“My father!” she exclaimed, and she bade him goodbye.
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 packinghouse, 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 hangdog 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.
XII
At the Priory
She was not to be pardoned: the offence was too monstrous, daring, and final. At the same time, the unappeasable ire of the old man tended to weaken his power over her. All her life she had been terrorised by the fear of a wrath which had never reached the superlative degree until that day. Now that she had seen and felt the limit of his anger, she became aware that she could endure it; the curse was heavy, and perhaps more irksome than heavy, but she survived; she continued to breathe, eat, drink, and sleep; her father’s power stopped short of annihilation. Here, too, was a satisfaction: that things could not be worse. And still greater comfort lay in the fact that she had not only accomplished the deliverance of Willie Price, but had secured absolute secrecy concerning the episode.
The next day was Saturday, when, after breakfast, it was Ephraim’s custom to give Anna the weekly sovereign for housekeeping.
“Here, Agnes,” he said, turning in his armchair to face the child, and drawing a sovereign from his waistcoat-pocket, “take charge o’ this, and mind ye make it go as far as ye can.” His tone conveyed a subsidiary message: “I am terribly angry, but I am not angry with you. However, behave yourself.”
The child mechanically took the coin, scared by this proof of an unprecedented domestic convulsion. Anna, with a tightening of the lips, rose and went into the kitchen. Agnes followed, after a discreet interval, and in silence gave up the sovereign.
“What is it all about, Anna?” she ventured to ask that night.
“Never mind,” said Anna curtly.
The question had needed some courage, for, at certain times, Agnes would as easily have trifled with her father as with Anna. From that moment, with the passive fatalism characteristic of her years, Agnes’ spirits began to rise again to the normal level.
