The Complete Five Towns Collections. Bennett ArnoldЧитать онлайн книгу.
atoned for the disorder, noise and squalor which had preceded. Here was a sample of the total and final achievement towards which the thousands of small, disjointed efforts that Anna had witnessed, were directed. And it seemed a miraculous, almost impossible, result; so definite, precise and regular after a series of acts apparently variable, inexact and casual; so inhuman after all that intensely inhuman labour; so vast in comparison with the minuteness of the separate endeavours. As Anna looked, for instance, at a pile of tea-sets, she found it difficult even to conceive that, a fortnight or so before, they had been nothing but lumps of dirty clay. No stage of the manufacture was incredible by itself, but the result was incredible. It was the result that appealed to the imagination, authenticating the adage that fools and children should never see anything till it is done.
Anna pondered over the organising power, the forethought, the wide vision, and the sheer ingenuity and cleverness which were implied by the contents of this warehouse. 'What brains!' she thought, of Mynors; 'what quantities of all sorts of things he must know!' It was a humble and deeply-felt admiration.
Her spoken words gave no clue to her thoughts. 'You seem to make a fine lot of tea-sets,' she remarked.
'Oh, no,' he said carelessly. 'These few that you see here are a special order. I don't go in much for tea-sets: they don't pay; we lose fifteen per cent. of the pieces in making. It's toilet-ware that pays, and that is our leading line.' He waved an arm vaguely towards rows and rows of ewers and basins in the distance. They walked to the end of the warehouse, glancing at everything.
'See here,' said Mynors, 'isn't that pretty?' He pointed through the last window to a view of the canal, which could be seen thence in perspective, finishing in a curve. On one side, close to the water's edge, was a ruined and fragmentary building, its rich browns reflected in the smooth surface of the canal. On the other side were a few grim, grey trees bordering the towpath. Down the vista moved a boat steered by a woman in a large mob-cap. 'Isn't that picturesque?' he said.
'Very,' Anna assented willingly. 'It's really quite strange, such a scene right in the middle of Bursley.'
'Oh! There are others,' he said. 'But I always take a peep at that whenever I come into the warehouse.'
'I wonder you find time to notice it—with all this place to see after,' she said. 'It's a splendid works!'
'It will do—to be going on with,' he answered, satisfied. 'I'm very glad you've been down. You must come again. I can see you would be interested in it, and there are plenty of things you haven't looked at yet, you know.'
He smiled at her. They were alone in the warehouse.
'Yes,' she said; 'I expect so. Well, I must go, at once; I'm afraid it's very late now. Thank you for showing me round, and explaining, and—I'm frightfully stupid and ignorant. Good-bye.'
Vapid and trite phrases: what unimaginable messages the hearer heard in you!
Anna held out her hand, and he seized it almost convulsively, his incendiary eyes fastened on her face.
'I must see you out,' he said, dropping that ungloved hand.
It was ten o'clock that night before Ephraim Tellwright returned home from Axe. He appeared to be in a bad temper. Agnes had gone to bed. His supper of bread-and-cheese and water was waiting for him, and Anna sat at the table while he consumed it. He ate in silence, somewhat hungrily, and she did not deem the moment propitious for telling him about her visit to Mynors' works.
'Has Titus Price sent up?' he asked at length, gulping down the last of the water.
'Sent up?'
'Yes. Art fond, lass? I told him as he mun send up some more o' thy rent to-day—twenty-five pun. He's not sent?'
'I don't know,' she said timidly. 'I was out this afternoon.'
'Out, wast?'
'Mr. Mynors sent word to ask me to go down and look over the works; so I went. I thought it would be all right.'
'Well, it was'na all right. And I'd like to know what business thou hast gadding out, as soon as my back's turned. How can I tell whether Price sent up or not? And what's more, thou know's as th' house hadn't ought to be left.'
'I'm sorry,' she said pleasantly, with a determination to be meek and dutiful.
He grunted. 'Happen he didna' send. And if he did, and found th' house locked up, he should ha' sent again. Bring me th' inkpot, and I'll write a note as Agnes must take when her goes to school to-morrow morning.'
Anna obeyed. 'They'll never be able to pay twenty-five pounds, father,' she ventured. 'They've paid thirty already, you know.'
'Less gab,' he said shortly, taking up the pen. 'Here—write it thysen.' He threw the pen towards her. 'Tell Titus if he doesn't pay five-and-twenty this wik, us'll put bailiffs in.'
'Won't it come better from you, father?' she pleaded.
'Whose property is it?' The laconic question was final. She knew she must obey, and began to write. But, realising that she would perforce meet both Titus Price and Willie on Sunday, she merely demanded the money, omitting the threat. Her hand trembled as she passed the note to him to read.
'Will that do?'
His reply was to tear the paper across. 'Put down what I tell ye,' he ordered, 'and don't let's have any more paper wasted.' Then he dictated a letter which was an ultimatum in three lines. 'Sign it,' he said.
She signed it, weeping. She could see the wistful reproach in Willie Price's eyes.
'I suppose,' her father said, when she bade him 'Good-night,' 'I suppose if I hadn't asked, I should ha' heard nowt o' this gadding-about wi' Mynors?'
'I was going to tell you I had been to the works, father,' she said.
'Going to!' That was his final blow, and having delivered it, he loosed the victim. 'Go to bed,' he said.
She went upstairs, resolutely read her Bible, and resolutely prayed.
1. Jacket-man: the artisan's satiric term for anyone who does not work in shirt-sleeves, who is not actually a producer, such as a clerk or a pretentious foreman.
2. Saggars: large oval receptacles of coarse clay, in which the ware is placed for firing.
Chapter IX
The Treat
This surly and terrorising ferocity of Tellwright's was as instinctive as the growl and spring of a beast of prey. He never considered his attitude towards the women of his household as an unusual phenomenon which needed justification, or as being in the least abnormal. The women of a household were the natural victims of their master: in his experience it had always been so. In his experience the master had always, by universal consent, possessed certain rights over the self-respect, the happiness and the peace of the defenceless souls set under him—rights as unquestioned as those exercised by Ivan the Terrible. Such rights were rooted in the secret nature of things. It was futile to discuss them, because their necessity and their propriety were equally obvious. Tellwright would not have been angry with any man who impugned them: he would merely have regarded the fellow as a crank and a born fool, on whom logic or indignation would be entirely wasted. He did as his father and uncles had done. He still thought of his father as a grim customer, infinitely more redoubtable than himself. He really believed that parents spoiled their children nowadays: to be knocked down by a single blow was one of the punishments of his own generation. He could recall the fearful timidity of his mother's eyes without a trace of compassion. His treatment of his daughters was no part of a system, nor obedient to any defined principles, nor the expression of a brutal disposition, nor the result of gradually-acquired habit. It came to him