Anna of the Five Towns Part 12

'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 ap.r.o.n 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 d.i.c.kinson, whom Anna slightly knew. The other, being empty, was a.s.signed 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 d.i.c.kinson, who was st.i.tching 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 st.i.tched 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-a-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 apt.i.tude 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 rea.s.sured 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 d.i.c.kinson, who offered a remark about the weather. Miss d.i.c.kinson was head-a.s.sistant 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 d.i.c.kinson supported her mother, and was a pattern to her s.e.x. 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 d.i.c.kinson 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 d.i.c.kinson, 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 circ.u.mstances, 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 d.i.c.kinson, 'I am.'

'Rather a novelty, isn't it?' Miss d.i.c.kinson 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 d.i.c.kinson 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 d.i.c.kinson 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 d.i.c.kinson'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 d.i.c.kinson 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 d.i.c.kinson smiled pleasantly. She was thirty-five years of age. Twenty of those years she had pa.s.sed 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 G.o.d 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 d.i.c.kinson, Anna obeyed, creeping on tiptoe across the intervening s.p.a.ce. '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 mult.i.tudes 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 s.e.x, turned with welcoming smiles. 'A greeting to you all,' the minister e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed 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 archaeological, 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 Inst.i.tution was always viewed with munic.i.p.al 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.