returned to
the parlour.  'Your father has consented to your going with us.  It is
very kind of him, for I'm sure he'll miss you.'

Anna sat down, limp, speechless.  She could not believe the news.

'You are awfully good,' she said to Mrs. Sutton in the lobby, as the
latter was leaving the house.  'I'm ever so grateful--you can't think.'
And she threw her arms round Mrs. Sutton's neck.

Agnes ran up to say good-bye.

Mrs. Sutton kissed the child.  'Agnes will be the little housekeeper,
eh?'  The little housekeeper was almost as pleased at the prospect of
housekeeping as if she too had been going to the Isle of Man.  'You'll
both be at the school-treat next Tuesday, I suppose,' Mrs. Sutton said,
holding Agnes by the hand.  Agnes glanced at her sister in inquiry.

'I don't know,' Anna replied.  'We shall see.'

The truth was, that not caring to ask her father for the money for the
tickets, she had given no thought to the school-treat.

'Did I tell you that Henry Mynors will most likely come with us to the
Isle of Man?' said Mrs. Sutton from the gate.

Anna retired to her bedroom to savour an astounding happiness in
quietude.  At supper the miser was in a mood not unbenevolent.  She
expected a reaction the next morning, but Ephraim, strange to say,
remained innocuous.  She ventured to ask him for the money for the
treat tickets, two shillings.  He made no immediate reply.  Half an
hour afterwards, he ejaculated: 'What i' th' name o' fortune dost thee
want wi' school-treats?'

'It's Agnes,' she answered; 'of course Agnes can't go alone.'

In the end he threw down a florin.  He became perilous for the rest of
the day, but the florin was an indisputable fact in Anna's pocket.

The school-treat was held in a twelve-acre field near Sneyd, the seat
of a marquis, and a Saturday afternoon resort very popular in the Five
Towns.  The children were formed at noon on Duck Bank into a
procession, which marched to the railway station to the singing of
'Shall we gather at the river?'  Thence a special train carried them,
in seething compartments, excited and strident, to Sneyd, where there
had been two sharp showers in the morning, the procession was reformed
along a country road, and the vacillating sky threatened more rain; but
because the sun had shone dazzlingly at eleven o'clock all the women
and girls, too easily tempted by the glory of the moment, blossomed
forth in pale blouses and parasols.  The chattering crowd, bright and
defenceless as flowers, made at Sneyd a picture at once gay and
pathetic.  It had rained there at half-past twelve; the roads were wet;
and among the two hundred and fifty children and thirty teachers there
were less than a score umbrellas.  The excursion was theoretically in
charge of Titus Price, the Senior Superintendent, but this dignitary
had failed to arrive on Duck Bank, and Mynors had taken his place.  In
the train Anna heard that some one had seen Mr. Price, wearing a large
grey wideawake, leap into the guard's van at the very instant of
departure.  He had not been at school on the previous Sunday, and Anna
was somewhat perturbed at the prospect of meeting the man who had
defined her letter to him as unique in the whole of his business
career.  She caught a glimpse of the grey wideawake on the platform at
Sneyd, and steered her own scholars so as to avoid its vicinity.  But
on the march to the field Titus reviewed the procession, and she was
obliged to meet his eyes and return his salutation.  The look of the
man was a shock to her.  He seemed thinner, nervous, restless,
preoccupied, and terribly careworn; except the new brilliant hat, all
his summer clothes were soiled and shabby.  It was as though he had
forced himself, out of regard for appearances, to attend the fête, but
had left his thoughts in Edward Street.  His uneasy and hollow
cheerfulness was painful to watch.  Anna realised the intensity of the
crisis through which Mr. Price was passing.  She perceived in a single
glance, more clearly than she could have done after a hundred
interviews with the young and unresponsible William--however
distressing these might be--that Titus must for weeks have been engaged
in a truly frightful struggle.  His face was a proof of the tragic
sincerity of William's appeals to herself and to her father.  That
Price should have contrived to pay seventy pounds of rent in a little
more than a month seemed to her, imperfectly acquainted alike with
Ephraim's ruthless compulsions and with the financial jugglery often
practised by hard-pressed debtors, to be an almost miraculous effort
after honesty.  Her conscience smote her for conniving at which she now
saw to be a persecution.  She felt as sorry for Titus as she had felt
for his son.  The obese man, with his reputation in rags about him, was
acutely wistful in her eyes, as a child might have been.

A carriage rolled by, raising the dust in places where the strong sun
had already dried the road.  It was Mr. Sutton's landau, driven by
Barrett.  Beatrice, in white, sat solitary amid cushions, while two
large hampers occupied most of the coachman's box.  The carriage seemed
to move with lordly ease and rapidity, and the teachers, already weary
and fretted by the endless pranks of the children, bitterly envied the
enthroned maid who nodded and smiled to them with such charming
condescension.  It was a social triumph for Beatrice.  She disappeared
ahead like a goddess in a cloud, and scarcely a woman who saw her from
the humble level of the roadway but would have married a satyr to be
able to do as Beatrice did.  Later, when the field was reached, and the
children bursting through the gate had spread like a flood over the
daisied grass, the landau was to be seen drawn up near the refreshment
tent; Barrett was unpacking the hampers, which contained delicate
creamy confectionery for the teachers' tea; Beatrice explained that
these were her mother's gift, and that she had driven down in order to
preserve the fragile pasties from the risks of a railway journey.
Gratitude became vocal, and Beatrice's success was perfected.

Then the more conscientious teachers set themselves seriously to the
task of amusing the smaller children, and the smaller children
consented to be amused according to the recipes appointed by long
custom for school-treats.  Many round-games, which invariably comprised
singing or kissing, being thus annually resuscitated by elderly people
from the deeps of memory, were preserved for a posterity which
otherwise would never have known them.  Among these was Bobby-Bingo.
For twenty-five years Titus Price had played at Bobby-Bingo with the
infant classes at the school-treat, and this year he was bound by the
expectations of all to continue the practice.  Another diversion which
he always took care to organise was the three-legged race for boys.
Also, he usually joined in the tut-ball, a quaint game which owes its
surprising longevity to the fact that it is equally proper for both
sexes.  Within half an hour the treat was in full career; football,
cricket, rounders, tick, leap-frog, prison-bars, and round-games,
transformed the field into a vast arena of complicated struggles and
emulations.  All were occupied, except a few of the women and older
girls, who strolled languidly about in the _rôle_ of spectators.  The
sun shone generously on scores of vivid and frail toilettes, and
parasols made slowly-moving hemispheres of glowing colour against the
rich green of the grass.  All around were yellow cornfields, and
meadows where cows of a burnished brown indolently meditated upon the
phenomena of a school-treat.  Every hedge and ditch and gate and stile
was in that ideal condition of plenary correctness which denotes that a
great landowner is exhibiting the beauties of scientific farming for
the behoof of his villagers.  The sky, of an intense blue, was a sea in
which large white clouds sailed gently but capriciously; on the
northern horizon a low range of smoke marked the sinister region of the
Five Towns.

'Will you come and help with the bags and cups?' Henry Mynors asked
Anna.  She was standing by herself, watching Agnes at play with some
other girls.  Mynors had evidently walked across to her from the
refreshment tent, which was at the opposite extremity of the field.  In
her eyes he was once more the exemplar of style.  His suit of grey
flannel, his white straw hat, became him to admiration.  He stood at
ease with his hands in his coat-pockets, and smiled contentedly.

'After all,' he said, 'the tea is the principal thing, and, although it
wants two hours to tea-time yet, it's as well to be beforehand.'

'I should like something to do,' Anna replied.

'How are you?' he said familiarly, after this abrupt opening, and then
shook hands.  They traversed the field together, with many deviations
to avoid trespassing upon areas of play.

The flapping refreshment tent seemed to be full of piles of baskets and
piles of bags and piles of cups, which the contractor had brought in a
waggon.  Some teachers were already beginning to put the paper bags
into the baskets; each bag contained bread-and-butter, currant cake, an
Eccles-cake, and a Bath-bun.  At the far end of the tent Beatrice
Sutton was arranging her dainties on a small trestle-table.

'Come along quick, Anna,' she exclaimed, 'and taste my tarts, and tell
me what you think of them.  I do hope the good people will enjoy them.'
And then, turning to Mynors, 'Hello!  Are you seeing after the bags and
things?  I thought that was always Willie Price's favourite job!'

'So it is,' said Mynors.  'But, unfortunately, he isn't here to-day.'

'How's that, pray?  I never knew him miss a school-treat before.'

'Mr. Price told me they couldn't both be away from the works just now.
Very busy, I suppose.'

'Well, William would have been more use than his father, anyhow.'

'Hush, hush!' Mynors murmured with a subdued laugh.

Beatrice was in one of her 'downright' moods, as she herself called
them.

Mynors's arrangements for the prompt distribution of tea at the
appointed hour were very minute, and involved a considerable amount of
back bending and manual labour.  But, though they were enlivened by
frequent intervals of gossip, and by excursions into the field to
observe this and that amusing sight, all was finished half an hour
before time.

'I will go and warn Mr. Price,' said Mynors.  'He is quite capable of
forgetting the clock.'  Mynors left the tent, and proceeded to the
scene of an athletic meeting, at which Titus Price, in shirt-sleeves,
was distributing prizes of sixpences and pennies.  The famous
three-legged race had just been run.  Anna followed at a saunter, and
shortly afterwards Beatrice overtook her.

'The great Titus looks better than he did when he came on the field,'
Beatrice remarked.  And indeed the superintendent had put on quite a
merry appearance--flushed, excited, and jocular in his elephantine
way--it seemed as if he had not a care in the world.  The boys crowded
appreciatively round him.  But this was his last hour of joy.

'Why!  Willie Price _is_ here,' Anna exclaimed, perceiving William in
the fringe of the crowd.  The lanky fellow stood hesitatingly, his left
hand busy with his moustache.

'So he is,' said Beatrice.  'I wonder what that means.'

Titus had not observed the newcomer, but Henry Mynors saw William, and
exchanged a few words with him.  Then Mr. Mynors advanced into the
crowd and spoke to Mr. Price, who glanced quickly round at his son.
The girls, at a distance of forty yards, could discern the swift change
in the man's demeanour.  In a second he had reverted to the deplorable
Titus of three hours ago.  He elbowed his way roughly to William,
getting into his coat as he went.  The pair talked, William glanced at
his watch, and in another moment they were leaving the field.  Henry
Mynors had to finish the prize distribution.  So much Anna and Beatrice
plainly saw.  Others, too, had not been blind to this sudden and
dramatic departure.  It aroused universal comment among the teachers.

'Something must be wrong at Price's works,' Beatrice said, 'and Willie
has had to fetch his papa.'  This was the conclusion of all the
gossips.  Beatrice added: 'Dad has mentioned Price's several times
lately, now I think of it.'

Anna grew extremely self-conscious and uncomfortable.  She felt as
though all were saying of her: 'There goes the oppressor of the poor!'
She was fairly sure, however, that her father was not responsible for
this particular incident.  There must, then, be other implacable
creditors.  She had been thoroughly enjoying the afternoon, but now her
pleasure ceased.

The treat ended disastrously.  In the middle of the children's meal,
while yet the enormous double-handled tea-cans were being carried up
and down the thirsty rows, and the boys were causing their bags to
explode with appalling detonations, it began to rain sharply.  The
fickle sun withdrew his splendour from the toilettes, and was seen no
more for a week afterwards.  'It's come at last,' ejaculated Mynors,
who had watched the sky with anxiety for an hour previously.  He
mobilised the children and ranked them under a row of elms.  The
teachers, running to the tent for their own tea, said to one another
that the shower could only be a brief one.  The wish was father to the
thought, for they were a little ashamed to be under cover while their
charges precariously sheltered beneath dripping trees--yet there was
nothing else to be done; the men took turns in the rain to keep the
children in their places.  The sky was completely overcast.  'It's set
in for a wet evening, and so we may as well make the best of it,'
Beatrice said grimly, and she sent the landau home empty.  She was
right.  A forlorn and disgusted snake of a procession crawled through
puddles to the station.  The platform resounded with sneezes.  None but
a dressmaker could have discovered a silver lining to the black and
all-pervading cloud which had ruined so many dozens of fair costumes.
Anna, melancholy and taciturn, exerted herself to minimise the
discomfort of her scholars.  A word from Mynors would have been balm to
her; but Mynors, the general of a routed army, was parleying by
telephone with the traffic-manager of the railway for the expediting of
the special train.



[1] _Welly_: nearly.

[2] _Meet_: meet in class--a gathering for the exchange of religious
counsel and experience.




CHAPTER X

THE ISLE

About this time Anna was not seeing very much of Henry Mynors.  At
twenty a man is rash in love, and again, perhaps, at fifty; a man of
middle-age enamoured of a young girl is capable of sublime follies.
But the man of thirty who loves for the first time is usually the
embodiment of cautious discretion.  He does not fall in love with a
violent descent, but rather lets himself gently down, continually
testing the rope.  His social value, especially if he have achieved
worldly success, is at its highest, and, without conceit, he is aware
of it.  He has lost many illusions concerning women; he has seen more
than one friend wrecked in the sea of foolish marriage; he knows the
joys of a bachelor's freedom, without having wearied of them; he
perceives risks where the youth perceives only ecstasy, and the oldster
only a blissful release from solitude.  Instead of searching, he is
sought for; accordingly he is selfish and exacting.  All these things,
combine to tranquillize passion at thirty.  Mynors was in love with
Anna, and his love had its ardent moments; but in the main it was a
temperate affection, an affection that walked circumspectly, with its
eyes open, careful of its dignity, too proud to seem in a hurry; if, by
impulse, it chanced now and then to leap forward, the involuntary
movement was mastered and checked.  Mynors called at Manor Terrace once
a week, never on the same day of the week, nor without discussing
business with the miser.  Occasionally he accompanied Anna from school
or chapel.  Such methods were precisely to Anna's taste.  Like him, she
loved prudence and decorum, preferring to make haste slowly.  Since the
Revival, they had only once talked together intimately; on that sole
occasion Henry had suggested to her that she might care to join Mrs.
Sutton's class, which met on Monday nights; she accepted the hint with
pleasure, and found a well of spiritual inspiration in Mrs. Sutton's
modest and simple yet fervent homilies.  Mynors was not guilty of
blowing both hot and cold.  She was sure of him.  She waited calmly for
events, existing, as her habit was, in the future.

The future, then, meant the Isle of Man.  Anna dreamed of an enchanted
isle and hours of unimaginable rapture.  For a whole week after Mrs.
Sutton had won Ephraim's consent, her vision never stooped to practical
details.  Then Beatrice called to see her; it was the morning after the
treat, and Anna was brushing her muddy frock; she wore a large white
apron, and held a cloth-brush in her hand as she opened the door.

'You're busy?' said Beatrice.

'Yes,' said Anna, 'but come in.  Come into the kitchen--do you mind?'

Beatrice was covered from neck to heel with a long mackintosh, which
she threw off when entering the kitchen.

'Anyone else in the house?' she asked.

'No,' said Anna, smiling, as Beatrice seated herself, with a sigh of
content, on the table.

'Well, let's talk, then.'  Beatrice drew from her pocket the
indispensable chocolates and offered them to Anna.  'I say, wasn't last
night perfectly awful?  Henry got wet through in the end, and mother
made him stop at our house, as he was at the trouble to take me home.
Did you see him go down this morning?'

'No; why?' said Anna, stiffly.

'Oh--no reason.  Only I thought perhaps you did.  I simply can't tell
you how glad I am that you're coming with us to the Isle of Man; we
shall have rare fun.  We go every year, you know--to Port Erin, a
lovely little fishing village.  All the fishermen know us there.  Last
year Henry hired a yacht for the fortnight, and we all went
mackerel-fishing, every day; except sometimes Pa.  Now and then Pa had
a tendency to go fiddling in caves and things.  I do hope it will be
fine weather again by then, don't you?'

'I'm looking forward to it, I can tell you,' Anna said.  'What day are
we supposed to start?'

'Saturday week.'

'So soon?'  Anna was surprised at the proximity of the event.

'Yes; and quite late enough, too.  We should start earlier, only the
Dad always makes out he can't.  Men always pretend to be so frightfully
busy, and I believe it's all put on.'  Beatrice continued to chat about
the holiday, and then of a sudden she asked: 'What are you going to
wear?'

'Wear!' Anna repeated; and added, with hesitation: 'I suppose one will
want some new clothes?'

'Well, just a few!  Now let me advise you.  Take a blue serge skirt.
Sea-water won't harm it, and if it's dark enough it will look well to
any mortal blouse.  Secondly, you can't have too many blouses; they're
always useful at the seaside.  Plain straw-hats are my tip.  A coat for
nights, and thick boots.  There!  Of course no one ever _dresses_ at
Port Erin.  It isn't like Llandudno, and all that sort of thing.  You
don't have to meet your young man on the pier, because there isn't a
pier.'

There was a pause.  Anna did not know what to say.  At length she
ventured: 'I'm not much for clothes, as I dare say you've noticed.'

'I think you always look nice, my dear,' Beatrice responded.  Nothing
was said as to Anna's wealth, no reference made as to the discrepancy
between that and the style of her garments.  By a fiction, there was
supposed to be no discrepancy.

'Do you make your own frocks?' Beatrice asked, later.

'Yes.'

'Do you know I thought you did.  But they do you great credit.  There's
few people can make a plain frock look decent.'

This conversation brought Anna with a shock to the level of earth.  She
perceived--only too well--a point which she had not hitherto fairly
faced in her idyllic meditations: that her father was still a factor in
the case.  Since Mrs. Sutton's visit both Anna and the miser avoided
the subject of the holiday.  'You can't have too many blouses.'  Did
Beatrice, then, have blouses by the dozen?  A coat, a serge skirt,
straw hats (how many?)--the catalogue frightened her.  She began to
suspect that she would not be able to go to the Isle of Man.

'About me going with Suttons to the Isle of Man?' she accosted her
father, in the afternoon, outwardly calm, but with secret trembling.

'Well?' he exclaimed savagely.

'I shall want some money--a little.'  She would have given much not to
have added that 'little,' but it came out of itself.

'It's a waste o' time and money--that's what I call it.  I can't think
why Suttons asked ye.  Ye aren't ill, are ye?'  His savagery changed to
sullenness.

'No, father; but as it's arranged, I suppose I shall have to go.'

'Well, I'm none so set up with the idea mysen.'

'Shan't you be all right with Agnes?'

'Oh, yes.  _I_ shall be all right.  _I_ don't want much.  _I_'ve no
fads and fal-lals.  How long art going to be away?'

'I don't know.  Didn't Mrs. Sutton tell you?  You arranged it.'

'That I didna'.  Her said nowt to me.'

'Well, anyhow I shall want some clothes.'

'What for?  Art naked?'

'I must have some money.'  Her voice shook.  She was getting near tears.

'Well, thou's gotten thy own money, hast na'?'

'All I want is that you shall let me have some of my own money.
There's forty odd pounds now in the bank.'

'Oh!' he repeated, sneering, 'all ye want is as I shall let thee have
some o' thy own money.  And there's forty odd pound i' the bank.  Oh!'

'Will you give me my cheque-book out of the bureau?  And I'll draw a
cheque; I know how to.'  She had conquered the instinct to cry, and
unwillingly her tones became somewhat peremptory.  Ephraim seized the
chance.

'No, I won't give ye the cheque-book out o' th' bureau,' he said
flatly.  'And I'll thank ye for less sauce.'

That finished the episode.  Proudly she took an oath with herself not
to re-open the question, and resolved to write a note to Mrs. Sutton
saying that on consideration she found it impossible to go to the Isle
of Man.

The next morning there came to Anna a letter from the secretary of a
limited company enclosing a post-office order for ten pounds.  Some
weeks previously her father had discovered an error of that amount in
the deduction of income-tax from the dividend paid by this company, and
had instructed Anna to demand the sum.  She had obeyed, and then
forgotten the affair.  Here was the answer.  Desperate at the thought
of missing the holiday, she cashed the order, bought and made her
clothes in secret, and then, two days before the arranged date of
departure told her father what she had done.  He was enraged; but since
his anger was too illogical to be rendered effectively coherent in
words, he had the wit to keep silence.  With bitterness Anna reflected
that she owed her holiday to the merest accident--for if the remittance
had arrived a little earlier or a little later, or in the form of a
cheque, she could not have utilised it.


It was an incredible day, the following Saturday, a warm and benign day
of earliest autumn.  The Suttons, in a hired cab, called for Anna at
half-past eight, on the way to the main line station at Shawport.
Anna's tin box was flung on to the roof of the cab amid the trunks and
portmanteaux already there.

'Why should not Agnes ride with us to the station?' Beatrice suggested.

'Nay, nay; there's no room,' said Tellwright, who stood at the door,
impelled by an unacknowledged awe of Mrs. Sutton thus to give official
sanction to Anna's departure.

'Yes, yes,' Mrs. Sutton exclaimed.  'Let the little thing come, Mr.
Tellwright.'

Agnes, far more excited than any of the rest, seized her straw hat, and
slipping the elastic under her small chin, sprang into the cab, and
found a haven between Mr. Sutton's short, fat legs.  The driver drew
his whip smartly across the aged neck of the cream mare.  They were
off.  What a rumbling, jolting, delicious journey, down the first hill,
up Duck Bank, through the market-place, and down the steep declivity of
Oldcastle Street!  Silent and shy, Agnes smiled ecstatically at the
others.  Anna answered remarks in a dream.  She was conscious only of
present happiness and happy expectation.  All bitterness had
disappeared.  At least thirty thousand Bursley folk were not going to
the Isle of Man that day--their preoccupied and cheerless faces swam in
a continuous stream past the cab window--and Anna sympathised with
every unit of them.  Her spirit overflowed with universal compassion.
What haste and exquisite confusion at the station!  The train was
signalled, and the porter, crossing the line with the luggage, ran his
truck perilously under the very buffers of the incoming engine.  Mynors
was awaiting them, admirably attired as a tourist.  He had got the
tickets, and secured a private compartment in the through-coach for
Liverpool; and he found time to arrange with the cabman to drive Agnes
home on the box-seat.  Certainly there was none like Mynors.  From the
footboard of the carriage Anna bent down to kiss Agnes.  The child had
been laughing and chattering.  Suddenly, as Anna's lips touched hers,
she burst into tears, sobbed passionately as though overtaken by some
terrible and unexpected misfortune.  Tears stood also in Anna's eyes.
The sisters had never been parted before.

'Poor little thing!' Mrs. Sutton murmured; and Beatrice told her father
to give Agnes a shilling to buy chocolates at Stevenson's in St. Luke's
Square, that being the best shop.  The shilling fell between the
footboard and the platform.  A scream from Beatrice!  The attendant
porter promised to rescue the shilling in due course.  The engine
whistled, the silver-mounted guard asserted his authority, Mynors
leaped in, and amid laughter and tears the brief and unique joy of
Anna's life began.

In a moment, so it seemed, the train was thundering through the mile of
solid rock which ends at Lime Street Station, Liverpool.
Thenceforward, till she fell asleep that night, Anna existed in a state
of blissful bewilderment, stupefied by an overdose of novel and
wondrous sensations.  They lunched in amazing magnificence at the
Bear's Paw, and then walked through the crowded and prodigious streets
to Prince's landing-stage.  The luggage had disappeared by some
mysterious agency--Mynors said that they would find it safe at Douglas;
but Anna could not banish the fear that her tin box had gone for ever.

The great, wavy river, churned by thousands of keels; the monstrous
steamer--the 'Mona's Isle'--whose side rose like solid wall out of the
water; the vistas of its decks; its vast saloons, story under story,
solid and palatial (could all this float?); its high bridge; its
hawsers as thick as trees; its funnels like sloping towers; the
multitudes of passengers; the whistles, hoots, cries; the
far-stretching panorama of wharves and docks; the squat ferry-craft
carrying horses and carts, and no one looking twice at the feat--it was
all too much, too astonishing, too lovely.  She had not guessed at this.

'They call Liverpool the slum of Europe,' said Mynors.

'How can you!' she exclaimed, shocked.

Beatrice, seeing her radiant and rapt face, walked to and fro with
Anna, proud of the effect produced on her friend's inexperience by
these sights.  One might have thought that Beatrice had built Liverpool
and created its trade by her own efforts.

Suddenly the landing-stage and all the people on it moved away bodily
from the ship; there was green water between; a tremor like that of an
earthquake ran along the deck; handkerchiefs were waved.  The voyage
had commenced.  Mynors found chairs for all the Suttons, and tucked
them up on the lee-side of a deck-house; but Anna did not stir.  They
passed New Brighton, Seaforth, and the Crosby and Formby lightships.

'Come and view the ship,' said Mynors, at her side.  'Suppose we go
round and inspect things a bit?'

'It's a very big one, isn't it?' she asked.

'Pretty big,' he said; 'of course not as big as the Atlantic liners--I
wonder we didn't meet one in the river--but still pretty big.  Three
hundred and twenty feet over all.  I sailed on her last year on her
maiden voyage.  She was packed, and the weather very bad.'

'Will it be rough to-day?' Anna inquired timidly.

'Not if it keeps like this,' he laughed.  'You don't feel queer, do
you?'

'Oh, no.  It's as firm as a house.  No one could be ill with this?'

'Couldn't they?' he exclaimed.  'Beatrice could be.'

They descended into the ship, and he explained all its internal
economy, with a knowledge that seemed to her encyclopædic.  They stayed
a long time watching the engines, so Titanic, ruthless, and deliberate;
even the smell of the oil was pleasant to Anna.  When they came on deck
again the ship was at sea.  For the first time Anna beheld the ocean.
A strong breeze blew from prow to stern, yet the sea was absolutely
calm, the unruffled mirror of effulgent sunlight.  The steamer moved
alone on the waters, exultantly, leaving behind it an endless track of
white froth in the green, and the shadow of its smoke.  The sun, the
salt breeze, the living water, the proud gaiety of the ship, produced a
feeling of intense, inexplicable joy, a profound satisfaction with the
present, and a negligence of past and future.  To exist was enough,
then.  As Anna and Henry leaned over the starboard quarter and watched
the torrent of foam rush madly and ceaselessly from under the
paddle-box to be swallowed up in the white wake, the spectacle of the
wild torrent almost hypnotised them, destroying thought and reason, and
all sense of their relation to other things.  With difficulty Anna
raised her eyes, and perceived the dim receding line of the Lancashire
coast.

'Shall we get quite out of sight of land?' she asked.

'Yes, for a little while, about half an hour or so.  Just as much out
of sight of land as if we were in the middle of the Atlantic.'

'I can scarcely believe it.'

'Believe what?'

'Oh!  The idea of that--of being out of sight of land--nothing but sea.'

When at last it occurred to them to reconnoitre the Suttons, they found
all three still in their deck-chairs, enwrapped and languid.  Mr.
Sutton and Beatrice were apparently dozing.  This part of the deck was
occupied by somnolent, basking figures.

'Don't wake them,' Mrs. Sutton enjoined, whispering out of her hood.
Anna glanced curiously at Beatrice's yellow face.

'Go away, do,' Beatrice exclaimed, opening her eyes and shutting them
again, wearily.

So they went away, and discovered two empty deck-chairs on the
fore-deck.  Anna was innocently vain of her immunity from _malaise_.
Mynors appeared to appoint himself little errands about the deck,
returning frequently to his chair.  'Look over there.  Can you see
anything?'

Anna ran to the rail, with the infantile idea of getting nearer, and
Mynors followed, laughing.  What looked like a small slate-coloured
cloud lay on the horizon.

'I seem to see something,' she said.

'That is the Isle of Man.'

By insensible gradations the contours of the land grew clearer in the
afternoon haze.

'How far are we off now?'

'Perhaps twenty miles.'

Twenty miles of uninterrupted flatness, and the ship steadily invading
that separating solitude, yard by yard, furlong by furlong!  The
conception awed her.  There, a morsel in the waste of the deep, a speck
under the infinite sunlight, lay the island, mysterious, enticing,
enchanted, a glinting jewel on, the sea's bosom, a remote entity
fraught with strange secrets.  It was all unspeakable.


'Anna, you have covered yourself with glory,' said Mrs. Sutton, when
they were in the diminutive and absurd train which by breathless
plunges annihilates the sixteen miles between Douglas and Port Erin in
sixty-five minutes.

'Have I?' she answered.  'How?'

'By not being ill.'

'That's always the beginner's luck,' said Beatrice, pale and
dishevelled.  They all relapsed into the silence of fatigue.  It was
growing dusk when the train stopped at the tiny terminus.  The station
was a hive of bustling activity, the arrival of this train being the
daily event at that end of the world.  Mynors and the Suttons were
greeted familiarly by several sailors, and one of these, Tom Kelly, a
tall, middle-aged man, with grey beard, small grey eyes, a wrinkled
skin of red mahogany, and an enormous fist, was introduced to Anna.  He
raised his cap, and shook hands.  She was touched by the sad, kind look
on his face, the melancholy impress of the sea.  Then they drove to
their lodging, and here again the party was welcomed as being old and
tried friends.  A fire was burning in the parlour.  Throwing herself
down in front of it, Mrs. Sutton breathed, 'At last!  Oh, for some
tea.'  Through the window, Anna had a glimpse of a deeply indented bay
at the foot of cliffs below them, with a bold headland to the right.
Fishing vessels with flat red sails seemed to hang undecided just
outside the bay.  From cottage chimneys beneath the road blue smoke
softly ascended.

All went early to bed, for the weariness of Mr. and Mrs. Sutton seemed
to communicate itself to the three young people, who might otherwise
have gone forth into the village in search of adventures.  Anna and
Beatrice shared a room.  Each inspected the other's clothes, and
Beatrice made Anna try on the new serge skirt.  Through the thin wall
came the sound of Mr. and Mrs. Sutton talking, a high voice, then a
bass reply, in continual alternation.  Beatrice said that these two
always discussed the day's doings in such manner.  In a few moments
Beatrice was snoring; she had the subdued but steady and serious snore
characteristic of some muscular men.  Anna felt no inclination to
sleep.  She lived again hour by hour through the day, and beneath
Beatrice's snore her ear caught the undertone of the sea.

The next morning was as lovely as the last.  It was Sunday, and every
activity of the village was stilled.  Sea and land were equally folded
in a sunlit calm.  During breakfast--a meal abundant in fresh herrings,
fresh eggs and fresh rolls, eaten with the window wide open--Anna was
puzzled by the singular amenity of her friends to one another and to
her.  They were as polite as though they had been strangers; they
chatted amiably, were full of goodwill, and as anxious to give
happiness as to enjoy it.  She thought at first, so unusual was it to
her as a feature of domestic privacy, that this demeanour was affected,
or at any rate a somewhat exaggerated punctilio due to her presence;
but she soon came to see that she was mistaken.  After breakfast Mr.
Sutton suggested that they should attend the Wesleyan Chapel on the
hill leading to the Chasms.  Here they met the sailors of the night
before, arrayed now in marvellous blue Melton coats with velveteen
collars.  Tom Kelly walked back with them to the beach, and showed them
the yacht 'Fay' which Mynors had arranged to hire for mackerel-fishing;
it lay on the sands speckless in new white paint.  All the afternoon
they dozed on the cliffs, doing nothing whatever, for this Sunday was
tacitly regarded, not as part of the holiday, but as a preparation for
the holiday; all felt that the holiday, with its proper exertions and
appointed delights, would really begin on Monday morning.

'Let us go for a walk,' said Mynors, after tea, to Beatrice and Anna.
They stood at the gate of the lodging-house.  The old people were
resting within.

'You two go,' Beatrice replied, looking at Anna.  'You know I hate
walking, Henry.  I'll stop with mother and dad.'

Throughout the day Anna had been conscious of the fact that all the
Suttons showed a tendency, slight but perceptible, to treat Henry and
herself as a pair desirous of opportunities for being alone together.
She did not like it.  She flushed under the passing glance with which
Beatrice accompanied the words: 'You two go.'  Nevertheless, when
Mynors placidly remarked: 'Very well,' and his eyes sought hers for a
consent, she could not refuse it.  One part of her nature would have
preferred to find an excuse for staying at home; but another, and a
stronger, part insisted on seizing this offered joy.

They walked straight up out of the village toward the high coast-range
which stretches peak after peak from Port Erin to Peel.  The stony and
devious lanes wound about the bleak hillside, passing here and there
small, solitary cottages of whitewashed stone, with children, fowls,
and dogs at the doors, all embowered in huge fuchsia trees.  Presently
they had surmounted the limit of habitation and were on the naked flank
of Bradda, following a narrow track which crept upwards amid short
mossy turf of the most vivid green.  Nothing seemed to flourish on this
exposed height except bracken, sheep, and boulders that, from a
distance, resembled sheep; there was no tree, scarcely a shrub; the
immense contours, stark, grim, and unrelieved, rose in melancholy and
defiant majesty against the sky: the hand of man could coax no harvest
from these smooth but obdurate slopes; they had never relented, and
they would never relent.  The spirit was braced by the thought that
here, to the furthest eternity of civilisation more and more intricate,
simple and strong souls would always find solace and repose.

Mynors bore to the left for a while, striking across the moor in the
direction of the sea.  Then he said:

'Look down, now.'

The little bay lay like an oblong swimming-bath five hundred feet below
them.  The surface of the water was like glass; the strand, with its
phalanx of boats drawn up in Sabbath tidiness, glittered like marble in
the living light, and over this marble black dots moved slowly to and
fro; behind the boats were the houses--dolls' houses--each with a
curling wisp of smoke; further away the railway and the high road ran
out in a black and white line to Port St. Mary; the sea, a pale grey,
encompassed all; the southern sky had a faint sapphire tinge, rising to
delicate azure.  The sight of this haven at rest, shut in by the
restful sea and by great moveless hills, a calm within a calm, aroused
profound emotion.

'It's lovely,' said Anna, as they stood gazing.  Tears came to her eyes
and hung there.  She wondered that scenery should cause tears, felt
ashamed, and turned her face so that Mynors should not see.  But he had
seen.

'Shall we go on to the top?' he suggested, and they set their faces
northwards to climb still higher.  At length they stood on the rocky
summit of Bradda, seven hundred feet from the sea.  The Hill of the
Night Watch lifted above them to the north, but on east, south, and
west, the prospect was bounded only by the ocean.  The coast-line was
revealed for thirty miles, from Peel to Castletown.  Far to the east
was Castletown Bay, large, shallow and inhospitable, its floor strewn
with a thousand unseen wrecks; the lighthouse at Scarlet Point flashed
dimly in the dusk; thence the beach curved nearer in an immense arc,
without a sign of life, to the little cove of Port St. Mary, and jutted
out again into a tongue of land at the end of which lay the Calf of Man
with its single white cottage and cart-track.  The dangerous Calf
Sound, where the vexed tide is forced to run nine hours one way and
three the other, seemed like a grey ribbon, and the Chicken Rock like a
tiny pencil on a vast slate.  Port Erin was hidden under their feet.
They looked westward.  The darkening sky was a labyrinth of purple and
crimson scarves drawn pellucid, as though by the finger of God, across
a sheet of pure saffron.  These decadent tints of the sunset faded in
every direction to the same soft azure which filled the south, and one
star twinkled in the illimitable field.  Thirty miles off, on the
horizon, could be discerned the Mourne Mountains of Ireland.

'See!' Mynors exclaimed, touching her arm.

The huge disc of the moon was rising in the east, and as this mild lamp
passed up the sky, the sense of universal quiescence increased.
Lovely, Anna had said.  It was the loveliest sight her eyes had ever
beheld, a panorama of pure beauty transcending all imagined visions.
It overwhelmed her, thrilled her to the heart, this revelation of the
loveliness of the world.  Her thoughts went back to Hanbridge and
Bursley and her life there; and all the remembered scenes, bathed in
the glow of a new ideal, seemed to lose their pain.  It was as if she
had never been really unhappy, as if there was no real unhappiness on
the whole earth.  She perceived that the monotony, the austerity, the
melancholy of her existence had been sweet and beautiful of its kind,
and she recalled, with a sort of rapture, hours of companionship with
the beloved Agnes, when her father was equable and pacific.  Nothing
was ugly nor mean.  Beauty was everywhere, in everything.

In silence they began to descend, perforce walking quickly because of
the steep gradient.  At the first cottage they saw a little girl in a
mob-cap playing with two kittens.

'How like Agnes!' Mynors said.

'Yes.  I was just thinking so,' Anna answered.

'I thought of her up on the hill,' he continued.  'She will miss you,
won't she?'

'I know she cried herself to sleep last night.  You mightn't guess it,
but she is extremely sensitive.'

'Not guess it?  Why not?  I am sure she is.  Do you know--I am very
fond of your sister.  She's a simply delightful child.  And there's a
lot in her, too.  She's so quick and bright, and somehow like a little
woman.'

'She's exactly like a woman sometimes,' Anna agreed.  'Sometimes I
fancy she's a great deal older than I am.'

'Older than any of us,' he corrected.

'I'm glad you like her,' Anna said, content.  'She thinks all the world
of you.'  And she added: 'My word, wouldn't she be vexed if she knew I
had told you that!'

This appreciation of Agnes brought them into closer intimacy, and they
talked the more easily of other things.

'It will freeze to-night,' Mynors said; and then, suddenly looking at
her in the twilight: 'You are feeling chill.'

'Oh, no!' she protested.

'But you are.  Put this muffler round your neck.'  He took a muffler
from his pocket.

'Oh, no, really!  You will need it yourself.'  She drew a little away
from him, as if to avoid the muffler.

'Please take it.'

She did so, and thanked him, tying it loosely and untidily round her
throat.  That feeling of the untidiness of the muffler, of its being
something strange to her skin, something with the rough virtue of
masculinity, which no one could detect in the gloom, was in itself
pleasant.

'I wager Mrs. Sutton has a good fire burning when we get in,' he said.

She thought with joyous anticipation of the warm, bright, sitting-room,
the supper, and the vivacious good-natured conversation.  Though the
walk was nearly at an end, other delights were in store.  Of the
holiday, thirteen complete days yet remained, each to be as happy as
the one now closing.  It was an age!  At last they entered the human
cosiness of the village.  As they walked up the steps of their lodging
and he opened the door for her, she quickly drew off the muffler and
returned it to him with a word of thanks.

On Monday morning, when Beatrice and Anna came downstairs, they found
the breakfast odorously cooling on the table, and nobody in the room.

'Where are they all, I wonder.  Any letters?' Beatrice said.

'There's your mother, out on the front--and Mr. Mynors too.'

Beatrice threw up the window, and called: 'Come along, Henry; come
along, mother.  Everything's going cold.'

'Is it?' Mynors cheerfully replied.  'Come out here, both of you, and
begin the day properly with a dose of ozone.'

'I loathe cold bacon,' said Beatrice, glancing at the table, and they
went out into the road, where Mrs. Sutton kissed them with as much
fervour as if they had arrived from a long journey.

'You look pale, Anna,' she remarked.

'Do I?' said Anna, 'I don't feel pale.'

'It's that long walk last night,' Beatrice put in.  'Henry always goes
too far.'

'I don't----' Anna began; but at that moment Mr. Sutton, lumbering and
ponderous, joined the party.

'Henry,' he said, without greeting anyone, 'hast noticed those
half-finished houses down the road yonder by the "Falcon"?  I've been
having a chat with Kelly, and he tells me the fellow that was building
them has gone bankrupt, and they're at a stand-still.  The Receiver
wants to sell 'em.  In fact Kelly says they're going cheap.  I believe
they'd be a good spec.'

'Eh, dear!' Mrs. Sutton interrupted him.  'Father, I wish you would
leave your specs alone when you're on your holiday.'

'Now, missis!' he affectionately protested, and continued: 'They're
fairly well built, seemingly, and the rafters are on the roof.  Anna,'
he turned to her quickly, as if counting on her sympathy, 'you must
come with me and look at 'em after breakfast.  Happen they might suit
your father--or you.  I know your father's fond of a good spec.'

She assented with a ready smile.  This was the beginning of a fancy
which the Alderman always afterwards showed for Anna.

After breakfast Mrs. Sutton, Beatrice, and Anna arranged to go shopping:

'Father--brass,' Mrs. Sutton ejaculated in two monosyllables to her
husband.

'How much will content ye?' he asked mildly.

'Give me five or ten pounds to go on with.'

He opened the left-hand front pocket of his trousers--a pocket which
fastened with a button; and leaning back in his chair drew out a fat
purse, and passed it to his wife with a preoccupied air.  She helped
herself, and then Beatrice intercepted the purse and lightened it of
half a sovereign.

'Pocket-money,' Beatrice said; 'I'm ruined.'

The Alderman's eyes requested Anna to observe how he was robbed.  At
last the purse was safely buttoned up again.

Mrs. Sutton's purchases of food at the three principal shops of the
village seemed startlingly profuse to Anna, but gradually she became
accustomed to the scale, and to the amazing habit of always buying the
very best of everything, from beefsteak to grapes.  Anna calculated
that the housekeeping could not cost less than six pounds a week for
the five.  At Manor Terrace three people existed on a pound.  With her
half-sovereign Beatrice bought a belt and a pair of sand-shoes, and
some cigarettes for Henry.  Mrs. Sutton bought a pipe with a nickel
cap, such as is used by sailors.  When they returned to the house, Mr.
Sutton and Henry were smoking on the front.  All five walked in a row
down to the harbour, the Alderman giving an arm each to Beatrice and
Anna.  Near the 'Falcon' the procession had to be stopped in order to
view the unfinished houses.  Tom Kelly had a cabin partly excavated out
of the rock behind the little quay.  Here they found him entangled amid
nets, sails, and oars.  All crowded into the cabin and shook hands with
its owner, who remarked with severity on their pallid faces, and
insisted that a change of complexion must be brought about.  Mynors
offered him his tobacco-pouch, but on seeing the light colour of the
tobacco he shook his head and refused it, at the same time taking from
within his jersey a lump of something that resembled leather.

'Give him this, Henry,' Mrs. Sutton whispered, handing Mynors the pipe
which she had bought.

'Mrs. Sutton wishes you to accept this,' said Mynors.

'Eh, thank ye,' he exclaimed.  'There's a leddy that knows my taste.'
He cut some shreds from his plug with a clasp-knife and charged and
lighted the pipe, filling the cabin with asphyxiating fumes.

'I don't know how you can smoke such horrid, nasty stuff,' said
Beatrice, coughing.

He laughed condescendingly at Beatrice's petulant manner.  'That stuff
of Henry's is boy's tobacco,' he said shortly.

It was decided that they should go fishing in the 'Fay.'  There was a
light southerly breeze, a cloudy sky, and smooth water.  Under charge
of young Tom Kelly, a sheepish lad of sixteen, with his father's smile,
they all got into an inconceivably small dinghy, loading it down till
it was almost awash.  Old Tom himself helped Anna to embark, told her
where to tread, and forced her gently into a seat at the stern.  No one
else seemed to be disturbed, but Anna was in a state of desperate fear.
She had never committed herself to a boat before, and the little waves
spat up against the sides in a most alarming way as young Tom jerked
the dinghy along with the short sculls.  She went white, and clung in
silence fiercely to the gunwale.  In a few moments they were tied up to
the 'Fay,' which seemed very big and safe in comparison with the
dinghy.  They clambered on board, and in the deep well of the two-ton
yacht Anna contrived to collect her wits.  She was reassured by the
painted legend in the well, 'Licensed to carry eleven.'  Young Tom and
Henry busied themselves with ropes, and suddenly a huge white sail
began to ascend the mast; it flapped like thunder in the gentle breeze.
Tom pulled up the anchor, curling the chain round and round on the
forward deck, and then Anna noticed that, although the wind was
scarcely perceptible, they were gliding quickly past the embankment.
Henry was at the tiller.  The next minute Tom had set the jib, and by
this time the 'Fay' was approaching the breakwater at a great pace.
There was no rolling or pitching, but simply a smooth, swift
progression over the calm surface.  Anna thought it the ideal of
locomotion.  As soon as they were beyond the breakwater and the sails
caught the breeze from the Sound, the 'Fay' lay over as if shot, and a
little column of green water flung itself on the lee coaming of the
well.  Anna screamed as she saw the water and felt the angle of the
floor suddenly change, but when everyone laughed, she laughed too.
Henry, noticing the whiteness of her knuckles as she gripped the
coaming, explained the disconcerting phenomena.  Anna tried to be at
ease, but she was not.  She could not for a long time dismiss the
suspicion that all these people were foolishly blind to a peril which
she alone had the sagacity to perceive.

They cruised about while Tom prepared the lines.  The short waves
chopped cheerfully against the carvel sides of the yacht; the clouds
were breaking at a hundred points; the sea grew lighter in tone; gaiety
was in the air; no one could possibly be indisposed in that innocuous
weather.  At length the lines were ready, but Tom said the yacht was
making at least a knot too much for serious fishing, so Henry took a
reef in the mainsail, showing Anna how to tie the short strings.  The
Alderman, lying on the fore-deck, was placidly smoking.  The lines were
thrown out astern, and Mrs. Sutton and Beatrice each took one.  But
they had no success; young Tom said it was because the sun had appeared.

'Caught anything?' Mr. Sutton inquired at intervals.  After a time he
said:

'Suppose Anna and I have a try?'

It was agreed.

'What must I do?' asked Anna, brave now.

'You just hold the line--so.  And if you feel a little jerk-jerk,
that's a mackerel.'  These were the instructions of Beatrice.  Anna was
becoming excited.  She had not held the line ten seconds before she
cried out:

'I've got one.'

'Nonsense,' said Beatrice.  'Everyone thinks at first that the motion
of the waves against the line is a fish.'

'Well,' said Henry, giving the tiller to young Tom.  'Let's haul in and
see, anyway.'  Before doing so he held the line for a moment, testing
it, and winked at Anna.  While Anna and Henry were hauling in, the
Alderman, dropping his pipe, began also to haul in his own line with
great fury.

'Got one, father?' Mrs. Sutton asked.

'Ay!'

Both lines came in together, and on each was a pounder.  Anna saw her
fish gleam and flash like silver in the clear water as it neared the
surface.  Henry held the line short, letting the mackerel plunge and
jerk, and then seized and unhooked the catch.

'How cruel!' Anna cried, startled at the nearness of the two fish as
they sprang about in an old sugar box at her feet.  Young Tom laughed
loud at her exclamation.  'They cairn't feel, miss,' he sniggered.
Anna wondered that a mouth so soft and kind could utter such heartless
words.

In an hour the united efforts of the party had caught nine mackerel; it
was not a multitude, but the sun, in perfecting the weather, had spoilt
the sport.  Anna had ceased to commiserate the captured fish.  She was
obliged, however, to avert her head when Tom cut some skin from the
side of one of the mackerel to provide fresh bait; this device seemed
to her the extremest refinement of cruelty.  Beatrice grew ominously
silent and inert, and Mrs. Sutton glanced first at her daughter and
then at her husband; the latter nodded.

'We'd happen better be getting back, Henry,' said the Alderman.

The 'Fay' swept home like a bird.  They were at the quay, and Kelly was
dragging them one by one from the black dinghy on to what the Alderman
called _terra-firma_.  Henry had the fish on a string.

'How many did ye catch, Miss Tellwright?' Kelly asked benevolently.

'I caught four,' Anna replied.  Never before had she felt so proud,
elated, and boisterous.  Never had the blood so wildly danced in her
veins.  She looked at her short blue skirt which showed three inches of
ankle, put forward her brown-shod foot like a vain coquette, and darted
a covert look at Henry.  When he caught it she laughed instead of
blushing.

'Ye're doing well,' Tom Kelly approved.  'Ye'll make a famous
mackerel-fisher.'

Five of the mackerel were given to young Tom, the other four preceded a
fowl in the menu of dinner.  They were called Anna's mackerel, and all
the diners agreed that better mackerel had never been lured out of the
Irish Sea.

In the afternoon the Alderman and his wife slept as usual, Mr. Sutton
with a bandanna handkerchief over his face.  The rest went out
immediately; the invitation of the sun and the sea was far too
persuasive to be resisted.

'I'm going to paint,' said Beatrice, with a resolute mien.  'I want to
paint Bradda Head frightfully.  I tried last year, but I got it too
dark, somehow.  I've improved since then.  What are you going to do?'

'We'll come and watch you,' said Henry.

'Oh, no, you won't.  At least you won't; you're such a critic.  Anna
can if she likes.'

'What!  And me be left all afternoon by myself?'

'Well, suppose you go with him, Anna, just to keep him from being
bored?'

Anna hesitated.  Once more she had the uncomfortable suspicion that
Mynors and herself were being manoeuvred.

'Look here,' said Mynors to Beatrice.  'Have you decided absolutely to
paint?'

'Absolutely.'  The finality of the answer seemed to have a touch of
resentment.

'Then'--he turned to Anna--'let's go and get that dinghy and row about
the bay.  Eh?'

She could offer no rational objection, and they were soon putting off
from the jetty, impelled seaward by a mighty push from Kelly's arm.  It
was very hot.  Mynors wore white flannels.  He removed his coat, and
turned up his sleeves, showing thick, hairy arms.  He sculled in a
manner almost dramatic, and the dinghy shot about like a water-spider
on a brook.  Anna had nothing to do except to sit still and enjoy.
Everything was drowned in dazzling sunlight, and both Henry and Anna
could feel the process of tanning on their faces.  The bay shimmered
with a million diamond points; it was impossible to keep the eyes open
without frowning, and soon Anna could see the beads of sweat on Henry's
crimson brow.

'Warm?' she said.  This was the first word of conversation.  He merely
smiled in reply.  Presently they were at the other side of the bay, in
a cave whose sandy and rock-strewn floor trembled clear under a fathom
of blue water.  They landed on a jutting rock; Henry pushed his straw
hat back, and wiped his forehead.  'Glorious! glorious!' he exclaimed.
'Do you swim?  No?  You should get Beatrice to teach you.  I swam out
here this morning at seven o'clock.  It was chilly enough then.  Oh!  I
forgot, I told you at breakfast.'

She could see him in the translucent water, swimming with long,
powerful strokes.  Dozens of boats were moving lazily in the bay, each
with a cargo of parasols.

'There's a good deal of the sunshade afloat,' he remarked.  'Why
haven't you got one?  You'll get as brown as Tom Kelly.'

'That's what I want,' she said.

'Look at yourself in the water there,' he said, pointing to a little
pool left on the top of the rock by the tide.  She did so, and saw two
fiery cheeks, and a forehead divided by a horizontal line into halves
of white and crimson; the tip of the nose was blistered.

'Isn't it disgraceful?' he suggested.

'Why,' she exclaimed, 'they'll never know me when I get home!'

It was in such wise that they talked, endlessly exchanging trifles of
comment.  Anna thought to herself: 'Is this love-making?'  It could not
be, she decided; but she infinitely preferred it so.  She was content.
She wished for nothing better than this apparently frivolous and
irresponsible dalliance.  She felt that if Mynors were to be tender,
sentimental, and serious, she would become wretchedly self-conscious.

They re-embarked, and, skirting the shore, gradually came round to the
beach.  Up above them, on the cliffs, they could discern the
industrious figure of Beatrice, with easel and sketching-umbrella, and
all the panoply of the earnest amateur.

'Do you sketch?' she asked him.

'Not I!' he said scornfully.

'Don't you believe in that sort of thing, then?'

'It's all right for professional artists,' he said; 'people who can
paint.  But----  Well, I suppose it's harmless for the amateurs--finds
them something to do.'

'I wish I could paint, anyway,' she retorted.

'I'm glad you can't,' he insisted.

When they got back to the cliffs, towards tea-time, Beatrice was still
painting, but in a new spot.  She seemed entirely absorbed in her work,
and did not hear their approach.

'Let's creep up and surprise her,' Mynors whispered.  'You go first,
and put your hands over her eyes.'

'Oh!' exclaimed Beatrice, blindfolded; 'how horrid you are, Henry!  I
know who it is--I know who it is.'

'You just don't, then,' said Henry, now in front of her.  Anna removed
her hands.

'Well, you told her to do it, I'm sure of that.  And I was getting on
so splendidly!  I shan't do another stroke now.'

'That's right,' said Henry.  'You've wasted quite enough time as it is.'

Beatrice pouted.  She was evidently annoyed with both of them.  She
looked from one to the other, jealous of their mutual understanding and
agreement.  Mr. and Mrs. Sutton issued from the house, and the five
stood chatting till tea was ready; but the shadow remained on
Beatrice's face.  Mynors made several attempts to laugh it away, and at
dusk these two went for a stroll to Port St. Mary.  They returned in a
state of deep intimacy.  During supper Beatrice was consciously and
elaborately angelic, and there was that in her voice and eyes, when
sometimes she addressed Mynors, which almost persuaded Anna that he
might once have loved his cousin.  At night, in the bedroom, Anna
imagined that she could detect in Beatrice's attitude the least shade
of condescension.  She felt hurt, and despised herself for feeling hurt.

So the days passed, without much variety, for the Suttons were not
addicted to excursions.  Anna was profoundly happy; she had forgotten
care.  She agreed to every suggestion for amusement; each moment had
its pleasure, and this pleasure was quite independent of the thing
done; it sprang from all activities and idlenesses.  She was at special
pains to fraternise with Mr. Sutton.  He made an interesting companion,
full of facts about strata, outcrops, and breaks, his sole weakness
being the habit of quoting extremely sentimental scraps of verse when
walking by the sea-shore.  He frankly enjoyed Anna's attention to him,
and took pride in her society.  Mrs. Sutton, that simple heart, devoted
herself to the attainment of absolute quiescence.  She had come for a
rest, and she achieved her purpose.  Her kindliness became for the time
passive instead of active.  Beatrice was a changing quantity in the
domestic equation.  Plainly her parents had spoiled their only child,
and she had frequent fits of petulance, particularly with Mynors; but
her energy and spirits atoned well for these.  As for Mynors, he
behaved exactly as on the first Monday.  He spent many hours alone with
Anna--(Beatrice appeared to insist on leaving them together, even while
showing a faint resentment at the loneliness thus entailed on
herself)--and his attitude was such as Anna, ignorant of the ways of
brothers, deemed a brother might adopt.

On the second Monday an incident occurred.  In the afternoon Mr. Sutton
had asked Beatrice to go with him to Port St. Mary, and she had refused
on the plea that the light was of a suitable grey for painting.  Mr.
Sutton had slipped off alone, unseen by Anna and Henry, who had meant
to accompany him in place of Beatrice.  Before tea, while Anna,
Beatrice and Henry were awaiting the meal in the parlour, Mynors
referred to the matter.

'I hope you've done some decent work this afternoon,' he said to
Beatrice.

'I haven't,' she replied shortly; 'I haven't done a stroke.'

'But you said you were going to paint hard!'

'Well, I didn't.'

'Then why couldn't you have gone to Port St. Mary, instead of breaking
your fond father's heart by a refusal?'

'He didn't want me, really.'

Anna interjected: 'I think he did, Bee.'

'You know you're very self-willed, not to say selfish,' Mynors said.

'No, I'm not,' Beatrice protested seriously.  'Am I, Anna?'

'Well----'  Anna tried to think of a diplomatic pronouncement.
Beatrice took offence at the hesitation.

'Oh!  You two are bound to agree, of course.  You're as thick as
thieves.'

She gazed steadily out of the window, and there was a silence.  Mynors'
lip curled.

'Oh!  There's the loveliest yacht just coming into the bay,' Beatrice
cried suddenly, in a tone of affected enthusiasm.  'I'm going out to
sketch it.'  She snatched up her hat and sketching-block, and ran
hastily from the room.  The other two saw her sitting on the grass,
sharpening a pencil.  The yacht, a large and luxurious craft, had
evidently come to anchor for the night.

Mrs. Sutton arrived from her bedroom, and then Mr. Sutton also came in.
Tea was served.  Mynors called to Beatrice through the window and
received no reply.  Then Mrs. Sutton summoned her.

'Go on with your tea,' Beatrice shouted, without turning her head.
'Don't wait for me.  I'm bound to finish this now.'

'Fetch her, Anna dear,' said Mrs. Sutton after another interval.  Anna
rose to obey, half-fearful.

'Aren't you coming in, Bee?'  She stood by the sketcher's side, and
observed nothing but a few meaningless lines on the block.

'Didn't you hear what I said to mother?'

Anna retired in discomfiture.

Tea was finished.  They went out, but kept at a discreet distance from
the artist, who continued to use her pencil until dusk had fallen.
Then they returned to the sitting-room, where a fire had been lighted,
and Beatrice at length followed.  As the others sat in a circle round
the fire, Beatrice, who occupied the sofa in solitude, gave a shiver.

'Beatrice, you've taken cold,' said her mother, sitting out there like
that.'

'Oh, nonsense, mother--what a fidget you are!'

'A fidget I certainly am not, my darling, and that you know very well.
As you've had no tea, you shall have some gruel at once, and go to bed
and get warm.'

'Oh no, mother!'  But Mrs. Sutton was resolved, and in half an hour she
had taken Beatrice to bed and tucked her up.

When Anna went to the bedroom Beatrice was awake.

'Can't you sleep?' she inquired kindly.

'No,' said Beatrice, in a feeble voice, 'I'm restless, somehow.'

'I wonder if it's influenza,' said Mrs. Sutton, on the following
morning, when she learnt from Anna that Beatrice had had a bad night,
and would take breakfast in bed.  She carried the invalid's food
upstairs herself.  'I hope it isn't influenza,' she said later.  'The
girl is very hot.'

'You haven't a clinical thermometer?' Mynors suggested.

'Go, see if you can buy one at the little chemist's,' she replied
eagerly.  In a few minutes he came back with the instrument.

'She's at over a hundred,' Mrs. Sutton reported, having used the
thermometer.  'What do you say, father?  Shall we send for a doctor?
I'm not so set up with doctors as a general rule,' she added, as if in
defence, to Anna.  'I brought Beatrice through measles and scarlet
fever without a doctor--we never used to think of having a doctor in
those days for ordinary ailments; but influenza--that's different.  Eh,
I dread it; you never know how it will end.  And poor Beatrice had such
a bad attack last Martinmas.'

'If you like, I'll run for a doctor now,' said Mynors.

'Let be till to-morrow,' the Alderman decided.  'We'll see how she goes
on.  Happen it's nothing but a cold.'

'Yes,' assented Mrs. Sutton; 'it's no use crying out before you're
hurt.'

Anna was struck by the placidity with which they covered their
apprehension.  Towards noon, Beatrice, who said that she felt better,
insisted on rising.  A fire was lighted at once in the parlour, and she
sat in front of it till tea-time, when she was obliged to go to bed
again.  On the Wednesday morning, after a night which had been almost
sleepless for both girls, her temperature stood at 103°, and Henry
fetched the doctor, who pronounced it a case of influenza, severe,
demanding very careful treatment.  Instantly the normal movement of the
household was changed.  The sickroom became a mysterious centre round
which everything revolved, and the parlour, without the alteration of a
single chair, took on a deserted, forlorn appearance.  Meals were eaten
like the passover, with loins girded for any sudden summons.  Mrs.
Sutton and Anna, as nurses, grew important in the eyes of the men, who
instinctively effaced themselves, existing only like messenger-boys
whose business it is to await a call.  Yet there was no alarm, flurry,
nor excitement.  In the evening the doctor returned.  The patient's
temperature had not fallen.  It was part of the treatment that a
medicine should be administered every two hours with absolute
regularity, and Mrs. Sutton said that she should sit up through the
night.

'I shall do that,' said Anna.

'Nay, I won't hear of it,' Mrs. Sutton replied, smiling.

But the three men (the doctor had remained to chat in the parlour),
recognising Anna's capacity and reliability, and perhaps impressed also
by her business-like appearance as, arrayed in a white apron, she stood
with firm lips before them, gave a unanimous decision against Mrs.
Sutton.

'We'st have you ill next, lass,' said the Alderman to his wife; 'and
that'll never do.'

'Well,' Mrs. Sutton surrendered, 'if I can leave her to anyone, it's
Anna.'

Mynors smiled appreciatively.

On the Thursday morning there was still no sign of recovery.  The
temperature was 104°, and the patient slightly delirious.  Anna left
the sickroom at eight o'clock to preside at breakfast, and Mrs. Sutton
took her place.

'You look tired, my dear,' said the Alderman affectionately.

'I feel perfectly well,' she replied with cheerfulness.

'And you aren't afraid of catching it?' Mynors asked.

'Afraid?' she said; 'there's no fear of me catching it.'

'How do you know?'

'I know, that's all.  I'm never ill.'

'That's the right way to keep well,' the Alderman remarked.

The quiet admiration of these two men was very pleasant to her.  She
felt that she had established herself for ever in their esteem.  After
breakfast, in obedience to them, she slept for several hours on Mrs.
Sutton's bed.  In the afternoon Beatrice was worse.  The doctor called,
and found her temperature at 105°.

'This can't last,' he remarked briefly.

'Well, Doctor,' Mr. Sutton said, 'it's i' your hands.'

'Nay,' Mrs. Sutton murmured with a smile, 'I've left it with God.  It's
with Him.'

This was the first and only word of religion, except grace at table,
that Anna heard from the Suttons during her stay in the Isle of Man.
She had feared lest vocal piety might form a prominent feature of their
daily life, but her fear had proved groundless.  She, too, from reason
rather than instinct, had tried to pray for Beatrice's recovery.  She
had, however, found much more satisfaction in the activity of nursing.

Again that night she sat up, and on the Friday morning Beatrice was
better.  At noon all immediate danger was past; the patient slept; her
temperature was almost correct.  Anna went to bed in the afternoon and
slept soundly till supper-time, when she awoke very hungry.  For the
first time in three days Beatrice could be left alone.  The other four
had supper together, cheerful and relieved after the tension.

'She'll be as right as a trivet in a few days,' said the Alderman.

'A few weeks,' said Mrs. Sutton.

'Of course,' said Mynors, 'you'll stay on here, now?'

'We shall stay until Beatrice is quite fit to travel,' Mr. Sutton
answered.  'I might have to run over to th' Five Towns for a day or two
middle of next week, but I can come back immediately.'

'Well, I must go tomorrow,' Mynors sighed.

'Surely you can stay over Sunday, Henry?'

'No; I've no one to take my place at school.'

'And I must go to-morrow, too,' said Anna suddenly.

'Fiddle-de-dee, Anna!' the Alderman protested.

'I must,' she insisted.  'Father will expect me.  You know I came for a
fortnight.  Besides, there's Agnes.'

'Agnes will be all right.'

'I must go.'  They saw that she was fixed.

'Won't a short walk do you good?' Mynors suggested to her, with
singular gravity, after supper.  'You've not been outside for two days.'

She looked inquiringly at Mrs. Sutton.

'Yes, take her, Henry; she'll sleep better for it.  Eh, Anna, but it's
a shame to send you home with those rings round your eyes.'

She went upstairs for a jacket.  Beatrice was awake.  'Anna,' she
exclaimed in a weak voice, without any preface, 'I was awfully silly
and cross the other afternoon, before all this business.  Just now,
when you came into the room, I was feeling quite ashamed.'

'Oh!  Bee!' she answered, bending over her, 'what nonsense!  Now go off
to sleep at once.'  She was very happy.  Beatrice, victim of a
temperament which had the childishness and the impulsiveness of the
artist without his higher and sterner traits, sank back in facile
content.

The night was still and very dark.  When Anna and Mynors got outside
they could distinguish neither the sky nor the sea; but the faint,
restless murmur of the sea came up the cliffs.  Only the lights of the
houses disclosed the direction of the road.

'Suppose we go down to the jetty, and then along as far as the
breakwater?' he said, and she concurred.  'Won't you take my
muffler--again?' he added, pulling this ever-present article from his
pocket.

'No, thanks,' she said, almost coldly, 'it's really quite warm.'  She
regarded the offer of the muffler as an indiscretion--his sole
indiscretion during their acquaintance.  As they walked down the hill
to the shore she though how Beatrice's illness had sharply interrupted
their relations.  If she had come to the Isle of Man with a vague idea
that he would possibly propose to her, the expectation was
disappointed; but she felt no disappointment.  She felt that events had
lifted her to a higher plane than that of love-making.  She was filled
with the proud satisfaction of a duty accomplished.  She did not seek
to minimise to herself the fact that she had been of real value to her
friends in the last few days, had probably saved Mrs. Sutton from
illness, had certainly laid them all under an obligation.  Their
gratitude, unexpressed, but patent on each face, gave her infinite
pleasure.  She had won their respect by the manner in which she had
risen to the height of an emergency that demanded more than devotion.
She had proved, not merely to them but to herself, that she could be
calm under stress, and could exert moral force when occasion needed.
Such were the joyous and exultant reflections which passed through her
brain--unnaturally active in the factitious wakefulness caused by
excessive fatigue.  She was in an extremely nervous and excitable
condition--and never guessed it, fancying indeed that her emotions were
exceptionally tranquil that night.  She had not begun to realise the
crisis through which she had just lived.

The uneven road to the ruined breakwater was quite deserted.  Having
reached the limit of the path, they stood side by side, solitary,
silent, gazing at the black and gently heaving surface of the sea.  The
eye was foiled by the intense gloom; the ear could make nothing of the
strange night-noises of the bay and the ocean beyond; but the
imagination was stimulated by the appeal of all this mystery and
darkness.  Never had the water seemed so wonderful, terrible, and
austere.

'We are going away to-morrow,' he said at length.

Anna started and shook with apprehension at the tremor in his voice.
She had read that a woman was always well warned by her instincts when
a man meant to propose to her.  But here was the proposal imminent, and
she had not suspected.  In a flash of insight she perceived that the
very event which had separated them for three days had also impelled
the lover forward in his course.  It was the thought of her vigils, her
fortitude, her compassion, that had fanned the flame.  She was not
surprised, only made uncomfortable, when he took her hand.

'Anna,' he said, 'it's no use making a long story of it.  I'm
tremendously in love with you; you know I am.'

He stepped back, still holding her hand.  She could say nothing.

'Well?' he ventured.  'Didn't you know?'

'I thought--I thought,' she murmured stupidly, 'I thought you liked me.'

'I can't tell you how I admire you.  I'm not going to praise you to
your face, but I simply never met anyone like you.  From the very first
moment I saw you, it was the same.  It's something in your face,
Anna----  Anna, will you be my wife?'

The actual question was put in a precise, polite, somewhat conventional
tone.  To Anna he was never more himself than at that moment.

She could not speak; she could not analyse her feelings; she could not
even think.  She was adrift.  At last she stammered: 'We've only known
each other----'

'Oh, dear,' he exclaimed masterfully, 'what does that matter?  If it
had been a dozen years instead of one, that would have made no
difference.'  She drew her hand timidly away, but he took it again.
She felt that he dominated her and would decide for her.  'Say yes.'

'Yes,' she said.

She saw pictures of her career as his wife, and resolved that one of
the first acts of her freedom should be to release Agnes from the more
ignominious of her father's tyrannies.

They walked home almost in silence.  She was engaged, then.  Yet she
experienced no new sensation.  She felt as she had felt on the way
down, except that she was sorely perturbed.  There was no ineffable
rapture, no ecstatic bliss.  Suddenly the prospect of happiness swept
over her like a flood.

At the gate she wished to make a request to him, but hesitated, because
she could not bring herself to use his Christian name.  It was proper
for her to use his Christian name, however, and she would do so, or
perish.

'Henry,' she said, 'don't tell anyone here.'  He merely kissed her once
more.  She went straight upstairs.




CHAPTER XI

THE DOWNFALL

In order to catch the Liverpool steamer at Douglas it was necessary to
leave Port Erin at half-past six in the morning.  The freshness of the
morning, and the smiles of the Alderman and his wife as they waved
God-speed from the doorstep, filled Anna with a serene content which
she certainly had not felt during the wakeful night.  She forgot, then,
the hours passed with her conscience in realising how serious and
solemn a thing was this engagement, made in an instant on the previous
evening.  All that remained in her mind, as she and Henry walked
quickly down the road, was the tonic sensation of high resolves to be a
worthy wife.  The duties, rather than the joys, of her condition, had
lain nearest her heart until that moment of setting out, giving her an
anxious and almost worried mien which at breakfast neither Henry nor
the Suttons could quite understand.  But now the idea of duty ceased
for a time to be paramount, and she loosed herself to the pleasures of
the day in store.  The harbour was full of low wandering mists, through
which the brown sails of the fishing-smacks played at hide-and-seek.
High above them the round forms of immense clouds were still carrying
the colours of sunrise.  The gentle salt wind on the cheek was like the
touch of a life-giver.  It was impossible, on such a morning, not to
exult in life, not to laugh childishly from irrational glee, not to
dismiss the memory of grief and the apprehension of grief as morbid
hallucinations.  Mynor's face expressed the double happiness of present
and anticipated pleasure.  He had once again succeeded, he who had
never failed; and the voyage back to England was for him a triumphal
progress.  Anna responded eagerly to his mood.  The day was an ecstasy,
a bright expanse unstained.  To Anna in particular it was a unique day,
marking the apogee of her existence.  In the years that followed she
could always return to it and say to herself: 'That day I was happy,
foolishly, ignorantly, but utterly.  And all that I have since learnt
cannot alter it--I was happy.'

When they reached Shawport Station a cab was waiting for Anna.  Unknown
to her, Henry had ordered it by telegraph.  This considerateness was of
a piece, she thought, with his masterly conduct of the entire
journey--on the steamer, at Liverpool, in the train; nothing that an
experienced traveller could devise had been lacking to her comfort.
She got into the cab alone, while Mynors, followed by a boy and his
bag, walked to his rooms in Mount Street.  It had been arranged, at
Anna's wish, that he should not appear at Manor Terrace till
supper-time.  Ephraim opened for her the door of her home.  It seemed
to her that he was pleased.

'Well, father, here I am again, you see.'

'Ay, lass.'  They shook hands, and she indicated to the cabman where to
deposit her tin-box.  She was glad and relieved to be back.  Nothing
had changed, except herself, and this absolute sameness was at once
pleasant and pathetic to her.

'Where's Agnes?' she asked, smiling at her father.  In the glow of
arrival she had a vague notion that her relations with him had been
permanently softened by absence.

'I see thou's gotten into th' habit o' flitting about in cabs,' he
said, without answering her question.

'Well, father,' she said, smiling yet, 'there was the box.  I couldn't
carry the box.'

'I reckon thou couldst ha' hired a lad to carry it for sixpence.'

She did not reply.  The cabman had gone to his vehicle.

'Art'na going to pay th' cabby?'

'I've paid him, father.'

'How much?'

She paused.  'Eighteen-pence, father.'  It was a lie; she had paid two
shillings.

She went eagerly into the kitchen, and then into the parlour, where tea
was set for one.  Agnes was not there.  'Her's upstairs,' Ephraim said,
meeting Anna as she came into the lobby again.  She ran softly
upstairs, and into the bedroom.  Agnes was replacing ornaments on the
mantelpiece with mathematical exactitude; under her arm was a duster.
The child turned, startled, and gave a little shriek.

'Eh, I didn't know you'd come.  How early you are!'

They rushed towards each other, embraced, and kissed.  Anna was
overcome by the pathos of her sister's loneliness in that grim house
for fourteen days, while she, the elder, had been absorbed in selfish
gaiety.  The pale face, large, melancholy eyes, and long, thin arms,
were a silent accusation.  She wondered that she could ever have
brought herself to leave Agnes even for a day.  Sitting down on the
bed, she drew the child on her knee in a fury of love, and kissed her
again, weeping.  Agnes cried too, for sympathy.

'Oh, my dear, dear Anna, I'm so glad you've come back!'  She dried her
eyes, and in quite a different tone of voice asked: 'Has Mr. Mynors
proposed to you?'

Anna could not avoid a blush at this simple and astounding query.  She
said: 'Yes.'  It was the one word of which she was capable, under the
circumstances.  That was not the moment to tax Agnes with too much
precocity and abruptness.

'You're engaged, then?  Oh, Anna, does it feel nice?  It must.  I knew
you would be!'

'How did you know, Agnes?'

'I mean I knew he would ask you, some time.  All the girls at school
knew too.'

'I hope you didn't talk about it,' said the elder sister.

'Oh, _no_!  But they did; they were always talking about it.'

'You never told me that.'

'I--I didn't like to.  Anna, shall I have to call him Henry now?'

'Yes, of course.  When we're married he will be your brother-in-law.'

'Shall you be married soon, Anna?'

'Not for a very long time.'

'When you are--shall I keep house alone?  I can, you know----  I shall
never _dare_ to call him Henry.  But he's awfully nice; isn't he, Anna?
Yes, when you are married, I shall keep house here, but I shall come to
see you every day.  Father will _have_ to let me do that.  Does father
know you're engaged?'

'Not yet.  And you mustn't say anything.  Henry is coming for supper.
And then father will be told.'

'Did he kiss you, Anna?'

'Who--father?'

'No, silly!  Henry, of course--I mean when he'd asked you?'

'I think you are asking all the questions.  Suppose I ask you some now.
How have you managed with father?  Has he been nice?'

'Some days--yes,' said Agnes, after thinking a moment.  'We have had
some new cups and saucers up from Mr. Mynors works.  And father has
swept the kitchen chimney.  And, oh Anna!  I asked him to-day if I'd
kept house well, and he said "Pretty well," and he gave me a penny.
Look!  It's the first money I've ever had, you know.  I wanted you at
nights, Anna--and all the time, too.  I've been frightfully busy.  I
cleaned silvers all afternoon.  Anna, I _have_ tried----  And I've got
some tea for you.  I'll go down and make it.  Now you mustn't come into
the kitchen.  I'll bring it to you in the parlour.'

'I had my tea at Crewe,' Anna was about to say, but refrained, in due
course drinking the cup prepared by Agnes.  She felt passionately sorry
for Agnes, too young to feel the shadow which overhung her future.
Anna would marry into freedom, but Agnes would remain the serf.  Would
Agnes marry?  Could she?  Would her father allow it?  Anna had noticed
that in families the youngest, petted in childhood, was often
sacrificed in maturity.  It was the last maid who must keep her
maidenhood, and, vicariously filial, pay out of her own life the debt
of all the rest.

'Mr. Mynors is coming up for supper to-night.  He wants to see you;'
Anna said to her father, as calmly as she could.  The miser grunted.
But at eight o'clock, the hour immutably fixed for supper, Henry had
not arrived.  The meal proceeded, of course, without him.  To Anna his
absence was unaccountable and disturbing, for none could be more
punctilious than he in the matter of appointments.  She expected him
every moment, but he did not appear.  Agnes, filled full of the great
secret confided to her, was more openly impatient than her sister.
Neither of them could talk, and a heavy silence fell upon the family
group, a silence which her father, on that particular evening of Anna's
return, resented.

'You dunna' tell us much,' he remarked, when the supper was finished.

She felt that the complaint was a just one.  Even before supper, when
nothing had occurred to preoccupy her, she had spoken little.  There
had seemed so much to tell--at Port Erin, and now there seemed nothing
to tell.  She ventured into a flaccid, perfunctory account of
Beatrice's illness, of the fishing, of the unfinished houses which had
caught the fancy of Mr. Sutton; she said the sea had been smooth, that
they had had something to eat at Liverpool, that the train for Crewe
was very prompt; and then she could think of no more.  Silence fell
again.  The supper-things were cleared away and washed up.  At a
quarter-past nine, Agnes, vainly begging permission to stay up in order
to see Mr. Mynors, was sent to bed, only partially comforted by a
clothes-brush, long desired, which Anna had brought for her as a
present from the Isle of Man.

'Shall you tell father yourself, now Henry hasn't come?' the child
asked Anna, who had gone upstairs to unpack her box.

'Yes,' said Anna, briefly.

'I wonder what he'll say,' Agnes reflected, with that habit, always
annoying to Anna, of meeting trouble half-way.

At a quarter to ten Anna ceased to expect Mynors, and finally braced
herself to the ordeal of a solemn interview with her father, well
knowing that she dared not leave him any longer in ignorance of her
engagement.  Already the old man was locking and bolting the door; he
had wound up the kitchen clock.  When he came back to the parlour to
extinguish the gas she was standing by the mantelpiece.

'Father,' she began, 'I've something I must tell you.'

'Eh, what's that ye say?' his hand was on the gas-tap.  He dropped it,
examining her face curiously.

'Mr. Mynors has asked me to marry him; he asked me last night.  We
settled he should come up to-night to see you--I can't think why he
hasn't.  It must be something very unexpected and important, or he'd
have come.'  She trembled, her heart beat violently; but the words were
out, and she thanked God.

'Asked ye to marry him, did he?'  The miser gazed at her quizzically
out of his small blue eyes.

'Yes, father.'

'And what didst say?'

'I said I would.'

'Oh!  Thou saidst thou wouldst!  I reckon it was for thatten as thou
must go gadding off to seaside, eh?'

'Father, I never dreamt of such a thing when Suttons asked me to go.  I
do wish Henry'--the cost of that Christian name!--'had come.  He quite
meant to come to-night.'  She could not help insisting on the propriety
of Henry's intentions.

'Then I am for be consulted, eh?'

'Of course, father.'

'Ye've soon made it up, between ye.'

His tone was, at the best, brusque; but she breathed more easily,
divining instantly from his manner that he meant to offer no violent
objection to the engagement.  She knew that only tact was needed now.
The miser had, indeed, foreseen the possibility of this marriage for
months past, and had long since decided in his own mind that Henry
would make a satisfactory son-in-law.  Ephraim had no social
ambitions--with all his meanness, he was above them; he had nothing but
contempt for rank, style, luxury, and 'the theory of what it is to be a
lady and a gentleman.'  Yet, by a curious contradiction, Henry's
smartness of appearance--the smartness of an unrivalled commercial
traveller--pleased him.  He saw in Henry a young and sedate man of
remarkable shrewdness, a man who had saved money, had made money for
others, and was now making it for himself; a man who could be trusted
absolutely to perform that feat of 'getting on'; a 'safe' and
profoundly respectable man, at the same time audacious and
imperturbable.  He was well aware that Henry had really fallen in love
with Anna, but nothing would have convinced him that Anna's money was
not the primal cause of Henry's genuine passion for Anna's self.

'You like Henry, don't you, father?' Anna said.  It was a failure in
the desired tact, for Ephraim had never been known to admit that he
liked anyone or anything.  Such natures are capable of nothing more
positive than toleration.

'He's a hard-headed chap, and he knows the value o' money.  Ay! that he
does; he knows which side his bread's buttered on.'  A sinister
emphasis marked the last sentence.

Instead of remaining silent, Anna, in her nervousness, committed
another imprudence.  'What do you mean, father?' she asked, pretending
that she thought it impossible he could mean what he obviously did mean.

'Thou knows what I'm at, lass.  Dost think he isna' marrying thee for
thy brass?  Dost think as he canna' make a fine guess what thou'rt
worth?  But that wunna' bother thee as long as thou'st hooked a
good-looking chap.'

'Father!'

'Ay! thou mayst bridle; but it's true.  Dunna' tell me.'

Securely conscious of the perfect purity of Mynors' affection, she was
not in the least hurt.  She even thought that her father's attitude was
not quite sincere, an attitude partially due to mere wilful
churlishness.  'Henry has never even mentioned money to me,' she said
mildly.

'Happen not; he isna' such a fool as that.'  He paused, and continued:
'Thou'rt free to wed, for me.  Lasses will do it, I reckon, and thee
among th' rest.'  She smiled, and on that smile he suddenly turned out
the gas.  Anna was glad that the colloquy had ended so well.
Congratulations, endearments, loving regard for her welfare: she had
not expected these things, and was in no wise grieved by their absence.
Groping her way towards the lobby, she considered herself lucky, and
only wished that nothing had happened to keep Mynors away.  She wanted
to tell him at once that her father had proved tractable.


The next morning, Tellwright, whose attendance at chapel was losing the
strictness of its old regularity, announced that he should stay at
home.  Sunday's dinner was to be a cold repast, and so Anna and Agnes
went to chapel.  Anna's thoughts were wholly occupied with the prospect
of seeing Mynors, and hearing the explanation of his absence on
Saturday night.

'There he is!' Agnes exclaimed loudly, as they were approaching the
chapel.

'Agnes,' said Anna, 'when will you learn to behave in the street?'

Mynors stood at the chapel-gates; he was evidently awaiting them.  He
looked grave, almost sad.  He raised his hat and shook hands, with a
particular friendliness for Agnes, who was speculating whether he would
kiss Anna, as his betrothed, or herself, as being only a little girl,
or both or neither of them.  Her eyes already expressed a sort of
ownership in him.

'I should like to speak to you a moment,' Henry said.  'Will you come
into the school-yard?'

'Agnes, you had better go straight into chapel,' said Anna.  It was an
ignominious disaster to the child, but she obeyed.

'I didn't give you up last night till nearly ten o'clock,' Anna
remarked as they passed into the school-yard.  She was astonished to
discover in herself an inclination to pout, to play the offended fair
one, because Mynors had failed in his appointment.  Contemptuously she
crushed it.

'Have you heard about Mr. Price?' Mynors began.

'No.  What about him?  Has anything happened?'

'A very sad thing has happened.  Yes----'  He stopped, from emotion.
'Our superintendent has committed suicide!'

'Killed himself?' Anna gasped.

'He hanged himself yesterday afternoon at Edward Street, in the
slip-house after the works were closed.  Willie had gone home, but he
came back, when his father didn't turn up for dinner, and found him.
Mr. Price was quite dead.  He ran in to my place to fetch me just as I
was getting my tea.  That was why I never came last night.'

Anna was speechless.

'I thought I would tell you myself,' Henry resumed.  'It's an awful
thing for the Sunday-school, and the whole society, too.  He, a
prominent Wesleyan, a worker among us!  An awful thing!' he repeated,
dominated by the idea of the blow thus dealt to the Methodist connexion
by the man now dead.

'Why did he do it?' Anna demanded, curtly.

Mynors shrugged his shoulders, and ejaculated: 'Business troubles, I
suppose; it couldn't be anything else.  At school this morning I simply
announced that he was dead.'  Henry's voice broke, but he added, after
a pause: 'Young Price bore himself splendidly last night.'

Anna turned away in silence.  'I shall come up for tea, if I may,'
Henry said, and then they parted, he to the singing-seat, she to the
portico of the chapel.  People were talking in groups on the broad
steps and in the vestibule.  All knew of the calamity, and had received
from it a new interest in life.  The town was aroused as if from a
lethargy.  Consternation and eager curiosity were on every face.  Those
who arrived in ignorance of the event were informed of it in impressive
tones, and with intense satisfaction to the informer; nothing of equal
importance had happened in the society for decades.  Anna walked up the
aisle to her pew, filled with one thought:

'We drove him to it, father and I.'

Her fear was that the miser had renewed his terrible insistence during
the previous fortnight.  She forgot that she had disliked the dead man,
that he had always seemed to her mean, pietistic, and two-faced.  She
forgot that in pressing him for rent many months overdue she and her
father had acted within their just rights--acted as Price himself would
have acted in their place.  She could think only of the strain, the
agony, the despair that must have preceded the miserable tragedy.  Old
Price had atoned for all in one sublime sin, the sole deed that could
lend dignity and repose to such a figure as his.  Anna's feverish
imagination reconstituted the scene in the slip-house: she saw it as
something grand, accusing, and unanswerable; and she could not dismiss
a feeling of acute remorse that she should have been engaged in
pleasure at that very hour of death.  Surely some instinct should have
warned her that the hare which she had helped to hunt was at its last
gasp!

Mr. Sargent, the newly-appointed second minister, was in the pulpit--a
little, earnest bachelor, who emphasised every sentence with a
continual tremor of the voice.  'Brethren,' he said, after the second
hymn--and his tones vibrated with a singular effect through the
half-empty building: 'Before I proceed to my sermon I have one word to
say in reference to the awful event which is doubtless uppermost in the
minds of all of you.  It is not for us to judge the man who is now gone
from us, ushered into the dread presence of his Maker with the crime of
self-murder upon his soul.  I say it is not for us to judge him.  The
ways of the Almighty are past finding out.  Therefore at such a moment
we may fitly humble ourselves before the Throne, and while prostrate
there let us intercede for the poor young man who is left behind,
bereft, and full of grief and shame.  We will engage in silent prayer.'
He lifted his hand, and closed his eyes, and the congregation leaned
forward against the fronts of the pews.  The appealing face of Willie
presented itself vividly to Anna.

'Who is it?' Agnes asked, in a whisper of appalling distinctness.  Anna
frowned angrily, and gave no reply.

While the last hymn was being sung, Anna signed to Agnes that she
wished to leave the chapel.  Everyone would be aware that she was among
Price's creditors, and she feared that if she stayed till the end of
the service some chatterer might draw her into a distressing
conversation.  The sisters went out, and Agnes's burning curiosity was
at length relieved.

'Mr. Price has hanged himself,' Anna said to her father when they
reached home.

The miser looked through the window for a moment.  'I am na'
surprised,' he said.  'Suicide's i' that blood.  Titus's uncle 'Lijah
tried to kill himself twice afore he died o' gravel.  Us'n have to do
summat wi' Edward Street at last.'

She wanted to ask Ephraim if he had been demanding more rent lately,
but she could not find courage to do so.

Agnes had to go to Sunday-school alone that afternoon.  Without saying
anything to her father, Anna decided to stay at home.  She spent the
time in her bedroom, idle, preoccupied; and did not come downstairs
till half-past three.  Ephraim had gone out.  Agnes presently returned,
and then Henry came in with Mr. Tellwright.  They were conversing
amicably, and Anna knew that her engagement was finally and
satisfactorily settled.  During tea no reference was made to it, nor to
the suicide.  Mynors' demeanour was quiet but cheerful.  He had partly
recovered from the morning's agitation, and gave Ephraim and Agnes a
vivacious account of the attractions of Port Erin.  Anna noticed the
amusement in his eyes when Agnes, reddening, said to him: 'Will you
have some more bread-and-butter, Henry?' It seemed to be tacitly
understood afterwards that Agnes and her father would attend chapel,
while Henry and Anna kept house.  No one was ingenious enough to detect
an impropriety in the arrangement.  For some obscure reason,
immediately upon the departure of the chapel-goers, Anna went into the
kitchen, rattled some plates, stroked her hair mechanically, and then
stole back again to the parlour.  It was a chilly evening, and instead
of walking up and down the strip of garden the betrothed lovers sat
together under the window.  Anna wondered whether or not she was happy.
The presence of Mynors was, at any rate, marvellously soothing.

'Did your father say anything about the Price affair?' he began,
yielding at once to the powerful hypnotism of the subject which
fascinated the whole town that night, and which Anna could bear neither
to discuss nor to ignore.

'Not much,' she said, and repeated to him her father's remark.

Mynors told her all he knew; how Willie had discovered his father with
his toes actually touching the floor, leaning slightly forward, quite
dead; how he had then cut the rope and fetched Mynors, who went with
him to the police-station; how they had tied up the head of the corpse,
and then waited till night to wheel the body on a hand-cart from Edward
Street to the mortuary chamber at the police-station; how the police
had telephoned to the coroner, and settled at once that the inquest
should be held on Tuesday in the court-room at the town-hall; and how
quiet, self-contained, and dignified Willie had been, surprising
everyone by this new-found manliness.  It all seemed hideously real to
Anna, as Henry added detail to detail.

'I think I ought to tell you,' she said very calmly, when he had
finished the recital, 'that I--I'm dreadfully upset over it.  I can't
help thinking that I--that father and I, I mean--are somehow partly
responsible for this.'

'For Price's death?  How?'

'We have been so hard on him for his rent lately, you know.'

'My dearest girl!  What next?'  He took her hand in his.  'I assure you
the idea is absurd.  You've only got it because you're so sensitive and
high-strung.  I undertake to say Price was stuck fast
everywhere--everywhere--hadn't a chance.'

'Me high-strung!' she exclaimed.  He kissed her lovingly.  But, beneath
the feeling of reassurance, which by superior force he had imposed on
her, there lay a feeling that she was treated like a frightened child
who must be tranquillized in the night.  Nevertheless, she was grateful
for his kindness, and when she went to bed she obtained relief from the
returning obsession of the suicide by making anew her vows to him.

As a theatrical effect the death of Titus Price could scarcely have
been surpassed.  The town was profoundly moved by the spectacle of this
abject yet heroic surrender of all those pretences by which society
contrives to tolerate itself.  Here was a man whom no one respected,
but everyone pretended to respect--who knew that he was respected by
none, but pretended that he was respected by all; whose whole career
was made up of dissimulations: religious, moral, and social.  If any
man could have been trusted to continue the decent sham to the end, and
so preserve the general self-esteem, surely it was this man.  But no!
Suddenly abandoning all imposture, he transgresses openly, brazenly;
and, snatching a bit of hemp cries: 'Behold me; this is real human
nature.  This is the truth; the rest was lies.  I lied; you lied.  I
confess it, and you shall confess it.'  Such a thunderclap shakes the
very base of the microcosm.  The young folk in particular could with
difficulty believe their ears.  It seemed incredible to them that Titus
Price, the Methodist, the Sunday-school superintendent, the loud
champion of the highest virtues, should commit the sin of all
sins--murder.  They were dazed.  The remembrance of his insincerity did
nothing to mitigate the blow.  In their view it was perhaps even worse
that he had played false to his own falsity.  The elders were a little
less disturbed.  The event was not unique in their experience.  They
had lived longer and felt these seismic shocks before.  They could go
back into the past and find other cases where a swift impulse had
shattered the edifice of a lifetime.  They knew that the history of
families and of communities is crowded with disillusion.  They had
discovered that character is changeless, irrepressible, incurable.
They were aware of the astonishing fact, which takes at least thirty
years to learn, that a Sunday-school superintendent is a man.  And the
suicide of Titus Price, when they had realised it, served but to
confirm their most secret and honest estimate of humanity, that
estimate which they never confided to a soul.  The young folk thought
the Methodist Society shamed and branded by the tragic incident, and
imagined that years must elapse before it could again hold up its head
in the town.  The old folk were wiser, foreseeing with certainty that
in only a few days this all-engrossing phenomenon would lose its
significance, and be as though it had never been.  Even in two days,
time had already begun its work, for by Tuesday morning the interest of
the affair--on Sunday at the highest pitch--had waned so much that the
thought of the inquest was capable of reviving it.  Although everyone
knew that the case presented no unusual features, and that the
coroner's inquiry would be nothing more than a formal ceremony, the
almost greedy curiosity of Methodist circles lifted it to the level of
a _cause célèbre_.  The court was filled with irreproachable
respectability when the coroner drove into the town, and each animated
face said to its fellow: 'So you're here, are you?'  Late comers of the
official world--councillors, guardians of the poor, members of the
school board, and one or two of their ladies, were forced to intrigue
for room with the police and the town-hall keeper, and, having
succeeded, sank into their narrow seats with a sigh of expectancy and
triumph.  Late comers with less influence had to retire, and by a kind
of sinister fascination were kept wandering about the corridor before
they could decide to go home.  The market-place was occupied by
hundreds of loafers, who seemed to find a mystic satisfaction in
beholding the coroner's dogcart and the exterior of the building which
now held the corpse.

It was by accident that Anna was in the town.  She knew that the
inquest was to occur that morning, but had not dreamed of attending it.
When, however, she saw the stir of excitement in the market-place, and
the police guarding the entrances of the town-hall, she walked directly
across the road, past the two officers at the east door, and into the
dark main corridor of the building, which was dotted with small groups
idly conversing.  She was conscious of two things: a vehement
curiosity, and the existence somewhere in the precincts of a dead body,
unsightly, monstrous, calm, silent, careless--the insensible origin of
all this simmering ferment which disgusted her even while she shared in
it.  At a small door, half hidden by a curtain, she was startled to see
Mynors.

'You here!' he exclaimed, as if painfully surprised, and shook hands
with a preoccupied air.  'They are examining Willie.  I came outside
while he was in the witness-box.'

'Is the inquest going on in there?' she asked, pointing to the door.
Each appeared to be concealing a certain resentment against the other;
but this appearance was due only to nervous agitation.

A policeman down the corridor called: 'Mr. Mynors, a moment.'  Henry
hurried away, answering Anna's question as he went: 'Yes, in there.
That's the witnesses' and jurors' door; but please don't go in.  I
don't like you to, and it is sure to upset you.'

She opened the door and went in.  None said nay, and she found a few
inches of standing-room behind the jury-box.  A terrible stench
nauseated her; the chamber was crammed, and not a window open.  There
was silence in the court--no one seemed to be doing anything; but at
last she perceived that the coroner, enthroned on the bench justice was
writing in a book with blue leaves.  In the witness-box stood William
Price, dressed in black, with kid gloves, not lounging in an ungainly
attitude, as might have been expected, but perfectly erect; he kept his
eyes fixed on the coroner's head.  Sarah Vodrey, Price's aged
housekeeper, sat on a chair near the witness-box, weeping into a
black-bordered handkerchief; at intervals she raised her small,
wrinkled, red face, with its glistening, inflamed eyes, and then buried
it again in the handkerchief.  The members of the jury, whom Anna could
see only in profile, shuffled to and fro on their long, pew-like
seats--they were mostly working men, shabbily clothed; but the foreman
was Mr. Leal, the provision dealer, a freemason, and a sidesman at the
parish church.  The general public sat intent and vacuous; their minds
gaped, if not their mouths; occasionally one whispered inaudibly to
another; the jury, conscious of an official status, exchanged remarks
in a whisper courageously loud.  Several tall policemen, helmet in
hand, stood in various corners of the room, and the coroner's officer
sat near the witness-box to administer the oath.  At length the coroner
lifted his head.  He was rather a young man, with a large, intelligent
face; he wore eyeglasses, and his chin was covered with a short, wavy
beard.  His manner showed that, while secretly proud of his supreme
position in that assemblage, he was deliberately trying to make it
appear that this exercise of judicial authority was nothing to him,
that in truth these eternal inquiries, which interested others so
deeply, were to him a weariness conscientiously endured.

'Now, Mr. Price,' the coroner said blandly, and it was plain that he
was being ceremoniously polite to an inferior, in obedience to the
rules of good form, 'I must ask you some more questions.  They may be
inconvenient, even painful; but I am here simply as the instrument of
the law, and I must do my duty.  And these gentlemen here,' he waved a
hand in the direction of the jury, 'must be told the whole facts of the
case.  We know, of course, that the deceased committed suicide--that
has been proved beyond doubt; but, as I say, we have the right to know
more.'  He paused, well satisfied with the sound of his voice, and
evidently thinking that he had said something very weighty and
impressive.

'What do you want to know?' Willie Price demanded, his broad Five Towns
speech contrasting with the Kensingtonian accents of the coroner.  The
latter, who came originally from Manchester, was irritated by the
brusque interruption; but he controlled his annoyance, at the same time
glancing at the public as if to signify to them that he had learnt not
to take too seriously the unintentional rudeness characteristic of
their district.

'You say it was probably business troubles that caused your late father
to commit the rash act?'

'Yes.'

'You are sure there was nothing else?'

'What else could there be?'

'Your late father was a widower?'

'Yes.'

'Now as to these business troubles--what were they?'

'We were being pressed by creditors.'

'Were you a partner with your late father?'

'Yes.'

'Oh!  You were a partner with him!'

The jury seemed surprised, and the coroner wrote again: 'What was your
share in the business?'

'I don't know.'

'You don't know?  Surely that is rather singular?'

'My father took me in Co. not long since.  We signed a deed, but I
forget what was in it.  My place was principally on the bank, not in
the office.'

'And so you were being pressed by creditors?'

'Yes.  And we were behind with the rent.'

'Was the landlord pressing you, too?'

Anna lowered her eyes, fearful lest every head had turned towards her.

'Not then; he had been--she, I mean.'

'The landlord is a lady?'  Here the coroner faintly smiled.  'Then, as
regards the landlord, the pressure was less than it had been?'

'Yes; we had paid some rent, and settled some other claims.'

'Does it not seem strange----?' the coroner began, with a suave air of
suggesting an idea.

'If you must know,' Willie surprisingly burst out, 'I believe it was
the failure of a firm in London that owed us money that caused father
to hang himself.'

'Ah!' exclaimed the coroner.  'When did you hear of that failure?'

'By second post on Friday.  Eleven in the morning.'

'I think we have heard enough, Mr. Coroner,' said Leal, standing up in
the jury-box.  'We have decided on our verdict.'

'Thank you, Mr. Price,' said the coroner, dismissing Willie.  He added,
in a tone of icy severity to the foreman: 'I had concluded my
examination of the witness.'  Then he wrote further in his book.

'Now, gentlemen of the jury,' the coroner resumed, having first cleared
his throat; 'I think you will agree with me that this is a peculiarly
painful case.  Yet at the same time----'

Anna hastened from the court as impulsively as she had entered it.  She
could think of nothing but the quiet, silent, pitiful corpse; and all
this vapid mouthing exasperated her beyond sufferance.


On the Thursday afternoon, Anna was sitting alone in the house, with
the Persian cat and a pile of stockings on her knee, darning.  Agnes
had with sorrow returned to school; Ephraim was out.  The bell sounded
violently, and Anna, thinking that perhaps for some reason her father
had chosen to enter by the front door, ran to open it.  The visitor was
Willie Price; he wore the new black suit which had figured in the
coroner's court.  She invited him to the parlour and they both sat
down, tongue-tied.  Now that she had learnt from his evidence given at
the inquest that Ephraim had not been pressing for rent during her
absence in the Isle of Man, she felt less like a criminal before Willie
than she would have felt without that assurance.  But at the best she
was nervous, self-conscious, and shamed.  She supposed that he had
called to make some arrangement with reference to the tenure of the
works, or, more probably, to announce a bankruptcy and stoppage.

'Well, Miss Tellwright,' Willie began, 'I've buried him.  He's gone.'

The simple and profound grief, and the restrained bitterness against
all the world, which were expressed in these words--the sole epitaph of
Titus Price--nearly made Anna cry.  She would have cried, if the cat
had not opportunely jumped on her knee again; she controlled herself by
dint of stroking it.  She sympathised with him more intensely in that
first moment of his loneliness than she had ever sympathised with
anyone, even Agnes.  She wished passionately to shield, shelter, and
comfort him, to do something, however small, to diminish his sorrow and
humiliation; and this despite his size, his ungainliness, his coarse
features, his rough voice, his lack of all the conventional
refinements.  A single look from his guileless and timid eyes atoned
for every shortcoming.  Yet she could scarcely open her mouth.  She
knew not what to say.  She had no phrases to soften the frightful blow
which Providence had dealt him.

'I'm very sorry,' she said.  'You must be relieved it's all over.'

If she could have been Mrs. Sutton for half an hour!  But she was Anna,
and her feelings could only find outlet in her eyes.  Happily young
Price was of those meek ones who know by instinct the language of the
eyes.

'You've come about the works, I suppose?' she went on.

'Yes,' he said.  'Is your father in?  I want to see him very
particular.'

'He isn't in now,' she replied: 'but he will be back by four o'clock.'

'That's an hour.  You don't know where he is?'

She shook her head.  'Well,' he continued, 'I must tell you, then.
I've come up to do it, and do it I must.  I can't come up again;
neither can I wait.  You remember that bill of exchange as we gave you
some weeks back towards rent?'

'Yes,' she said.  There was a pause.  He stood up, and moved to the
mantelpiece.  Her gaze followed him intently, but she had no idea what
he was about to say.

'It's forged, Miss Tellwright.'  He sat down again, and seemed calmer,
braver, ready to meet any conceivable set of consequences.

'Forged!' she repeated, not immediately grasping the significance of
the avowal.

'Mr. Sutton's name is forged on it.  So I came to tell your father; but
you'll do as well.  I feel as if I should like to tell you all about
it,' he said, smiling sadly.  'Mr. Sutton had really given us a bill
for thirty pounds, but we'd paid that away when Mr. Tellwright sent
word down--you remember--that he should put bailiffs in if he didn't
have twenty-five pounds next day.  We were just turning the corner
then, father said to me.  There was a goodish sum due to us from a
London firm in a month's time, and if we could only hold out till then,
father said he could see daylight for us.  But he knew as there'd be no
getting round Mr. Tellwright.  So he had the idea of using Mr. Sutton's
name--just temporary like.  He sent me to the post-office to buy a bill
stamp, and he wrote out the bill all but the name.  "You take this up
to Tellwright's," he says, "and ask 'em to take it and hold it, and
we'll redeem it, and that'll be all right.  No harm done there, Will!"
he says.  Then he tries Sutton's name on the back of an envelope.  It's
an easy signature, as you know; but he couldn't do it.  "Here, Will,"
he says, "my old hand shakes; you have a go," and he gives me a letter
of Sutton's to copy from.  I did it easy enough after a try or two.
"That'll be all right, Will," he says, and I put my hat on and brought
the bill up here.  That's the truth, Miss Tellwright.  It was the smash
of that London firm that finished my poor old father off.'

Her one feeling was the sense of being herself a culprit.  After all,
it was her father's action, more than anything else, that had led to
the suicide, and he was her agent.

'Oh, Mr. Price,' she said foolishly, 'whatever shall you do?'

'There's nothing to be done,' he replied.  'It was bound to be.  It's
our luck.  We'd no thought but what we should bring you thirty pound in
cash and get that bit of paper back, and rip it up, and no one the
worse.  But we were always unlucky, me and him.  All you've got to do
is just to tell your father, and say I'm ready to go to the
police-station when he gives the word.  It's a bad business, but I'm
ready for it.'

'Can't we do something?' she naïvely inquired, with a vision of a trial
and sentence, and years of prison.

'Your father keeps the bill, doesn't he?  Not you?'

'I could ask him to destroy it.'

'He wouldn't,' said Willie.  'You'll excuse me saying that, Miss
Tellwright, but he wouldn't.'

He rose as if to go, bitterly.  As for Anna, she knew well that her
father would never permit the bill to be destroyed.  But at any cost
she meant to comfort him then, to ease his lot, to send him away less
grievous than he came.

'Listen!' she said, standing up, and abandoning the cat, 'I will see
what can be done.  Yes.  Something _shall_ be done--something or other.
I will come and see you at the works to-morrow afternoon.  You may rely
on me.'

She saw hope brighten his eyes at the earnestness and resolution of her
tone, and she felt richly rewarded.  He never said another word, but
gripped her hand with such force that she flinched in pain.  When he
had gone, she perceived clearly the dire dilemma; but cared nothing, in
the first bliss of having reassured him.

During tea it occurred to her that as soon as Agnes had gone to bed she
would put the situation plainly before her father, and, for the first
and last time in her life, assert herself.  She would tell him that the
affair was, after all, entirely her own, she would firmly demand
possession of the bill of exchange, and she would insist on it being
destroyed.  She would point out to the old man that, her promise having
been given to Willie Price, no other course than this was possible.  In
planning this night-surprise on her father's obstinacy, she found
argument after argument auspicious of its success.  The formidable
tyrant was at last to meet his equal, in force, in resolution, and in
pugnacity.  The swiftness of her onrush would sweep him, for once, off
his feet.  At whatever cost, she was bound to win, even though victory
resulted in eternal enmity between father and daughter.  She saw
herself towering over him, morally, with blazing eye and scornful
nostril.  And, thus meditating on the grandeur of her adventure, she
fed her courage with indignation.  By the act of death, Titus Price had
put her father for ever in the wrong.  His corpse accused the miser,
and Anna, incapable now of seeing aught save the pathos of suicide,
acquiesced in the accusation with all the strength of her remorse.  She
did not reason--she felt; reason was shrivelled up in the fire of
emotion.  She almost trembled with the urgency of her desire to protect
from further shame the figure of Willie Price, so frank, simple,
innocent, and big; and to protect also the lifeless and dishonoured
body of his parent.  She reviewed the whole circumstances again and
again, each time finding less excuse for her father's implacable and
fatal cruelty.

So her thoughts ran until the appointed hour of Agnes's bedtime.  It
was always necessary to remind Agnes of that hour; left to herself, the
child would have stayed up till the very Day of Judgment.  The clock
struck, but Anna kept silence.  To utter the word 'bedtime' to Agnes
was to open the attack on her father, and she felt as the conductor of
an opera feels before setting in motion a complicated activity which
may end in either triumph or an unspeakable fiasco.  The child was
reading; Anna looked and looked at her, and at length her lips were set
for the phrase, 'Now Agnes,' when, suddenly, the old man forestalled
her:

'Is that wench going for sit here all night?' he asked of Anna,
menacingly.

Agnes shut her book and crept away.

This accident was the ruin of Anna's scheme.  Her father, always the
favourite of circumstance, had by chance struck the first blow;
ignorant of the battle that awaited him, he had unwittingly won it by
putting her in the wrong, as Titus Price had put him in the wrong.  She
knew in a flash that her enterprise was hopeless; she knew that her
father's position in regard to her was impregnable, that no moral
force, no consciousness of right, would avail to overthrow that
authority which she had herself made absolute by a life-long
submission; she knew that face to face with her father she was, and
always would be, a coward.  And now, instead of finding arguments for
success, she found arguments for failure.  She divined all the retorts
that he would fling at her.  What about Mr. Sutton--in a sense the
victim of this fraud?  It was not merely a matter of thirty pounds.  A
man's name had been used.  Was he, Ephraim Tellwright, and she, his
daughter, to connive at a felony?  The felony was done, and could not
be undone.  Were they to render themselves liable, even in theory, to a
criminal prosecution?  If Titus Price had killed himself, what of that?
If Willie Price was threatened with ruin, what of that?  Them as made
the bed must lie on it.  At the best, and apart from any forgery, the
Prices had swindled their creditors; even in dying, old Price had been
guilty of a commercial swindle.  And was the fact that father and son
between them had committed a direct and flagrant crime to serve as an
excuse for sympathising with the survivor?  Why was Anna so anxious to
shield the forger?  What claim had he?  A forger was a forger, and that
was the end of it.

She went to bed without opening her mouth.  Irresolute, shamed, and
despairing, she tried to pray for guidance, but she could bring no
sincerity of appeal into this prayer; it seemed an empty form.  Where,
indeed, was her religion?  She was obliged to acknowledge that the
fervour of her aspirations had been steadily cooling for weeks.  She
was not a whit more a true Christian now than she had been before the
Revival; it appeared that she was incapable of real religion, possibly
one of those souls foreordained to damnation.  This admission added to
the general sense of futility, and increased her misery.  She lay awake
for hours, confronting her deliberate promise to Willie Price.
_Something shall be done_.  _Rely on me_.  He was relying on her, then.
But on whom could she rely?  To whom could she turn?  It is significant
that the idea of confiding in Henry Mynors did not present itself for a
single moment as practical.  Mynors had been kind to Willie in his
trouble, but Anna almost resented this kindness on account of the
condescending superiority which she thought she detected therein.  It
was as though she had overheard Mynors saying to himself: 'Here is this
poor, crushed worm.  It is my duty as a Christian to pity and succour
him.  I will do so.  I am a righteous man.'  The thought of anyone
stooping to Willie was hateful to her.  She felt equal with him, as a
mother feels equal with her child when it cries and she soothes it.
And she felt, in another way, that he was equal with her, as she
thought of his sturdy and simple confession, and of the loyal love in
his voice when he spoke of his father.  She liked him for hurting her
hand, and for refusing to snatch at the slender chance of her father's
clemency.  She could never reveal Willie's sin, if it was a sin, to
Henry Mynors--that symbol of correctness and of success.  She had
fraternised with sinners, like Christ; and, with amazing injustice, she
was capable of deeming Mynors a Pharisee because she could not find
fault with him, because he lived and loved so impeccably and so
triumphantly.  There was only one person from whom she could have asked
advice and help, and that wise and consoling heart was far away in the
Isle of Man.

'Why won't father give up the bill?' she demanded, half aloud, in
sullen wrath.  She could not frame the answer in words, but
nevertheless she knew it and felt it.  Such an act of grace would have
been impossible to her father's nature--that was all.

Suddenly the expression of her face changed from utter disgust into a
bitter and proud smile.  Without thinking further, without daring to
think, she rose out of bed and, night-gowned and bare-footed, crept
with infinite precaution downstairs.  The oilcloth on the stairs froze
her feet; a cold, grey light issuing through the glass square over the
front door showed that dawn was beginning.  The door of the
front-parlour was shut; she opened it gently, and went within.  Every
object in the room was faintly visible, the bureau, the chair, the
files of papers, the pictures, the books on the mantelshelf, and the
safe in the corner.  The bureau, she knew, was never locked; fear of
their father had always kept its privacy inviolate from Anna and Agnes,
without the aid of a key.  As Anna stood in front of it, a shaking
figure with hair hanging loose, she dimly remembered having one day
seen a blue paper among white in the pigeon-holes.  But if the bill was
not there she vowed that she would steal her father's keys while he
slept, and force the safe.  She opened the bureau, and at once saw the
edge of a blue paper corresponding with her recollection.  She pulled
it forth and scanned it.  'Three months after date pay to our order ...
Accepted payable, _William Sutton_.'  So here was the forgery, here the
two words for which Willie Price might have gone to prison!  What a
trifle!  She tore the flimsy document to bits, and crumpled the bits
into a little ball.  How should she dispose of the ball?  After a
moment's reflection she went into the kitchen, stretched on tiptoe to
reach the match-box from the high mantelpiece, struck a match, and
burnt the ball in the grate.  Then, with a restrained and sinister
laugh, she ran softly upstairs.

'What's the matter, Anna?'  Agnes was sitting up in bed, wide awake.

'Nothing; go to sleep, and don't bother,' Anna angrily whispered.

Had she closed the lid of the bureau?  She was compelled to return in
order to make sure.  Yes, it was closed.  When at length she lay in
bed, breathless, her heart violently beating, her feet like icicles,
she realised what she had done.  She had saved Willie Price, but she
had ruined herself with her father.  She knew well that he would never
forgive her.

On the following afternoon she planned to hurry to Edward Street and
back while Ephraim and Agnes were both out of the house.  But for some
reason her father sat persistently after dinner, conning a sale
catalogue.  At a quarter to three he had not moved.  She decided to go
at any risks.  She put on her hat and jacket, and opened the front
door.  He heard her.

'Anna!' he called sharply.  She obeyed the summons in terror.  'Art
going out?'

'Yes, father.'

'Where to?'

'Down town to buy some things.'

'Seems thou'rt always buying.'

That was all; he let her free.  In an unworthy attempt to appease her
conscience she did in fact go first into the town; she bought some
wool; the trick was despicable.  Then she hastened to Edward Street.
The decrepit works seemed to have undergone no change.  She had
expected the business would be suspended, and Willie Price alone on the
bank; but manufacture was proceeding as usual.  She went direct to the
office, fancying, as she climbed the stairs, that every window of all
the workshops was full of eyes to discern her purpose.  Without
knocking, she pushed against the unlatched door and entered.  Willie
was lolling in his father's chair, gloomy, meditative, apparently idle.
He was coatless, and wore a dirty apron; a battered hat was at the back
of his head, and his great hands which lay on the desk in front of him,
were soiled.  He sprang up, flushing red, and she shut the door; they
were alone together.

'I'm all in my dirt,' he murmured apologetically.  Simple and silly
creature, to imagine that she cared for his dirt!

'It's all right,' she said; 'you needn't worry any more.  It's all
right.'  They were glorious words for her, and her face shone.

'What do you mean?' he asked gruffly.

'Why,' she smiled, full of happiness, 'I got that paper and burnt it!'

He looked at her exactly as if he had not understood.  'Does your
father know?'

She still smiled at him happily.  'No; but I shall tell him this
afternoon.  It's all right.  I've burnt it.'

He sank down in the chair, and, laying his head on the desk, burst into
sobbing tears.  She stood over him, and put a hand on the sleeve of his
shirt.  At that touch he sobbed more violently.

'Mr. Price, what is it?'  She asked the question in a calm, soothing
tone.

He glanced up at her, his face wet, yet apparently not shamed by the
tears.  She could not meet his gaze without herself crying, and so she
turned her head.  'I was only thinking,' he stammered, 'only
thinking--what an angel you are.'

Only the meek, the timid, the silent, can, in moments of deep feeling,
use this language of hyperbole without seeming ridiculous.

He was her great child, and she knew that he worshipped her.  Oh,
ineffable power, that out of misfortune canst create divine happiness!

Later, he remarked in his ordinary tone: 'I was expecting your father
here this afternoon about the lease.  There is to be a deed of
arrangement with the creditors.'

'My father!' she exclaimed, and she bade him good-bye.

As she passed under the archway she heard a familiar voice: 'I reckon I
shall find young Mester Price in th' office?'  Ephraim, who had
wandered into the packing-house, turned and saw her through the
doorway; a second's delay, and she would have escaped.  She stood
waiting the storm, and then they walked out into the road together.

'Anna, what art doing here?'

She did not know what to say.

'What art doing here?' he repeated coldly.

'Father, I--was just going back home.'

He hesitated an instant.  'I'll go with thee,' he said.  They walked
back to Manor Terrace in silence.  They had tea in silence; except that
Agnes, with dreadful inopportuneness, continually worried her father
for a definite promise that she might leave school at Christmas.  The
idea was preposterous; but Agnes, fired by her recent success as a
housekeeper, clung to it.  Ignorant of her imminent danger, and
misinterpreting the signs of his face, she at last pushed her
insistence too far.

'Get to bed, this minute,' he said, in a voice suddenly terrible.  She
perceived her error then, but it was too late.  Looking wistfully at
Anna, the child fled.

'I was told this morning, miss,' Ephraim began, as soon as Agnes was
gone, 'that young Price had bin seen coming to this house 'ere
yesterday afternoon.  I thought as it was strange as thoud'st said nowt
about it to thy feyther; but I never suspected as a daughter o' mine
was up to any tricks.  There was a hang-dog look on thy face this
afternoon when I asked where thou wast going, but I didna' think thou
wast lying to me.'

'I wasn't,' she began, and stopped.

'Thou wast!  Now, what is it?  What's this carrying-on between thee and
Will Price?  I'll have it out of thee.'

'There is no carrying-on, father.'

'Then why hast thou gotten secrets?  Why dost go sneaking about to see
him--sneaking, creeping, like any brazen moll?'

The miser was wounded in the one spot where there remained to him any
sentiment capable of being wounded: his faith in the irreproachable,
absolute chastity, in thought and deed, of his womankind.

'Willie Price came in here yesterday,' Anna began, white and calm, 'to
see you.  But you weren't in.  So he saw me.  He told me that bill of
exchange, that blue paper, for thirty pounds, was forged.  He said he
had forged Mr. Sutton's name on it.'  She stopped, expecting the
thunder.

'Get on with thy tale,' said Ephraim, breathing loudly.

'He said he was ready to go to prison as soon as you gave the word.
But I told him, "No such thing!"  I said it must be settled quietly.  I
told him to leave it to me.  He was driven to the forgery, and I
thought----'

'Dost mean to say,' the miser shouted, 'as that blasted scoundrel came
here and told thee he'd forged a bill, and thou told him to leave it to
thee to settle?'  Without waiting for an answer, he jumped up and
strode to the door, evidently with the intention of examining the
forged document for himself.

'It isn't there--it isn't there!' Anna called to him wildly.

'What isna' there?'

'The paper.  I may as well tell you, father.  I got up early this
morning and burnt it.'

The man was staggered at this audacious and astounding impiety.

'It was mine, really,' she continued; 'and I thought----'

'Thou thought!'

Agnes, upstairs, heard that passionate and consuming roar.  'Shame on
thee, Anna Tellwright!  Shame on thee for a shameless hussy!  A
daughter o' mine, and just promised to another man!  Thou'rt an
accomplice in forgery.  Thou sees the scamp on the sly!  Thou----'  He
paused, and then added, with furious scorn: 'Shalt speak o' this to
Henry Mynors?'

'I will tell him if you like,' she said proudly.

'Look thee here!' he hissed, 'if thou breathes a word o' this to Henry
Mynors, or any other man, I'll cut thy tongue out.  A daughter o' mine!
If thou breathes a word----'

'I shall not, father.'

It was finished; grey with frightful anger, Ephraim left the room.




CHAPTER XII

AT THE PRIORY

She was not to be pardoned: the offence was too monstrous, daring, and
final.  At the same time, the unappeasable ire of the old man tended to
weaken his power over her.  All her life she had been terrorised by the
fear of a wrath which had never reached the superlative degree until
that day.  Now that she had seen and felt the limit of his anger, she
became aware that she could endure it; the curse was heavy, and perhaps
more irksome than heavy, but she survived; she continued to breathe,
eat, drink, and sleep; her father's power stopped short of
annihilation.  Here, too, was a satisfaction: that things could not be
worse.  And still greater comfort lay in the fact that she had not only
accomplished the deliverance of Willie Price, but had secured absolute
secrecy concerning the episode.

The next day was Saturday, when, after breakfast, it was Ephraim's
custom to give Anna the weekly sovereign for housekeeping.

'Here, Agnes,' he said, turning in his armchair to face the child, and
drawing a sovereign from his waistcoat-pocket, 'take charge o' this,
and mind ye make it go as far as ye can.'  His tone conveyed a
subsidiary message: 'I am terribly angry, but I am not angry with you.
However, behave yourself.'

The child mechanically took the coin, scared by this proof of an
unprecedented domestic convulsion.  Anna, with a tightening of the
lips, rose and went into the kitchen.  Agnes followed, after a discreet
interval, and in silence gave up the sovereign.

'What is it all about, Anna?' she ventured to ask that night.

'Never mind,' said Anna curtly.

The question had needed some courage, for, at certain times, Agnes
would as easily have trifled with her father as with Anna.  From that
moment, with the passive fatalism characteristic of her years, Agnes'
spirits began to rise again to the normal level.  She accepted the new
situation, and fitted herself into it with a child's adaptability.  If
Anna naturally felt a slight resentment against this too impartial and
apparently callous attitude on the part of the child, she never showed
it.

Nearly a week later, Anna received a postcard from Beatrice announcing
her complete recovery, and the immediate return of her parents and
herself to Bursley.  That same afternoon, a cab encumbered with much
luggage passed up the street as Anna was fixing clean curtains in her
father's bedroom.  Beatrice, on the look-out, waved a hand and smiled,
and Anna responded to the signals.  She was glad now that the Suttons
had come back, though for several days she had almost forgotten their
existence.  On the Saturday afternoon, Mynors called.  Anna was in the
kitchen; she heard him scuffling with Agnes in the lobby, and then
talking to her father.  Three times she had seen him since her
disgrace, and each time the secret bitterness of her soul, despite
conscientious effort to repress it, had marred the meeting--it had been
plain, indeed, that she was profoundly disturbed; he had affected at
first not to observe the change in her, and she, anticipating his
questions, hinted briefly that the trouble was with her father, and had
no reference to himself, and that she preferred not to discuss it at
all; reassured, and too young in courtship yet to presume on a lover's
rights, he respected her wish, and endeavoured by every art to restore
her to equanimity.  This time, as she went to greet him in the parlour,
she resolved that he should see no more of the shadow.  He noticed
instantly the difference in her face.

'I've come to take you into Sutton's for tea--and for the evening,' he
said eagerly.  'You must come.  They are very anxious to see you.  I've
told your father,' he added.  Ephraim had vanished into his office.

'What did he say, Henry?' she asked timidly.

'He said you must please yourself, of course.  Come along, love.
Mustn't she, Agnes?'

Agnes concurred, and said that she would get her father's tea, and his
supper too.

'You will come,' he urged.  She nodded, smiling thoughtfully, and he
kissed her, for the first time in front of Agnes, who was filled with
pride at this proof of their confidence in her.

'I'm ready, Henry,' Anna said, a quarter of an hour later, and they
went across to Sutton's.

'Anna, tell me all about it,' Beatrice burst out when she and Anna had
fled to her bedroom.  'I'm so glad.  Do you love him really--truly?
He's dreadfully fond of you.  He told me so this morning; we had quite
a long chat in the market.  I think you're both very lucky, you know.'
She kissed Anna effusively for the third time.  Anna looked at her
smiling but silent.

'Well?' Beatrice said.

'What do you want me to say?'

'Oh!  You are the funniest girl, Anna, I ever met.  "What do you want
me to say," indeed!'  Beatrice added in a different tone: 'Don't
imagine this affair was the least bit of a surprise to us.  It wasn't.
The fact is, Henry had--oh! well, never mind.  Do you know, mother and
dad used to think there was something between Henry and me.  But there
wasn't, you know--not really.  I tell you that, so that you won't be
able to say you were kept in the dark.  When shall you be married,
Anna?'

'I haven't the least idea,' Anna replied, and began to question
Beatrice about her convalescence.

'I'm perfectly well,' Beatrice said.  'It's always the same.  If I
catch anything I catch it bad and get it over quickly.'

'Now, how long are you two chatterboxes going to stay here?'  It was
Mrs. Sutton who came into the room.  'Bee, you've got those
sewing-meeting letters to write.  Eh, Anna, but I'm glad of this.
You'll make him a good wife.  You two'll just suit each other.'

Anna could not but be impressed by this unaffected joy of her friends
in the engagement.  Her spirits rose, and once more she saw visions of
future happiness.  At tea, Alderman Sutton added his felicitations to
the rest, with that flattering air of intimate sympathy and
comprehension which some middle-aged men can adopt towards young girls.
The tea, made specially magnificent in honour of the betrothal, was
such a meal as could only have been compassed in Staffordshire or
Yorkshire--a high tea of the last richness and excellence, exquisitely
gracious to the palate, but ruthless in its demands on the stomach.  At
one end of the table, which glittered with silver, glass, and Longshaw
china, was a fowl which had been boiled for four hours; at the other, a
hot pork-pie, islanded in liquor, which might have satisfied a
regiment.  Between these two dishes were all the delicacies which
differentiate high tea from tea, and on the quality of which the
success of the meal really depends; hot pikelets, hot crumpets, hot
toast, sardines with tomatoes, raisin-bread, current-bread, seed-cake,
lettuce, home-made marmalade and home-made jams.  The repast occupied
over an hour, and even then not a quarter of the food was consumed.
Surrounded by all that good fare and good-will, with the Alderman on
her left, Henry on her right, and a bright fire in front of her, Anna
quickly caught the gaiety of the others.  She forgot everything but the
gladness of reunion, the joy of the moment, the luxurious comfort of
the house.  Conversation was busy with the doings of the Suttons at
Port Erin after Anna and Henry had left.  A listener would have caught
fragments like this:--'You know such-and-such a point....  No, not
there, over the hill.  Well, we hired a carriage and drove....  The
weather was simply....  Tom Kelly said he'd never....  And that little
guard on the railway came all the way down to the steamer....  Did you
see anything in the "Signal" about the actress being drowned?  Oh!  It
was awfully sad.  We saw the corpse just after....  Beatrice, will you
hush?'

'Wasn't it terrible about Titus Price?' Beatrice exclaimed.

'Eh, my!' sighed Mrs. Sutton, glancing at Anna.  'You can never tell
what's going to happen next.  I'm always afraid to go away for fear of
something happening.'

A silence followed.  When tea was finished Beatrice was taken away by
her mother to write the letters concerning the immediate resumption of
sewing-meetings, and for a little time Anna was left in the
drawing-room alone with the two men, who began to talk about the
affairs of the Prices.  It appeared that Mr. Sutton had been asked to
become trustee for the creditors under a deed of arrangement, and that
he had hopes of being able to sell the business as a going concern.  In
the meantime it would need careful management.

'Will Willie Price manage it?' Anna inquired.  The question seemed to
divert Henry and the Alderman, to afford them a contemptuous and
somewhat inimical amusement at the expense of Willie.

'No,' said the Alderman, quietly, but emphatically.

'Master William is fairly good on the works,' said Henry; 'but in the
office, I imagine, he is worse than useless.'

Grieved and confused, Anna bent down and moved a hassock in order to
hide her face.  The attitude of these men to Willie Price, that victim
of circumstances and of his own simplicity, wounded Anna inexpressibly.
She perceived that they could see in him only a defaulting debtor, that
his misfortune made no appeal to their charity.  She wondered that men
so warm-hearted and kind in some relations could be so hard in others.

'I had a talk with your father at the creditors' meeting yesterday,'
said the Alderman.  'You won't lose much.  Of course you've got a
preferential claim for six months' rent.'  He said this reassuringly,
as though it would give satisfaction.  Anna did not know what a
preferential claim might be, nor was she aware of any creditors'
meeting.  She wished ardently that she might lose as much as
possible--hundreds of pounds.  She was relieved when Beatrice swept in,
her mother following.

'Now, your worship,' said Beatrice to her father, 'seven stamps for
these letters, please.'  Anna glanced up inquiringly on hearing the
form of address.  'You don't mean to say that you didn't know that
father is going to be mayor this year?' Beatrice asked, as if shocked
at this ignorance of affairs.  'Yes, it was all settled rather late,
wasn't it, dad?  And the mayor-elect pretends not to care much, but
actually he is filled with pride, isn't he, dad?  As for the
mayoress----?'

'Eh, Bee!'  Mrs. Sutton stopped her, smiling; 'you'll tumble over that
tongue of yours some day.'

'Mother said I wasn't to mention it,' said Beatrice, 'lest you should
think we were putting on airs.'

'Nay, not I!' Mrs. Sutton protested.  'I said no such thing.  Anna
knows us too well for that.  But I'm not so set up with this mayor
business as some people will think I am.'

'Or as Beatrice is,' Mynors added.

At half-past eight, and again at nine, Anna said that she must go home;
but the Suttons, now frankly absorbed in the topic of the mayoralty,
their secret preoccupation, would not spoil the confidential talk which
had ensued by letting the lovers depart.  It was nearly half-past nine
before Anna and Henry stood on the pavement outside, and Beatrice,
after facetious farewells, had shut the door.

'Let us just walk round by the Manor Farm,' Henry pleaded.  'It won't
take more than a quarter of an hour or so.'

She agreed dutifully.  The footpath ran at right angles to Trafalgar
Road, past a colliery whose engine-fires glowed in the dark, moonless,
autumn night, and then across a field.  They stood on a knoll near the
old farmstead, that extraordinary and pathetic survival of a vanished
agriculture.  Immediately in front of them stretched acres of burning
ironstone--a vast tremulous carpet of flame woven in red, purple, and
strange greens.  Beyond were the skeleton-like silhouettes of
pit-heads, and the solid forms of furnace and chimney-shaft.  In the
distance a canal reflected the gigantic illuminations of Cauldon Bar
Ironworks.  It was a scene mysterious and romantic enough to kindle the
raptures of love, but Anna felt cold, melancholy, and apprehensive of
vague sorrows.  'Why am I so?' she asked herself, and tried in vain to
shake off the mood.

'What will Willie Price do if the business is sold?' she questioned
Mynors suddenly.

'Surely,' he said to soothe her, 'you aren't still worrying about that
misfortune.  I wish you had never gone near the inquest; the thing
seems to have got on your mind.'

'Oh, no!' she protested, with an air of cheerfulness.  'But I was just
wondering.'

'Well, Willie will have to do the best he can.  Get a place somewhere,
I suppose.  It won't be much, at the best.'

Had he guessed what perhaps hung on that answer, Mynors might have
given it in a tone less callous and perfunctory.  Could he have seen
the tightening of her lips, he might even afterwards have repaired his
error by some voluntary assurance that Willie Price should be watched
over with a benevolent eye and protected with a strong arm.  But how
was he to know that in misprizing Willie Price before her, he was
misprizing a child to its mother?  He had done something for Willie
Price, and considered that he had done enough.  His thoughts, moreover,
were on other matters.

'Do you remember that day we went up to the park?' he murmured fondly;
'that Sunday?  I have never told you that that evening I came out of
chapel after the first hymn, when I noticed you weren't there, and
walked up past your house.  I couldn't help it.  Something drew me.  I
nearly called in to see you.  Then I thought I had better not.'

'I saw you,' she said calmly.  His warmth made her feel sad.  'I saw
you stop at the gate.'

'You did?  But you weren't at the window?'

'I saw you through the glass of the front-door.'  Her voice grew
fainter, more reluctant.

'Then you were watching?'  In the dark he seized her with such
violence, and kissed her so vehemently, that she was startled out of
herself.

'Oh!  Henry!' she exclaimed.

'Call me Harry,' he entreated, his arm still round her waist; 'I want
you to call me Harry.  No one else does or ever has done, and no one
shall, now.'

'Harry,' she said deliberately, bracing her mind to a positive
determination.  She must please him, and she said it again: 'Harry;
yes, it has a nice sound.'

Ephraim sat reading the 'Signal' in the parlour when she arrived home
at five minutes to ten.  Imbued then with ideas of duty, submission,
and systematic kindliness, she had an impulse to attempt a
reconciliation with her father.

'Good-night, father,' she said, 'I hope I've not kept you up.'

He was deaf.

She went to bed resigned; sad, but not gloomy.  It was not for nothing
that during all her life she had been accustomed to infelicity.
Experience had taught her this: to be the mistress of herself.  She
knew that she could face any fact--even the fact of her dispassionate
frigidity under Mynors' caresses.  It was on the firm, almost rapturous
resolve to succour Willie Price, if need be, that she fell asleep.

The engagement, which had hitherto been kept private, became the theme
of universal gossip immediately upon the return of the Suttons from the
Isle of Man.  Two words let fall by Beatrice in the St. Luke's covered
market on Saturday morning had increased and multiplied till the whole
town echoed with the news.  Anna's private fortune rose as high as a
quarter of a million.  As for Henry Mynors, it was said that Henry
Mynors knew what he was about.  After all, he was like the rest.
Money, money!  Of course it was inconceivable that a fine, prosperous
figure of a man, such as Mynors, would have made up to _her_, if she
had not been simply rolling in money.  Well, there was one thing to be
said for young Mynors, he would put money to good use; you might rely
he would not hoard it up same as it had been hoarded up.  However, the
more saved, the more for young Mynors, so he needn't grumble.  It was
to be hoped he would make her dress herself a bit better--though indeed
it hadn't been her fault she went about so shabby; the old skinflint
would never allow her a penny of her own.  So tongues wagged.

The first Sunday was a tiresome ordeal for Anna, both at school and at
chapel.  'Well, I never!' seemed to be written like a note of
exclamation on every brow; the monotony of the congratulations fatigued
her as much as her involuntary efforts to grasp what each speaker had
left unsaid of innuendo, malice, envy or sycophancy.  Even the people
in the shops, during the next few days, could not serve her without
direct and curious reference to her private affairs.  The general
opinion that she was a cold and bloodless creature was strengthened by
her attitude at this period.  But the apathy which she displayed was
neither affected nor due to an excessive diffidence.  As she seemed, so
she felt.  She often wondered what would have happened to her if that
vague 'something' between Henry and Beatrice, to which Beatrice had
confessed, had ever taken definite shape.

'Hancock came back from Lancashire last night,' said Mynors, when he
arrived at Manor Terrace on the next Saturday afternoon.  Ephraim was
in the room, and Henry, evidently joyous and triumphant, addressed both
him and Anna.

'Is Hancock the commercial traveller?' Anna asked.  She knew that
Hancock was the commercial traveller, but she experienced a nervous
compulsion to make idle remarks in order to hide the breach of
intercourse between her father and herself.

'Yes,' said Mynors; 'he's had a magnificent journey.'

'How much?' asked the miser.

Henry named the amount of orders taken in a fortnight's journey.

'Humph!' the miser ejaculated.  'That's better than a bat in the eye
with a burnt stick.'  From him, this was the superlative of praise.
'You're making good money at any rate?'

'We are,' said Mynors.

'That reminds me,' Ephraim remarked gruffly.  'When dost think o'
getting wed?  I'm not much for long engagements, and so I tell ye.'  He
threw a cold glance sideways at Anna.  The idea penetrated her heart
like a stab: 'He wants to get me out of the house!'

'Well,' said Mynors, surprised at the question and the tone, and,
looking at Anna as if for an explanation: 'I had scarcely thought of
that.  What does Anna say?'

'I don't know,' she murmured; and then, more bravely, in a louder
voice, and with a smile: 'The sooner the better.'  She thought, in her
bitter and painful resentment: 'If he wants me to go, go I will.'

Henry tactfully passed on to another phase of the subject: 'I met Mr.
Sutton yesterday, and he was telling me of Price's house up at Toft
End.  It belonged to Mr. Price, but of course it was mortgaged up to
the hilt.  The mortgagees have taken possession, and Mr. Sutton said it
would be to let cheap at Christmas.  Of course Willie and old Sarah
Vodrey, the housekeeper, will clear out.  I was thinking it might do
for us.  It's not a bad sort of house, or, rather, it won't be when
it's repaired.'

'What will they ask for it?' Ephraim inquired.

'Twenty-five or twenty-eight.  It's a nice large house--four bedrooms,
and a very good garden.'

'Four bedrooms!' the miser exclaimed.  'What dost want wi' four
bedrooms?  You'd have for keep a servant.'

'Naturally we should keep a servant,' Mynors said, with calm politeness.

'You could get one o' them new houses up by th' park for fifteen pounds
as would do you well enough'; the miser protested against these dreams
of extravagance.

'I don't care for that part of the town,' said Mynors.  'It's too new
for my taste.'

After tea, when Henry and Anna went out for the Saturday evening
stroll, Mynors suddenly suggested: 'Why not go up and look through that
house of Price's?'

'Won't it seem like turning them out if we happen to take it?' she
asked.

'Turning them out!  Willie is bound to leave it.  What use is it to
him?  Besides, it's in the hands of the mortgagees now.  Why shouldn't
we take it just as well as anybody else, if it suits us?'

Anna had no reply, and she surrendered herself placidly enough to his
will; nevertheless she could not entirely banish a misgiving that
Willie Price was again to be victimised.  Infinitely more disturbing
than this illogical sensation, however, was the instinctive and sure
knowledge, revealed in a flash, that her father wished to be rid of
her.  So implacable, then, was his animosity against her!  Never, never
had she been so deeply hurt.  The wound, in fact, was so severe that at
first she felt only a numbness that reduced everything to unimportance,
robbing her of volition.  She walked up to Toft End as if walking in
her sleep.

Price's house, sometimes called Priory House, in accordance with a
legend that a priory had once occupied the site, stood in the middle of
the mean and struggling suburb of Toft End, which was flung up the
hillside like a ragged scarf.  Built of red brick, towards the end of
the eighteenth century, double-fronted, with small, evenly disposed
windows, and a chimney stack at either side, it looked westward over
the town smoke towards a horizon of hills.  It had a long, narrow
garden, which ran parallel with the road.  Behind it, adjoining, was a
small, disused potworks, already advanced in decay.  On the north side,
and enclosed by a brick wall which surrounded also the garden, was a
small orchard of sterile and withered fruit trees.  In parts the wall
had crumpled under the assaults of generations of boys, and from the
orchard, through the gaps, could be seen an expanse of grey-green
field, with a few abandoned pit-shafts scattered over it.  These
shafts, imperfectly protected by ruinous masonry, presented an
appearance strangely sinister and forlorn, raising visions in the mind
of dark and mysterious depths peopled with miserable ghosts of those
who had toiled there in the days when to be a miner was to be a slave.
The whole place, house and garden, looked ashamed and sad, with a
shabby mournfulness acquired gradually from its inmates during many
years.  But, nevertheless, the house was substantial, and the air on
that height fresh and pure.

Mynors rang in vain at the front door, and then they walked round the
house to the orchard, and discovered Sarah Vodrey taking in clothes
from a line--a diminutive and wasted figure, with scanty, grey hair, a
tiny face permanently soured, and bony hands contorted by rheumatism.

'My rheumatism's that bad,' she said in response to greetings, 'I can
scarce move about, and this house is a regular barracks to keep clean.
No; Willie's not in.  He's at th' works, as usual--Saturday like any
other day.  I'm by myself here all day and every day.  But I reckon
us'n be flitting soon, and me lived here eight-and-twenty year!  Praise
God, there's a mansion up there for me at last.  And not sorry shall I
be when He calls.'

'It must be very lonely for you, Miss Vodrey,' said Mynors.  He knew
exactly how to speak to this dame who lived her life like a fly between
two panes of glass, and who could find room in her head for only three
ideas, namely: that God and herself were on terms of intimacy; that she
was, and had always been, indispensable to the Price family; and that
her social status was far above that of a servant.  'It's a pity you
never married,' Mynors added.

'Me, marry!  What would _they_ ha' done without me?  No, I'm none for
marriage and never was.  I'd be shamed to be like some o' them
spinsters down at chapel, always hanging round chapel-yard on the
off-chance of a service, to catch that there young Mr. Sargent, the new
minister.  It's a sign of a hard winter, Miss Terrick, when the hay
runs after the horse, that's what I say.'

'Miss Tellwright and myself are in search of a house,' Mynors gently
interrupted the flow, and gave her a peculiar glance which she
appreciated.  'We heard you and Willie were going to leave here, and so
we came up just to look over the place, if it's quite convenient to
you.'

'Eh, I understand ye,' she said; 'come in.  But ye mun tak' things as
ye find 'em, Miss Terrick.'

Dismal and unkempt, the interior of the house matched the exterior.
The carpets were threadbare, the discoloured wall-papers hung loose on
the walls, the ceilings were almost black, the paint had nearly been
rubbed away from the woodwork; the exhausted furniture looked as if it
would fall to pieces in despair if compelled to face the threatened
ordeal of an auction-sale.  But to Anna the rooms were surprisingly
large, and there seemed so many of them!  It was as if she were
exploring an immense abode, like a castle, with odd chambers
continually showing themselves in unexpected places.  The upper story
was even less inviting than the ground-floor--barer, more chill,
utterly comfortless.

'This is the best bedroom,' said Miss Vodrey.  'And a rare big room
too!  It's not used now.  _He_ slept here.  Willie sleeps at back.'

'A very nice room,' Mynors agreed blandly, and measured it, as he had
done all the others, with a two-foot, entering the figures in his
pocket-book.

Anna's eye wandered uneasily across the room, with its dismantled bed
and decrepit mahogany suite.

'I'm glad he hanged himself at the works, and not here,' she thought.
Then she looked out at the window.  'What a splendid view!' she
remarked to Mynors.

She saw that he had taken a fancy to the house.  The sagacious fellow
esteemed it, not as it was, but as it would be, re-papered, re-painted,
re-furnished, the outer walls pointed, the garden stocked; everything
cleansed, brightened, renewed.  And there was indeed much to be said
for his fancy.  The house was large, with plenty of ground; the
boundary wall secured that privacy which young husbands and young wives
instinctively demand; the outlook was unlimited, the air the purest in
the Five Towns.  And the rent was low, because the great majority of
those who could afford such a house would never deign to exist in a
quarter so poverty-stricken and unfashionable.

After leaving the house they continued their walk up the hill, and then
turned off to the left on the high road from Hanbridge to Moorthorne.
The venerable but not dignified town lay below them, a huddled medley
of brown brick under a thick black cloud of smoke.  The gold angel of
the town-hall gleamed in the evening light, and the dark, squat tower
of the parish church, sole relic of the past stood out grim and
obdurate amid the featureless buildings which surrounded it.  To the
north and east miles of moorland, defaced by collieries and murky
hamlets, ran to the horizon.  Across the great field at their feet a
figure slouched along, past the abandoned pit-shafts.  They both
recognised the man.

'There's Willie Price going home!' said Mynors.

'He looks tired,' she said.  She was relieved that they had not met him
at the house.

'I say,' Mynors began earnestly, after a pause, 'why shouldn't we get
married soon, since the old gentleman seems rather to expect it?  He's
been rather awkward lately, hasn't he?'

This was the only reference made by Mynors to her father's temper.  She
nodded.  'How soon?' she asked.

'Well, I was just thinking.  Suppose, for the sake of argument, this
house turns out all right.  I couldn't get it thoroughly done up much
before the middle of January--couldn't begin till these people had
moved.  Suppose we said early in February?'

'Yes!'

'Could you be ready by that time?'

'Oh, yes,' she answered, 'I could be ready.'

'Well, why shouldn't we fix February, then?'

'There's the question of Agnes,' she said.

'Yes; and there will always be the question of Agnes.  Your father will
have to get a housekeeper.  You and I will be able to see after little
Agnes, never fear.'  So, with tenderness in his voice, he reassured her
on that point.

'Why not February?' she reflected.  'Why not to-morrow, as father wants
me out of the house?'

It was agreed.

'I've taken the Priory, subject to your approval,' Henry said, less
than a fortnight later.  From that time he invariably referred to the
place as the Priory.


It was on the very night after this eager announcement that the
approaching tragedy came one step nearer.  Beatrice, in a modest
evening-dress, with a white cloak--excited, hurried, and important--ran
in to speak to Anna.  The carriage was waiting outside.  She and her
father and mother had to attend a very important dinner at the mayor's
house at Hillport, in connection with Mr. Sutton's impending mayoralty.
Old Sarah Vodrey had just sent down a girl to say that she was unwell,
and would be grateful if Mrs. Sutton or Beatrice would visit her.  It
was a most unreasonable time for such a summons, but Sarah was a
fidgety old crotchet, and knew how frightfully good-natured Mrs. Sutton
was.  Would Anna mind going up to Toft End?  And would Anna come out to
the carriage and personally assure Mrs. Sutton that old Sarah should be
attended to?  If not, Beatrice was afraid her mother would take it into
her head to do something stupid.

'It's very good of you, Anna,' said Mrs. Sutton, when Anna went outside
with Beatrice.  'But I think I'd better go myself.  The poor old thing
may feel slighted if I don't, and Beatrice can well take my place at
this affair at Hillport, which I've no mind for.'  She was already half
out of the carriage.

'Nothing of the kind,' said Anna firmly, pushing her back.  'I shall be
delighted to go and do what I can.'

'That's right, Anna,' said the Alderman from the darkness of the
carriage, where his shirt-front gleamed; 'Bee said you'd go, and we're
much obliged to ye.'

'I expect it will be nothing,' said Beatrice, as the vehicle drove off;
'Sarah has served mother this trick before now.'

As Anna opened the garden-gate of the Priory she discerned a figure
amid the rank bushes, which had been allowed to grow till they almost
met across the narrow path leading to the front door of the house.

It was a thick and mysterious night--such a night as death chooses; and
Anna jumped in vague terror at the apparition.

'Who's there?' said a voice sharply.

'It's me,' said Anna.  'Miss Vodrey sent down to ask Mrs. Sutton to
come up and see her, but Mrs. Sutton had an engagement, so I came
instead.'

The figure moved forward; it was Willie Price.

He peered into her face, and she could see the mortal pallor of his
cheeks.

'Oh!' he exclaimed, 'it's Miss Tellwright, is it?  Will ye come in,
Miss Tellwright?'

She followed him with beating heart, alarmed, apprehensive.  The front
door stood wide open, and at the far end of the gloomy passage a faint
light shone from the open door of the kitchen.  'This way,' he said.
In the large, bare, stone-floored kitchen Sarah Vodrey sat limp and
with closed eyes in an old rocking-chair close to the fireless range.
The window, which gave on to the street, was open; through that window
Sarah, in her extremity, had called the child who ran down to Mrs.
Sutton's.  On the deal table were a dirty cup and saucer, a tea-pot,
bread, butter, and a lighted candle--sole illumination of the chamber.

'I come home, and I find this,' he said.

Daunted for a moment by the scene of misery, Anna could say nothing.

'I find this,' he repeated, as if accusing God of spitefulness; and he
lifted the candle to show the apparently insensible form of the woman.
Sarah's wrinkled and seamed face had the flush of fever, and the
features were drawn into the expression of a terrible anxiety; her
hands hung loose; she breathed like a dog after a run.

'I wanted her to have the doctor yesterday,' he said, 'but she
wouldn't.  Ever since you and Mr. Mynors called she's been cleaning the
house down.  She said you'd happen be coming again soon, and the place
wasn't fit to be seen.  No use me arguing with her.'

'You had better run for a doctor,' Anna said.

'I was just going off when you came.  She's been complaining more of
her rheumatism, and pain in her hips, lately.'

'Go now; fetch Mr. Macpherson, and call at our house and say I shall
stay here all night.  Wait a moment.'  Seeing that he was exhausted
from lack of food, she cut a thick piece of bread-and-butter.  'Eat
this as you go,' she said.

'I can't eat; it'll choke me.'

'Let it choke you,' she said.  'You've got to swallow it.'

Child of a hundred sorrows, he must be treated as a child.  As soon as
Willie was gone she took off her hat and jacket, and lit a lamp; there
was no gas in the kitchen.

'What's that light?' the old woman asked peevishly, rousing herself and
sitting up.  'I doubt I'll be late with Willie's tea.  Eh, Miss
Terrick, what's amiss?'

'You're not quite well, Miss Vodrey,' Anna answered.  'If you'll show
me your room, I'll see you into bed.'  Without giving her a moment for
hesitation, Anna seized the feeble creature under the arms, and so,
coaxing, supporting, carrying, got her to bed.  At length she lay on
the narrow mattress, panting, exhausted.  It was Sarah's final effort.

Anna lit fires in the kitchen and in the bedroom, and when Willie
returned with Dr. Macpherson, water was boiling and tea made.

'You'd better get a woman in,' said the doctor curtly, in the kitchen,
when he had finished his examination of Sarah.  'Some neighbour for
to-night, and I'll send a nurse up from the cottage-hospital early
to-morrow morning.  Not that it will be the least use.  She must have
been dying for the last two days at least.  She's got pericarditis and
pleurisy.  She's breathing I don't know how many to the minute, and her
temperature is just about as high as it can be.  It all follows from
rheumatism, and then taking cold.  Gross carelessness and neglect all
through!  I've no patience with such work.'  He turned angrily to
Willie.  'I don't know what on earth you were thinking of, Mr. Price,
not to send for me earlier.'

Willie, abashed and guilty, found nothing to say.  His eye had the meek
wistfulness of Holman Hunt's 'Scapegoat.'

'Mr. Price wanted her to have the doctor,' said Anna, defending him
with warmth; 'but she wouldn't.  He is out at the works all day till
late at night.  How was he to know how she was?  She could walk about.'

The tall doctor glanced at Anna in surprise, and at once modified his
tone.  'Yes,' he said, 'that's the curious thing.  It passes me how she
managed to get about.  But there is no knowing what an obstinate woman
won't force herself to do.  I'll send the medicine up to-night, and
come along myself with the nurse early to-morrow.  Meantime, keep
carefully to my instructions.'

That night remains for ever fixed in Anna's memory: the grim rooms,
echoing and shadowy; the countless journeys up and down dark stairs and
passages; Willie sitting always immovable in the kitchen, idle because
there was nothing for him to do; Sarah incessantly panting on the
truckle-bed; the hired woman from up the street, buxom, kindly, useful,
but fatuous in the endless monotony of her commiserations.

Towards morning, Sarah Vodrey gave sign of a desire to talk.

'I've fought the fight,' she murmured to Anna, who alone was in the
bedroom with her, 'I've fought the fight; I've kept the faith.  In that
box there ye'll see a purse.  There's seventeen pounds six in it.  That
will pay for the funeral, and Willie must have what's over.  There
would ha' been more for the lad, but he never paid me no wages this two
years past.  I never troubled him.'

'Don't tell Willie that,' Anna said impetuously.

'Eh, bless ye, no!' said the dying drudge, and then seemed to doze.

Anna went to the kitchen, and sent the woman upstairs.

'How is she?' asked Willie, without stirring.  Anna shook her head.
'Neither her nor me will be here much longer, I'm thinking,' he said,
smiling wearily.

'What?' she exclaimed, startled.

'Mr. Sutton has arranged to sell our business as a going-concern--some
people at Turnhill are buying it.  I shall go to Australia; there's no
room for me here.  The creditors have promised to allow me twenty-five
pounds, and I can get an assisted passage.  Bursley'll know me no more.
But--but--I shall always remember you and what you've done.'

She longed to kneel at his feet, and to comfort him, and to cry: 'It is
I who have ruined you--driven your father to cheating his servant, to
crime, to suicide; driven you to forgery, and turned you out of your
house which your old servant killed herself in making clean for me.  I
have wronged you, and I love you like a mother because I have wronged
you and because I saved you from prison.'

But she said nothing except: 'Some of us will miss you.'

The next day Sarah Vodrey died--she who had never lived save in the
fetters of slavery and fanaticism.  After fifty years of ceaseless
labour, she had gained the affection of one person, and enough money to
pay for her own funeral.  Willie Price took a cheap lodging with the
woman who had been called in on the night of Sarah's collapse.  Before
Christmas he was to sail for Melbourne.  The Priory, deserted, gave up
its rickety furniture to a van from Hanbridge, where, in an
auction-room, the frail sticks lost their identity in a medley of other
sticks, and ceased to be.  Then the bricklayer, the plasterer, the
painter, and the paper-hanger came to the Priory, and whistled and sang
in it.




CHAPTER XIII

THE BAZAAR

The Wesleyan Bazaar, the greatest undertaking of its kind ever known in
Bursley, gradually became a cloud which filled the entire social
horizon.  Mrs. Sutton, organiser of the Sunday-school stall, pressed
all her friends into the service, and a fortnight after the death of
Sarah Vodrey, Anna and even Agnes gave much of their spare time to the
work, which was carried on under pressure increasing daily as the final
moments approached.  This was well for Anna, in that it diverted her
thoughts by keeping her energies fully engaged.  One morning, however,
it occurred to Mrs. Sutton to reflect that Anna, at such a period of
life, should be otherwise employed.  Anna had called at the Suttons' to
deliver some finished garments.

'My dear,' she said, 'I am very much obliged to you for all this
industry.  But I've been thinking that as you are to be married in
February you ought to be preparing your things.'

'My things!' Anna repeated idly; and then she remembered Mynors'
phrase, on the hill, 'Can you be ready by that time?'

'Yes,' said Mrs. Sutton; 'but possibly you've been getting forward with
them on the quiet.'

'Tell me,' said Anna, with an air of interest; 'I've meant to ask you
before: Is it the bride's place to provide all the house-linen, and
that sort of thing?'

'It was in my day; but those things alter so.  The bride took all the
house-linen to her husband, and as many clothes for herself as would
last a year; that was the rule.  We used to stitch everything at home
in those days--everything; and we had what we called a "bottom drawer"
to store them in.  As soon as a girl passed her fifteenth birthday, she
began to sew for the "bottom drawer."  But all those things change so,
I dare say it's different now.'

'How much will it cost to buy everything, do you think?' Anna asked.

Just then Beatrice entered the room.

'Beatrice, Anna is inquiring how much it will cost to buy her
trousseau, and the house-linen.  What do you say?'

'Oh!' Beatrice replied, without any hesitation, 'a couple of hundred at
least.'

Mrs. Sutton, reading Anna's face, smiled reassuringly.  'Nonsense, Bee!
I dare say you could do it on a hundred with care, Anna.'

'Why should Anna want to do it with care?' Beatrice asked curtly.

Anna went straight across the road to her father, and asked him for a
hundred pounds of her own money.  She had not spoken to him, save under
necessity, since the evening spent at the Suttons'.

'What's afoot now?' he questioned savagely.

'I must buy things for the wedding--clothes and things, father.'

'Ay! clothes! clothes!  What clothes dost want?  A few pounds will
cover them.'

'There'll be all the linen for the house.'

'Linen for----  It's none thy place for buy that.'

'Yes, father, it is.'

'I say it isna',' he shouted.

'But I've asked Mrs. Sutton, and she says it is.'

'What business an' ye for go blabbing thy affairs all over Bosley?  I
say it isna' thy place for buy linen, and let that be sufficient.  Go
and get dinner.  It's nigh on twelve now.'

That evening, when Agnes had gone to bed, she resumed the struggle.

'Father, I must have that hundred pounds.  I really must.  I mean it.'

'_Thou means it_!  What?'

'I mean I must have a hundred pounds.'

'I'd advise thee to tak' care o' thy tongue, my lass.  _Thou means it_!'

'But you needn't give it me all at once,' she pursued.

He gazed at her, glowering.

'I shanna' give it thee.  It's Henry's place for buy th' house-linen.'

'Father, it isn't.'  Her voice broke, but only for an instant.  'I'm
asking you for my own money.  You seem to want to make me miserable
just before my wedding.'

'I wish to God thou 'dst never seen Henry Mynors.  It's given thee
pride and made thee undutiful.'

'I'm only asking you for my own money.'

Her calm insistence maddened him.  Jumping up from his chair, he
stamped out of the room, and she heard him strike a match in his
office.  Presently he returned, and threw angrily on to the table in
front of her a cheque-book and pass-book.  The deposit-book she had
always kept herself for convenience of paying into the bank.

'Here,' he said scornfully, 'tak' thy traps and ne'er speak to me
again.  I wash my hands of ye.  Tak' 'em and do what ye'n a mind.
Chuck thy money into th' cut[1] for aught I care.'

The next evening Henry came up.  She observed that his face had a grave
look, but intent on her own difficulties she did not remark on it, and
proceeded at once to do what she resolved to do.  It was a cold night
in November, yet the miser, wrathfully sullen, chose to sit in his
office without a fire.  Agnes was working sums in the kitchen.

'Henry,' Anna began, 'I've had a difficulty with father, and I must
tell you.'

'Not about the wedding, I hope,' he said.

'It was about money.  Of course, Henry, I can't get married without a
lot of money.'

'Why not?' he inquired.

'I've my own things to get,' she said, 'and I've all the house-linen to
buy.'

'Oh!  You buy the house-linen, do you?'  She saw that he was relieved
by that information.

'Of course.  Well, I told father I must have a hundred pounds, and he
wouldn't give it me.  And when I stuck to him he got angry--you know he
can't bear to see money spent--and at last he get a little savage and
gave me my bank-books, and said he'd have nothing more to do with my
money.'

Henry's face broke into a laugh, and Anna was obliged to smile.
'Capital!' he said.  'Couldn't be better.'

'I want you to tell me how much I've got in the bank,' she said.  'I
only know I'm always paying in odd cheques.'

He examined the three books.  'A very tidy bit,' he said; 'something
over two hundred and fifty pounds.  So you can draw cheques at your
ease.'

'Draw me a cheque for twenty pounds,' she said; and then, while he
wrote: 'Henry, after we're married, I shall want you to take charge of
all this.'

'Yes, of course; I will do that, dear.  But your money will be yours.
There ought to be a settlement on you.  Still, if your father says
nothing, it is not for me to say anything.'

'Father will say nothing--now,' she said.  'You've never shown any
interest in it, Henry; but as we're talking of money, I may as well
tell you that father says I'm worth fifty thousand pounds.'

The man of business was astonished and enraptured beyond measure.  His
countenance shone with delight.

'Surely not!' he protested formally.

'That's what father told me, and he made me read a list of shares, and
so on.'

'We will go slow, to begin with,' said Mynors solemnly.  He had not
expected more than fifteen, or twenty thousand pounds, and even this
sum had dazzled his imagination.  He was glad that he had only taken
the house at Toft End on a yearly tenancy.  He now saw himself the
dominant figure in all the Five Towns.

Later in the evening he disclosed, perfunctorily, the matter which had
been a serious weight on his mind when he entered the house, but which
this revelation of vast wealth had diminished to a trifle.  Titus Price
had been the treasurer of the building fund which the bazaar was
designed to assist.  Mynors had assumed the position of the dead man,
and that day, in going through the accounts, he had discovered that a
sum of fifty pounds was missing.

'It's a dreadful thing for Willie, if it gets about,' he said; 'a tale
of that sort would follow him to Australia.'

'Oh, Henry, it is!' she exclaimed, sorrow-stricken, 'but we mustn't let
it get about.  Let us pay the money ourselves.  You must enter it in
the books and say nothing.'

'That is impossible,' he said firmly.  'I can't alter the accounts.  At
least I can't alter the bank-book and the vouchers.  The auditor would
detect it in a minute.  Besides, I should not be doing my duty if I
kept a thing like this from the Superintendent-minister.  He, at any
rate, must know, and perhaps the stewards.'

'But you can urge them to say nothing.  Tell them that you will make it
good.  I will write a cheque at once.'

'I had meant to find the fifty myself,' he said.  It was a peddling sum
to him now.

'Let me pay half, then,' she asked.

'If you like,' he urged, smiling faintly at her eagerness.  'The thing
is bound to be kept quiet--it would create such a frightful scandal.
Poor old chap!' he added, carelessly, 'I suppose he was hard run, and
meant to put it back--as they all do mean.'

But it was useless for Mynors to affect depression of spirits, or
mournful sympathy with the errors of a dead sinner.  The fifty thousand
danced a jig in his brain that night.

Anna was absorbed in contemplating the misfortune of Willie Price.  She
prayed wildly that he might never learn the full depth of his father's
fall.  The miserable robbery of Sarah's wages was buried for evermore,
and this new delinquency, which all would regard as flagrant sacrilege,
must be buried also.  A soul less loyal than Anna's might have feared
that Willie, a self-convicted forger, had been a party to the
embezzlement; but Anna knew that it could not be so.

It was characteristic of Mynors' cautious prudence that, the first
intoxication having passed, he made no further reference of any kind to
Anna's fortune.  The arrangements for their married life were planned
on a scale which ignored the fifty thousand pounds.  For both their
sakes he wished to avoid all friction with the miser, at any rate until
his status as Anna's husband would enable him to enforce her rights, if
that should be necessary, with dignity and effectiveness.  He did not
precisely anticipate trouble, but the fact had not escaped him that
Ephraim still held the whole of Anna's securities.  He was in no hurry
to enlarge his borders.  He knew that there were twenty-four hours in
every day, three hundred and sixty-five days in every year, and thirty
good years in life still left to him; and therefore that there would be
ample time, after the wedding, for the execution of his purposes in
regard to that fifty thousand pounds.  Meanwhile, he told Anna that he
had set aside two hundred pounds for the purchase of furniture for the
Priory--a modest sum; but he judged it sufficient.  His method was to
buy a piece at a time, always second-hand, but always good.  The
bargain-hunt was up, and Anna soon yielded to its mild satisfactions.
In the matter of her trousseau and the house-linen, Anna, having
obtained the needed money--at so dear a cost--found yet another
obstacle in the imminent bazaar, which occupied Mrs. Sutton and
Beatrice so completely that they could not contrive any opportunity to
assist her in shopping.  It was decided between them that every article
should be bought ready-made and seamed, and that the first week of the
New Year, if indeed Mrs. Sutton survived the bazaar, should be entirely
and absolutely devoted to Anna's business.

At nights, when she had leisure to think, Anna was astonished how
during the day she had forgotten her preoccupations in the activities
precendent to the bazaar, or in choosing furniture with Mynors.  But
she never slept without thinking of Willie Price, and hoping that no
further disaster might overtake him.  The incident of the embezzled
fifty pounds had been closed, and she had given a cheque for
twenty-five pounds to Mynors.  He had acquainted the minister with the
facts, and Mr. Banks had decided that the two circuit stewards must be
informed.  Beyond these the scandalous secret was not to go.  But Anna
wondered whether a secret shared by five persons could long remain a
secret.

The bazaar was a triumphant and unparalleled success, and, of the seven
stalls, the Sunday-school stall stood first each night in the nightly
returns.  The scene in the town-hall, on the fourth and final night, a
Saturday, was as delirious and gay as a carnival.  Four hundred and
twenty pounds had been raised up to tea-time, and it was the
impassioned desire of everyone to achieve five hundred.  The price of
admission had been reduced to threepence, in order that the artisan
might enter and spend his wages in an excellent cause.  The seven
stalls, ranged round the room like so many bowers of beauty, draped and
frilled and floriated, and still laden with countless articles of use
and ornament, were continually reinforced with purchasers by emissaries
canvassing the crowd which filled the middle of the paper-strewn floor.
The horse was not only taken to the water, but compelled to drink; and
many a man who, outside, would have laughed at the risk of being
robbed, was robbed openly, shamelessly, under the gaze of ministers and
class-leaders.  Bouquets were sold at a shilling each, and at the
refreshment stall a glass of milk cost sixpence.  The noise rivalled
that of a fair; there was no quiet anywhere, save in the farthest
recess of each stall, where the lady in supreme charge of it, like a
spider in the middle of its web, watched customers and cash-box with
equal cupidity.

Mrs. Sutton, at seven o'clock, had not returned from tea, and Anna and
Beatrice, who managed the Sunday-school stall in her absence, feared
that she had at last succumbed under the strain.  But shortly
afterwards she hurried back breathless to her place.

'See that, Anna?  It will be reckoned in our returns,' she said,
exhibiting a piece of paper.  It was Ephraim's cheque for twenty-five
pounds promised months ago, but on a condition which had not been
fulfilled.

'She has the secret of persuading him,' thought Anna.  'Why have I
never found it?'

Then Agnes, in a new white frock, came up with three shillings,
proceeds of bouquets.

'But you must take that to the flower-stall, my pet,' said Mrs. Sutton.

'Can't I give it to you?' the child pleaded.  'I want your stall to be
the best.'

Mynors arrived next, with something concealed in tissue-paper.  He
removed the paper, and showed, in a frame of crimson plush, a common
white plate decorated with a simple band and line, and a monogram in
the centre--'A.T.'  Anna blushed, recognising the plate which she had
painted that afternoon in July at Mynors' works.

'Can you sell this?' Mynors asked Mrs. Sutton.

'I'll try to,' said Mrs. Sutton doubtfully--not in the secret.  'What's
it meant for?'

'Try to sell it to me,' said Mynors.

'Well,' she laughed, 'what will you give?'

'A couple of sovereigns.'

'Make it guineas.'

He paid the money, and requested Anna to keep the plate for him.

At nine o'clock it was announced that, though raffling was forbidden,
the bazaar would be enlivened by an auction.  A licensed auctioneer was
brought, and the sale commenced.  The auctioneer, however, failed to
attune himself to the wild spirit of the hour, and his professional
efforts would have resulted in a fiasco had not Mynors, perceiving the
danger, leaped to the platform and masterfully assumed the hammer.
Mynors surpassed himself in the kind of wit that amuses an excited
crowd, and the auction soon monopolised the attention of the room; it
was always afterwards remembered as the crowning success of the bazaar.
The incredible man took ten pounds in twenty minutes.  During this
episode Anna, who had been left alone in the stall, first noticed
Willie Price in the room.  His ship sailed on the Monday, but steerage
passengers had to be aboard on Sunday, and he was saying good-bye to a
few acquaintances.  He seemed quite cheerful, as he walked about with
his hands in his pockets, chatting with this one and that; it was the
false and hysterical gaiety that precedes a final separation.  As soon
as he saw Anna he came towards her.

'Well, good-bye, Miss Tellwright,' he said jauntily.  'I leave for
Liverpool to-morrow morning.  Wish me luck.'

Nothing more; no word, no accent, to recall the terrible but sublime
past.

'I do,' she answered.  They shook hands.  Others approaching, he
drifted away.  Her glance followed him like a beneficent influence.

For three days she had carried in her pocket an envelope containing a
bank-note for a hundred pounds, intending by some device to force it on
him as a parting gift.  Now the last chance was lost, and she had not
even attempted this difficult feat of charity.  Such futility, she
reflected, self-scorning, was of a piece with her life.  'He hasn't
really gone.  He hasn't really gone,' she kept repeating, and yet knew
well that he had gone.

'Do you know what they are saying, Anna?' said Beatrice, when, after
eleven o'clock, the bazaar was closed to the public, and the
stall-holders and their assistants were preparing to depart, their
movements hastened by the stern aspect of the town-hall keeper.

'No.  What?' said Anna; and in the same moment guessed.

'They say old Titus Price embezzled fifty pounds from the building
fund, and Henry made it up, privately, so that there shouldn't be a
scandal.  Just fancy!  Do you believe it?'

The secret was abroad.  She looked round the room, and saw it in every
face.

'Who says?' Anna demanded fiercely.

'It's all over the place.  Miss Dickinson told me.'

'You will be glad to know, ladies,' Mynors' voice sang out from the
platform, 'that the total proceeds, so far as we can calculate them
now, exceed five hundred and twenty-five pounds.'

There was clapping of hands, which died out suddenly.

'Now Agnes,' Anna called, 'come along, quick; you're as white as a
sheet.  Good-night, Mrs. Sutton; good-night, Bee.'

Mynors was still occupied on the platform.

The town-hall keeper extinguished some of the lights.  The bazaar was
over.



[1] _Cut_: canal.




CHAPTER XIV

END OF A SIMPLE SOUL

The next morning, at half-past seven, Anna was standing in the
garden-doorway of the Priory.  The sun had just risen, the air was
cold; roof and pavement were damp; rain had fallen, and more was to
fall.  A door opened higher up the street, and Willie Price came out,
carrying a small bag.  He turned to speak to some person within the
house, and then stepped forward.  As he passed Anna she sprang forth.

'Oh!' she cried, 'I had just come up here to see if the workmen had
locked up properly.  We have some of our new furniture in the house,
you know.'  She was as red as the sun over Hillport.

He glanced at her.  'Have _you_ heard?' he asked simply.

'About what?' she whispered.

'About my poor old father.'

'Yes.  I was hoping--hoping you would never know.'

By a common impulse they went into the garden of the Priory, and he
shut the door.

'Never know?' he repeated.  'Oh! they took care to tell me.'

A silence followed.

'Is that your luggage?' she inquired.  He lifted up the handbag, and
nodded.

'All of it?'

'Yes,' he said.  'I'm only an emigrant.'

'I've got a note here for you,' she said.  'I should have posted it to
the steamer; but now you can take it yourself.  I want you not to read
it till you get to Melbourne.'

'Very well,' he said, and crumpled the proffered envelope into his
pocket.  He was not thinking of the note at all.  Presently he asked:
'Why didn't you tell me about my father?  If I had to hear it, I'd
sooner have heard it from you.'

'You must try to forget it,' she urged him.  'You are not your father.'

'I wish I had never been born,' he said.  'I wish I'd gone to prison.'

Now was the moment when, if ever, the mother's influence should be
exerted.

'Be a man,' she said softly.  'I did the best I could for you.  I shall
always think of you, in Australia, getting on.'

She put a hand on his shoulder.  'Yes,' she said again, passionately:
'I shall always remember you--always.'

The hand with which he touched her arm shook like an old man's hand.
As their eyes met in an intense and painful gaze, to her, at least, it
was revealed that they were lovers.  What he had learnt in that instant
can only be guessed from his next action....


Anna ran out of the garden into the street, and so home, never looking
behind to see if he pursued his way to the station.

Some may argue that Anna, knowing she loved another man, ought not to
have married Mynors.  But she did not reason thus; such a notion never
even occurred to her.  She had promised to marry Mynors, and she
married him.  Nothing else was possible.  She who had never failed in
duty did not fail then.  She who had always submitted and bowed the
head, submitted and bowed the head then.  She had sucked in with her
mother's milk the profound truth that a woman's life is always a
renunciation, greater or less.  Hers by chance was greater.  Facing the
future calmly and genially, she took oath with herself to be a good
wife to the man whom, with all his excellences, she had never loved.
Her thoughts often dwelt lovingly on Willie Price, whom she deemed to
be pursuing in Australia an honourable and successful career, quickened
at the outset by her hundred pounds.  This vision of him was her stay.
But neither she nor anyone in the Five Towns or elsewhere ever heard of
Willie Price again.  And well might none hear!  The abandoned pitshaft
does not deliver up its secret.  And so--the Bank of England is the
richer by a hundred pounds unclaimed, and the world the poorer by a
simple and meek soul stung to revolt only in its last hour.




_Jamieson & Munro, Ltd., Printers, Stirling._




  Uniform with this Volume


   36 De Profundis                                          Oscar Wilde
   37 Lord Arthur Savile's Crime                            Oscar Wilde
   38 Selected Poems                                        Oscar Wilde
   39 An Ideal Husband                                      Oscar Wilde
   40 Intentions                                            Oscar Wilde
   41 Lady Windermere's Fan                                 Oscar Wilde
   42 Charmides and other Poems                             Oscar Wilde
   43 Harvest Home                                          E. V. Lucas
   44 A Little of Everything                                E. V. Lucas
   45 Vallima Letters                            Robert Louis Stevenson
   46 Hills and the Sea                                  Hilaire Belloc
   47 The Blue Bird                                 Maurice Maeterlinck
   50 Charles Dickens                                  G. K. Chesterton
   53 Letters from Self-Made Merchant to his Son  George Horace Larimer
   54 The Life of John Ruskin                         W. G. Collingwood
   57 Sevastopol and other Stories                          Leo Tolstoy
   58 The Lore of the Honey-Bee                        Tickner Edwardes
   60 From Midshipman to Field Marshal                  Sir Evelyn Wood
   63 Oscar Wilde                                        Arthur Ransome
   64 The Vicar of Morwenstow                           S. Baring-Gould
   65 Old Country Life                                  S. Baring-Gould
   76 Home Life in France                             M. Betham-Edwards
   77 Selected Prose                                        Oscar Wilde
   78 The Best of Lamb                                      E. V. Lucas
   80 Selected Letters                           Robert Louis Stevenson
   83 Reason and Belief                                Sir Oliver Lodge
   85 The Importance of Being Earnest                       Oscar Wilde
   91 Social Evils and their Remedy                         Leo Tolstoy
   93 The Substance of Faith                           Sir Oliver Lodge
   94 All Things Considered                            G. K. Chesterton
   95 The Mirror of the Sea                               Joseph Conrad
   96 A Picked Company                                   Hilaire Belloc
  116 The Survival of Man                              Sir Oliver Lodge
  126 Science from an Easy Chair                      Sir Ray Lankester
  141 Variety Lane                                          E. V. Lucas
  144 A Shilling for my Thoughts                       G. K. Chesterton
  146 A Woman of No Importance                              Oscar Wilde
  149 A Shepherd's Life                                    W. H. Hudson
  193 On Nothing                                         Hilaire Belloc
  300 Jane Austen and her Times                            G. E. Mitton
  114 Select Essays                                 Maurice Maeterlinck
  218 R. L. S.                                             Francis Watt
  223 Two Generations                                       Leo Tolstoy
  126 On Everything                                      Hilaire Belloc
  934 Records and Reminiscences                     Sir Francis Burnand
  253 My Childhood and Boyhood                              Leo Tolstoy
  254 On Something                                       Hilaire Belloc


  A Selection only.


  Uniform with this Volume


    1 The Mighty Atom                                     Marie Corelli
    2 Jane                                                Marie Corelli
    3 Boy                                                 Marie Corelli
    4 Spanish Gold                                     G. A. Birmingham
    5 The Search Party                                 G. A. Birmingham
    6 Teresa of Watling Street                           Arnold Bennett
    9 The Unofficial Honeymoon                            Dolf Wyllarde
   12 The Demon                              C. N. and A. M. Williamson
   17 Joseph                                                Frank Danby
   18 Round the Red Lamp                             Sir A. Conan Doyle
   20 Light Freights                                       W. W. Jacobs
   22 The Long Road                                        John Oxenham
   71 The Gates of Wrath                                 Arnold Bennett
   72 Short Cruises                                        W. W. Jacobs
   81 The Card                                           Arnold Bennett
   87 Lalage's Lovers                                  G. A. Birmingham
   93 White Fang                                            Jack London
  105 The Wallet of Kai Lung                              Ernest Bramah
  108 The Adventures of Dr. Whitty                     G. A. Birmingham
  113 Lavender and Old Lace                                 Myrtle Reed
  115 Old Rose and Silver                                   Myrtle Reed
  122 The Double Life of Mr. Alfred Burton        E. Phillips Oppenheim
  125 The Regent                                         Arnold Bennett
  127 Sally                                            Dorothea Conyers
  129 The Lodger                                    Mrs. Belloc Lowndes
  135 A Spinner In the Sun                                  Myrtle Reed
  137 The Mystery of Dr. Fu-Manchu                           Sax Rohmer
  139 The Golden Centipede                                Louise Gerard
  140 The Love Pirate                        C. N. and A. M. Williamson
  143 The Way of these Women                      E. Phillips Oppenheim
  143 Sandy Married                                    Dorothea Conyers
  145 Chance                                              Joseph Conrad
  148 Flower of the Dusk                                    Myrtle Reed
  150 The Gentleman Adventurer                             H. C. Bailey
  154 The Hyena of Kallu                                  Louise Gerard
  190 The Happy Hunting Ground                        Mrs. Alice Perrin
  191 My Lady of Shadows                                   John Oxenham
  211 Max Carrados                                        Ernest Bramah
  212 Under Western Eyes                                  Joseph Conrad
  213 The Kloof Bride                                  Ernest Glanville
  215 Mr. Grex of Monte Carlo                     E. Phillips Oppenheim
  216 The Wonder of Love                                 E. M. Albanesi
  217 A Weaver of Dreams                                    Myrtle Reed
  219 The Family                                        Elinor Mordaunt
  220 A Heritage of Peril                               A. W. Marchmont
  221 The Kinsman                                         Mrs. Sidgwick
  222 Emmanuel Burden                                    Hilaire Belloc
  224 Broken Shackles                                      John Oxenham
  225 A Knight of Spain                                  Marjorie Bowen
  227 Byeways                                            Robert Hichens
  228 Gossamer                                         G. A. Birmingham
  230 The Salving of a Derelict                           Maurice Drake
  231 Cameos                                              Marie Corelli
  232 The Happy Valley                                     B. M. Croker
  245 The Shop Girl                          C. N. and A. M. Williamson
  250 The Lost Regiment                                Ernest Glanville
  261 Tarzan of the Apes                           Edgar Rice Burroughs



  A Selection only.









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