Anna of the Five Towns | Page 2

not perceive Agnes, who had fallen back.
'Had a good class this afternoon, Henry?' Mrs. Sutton's breathing was
short and quick.
'Oh, yes,' he said, 'very good indeed.'
'You're doing a grand work.'
'We had over seventy present,' he added.
'Eh!' she said, 'I make nothing of numbers, Henry. I meant a good class.
Doesn't it say-- Where two or three are gathered together...? But I must
be getting on. The horse will be restless. I've to go up to Hillport before
tea. Mrs. Clayton Vernon is ill.'

Scarcely having stopped in her active course, Mrs. Sutton drew the men
along with her down the yard, she and Mynors in rapid talk: Willie
Price fell a little to the rear, his big hands half-way into his pockets and
his eyes diffidently roving. It appeared as though he could not find
courage to take a share in the conversation, yet was anxious to convince
himself of his right to do so.
Mynors helped Mrs. Sutton into her carriage, which had been drawn up
outside the gate of the school yard. Only two families of the Bursley
Wesleyan Methodists kept a carriage, the Suttons and the Clayton
Vernons. The latter, boasting lineage and a large house in the
aristocratic suburb of Hillport, gave to the society monetary aid and a
gracious condescension. But though indubitably above the operation of
any unwritten sumptuary law, even the Clayton Vernons ventured only
in wet weather to bring their carriage to chapel. Yet Mrs. Sutton, who
was a plain woman, might with impunity use her equipage on Sundays.
This license granted by Connexional opinion was due to the fact that
she so obviously regarded her carriage, not as a carriage, but as a
contrivance on four wheels for enabling an infirm creature to move
rapidly from place to place. When she got into it she had exactly the air
of a doctor on his rounds. Mrs. Sutton's bodily frame had long ago
proved inadequate to the ceaseless demands of a spirit indefatigably
altruistic, and her continuance in activity was a notable illustration of
the dominion of mind over matter. Her husband, a potter's valuer and
commission agent, made money with facility in that lucrative vocation,
and his wife's charities were famous, notwithstanding her attempts to
hide them. Neither husband nor wife had allowed riches to put a
factitious gloss upon their primal simplicity. They were as they were,
save that Mr. Sutton had joined the Five Towns Field Club and
acquired some of the habits of an archæologist. The influence of wealth
on manners was to be observed only in their daughter Beatrice, who,
while favouring her mother, dressed at considerable expense, and at
intervals gave much time to the arts of music and painting. Agnes
watched the carriage drive away, and then turned to look up the stairs
within the school doorway. She sighed, scowled, and sighed again,
murmured something to herself, and finally began to read her book.

'Not come out yet?' Mynors was at her side once more, alone this time.
'No, not yet,' said Agnes, wearied. 'Yes. Here she is. Anna, what ages
you've been!
Anna Tellwright stood motionless for a second in the shadow of the
doorway. She was tail, but not unusually so, and sturdily built up. Her
figure, though the bust was a little flat, had the lenient curves of
absolute maturity. Anna had been a woman since seventeen, and she
was now on the eve of her twenty-first birthday. She wore a plain,
home-made light frock checked with brown and edged with brown
velvet, thin cotton gloves of cream colour, and a broad straw hat like
her sister's. Her grave face, owing to the prominence of the cheekbones
and the width of the jaw, had a slight angularity; the lips were thin, the
brown eyes rather large, the eyebrows level, the nose fine and delicate;
the ears could scarcely be seen for the dark brown hair which was
brushed diagonally across the temples, leaving of the forehead only a
pale triangle. It seemed a face for the cloister, austere in contour,
fervent in expression, the severity of it mollified by that resigned and
spiritual melancholy peculiar to women who through the error of
destiny have been born into a wrong environment.
As if charmed forward by Mynors' compelling eyes, Anna stepped into
the sunlight, at the same time putting up her parasol. 'How calm and
stately she is,' he thought, as she gave him her cool hand and murmured
a reply to his salutation. But even his aquiline gaze could not surprise
the secrets of that concealing breast: this was one of the three great
tumultuous moments of her life--she realised for the first time that she
was loved.
'You are late this afternoon, Miss Tellwright,' Mynors began, with the