THE DOWNFALL
In order to catch the Liverpool steamer at Douglas it was necessary to
leave Port Erin at half-past six in the morning. The freshness of the
morning, and the smiles of the Alderman and his wife as they waved
God-speed from the doorstep, filled Anna with a serene content which
she certainly had not felt during the wakeful night. She forgot, then,
the hours passed with her conscience in realising how serious and
solemn a thing was this engagement, made in an instant on the previous
evening. All that remained in her mind, as she and Henry walked
quickly down the road, was the tonic sensation of high resolves to be a
worthy wife. The duties, rather than the joys, of her condition, had
lain nearest her heart until that moment of setting out, giving her an
anxious and almost worried mien which at breakfast neither Henry nor
the Suttons could quite understand. But now the idea of duty ceased
for a time to be paramount, and she loosed herself to the pleasures of
the day in store. The harbour was full of low wandering mists, through
which the brown sails of the fishing-smacks played at hide-and-seek.
High above them the round forms of immense clouds were still carrying
the colours of sunrise. The gentle salt wind on the cheek was like the
touch of a life-giver. It was impossible, on such a morning, not to
exult in life, not to laugh childishly from irrational glee, not to
dismiss the memory of grief and the apprehension of grief as morbid
hallucinations. Mynor's face expressed the double happiness of present
and anticipated pleasure. He had once again succeeded, he who had
never failed; and the voyage back to England was for him a triumphal
progress. Anna responded eagerly to his mood. The day was an ecstasy,
a bright expanse unstained. To Anna in particular it was a unique day,
marking the apogee of her existence. In the years that followed she
could always return to it and say to herself: 'That day I was happy,
foolishly, ignorantly, but utterly. And all that I have since learnt
cannot alter it--I was happy.'
When they reached Shawport Station a cab was waiting for Anna. Unknown
to her, Henry had ordered it by telegraph. This considerateness was of
a piece, she thought, with his masterly conduct of the entire
journey--on the steamer, at Liverpool, in the train; nothing that an
experienced traveller could devise had been lacking to her comfort.
She got into the cab alone, while Mynors, followed by a boy and his
bag, walked to his rooms in Mount Street. It had been arranged, at
Anna's wish, that he should not appear at Manor Terrace till
supper-time. Ephraim opened for her the door of her home. It seemed
to her that he was pleased.
'Well, father, here I am again, you see.'
'Ay, lass.' They shook hands, and she indicated to the cabman where to
deposit her tin-box. She was glad and relieved to be back. Nothing
had changed, except herself, and this absolute sameness was at once
pleasant and pathetic to her.
'Where's Agnes?' she asked, smiling at her father. In the glow of
arrival she had a vague notion that her relations with him had been
permanently softened by absence.
'I see thou's gotten into th' habit o' flitting about in cabs,' he
said, without answering her question.
'Well, father,' she said, smiling yet, 'there was the box. I couldn't
carry the box.'
'I reckon thou couldst ha' hired a lad to carry it for sixpence.'
She did not reply. The cabman had gone to his vehicle.
'Art'na going to pay th' cabby?'
'I've paid him, father.'
'How much?'
She paused. 'Eighteen-pence, father.' It was a lie; she had paid two
shillings.
She went eagerly into the kitchen, and then into the parlour, where tea
was set for one. Agnes was not there. 'Her's upstairs,' Ephraim said,
meeting Anna as she came into the lobby again. She ran softly
upstairs, and into the bedroom. Agnes was replacing ornaments on the
mantelpiece with mathematical exactitude; under her arm was a duster.
The child turned, startled, and gave a little shriek.
'Eh, I didn't know you'd come. How early you are!'
They rushed towards each other, embraced, and kissed. Anna was
overcome by the pathos of her sister's loneliness in that grim house
for fourteen days, while she, the elder, had been absorbed in selfish
gaiety. The pale face, large, melancholy eyes, and long, thin arms,
were a silent accusation. She wondered that she could ever have
brought herself to leave Agnes even for a day. Sitting down on the
bed, she drew the child on her knee in a fury of love, and kissed her
again, weeping. Agnes cried too, for sympathy.
'Oh, my dear, dear Anna, I'm so glad you've come back!' She dried her
eyes, and in quite a different tone of voice asked: 'Has Mr. Mynors
proposed to you?'
Anna could not avoid a blush at this simple and astounding query. She
said: 'Yes.' It was the one word of which she was capable, under the
circumstances. That was not the moment to tax Agnes with too much
precocity and abruptness.
'You're engaged, then? Oh, Anna, does it feel nice? It must. I knew
you would be!'
'How did you know, Agnes?'
'I mean I knew he would ask you, some time. All the girls at school
knew too.'
'I hope you didn't talk about it,' said the elder sister.
'Oh, _no_! But they did; they were always talking about it.'
'You never told me that.'
'I--I didn't like to. Anna, shall I have to call him Henry now?'
'Yes, of course. When we're married he will be your brother-in-law.'
'Shall you be married soon, Anna?'
'Not for a very long time.'
'When you are--shall I keep house alone? I can, you know---- I shall
never _dare_ to call him Henry. But he's awfully nice; isn't he, Anna?
Yes, when you are married, I shall keep house here, but I shall come to
see you every day. Father will _have_ to let me do that. Does father
know you're engaged?'
'Not yet. And you mustn't say anything. Henry is coming for supper.
And then father will be told.'
'Did he kiss you, Anna?'
'Who--father?'
'No, silly! Henry, of course--I mean when he'd asked you?'
'I think you are asking all the questions. Suppose I ask you some now.
How have you managed with father? Has he been nice?'
'Some days--yes,' said Agnes, after thinking a moment. 'We have had
some new cups and saucers up from Mr. Mynors works. And father has
swept the kitchen chimney. And, oh Anna! I asked him to-day if I'd
kept house well, and he said "Pretty well," and he gave me a penny.
Look! It's the first money I've ever had, you know. I wanted you at
nights, Anna--and all the time, too. I've been frightfully busy. I
cleaned silvers all afternoon. Anna, I _have_ tried---- And I've got
some tea for you. I'll go down and make it. Now you mustn't come into
the kitchen. I'll bring it to you in the parlour.'
'I had my tea at Crewe,' Anna was about to say, but refrained, in due
course drinking the cup prepared by Agnes. She felt passionately sorry
for Agnes, too young to feel the shadow which overhung her future.
Anna would marry into freedom, but Agnes would remain the serf. Would
Agnes marry? Could she? Would her father allow it? Anna had noticed
that in families the youngest, petted in childhood, was often
sacrificed in maturity. It was the last maid who must keep her
maidenhood, and, vicariously filial, pay out of her own life the debt
of all the rest.
'Mr. Mynors is coming up for supper to-night. He wants to see you;'
Anna said to her father, as calmly as she could. The miser grunted.
But at eight o'clock, the hour immutably fixed for supper, Henry had
not arrived. The meal proceeded, of course, without him. To Anna his
absence was unaccountable and disturbing, for none could be more
punctilious than he in the matter of appointments. She expected him
every moment, but he did not appear. Agnes, filled full of the great
secret confided to her, was more openly impatient than her sister.
Neither of them could talk, and a heavy silence fell upon the family
group, a silence which her father, on that particular evening of Anna's
return, resented.
'You dunna' tell us much,' he remarked, when the supper was finished.
She felt that the complaint was a just one. Even before supper, when
nothing had occurred to preoccupy her, she had spoken little. There
had seemed so much to tell--at Port Erin, and now there seemed nothing
to tell. She ventured into a flaccid, perfunctory account of
Beatrice's illness, of the fishing, of the unfinished houses which had
caught the fancy of Mr. Sutton; she said the sea had been smooth, that
they had had something to eat at Liverpool, that the train for Crewe
was very prompt; and then she could think of no more. Silence fell
again. The supper-things were cleared away and washed up. At a
quarter-past nine, Agnes, vainly begging permission to stay up in order
to see Mr. Mynors, was sent to bed, only partially comforted by a
clothes-brush, long desired, which Anna had brought for her as a
present from the Isle of Man.
'Shall you tell father yourself, now Henry hasn't come?' the child
asked Anna, who had gone upstairs to unpack her box.
'Yes,' said Anna, briefly.
'I wonder what he'll say,' Agnes reflected, with that habit, always
annoying to Anna, of meeting trouble half-way.
At a quarter to ten Anna ceased to expect Mynors, and finally braced
herself to the ordeal of a solemn interview with her father, well
knowing that she dared not leave him any longer in ignorance of her
engagement. Already the old man was locking and bolting the door; he
had wound up the kitchen clock. When he came back to the parlour to
extinguish the gas she was standing by the mantelpiece.
'Father,' she began, 'I've something I must tell you.'
'Eh, what's that ye say?' his hand was on the gas-tap. He dropped it,
examining her face curiously.
'Mr. Mynors has asked me to marry him; he asked me last night. We
settled he should come up to-night to see you--I can't think why he
hasn't. It must be something very unexpected and important, or he'd
have come.' She trembled, her heart beat violently; but the words were
out, and she thanked God.
'Asked ye to marry him, did he?' The miser gazed at her quizzically
out of his small blue eyes.
'Yes, father.'
'And what didst say?'
'I said I would.'
'Oh! Thou saidst thou wouldst! I reckon it was for thatten as thou
must go gadding off to seaside, eh?'
'Father, I never dreamt of such a thing when Suttons asked me to go. I
do wish Henry'--the cost of that Christian name!--'had come. He quite
meant to come to-night.' She could not help insisting on the propriety
of Henry's intentions.
'Then I am for be consulted, eh?'
'Of course, father.'
'Ye've soon made it up, between ye.'
His tone was, at the best, brusque; but she breathed more easily,
divining instantly from his manner that he meant to offer no violent
objection to the engagement. She knew that only tact was needed now.
The miser had, indeed, foreseen the possibility of this marriage for
months past, and had long since decided in his own mind that Henry
would make a satisfactory son-in-law. Ephraim had no social
ambitions--with all his meanness, he was above them; he had nothing but
contempt for rank, style, luxury, and 'the theory of what it is to be a
lady and a gentleman.' Yet, by a curious contradiction, Henry's
smartness of appearance--the smartness of an unrivalled commercial
traveller--pleased him. He saw in Henry a young and sedate man of
remarkable shrewdness, a man who had saved money, had made money for
others, and was now making it for himself; a man who could be trusted
absolutely to perform that feat of 'getting on'; a 'safe' and
profoundly respectable man, at the same time audacious and
imperturbable. He was well aware that Henry had really fallen in love
with Anna, but nothing would have convinced him that Anna's money was
not the primal cause of Henry's genuine passion for Anna's self.
'You like Henry, don't you, father?' Anna said. It was a failure in
the desired tact, for Ephraim had never been known to admit that he
liked anyone or anything. Such natures are capable of nothing more
positive than toleration.
'He's a hard-headed chap, and he knows the value o' money. Ay! that he
does; he knows which side his bread's buttered on.' A sinister
emphasis marked the last sentence.
Instead of remaining silent, Anna, in her nervousness, committed
another imprudence. 'What do you mean, father?' she asked, pretending
that she thought it impossible he could mean what he obviously did mean.
'Thou knows what I'm at, lass. Dost think he isna' marrying thee for
thy brass? Dost think as he canna' make a fine guess what thou'rt
worth? But that wunna' bother thee as long as thou'st hooked a
good-looking chap.'
'Father!'
'Ay! thou mayst bridle; but it's true. Dunna' tell me.'
Securely conscious of the perfect purity of Mynors' affection, she was
not in the least hurt. She even thought that her father's attitude was
not quite sincere, an attitude partially due to mere wilful
churlishness. 'Henry has never even mentioned money to me,' she said
mildly.
'Happen not; he isna' such a fool as that.' He paused, and continued:
'Thou'rt free to wed, for me. Lasses will do it, I reckon, and thee
among th' rest.' She smiled, and on that smile he suddenly turned out
the gas. Anna was glad that the colloquy had ended so well.
Congratulations, endearments, loving regard for her welfare: she had
not expected these things, and was in no wise grieved by their absence.
Groping her way towards the lobby, she considered herself lucky, and
only wished that nothing had happened to keep Mynors away. She wanted
to tell him at once that her father had proved tractable.
The next morning, Tellwright, whose attendance at chapel was losing the
strictness of its old regularity, announced that he should stay at
home. Sunday's dinner was to be a cold repast, and so Anna and Agnes
went to chapel. Anna's thoughts were wholly occupied with the prospect
of seeing Mynors, and hearing the explanation of his absence on
Saturday night.
'There he is!' Agnes exclaimed loudly, as they were approaching the
chapel.
'Agnes,' said Anna, 'when will you learn to behave in the street?'
Mynors stood at the chapel-gates; he was evidently awaiting them. He
looked grave, almost sad. He raised his hat and shook hands, with a
particular friendliness for Agnes, who was speculating whether he would
kiss Anna, as his betrothed, or herself, as being only a little girl,
or both or neither of them. Her eyes already expressed a sort of
ownership in him.
'I should like to speak to you a moment,' Henry said. 'Will you come
into the school-yard?'
'Agnes, you had better go straight into chapel,' said Anna. It was an
ignominious disaster to the child, but she obeyed.
'I didn't give you up last night till nearly ten o'clock,' Anna
remarked as they passed into the school-yard. She was astonished to
discover in herself an inclination to pout, to play the offended fair
one, because Mynors had failed in his appointment. Contemptuously she
crushed it.
'Have you heard about Mr. Price?' Mynors began.
'No. What about him? Has anything happened?'
'A very sad thing has happened. Yes----' He stopped, from emotion.
'Our superintendent has committed suicide!'
'Killed himself?' Anna gasped.
'He hanged himself yesterday afternoon at Edward Street, in the
slip-house after the works were closed. Willie had gone home, but he
came back, when his father didn't turn up for dinner, and found him.
Mr. Price was quite dead. He ran in to my place to fetch me just as I
was getting my tea. That was why I never came last night.'
Anna was speechless.
'I thought I would tell you myself,' Henry resumed. 'It's an awful
thing for the Sunday-school, and the whole society, too. He, a
prominent Wesleyan, a worker among us! An awful thing!' he repeated,
dominated by the idea of the blow thus dealt to the Methodist connexion
by the man now dead.
'Why did he do it?' Anna demanded, curtly.
Mynors shrugged his shoulders, and ejaculated: 'Business troubles, I
suppose; it couldn't be anything else. At school this morning I simply
announced that he was dead.' Henry's voice broke, but he added, after
a pause: 'Young Price bore himself splendidly last night.'
Anna turned away in silence. 'I shall come up for tea, if I may,'
Henry said, and then they parted, he to the singing-seat, she to the
portico of the chapel. People were talking in groups on the broad
steps and in the vestibule. All knew of the calamity, and had received
from it a new interest in life. The town was aroused as if from a
lethargy. Consternation and eager curiosity were on every face. Those
who arrived in ignorance of the event were informed of it in impressive
tones, and with intense satisfaction to the informer; nothing of equal
importance had happened in the society for decades. Anna walked up the
aisle to her pew, filled with one thought:
'We drove him to it, father and I.'
Her fear was that the miser had renewed his terrible insistence during
the previous fortnight. She forgot that she had disliked the dead man,
that he had always seemed to her mean, pietistic, and two-faced. She
forgot that in pressing him for rent many months overdue she and her
father had acted within their just rights--acted as Price himself would
have acted in their place. She could think only of the strain, the
agony, the despair that must have preceded the miserable tragedy. Old
Price had atoned for all in one sublime sin, the sole deed that could
lend dignity and repose to such a figure as his. Anna's feverish
imagination reconstituted the scene in the slip-house: she saw it as
something grand, accusing, and unanswerable; and she could not dismiss
a feeling of acute remorse that she should have been engaged in
pleasure at that very hour of death. Surely some instinct should have
warned her that the hare which she had helped to hunt was at its last
gasp!
Mr. Sargent, the newly-appointed second minister, was in the pulpit--a
little, earnest bachelor, who emphasised every sentence with a
continual tremor of the voice. 'Brethren,' he said, after the second
hymn--and his tones vibrated with a singular effect through the
half-empty building: 'Before I proceed to my sermon I have one word to
say in reference to the awful event which is doubtless uppermost in the
minds of all of you. It is not for us to judge the man who is now gone
from us, ushered into the dread presence of his Maker with the crime of
self-murder upon his soul. I say it is not for us to judge him. The
ways of the Almighty are past finding out. Therefore at such a moment
we may fitly humble ourselves before the Throne, and while prostrate
there let us intercede for the poor young man who is left behind,
bereft, and full of grief and shame. We will engage in silent prayer.'
He lifted his hand, and closed his eyes, and the congregation leaned
forward against the fronts of the pews. The appealing face of Willie
presented itself vividly to Anna.
'Who is it?' Agnes asked, in a whisper of appalling distinctness. Anna
frowned angrily, and gave no reply.
While the last hymn was being sung, Anna signed to Agnes that she
wished to leave the chapel. Everyone would be aware that she was among
Price's creditors, and she feared that if she stayed till the end of
the service some chatterer might draw her into a distressing
conversation. The sisters went out, and Agnes's burning curiosity was
at length relieved.
'Mr. Price has hanged himself,' Anna said to her father when they
reached home.
The miser looked through the window for a moment. 'I am na'
surprised,' he said. 'Suicide's i' that blood. Titus's uncle 'Lijah
tried to kill himself twice afore he died o' gravel. Us'n have to do
summat wi' Edward Street at last.'
She wanted to ask Ephraim if he had been demanding more rent lately,
but she could not find courage to do so.
Agnes had to go to Sunday-school alone that afternoon. Without saying
anything to her father, Anna decided to stay at home. She spent the
time in her bedroom, idle, preoccupied; and did not come downstairs
till half-past three. Ephraim had gone out. Agnes presently returned,
and then Henry came in with Mr. Tellwright. They were conversing
amicably, and Anna knew that her engagement was finally and
satisfactorily settled. During tea no reference was made to it, nor to
the suicide. Mynors' demeanour was quiet but cheerful. He had partly
recovered from the morning's agitation, and gave Ephraim and Agnes a
vivacious account of the attractions of Port Erin. Anna noticed the
amusement in his eyes when Agnes, reddening, said to him: 'Will you
have some more bread-and-butter, Henry?' It seemed to be tacitly
understood afterwards that Agnes and her father would attend chapel,
while Henry and Anna kept house. No one was ingenious enough to detect
an impropriety in the arrangement. For some obscure reason,
immediately upon the departure of the chapel-goers, Anna went into the
kitchen, rattled some plates, stroked her hair mechanically, and then
stole back again to the parlour. It was a chilly evening, and instead
of walking up and down the strip of garden the betrothed lovers sat
together under the window. Anna wondered whether or not she was happy.
The presence of Mynors was, at any rate, marvellously soothing.
'Did your father say anything about the Price affair?' he began,
yielding at once to the powerful hypnotism of the subject which
fascinated the whole town that night, and which Anna could bear neither
to discuss nor to ignore.
'Not much,' she said, and repeated to him her father's remark.
Mynors told her all he knew; how Willie had discovered his father with
his toes actually touching the floor, leaning slightly forward, quite
dead; how he had then cut the rope and fetched Mynors, who went with
him to the police-station; how they had tied up the head of the corpse,
and then waited till night to wheel the body on a hand-cart from Edward
Street to the mortuary chamber at the police-station; how the police
had telephoned to the coroner, and settled at once that the inquest
should be held on Tuesday in the court-room at the town-hall; and how
quiet, self-contained, and dignified Willie had been, surprising
everyone by this new-found manliness. It all seemed hideously real to
Anna, as Henry added detail to detail.
'I think I ought to tell you,' she said very calmly, when he had
finished the recital, 'that I--I'm dreadfully upset over it. I can't
help thinking that I--that father and I, I mean--are somehow partly
responsible for this.'
'For Price's death? How?'
'We have been so hard on him for his rent lately, you know.'
'My dearest girl! What next?' He took her hand in his. 'I assure you
the idea is absurd. You've only got it because you're so sensitive and
high-strung. I undertake to say Price was stuck fast
everywhere--everywhere--hadn't a chance.'
'Me high-strung!' she exclaimed. He kissed her lovingly. But, beneath
the feeling of reassurance, which by superior force he had imposed on
her, there lay a feeling that she was treated like a frightened child
who must be tranquillized in the night. Nevertheless, she was grateful
for his kindness, and when she went to bed she obtained relief from the
returning obsession of the suicide by making anew her vows to him.
As a theatrical effect the death of Titus Price could scarcely have
been surpassed. The town was profoundly moved by the spectacle of this
abject yet heroic surrender of all those pretences by which society
contrives to tolerate itself. Here was a man whom no one respected,
but everyone pretended to respect--who knew that he was respected by
none, but pretended that he was respected by all; whose whole career
was made up of dissimulations: religious, moral, and social. If any
man could have been trusted to continue the decent sham to the end, and
so preserve the general self-esteem, surely it was this man. But no!
Suddenly abandoning all imposture, he transgresses openly, brazenly;
and, snatching a bit of hemp cries: 'Behold me; this is real human
nature. This is the truth; the rest was lies. I lied; you lied. I
confess it, and you shall confess it.' Such a thunderclap shakes the
very base of the microcosm. The young folk in particular could with
difficulty believe their ears. It seemed incredible to them that Titus
Price, the Methodist, the Sunday-school superintendent, the loud
champion of the highest virtues, should commit the sin of all
sins--murder. They were dazed. The remembrance of his insincerity did
nothing to mitigate the blow. In their view it was perhaps even worse
that he had played false to his own falsity. The elders were a little
less disturbed. The event was not unique in their experience. They
had lived longer and felt these seismic shocks before. They could go
back into the past and find other cases where a swift impulse had
shattered the edifice of a lifetime. They knew that the history of
families and of communities is crowded with disillusion. They had
discovered that character is changeless, irrepressible, incurable.
They were aware of the astonishing fact, which takes at least thirty
years to learn, that a Sunday-school superintendent is a man. And the
suicide of Titus Price, when they had realised it, served but to
confirm their most secret and honest estimate of humanity, that
estimate which they never confided to a soul. The young folk thought
the Methodist Society shamed and branded by the tragic incident, and
imagined that years must elapse before it could again hold up its head
in the town. The old folk were wiser, foreseeing with certainty that
in only a few days this all-engrossing phenomenon would lose its
significance, and be as though it had never been. Even in two days,
time had already begun its work, for by Tuesday morning the interest of
the affair--on Sunday at the highest pitch--had waned so much that the
thought of the inquest was capable of reviving it. Although everyone
knew that the case presented no unusual features, and that the
coroner's inquiry would be nothing more than a formal ceremony, the
almost greedy curiosity of Methodist circles lifted it to the level of
a _cause célèbre_. The court was filled with irreproachable
respectability when the coroner drove into the town, and each animated
face said to its fellow: 'So you're here, are you?' Late comers of the
official world--councillors, guardians of the poor, members of the
school board, and one or two of their ladies, were forced to intrigue
for room with the police and the town-hall keeper, and, having
succeeded, sank into their narrow seats with a sigh of expectancy and
triumph. Late comers with less influence had to retire, and by a kind
of sinister fascination were kept wandering about the corridor before
they could decide to go home. The market-place was occupied by
hundreds of loafers, who seemed to find a mystic satisfaction in
beholding the coroner's dogcart and the exterior of the building which
now held the corpse.
It was by accident that Anna was in the town. She knew that the
inquest was to occur that morning, but had not dreamed of attending it.
When, however, she saw the stir of excitement in the market-place, and
the police guarding the entrances of the town-hall, she walked directly
across the road, past the two officers at the east door, and into the
dark main corridor of the building, which was dotted with small groups
idly conversing. She was conscious of two things: a vehement
curiosity, and the existence somewhere in the precincts of a dead body,
unsightly, monstrous, calm, silent, careless--the insensible origin of
all this simmering ferment which disgusted her even while she shared in
it. At a small door, half hidden by a curtain, she was startled to see
Mynors.
'You here!' he exclaimed, as if painfully surprised, and shook hands
with a preoccupied air. 'They are examining Willie. I came outside
while he was in the witness-box.'
'Is the inquest going on in there?' she asked, pointing to the door.
Each appeared to be concealing a certain resentment against the other;
but this appearance was due only to nervous agitation.
A policeman down the corridor called: 'Mr. Mynors, a moment.' Henry
hurried away, answering Anna's question as he went: 'Yes, in there.
That's the witnesses' and jurors' door; but please don't go in. I
don't like you to, and it is sure to upset you.'
She opened the door and went in. None said nay, and she found a few
inches of standing-room behind the jury-box. A terrible stench
nauseated her; the chamber was crammed, and not a window open. There
was silence in the court--no one seemed to be doing anything; but at
last she perceived that the coroner, enthroned on the bench justice was
writing in a book with blue leaves. In the witness-box stood William
Price, dressed in black, with kid gloves, not lounging in an ungainly
attitude, as might have been expected, but perfectly erect; he kept his
eyes fixed on the coroner's head. Sarah Vodrey, Price's aged
housekeeper, sat on a chair near the witness-box, weeping into a
black-bordered handkerchief; at intervals she raised her small,
wrinkled, red face, with its glistening, inflamed eyes, and then buried
it again in the handkerchief. The members of the jury, whom Anna could
see only in profile, shuffled to and fro on their long, pew-like
seats--they were mostly working men, shabbily clothed; but the foreman
was Mr. Leal, the provision dealer, a freemason, and a sidesman at the
parish church. The general public sat intent and vacuous; their minds
gaped, if not their mouths; occasionally one whispered inaudibly to
another; the jury, conscious of an official status, exchanged remarks
in a whisper courageously loud. Several tall policemen, helmet in
hand, stood in various corners of the room, and the coroner's officer
sat near the witness-box to administer the oath. At length the coroner
lifted his head. He was rather a young man, with a large, intelligent
face; he wore eyeglasses, and his chin was covered with a short, wavy
beard. His manner showed that, while secretly proud of his supreme
position in that assemblage, he was deliberately trying to make it
appear that this exercise of judicial authority was nothing to him,
that in truth these eternal inquiries, which interested others so
deeply, were to him a weariness conscientiously endured.
'Now, Mr. Price,' the coroner said blandly, and it was plain that he
was being ceremoniously polite to an inferior, in obedience to the
rules of good form, 'I must ask you some more questions. They may be
inconvenient, even painful; but I am here simply as the instrument of
the law, and I must do my duty. And these gentlemen here,' he waved a
hand in the direction of the jury, 'must be told the whole facts of the
case. We know, of course, that the deceased committed suicide--that
has been proved beyond doubt; but, as I say, we have the right to know
more.' He paused, well satisfied with the sound of his voice, and
evidently thinking that he had said something very weighty and
impressive.
'What do you want to know?' Willie Price demanded, his broad Five Towns
speech contrasting with the Kensingtonian accents of the coroner. The
latter, who came originally from Manchester, was irritated by the
brusque interruption; but he controlled his annoyance, at the same time
glancing at the public as if to signify to them that he had learnt not
to take too seriously the unintentional rudeness characteristic of
their district.
'You say it was probably business troubles that caused your late father
to commit the rash act?'
'Yes.'
'You are sure there was nothing else?'
'What else could there be?'
'Your late father was a widower?'
'Yes.'
'Now as to these business troubles--what were they?'
'We were being pressed by creditors.'
'Were you a partner with your late father?'
'Yes.'
'Oh! You were a partner with him!'
The jury seemed surprised, and the coroner wrote again: 'What was your
share in the business?'
'I don't know.'
'You don't know? Surely that is rather singular?'
'My father took me in Co. not long since. We signed a deed, but I
forget what was in it. My place was principally on the bank, not in
the office.'
'And so you were being pressed by creditors?'
'Yes. And we were behind with the rent.'
'Was the landlord pressing you, too?'
Anna lowered her eyes, fearful lest every head had turned towards her.
'Not then; he had been--she, I mean.'
'The landlord is a lady?' Here the coroner faintly smiled. 'Then, as
regards the landlord, the pressure was less than it had been?'
'Yes; we had paid some rent, and settled some other claims.'
'Does it not seem strange----?' the coroner began, with a suave air of
suggesting an idea.
'If you must know,' Willie surprisingly burst out, 'I believe it was
the failure of a firm in London that owed us money that caused father
to hang himself.'
'Ah!' exclaimed the coroner. 'When did you hear of that failure?'
'By second post on Friday. Eleven in the morning.'
'I think we have heard enough, Mr. Coroner,' said Leal, standing up in
the jury-box. 'We have decided on our verdict.'
'Thank you, Mr. Price,' said the coroner, dismissing Willie. He added,
in a tone of icy severity to the foreman: 'I had concluded my
examination of the witness.' Then he wrote further in his book.
'Now, gentlemen of the jury,' the coroner resumed, having first cleared
his throat; 'I think you will agree with me that this is a peculiarly
painful case. Yet at the same time----'
Anna hastened from the court as impulsively as she had entered it. She
could think of nothing but the quiet, silent, pitiful corpse; and all
this vapid mouthing exasperated her beyond sufferance.
On the Thursday afternoon, Anna was sitting alone in the house, with
the Persian cat and a pile of stockings on her knee, darning. Agnes
had with sorrow returned to school; Ephraim was out. The bell sounded
violently, and Anna, thinking that perhaps for some reason her father
had chosen to enter by the front door, ran to open it. The visitor was
Willie Price; he wore the new black suit which had figured in the
coroner's court. She invited him to the parlour and they both sat
down, tongue-tied. Now that she had learnt from his evidence given at
the inquest that Ephraim had not been pressing for rent during her
absence in the Isle of Man, she felt less like a criminal before Willie
than she would have felt without that assurance. But at the best she
was nervous, self-conscious, and shamed. She supposed that he had
called to make some arrangement with reference to the tenure of the
works, or, more probably, to announce a bankruptcy and stoppage.
'Well, Miss Tellwright,' Willie began, 'I've buried him. He's gone.'
The simple and profound grief, and the restrained bitterness against
all the world, which were expressed in these words--the sole epitaph of
Titus Price--nearly made Anna cry. She would have cried, if the cat
had not opportunely jumped on her knee again; she controlled herself by
dint of stroking it. She sympathised with him more intensely in that
first moment of his loneliness than she had ever sympathised with
anyone, even Agnes. She wished passionately to shield, shelter, and
comfort him, to do something, however small, to diminish his sorrow and
humiliation; and this despite his size, his ungainliness, his coarse
features, his rough voice, his lack of all the conventional
refinements. A single look from his guileless and timid eyes atoned
for every shortcoming. Yet she could scarcely open her mouth. She
knew not what to say. She had no phrases to soften the frightful blow
which Providence had dealt him.
'I'm very sorry,' she said. 'You must be relieved it's all over.'
If she could have been Mrs. Sutton for half an hour! But she was Anna,
and her feelings could only find outlet in her eyes. Happily young
Price was of those meek ones who know by instinct the language of the
eyes.
'You've come about the works, I suppose?' she went on.
'Yes,' he said. 'Is your father in? I want to see him very
particular.'
'He isn't in now,' she replied: 'but he will be back by four o'clock.'
'That's an hour. You don't know where he is?'
She shook her head. 'Well,' he continued, 'I must tell you, then.
I've come up to do it, and do it I must. I can't come up again;
neither can I wait. You remember that bill of exchange as we gave you
some weeks back towards rent?'
'Yes,' she said. There was a pause. He stood up, and moved to the
mantelpiece. Her gaze followed him intently, but she had no idea what
he was about to say.
'It's forged, Miss Tellwright.' He sat down again, and seemed calmer,
braver, ready to meet any conceivable set of consequences.
'Forged!' she repeated, not immediately grasping the significance of
the avowal.
'Mr. Sutton's name is forged on it. So I came to tell your father; but
you'll do as well. I feel as if I should like to tell you all about
it,' he said, smiling sadly. 'Mr. Sutton had really given us a bill
for thirty pounds, but we'd paid that away when Mr. Tellwright sent
word down--you remember--that he should put bailiffs in if he didn't
have twenty-five pounds next day. We were just turning the corner
then, father said to me. There was a goodish sum due to us from a
London firm in a month's time, and if we could only hold out till then,
father said he could see daylight for us. But he knew as there'd be no
getting round Mr. Tellwright. So he had the idea of using Mr. Sutton's
name--just temporary like. He sent me to the post-office to buy a bill
stamp, and he wrote out the bill all but the name. "You take this up
to Tellwright's," he says, "and ask 'em to take it and hold it, and
we'll redeem it, and that'll be all right. No harm done there, Will!"
he says. Then he tries Sutton's name on the back of an envelope. It's
an easy signature, as you know; but he couldn't do it. "Here, Will,"
he says, "my old hand shakes; you have a go," and he gives me a letter
of Sutton's to copy from. I did it easy enough after a try or two.
"That'll be all right, Will," he says, and I put my hat on and brought
the bill up here. That's the truth, Miss Tellwright. It was the smash
of that London firm that finished my poor old father off.'
Her one feeling was the sense of being herself a culprit. After all,
it was her father's action, more than anything else, that had led to
the suicide, and he was her agent.
'Oh, Mr. Price,' she said foolishly, 'whatever shall you do?'
'There's nothing to be done,' he replied. 'It was bound to be. It's
our luck. We'd no thought but what we should bring you thirty pound in
cash and get that bit of paper back, and rip it up, and no one the
worse. But we were always unlucky, me and him. All you've got to do
is just to tell your father, and say I'm ready to go to the
police-station when he gives the word. It's a bad business, but I'm
ready for it.'
'Can't we do something?' she naïvely inquired, with a vision of a trial
and sentence, and years of prison.
'Your father keeps the bill, doesn't he? Not you?'
'I could ask him to destroy it.'
'He wouldn't,' said Willie. 'You'll excuse me saying that, Miss
Tellwright, but he wouldn't.'
He rose as if to go, bitterly. As for Anna, she knew well that her
father would never permit the bill to be destroyed. But at any cost
she meant to comfort him then, to ease his lot, to send him away less
grievous than he came.
'Listen!' she said, standing up, and abandoning the cat, 'I will see
what can be done. Yes. Something _shall_ be done--something or other.
I will come and see you at the works to-morrow afternoon. You may rely
on me.'
She saw hope brighten his eyes at the earnestness and resolution of her
tone, and she felt richly rewarded. He never said another word, but
gripped her hand with such force that she flinched in pain. When he
had gone, she perceived clearly the dire dilemma; but cared nothing, in
the first bliss of having reassured him.
During tea it occurred to her that as soon as Agnes had gone to bed she
would put the situation plainly before her father, and, for the first
and last time in her life, assert herself. She would tell him that the
affair was, after all, entirely her own, she would firmly demand
possession of the bill of exchange, and she would insist on it being
destroyed. She would point out to the old man that, her promise having
been given to Willie Price, no other course than this was possible. In
planning this night-surprise on her father's obstinacy, she found
argument after argument auspicious of its success. The formidable
tyrant was at last to meet his equal, in force, in resolution, and in
pugnacity. The swiftness of her onrush would sweep him, for once, off
his feet. At whatever cost, she was bound to win, even though victory
resulted in eternal enmity between father and daughter. She saw
herself towering over him, morally, with blazing eye and scornful
nostril. And, thus meditating on the grandeur of her adventure, she
fed her courage with indignation. By the act of death, Titus Price had
put her father for ever in the wrong. His corpse accused the miser,
and Anna, incapable now of seeing aught save the pathos of suicide,
acquiesced in the accusation with all the strength of her remorse. She
did not reason--she felt; reason was shrivelled up in the fire of
emotion. She almost trembled with the urgency of her desire to protect
from further shame the figure of Willie Price, so frank, simple,
innocent, and big; and to protect also the lifeless and dishonoured
body of his parent. She reviewed the whole circumstances again and
again, each time finding less excuse for her father's implacable and
fatal cruelty.
So her thoughts ran until the appointed hour of Agnes's bedtime. It
was always necessary to remind Agnes of that hour; left to herself, the
child would have stayed up till the very Day of Judgment. The clock
struck, but Anna kept silence. To utter the word 'bedtime' to Agnes
was to open the attack on her father, and she felt as the conductor of
an opera feels before setting in motion a complicated activity which
may end in either triumph or an unspeakable fiasco. The child was
reading; Anna looked and looked at her, and at length her lips were set
for the phrase, 'Now Agnes,' when, suddenly, the old man forestalled
her:
'Is that wench going for sit here all night?' he asked of Anna,
menacingly.
Agnes shut her book and crept away.
This accident was the ruin of Anna's scheme. Her father, always the
favourite of circumstance, had by chance struck the first blow;
ignorant of the battle that awaited him, he had unwittingly won it by
putting her in the wrong, as Titus Price had put him in the wrong. She
knew in a flash that her enterprise was hopeless; she knew that her
father's position in regard to her was impregnable, that no moral
force, no consciousness of right, would avail to overthrow that
authority which she had herself made absolute by a life-long
submission; she knew that face to face with her father she was, and
always would be, a coward. And now, instead of finding arguments for
success, she found arguments for failure. She divined all the retorts
that he would fling at her. What about Mr. Sutton--in a sense the
victim of this fraud? It was not merely a matter of thirty pounds. A
man's name had been used. Was he, Ephraim Tellwright, and she, his
daughter, to connive at a felony? The felony was done, and could not
be undone. Were they to render themselves liable, even in theory, to a
criminal prosecution? If Titus Price had killed himself, what of that?
If Willie Price was threatened with ruin, what of that? Them as made
the bed must lie on it. At the best, and apart from any forgery, the
Prices had swindled their creditors; even in dying, old Price had been
guilty of a commercial swindle. And was the fact that father and son
between them had committed a direct and flagrant crime to serve as an
excuse for sympathising with the survivor? Why was Anna so anxious to
shield the forger? What claim had he? A forger was a forger, and that
was the end of it.
She went to bed without opening her mouth. Irresolute, shamed, and
despairing, she tried to pray for guidance, but she could bring no
sincerity of appeal into this prayer; it seemed an empty form. Where,
indeed, was her religion? She was obliged to acknowledge that the
fervour of her aspirations had been steadily cooling for weeks. She
was not a whit more a true Christian now than she had been before the
Revival; it appeared that she was incapable of real religion, possibly
one of those souls foreordained to damnation. This admission added to
the general sense of futility, and increased her misery. She lay awake
for hours, confronting her deliberate promise to Willie Price.
_Something shall be done_. _Rely on me_. He was relying on her, then.
But on whom could she rely? To whom could she turn? It is significant
that the idea of confiding in Henry Mynors did not present itself for a
single moment as practical. Mynors had been kind to Willie in his
trouble, but Anna almost resented this kindness on account of the
condescending superiority which she thought she detected therein. It
was as though she had overheard Mynors saying to himself: 'Here is this
poor, crushed worm. It is my duty as a Christian to pity and succour
him. I will do so. I am a righteous man.' The thought of anyone
stooping to Willie was hateful to her. She felt equal with him, as a
mother feels equal with her child when it cries and she soothes it.
And she felt, in another way, that he was equal with her, as she
thought of his sturdy and simple confession, and of the loyal love in
his voice when he spoke of his father. She liked him for hurting her
hand, and for refusing to snatch at the slender chance of her father's
clemency. She could never reveal Willie's sin, if it was a sin, to
Henry Mynors--that symbol of correctness and of success. She had
fraternised with sinners, like Christ; and, with amazing injustice, she
was capable of deeming Mynors a Pharisee because she could not find
fault with him, because he lived and loved so impeccably and so
triumphantly. There was only one person from whom she could have asked
advice and help, and that wise and consoling heart was far away in the
Isle of Man.
'Why won't father give up the bill?' she demanded, half aloud, in
sullen wrath. She could not frame the answer in words, but
nevertheless she knew it and felt it. Such an act of grace would have
been impossible to her father's nature--that was all.
Suddenly the expression of her face changed from utter disgust into a
bitter and proud smile. Without thinking further, without daring to
think, she rose out of bed and, night-gowned and bare-footed, crept
with infinite precaution downstairs. The oilcloth on the stairs froze
her feet; a cold, grey light issuing through the glass square over the
front door showed that dawn was beginning. The door of the
front-parlour was shut; she opened it gently, and went within. Every
object in the room was faintly visible, the bureau, the chair, the
files of papers, the pictures, the books on the mantelshelf, and the
safe in the corner. The bureau, she knew, was never locked; fear of
their father had always kept its privacy inviolate from Anna and Agnes,
without the aid of a key. As Anna stood in front of it, a shaking
figure with hair hanging loose, she dimly remembered having one day
seen a blue paper among white in the pigeon-holes. But if the bill was
not there she vowed that she would steal her father's keys while he
slept, and force the safe. She opened the bureau, and at once saw the
edge of a blue paper corresponding with her recollection. She pulled
it forth and scanned it. 'Three months after date pay to our order ...
Accepted payable, _William Sutton_.' So here was the forgery, here the
two words for which Willie Price might have gone to prison! What a
trifle! She tore the flimsy document to bits, and crumpled the bits
into a little ball. How should she dispose of the ball? After a
moment's reflection she went into the kitchen, stretched on tiptoe to
reach the match-box from the high mantelpiece, struck a match, and
burnt the ball in the grate. Then, with a restrained and sinister
laugh, she ran softly upstairs.
'What's the matter, Anna?' Agnes was sitting up in bed, wide awake.
'Nothing; go to sleep, and don't bother,' Anna angrily whispered.
Had she closed the lid of the bureau? She was compelled to return in
order to make sure. Yes, it was closed. When at length she lay in
bed, breathless, her heart violently beating, her feet like icicles,
she realised what she had done. She had saved Willie Price, but she
had ruined herself with her father. She knew well that he would never
forgive her.
On the following afternoon she planned to hurry to Edward Street and
back while Ephraim and Agnes were both out of the house. But for some
reason her father sat persistently after dinner, conning a sale
catalogue. At a quarter to three he had not moved. She decided to go
at any risks. She put on her hat and jacket, and opened the front
door. He heard her.
'Anna!' he called sharply. She obeyed the summons in terror. 'Art
going out?'
'Yes, father.'
'Where to?'
'Down town to buy some things.'
'Seems thou'rt always buying.'
That was all; he let her free. In an unworthy attempt to appease her
conscience she did in fact go first into the town; she bought some
wool; the trick was despicable. Then she hastened to Edward Street.
The decrepit works seemed to have undergone no change. She had
expected the business would be suspended, and Willie Price alone on the
bank; but manufacture was proceeding as usual. She went direct to the
office, fancying, as she climbed the stairs, that every window of all
the workshops was full of eyes to discern her purpose. Without
knocking, she pushed against the unlatched door and entered. Willie
was lolling in his father's chair, gloomy, meditative, apparently idle.
He was coatless, and wore a dirty apron; a battered hat was at the back
of his head, and his great hands which lay on the desk in front of him,
were soiled. He sprang up, flushing red, and she shut the door; they
were alone together.
'I'm all in my dirt,' he murmured apologetically. Simple and silly
creature, to imagine that she cared for his dirt!
'It's all right,' she said; 'you needn't worry any more. It's all
right.' They were glorious words for her, and her face shone.
'What do you mean?' he asked gruffly.
'Why,' she smiled, full of happiness, 'I got that paper and burnt it!'
He looked at her exactly as if he had not understood. 'Does your
father know?'
She still smiled at him happily. 'No; but I shall tell him this
afternoon. It's all right. I've burnt it.'
He sank down in the chair, and, laying his head on the desk, burst into
sobbing tears. She stood over him, and put a hand on the sleeve of his
shirt. At that touch he sobbed more violently.
'Mr. Price, what is it?' She asked the question in a calm, soothing
tone.
He glanced up at her, his face wet, yet apparently not shamed by the
tears. She could not meet his gaze without herself crying, and so she
turned her head. 'I was only thinking,' he stammered, 'only
thinking--what an angel you are.'
Only the meek, the timid, the silent, can, in moments of deep feeling,
use this language of hyperbole without seeming ridiculous.
He was her great child, and she knew that he worshipped her. Oh,
ineffable power, that out of misfortune canst create divine happiness!
Later, he remarked in his ordinary tone: 'I was expecting your father
here this afternoon about the lease. There is to be a deed of
arrangement with the creditors.'
'My father!' she exclaimed, and she bade him good-bye.
As she passed under the archway she heard a familiar voice: 'I reckon I
shall find young Mester Price in th' office?' Ephraim, who had
wandered into the packing-house, turned and saw her through the
doorway; a second's delay, and she would have escaped. She stood
waiting the storm, and then they walked out into the road together.
'Anna, what art doing here?'
She did not know what to say.
'What art doing here?' he repeated coldly.
'Father, I--was just going back home.'
He hesitated an instant. 'I'll go with thee,' he said. They walked
back to Manor Terrace in silence. They had tea in silence; except that
Agnes, with dreadful inopportuneness, continually worried her father
for a definite promise that she might leave school at Christmas. The
idea was preposterous; but Agnes, fired by her recent success as a
housekeeper, clung to it. Ignorant of her imminent danger, and
misinterpreting the signs of his face, she at last pushed her
insistence too far.
'Get to bed, this minute,' he said, in a voice suddenly terrible. She
perceived her error then, but it was too late. Looking wistfully at
Anna, the child fled.
'I was told this morning, miss,' Ephraim began, as soon as Agnes was
gone, 'that young Price had bin seen coming to this house 'ere
yesterday afternoon. I thought as it was strange as thoud'st said nowt
about it to thy feyther; but I never suspected as a daughter o' mine
was up to any tricks. There was a hang-dog look on thy face this
afternoon when I asked where thou wast going, but I didna' think thou
wast lying to me.'
'I wasn't,' she began, and stopped.
'Thou wast! Now, what is it? What's this carrying-on between thee and
Will Price? I'll have it out of thee.'
'There is no carrying-on, father.'
'Then why hast thou gotten secrets? Why dost go sneaking about to see
him--sneaking, creeping, like any brazen moll?'
The miser was wounded in the one spot where there remained to him any
sentiment capable of being wounded: his faith in the irreproachable,
absolute chastity, in thought and deed, of his womankind.
'Willie Price came in here yesterday,' Anna began, white and calm, 'to
see you. But you weren't in. So he saw me. He told me that bill of
exchange, that blue paper, for thirty pounds, was forged. He said he
had forged Mr. Sutton's name on it.' She stopped, expecting the
thunder.
'Get on with thy tale,' said Ephraim, breathing loudly.
'He said he was ready to go to prison as soon as you gave the word.
But I told him, "No such thing!" I said it must be settled quietly. I
told him to leave it to me. He was driven to the forgery, and I
thought----'
'Dost mean to say,' the miser shouted, 'as that blasted scoundrel came
here and told thee he'd forged a bill, and thou told him to leave it to
thee to settle?' Without waiting for an answer, he jumped up and
strode to the door, evidently with the intention of examining the
forged document for himself.
'It isn't there--it isn't there!' Anna called to him wildly.
'What isna' there?'
'The paper. I may as well tell you, father. I got up early this
morning and burnt it.'
The man was staggered at this audacious and astounding impiety.
'It was mine, really,' she continued; 'and I thought----'
'Thou thought!'
Agnes, upstairs, heard that passionate and consuming roar. 'Shame on
thee, Anna Tellwright! Shame on thee for a shameless hussy! A
daughter o' mine, and just promised to another man! Thou'rt an
accomplice in forgery. Thou sees the scamp on the sly! Thou----' He
paused, and then added, with furious scorn: 'Shalt speak o' this to
Henry Mynors?'
'I will tell him if you like,' she said proudly.
'Look thee here!' he hissed, 'if thou breathes a word o' this to Henry
Mynors, or any other man, I'll cut thy tongue out. A daughter o' mine!
If thou breathes a word----'
'I shall not, father.'
It was finished; grey with frightful anger, Ephraim left the room.