Anna of the Five Towns · Chapter 7 (2/3)

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 God 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 Dickinson, Anna obeyed, creeping on tiptoe across the intervening space. “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 multitudes 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 sex, turned with welcoming smiles. “A greeting to you all,” the minister ejaculated with formal suavity as he removed his low hat. The Alderman beamed a rather absentminded 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 archæological, 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 wavelike 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 Institution was always viewed with municipal pride.

The tearoom 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 parlourmaid 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 porkpie. Numerous as the company was, several chairs remained empty after everyone was seated. Anna found herself again next to Miss Dickinson, and five places from the minister, in the conservatory. Beatrice and her mother were higher up, in the room. Grace was sung, by request of Mrs. Sutton. At first, silence prevailed among the guests, and the inquiries of the maids about milk and sugar were almost painfully audible. Then Mr. Banks, glancing up the long vista of the table and pretending to descry some object in the distance, called out:

“Worthy host, I doubt not you are there, but I can only see you with the eye of faith.”

At this all laughed, and a natural ease was established. The minister and Mrs. Clayton Vernon, who sat on his right, exchanged badinage on the merits and demerits of porkpies, and their neighbours formed an appreciative audience. Then there was a sharp ring at the front door, and one of the maids went out.

“Didn’t I tell you?” Miss Dickinson whispered to Anna.

“What?” asked Anna.

“That he would come today⁠—Mr. Mynors, I mean.”

“Who can that be?” Mrs. Sutton’s voice was heard from the room.

“I dare say it’s Henry, mother,” Beatrice answered.

Mynors entered, joyous and self-possessed, a white rose in his coat: he shook hands with Mr. and Mrs. Sutton, sent a greeting down the table to Mr. Banks and Mrs. Clayton Vernon, and offered a general apology for being late.

“Sit here,” said Beatrice to him, sharply, indicating a chair between Mrs. Banks and herself. “Mrs. Banks has a word to say to you about the singing of that anthem last Sunday.”

Mynors made some laughing rejoinder, and the voices sank so that Anna could not catch what was said.

“That’s a new frock that Miss Sutton is wearing today,” Miss Dickinson remarked in an undertone.

“It looks new,” Anna agreed.

“Do you like it?”

“Yes. Don’t you?”

“Hum! Yes. It was made at Brunt’s at Hanbridge. It’s quite the fashion to go there now,” said Miss Dickinson, and added, almost inaudibly, “She’s put it on for Mr. Mynors. You saw how she saved that chair for him.”

Anna made no reply.

“Did you know they were engaged once?” Miss Dickinson resumed.

“No,” said Anna.

“At least people said they were. It was all over the town⁠—oh! let me see, three years ago.”

“I had not heard,” said Anna.

During the rest of the meal she said little. On some natures Miss Dickinson’s gossip had the effect of bringing them to silence. Anna had not seen Mynors since the previous Sunday, and now she was apparently unperceived by him. He talked gaily with Beatrice and Mrs. Banks: that group was a centre of animation. Anna envied their ease of manner, their smooth and sparkling flow of conversation. She had the sensation of feeling vulgar, clumsy, tongue-tied; Mynors and Beatrice possessed something which she would never possess. So they had been engaged! But had they? Or was it an idle rumour, manufactured by one who spent her life in such creations? Anna was conscious of misgivings. She had despised Beatrice once, but now it seemed that after all Beatrice was the natural equal of Henry Mynors. Was it more likely that Mynors or she, Anna, should be mistaken in Beatrice? That Beatrice had generous instincts she was sure. Anna lost confidence in herself; she felt humbled, out-of-place, and shamed.

“If our hostess and the company will kindly excuse me,” said the minister with a pompous air, looking at his watch, “I must go. I have an important appointment, or an appointment which some people think is important.”

He got up and made various adieux. The elaborate meal, complex with fifty dainties each of which had to be savoured, was not nearly over. The parson stopped in his course up the room to speak with Mrs. Sutton. After he had shaken hands with her, he caught the admired violet eyes of his slim wife, a lady of independent fortune whom the wives of circuit stewards found it difficult to please in the matter of furniture, and who despite her forty years still kept something of the pose of a spoiled beauty. As a minister’s spouse this languishing but impeccable and invariably correct dame was unique even in the experience of Mrs. Clayton Vernon.

“Shall you not be home early, Rex?” she asked in the tone of a young wife lounging amid the delicate odours of a boudoir.

“My love,” he replied with the stern fixity of a histrionic martyr, “did you ever know me have a free evening?”

The Alderman accompanied his pastor to the door.

After tea, Mynors was one of the first to leave the room, and Anna one of the last, but he accosted her in the hall, on the way back to the drawing-room, and asked how she was, and how Agnes was, with such deference and sincerity of regard for herself and everything that was hers that she could not fail to be impressed. Her sense of humiliation and of uncertainty was effaced by a single word, a single glance. Uplifted by a delicious reassurance, she passed into the drawing-room, expecting him to follow: strange to say, he did not do so. Work was resumed, but with less ardour than before. It was in fact impossible to be strenuously diligent after one of Mrs. Sutton’s teas, and in every heart, save those which beat over the most perfect and vigorous digestive organs, there was a feeling of repentance. The building-society’s clock on the mantelpiece intoned seven: all expressed surprise at the lateness of the hour, and Mrs. Clayton Vernon, pleading fatigue after her recent indisposition, quietly departed. As soon as she was gone, Anna said to Mrs. Sutton that she too must go.

“Why, my dear?” Mrs. Sutton asked.

“I shall be needed at home,” Anna replied.

“Ah! In that case⁠—I will come upstairs with you, my dear,” said Mrs. Sutton.

When they were in the bedroom, Mrs. Sutton suddenly clasped her hand. “How is it with you, dear Anna?” she said, gazing anxiously into the girl’s eyes. Anna knew what she meant, but made no answer. “Is it well?” the earnest old woman asked.

“I hope so,” said Anna, averting her eyes, “I am trying.”

Mrs. Sutton kissed her almost passionately. “Ah! my dear,” she exclaimed with an impulsive gesture, “I am glad, so glad. I did so want to have a word with you. You must ‘lean hard,’ as Miss Havergal says. ‘Lean hard’ on Him. Do not be afraid.” And then, changing her tone: “You are looking pale, Anna. You want a holiday. We shall be going to the Isle of Man in August or September. Would your father let you come with us?”

“I don’t know,” said Anna. She knew, however, that he would not. Nevertheless the suggestion gave her much pleasure.

“We must see about that later,” said Mrs. Sutton, and they went downstairs.

“I must say goodbye to Beatrice. Where is she?” Anna said in the hall. One of the servants directed them to the dining-room. The Alderman and Henry Mynors were looking together at a large photogravure of Sant’s The Soul’s Awakening, which Mr. Sutton had recently bought, and Beatrice was exhibiting her embroidery to a group of ladies: sundry stitchers were scattered about, including Miss Dickinson.

“It is a great picture⁠—a picture that makes you think,” Henry was saying, seriously, and the Alderman, feeling as the artist might have felt, was obviously flattered by this sagacious praise.

Anna said good night to Miss Dickinson and then to Beatrice. Mynors, hearing the words, turned round. “Well, I must go. Good evening,” he said suddenly to the astonished Alderman.

“What? Now?” the latter inquired, scarcely pleased to find that Mynors could tear himself away from the picture with so little difficulty.

“Yes.”

“Good night, Mr. Mynors,” said Anna.

“If I may I will walk down with you,” Mynors imperturbably answered.

It was one of those dramatic moments which arrive without the slightest warning. The gleam of joyous satisfaction in Miss Dickinson’s eyes showed that she alone had foreseen this declaration. For a declaration it was, and a formal declaration. Mynors stood there calm, confident with masculine superiority, and his glance seemed to say to those swiftly alert women, whose faces could not disguise a thrilling excitation: “Yes. Let all know that I, Henry Mynors, the desired of all, am honourably captive to this shy and perfect creature who is blushing because I have said what I have said.” Even the Alderman forgot his photogravure. Beatrice hurriedly resumed her explanation of the embroidery.

“How did you like the sewing meeting?” Mynors asked Anna when they were on the pavement.

Anna paused. “I think Mrs. Sutton is simply a splendid woman,” she said enthusiastically.