Anna of the Five Towns | Page 8

the house, the
housekeeper never gossiped; but tales will spread, and people fell into
the habit of regarding Tellwright's child and his housekeeper with
commiseration.
During all this period he was what is termed 'a good Wesleyan,'
preaching and teaching, and spending himself in the various activities
of Hanbridge chapel. For many years he had been circuit treasurer.
Among Anna's earliest memories was a picture of her father arriving
late for supper one Sunday night in autumn after an anniversary service,
and pouring out on the white tablecloth the contents of numerous
chamois-leather money-bags. She recalled the surprising dexterity with
which he counted the coins, the peculiar smell of the bags, and her
mother's bland exclamation, 'Eh, Ephraim! Tellwright belonged by
birth to the Old Guard of Methodism; there was in his family a tradition
of holy valour for the pure doctrine: his father, a Bursley man, had
fought in the fight which preceded the famous Primitive Methodist
Secession of 1808 at Bursley, and had also borne a notable part in the
Warren affrays of '28, and the disastrous trouble of the Fly-Sheets in
'49 when Methodism lost a hundred thousand members. As for
Ephraim, he expounded the mystery of the Atonement in village
conventicles and grew garrulous with God at prayer-meetings in the big
Bethesda chapel; but he did these things as routine, without skill and
without enthusiasm, because they gave him an unassailable position
within the central group of the society. He was not, in fact, much
smitten with either the doctrinal or the spiritual side of Methodism. His
chief interest lay in those fiscal schemes of organisation without whose
aid no religious propaganda can possibly succeed. It was in the finance
of salvation that he rose supreme--the interminable alternation of
debt-raising and new liability which provides a lasting excitement for
Nonconformists. In the negotiation of mortgages, the artful

arrangement of appeals, the planning of anniversaries and of mighty
revivals, he was an undisputed leader. To him the circuit was a 'going
concern,' and he kept it in motion, serving the Lord in committee and
over statements of account. The minister by his pleading might bring
sinners to the penitent form, but it was Ephraim Tellwright who
reduced the cost per head of souls saved, and so widened the frontiers
of the Kingdom of Heaven.
Three years after the death of his first wife it was rumoured that he
would marry again, and that his choice had fallen on a young orphan
girl, thirty years his junior, who 'assisted' at the stationer's shop where
he bought his daily newspaper. The rumour was well-founded. Anna,
then eight years of age, vividly remembered the home-coming of the
pale wife, and her own sturdy attempts to explain, excuse, or assuage to
this wistful and fragile creature the implacable harshness of her father's
temper. Agnes was born within a year, and the pale girl died of
puerperal fever. In that year lay a whole tragedy, which could not have
been more poignant in its perfection if the year had been a thousand
years. Ephraim promptly re-engaged the old housekeeper, a course
which filled Anna with secret childish revolt, for Anna was now nine,
and accomplished in all domesticity. In another seven years the
housekeeper died, a gaunt grey ruin, and Anna at sixteen became
mistress of the household, with a small sister to cherish and control.
About this time Anna began to perceive that her father was generally
regarded as a man of great wealth, having few rivals in the entire region
of the Five Towns. Definite knowledge, however, she had none he
never spoke of his affairs; she knew only that he possessed houses and
other property in various places, that he always turned first to the
money article in the newspaper, and that long envelopes arrived for him
by post almost daily. But she had once heard the surmise that he was
worth sixty thousand of his own, apart from the fortune of his first wife,
Anna's mother. Nevertheless, it did not occur to her to think of her
father, in plain terms, as a miser, until one day she happened to read in
the 'Staffordshire Signal' some particulars of the last will and testament
of William Wilbraham, J.P., who had just died. Mr. Wilbraham had
been a famous magnate and benefactor of the Five Towns; his revered
name was in every mouth; he had a fine seat, Hillport House, at

Hillport; and his superb horses were constantly seen, winged and
nervous, in the streets of Bursley and Hanbridge. The 'Signal' said that
the net value of his estate was sworn at fifty-nine thousand pounds.
This single fact added a definite and startling significance to figures
which had previously conveyed nothing to Anna except an idea of
vastness. The crude contrast between