Anna of the Five Towns Part 16

'Very,' Anna a.s.sented 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 t.i.tus Price sent up?' he asked at length, gulping down the last of the water.

'Sent up?'

'Yes. Art fond, la.s.s? 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 t.i.tus 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 t.i.tus Price and Willie on Sunday, she merely demanded the money, omitting the threat. Her hand trembled as she pa.s.sed 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 s.h.i.+rt-sleeves, who is not actually a producer, such as a clerk or a pretentious foreman.

[2] _Saggars_: large oval receptacles of coa.r.s.e 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 att.i.tude 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 compa.s.sion. 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 cla.s.s 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-a.n.a.lysis, 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, blus.h.i.+ng.

'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.