Anna of the Five Towns · Chapter 7 (1/3)

VII

The Sewing Meeting

On an afternoon ten days later, Mr. Sutton’s coachman, Barrett by name, arrived at Ephraim Tellwright’s backdoor 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:

“Mother gives tea to the Sunday-school Sewing Meeting here tomorrow. 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.

“They want me to go to their sewing meeting tomorrow,” 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 knickknacks. 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 fireplace, 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 timeworn 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 latecomer.

“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-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 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 today.”

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.