“Young Mr. Price wants to see you, father.”
Tellwright motioned to her to shut the door.
“You’d best see him, Anna,” he said. “It’s none my business.”
“But what has he come about, father?”
“That note as I sent down this morning. I told owd Titus as he mun pay us twenty pun’ on Monday morning certain, or us should distrain. Them as can pay ten pun, especially in bank notes, can pay twenty pun, and thirty.”
“And suppose he says he can’t?”
“Tell him he must. I’ve figured it out and changed my mind about that works. Owd Titus isna’ done for yet, though he’s getting on that road. Us can screw another fifty out o’ him, that’ll only leave six months rent owing; then us can turn him out. He’ll go bankrupt; us can claim for our rent afore th’ other creditors, and us’ll have a hundred or a hundred and twenty in hand towards doing the owd place up a bit for a new tenant.”
“Make him bankrupt, father?” Anna exclaimed. It was the only part of the ingenious scheme which she had understood.
“Ay!” he said laconically.
“But—” (Would Christ have driven Titus Price into the bankruptcy court?)
“If he pays, well and good.”
“Hadn’t you better see Mr. William, father?”
“Whose property is it, mine or thine?” Tellwright growled. His good humour was still precarious, insecurely reestablished, and Anna obediently left the room. After all, she said to herself, a debt is a debt, and honest people pay what they owe.
It was in an uncomplaisant tone that Anna invited Willie Price to the front parlour: nervousness always made her seem harsh and moreover she had not the trick of hiding firmness under suavity.
“Will you come this way, Mr. Price?”
“Yes,” he said with ingratiating, eager compliance. Dusk was falling, and the room in shadow. She forgot to ask him to take a chair, so they both stood up during the interview.
“A grand meeting we had last night,” he began, twisting his hat. “I saw you there, Miss Tellwright.”
“Yes.”
“Yes. There was a splendid muster of teachers. I wanted to be at the prayer-meeting this morning, but couldn’t get away. Did you happen to go, Miss Tellwright?”
She saw that he knew that she had been present, and gave him another curt monosyllable. She would have liked to be kind to him, to reassure him, to make him happy and comfortable, so ludicrous and touching were his efforts after a social urbanity which should appease; but, just as much as he, she was unskilled in the subtle arts of converse.
“Yes,” he continued, “and I was anxious to be at tonight’s meeting, but the dad asked me to come up here. He said I’d better.” That term, “the dad,” uttered in William’s slow, drawling voice, seemed to show Titus Price in a new light to Anna, as a human creature loved, not as a mere gross physical organism: the effect was quite surprising. William went on: “Can I see your father, Miss Tellwright?”
“Is it about the rent?”
“Yes,” he said.
“Well, if you will tell me—”
“Oh! I beg pardon,” he said quickly. “Of course I know it’s your property, but I thought Mr. Tellwright always saw after it for you. It was he that wrote that letter this morning, wasn’t it?”
“Yes,” Anna replied. She did not explain the situation.
“You insist on another twenty pounds on Monday?”
“Yes,” she said.
“We paid ten last Monday.”
“But there is still over a hundred owing.”
“I know, but—oh, Miss Tellwright, you mustn’t be hard on us. Trade’s bad.”
“It says in the Signal that trade is improving,” she interrupted sharply.
“Does it?” he said. “But look at prices; they’re cut till there’s no profit left. I assure you, Miss Tellwright, my father and me are having a hard struggle. Everything’s against us, and the works in particular, as you know.”
His tone was so earnest, so pathetic, that tears of compassion almost rose to her eyes as she looked at those simple naive blue eyes of his. His lanky figure and clumsily-fitting clothes, his feeble placatory smile, the twitching movements of his long red hands, all contributed to the effect of his defencelessness. She thought of the test: “Blessed are the meek,” and saw in a flash the deep truth of it. Here were she and her father, rich, powerful, autocratic; and there were Willie Price and his father, commercial hares hunted by hounds of creditors, hares that turned in plaintive appeal to those greedy jaws for mercy. And yet, she, a hound, envied at that moment the hares. Blessed are the meek, blessed are the failures, blessed are the stupid, for they, unknown to themselves, have a grace which is denied to the haughty, the successful, and the wise. The very repulsiveness of old Titus, his underhand methods, his insincerities, only served to increase her sympathy for the pair. How could Titus help being himself any more than Henry Mynors could help being himself? And that idea led her to think of the prospective partnership, destined by every favourable sign to brilliant success, and to contrast it with the ignoble and forlorn undertaking in Edward Street.
She tried to discover some method of soothing the young man’s fears, of being considerate to him without injuring her father’s scheme.
“If you will pay what you owe,” she said, “we will spend it all, every penny, on improving the works.”
“Miss Tellwright,” he answered with fatal emphasis, “we cannot pay.”
Ah! She wished to follow Christ day by day, hour by hour—constantly to endeavour after saintliness. What was she to do now? Left to herself, she might have said in a burst of impulsive generosity, “I forgive you all arrears. Start afresh.” But her father had to be reckoned with …
“How much do you think you can pay on Monday?” she asked coldly.
At that moment her father entered the room. His first act was to light the gas. Willie Price’s eyes blinked at the glare, as though he were trembling before the anticipated decree of this implacable old man.
