Anna of the Five Towns Part 34

'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 pa.s.ses 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 pa.s.sages; 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 a.s.sisted pa.s.sage. 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 ident.i.ty 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 st.i.tch 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 pa.s.sed 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 rea.s.suringly. '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?'