Anna of the Five Towns. Bennett Arnold

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СКАЧАТЬ 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

       Table of Contents

      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 25l. to 60l. 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, СКАЧАТЬ