← catalogue

The Spinners

by Eden Phillpotts · English · Gutenberg #15416 · 842,364 chars · public domain (US)

The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Spinners
    
This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and
most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms
of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online
at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States,
you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located
before using this eBook.

Title: The Spinners

Author: Eden Phillpotts


        
Release date: March 20, 2005 [eBook #15416]
                Most recently updated: December 14, 2020

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/15416

Credits: Produced by Audrey Longhurst, Mary Meehan, and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE SPINNERS ***




Produced by Audrey Longhurst, Mary Meehan, and the Online
Distributed Proofreading Team.





                              THE SPINNERS

                           BY EDEN PHILLPOTTS

            Author of "Old Delabole," "Brunel's Tower," etc.

                                  1918




CONTENTS


BOOK I

I      THE FUNERAL
II     AT 'THE TIGER'
III    THE HACKLER
IV     CHAINS FOR RAYMOND
V      IN THE MILL
VI     'THE SEVEN STARS'
VII    A WALK
VIII   THE LECTURE
IX     THE PARTY
X      WORK
XI     THE OLD STORE-HOUSE
XII    CREDIT
XIII   IN THE FOREMAN'S GARDEN
XIV    THE CONCERT
XV     A VISIT TO MISS IRONSYDE
XVI    AT CHILCOMBE
XVII   CONFUSION
XVIII  THE LOVERS' GROVE
XIX    JOB LEGG'S AMBITION
XX     A CONFERENCE
XXI    THE WARPING MILL
XXII   THE TELEGRAM
XXIII  A LETTER FOR SABINA
XXIV   MRS. NORTHOVER DECIDES
XXV    THE WOMAN'S DARKNESS
XXVI   OF HUMAN NATURE
XXVII  THE MASTER OF THE MILL
XXVIII CLASH OF OPINIONS
XXIX   THE BUNCH OF GRAPES
XXX    A TRIUMPH OF REASON
XXXI   THE OFFER DECLINED


BOOK II

I      THE FLYING YEARS
II     THE SEA GARDEN
III    A TWIST FRAME
IV     THE RED HAND
V      AN ACCIDENT
VI     THE GATHERING PROBLEM
VII    THE WALK HOME
VIII   EPITAPH
IX     THE FUTURE OF ABEL
X      THE ADVERTISEMENT
XI     THE HEMP BREAKER
XII    THE PICNIC
XIII   THE RUNAWAY
XIV    THE MOTOR CAR
XV     CRITICISM
XVI    THE OFFER OF MARRIAGE
XVII   SABINA AND ABEL
XVIII  SWAN SONG
XIX    NEW WORK FOR ABEL
XX     IDEALS
XXI    ATROPOS
XXII   THE HIDING-PLACE




BOOK I

SABINA




CHAPTER I

THE FUNERAL


The people were coming to church and one had thought it Sunday, but for
two circumstances. The ring of bells at St. Mary's did not peal, and the
women were dressed in black as the men.

Through the winding lanes of Bridetown a throng converged, drawn to the
grey tower by a tolling bell; and while the sun shone and a riot of many
flowers made hedgerows and cottage gardens gay; while the spirit of the
hour was inspired by June and a sun at the zenith unclouded, the folk of
the hamlet drew their faces to sadness and mothers chid the children,
who could not pretend, but echoed the noontide hour in their hearts.

All were not attired for a funeral. A small crowd of women, with one or
two men among them, stood together where a sycamore threw a patch of
shade on a triangular space of grass near the church. There were fifty
of these people--ancient women, others in their prime, and many young
maidens. Some communion linked them and the few men who stood with them.
All wore a black band upon their left arms. Drab or grey was their
attire, but sun-bonnets nodded bright as butterflies among them, and even
their dull raiment was more cheerful than the gathering company in black
who now began to mass their numbers and crane their heads along the
highway.

Bridetown lies near the sea in a valley under a range of grassy downs.
It is the centre of a network of little lanes with cottages dotted upon
them, or set back behind small gardens. The dwellings stood under
thatch, or weathered tile, and their faces at this season were radiant
with roses and honeysuckles, jasmine and clematis. Pinks, lilies,
columbines made the garden patches gay, and, as though so many flowers
were not enough, the windows, too, shone with geraniums and the scarlet
tassels of great cactus, that lifted their exotic, thorny bodies behind
the window panes. Not a wall but flaunted red valerian and snapdragon.
Indeed Bridetown was decked with blooms.

Here and there in the midst stood better houses, with some expanse of
lawn before them and flat shrubs that throve in that snug vale. Good
walnut trees and mulberries threw their shadows on grass plat and house
front, while the murmur of bees came from many bright borders.

South the land rose again to the sea cliffs, for the spirits of ocean
and the west wind have left their mark upon Bride Vale. The white gulls
float aloft; the village elms are moulded by Zephyr with sure and steady
breath. Of forestal size and unstunted, yet they turn their backs, as it
were, upon the west and, yielding to that unsleeping pressure, incline
landward. The trees stray not far. They congregate in an oasis about
Bridetown, then wend away through valley meadows, but leave the green
hills bare. The high ground rolls upward to a gentle skyline and the
hillsides, denuded by water springs, or scratched by man, reveal the
silver whiteness of the chalk where they are wounded.

Bride river winds in the midst, and her bright waters throw a loop round
the eastern frontier of the hamlet, pass under the highway, bring life
to the cottage gardens and turn more wheels than one. Bloom of apple
and pear are mirrored on her face and fruit falls into her lap at autumn
time. Then westward she flows through the water meadows, and so slips
uneventfully away to sea, where the cliffs break and there stretches a
little strand. To the last she is crowned with flowers, and the
meadowsweets and violets that decked her cradle give place to sea
poppies, sea hollies, and stones encrusted with lichens of red gold,
where Bride flows to one great pool, sinks into the sand and glides
unseen to her lover.

"They're coming!" said one of the crowd; but it was a false alarm. A
flock of breeding lambs of the Dorset horned sheep pattered through the
village on their way to pasture. The young, healthy creatures, with
amber-coloured horns and yellow eyes, trotted contentedly along together
and left an ovine reek in the air. Behind them came the shepherd--a
high-coloured, middle-aged man with a sharp nose and mild, grey eyes. He
could give news of the funeral, which was on the way behind him.

An iron seat stood under the sycamore on the triangular patch of grass,
and a big woman sat upon it. She was of vast dimensions, broad and beamy
as a Dutch sloop. Her bulk was clad in dun colour, and on her black
bonnet appeared a layer of yellow dust. She spoke to others of the
little crowd who surrounded her. They came from Bridetown Spinning Mill,
for work was suspended because Henry Ironsyde, the mill owner, had died
and now approached his grave.

"The Ironsydes bury here, but they don't live here," said Sally Groves.
"They lived here once, at North Hill House; but that's when I first came
to the Mill as a bit of a girl."

The big woman fanned herself with a handkerchief, then spoke a grey man
with a full beard, small head, and discontented eyes. He was Levi Baggs,
the hackler.

"We shall have those two blessed boys over us now, no doubt," he said.
"But what know they? Things will be as they were, and time and wages the
same as before."

"They'll be sure to do what their father wished, and there was a murmur
of changes before he died," said Sally Groves; but Levi shook his head.

"Daniel Ironsyde is built like his father, to let well alone. Raymond
Ironsyde don't count. He'll only want his money."

"Have you ever seen Mr. Raymond?" asked a girl. She was Nancy Buckler,
a spinner--hard-featured, sharp-voiced, and wiry. Nancy might have been
any age between twenty-five and forty. She owned to thirty.

"He don't come to Bridetown, and if you want to see him, you must go to
'The Tiger,' at Bridport," declared another girl. Her name was Sarah
Northover.

"My Aunt Nelly keeps 'The Seven Stars,' in Barrack Street," she
explained, "and that's just alongside 'The Tiger,' and my Aunt Nelly's
very friendly with Mr. Gurd, of 'The Tiger,' and he's told her that
Mr. Raymond is there half his time. He's all for sport and such like, and
'The Tiger's' a very sporting house."

"He won't be no good to the mills if he's that sort," prophesied Sally
Groves.

"I saw him once, with another young fellow called Motyer," answered
Sarah Northover. "He's very good-looking--fair and curly--quite
different from Mr. Daniel."

"Light or dark, they're Henry Ironsyde's sons and be brought up in his
pattern no doubt," declared Mr. Baggs.

People continued to appear, and among them walked an elderly man, a
woman and a girl. They were Mr. Ernest Churchouse, of 'The Magnolias,'
with his widowed housekeeper, Mary Dinnett, and her daughter, Sabina.
The girl was nineteen, dark and handsome, and very skilled in her
labour. None disputed her right to be called first spinner at the mills.
She was an impulsive, ambitious maiden, and Mr. Best, foreman at the
works, claimed for her that she brought genius as well as understanding
to her task. Sabina joined her friend, Nancy Buckler; Mrs. Dinnett, who
had been a mill hand in her youth, took a seat beside Sally Groves, and
Mr. Churchouse paced alone. He was a round-faced, clean-shaven man with
mild, grey eyes and iron grey hair. He looked gentle and genial. His
shoulders were high, and his legs short. Walking irked him, for a
sedentary life and hearty appetite had made him stout.

The fall of Henry Ironsyde served somewhat to waken Ernest Churchouse
from the placid dream in which he lived, shake him from his normal
quietude, and remind him of the flight of time. He and the dead man were
of an age and had been boys together. Their fathers founded the
Bridetown Spinning Mill, and when the elder men passed away, it was
Henry Ironsyde who took over the enterprise and gradually bought out
Ernest Churchouse. But while Ironsyde left Bridetown and lived
henceforth at Bridport, that he might develop further interests in the
spinning trade, Ernest had been well content to remain there, enjoy his
regular income and live at 'The Magnolias,' his father's old-world
house, beside the river. His tastes were antiquarian and literary. He
wrote when in the mood, and sometimes read papers at the Mechanics'
Institute of Bridport. But he was constitutionally averse from real work
of any sort, lacked ambition, and found all the fame he needed in the
village community with which his life had been passed. He was a
childless widower. Mr. Churchouse strolled now into the churchyard to
look at the grave. It opened beside that of Henry Ironsyde's parents and
his wife. She had been dead for fifteen years. A little crowd peered
down into the green-clad pit, for the sides, under the direction of John
Best, had been lined with cypress and bay. The grass was rank, but it
had been mown down for this occasion round the tombs of the Ironsydes,
though elsewhere darnel rose knee deep and many venerable stones slanted
out of it. Immediately south of the churchyard wall stood the Mill, and
Benny Cogle, engineman at the works, who now greeted Mr. Churchouse,
dwelt on the fact.

"Morning, sir," he said, "a brave day for the funeral, sure enough."

"Good morning, Benny," answered the other. His voice was weak and
gentle.

"When I think how near the church and Mill do lie together, I have
thoughts," continued Benny. He was a florid man of thirty, with
tow-coloured hair and blue eyes.

"Naturally. You work and pray here all inside a space of fifty yards.
But for my part, Benny Cogle, I am inclined to think that working is the
best form of praying."

Mr. Churchouse always praised work for others and, indeed, was under the
impression that he did his share.

"Same here," replied the engineman, "especially while you're young.
Anyway, if I had to choose between 'em, I'd sooner work. 'Tis better for
the mind and appetite. And I lay if Mr. Ironsyde, when he lies down
there, could tell the truth, he'd rather be hearing the Mill going six
days a week and feeling his grave throbbing to my engines, than list to
the sound of the church organ on the seventh."

"Not so," reproved Mr. Churchouse. "We must not go so far as that. Henry
Ironsyde was a God-fearing man and respected the Sabbath as we all
should, and most of us do."

"The weaker vessels come to church, I grant," said Benny, "but the men
be after more manly things than church-going of a Sunday nowadays."

"So much the worse for them," declared Mr. Churchouse. "Here," he
continued, "there are naturally more women than men. Since my father and
Henry Ironsyde's father established these mills, which are now justly
famous in the county, the natural result has happened and women have
come here in considerable numbers. Women preponderate in spinning
places, because the work of spinning yarn has always been in their hands
from time immemorial. And they tend our modern machinery as deftly as of
old they twirled the distaff and worked the spinning-wheel; and as
steadily as they used to trudge the rope walks and spin, like spiders,
from the masses of flax or hemp at their waists."

"The females want religion without a doubt," said Benny. "I'm tokened to
Mercy Gale, for instance; she looks after the warping wheels, and if
that girl didn't say her prayers some fine morning, she'd be as useless
as if she hadn't eat her breakfast. 'Tis the feminine nature that craves
for support."

A very old man stood and peered into the grave. He was the father of
Levi Baggs, the hackler, and people said he was never seen except on the
occasion of a funeral. The ancient had been reduced to a mere wisp by
the attrition of time.

He put his hand on the arm of Mr. Churchouse and regarded the grave with
a nodding head.

"Ah, my dear soul," he said. "Life, how short--eternity, how long!"

"True, most true, William."

"And I ask myself, as each corpse goes in, how many more pits will open
afore mine."

"'Tis hid with your Maker, William."

"Thank God I'm a good old man and ripe and ready," said Mr. Baggs.
"Not," he added, "that there's any credit to me; for you can't be
anything much but good at ninety-two."

"While the brain is spared we can think evil, William."

"Not a brain like mine, I do assure 'e."

A little girl ran into the churchyard--a pretty, fair child, whose
bright hair contrasted with the black she wore.

"They have come and father sent me to tell you, Mr. Churchouse," she
said.

"Thank you, Estelle," he answered, and they returned to the open space
together. The child then joined her father, and Mr. Churchouse, saluting
the dead, walked to the first mourning coach and opened the door.

It was a heavy and solid funeral of Victorian fashion proper to the
time. The hearse had been drawn by four black horses with black
trappings, and over the invisible coffin nodded a gloomy harvest of
black ostrich plumes. There were no flowers, and some children, who
crept forward with a little wreath of wild roses, were pushed back.

The men from the Mill helped to carry their master into the church; but
there were not enough of them to support the massive oak that held a
massive man, and John Best, Levi Baggs, Benny Cogle and Nicholas Roberts
were assisted by the undertakers.

From the first coach descended an elderly woman and a youth. The lady
was Miss Jenny Ironsyde, sister of the dead, and with her came her
nephew Daniel, the new mill-owner. He was five-and-twenty--a sallow,
strong-faced young fellow, broad in the shoulder and straight in the
back. His eyes were brown and steady, his mouth and nose indicated
decision; the funeral had not changed his cast of countenance, which was
always solemn; for, as his father before him, he lacked a sense of
humour.

Mr. Churchouse shook hands and peered into the coach.

"Where's Raymond?" he asked.

"Not come," answered Miss Ironsyde. She was a sturdy woman of
five-and-fifty, with a pleasant face and kindly eyes. But they were
clouded now and she showed agitation.

"Not come!" exclaimed Ernest with very genuine consternation.

Daniel Ironsyde answered. His voice was slow, but he had a natural
instinct for clarity and spoke more to the point than is customary with
youth.

"My brother has not come because my father has left him out of his will,
Mr. Churchouse."

"Altogether?"

"Absolutely. Will you take my aunt's arm and follow next after me,
please?"

Two clergymen met the coffin at the lich-gate, and behind the chief
mourners came certain servants and dependents, followed by the women of
the Mill. Then a dozen business men walked together. A few of his
co-workers had sent their carriages; but most came themselves, to do the
last honour to one greatly respected.

Mr. Churchouse paid little attention to the obsequies.

"Not at his father's funeral!" he kept thinking to himself. His simple
mind was thrown into a large confusion by such an incident. The fact
persisted rather than the reason for it. He longed to learn more, but
could not until the funeral was ended.

When the coffin came to the grave, Mary Dinnett stole home to look after
the midday dinner. It had weighed on her mind since she awoke, for Miss
Ironsyde and Daniel were coming to 'The Magnolias' to partake of a meal
before returning home. There were no relations from afar to be
considered, and no need for funeral baked meats in the dead man's house.

When all was ended and only old William Baggs stood by the grave and
watched the sextons fill it, a small company walked together up the hill
north of Bridetown. Daniel went first with Mr. Churchouse, and behind
them followed Miss Jenny Ironsyde with a man and a child. The man rented
North Hill House. Arthur Waldron was a widower, who lived now for two
things: his little daughter, Estelle, and sport. No other considerations
challenged his mind. He was rich and good-hearted. He knew that his
little girl had brains, and he dealt fairly with her in the matter of
education.

Of the Ironsyde brothers, Raymond was his personal friend, and Mr.
Waldron now permitted himself some vague expression of regret that the
young man should have been absent on such an occasion.

"Yes," said Miss Ironsyde, to whom he spoke, "if there's any excuse for
convention it's at a funeral. No doubt people will magnify the incident
into a scandal--for their own amusement and the amusement of their
friends. If Raymond had enjoyed time to reflect, I feel sure he would
have come; but there was no time. His father has made no provision for
him, and he is rather upset. It is not unnatural that he should be, for
dear Henry, while always very impatient of Raymond's sporting tastes and
so on, never threatened anything like this."

"No doubt Mr. Ironsyde would have made a difference if he had not died
so suddenly."

"I think so too," she answered.

Then Waldron and his daughter went homewards; while the others, turning
down a lane to the right, reached 'The Magnolias'--a small, ancient
house whose face was covered with green things and whose lawn spread to
the river bank.

Mrs. Dinnett had prepared a special meal of a sort associated with the
mournful business of the day; for a funeral feast has its own character;
the dishes should be cold and the wine should be white or brown.

Mr. Churchouse was concerned to know what Daniel meant to do for
Raymond; but he found the heir by no means inclined to emotional
generosity.

Daniel spoke in a steady voice, though he showed a spark of feeling
presently. The fire, however, was for his dead father, not his living
brother.

"I'm very sorry that Raymond could have been so small as to keep away
from the funeral," he said. "It was petty. But, as Aunt Jenny says, he's
built like that, and no doubt the shock of being ignored knocked him off
his balance."

"He has the defects of his qualities, my dear. The same people can often
rise to great heights and sink to great depths. They can do worse
things--and better things--than we humdrum folk, who jog along the
middle of the road. We must forgive such people for doing things we
wouldn't do, and remember their power to do things we couldn't do."

The young man was frankly puzzled by this speech, which came from his
aunt. He shrugged his shoulders.

"I've got to think of father first and Raymond afterwards," he said. "I
owe my first duty to my father, who trusted me and honoured me, and knew
very well that I should obey his wishes and carry on with my life as he
would have liked to see me. He has made a very definite and clear
statement, and I should be disloyal to him--dishonest to him--if I did
anything contrary to the spirit of it."

"Who would wish you to?" asked Ernest Churchouse. "But a brother is a
brother," he continued, "and since there is nothing definite about
Raymond in the will, you should, I think, argue like this. You should
say to yourself, 'my father was disappointed with my brother and did not
know what to do about him; but, having a high opinion of me and my good
sense and honesty, he left my brother to my care. He regarded me, in
fact, as my brother's keeper, and hoped that I would help Raymond to
justify his existence.' Don't you feel like that?"

"I feel that my father was very long-suffering with Raymond, and his
will tells me that he had a great deal more to put up with from Raymond
than anybody ever knew, except my brother himself."

"You needn't take up the cudgels for your father, Dan," interposed Miss
Ironsyde. "Be sure that your dear father, from the peace which now he
enjoys, would not like to see you make his quarrel with Raymond your
quarrel. I'm not extenuating Raymond's selfish and unthinking conduct as
a son. His own conscience will exact the payment for wrong done beyond
repair. He'll come to that some day. He won't escape it. He's not built
to escape it. But he's your brother, not your son; and you must ask
yourself, whether as a brother, you've fairly got any quarrel with him."

Daniel considered a moment, then he spoke.

"I have not," he said--"except the general quarrel that he's a waster
and not justifying his existence. We have had practically nothing to do
with each other since we left school."

"Well," declared Mr. Churchouse, "now you must have something to do with
each other. It is an admirable thought of your Aunt Jenny's that your
father has honoured your judgment by leaving the destiny of Raymond more
or less in your hands."

"I didn't say that; you said it," interrupted the lady. "Raymond's
destiny is in his own hands. But I do feel, of course, that Daniel can't
ignore him. The moment has come when a strong effort must be made to
turn Raymond into a useful member of society."

"What allowance did dear Henry make him?" asked Mr. Churchouse.

"Father gave him two hundred a year, and father paid all his debts
before his twenty-first birthday; but he didn't pay them again. Raymond
has told Aunt Jenny that he's owing two hundred pounds at this moment."

"And nothing to show for it--we may be sure of that. Well, it might have
been worse. Is the allowance to be continued?"

"No," said Miss Ironsyde. "That's the point. It is to cease. Henry
expressly directs that it is to cease; and to me that is very
significant."

"Of course, for it shows that he leaves Raymond in his brother's hands."

"I have heard Henry say that Raymond beat him," continued Miss Ironsyde.
"He was a good father and a forgiving father, but temperamentally he was
not built to understand Raymond. Some people develop slowly and remain
children much longer than other people. Raymond is one of those. Daniel,
like my dear brother before him, has developed quickly and come to man's
estate and understanding."

"His father could trust his eldest son," declared Mr. Churchouse, "and,
as I happen to know, Daniel, you always spoke with patience and reason
about Raymond--your father has told me so. It was natural and wise,
therefore, that my late dear friend should have left Raymond to you."

"I only want to do my duty," said the young man. "By stopping away
to-day Raymond hasn't made me feel any kinder to him, and if he were not
so stupid in some ways, he must have known it would be so; but I am not
going to let that weigh against him. How do you read the fact that my
father directs Raymond's allowance to cease, Uncle Ernest?"

Mr. Churchouse bore no real connection to the Ironsydes; but his
relations had always been close and cordial after he relinquished his
share in the business of the mills, and the younger generation was
brought up to call him 'uncle.'

"I read it like this," answered the elder. "It means that Raymond is to
look to you in future, and that henceforth you may justly demand that he
should not live in idleness. There is nothing more demoralising for
youth than to live upon money it doesn't earn. I should say--subject to
your aunt's opinion, to which I attach the greatest importance--that it
is your place to give your brother an interest in life and to show him,
what you know already, the value and dignity of work."

"I entirely agree," said Jenny Ironsyde. "I can go further and declare
from personal knowledge that my brother had shadowed the idea in his
mind."

They both regarded Daniel.

"Then leave it there," he bade them, "leave it there and I'll think it
out. My father was the fairest man I ever met, and I'll try and be as
fair. It's up to Raymond more than me."

"You can bring a horse to the water, though you can't make him drink,"
admitted Mr. Churchouse. "But if you bring your horse to the water,
you've done all that reason and sense may ask you to do."

Miss Ironsyde, from larger knowledge of the circumstances, felt disposed
to carry the question another step. She opened her mouth and drew in her
breath to speak--making that little preliminary sound only audible when
nothing follows it. But she did not speak.

"Come into the garden and see Magnolia grandiflora," said Mr.
Churchouse. "There are twelve magnificent blossoms open this morning,
and I should have picked every one of them for my dear friend's grave,
only the direction was clear, that there were to be no flowers."

"Henry disliked any attempt to soften the edges at such a time,"
explained the dead man's sister. "He held that death was the skeleton at
the feast of life--a wholesome and stark reminder to the thoughtless
living that the grave is the end of our mortal days. He liked a funeral
to be a funeral--black--black. He did not want the skeleton at the feast
to be decked in roses and lilies."

"An opinion worthy of all respect," declared Mr. Churchouse.

Then he asked after the health of his guest and expressed sympathy for
her sorrow and great loss.

"He'd been so much better lately that it was a shock," she said, "but he
died as he wanted to die--as all Ironsydes do die--without an illness.
It is a tradition that never seems to fail. That reconciled us in a way.
And you--how are you? You seldom come to Bridport nowadays."

Mr. Churchouse rarely talked about himself.

"True. I have been immersed in literary work and getting on with my
_magnum opus_: 'The Church Bells of Dorset.' You see one does not obtain
much help here--no encouragement. Not that I expect it. We men of
letters have to choose between being hermits, or humbugs."

"I always thought a hermit was a humbug," said Jenny, smiling for the
first time.

"Not always. When I say 'hermit,' I mean 'recluse.' With all the will to
be a social success and identify myself with the welfare of the place in
which I dwell, my powers are circumscribed. Do not think I put myself
above the people, or pretend any intellectual superiority, or any
nonsense of that sort. No, it is merely a question of time and energy.
My antiquarian work demands both, and so I am deprived by duty from
mixing in the social life as much as I wish. This is not, perhaps,
understood, and so I get a character for aloofness, which is not wholly
deserved."

"Don't worry," said Miss Ironsyde. "Everybody cares for you. People
don't think about us and our doings half as much as we are prone to
fancy. I liked your last article in the _Bridport Gazette_. Only I
seemed to have read most of it before."

"Probably you have. The facts, of course, were common property. My task
is to collect data and retail them in a luminous and illuminating way."

"So you do--so you do."

He looked away, where Daniel stood by himself with his hands in his
pockets and his eyes on the river.

"A great responsibility for one so young; but he will rise to it."

"D'you mean his brother, or the Mill?"

"Both," answered Ernest Churchouse. "Both."

Mrs. Dinnett came down the garden.

"The mourning coach is at the door," she said.

"Daniel insisted that we went home in a mourning coach," explained Miss
Ironsyde. "He felt the funeral was not ended until we returned home.
That shows imagination, so you can't say he hasn't got any."

"You can never say anybody hasn't got anything," declared Mr.
Churchouse. "Human nature defeats all calculations. The wisest only
generalise about it."




CHAPTER II

AT 'THE TIGER'


The municipal borough of Bridport stretches itself luxuriously from east
to west beneath a wooded hill. Southward the land slopes to broad
water-meadows where rivers meet and Brit and Asker wind to the sea.
Evidences of the great local industry are not immediately apparent; but
streamers and wisps of steam scattered above the red-tiled roofs tell of
work, and westward, where the land falls, there stand shoulder to
shoulder the busy mills.

From single yarn that a child could break, to hawsers strong enough to
hold a battleship, Bridport meets every need. Her twines and cords and
nets are famous the world over; her ropes, cables, cablets and canvas
rigged the fleet that scattered the Spanish Armada.

The broad streets with deep, unusual side-walks are a sign of Bridport's
past, for they tell of the days when men and women span yarn before
their doors, and rope-walks ran their amber and silver threads of hemp
and flax along the pavements. But steel and steam have taken the place
of the hand-spinners, though their industry has left its sign-manual
upon the township. For the great, open side-walks make for distinction
and spaciousness, and there shall be found in all Dorset, no brighter,
cheerfuller place than this. Bridport's very workhouse, south-facing and
bowered in green, blinks half a hundred windows amiably at the noonday
sun and helps to soften the life-failure of those who dwell therein. Off
Barrack Street it stands, and at the time of the terror, when Napoleon
threatened, soldiers hived here and gave the way its name.

Not far from the workhouse two inns face each other in Barrack
Street--'The Tiger' upon one side of the way, 'The Seven Stars' upon the
other; and at the moment when Henry Ironsyde's dust was reaching the
bottom of his grave at Bridetown, a young man of somewhat inane
countenance, clad in garments that displayed devotion to sport and
indifference to taste, entered 'The Tiger's' private bar.

Behind the counter stood Richard Gurd, a middle-aged, broad-shouldered
publican with a large and clean-shaven face, heavy-jaw, rather sulky
eyes and mighty hands.

"The usual," said the visitor. "Ray been here?"

Mr. Gurd shook his head.

"No, Mr. Ned--nor likely to. They're burying his father this morning."

The publican poured out a glass of cherry brandy as he spoke and Mr.
Neddy Motyer rolled a cigarette.

"Ray ain't going," said the customer.

"Not going to his father's funeral!"

"For a very good reason, too; he's cut off with a shilling."

"Dear, dear," said Mr. Gurd. "That's bad news, though perhaps not much
of a surprise to Mr. Raymond."

"It's a devil of a lesson to the rising generation," declared the youth.
"To think our own fathers can do such blackguard things, just because
they don't happen to like our way of life. What would become of England
if every man was made in the pattern of his father? Don't education and
all that count? If my father was to do such a thing--but he won't; he's
too fond of the open air and sport and that."

"Young men don't study their fathers enough in this generation,
however," argued the innkeeper, "nor yet do young women study their
mothers enough."

"We've got to go out in the world and play our parts," declared Neddy.
"'Tis for them to study us--not us them. You must have progress. The
thing for parents to do is to know they're back numbers and act
according."

"They do--most of them," answered Mr. Gurd. "A back number is a back
number and behaves as such. I speak impartial being a bachelor, and I
forgive the young men their nonsense and pardon their opinions, because
I know I was young myself once, and as big a fool as anybody, and put
just the same strain on my parents, no doubt, though they lived to see
me a responsible man and done with childish things. The point for
parents is not to forget what it feels like to be young. That I never
have, and you young gentlemen would very soon remind me if I did. But
the late Mr. Henry Ironsyde found no time for all-round wisdom. He
poured his brains into hemp and jute and such like. Why, he didn't even
make a minute to court and wed till he was forty-five year old. And the
result of that was that when his brace of boys was over twenty, he stood
in sight of seventy and could only see life at that angle. And what made
it worse was, that his eldest, Mister Daniel, was cut just in his own
pattern. So the late gentleman never could forgive Mr. Raymond for being
cut in another pattern. But if what you say is right and Mister Raymond
has been left out in the cold, then I think he's been badly used."

"So he has--it's a damned shame," said Mr. Motyer, "and I hope Ray will
do something about it."

"There's very little we can do against the writing of the dead,"
answered Mr. Gurd. Then he saluted a man who bustled into the bar.

"Morning, Job. What's the trouble?"

Job Legg was very tall and thin. He dropped at the middle, but showed
vitality and energy in his small face and rodent features. His hair was
black, and his thin mouth and chin clean-shaven. His eyes were small and
very shrewd; his manner was humble. He had a monotonous inflection and
rather chanted in a minor key than spoke.

"Mrs. Northover's compliments and might we have the big fish kettle
till to-morrow? A party have been sprung on us, and five-and-twenty sit
down to lunch in the pleasure gardens at two o'clock."

"And welcome, Job. Go round to the kitchen, will 'e?"

Job disappeared and Mr. Gurd explained.

"My good neighbour at 'The Seven Stars'--her with the fine pleasure
gardens and swings and so on. And Job Legg's her potman. Her husband's
right hand while he lived, and now hers. I have the use of their
stable-yard market days, for their custom is different from mine. A
woman's house and famous for her meat teas and luncheons. She does very
well and deserves to."

"That old lady with the yellow wig?"

Mr. Gurd pursed his lips.

"To you she might seem old, I suppose. That's the spirit that puts a bit
of a strain on the middle-aged and makes such men as me bring home to
ourselves what we said and thought when we were young. 'Tis just the
natural, thoughtless insolence of youth to say Nelly Northover's an old
woman--her being perhaps eight-and-forty. And to call her hair a wig,
because she's fortified it with home-grown what's fallen out over a
period of twenty years, is again only the insolence of youth. One can
only say 'forgive 'em, for they know not what they do.'"

"Well, get me another brandy anyway."

Then entered Raymond Ironsyde, and Mr. Gurd for once felt genuinely
sorry to see his customer.

The young man was handsome with large, luminous, grey eyes, curly, brown
hair and a beautiful mouth, clean cut, full, firm and finely modelled in
the lips. His nose was straight, high in the nostril and sensitive. He
resembled his brother, Daniel, but stood three inches taller, and his
brow was fuller and loftier. His expression in repose appeared frank and
receptive; but to-day his face wore a look half anxious, half ferocious.
He was clad in tweed knickerbockers and a Norfolk jacket, of different
pattern but similar material. His tie was light blue and fastened with
a gold pin modelled in the shape of a hunting-horn. He bore no mark of
mourning whatever.

"Whiskey and soda, Gurd. Morning, Neddy."

He spoke defiantly, as though knowing his entrance was a challenge. Then
he flung himself down on a cushioned seat in the bow window of the
bar-room and took a pipe and tobacco pouch from his pocket.

Mr. Gurd brought the drink round to Raymond. He spoke upon some general
subject and pretended to no astonishment that the young man should be
here on this day. But the customer cut him short. There was only one
subject for discussion in his mind.

"I suppose you thought I should go to my father's funeral? No doubt,
you'll say, with everybody else, that it's a disgrace I haven't."

"I shall mind my own business and say nothing, Mister Raymond. It's your
affair, not ours."

"I'd have done the same, Ray, if I'd been treated the same," said Neddy
Motyer.

"It's a protest," explained Raymond Ironsyde. "To have gone, after being
publicly outraged like this in my father's will, was impossible to
anybody but a cur. He ignored me as his son, and so I ignore him as my
father; and who wouldn't?"

"I suppose Daniel will come up to the scratch all right?" hazarded
Motyer.

"He'll make some stuffy suggestion, no doubt. He can't see me in the
gutter very well."

"You must get to work, Mr. Raymond; and I can tell you, as one who
knows, that work's only dreaded by them who have never done any. You'll
soon find that there's nothing better for the nerves and temper than
steady work."

Neddy chaffed Mr. Gurd's sentiments and Raymond said nothing. He was
looking in front of him, his mind occupied with personal problems.

Neddy Motyer made another encouraging suggestion.

"There's your aunt, Miss Ironsyde," he said. "She's got plenty of cash,
I've heard people say, and she gives tons away in charity. How do you
stand with her?"

"Mind your own business, Ned."

"Sorry," answered the other promptly. "Only wanted to buck you up."

"I'm not in need of any bucking up, thanks. If I've got to work, I'm
quite equal to it. I've got more brains than Daniel, anyway. I'm quite
conscious of that."

"You've got tons more mind than him," declared Neddy.

"And if that's the case, I could do more good, if I chose, than ever
Daniel will."

"Or more harm," warned Mr. Gurd. "Always remember that, Mister Raymond.
The bigger the intellects, the more power for wrong as well as right."

"He'll ask me to go into the works, I expect. And I may, or I may not."

"I should," advised Neddy. "Bridetown is a very sporting place and you'd
be alongside your pal, Arthur Waldron."

"Don't go to Bridetown with an idea of sport, however--don't do that,
Mister Raymond," warned Richard Gurd. "If you go, you put your back into
the work and master the business of the Mill."

The young men wasted an hour in futile talk and needless drinking while
Gurd attended to other customers. Then Raymond Ironsyde accepted an
invitation to return home with Motyer, who lived at Eype, a mile away.

"I'm going to give my people a rest to-day," said Raymond as he
departed. "I shall come in here for dinner, Dick."

"Very good, sir," answered Mr. Gurd; but he shook his head when the
young men had gone.

Others in the bar hummed on the subject of young Ironsyde after his back
was turned. A few stood up for him and held that he had been too
severely dealt with; but the majority and those who knew most about him
thought that his ill-fortune was deserved.

"For look at it," said a tradesman, who knew the facts. "If he'd been
left money, he'd have only wasted the lot in sporting and been worse off
after than before; but now he's up against work, and work may be the
saving of him. And if he won't work, let him die the death and get off
the earth and make room for a better man."

None denied the honourable obligation to work for every responsible
human being.




CHAPTER III

THE HACKLER


The warehouse of Bridetown Mill adjoined the churchyard wall and its
northern windows looked down upon the burying ground. The store came
first and then the foreman's home, a thatched dwelling bowered in red
and white roses, with the mill yard in front and a garden behind. From
these the works were separated by the river. Bride came by a mill race
to do her share, and a water wheel, conserving her strength, took it to
the machinery. For Benny Cogle's engine was reinforced by the river.
Then, speeding forward, Bride returned to her native bed, which wound
through the valley south of the works.

A bridge crossed the river from the yard and communicated with the
mills--a heterogeneous pile of dim, dun colours and irregular roofs
huddled together with silver-bright excrescences of corrugated iron. A
steady hum and drone as of some gigantic beehive ascended from the
mills, and their combined steam and water power produced a tremor of
earth and a steady roar in the air; while a faint dust storm often
flickered about the entrance ways.

The store-house reeked with that fat, heavy odour peculiar to hemp and
flax. It was a lofty building of wide doors and few windows. Here in the
gloom lay bales and stacks of raw material. Italy, Russia, India, had
sent their scutched hemp and tow to Bridetown. Some was in the rough;
the dressed line had already been hackled and waited in bundles of long
hemp composed of wisps, or 'stricks' like horses' tails. The silver and
amber of the material made flashes of brightness in the dark storerooms
and drew the light to their shining surfaces. Tall, brown posts
supported the rafters, and in the twilight that reigned here, a man
moved among the bales piled roof-high around him. He was gathering rough
tow from a broken bale of Russian hemp and had stripped the Archangel
matting from the mass.

Levi Baggs, the hackler, proceeded presently to weigh his material and
was taking it over the bridge to the hackling shop when he met John
Best, the foreman. They stopped to speak, and Levi set down the barrow
that bore his load.

"I see you with him, yesterday. Did you get any ideas out of the man?"

Baggs referred to the new master and John Best understood.

"In a manner of speaking, yes," he said. "Nothing definite, of course.
It's too soon to talk of changes, even if Mister Daniel means them.
He'll carry on as before for the present, and think twice and again
before he does anything different from his father."

"'Tis just Bridetown luck if he's the sort to keep at a dead parent's
apron-strings," grumbled the other. "Nowadays, what with education and
so on, the rising generation is generally ahead of the last and moves
according."

"You can move two ways--backward as well as forward," answered Best.
"Better he should go on as we've been going, than go back."

"He daren't go back--the times won't let him. The welfare of the workers
is the first demand on capital nowadays. If it weren't, labour would
very soon know the reason why."

Mr. Best regarded Levi without admiration.

"You are a grumbler born," he said, "and so fond of it that you squeal
before you're hurt, just for the pleasure of squealing. One thing I can
tell you, for Mister Daniel said it in so many words: he's the same in
politics as his father; and that's Liberal; and since the Liberals of
yesterday are the Radicals of to-morrow, we have every reason to
suppose he'll move with the times."

"We all know what that means," answered Mr. Baggs. "It means getting new
machinery and increasing the output of the works for the benefit of the
owners, not them that run the show. I don't set no store on a man being
a Radical nowadays. You can't trust nobody under a Socialist."

Mr. Best laughed.

"You wait till they've got the power, and you'll find that the whip will
fall just as heavy from their hands as the masters of to-day. Better to
get small money and be free, than get more and go a slave in state
clothes, on state food, in a state house, with a state slave-driver to
see you earn your state keep and take your state holidays when the state
wills, and work as much or as little as the state pleases. What you
chaps call 'liberty' you'll find is something quite different, Baggs,
for it means good-bye to privacy in the home and independence outside
it."

"That's a false and wicked idea of progress, John Best, and well you
know it," answered Levi. "You're one of the sort content to work on a
chain and bring up your children likewise; but you can't stand between
the human race and freedom--no more can Daniel Ironsyde, or any other
man."

"Well, meantime, till the world's put right by your friends, you get on
with your hackling, my old bird, else you'll have the spreaders
grumbling," answered Mr. Best. Then he went into his home and Levi
trundled the wheelbarrow to a building with a tar-pitched, penthouse
roof, which stuck out from the side of the mill, like a fungus on a tree
stem.

Within, before a long, low window, stood the hand dresser's tools--two
upturned boards set with a mass of steel pins. The larger board had tall
teeth disposed openly; upon the smaller, the teeth were shorter and as
dense as a hair brush. In front of them opened a grating and above ran
an endless band. Behind this grille was an exhaust, which sucked away
the dust and countless atoms of vegetable matter scattered by Levi's
activities, and the running band from above worked it. For the
authorities, he despised, considered the operations of Mr. Baggs and
ordained that they should be conducted under healthy conditions.

He took his seat now before the rougher's hackle, turned up his shirt
sleeves over a pair of sinewy arms and powerful wrists and set to work.

From the mass of hemp tow he drew hanks and beat the pins with them
industriously, wrenched the mass through the steel teeth again and again
and separated the short fibre from the long. Presently in his hand
emerged a wisp of bright fibre, and now flogging the finer hackling
board, he extracted still more short stalks and rubbish till the
finished strick came clean and shining as a lock of woman's hair. From
the hanks of long tow he seemed to bring out the tresses like magic. In
his swift hand each strick flashed out from the rough hank with great
rapidity, and every crafty, final touch on the teeth made it brighter.
Giving a last flick or two over the small pins, Mr. Baggs set down his
strick and soon a pile of these shining locks grew beside him, while the
exhaust sucked away the rubbish and fragments, and the mass of short
fibre which he had combed out, also accumulated for future treatment.

He worked with the swiftness and surety of a master craftsman, scourged
his tow and snorted sometimes as he struggled with it. He was exerting a
tremendous pressure, regulated and applied with skill, and he always
exulted in the thought that he, at least, of all the workers performed
hand labour far more perfectly than any machine. But still it was not
the least of his many grievances that Government showed too little
concern for his comfort. He was always demanding increased precautions
for purifying the air he breathed. From first to last, indeed, the hemp
and tow are shedding superfluities, and a layman is astonished to see
how the broad strips and ribbons running through the machines and torn
by innumerable systems of sharp teeth in transit, emerge at the last
gasp of attenuation to trickle down the spindles and turn into the glory
of yarn.

From Mr. Baggs, the long fibre and the short which he had combed out of
it, proceeded to the spinning mill; and now a girl came for the stricks
he had just created.

Their future under the new master was still on every tongue at Bridetown
Mill, and the women turned to the few men who worked among them for
information on this paramount subject.

"No, I ain't heard no more, Sarah," answered the hackler to Miss
Northover's question. "You may be sure that those it concerns most will
be the last to hear of any changes; and you may also be sure that the
changes, when made, will not favour us."

"You can't tell that," answered Sarah, gathering the stricks. "Old Mrs.
Chick, our spreader minder, says the young have always got bigger hearts
than the old, and she'd sooner trust them than--"

Mr. Baggs tore a hank through the comb with such vigour that its steel
teeth trembled and the dust flew.

"Tell Granny Chick not to be a bigger fool than God made her," he said.
"The young have got harder hearts than the old, and education, though it
may make the head bigger for all I know, makes the heart smaller. He'll
be hard--hard--and I lay a week's wages that he'll get out of his
responsibilities by shovelling 'em on his dead father."

"How can he?" asked Sarah.

"By letting things be as they are. By saying his father knew best."

"Young men never think that," answered she. "'Tis well known that no
young man ever thought his father knew better than himself."

"Then he'll pretend to for his own convenience."

"What about all that talk of changes for the better before Mister
Ironsyde died then?"

"Talk of dead men won't go far. We'll hear no more of that."

Sarah frowned and went her way. At the door, however, she turned.

"I might get to hear something about it next Sunday very like," she
said. "I'm going into Bridport to my Aunt Nelly at 'The Seven Stars';
and she's a great friend of Richard Gurd at 'The Tiger'; and 'tis there
Mister Raymond spends half his time, they say. So Mr. Gurd may have
learned a bit about it."

"No doubt he'll hear a lot of words, and as for Raymond Ironsyde, his
father knew him for a man with a bit of a heart in him and didn't trust
him accordingly. But you can take it from me--"

A bell rang and its note struck Mr. Baggs dumb. He ceased both to speak
and work, dropped his hank, turned down his shirt sleeves and put on his
coat. Sarah at the stroke of the bell also manifested no further
interest in Levi's forebodings but left him abruptly. For it was noon
and the dinner-hour had come.




CHAPTER IV

CHAINS FOR RAYMOND


Raymond Ironsyde had spent his life thus far in a healthy and selfish
manner. He owned no objection to hard work of a physical nature, for as
a sportsman and athlete he had achieved fame and was jealous to increase
it. He preserved the perspective of a boy into manhood; while his father
waited, not without exasperation, for him to reach adult estate in mind
as well as body. Henry Ironsyde was still waiting when he died and left
Raymond to the mercy of Daniel.

Now the brothers had met to thresh out the situation; and a day came
when Raymond lunched with his friend and fellow sportsman, Arthur
Waldron, of North Hill House, and furnished him with particulars.

In time past, Raymond's grandfather had bought a thousand acres of land
on the side of North Hill. Here he destroyed one old farmhouse and
converted another into the country-seat of his family. He lived and died
there; but his son, Henry, cared not for it, and the place had been let
to successive tenants for many years.

Waldron was the last of these, and Raymond's ambition had always been
some day to return to North Hill House and dwell in his grandfather's
home.

At luncheon the party of three sat at a round table on a polished floor
of oak. Estelle played hostess and gazed with frank admiration at the
chattering visitor. He brought a proposition that made her feel very
excited to learn what her father would think of it.

Mr. Waldron was tall and thin. He lived out of doors and appeared to be
made of iron, for nothing wearied him as yet. He had high cheek-bones,
and a clean-shaved, agreeable face. He took sport most seriously, was
jealous for its rights and observant of its rituals even in the smallest
matters. Upon the etiquette of all field sports he regarded himself, and
was regarded, as an arbiter.

"Tell me how it went," he said. "I hope your brother was sporting?"

Mr. Waldron used this adjective in the widest possible sense. It
embraced all reputable action and covered virtue. If conduct were
'sporting,' he demanded no more from any man; while, conversely,
'unsporting' deeds condemned the doer in all relations of life and
rendered him untrustworthy from every standpoint.

"Depends what you call 'sporting,'" answered Raymond, whose estimate of
the word was not so comprehensive. "You'd think it would have been
rather a case for generosity, but Dan didn't seem to see that. It's
unlucky for me in a way he's not larger-minded. He's content with
justice--what he calls justice. But justice depends on the mind that's
got to do it. There's no finality about it, and what Daniel calls
justice, I call beastly peddling, if not actual bullying."

"And what did he call justice?"

"Well, his first idea was to be just to my father, who was wickedly
unjust to me. That wasn't too good for a start, for if you are going to
punish the living, because the dead wanted them to be punished, what
price your justice anyway? But Daniel had a sort of beastly fairness
too, for he recognised that my father's very sudden death must be taken
into account. My Aunt Jenny supported me there; and she was sure he
would have altered his will if he had had time. Daniel granted that, and
I began to hope I was going to come well out of it; but I counted my
chickens before they were hatched. Some people have a sort of diseased
idea of the value of work and seem to think if you don't put ten hours a
day into an office, you're not justifying your existence. Unfortunately
for me Daniel is one of those people. If you don't work, you oughtn't
to eat--he actually thinks that."

"The fallacy is that what seems to be play to a mind like Daniel's, is
really seen to be work by a larger mind," explained Arthur Waldron.
"Sport, for instance, which is the backbone of British character, is a
thousand times more important to the nation than spinning yarn; and we,
who keep up the great tradition of British sport on the highest possible
plane, are doing a great deal more valuable work--unpaid, mark you--than
mere merchants and people of that kind who toil after money."

"Of course; but I never yet met a merchant who would see it--certainly
not Daniel. In fact I've got to work--in his way."

"D'you mean he's stopping the allowance?"

"Yes. At least he's not renewing it. He's offering me a salary if I'll
work. A jolly good salary, I grant. I can be just to him, though he
can't to me. But, if I'm going to draw the salary, I've got to learn the
business and, in fact, go into it and become a spinner. Then, at the end
of five years, if I shine and really get keen about it and help the
show, he'll take me into partnership. That's his offer; and first I told
him to go to the devil, and then I changed my mind and, after my aunt
had sounded Daniel and found that was his ultimatum, I climbed down."

"What are you to do? Surely he won't chain an open-air man like you to a
wretched desk all your time?"

"So I thought; but he didn't worry about that. I wanted to go abroad,
and combine business with pleasure, and buy the raw material in Russia
and India and Italy and so on. That might have been good enough; but in
his rather cold-blooded way, he pointed out that to buy raw material,
you wanted to know something about raw material. He asked me if I knew
hemp from flax, and of course I had to say I did not. So that put the
lid on that. I've got to begin where Daniel began ten years ago--at the
beginning--with this difference, that I get three hundred quid a year.
In fact there's such a mixture of fairness and unfairness in Daniel's
idea that you don't know where to have him."

"What shall you do about it?"

"I tell you I've agreed. I must live, obviously, and I'd always meant
to do something some day. But naturally my ideas were open air, and I
thought when I got things going and took a scheme to my father--for
horse-breeding or some useful enterprise--he would have seen I meant
business and come round and planked down. But Daniel has got no use for
horse-breeding, so I must be a spinner--for the time anyway."

Estelle ventured to speak.

"But only girls spin," she said. "You'd never be able to spin, Ray."

Raymond laughed.

"Everybody's got to spin, it seems," he answered.

"Except the lilies," declared Estelle gravely. "'They toil not, neither
do they spin,' you know."

Mr. Waldron regarded his daughter with respect.

"Just imagine," he said, "at her age. They've made her a member of the
Field Botanists' Club. Only eleven years old and invited to join a
grown-up club!"

Raymond was somewhat impressed.

"Fancy a kid like you knowing anything about botany," he said.

"I don't," answered the child. "I'm only just beginning. Why, I haven't
mastered the grasses yet. The flowers are easy, of course, but the
grasses are ever so difficult."

They returned to Ironsyde's plans.

"And when d'you weigh in?" queried his friend.

"That's the point. That's why I invited myself to lunch. Daniel doesn't
want me in the office at Bridport; he wants me here--at Bridetown--so
that I can mess about in the works and see a lot of John Best, the
foreman, and learn all the practical side of the business. It seems
rather footling work for a man, but he did it; and he says the first
thing is to get a personal understanding of the processes and all that.
Of course I've always been keen on machinery."

"Good, then we shall see something of each other."

"That's what I want--more than you do, very likely. The idea was that
I went to Uncle Ernest, who is willing to let me have a room at 'The
Magnolias' and live with him for a year, which is the time Daniel wants
me to be here; but I couldn't stick Churchouse for a year."

"Naturally."

"So what do you say? Are you game for a paying guest? You've got tons of
room and I shouldn't be in the way."

"How lovely!" cried Estelle. "Do come!"

Arthur Waldron was quietly gratified.

"I'm sure I should be delighted to have a pal in the house--a kindred
spirit, who understands sport. By all means come," he said.

"You're sure? I should be out most of my time at the blessed works, you
know. Could I bring my horse?"

"Certainly bring your horse."

"That reminds me of one reasonable thing Dan's going to do," ran on
the other. "He's going to clear me. I told Aunt Jenny it was no good
beginning a new life with a millstone of debts round my neck--in fact we
came down to that. I said it was a vital condition. Aunt Jenny had
rather a lively time between us. She sympathises with me tremendously,
however, and finally got Daniel to promise he would pay off every penny
I owed--a paltry two hundred or so."

"A very sporting arrangement. Make the coffee, Estelle, then we'll take
a walk on the downs."

"I'm going to Uncle Ernest to tea," explained Raymond. "I shall tell him
then that I'm not coming to him, thanks to your great kindness."

"He will be disappointed," declared Estelle. "It seems rather hard of
us to take you away from him, I'm afraid."

"Don't you worry, kiddy. He'll get over it. In fact he'll be jolly
thankful, poor old bird. He only did it because he thought he ought to.
It's the old, traditional attitude of the Churchouses to the Ironsydes."

"He's very wise about church bells, but he's rather vague about
flowers," replied Estelle. "He's only interested in dead things,
I think; and things that happened long, long ago."

"In a weird sort of way, a hobby is a man's substitute for sport, I
believe," said Estelle's father. "Many have no feeling for sport; it's
left out of them and they seem to be able to live comfortably without
it. Instead they develop an instinct for something else. Generally it's
deadly from the sportsman's point of view; but it seems to take the
place of sport to the sportless. How old ruins, or church bells, can
supersede a vital, living thing, like the sport of a nation, of course
you and I can't explain; but so it is with some minds."

"It depends how they were brought up," suggested Raymond.

"No--take you; you weren't brought up to sport. But your own natural,
good instinct took you to it. Same with me. The moment I saw a ball, I'm
told that I shrieked till they gave it to me--at the age of one that
was. And from that time forward they had no trouble with me. A ball
always calmed me. Why? Because a ball, you may say, is the emblem of
England's greatness. I was thinking over it not long ago. There is not a
single game of the first importance that does not depend on a ball. If
one had brains, one could write a book on the inner meaning of that
fact. I believe that the ball has a lot to do with the greatness of the
Empire."

"A jolly good idea. I'll try it on Uncle Ernest," promised Raymond.

He was cheerful and depressed in turn. His company made him happy and
the thought that he would come to live at North Hill House also pleased
him well; but from time to time the drastic change in his life swept his
thoughts like a cloud. The picture of regular work--unloved work that
would enable him to live--struck distastefully upon his mind.

They strolled over North Hill after luncheon and Estelle ran hither and
thither, busy with two quests. Her sharp eyes were in the herbage for
the flowers and grasses; but she also sought the feathers of the rooks
and crows who assembled here in companies.

"The wing feathers are the best for father's pipes," she explained; "but
the tail feathers are also very good. Sometimes I get splendid luck and
find a dozen or two in a morning, and sometimes the birds don't seem to
have parted with a single feather. The place to find them is round the
furze clumps, because they catch there when the wind blows them."

The great hogged ridge of North Hill keeps Bridetown snug in winter
time, and bursts the snow clouds on its bosom. To-day the breezes blew
and shadows raced above the rolling green expanses. The downs were
broken by dry-built walls and spattered with thickets of furze and
white-thorn, black-thorn and elder. Blue milkwort, buttercups and
daisies adorned them, with eye-bright and the lesser, quaking grass that
danced over the green. Rabbits twinkled into the furzes where Waldron's
three fox terriers ran before the party; and now and then a brave buck
coney would stand upon the nibbled knoll above his burrow and drum
danger before he darted in. It was a haunt of the cuckoo and peewit, the
bunting and carrion crow.

"Here we killed on the seventeenth of January last," said Raymond's
host. "A fine finish to a grand run. We rolled him over on this very
spot after forty-five minutes of the best. It is always good to remember
great moments in the past."

On the southern slope of North Hill there stood a ruined lime-kiln
whose walls were full of fern and coated with mother o' thyme. A bank of
brier and nettles lay before the mouth. They hid the foot of the kiln
and made a snug and secluded spot. Bridetown clustered in its elms far
below; then the land rose again to protect the hamlet from the south;
and beyond stretched the blue line of the Channel.

The men sat here and smoked, while Estelle hunted for flowers and
feathers.

She came back to them presently with a bee orchis. "For you," she said,
and gave it to Raymond. "What the dickens is it?" he asked, and she told
him. "They're rather rare, but they live happily on the down in some
places. I know where." He thanked her very much.

"Never seen one before," he said. "A funny little pink and black devil,
isn't it?"

"It isn't a devil," she assured him; "if anything, it's an angel. But
really it's more like a small bumble-bee than anything. Perhaps you've
never seen a bumble-bee either?"

"Oh, yes, I have--they don't sting." Estelle laughed.

"I thought that once. A boy in the village told me that bumble-bees have
'got no spears.' And I believed him and tried to help one out of the
window once. And I very soon found that he had got a spear."

"That reminds me I must take a wasps' nest to-night," said her father.
"I've not decided which way to take it yet. There are seven different
ways to take a wasps' nest--all good."

They strolled homeward presently and parted at the lodge of North Hill
House.

"You must come down and choose your room soon," said Estelle. "It must
be one that gets the sun in it, and the moon. People always want the
sun, but they never seem to want the moon."

"Don't they, Estelle! I know lots of people who want the moon,"
declared Raymond. "Perhaps I do."

"You can have your choice of four stalls for the horse," said Arthur
Waldron. "I always ride before breakfast myself, wet or fine. Only frost
stops me. I hope you will too--before you go to the works."

Raymond was soon at 'The Magnolias,' and found Mr. Churchouse expecting
him in the garden. They had not met since Henry Ironsyde's death, but
the elder, familiar with the situation, did not speak of Raymond's
father.

He was anxious to learn the young man's decision, and proved too
ingenuous to conceal his relief when the visitor explained his plans.

"I felt it my duty to offer you a temporary home," he said, "and we
should have done our best to make you comfortable, but one gets into
one's routine and I won't disguise from you that I am glad you go to
North Hill House, Raymond."

"You couldn't disguise it if you tried, Uncle Ernest. You're
thankful--naturally. You don't want youth in this dignified abode of
wisdom. Besides, you've got no place for a horse--you know you haven't."

"I've no objection to youth, my dear boy, but I can't pretend that the
manners and customs of youth are agreeable to me. Tobacco, for example,
causes me the most acute uneasiness. Then the robustness and general
exaggeration of the youthful mind and body! It rises beyond fatigue,
above the middle-aged desire for calm and comfort. It kicks up its heels
for sheer joy of living; it is ever in extremes; it lacks imagination,
with the result that it is ruthless. All these characteristics may go
with a delightful personality--as in your case, Raymond--but let youth
cleave to youth. Youth understands youth. You will in fact be much
happier with Waldron."

"And you will be happier without me."

"It may be selfish to say so, but I certainly shall."

"Well, you've had the virtue of making the self-denial and I think it
was awfully good of you to do so."

"I am always here and always very happy and willing to befriend the
grandson of my father's partner," declared Mr. Churchouse. "It is
excellent news that you are going into the business."

"Remains to be seen."

The dining room at 'The Magnolias' was also the master's study. There
were innocent little affectations in it and the room was arranged to
create an atmosphere of philosophy and art. Books thronged in lofty
book-shelves with glass doors. These were surmounted by plaster busts of
Homer and Minerva, toned to mellowness by time. In the window was the
writing desk of Mr. Churchouse, upon which stood a photograph of Goethe.

Tea was laid and a girl brought in the hot water when Mr. Churchouse
rang for it. After she had gone Raymond praised her enthusiastically.

"By Jove, what a pretty housemaid!" he exclaimed.

"Pretty, yes; a housemaid, no," explained Mr. Churchouse. "She is the
daughter of my housekeeper, Mrs. Dinnett. Mrs. Dinnett has been called
to Chilcombe, to see her old mother who is, I fear, going to die, and so
Sabina, with her usual kindness, has spent her half-holiday at home to
look after me. Sabina lives here. She is Mrs. Dinnett's daughter and one
of the spinners at the mill. In fact, Mr. Best tells me she is his most
accomplished spinner and has genius for the work. In her leisure she
does braiding at home, as many of the girls do."

"She's jolly handsome," declared Raymond. "She's chucked away in a place
like this."

"D'you mean 'The Magnolias'?" asked the elder mildly.

"No, not 'The Magnolias' particularly, but Bridetown in general."

"And why should Bridetown be denied the privilege of numbering a
beautiful girl amongst its population?"

"Oh--why--she's lost, don't you see. Working in a stuffy mill, she's
lost. If she was on the stage, then thousands would see her. A beautiful
thing oughtn't to be hidden away."

"God Almighty hides away a great many beautiful things," answered Mr.
Churchouse. "There are many beautiful things in our literature and our
flora and fauna that are never admired."

"So much the worse. When our fauna blossoms out in the shape of a lovely
girl, it ought to be seen and give pleasure to thousands."

Ernest smiled.

"I don't think Sabina has any ambition to give pleasure to thousands.
She is a young woman of very fine temper, with a dignified sense of her
own situation and an honest pride in her own dexterity."

"Engaged to be married, of course?"

"I think not. She and her mother are my very good friends. Had any
betrothal taken place, I feel sure I should have heard of it."

"Do ring for her, Mr. Churchouse, and let me look at her again. Does she
know how good-looking she is?"

"Youth! Youth! Yes, not being a fool, she knows she is
well-favoured--much as you do, no doubt. I mean that you cannot shave
yourself every morning without being conscious that you are in the Greek
mould. I could show you the engraving of a statue by Praxiteles which is
absurdly like you. But this accident of nature has not made you vain."

"Me! Good Lord!"

Raymond laughed long.

"Do not be puffed up," continued Mr. Churchouse, "for, with charm, you
combine to a certain extent the Greek vacuity. There are no lines upon
your brow. You don't think enough."

"Don't I, by Jove! I've been thinking a great deal too much lately. I've
had a headache once."

"Lack of practice, my dear boy. Sabina, being a woman of observation
and intelligence, is no doubt aware of the fact that she is unusually
personable. But she has brains and knows exactly what importance to
attach to such an accident. If you want to learn what spinning means,
she will be able to teach you."

"Every cloud has a silver lining, apparently," said Raymond, and when
Sabina returned, Ernest introduced him.

The girl was clad in black with a white apron. She wore no cap.

"This is Mr. Raymond Ironsyde, Sabina, and he's coming to learn all
about the Mill before long."

Raymond began to rattle away and Sabina, without self-consciousness,
listened to him, laughed at his jests and answered his questions.

Mr. Churchouse gazed at them benevolently through his glasses. He came
unconsciously under the influence of their joy of life.

Their conversation also pleased him, for it struck a right note--the
note which he considered was seemly between employer and employed. He
did not know that youth always modifies its tone in the presence of age,
and that those of ripe years never hear the real truth concerning the
opinions of the younger generation.

When Raymond left for home and Mr. Churchouse walked out to the gate
with him, Sabina peeped out of the kitchen window which commanded the
entrance, and her face was lighted with very genuine animation and
interest.

Mrs. Dinnett returned at midnight tearful, for the ancient woman at
Chilcombe had died in her arms--"at five after five," as she said.

Mary Dinnett was an excitable and pessimistic person. She always leapt
to meet trouble half way and invariably lost her nerve upon the least
opportunity to do so. The peace of 'The Magnolias' had long offered her
a fitting sanctum, for here life moved with the utmost simplicity and
regularity; but, though as old as he was, Mary looked ahead to the time
when Mr. Churchouse might fall, and could always win an ample misery
from the reflection that she must then be at the mercy of an unfriendly
world.

Sabina heard the full story of her grandmother's decease with every
detail of the passing, but it was the face of a young man, not the
countenance of an old woman, that flitted through her thoughts as she
went to sleep that night.




CHAPTER V

IN THE MILL


John Best was taking Raymond Ironsyde round the spinning mill, but the
foreman had his own theory and proposed to initiate the young man by
easy stages.

"You've seen the storehouses and the hacklers," he said. "Now if you
just look into the works and get a general idea of the scheme of things,
that's enough for one day."

In the great building two sounds deafened an unfamiliar ear: a steady
roar, deep and persistent, and through it, like a staccato pulse, a
louder, more painful, more penetrating din. The bass to this harsh
treble arose from humming belts and running wheels; the crash that
punctuated their deep-mouthed riot broke from the drawing heads of the
machines.

A lofty, open roof, full of large sky-lights, covered the operating
room, and in its uplifted dome supports and struts leapt this way and
that, while, at the height of the walls, ran rods supporting rows of
silver-bright wheels from which the power descended, through endless
bands, to the machinery beneath. The floor was of stone, and upon it
were disposed the various machine systems--the Card and Spreader, the
Drawing Frames, Roving Frames, Gill Spinners and Spinning Frames.

The general blurred effect in Raymond's mind was one of disagreeable
sound, which made speech almost impossible. The din drove at him from
above and below; and it was accompanied by a thousand unfamiliar
movements of flying bands and wheels and squat masses of machinery that
convulsed and heaved and palpitated round him. From nearly all the
machines there streamed away continuous bright ribbons of hemp or flax,
that caught the light and shone. This was the 'sliver,' the wrought,
textile material passing through its many changes before it came to the
spinners. The amber and lint-white coils of the winding sliver made a
brightness among the duns and drabs around them and their colour was
caught again aloft where whisps of material hung irregularly--lumps of
waste from the ends of the bobbins--and there were also colour notes of
warmth in the wooden wheels on many of the machines. These struck a
genial tone into the chill greys and flash of polished steel on every
side.

After the mechanical activity, movement came from the irregular actions
of the workers. Forty women and girls laboured here, and while some old
people only sat on stools by the spouting sliver and wound it away into
the tall cans that received it, other younger folk were more intensively
engaged. The massive figure of Sally Groves lumbered at her ministry,
where she fed the Carding Machine. She was subdued to the colour of the
hemp tow with which she plied it. Elsewhere Sarah Northover flashed the
tresses of long lines over her head and seemed to perform a rhythmic
dance with her hands, as she tore each strick into three and laid the
shining locks on her spread board. Others tended the drawers and rovers,
while Sabina Dinnett, Nancy Buckler and Alice Chick, whose high task it
was to spin, seemed to twinkle here, there and everywhere in a
corybantic measure as they served the shouting and insatiable monsters
that turned hemp and flax to yarn.

They, indeed, specially attracted Raymond, by the activity of their work
and the charm of their swift, supple figures, where, never still, they
danced about, with a thousand, strenuous activities of hand and foot and
eye. Their work dazed him and he wanted to stop here and ask Sabina many
questions. She looked much more beautiful while spinning than in her
black dress and white apron--so the young man thought. Her work
displayed her neat, slim shape as she twirled round, stooped, leapt up
again, twisted and stood on tip-toe in a thousand fascinating
attitudes. Never a dancer in the limelight had revealed so much beauty.
She was rayed in a brown gown with a short skirt, and on her head she
wore a grey woollen cap.

But Mr. Best forbade interest in the spinners.

"You'll not get to them for a week yet," he said. "I'll ask you to just
take in the general hang of it, Mister Raymond, please. Power comes from
the water-wheel and the steam engine and it's brought down to each
machine. Just throw your eyes round. You ain't here to look at the
girls, if you'll excuse my saying so. You're here to learn."

"You can learn more from the girls than all these noisy things put
together," laughed Raymond; while Mr. Best shook his head and proceeded
with his instructions.

"Those exhausts above each system suck away the dust and small rubbish,"
he explained. "We shouldn't be able to breathe without them."

The other looked up and saw great leaden-coloured tubes, like organ
pipes, above him. Mr. Best droned on and strove to lay a foundation for
future knowledge. He was skilled in every branch of the work, and a past
master of all spinning mysteries. His lucid and simple exposition had
very well served to introduce an attentive stranger to the complex
operations going on around him, but Raymond was not attentive. He failed
to concentrate and missed fundamental essentials from the desire to
examine more advanced and obviously interesting operations.

He apologised to John Best before the dinner-hour.

"This is only a preliminary canter," he said. "It's all Greek to me and
it will take time to get the thing clear. It looks quite different to me
from what it must to you. I'll get the general scheme into my head first
and then work out the details. A man's mind can't make order out of this
chaos in a minute."

He stood and tried to appreciate the trend of events. He enjoyed the
adventure, but at present made no effort to do more than enjoy it. He
would start to work later. He began to like the din and the dusty light
and the glitter and shine of polished metal and bright sliver eternally
winding into the cans. Round it hovered or sat the women like dull
moths. They wound the stream of hemp or flax away and snapped it when a
can was full. There was no pause or slackening, nothing but the whirl of
living hands and arms and bodies, dead wheels and teeth and pulleys and
pins operating on the inert tow. The mediators, animate and inanimate,
laboured together for its manufacture; while the masses of mingled wood
and steel, leather and brass and iron, moved in controlled obedience to
the giant forces liberated from steam and water that drove all. The
selfsame power, gleaned from sunshine and moisture and sublimated to
human flesh and blood through bread, plied in the fingers and muscles
and countless, complex mental directions of the men and women who
controlled. From sun-light and air, earth and water had also sprung the
fields of hemp and flax in far-off lands and yielded up their loveliness
to foreign scutchers. The dried death of countless beautiful herbs now
represented the textile fabric on which all this immense energy was
applied.

Thus far, along an obvious line of thought, Raymond's reflections took
him, but there his slight mental effort ended, and even this much tired
him. The time for dinner came; Mr. Best now turned certain hand-wheels
and moved certain levers. They shut off the power and gradually the din
lessened, the pulsing and throbbing slowed until the whole great
complexity came to a stand-still. The drone of the overhead wheels
ceased, the crash of the draw-heads stopped. A startling silence seemed
to grow out of the noise and quell it, while a new activity manifested
itself among the workers. As a bell rang they were changed in a
twinkling and, amid chatter and laughter, like breaking chrysalids, they
flung off their basset aprons and dun overalls, to emerge in brighter
colours. Blouses of pink and blue and red flashed out, straw hats and
sun-bonnets appeared, and all streamed away like magic to their
neighbouring houses. It was as though its soul had passed and left a
dead mill behind it.

Raymond, released for a moment from the attentions of the foreman,
strolled among the machines of the minders and spinners. Then his eyes
were held by an intimate and personal circumstance that linked these
women to this place. He found that on the whitewashed walls beside their
working corners, the girls had impressed themselves--their names, their
interests, their hopes. With little picture galleries were the walls
brightened, and with sentiments and ideas. The names of the workers were
printed up in old stamps--green and pink--and beside them one might
read, in verses, or photographs, or pictures taken from the journals,
something of the history, taste and personal life of those who set them
there. Serious girls had written favourite hymns beside their working
places; the flippant scribbled jokes and riddles; the sentimental copied
love songs that ran to many verses. Often the photograph of a maiden's
lover accompanied them, and there were also portraits of mothers and
sisters, babies and brothers. Some of the girls had hung up
fashion-plates and decorated their workshop with ugly and mean designs
for clothing that they would never wear.

Raymond found that picture postcards were a great feature of these
galleries, and they contained also, of course, many private jests and
allusions lost upon the visitor. Character was revealed in the
collections; for the most part they showed desire for joy, and
aspiration to deck the working-place with objects and words that should
breed happy thoughts and draw the mind where its treasure harboured.
Each heart it seemed was holding, or seeking, a romance; each heart was
settled about some stalwart figure presented in the picture gallery, or
still finding temporary substance for dreams in love poetry, in
representations of happy lovers at stiles, in partings of soldier and
sailor lads from their sweethearts. Beside some of the old workers the
walls were blank. They had nothing left to set down, or hang up.

Raymond was arrested by a little rhyme round which a black border had
been pasted. It was original:

"I am coiling, coiling, coiling
  Into the can,
And thinking, thinking, thinking,
  Of my dear man.

"He is toiling, toiling, toiling
  Out on the sea,
And thinking, thinking, thinking
  Only of me.

"F.H."

Mr. Best joined Ironsyde.

"These walls!" he said. "It's about time we had a coat of whitewash.
Mister Daniel thinks so too."

"Why--good lord--this is the most interesting part of the whole show.
This is alive! Who's F.H.?"

"The girls will keep that. They like it, though I tell them it would be
better rubbed out. Poor Flossy Hackett wrote that. She was going to
marry a sailor-man, but he changed his mind, and she broke her heart and
drowned herself--that's all there is to it."

"The damned rascal. I hope he got what he deserved."

Mr. Best allowed his mind to peep from the shell that usually concealed
it.

"If he did, he was one man in a thousand. He married a Weymouth woman
and Flossy went into the river--in the deep pool beyond the works. A
clever sort of girl, but a dreamer you might say."

"I'd like to have had the handling of that devil!"

"You never know. She may have had what's better than a wedding ring--in
happy dreams. Reality's not the best of life. People do change their
minds. He was honest and all that. Only he found somebody else he liked
better."

At this moment Daniel Ironsyde came into the works, and while John Best
hastened to him, Raymond pursued his amusement and studied the wall by
the spinning frame where Sabina Dinnett worked. He found a photograph of
her mother and a quotation from Shakespeare torn off a calendar for the
date of August the third. He guessed that might be Sabina's birthday.
The quotation ran:--

              "To thine own self be true;
And it must follow, as the night the day,
Thou canst not then be false to any man."

There was no male in Sabina's picture gallery--indeed, no other picture
but that of a girl--her fellow spinner, Nancy Buckler.

His brother approached Raymond.

"You've made a start, Ray?"

"Rather. It's jolly interesting. Best is wonderful, but he can't fathom
my ignorance yet."

"It's all very simple and straightforward. Do you like your office?"

"Yes," declared the younger. "Couldn't beat it. When I want something to
do, I can fling a line out of the window and fish in the river."

"You have plenty to do besides fish out of the window I should hope. Let
us lunch. I'm stopping here this afternoon. Aunt Jenny wanted to know
whether you'd come to Bridport to dinner on Sunday."

Daniel was entirely friendly now and he designed--if the future should
justify the step--to take Raymond into partnership. But only in the
event of very material changes in his brother's life would he do so.
Their aunt felt sanguine that Raymond must soon recognise his
responsibilities, settle to the business of justifying his existence and
put away childish things; Daniel was less hopeful, but trusted that she
might be right. Her imagination worked for Raymond and warned her nephew
not to be too exacting at first. She pointed out that it was very
improbable Daniel's brother would become a model in a moment, or settle
down to the business of fixed hours and clerical work without a few
lapses from the narrow and arduous path. So the elder was prepared to
see his brother kick against the pricks and even warned John Best that
it might be so. Brief acquaintance with Raymond had already convinced
the foreman of this probability, and he found himself liking Daniel's
brother from the first. The dangers, however, were not hid from him; but
while he perceived the youthful instability of the newcomer and his
impatience of detail, he presently discovered an interest in mechanical
contrivances, a spark of originality, and a feeling for new things that
might lead to results, if only the necessary application were
forthcoming and the vital interest aroused.

Mr. Best had a simple formula.

"The successful spinner," he often remarked, "is the man who can turn
out the best yarn from a given sample of the raw. Hand identical stuff
to ten manufacturers and you'll soon see where the best yarn comes
from."

He knew of better yarns than came from the Ironsyde mill, and regretted
the fact. That a time might arrive when Raymond would see with him
seemed exceedingly improbable; yet he felt the dim possibility by
occasional flashes in the young man, and it was a quality of Mr. Best's
mind to be hopeful and credit other men with his own aspirations, if any
excuse existed for so doing.




CHAPTER VI

'THE SEVEN STARS'


On a Saturday in August, Sarah Northover, one of those who minded the
'spreader' at Bridetown Mill, came to see her aunt--the mistress of 'The
Seven Stars,' in Barrack Street, Bridport.

She had walked three miles through the hot and dusty lanes and found the
shady streets of Bridport cool by comparison, but there was work for her
at 'The Seven Stars,' and Mrs. Northover proved very busy. A holiday
party of five-and-twenty guests was arriving at five o'clock for tea,
and Sarah, perceiving that her own tea would be a matter for the future,
lent her aunt a hand.

Her tea gardens and pleasure grounds were the pride of Nelly Northover's
heart. Three quarters of an acre extended here behind the inn, and she
had erected swings for the children and laid a croquet lawn for those
who enjoyed that pastime. Lawn tennis she would not permit, out of
respect for her herbaceous border which surrounded the place of
entertainment. At one corner was a large summer-house in which her
famous teas were generally taken. The charge was one shilling, and being
of generous disposition, Mrs. Northover provided for that figure a
handsome meal.

She was a large, high-bosomed woman, powerfully built, and inclined to
stoutness. Her complexion was sanguine, and her prominent eyes were very
blue. Of a fair-minded and honest spirit, she suffered from an excitable
temper and rather sharp tongue. But her moods were understood by her
staff, and if her emotional quality did injustice, an innate sense of
what was reasonable ultimately righted the wrong.

Sarah helped Job Legg and others to prepare for the coming party, while
Mrs. Northover roamed the herbaceous border and cut flowers to decorate
the table. While she pursued this work there bustled in Richard Gurd
from 'The Tiger.' He was in his shirt-sleeves and evidently pushed for
time.

"Wonders never cease," said Nelly, smiling upon him. "It's a month of
Sundays since you was in my gardens. I'll lay you've come for some
flowers for your dining table."

Reciprocity was practised between these best of friends, and while Mr.
Gurd often sent customers to Mrs. Northover, since tea parties were not
a branch of business he cared about, she returned his good service with
gifts from the herbaceous border and free permission to use her spacious
inn yard and stables.

"I'm always coming to have a look round at your wonderful flower-bed,"
said Richard, "and some Sunday morning, during church hours, I will do
so; but you know how busy we all are in August. And I don't want no
flowers; but I want the run of your four-stall stable. There's a 'beano'
coming over from Lyme and I'm full up already."

"Never no need to ask," she answered. "I'll tell Job to set a man on to
it."

He thanked her very heartily and she gave him a rose. Then he admired
the grass, knowing that she prided herself upon it.

"Never seen such grass anywhere else in Bridport," he assured her.
"There's lots try to grow grass like yours; but none can come near
this."

"'Tis Job's work," she told him. "He's a Northerner and had the charge
of a bowling-green at his uncle's public; and what he don't know about
grass ain't worth knowing."

"He's a sheet-anchor, that man," confessed Richard; "a sheet-anchor and
a tower of strength, as you might say."

"I don't deny it," admitted Nelly. "Sometimes, in a calm moment, I run
my mind over Job Legg, and I'm almost ashamed to think how much I owe
him."

"It ain't all one way, however. He's got a snug place, and no potman in
Dorset draws more money, though there's some who draws more beer."

"There's no potman in Dorset with his head," she answered. "He's got a
brain and it's very seldom indeed you find such an honest chap with such
a lot of intellects. The clever ones are mostly the downy ones; but
Job's single thought is the welfare of the house, and he pushes honesty
to extremes."

"If you can say that, he must be a wonder, certainly, for none knows
what honesty means better than you," said Mr. Gurd. He had put Nelly's
rose into his coat.

"He's more than a potman, chiefly along of being such a good friend to
my late husband. Almost the last sensible thing my poor dear said to me
before he died was never to get rid of Job. And no doubt I never shall.
I'm going to put up his money at Michaelmas."

"Well, don't make the man a god, and don't you spoil him. Job's a very
fine chap and can carry corn as well as most of 'em--in fact far better;
but a man is terrible quick to trade on the good opinion of his fellow
man, and if you let him imagine you can't do without him, you may put
false and fantastic ideas into his head."

"I'm not at all sure if I could do without him," she answered, "though,
even if he knew it, he's far too fine a character to take advantage. A
most modest creature and undervalued accordingly."

Then a boy ran in for Richard and he hastened away, while Nelly took a
sheaf of flowers to the summer-house and made the table bright with
them.

She praised her niece's activities.

"'Tis a shame to ring you in on your half-holiday," she said. "But
you're one of the sensible sort, and you won't regret being a good girl
to me in the time to come."

Then she turned to Job.

"Gurd's got a char-a-bank and a party on the way from Lyme, and he's
full up and wants the four-horse stable," she told him. It was part of
Job's genius never to be put about, or driven from placidity by
anything.

"Then there's no time to lose," he said. "We're ready here, and now if
Sarah will lend a hand at the table over there in the shade for the
party of six--"

"Lord! I'd forgotten them."

"I hadn't," he answered. "They're cutting in the kitchen now and the
party's due at four. So you'll have them very near off your hands before
the big lot comes. I'll see to the stable and get in a bit of fresh
straw and shake down some hay. Then I'll take the bar and let Miss
Denman come to help with the tea."

He went his way and Sarah sat down a moment while her aunt arranged the
flowers.

"There's no tea-tables like yours," she said.

"I pride myself on 'em. A lot goes to a tea beside the good food, in my
opinion. Some human pigs don't notice my touches and only want to stuff;
but the bettermost have an eye for everything sweet and clean about 'em.
Such nicer characters don't like poultry messing round and common things
in sight while they eat and drink. I know what I feel myself about a
clean cloth and a bunch of fine flowers on the table, and many people
are quite as particular as me. I train the girls up to take a pride in
such things, and now and again a visitor will thank me for it."

"I could have brought a bunch of flowers from our little garden," said
Sarah.

"It would be coals to Newcastle, my dear. We make a feature of 'em. Job
Legg understands the ways of 'em, and you see the result. You can pick
all day from my herbaceous border and not miss what you take."

"Nobody grows sweet peas like yours."

"Job again. He's mastered the sweet pea in a manner given to few. He'll
bring out four on a stalk, and think nothing of it."

"Mister Best, our foreman, is wonderful in a garden, too," answered
Sarah. "And a great fruit grower also."

"That reminds me. I've got a fine dish of greengages for this party. In
the season I fling in a bit of fruit sometimes. It always comes as a
pleasant surprise to tea people that they ain't called to pay extra for
fruit."

She went her way and Sarah turned to a lesser entertainment under
preparation in a shady corner of the garden.

A girl of the house was already busy there, and the guests had arrived.
They were hot and thirsty. Some sat on the grass and fanned themselves.
A young man did juggling feats with the croquet balls for the amusement
of two young women.

Not until half-past six came any pause, but after that hour the tea
drinkers thinned off; the big party had come and gone; the smaller
groups were all attended to and tea was served in Mrs. Northover's
private sitting-room behind the bar for herself, Sarah and the barmaid.
Being refreshed and rested, Mrs. Northover turned to the affairs of her
niece. At the same moment Mr. Legg came in.

"Sit down and have some tea," said Mrs. Northover.

"I've took a hasty cup," he answered, "but could very well do with
another."

"And how's Mister Roberts, Sarah?" asked her aunt.

"Fine. He's playing in a cricket match to-day--Bridetown against
Chilcombe. They've asked him to play for Bridport since Mister Raymond
saw him bowl. He's very pleased about it."

"Teetotal, isn't he?" asked Mr. Job.

"Yes, Mister Legg. Nick have never once touched a drop in all his life
and never means to."

"A pity there ain't more of the same way of thinking," said Mrs.
Northover. "And I say that, though a publican and the wife of a
publican; and so do you, don't you, Job?"

"Most steadfast," he replied. "When I took on barman as a profession, I
never lifted pot or glass again to my own lips, and have stood between
many a young man and the last half pint. I tell you this to your face,
Missis Northover. Not an hour ago I was at 'The Tiger,' to let Richard
Gurd know the stable was ready, and in the private bar there were six
young men, all drinking for the pleasure of drinking. If the younger
generation only lapped when 'twas thirsty, half the drinking-places
would shut, and there wouldn't be no more brewers in the peerage."

He shook his head and drank his tea.

Mrs. Northover changed the subject.

"How's the works?" she asked. "Do the people like the new master?"

"Just the same--same hours, same money--everything. And Mister Daniel's
brother, Mister Raymond's, come to it to learn the business. He is a
cure!"

"He's over there now," said Job, waving his hand in the direction of
'The Tiger.' "Drinking port wine he is with that young sport, Motyer,
and others like him. I don't like Motyer's face. He's a shifty chap, and
a thorn in his family's side by all accounts. But Mister Raymond have a
very open countenance and ought to have a good heart."

"What do you mean when you say he's a 'cure,' Sarah?" asked her aunt.

"He's that friendly with us girls," she answered. "He's supposed to be
learning all there is to spinning, but he plays about half his time and
you can't help laughing. He's so friendly as if he was one of us; but
Sabina Dinnett is his pet. Wants to make her smoke cigarettes! But
there's no harm to him if you understand."

"There's always harm to a chap that plays about and don't look after his
own business," declared Job. "I understand his brother's been very
proper about him, and now it's up to him; and he ain't at the Mill to
offer the girls cigarettes."

"He's got his own room and Mister Best wishes he'd bide in it,"
explained Sarah, "but he says he must learn, and so he's always
wandering around. But everybody likes him, except Levi Baggs. He don't
like anybody. He'd like to draw us all over his hackling frames if he
could."

They chattered awhile, then worked again; but Sarah stayed to supper,
and it was not until half-past ten o'clock that she started for home.

Another Bridetown girl--Alice Chick, the spinner--had been spending her
half holiday in Bridport. Now she met Sarah, by appointment, at the top
of South Street and the two returned together.




CHAPTER VII

A WALK


The Carding Machine was a squat and noisy monster. Mr. Best confessed
that it had put him in mind of a passage from Holy Writ, for it seemed
to be all eyes, behind and before. The eyes were wheels, and beneath,
the mass of the carder opened its mouth--a thin and hungry slit into
which wound an endless band. Spread upon this leathern roller was the
hemp tow--that mass of short material which Levi Baggs, the hackler,
pruned away from his long strides. As for the minder, Sally Groves, she
seemed built and born to tend a Carding Machine. She moved with dignity
despite her great size, and although covered in tow dust from head to
foot and powdered with a layer of pale amber fluff, she stood as well as
another for the solemnity of toil, laboured steadfastly, was neither
elated, nor cast down, and presented to younger women a spectacle of
skill, resolution and good sense. The great woman ennobled her work;
through the dust and din, with placid and amiable features, she peered,
and ceased not hour after hour, to spread the tow truly and evenly upon
the rolling board. One of less experience might have needed to weigh her
material, but Sally never weighed; by long practice and good judgment,
she produced sliver of even texture.

The carder panted, crashed and shook with its energies. It glimmered all
over with the bright, hairy gossamer of the tow, which wound thinly
through systems of fast and slow wheels. Between them the material was
lashed and pricked, divided and sub-divided, torn and lacerated by
thousands of pins, that separated strand from strand and shook the
stuff to its integral fibres before building it up again. Despite the
thunder and the suggestion of immense forces exerted upon the frail
material, utmost delicacy marked the operations of the card. Any real
strain must have torn to atoms the fine amber coils in which it ejected
the strips of shining sliver. Enormous waste marked the operation.
Beneath the machine rose mounds of dust and dirt, and fluff, light as
thistledown; while as much was sucked away into the air by the exhaust
above.

In a lion-coloured overall and under a hat tied beneath her chin with a
yellow handkerchief, Sally Groves pursued her task. Then came to her
Sabina Dinnett and, ceasing not to spread her tow the while, Sally spoke
serious words.

"I asked Nancy Buckler to send you along when your machine stopped a
minute. You won't be vexed with me if I say something, will you?"

"Vexed with you, Sally? Who ever was vexed with you?"

"I'm old enough to be your mother, and 'tis her work if anybody's to
speak to you," explained Sally; "but she's not here, and she don't see
what I can't help seeing."

"What have you seen then?"

"I've seen a very good-looking young man by the name of Raymond Ironsyde
wasting a deuce of a lot of his time by your spinning frame; and wasting
your time, too."

Sabina changed colour.

"Fancy you saying that!" she exclaimed. "He's got to learn the
business--the practical side, Sally. And he wants to master it carefully
and grasp the whole thing."

Miss Groves smiled.

"Ah. He didn't take long mastering the carder," she said. "Just two
minutes was all he gave me, and I don't think he was very long at the
drawing heads neither; and I ain't heard Sarah Northover say he spent
much of his time at the spreader. It all depends on the minder whether
Mister Raymond wants to know much about the work!"

"But the spinning is the hardest to understand, Sally."

"Granted, but he don't ask many questions of Alice Chick or Nancy
Buckler, do he? I'm not blaming him, Lord knows, nor yet you, but for
friendship I'm whispering to you to be sensible. He's a very
kind-hearted young gentleman, and if he had a memory as big as his
promises, he'd soon ruin himself. But, like a lot of other nice chaps
full of generous ideas, he forgets 'em when the accident that woke 'em
is out of his mind. And all I say, Sabina, is to be careful. He may be
as good as gold, and I dare say he is, but he's gone on you--head
over heels--he can't hide it. He don't even try to. And he's a gentleman
and you're a spinner. So don't you be silly, and don't think the worse
of me for speaking."

Sabina entertained the opinions concerning middle-age common to youth,
but she was fond of Sally and set her heart at rest.

"You needn't be frightened," she answered. "He's a gentleman, as you
say; and you know I'm not the sort to be a fool. I can't help him
coming; and I can't be rude to the young man. For that matter I
wouldn't. I won't forget what you've said all the same."

She hurried away and started her machine; but while her mind
concentrated on spinning, some subconscious instincts worked at another
matter and she found that Sally had cast a cloud upon a coming event
which promised nothing but sunshine.

She had agreed to go for a walk with Raymond Ironsyde on the following
Sunday, and he had named their meeting-place: a bridge that crossed the
Bride in the vale two miles from the village. She meant to go, for the
understanding between her and Raymond had advanced far beyond any point
dreamed of by Sally Groves. Sabina's mind was in fact exceedingly full
of Raymond, and his mind was full of her. Temperament had conspired to
this state of things, for while the youth found himself in love for the
first time in his life, and pursued the quest with that ardour and
enthusiasm until now reserved for sport, Sabina, who had otherwise been
much more cautious, was not only in love, but actually felt that shadowy
ambitions from the past began to promise realisation. She was not vain,
but she knew herself a finer thing in mind and body than most of the
girls with whom she worked. She had read a great deal and learned much
from Mr. Churchouse, who delighted to teach her, and from Mr. Best, with
whom she was a prime favourite. She had refused several offers of
marriage and preserved a steady determination not to wed until there
came a man who could lift her above work and give her a home that would
embrace comfort and leisure. She waited, confident that this would
happen, for she knew that she could charm men. As yet none had come who
awakened any emotion of love in Sabina; and she told herself that real
love might alter her values and send her to a poor man's home after all.
If that happened, she was willing; but she thought it improbable;
because, in her experience, poor men were ignorant, and she felt very
sure no ignorant man would ever make her love him.

Then came into her life one very much beyond her dreams, and from an
attitude of utmost caution before a physical beauty that fascinated her,
she woke into tremendous excitation of mind at the discovery that he,
too, was interested. To her it seemed that he had plenty of brains. His
ideas were human and beautiful. He declared the conditions of the
workers to be not sufficiently considered. He was full of nebulous
theories for the amelioration of such conditions. The spectacle of women
working for a living caused Raymond both uneasiness and indignation. To
Sabina, it seemed that he was a chivalric knight of romance--a being
from a fairy story. She had heard of such men, but never met with one
outside a novel. She glorified Raymond into something altogether
sublime--as soon as she found that he liked her. He filled her head,
and while her common-sense vainly tried to talk as Sally Groves had
talked, each meeting with the young man threw her back upon the
tremendous fact that he was deeply interested in her and did not care
who knew it. Common-sense could not modify that; nor would she listen to
common-sense, when it suggested that Raymond's record was uninspiring,
and pointed to no great difference between him and other young men. She
told herself that he was misunderstood; she whispered to herself that
she understood him. It must be so, for he had declared it. He had said
that he was an idealist. As a matter of fact he did not himself know the
meaning of the word half as well as Sabina.

He filled her thoughts, and believing him to be honourable, in the
everyday acceptation of the word, she knew she was safe and need not
fear him. This fact added to the joy and excitement of a situation that
was merely thrilling, not difficult. For she had to be receptive only,
and that was easy: the vital matter rested with him. She did not do
anything to encourage him, or take any step that her friends could call
"forward." She just left it to him and knew not how far he meant to go,
yet felt, in sanguine moments, that he would go all the way, sooner or
later, and offer to marry her. Her friends declared it would be so. They
were mightily interested, but not jealous, for the girls recognised
Sabina's advantages.

When, therefore, he asked her to take a walk on a certain Sunday
afternoon, she agreed to do so. There was no plotting or planning about
it. He named a familiar place of meeting and proposed to go thence to
the cliffs--a ramble that might bring them face to face with a dozen
people who knew them. She felt the happier for that. Nor could Sally
Groves and her warning cast her down for long. The hint that Raymond was
a gentleman and Sabina a spinner touched a point in their friendship
long past. The girl knew that well enough; but she also knew what Sally
did not, and told herself that Raymond was a great deal more than a
gentleman, just as she--Sabina--was something more than a spinner. That,
however, was the precious knowledge peculiar to the young people
themselves. She could not expect Sally, or anybody else, to know it yet.

As for the young man, life had cut away from him most of his former
interests and amusements. He was keeping regular hours and working
steadily. He regarded himself as a martyr, yet could get none to take
that view. To him, then, came his love affair as a very present help in
time of trouble. The emotions awakened by Sabina were real, and he fully
believed that she was going to be essential to his life's happiness and
completion. He knew nothing about women, for his athletic pursuits and
ambitions to excel physically produced an indifference to them. But with
the change in his existence, and the void thereby created, came love,
and he had leisure to welcome it. He magnified Sabina, and since her
intellect was as good as his own and her education better, he assured
himself that she was in every respect superior to her position and
worthy of any man's admiration.

He did not analyse his feelings or look ahead very far. He did not
bother to ask himself what he wanted. He was only concerned to make
Sabina 'a chum,' as he said, to himself. He knew this to be nonsense,
even while he said it, but in the excitement of the quest, chose to
ignore rational lines of thought.

They met by the little bridge over Bride, then walked southerly up a
hill to a hamlet, and so on to the heights. Beneath the sponge-coloured
cliffs eastward swept the grand scythe of Chesil Bank; but an east wind
had brought its garment of grey-blue haze and the extremity of the Bank,
with Portland Bill beyond, was hidden. The cliffs gave presently and
green slopes sank to the beaches. They reached a place where, separated
from the sea by great pebble-ridges, there lay a little mere. Two swans
swam together upon it, and round about the grey stone banks were washed
with silver pink, where the thrift prospered.

Sabina had not talked much, though she proved a good listener; but
Raymond spoke fitfully, too, at first. He was new to this sort of thing
and told her so.

"I don't believe I've ever been for a walk with a girl in my life
before," he said.

"I can't walk fast enough for you, I'm afraid."

"Oh yes, you can; you're a very good walker."

At last he began to tell her about himself, in the usual fashion of the
male, who knows by instinct that subject is most interesting to both. He
dwelt on his sporting triumphs of the past, and explained his trials and
tribulations in the present. He represented that he was mewed up like an
eagle. He described how the tragic call to work for a living had sounded
in his ear when he anticipated no such painful experience. Before this
narrative Sabina affected a deeper sympathy than she felt, yet honestly
perceived that to such a man, his present life of regular hours must be
dreary and desolate.

"It's terrible dull for you, I'm sure," she said.

"It was," he confessed, "but I'm getting broken in, or perhaps it's
because you're so jolly friendly. You're the only person I know in the
whole world who has got the mind and imagination to see what a frightful
jar it was for an open-air man like me to be dropped into this. People
think it is the most unnatural thing on earth that I should suddenly
begin to work. But it's just as unnatural really as if my brother
suddenly began to play. Even my great friend, Arthur Waldron, talks
rubbish about everybody having to work sooner or later--not that he ever
did. But you were quick enough to see in a moment. You're tremendously
clever, really."

"I wish I was; but I saw, of course, that you were rather contemptuous
of it all."

"So I was at first," he confessed. "At first I felt that it was a
woman's show, and that what women can do well is no work for men. But
I soon saw I was wrong. It increased my respect for women in a way. To
find, for instance, that you could do what you do single-handed and make
light of it; that was rather an eye-opener. Whenever any pal of mine
talks twaddle about what women can't do, I shall bring him to see you at
work."

"I could do something better than spin if I got the chance," she said,
and he applauded the sentiment highly.

"Of course you could, and I'm glad you've got the pluck to say so. I
knew that from the first. You're a lot too clever for spinning, really.
You'd shine anywhere. Let's sit here under this thorn bush. I must get
some rabbiting over this scrub. The place swarms with them. You don't
mind if I smoke?"

They rested, and he ventured to make a personal remark after Sabina had
taken off her gloves to cool her hands.

"You've hurt yourself," he said, noting what seemed to be an injury. But
she made light of it.

"It's only a corn from stopping the spindles. Every spinner's hands are
like that. Alice Chick has chilblains in winter, then she gets a cruel,
bad hand."

The slight deformity made Raymond uncomfortable. He could not bear to
think of a woman suffering such a stigma in her tender flesh.

"They ought to invent something to prevent you being hurt," he said, and
Sabina laughed.

"Why, there are very few manual trades don't leave their mark," she
answered, "and a woman's lucky to get nothing worse than a scarred
hand."

"Would it come right," he ventured to ask, "if you gave up spinning?"

"Yes, in no time. There are worse things happen to you in the mills than
that--and more painful. Sometimes the wind from the reels numbs your
fingers till you can't feel 'em and they go red, and then blue. And
there's always grumbling about the temperature, because what suits hemp
and flax don't suit humans. If some clever man could solve these
difficulties, it would be more comfortable for us. Not that I'm
grumbling. Our mill is about as perfect as any mill can be, and we've
got the blessing of living in the country, too--that's worth a lot."

"You're fond of the country."

"Couldn't live out of it," she said. "Thanks to Mr. Churchouse, I know
more about things than some girls."

"I should think you did."

"He's very wise and kind and lends me books."

"A very nice old bird. I nearly went to live with him when I came to
Bridetown. Sorry I didn't, now."

She smiled and did not pretend to miss the compliment.

"As to the Mill," he went on; "don't think I'm the sort of chap that
just drifts and is contented to let things be as they were in the time
of his father and grandfather."

"Wouldn't you?"

"Certainly not. No doubt it's safer and easier and the line of least
resistance and all that sort of thing. But when I've once mastered the
business, you'll see. I didn't want to come in, but now I'm in, I'm
going to the roots of it, and I shall have a pretty big say in things,
too, later on."

"Fancy!" said Sabina.

"Oh yes. You mustn't suppose my brother and I see alike all round. We
don't. He wants to be a copy of my father, and I've no ambition to be
anything of the kind. My father wasn't at all sporting to me, Sabina,
and it doesn't alter the fact because he's dead. The first thing is the
workers, and whatever I am, I'm clever enough to know that if we don't
do a good many things for the workers pretty soon, they'll do those
things for themselves. But it will be a great deal more proper and breed
a lot more goodwill between labour and capital, if capital takes the
first step and improves the conditions and raises the wages all round.
D'you know what I would do if I had my way? I'd go one better than the
Trade Unions! I'd cut the ground from under their feet! I'd say to
Capital 'instead of whining about the Trades Unions, get to work and
make them needless.'"

But these gigantic ideas, uttered on the spur of the moment by one who
knew less than nothing of his subject, did not interest Sabina as much
as he expected. The reason, however, he did not know. It was that he
had called her by her name for the first time. It slipped out without
intention, though he was conscious of it as he spoke it; but he had no
idea that it had greatly startled her and awoke mingled feelings of
delight and doubt. She was delighted, because it meant her name must
have been often in his thoughts, she was doubtful, because its argued
perhaps a measure less of that respect he had always paid her. But, on
the whole, she felt glad. He waited for her to speak and did not know
that she had heard little, but was wondering at that moment if he would
go back to the formal 'Miss Dinnett' again, or always call her 'Sabina'
in future.

After a pause Raymond spoke.

"Now tell me about yourself," he said. "I'm sure you've heard enough
about me."

"There's nothing to tell."

"How did you happen to be a spinner?"

"Mother was, so I went into it as a matter of course."

"I should have thought old Churchouse would have seen you're a genius,
and educated you and adopted you."

"Nothing of a genius about me. I'm like most other girls."

"I never saw another girl like you," he said.

"You'd spoil anybody with your compliments."

"Never paid a compliment in my life," he declared.

Their conversation became desultory, and presently Sabina said she must
be going home.

"Mother will be wondering."

On the way back they met another familiar pair and Sabina speculated as
to what Raymond thought; but he showed no emotion and took off his hat
to Sarah Northover and Nicholas Roberts, the lathe worker, as they
passed by. Sarah smiled, and Nicholas, a thin, good-looking man, took
off his hat also.

"I must go and study the lathes," said Raymond after they had passed.
"That's a branch of the work I haven't looked at yet. Roberts seems a
good chap, and he's a very useful bowler, I find."

"He's engaged to Sarah; they're going to be married when he can get a
house."

"That's another thing that must be looked to. There are scores of
cottages that want pulling down here. I shall point that out to the Lord
of the Manor when I get a chance."

"You're all for changes and improvements, Mister Ironsyde."

"Call me Raymond, Sabina."

"I couldn't do that."

"Why not? I want you to. By the way, may I call you Sabina?"

"Yes, if you care to."

They parted at the entrance gate of 'The Magnolias,' and Raymond thanked
her very heartily for her company.

"I've looked forward to this," he said. "And now I shall look forward to
the next time. It's very sporting of you to come and I'm tremendously
grateful and--good-bye, Sabina--till to-morrow."

He went on up the road to North Hill House and felt the evening had
grown tasteless without her. He counted the hours to when he would see
her again. She went to work at seven o'clock, but he never appeared at
the Mill until ten, or later.

He began to see that this was the most serious thing within his
experience. He supposed that it must be enduring and tend to alter the
whole tenor of his life. Marriage was one of the stock jokes in his
circle, yet, having regard for Sabina, this meant marriage or nothing.
He felt ill at ease, for love had not yet taken the bit and run away
with him. Other interests cried out to him--interests that he would have
to give up. He tried to treat the matter as a joke with himself, but he
could not. He felt melancholy, and that night at supper Waldron asked
what was wrong, while Estelle told him he must be ill, because he was
so dull.

"I don't believe the spinning works are good for you," she said.

"Ask for a holiday and distract your mind with other things," suggested
Waldron. "If you'd come out in the mornings and ride for a couple of
hours before breakfast, as I do, you'd be all right."

"I will," promised Raymond. "I want bucking up."

He pictured Sabina on horseback.

"I wish to God I was rich instead of being a pauper!" he exclaimed.

"My advice is that you stick it out for a year or more, till you've
convinced your brother you'll never be any good at spinning," said
Arthur Waldron. "Then, after he knows you're not frightened of work,
but, of course, can't excel at work that isn't congenial, he'll put
money into your hands for a higher purpose, and you will go into
breeding stock, or some such thing, to help keep up the sporting
instincts of the country."

With that bright picture still before him Raymond retired. But he was
not hopeful and even vague suggestions on Waldron's part that his friend
should become his bailiff and study agriculture did not serve to win
from the sufferer more than thanks. The truth he did not mention,
knowing that neither Waldron, nor anybody else, would offer palatable
counsel in connection with that.




CHAPTER VIII

THE LECTURE


Daniel Ironsyde sat with his Aunt Jenny after dinner and voiced
discontent. But it was not with himself and his personal progress that
he felt out of tune. All went well at the Mill save in one particular,
and he found no fault either with the heads of the offices at Bridport,
or with John Best, who entirely controlled the manufacture at Bridetown.
His brother caused the tribulation of his mind.

Miss Ironsyde sympathised, but argued for Raymond.

"He has an immense respect for you and would not willingly do anything
to annoy you, I'm sure of that. You must remember that Raymond was not
schooled to this. It takes a boy of his temperament a long time to find
the yoke easy. You were naturally studious, and wise enough to get into
harness after you left school; Raymond, with his extraordinary physical
powers, found the fascination of sport over-mastering. He has had to give
up what to your better understanding is trivial and unimportant, but it
really meant something to him."

"He hasn't given up as much as you might think," answered Daniel. "He's
always taking holidays now for cricket matches, and he rides often with
Waldron. It was a mistake his going there. Waldron is a person with one
idea, and a foolish idea at that. He only thinks a man is a man when
he's tearing about after foxes, or killing something, or playing with a
ball of some sort. He's a bad influence for Raymond. But it's not that.
It's not so much what Raymond doesn't do as what he does do. He's
foolish with the spinners and minders at the Mill."

"He might be," said Jenny Ironsyde, "but he's a gentleman."

"He's an idiot. I believe he'd wreck the whole business if he had the
power. Best tells me he talks to the girls about what he's going to do
presently, and tells them he will raise all their wages. He suggests to
perfectly satisfied people that they are not getting enough money! Well,
it's only human nature for them to agree with him, and you can easily
see what the result of that would be. Instead of having the hands
willing and contented, they'll grow unsettled and grumble, and then work
will suffer and a bad spirit appear in the Mill. It is simply insane."

"I quite agree," answered his aunt. "There's no excuse whatever for
nonsense of that sort, and if Raymond minded his own business, as he
should, it couldn't happen. Surely his own work doesn't throw him into
the company of the girls?"

"Of course it doesn't. It's simply a silly excuse to waste his time and
hear his own voice. He ought to have learned all about the mechanical
part weeks ago."

"Well, I can only advise patience," said Miss Ironsyde. "I don't suppose
a woman would carry much weight with him, an old one I mean--myself in
fact. But failing others I will do what I can. You say Mr. Waldron's no
good. Then try Uncle Ernest. I think he might touch Raymond. He's
gentle, but he's wise. And failing that, you must tackle him yourself,
Daniel. It's your duty. I know you hate preaching and all that sort of
thing, but there's nobody else."

"I suppose there isn't. It can't go on anyway, because he'll do harm. I
believe asses like Raymond make more trouble than right down wicked
people, Aunt Jenny."

"Don't tell him he's an ass. Be patient--you're wonderfully patient
always for such a young man, so be patient with your brother. But try
Uncle Ernest first. He might ask Raymond to lunch, or tea, and give him
a serious talking to. He'll know what to say."

"He's too mild and easy. It will go in at one ear and come out of the
other," prophesied Daniel.

But none the less he called on Mr. Churchouse when next at Bridetown.

The old man had just received a parcel by post and was elated.

"A most interesting work sent to me from 'A Well Wisher,'" he said. "It
is an old perambulation of Dorsetshire, which I have long desired to
possess."

"People like your writings in the _Bridport Gazette_," declared Daniel.
"Can you give me a few minutes, Uncle Ernest? I won't keep you."

"My time is always at the service of Henry Ironsyde's boys," answered
the other, "and nothing that I can do for you, or Raymond, is a
trouble."

"Thank you. I'm grateful. It is about Raymond, as a matter of fact."

"Ah, I'm not altogether surprised. Come into the study."

Mr. Churchouse, carrying his new book, led the way and soon he heard of
the younger man's anxieties. But the bookworm increased rather than
allayed them.

"Do you see anything of Raymond?" began Daniel.

"A great deal of him. He often comes to supper. But I will be frank. He
does not patronise my simple board for what he can get there, nor does
he find my company very exciting. He wouldn't. The attraction, I'm
afraid, is my housekeeper's daughter, Sabina. Sabina, I may tell you, is
a very attractive girl, Daniel. It has been my pleasure during her youth
to assist at her education, and she is well informed and naturally
clever. She is inclined to be excitable, as many clever people are, but
she is of a charming disposition and has great natural ability. I had
thought she would very likely become a schoolmistress; but in this place
the call of the mills is paramount and, as you know, the young women
generally follow their mothers. So Sabina found the thought of the
spinning attractive and is now, Mr. Best tells me, an amazingly clever
spinner--his very first in fact. And it cannot be denied that Raymond
sees a good deal of her. This is probably not wise, because friendship,
at their tender ages, will often run into emotion, and, naturally
flattered by his ingenuous attentions, Sabina might permit herself to
spin dreams and so lessen her activities as a spinner of yarn. I say she
might. These things mean more to a girl than a boy."

"What can I do about it? I was going to ask you to talk sense to
Raymond."

"With all the will, I am not the man, I fear. Sense varies so much from
the standpoint of the observer, my dear Daniel. You, for example, having
an old head on young shoulders, would find yourself in agreement with my
sentiments; Raymond, having a young and rather empty head on his
magnificent shoulders, would not. I take the situation to be this.
Raymond's life has been suddenly changed and his prodigious physical
activities reduced. He bursts with life. He is more alive than any youth
I have ever known. Now all this exuberance of nature must have an
outlet, and what more natural than that, in the presence of such an
attractive young woman, the sex instinct should begin to assert itself?"

"You don't mean he is in love, or anything like that?"

"That is just exactly what I do mean," answered Mr. Churchouse.

"I thought he probably liked to chatter to them all, and hear his own
voice, and talk rubbish about what he'll do for them in the future."

"He has nebulous ideas about wages and so on; but women are quicker than
men, and probably they understand perfectly well that he doesn't know
what he's talking about so far as that goes. How would it be if you took
him into the office at Bridport, where he would be more under your eye?"

"He must learn the business first and nobody can teach him like Best."

"Then I advise that you talk to him yourself. Don't let the fact that
you are only a year and three months older than Raymond make you too
tolerant. You are really ten, or twenty, years older than he is in
certain directions, and you must lecture him accordingly. Be firm; be
decisive. Explain to him that life is real and that he must approach it
with the same degree of earnestness and self-discipline as he devotes to
running and playing games and the like. I feel sure you will carry great
weight. He is far from being a fool. In fact he is a very intelligent
young man with excellent brains, and if he would devote them to the
business, you would soon find him your right hand. The machinery does
honestly interest him. But you must make it a personal thing. He must
study political economy and the value of labour and its relations to
capital and the market value of dry spun yarns. These vague ideas to
better the lot of the working classes are wholly admirable and speak of
a good heart. But you must get him to listen to reason and the laws of
supply and demand and so forth."

"What shall I say about the girls?"

"It is not so much the girls as the girl. If he had manifested a general
interest in them, you need have said nothing; but, with the purest good
will to Raymond and a great personal affection for Sabina, I do feel
that this friendship is not desirable. Don't think I am cynical and
worldly and take too low a view of human nature--far from it, my dear
boy. Nothing would ever make me take a low view of human nature. But one
has not lived for sixty years with one's eyes shut. Unhappy things occur
and Nature is especially dangerous when you find her busy with such
natural creatures as your brother and Sabina. A word to the wise. I
would speak, but you will do so with far greater weight."

"I hate preaching and making Raymond think I'm a prig and all that sort
of thing. It only hardens him against me."

"He knows better. At any rate try persuasion. He has a remarkably good
temper and a child could lead him. In fact a child sometimes does. He'd
do anything for Waldron's little girl. Just say you admire and share his
ambitions for the welfare of the workers. Hint at supply and demand;
then explain that all must go according to fixed laws, and amelioration
is a question of time and combination, and so on. Then tackle him
fearlessly about Sabina and appeal to his highest instincts. I, too, in
my diplomatic way will approach him with modern instances. Unfortunately
it is only too easy to find modern instances of what romance may end in.
And to say that modern instances are exceedingly like ancient ones, is
merely to say, that human nature doesn't change."

Fired by this advice, Daniel went straight to the works, and it was
about eleven o'clock in the day when he entered his brother's office
above the Mill--to find it empty.

Descending to the main shop, he discovered Raymond showing a visitor
round the machines. Little Estelle Waldron was paying her first visit to
the spinners and, delighted at the distraction, Raymond, on whose
invitation she had come, displayed all the operation of turning flax and
hemp into yarn. He aired his knowledge, but it was incomplete and he
referred constantly to the operators from stage to stage.

Round-eyed and attentive, Estelle poured her whole heart and soul into
the business. She showed a quick perception and asked questions that
interested the girls. Some, indeed, they could not answer. Estelle's
mind approached their work from a new angle and saw in it mysteries and
points calling for solution that had never challenged them. Neither had
her problems much struck Raymond, but he saw their force when she raised
them and pronounced them most important.

"Why, that's fundamental, really," he said, "and yet, be shot, if I
ever thought of it! Only Best will know and I shouldn't be surprised if
he doesn't."

They stood at the First Drawing Frame when Daniel appeared. They had
followed the flat ribbon of sliver from the Carding Machine. At the
Drawing Frame six ribbons from the Carder were all brought together into
one ribbon and so gained in quality, while losing more impurities during
a second severe process of combing out.

"And even now it's not ready for spinning," explained Raymond. "Now it
goes on to the Second Drawing Frame, and four of these ribbons from the
First Drawer are brought together into one ribbon again. So you see that
no less than twenty-four ribbons from the Carder are brought together to
make stuff good enough to spin."

"What do the Drawing Frames do to it?" asked Estelle; "it looks just the
same."

"Blessed if I know," confessed Raymond. "What do they do to it, Mrs.
Chick?"

A venerable old woman, whose simple task was to wind away the flowing
sliver into cans, made answer. She was clad in a dun overall and had a
dim scarlet cap of worsted drawn over her white hair. The remains of
beauty homed in her brown and wrinkled face; her grey eyes were gentle,
and her expression wistful and kindly.

"The Drawing Heads level the 'sliver,' and true it, and make it good,"
she said. "All the rubbish is dragged out on the teeth and now, though
it seems thinner and weaker, it isn't really. Now it goes to the Roving
Frame and that makes it still better and ready for the spinners."

Then came Daniel, and Raymond, leaving Estelle with Mrs. Chick, departed
at his brother's wish. The younger anticipated trouble and began to
excuse himself.

"Waldron's so jolly friendly that I thought you wouldn't mind if I
showed his little girl round the works. She's tremendously clever and
intelligent."

"Of course I don't mind. That's nothing, but I want to speak to you on
the general question. I do wish, Raymond, you'd be more dignified."

"Dignified! Me? Good Lord!"

"Well, if you don't like that word, say 'self-respecting.' You might
take longer views and look ahead."

"You may bet your boots I do that, Dan. This life isn't so delightful
that I am content to live in the present hour, I assure you. I look
ahead all right."

"I mean look ahead for the sake of the business, not for your own sake.
I don't want to preach, or any nonsense of that kind; but there's nobody
else to speak, so I must. The point is that you don't see in the least
what you are doing here. In the future my idea was--and yours, too, I
suppose--that you came into the business as joint partner with me in
everything."

"Jolly sporting of you, Dan."

"But that being so, can't you see you ought to support me in
everything?"

"I do."

"No, you don't. You're not taking the right line in the least, and
what's more, I believe you know it yourself. Don't think I'm selfish
and careless about our people, or indifferent to their needs and rights.
I'm quite as keen about their welfare as you are; but one can't do
everything in a moment. And you're not helping them and only hindering
me by talking a lot of rubbish to them."

"It isn't rubbish, Dan. I had all the facts from Levi Baggs, the
hackler. He understands the claims of capital and what labour is
entitled to, and all the rest of it."

"Baggs is a sour, one-sided man and will only give you a biased and
wrong view. If you want to know the truth, you can come into Bridport
and study it. Then you'll see exactly what things are worth, and what we
get paid in open market for our goods. All you do by listening to Levi
is to waste your time and waste his. And then you wander about among the
women talking nonsense. And remember this: they know it's nonsense.
They understand the question very much better than you do, and instead
of respecting you, as they ought to respect a future master, they only
laugh at you behind your back. And what will the result be? Why, when
you come to have a voice in the thing, they'll remind you of all your
big talk. And then you've got to climb down and they'll not respect you,
or take you seriously."

"All right, old chap--enough said. Only you needn't think the people
wouldn't respect me. I get on jolly well with them as a matter of fact.
And I do look ahead--perhaps further than you do. I certainly wouldn't
promise anything I wouldn't try to perform. In fact, I'm very keen about
them. And I believe if we scrapped all the machinery and got new--"

"When you've mastered the present machinery, it will be time to talk
about scrapping it," answered Daniel. "People are always shouting out
for new things, and when they get them--and sacrifice a year's profits
very likely in doing so--often the first thing they hear from the
operatives is, that the old machinery was much better. Our father always
liked to see other firms make the experiments."

"That's the way to get left, if you ask me."

"I don't ask you," answered the master. "I'm telling you, Raymond; and
you ought to remember that I very well know what I'm talking about and
you don't. You must give me some credit. To question me is to question
our father, for I learned everything from him."

"But times change. You don't want to be left high and dry in the march
of progress, my dear chap."

"No--you needn't fear that. If you're young, you're a part of progress;
you belong to it. But you must get a general knowledge of the present
situation in our trade before you can do anything rational in the shape
of progress. I've been left a very fine business with a very honoured
name to keep up, and if I begin trying to run before I can walk, I
should very soon fall down. You must see that."

Raymond nodded.

"Yes, that's all right. I'm a learner and I know you can teach me a
lot."

"If you'd come to me instead of to the mill people."

"You don't know their side."

"Much better than you do. I've talked with our father often and often
about it. He was no tyrant and nobody could ever accuse him of
injustice."

Raymond flashed; but he kept his mouth shut on that theme. The only
bitter quarrels between the brothers had been on the subject of their
father, and the younger knew that the ground was dangerous. At this
moment the last thing he desired was any difference with Daniel.

"I'll keep it all in mind, Dan. I don't want to do anything to annoy
you, God knows. Is there any more? I must go and look after young
Estelle."

"Only one thing; and this is purely personal, and so I hope you'll
excuse me. I've just been seeing Uncle Ernest, and nobody wished us
better fortune than he does."

"He's a good old boy. I've learned a lot about spinning from him."

"I know. But--look here, Raymond, I do beg of you--I implore of you not
to be too friendly with Sabina Dinnett. You can't think how I should
hate anything like that. It isn't fair--it isn't fair to the woman, or
to me, or to the family. You must see yourself that sort of thing isn't
right. She's a very good girl--our champion spinner Best says; and if
you go distracting her and taking her out of her station, you are doing
her a very cruel turn and upsetting her peace of mind. And the others
will be jealous, of course, and so it will go on. It isn't playing the
game--it really isn't. That's all. I know you're a sportsman and all
that; so I do beg you'll be a sportsman in business too, and take a
proper line and remember your obligations. And if I've said a harsh, or
unfair word, I'm sorry for it; but you know I haven't."

Seeing that Sabina Dinnett was now in paramount and triumphant
possession of Raymond's mind, he felt thankful that his brother, by
running on over this subject and concluding upon the whole question, had
saved him the necessity for any direct reply. Whether he would have lied
or no concerning Sabina, Raymond did not stop to consider. There is
little doubt that he would. But the need was escaped; and so thankful
did he feel, that he responded to the admonishment in a tone more
complete and with promises more comprehensive than Daniel expected.

"You're dead right. Of course I know it! I've been a silly fool all
round. But I won't open my mouth so wide in future, Dan. And don't think
I'm wasting my time. I'm working like the devil, really, and learning
everything from the beginning. Best will tell you that's true. He's a
splendid teacher and I'll see more of him in future. And I'll read all
about yarn and get the hang of the markets, and so on."

"Thank you--you can't say more. And you might come into Bridport
oftener, I think. Aunt Jenny was saying she never sees you now."

"I will," promised Raymond. "I'm going to dine with you both on my
birthday. I believe she'll be good for fifty quid this year. Father left
her a legacy of a thousand."

They parted, and Raymond returned to Estelle, who was now watching the
warping, while Daniel went into his foreman's office.

Estelle was radiant. She had fallen in love with the works.

"The girls are all so kind and clever," she said.

"Rather so. I expect you know all about everything now."

"Hardly anything yet. But you must let me come again. I do want to know
all about it. It is splendidly interesting."

"Of course, come and go when you like, kiddy."

"And I'm going to ask some of them to tea with me," declared Estelle.
"They all love flowers, and I'm going to show them our garden and my
pets. I've asked seven of them and two men."

"Ask me, too."

She brought out a piece of paper and showed him that she had written
down nine names.

"And if they like it, they'll tell the others and I shall ask them too,"
she said. "Father is always wanting me to spend money, so now I'll spend
some on a beautiful tea."

Raymond saw the name of Sabina Dinnett.

"I'll be there to help you," he promised.

"Nicholas Roberts is the lover of Miss Northover," explained Estelle,
"and Benny Cogle is the lover of Miss Gale. That's why I asked them. I
very nearly went back and asked Mister Baggs to come, because he seems a
silent, sad man; but I was rather frightened of him."

"Don't ask him; he's an old bear," declared Raymond.

Thus, forgetting his brother as though Daniel had ceased to exist, he
threw himself into Estelle's enterprise and planned an entertainment
that must at least have rendered the master uneasy.




CHAPTER IX

THE PARTY


Arthur Waldron did more than love his daughter. He bore to her almost a
superstitious reverence, as for one made of superior flesh and blood. He
held her in some sort a reincarnation of his wife and took no credit for
her cleverness himself. Yet he did not spoil her, for her nature was
proof against that.

Estelle, though old for her age, could not be called a prig. She
developed an abstract interest in life as her intellect unfolded to
accept its wonders and mysteries, yet she remained young in mind as well
as body, and was always very glad to meet others of her own age. The
mill girls were indeed older than she, but Mr. Waldron's daughter found
their minds as young as her own in such subjects as interested her,
though there were many things hidden from her that life had taught them.

Her father never doubted Estelle's judgment or crossed her wishes.
Therefore he approved of the proposed party and did his best to make it
a success. Others also were glad to aid Estelle and, to her delight,
Ernest Churchouse, with whom she was in favour, yielded to entreaty and
joined the company on the lawn of North Hill House. Tea was served out
of doors, and to it there came nine workers from the mill, and two of
Mr. Best's own girls, who were friends of Estelle. Nicholas Roberts
arrived with his future wife, Sarah Northover; Sabina Dinnett came with
Nancy Buckler and Sally Groves from the Carding Machine, while Alice
Chick brought old Mrs. Chick; Mercy Gale came too--a fair, florid girl,
who warped the yarn when it was spun.

Mr. Waldron was not a ladies' man, and after helping with the tea,
served under a big mulberry tree in the garden, he turned his attention
to Mr. Roberts, already known favourably to him as a cricketer, and
Benny Cogle, the engine man. They departed to look at a litter of
puppies and the others perambulated the gardens. Estelle had a plot of
her own, where grew roses, and here, presently, each with a rose at her
breast, the girls sat about on an old stone seat and listened to Mr.
Churchouse discourse on the lore of their trade.

Some, indeed, were bored by the subject and stole away to play beside a
fountain and lily pond, where the gold fish were tame and crowded to
their hands for food; but others listened and learned surprising facts
that set the thoughtful girls wondering.

"You mustn't think, you spinners, that you are the last word in
spinning," he said; "no, Alice and Nancy and Sabina, you're not; no more
are those at other mills, who spin in choicer materials than flax and
hemp--I mean the workers in cotton and silk. For the law of things in
general, called evolution, seems to stand still when machinery comes to
increase output and confuse our ideas of quality and quantity. Missis
Chick here will tell you, when she was a spinner and the old rope walks
were not things of the past, that she spun quite as good yarn from the
bundle of tow at her waist as you do from the regulation spinners."

"And better," said Mrs. Chick.

"I believe you," declared Ernest, "and before your time the yarn was
better still. For, though some of the best brains in men's heads have
been devoted to the subject, we go backwards instead of forwards, and
things have been done in spinning that I believe will never be done
again. In fact, the further you go back, the better the yarn seems to
have been, and I'm sure I don't know how the laws of evolution can
explain that. The secret is this: machinery, for all its marvellous
improvements, lags far behind the human hand, and the record yarns were
spun in the East, while our forefathers still went about in wolf-skins
and painted their faces blue. You may laugh, but it is so."

"Tell us about them, Mister Churchouse," begged Estelle.

"For the moment we needn't go back so far," he said. "I'll remind you
what a girl thirteen years old did in Ireland a hundred years ago. Only
thirteen was Catherine Woods--mark that, Sabina and Alice--but she was a
genius who lived in Dunmore, County Down, and she spun a hank of linen
yarn of such tenuity that it would have taken seven hundred such hanks
to make a pound of yarn."

He turned to Estelle.

"Sabina and the other spinners will appreciate this," he said, "but to
explain the marvel of such spider-like spinning, Estelle, I may tell you
that seventeen and a half pounds of Catherine's yarn would have sufficed
to stretch round the equator of the earth. No machine-spun yarn has ever
come within measurable distance of this astounding feat, and I have
never heard of any spinner in Europe or America equalling it; yet even
this has been beaten when we were painting our noses blue."

"Where?" asked Estelle breathlessly.

"In the land of all wonders: Egypt. Herodotus tells us of a linen
corselet, presented to the Lacedemonians by King Amasis, each thread of
which commanded admiration, for though very fine, each was twisted of
three hundred and sixty others! And if you decline to believe this--"

"Oh, Mister Churchouse, we quite believe it I'm sure, sir, if you say
so," interrupted Mrs. Chick.

"Well, a later authority, Sir Gardiner Wilkinson, tells us of equal
wonders. The linen which he unwound from Egyptian mummies has proved as
delicate as silk, and equal, if not superior, to our best cambrics. Five
hundred and forty threads went to the warp and a hundred and ten to the
weft; and I'm sure a modern weaver would wonder how they could produce
quills fine enough for weaving such yarn through."

"There's nothing new under the sun, seemingly," said old Mrs. Chick.

"Indeed there isn't, my dear, and so, perhaps, in the time to come, we
shall spin again as well as the Egyptians five or six thousand years
ago," declared Ernest.

"And even then the spiders will always beat us I expect," said Estelle.

"True--true, child; nor has man learned the secret, of the caterpillar's
silken spinning. Talking of caterpillars, you may, or may not, have
observed--"

It was at this point that Raymond, behind the speaker's back, beckoned
Sabina, and presently, as Mr. Churchouse began to expatiate on Nature's
spinning, she slipped away. The garden was large and held many winding
paths and secluded nooks. Thus the lovers were able to hide themselves
from other eyes and amuse themselves with their own conversation.

Sabina praised Estelle.

"She's a dear little lady and ever so clever, I'm sure."

"So she is, and yet she loses a lot. Though her father's such a great
sportsman, she doesn't care a button about it. Wouldn't ride on a pony
even."

"I can very well understand that. Nor would I if I had the chance."

"You're different, Sabina. You've not been brought up in a sporting
family. All the same you'd ride jolly well, because you've got nerve
enough for anything and a perfect figure for riding. You'd look fairly
lovely on horseback."

"Whatever will you say next?"

"I often wonder myself," he answered. "This much I'll say any way: it's
meat and drink to me to be walking here with you. I only wish I was
clever and could really amuse you and make you want to see me,
sometimes. But the things I understand, of course, bore you to tears."

"You know very well that isn't so," she said. "You've told me heaps of
things well worth knowing--things I should never have heard of but for
you. And--and I'm sure I'm very proud of your friendship."

"Good Lord! It's the other way about. Thanks to Mister Churchouse and
your own wits, you are fearfully well read, and your cleverness fairly
staggers me. Just to hear you talk is all I want--at least that isn't
all. Of course, it is a great score for an everyday sort of chap like me
to have interested you."

Sabina did not answer and after a silence which drew out into
awkwardness, she made some remark on the flowers. But Raymond was not
interested about the flowers. He had looked forward to this occasion as
an opportunity of exceptional value and now strove to improve the
shining hour.

"You know I'm a most unlucky beggar really, Sabina. You mightn't think
it, but I am. You see me cheerful, and joking and trying to make things
pleasant for us all at the works; but sometimes, if you could see me
tramping alone over North Hill, or walking on the beach and looking at
the seagulls, you'd be sorry for me."

"Of course, I'd be sorry for you--if there was anything to be sorry
for."

"Look at it. An open-air man brought up to think my father would leave
me all right, and then cut off with nothing and forced to come here and
stew and toil and wear myself out struggling with a most difficult
business--difficult to me, any way."

"I'm sure you're mastering it as quickly as possible."

"But the effort. And my muscles are shrinking and I'm losing weight.
But, of course, that's nothing to anybody but myself. And then, another
side: I want to think of you people first and raise your salaries and
so on--especially yours, for you ought to have pounds where you have
shillings. And my wishes to do proper things, in the line of modern
progress and all that, are turned down by my brother. Here am I thinking
about you and worrying and knowing it's all wrong--and there's nobody on
my side--not a damned person. And it makes me fairly mad."

"I'm sure it's splendid of you to look at the Mill in such a high-minded
way," declared Sabina. "And now you've told me, I shall understand
what's in your mind. I'm sure I thank you for the thought at any rate."

"If you'd only be my friend," he said.

"It would be a great honour for a girl--just a spinner--to be that."

"The honour is for me. You've got such tons of mind, Sabina. You
understand all the economical side, and so on."

"A thing is only worth what it will fetch, I'm afraid."

"That's the point. If you would help me, we would go into it and
presently, when I'm a partner, we could bring out a scheme; and then
you'd know you'd been instrumental in raising the tone of the whole
works. And probably, if we set a good example, other works would raise
their tone, too, and gradually the workers would find the whole scheme
of things changing, to their advantage."

Sabina regarded this majestic vision with due reverence. She praised his
ideals and honestly believed him a hero.

They discussed the subject while the dusk came down and he prophesied
great things.

"We shall live to see it," he assured her, "and it may be largely thanks
to you. And when you have a home of your own and--and--"

It was then that she became conscious of his very near presence and the
dying light.

"They'll all have gone, and so must I," she said, "and I hope you'll
thank Miss Waldron dearly for her nice party."

"This is only the first; she'll give dozens more now that this has been
such a success. She loves the Mill. If you come this way I can let you
out by the bottom gate--by the bamboo garden. You've bucked me up like
anything--you always do. You're the best thing in my life, Sabina. Oh,
if I was anything to you--if--but of course it's all one way."

His voice shook a little. He burned to put his arms round her, and
Nature shouted so loud in his humming ears that he hardly heard her
answer. For she echoed his emotion.

"What can I say to that? You're so kind--you don't know how kind. You
can't guess what such friendship means to a girl like me. It's something
that doesn't come into our lives very often. I'm only wondering what the
world will be like when you've gone again."

"I shan't go--I'm never going. Never, Sabina. I--I couldn't live without
you. Kiss me, for God's sake. I must kiss you--I must--or I shall go
mad."

His arms were round her and he felt her hot cheek against his. They were
young in love and dared not look into each other's eyes. But she kissed
him back, and then, as he released her, she ran away, slipped through
the wicket, where they stood and hastened off by the lane to Bridetown.
He glowed at her touch and panted at his triumph. She had not rebuked
him, but let him see that she loved him and kissed him for his kiss. He
did not attempt to follow her then but turned full of glory. Here was a
thing that dwarfed every interest of life and made life itself a
triviality by comparison. She loved him; he had won her; nothing else
that would be, or had been, in the whole world mattered beside such a
triumph. His head had touched the stars.

And he felt amazingly grateful to her. His thoughts for the moment were
full of chivalry. Her life must be translated to higher terms and new
values. She should have the best that the world could offer, and he
would win it for her. Her trust was so pathetic and beautiful. To be
trusted by her made him feel a finer thing and more important to the
cosmic scheme.

In itself this was a notable sensation and an addition of power, for
nobody had ever trusted him until now. And here was a radiant creature,
the most beautiful in the world, who trusted him with herself. His love
brought a sense of splendour; her love brought a sense of strength.

He swung back to the house feeling in him such mastery as might bend the
whole earth to his purposes, take Leviathan with a hook, and hang the
constellations in new signs upon the void of heaven.




CHAPTER X

WORK


Sarah Northover and another young woman were tending the Spread Board.
To this came the 'long line' from the hackler--those strides of amber
hemp and lint-white flax that Mr. Baggs prepared in the hackler's shop.
The Spread Board worked upon the long line as the Carder on the tow.
Over its endless leathern platform, or spreading carriage, the long
fibre was drawn into the toothed gills of the machine and converted into
sliver for the Drawing Frames.

With swift and rhythmic flinging apart of her arms over her head, Sarah
separated the stricks into three and laid them overlapping on the
carriage. The ribbon thus created was never-ending and wound away into
the torture chambers of wheels and teeth within, while from the rear of
the Spreader trickled out the new-created sliver. Great scales hung
beside Sarah and from time to time she weighed fresh loads of long line
and recorded the amount.

Her arms flashed upwards, the divided stricks came down to be laid in
rotation on the running carriage, and ceaselessly she and her fellow
worker chattered despite the din around them.

"My Aunt Nelly's coming to see me this morning," said Sarah. "She's
driving over to talk to Mister Waldron about his apple orchard and have
a look round. Last year she bought the whole orchard for cider; and if
she thinks well of it, she'll do the same this year."

"I wonder you stop here," answered the other girl, "when you might go to
your aunt and work in her public-house. I'd a long sight sooner be there
than here."

"You wouldn't if you was engaged to Mister Roberts," answered Sarah.
"Of course seeing him every day makes all the difference. And as to
work, there's nothing in it, for everybody's got to work at 'The Seven
Stars,' I can tell you, and the work's never done there."

"It's the company I should like," declared the other. "I'd give a lot to
see new people every day. In a public they come and go, before you've
got time to be sick of the sight of 'em. But here, you see the same
people and hear the same voices every day of your blessed life; and
sometimes it makes me feel right down wicked."

"It's narrowing to the mind I dare say, unless you've got a man like
Mister Roberts with a lot of general ideas," admitted Sarah. "But you
know very well for that matter you could have a man to-morrow. Benny
Cogle's mate is daft for you."

The other sniffed.

"It's very certain he ain't got no general ideas, beyond the steam
engine. He can only talk about the water wheel to-day and the boilers
to-morrow. When I find a chap, he'll have to know a powerful lot more
about life than that chap--and shave himself oftener also."

"He'd shave every day if you took him, same as Mister Roberts does,"
said Sarah.

Elsewhere Mr. Best was starting a run of the Gill Spinner, a machine
which took sliver straight from the Drawing Frames and spun it into a
large coarse yarn. A novice watched him get the great machine to work,
make all ready and then, at a touch, connect it with the power and set
it crashing and roaring. Its voice was distinctive and might be heard by
a practised ear above the prevailing thunder.

Then came Mrs. Nelly Northover to this unfamiliar scene, peeped in at a
door or two and failed to see Sarah, who laboured at the other end of
the Mill. But the hostess of 'The Seven Stars' knew Sabina Dinnett and
now shook hands with her and then stood and watched in bewildered
admiration before a big frame of a hundred spindles.

Sabina was spinning with a heart very full of happiness. On the previous
evening she had promised to wed Raymond Ironsyde, and her thoughts
to-day were winged with over-mastering joy. For life had turned into a
glorious triumph; the man who had asked her to marry him was not only a
gentleman, but far above the power of any wrong-doing. She knew in the
very secret places of her soul, that he could never act away from his
honest and noble character; that he was a knight above reproach,
incapable of wronging any living thing. There was an element of risk for
most girls who fell in love with those better born than themselves; but
none for her. Other men might deceive and abuse, and suffer outer
influences to chill their love, when the secret of it became known; but
not this man. His rare nature had been revealed to her; he desired the
welfare of all people; he was moved with nothing but the purest
principles and loftiest feeling. He would not willingly have brought
sorrow to a child. And she had won this unique spirit! He loved her with
the love that only such a man was great enough to show; and she echoed
it and knew that such a passion must be unchanging, everlasting, built
not only to make their united lives unspeakably happy and gloriously
content, but to run over also into the lives of others, less blessed,
and leave the sad world happier for their happiness. There was not a
cloud in the sky of her romance and she shared with him for the moment
the joy of secrecy. But that would not be long. They had determined to
hug their delicious knowledge for a little while and then proclaim the
great tidings to the world.

So she followed the old road, along which her sisters had tramped from
immemorial time, and would still tramp through the generations to come,
when her journey was ended and the wonderful country of man's love
explored--its oases visited, its antres endured.

Now Sabina played priestess to the Spinning Machine--a monster reared
above her, stupendous and insatiable.

Along the summit of the Spinning Frame, just within reach of tall
Sabina's uplifted hand, there perched a row of reels from which the
finished material descended through series of rollers. The retaining
roller aloft gave it to the steel delivery roller which drew the thin,
sad-looking stuff with increased speed downward. And here at its moment
of most shivering tenuity, when the perfected and purified material
seemed reduced to an extremity of weakness, came the magic change.
Unseen in the whirring complexity of the spinner, it received the
momentous gift that translates fibre to yarn. In a moment it changed
from stuff a baby's finger could break to thread capable of supporting
fifteen pounds of pressure. For now came the twist--that word of mighty
significance--and the tiny thread of new-born yarn descended to the
spindle, vanished in the whirl of the flier and reappeared, an
accomplished miracle, winding on the bobbin beneath.

Upon the spindle revolved the flier--a fork of steel with guide eye at
one leg of the fork--and through the guide eye came the twisted yarn to
wind on the bobbin below. There, as the bobbin frame rose and fell, the
thread was perfectly delivered to the reel and coiled off layer by layer
upon it.

Mrs. Northover stared to see the nature of a Spinner's duties and the
ease with which she controlled the great, pulsing, roaring frame of a
hundred spindles. Sabina's eyes were everywhere; her hands were never
still; her feet seemed to dance a measure to the thunder of the Frame.
Now she marked a roving reel aloft that was running out, and in a moment
she had broken the sliver, swept away the empty reel and hung up a full
one. Then she drew the new sliver down to the point of the break and, in
a moment, the two merged and the thread ran on. Now her fingers touched
the spindles, as a musician touches the keys, and at a moment's pressure
the machine obeyed and the yarn flew on its way obedient. Now she
cleared a snarl, or catch, where a spindle appeared to have run amuck or
created hopeless confusion; now she readjusted the weights that kept a
drag on the humming bobbins. Her twinkling hands touched and calmed and
fed the monster. She knew its whims, corrected its errors, brought to
her insensate machine the complement of brain that made it trustworthy.
And when the bobbins were all full, she hastened along the Frame, turned
off the driving power and silenced the huge activity in a moment. Then,
like lightning, she cut her hundred threads and lifted the bobbins from
their spindles until she had a pile upon her shoulder. In a marvellously
short time she had doffed the bobbins and set up a hundred empty ones.
Then the cut threads were readjusted, the power turned on and all was
motion again.

Sabina had never calculated her labours, until Raymond took the trouble
to do so; then she learned a fact that astonished her. He found that it
took a hundred and fifty minutes to spin one thousand and fifty yards;
and as each spindle spun two and a half miles in ten hours, her daily
accomplishment was two hundred and fifty miles of yarn.

"You spin from seventy to eighty thousand miles of single yarn a year,"
he told her, and the fact expressed in these terms amazed her and her
sister spinners.

Now Nelly Northover praised the performance.

"To think that you slips of girls can do anything so wonderful!" she
said. "We talk of the spinners of Bridport as if they were nobodies; but
upon my conscience, Sabina, I never will again. I've always thought I
was a pretty busy woman; but I'd drop to the earth I'm sure after an
hour of your job, let alone ten hours."

Sabina laughed.

"It's use, Mrs. Northover. Some take to it like a duck to water. I did
for one. But some never do. If you come to the Frame frightened, you
never make a spinner. They're like humans, the Spinning Frames; if they
think you're afraid of them, they'll always bully you, but if you show
them you're mistress, it's all right. They have their moods and whims,
just as we have. They vary, and you never know how the day will go.
Sometimes everything runs smoothly; sometimes nothing does. Some days
you're as fresh at the end as the beginning; some days you're dog-tired
and worn out after a proper fight."

"There's something hungry and cruel and wicked about 'em to my eye,"
declared Mrs. Northover.

"We're oftener in fault than the Frames, however. Sometimes the
spinner's to blame herself--she may be out of sorts and heavy-handed and
slow on her feet and can't put up her ends right, or do anything right;
and often it's the fault of the other girls and the 'rove' comes to the
spinner rough; and often, again, it's just luck--good or bad. If the
machine always ran perfect, there'd be nothing to do. But you've got
to use your wits from the time it starts to the time it stops."

"The creature would best me every time," said the visitor, regarding
Sabina's machine with suspicion and something akin to dislike.

The spinner stopped a fouled spindle and rubbed her hand.

"Sometimes the yarn's always snarling and your drag weights are always
burning off and the stuff is full of kinks and the sliver's badly pieced
up--that's the drawing minder's fault--and a bad drawing minder means
work for me. Your niece, Sarah, is a very good drawing minder, Mrs.
Northover. Then you'll get ballooning, when the thread flies round above
the flier, and that means too little strain on the jamb and the bobbin
has got to be tempered. And often it's too hot, or else too cold, for
hemp and flax must have their proper temperature. But to-day my machine
is as good and kind as a nice child, that only asks to be fed and won't
quarrel with anybody."

Mrs. Northover, however, saw nothing to praise, for Sabina's speech had
been broken a dozen times.

"If that's what you call working kindly, I'd like to see the wretch in a
nasty mood," she said. "I lay you want to slap it sometimes."

Sabina was mending a drag that had burned off. The drags were heavy
weights hanging from strings that pressed upon the side of the bobbins
and controlled their speed. The friction often burned these cords
through and the weights had to be lifted and retied again and again.

"We want a clever invention to put this right," she said. "A lot of good
time's wasted with the weights. Nobody's thought upon the right thing
yet."

"I'm properly dazed," confessed Nelly Northover. "You live and learn
without a doubt--nothing's so true as that."

Her niece had seen her and approached, as the machinery began to still
for the dinner-hour.

"Morning, Sarah. Can you do such wonders as Miss Dinnett?" she asked.

"No, Aunt Nelly. I'm a spreader minder. But I'll be a spinner some day,
if Mr. Roberts likes for me to stop, here after I'm married."

"Sarah would soon learn to spin," declared Sabina.

Then she turned to bid Raymond Ironsyde good morning. His brother was
away from Bridport on a tour with one of his travellers, that he might
become acquainted with many of his more important customers. Raymond,
therefore, felt safe and was wasting a good deal of his time. He had
brought a basket of fruit from North Hill House--a present from
Estelle--and he began to dispense plums and pears as the women streamed
away to dinner.

They knew him very well now and treated him with varying degrees of
familiarity. Early doubts had vanished, and they took him as a good
natured, rather 'soft' young man, who meant well and was friendly and
harmless. The ill-educated are always suspicious, and Levi Baggs
declared from the first that Raymond was nothing better than his
brother's spy, placed here for a time to inquire into the ambitions and
ideas of the workers and so help the firm to combat the lawful demands
of those whom they employed; but this theory was long exploded save in
the mind of Mr. Baggs himself. The people of Bridetown Mill held Raymond
on their side, and all were secretly interested to know what would
spring of his frank friendship with Sabina.

In serious moments Raymond felt uneasy at the relations he had
established with the workers, and Mr. Best did not hesitate to warn
him again and again that discipline was ill served by such easy terms
between employer and employed; but his moments of perspicuity were rare,
for now his mind and soul were poured into one thought and one only. He
was riotously happy in his love affair and could not pretend to his
fellow creatures anything he did not feel. Always amiable and
accessible, his romance made him still more so, and he was
constitutionally unable at this moment to take a serious view of
anything or anybody.

One ray of hope, however, Mr. Best recognised: Raymond did show an
honest and genuine interest in the machines. He had told the foreman
that he believed the great problem lay there, and where machinery was
concerned he could be exceedingly intelligent and rational. This trait
in him had a bearing on the future and, in time to come, John Best
remembered its inception and perceived how it had developed.

Now, his fruit dispensed, Raymond talked with Sabina about the Spinning
Frame and instructed Mrs. Northover, who was an acquaintance of his, in
its mysteries.

"These are old-fashioned frames," he declared, "and I shan't rest till
I've turned them out of the works and got the latest and best. I'm all
for the new things, because they help the workers and give good results.
In fact, I tell my brother that he's behind the times. That's the
advantage of coming to a subject fresh, with your mind unprejudiced.
Daniel's all bound up in the past and, of course, everything my father
did must be right; but I know better. You have to move with the times,
and if you don't you'll get left."

"That's true enough, Mr. Ironsyde, whatever your business may be,"
answered Mrs. Northover.

"Of course--look at 'The Seven Stars.' You're always up to date, and why
should my spinners--I call them mine--why should they have to spin on
machines that come out of the ark, when, by spending a few thousand,
they could have the latest?"

"You've got to balance cost against value," answered the innkeeper. "It
don't do to dash at things. One likes for the new to be tried on its
merits first, and then, if it proves all that's claimed for it, you go
in and keep abreast of the times according; but the old will often be
found as good as the new; and so Mr. Daniel no doubt looks before he
leaps."

"That's cowardly in my opinion," replied Raymond. "You must take the
chances. Of course if you're frightened to back your judgment, then that
shows you're a second class man with a second class sort of mind; but if
you believe in yourself, as everybody does who is any good, then you go
ahead, and if you come a purler now and again, that's nothing, because
you get it back in other ways. I'm not frightened to chance my luck, am
I, Sabina?"

"Never was such a brave one, I'm sure," she said, conscious of their
secret.

"If you haven't got nerve, you're no good," summed up the young man;
"and if you have got nerve, then use it and break out of the beaten
track and welcome your luck and court a few adventures for your soul's
sake."

"All very well for you men," said Mrs. Northover. "You can have
adventures and no great harm done; but us women, if we try for
adventures, we come to a bad end."

"Nobody's more adventurous than you," answered Raymond. "Look at your
gardens and your teas for a bob ahead. Wasn't that an adventure--to give
a better tea than anybody in Bridport?"

"I believe women have quite as many adventures as men," declared Sarah
Northover, who was waiting for her aunt, "only we're quieter about 'em."

"We've got to be," answered Mrs. Northover. "Now come on to your
mother's, Sarah. There's Mr. Roberts waiting for us outside."

In the silent and empty mill Raymond dawdled for a few minutes with
Sabina, talked love and won a caress. Then she put on her sunbonnet and
he walked with her to the door of her home, left her at 'The Magnolias'
and went his way with Estelle's fruit basket.

A great expedition had been planned by the lovers for a forthcoming
public holiday. They were going to rise in the dawn, before the rest of
the world was awake, and tramp out through West Haven to Golden Cap--the
supreme eminence of the south coast, that towers with bright,
sponge-coloured precipices above the sea, nigh Lyme.




CHAPTER XI

THE OLD STORE-HOUSE


Through a misty morning, made silver bright by the risen sun, Sabina and
Raymond started for their August holiday. They left Bridetown, passed
through a white fog on the water-meadows and presently climbed to the
cliffs and pursued their way westward. Now the sun was over the sea and
the Channel gleamed and flashed under a wakening, westerly breeze.

To West Haven they came, where the cliffs break and the rivers from
Bridport flow through sluices into the little harbour.

Among the ancient, weather-worn buildings standing here with their feet
in the sand drifts, was one specially picturesque. A long and lofty mass
it presented, and a hundred years of storm and salt-laden winds had
toned it to rich colour and fretted its roof and walls with countless
stains. It was a store, three stories high, used of old time for
merchandise, but now sunk to rougher uses. In its great open court,
facing north, were piled thousands of tons of winnowed sand; its vaults
were barred and empty; its glass windows were shattered; rust had eaten
away its metal work and rot reduced its doors and sashes to powder. Rich
red and auburn was its face, with worn courses of brickwork like wounds
gashed upon it. A staircase of stone rose against one outer wall, and
aloft, in the chambers approached thereby, was laid up a load of sweet
smelling, deal planks brought by a Norway schooner. Here too, were all
manner of strange little chambers, some full of old nettings, others
littered with the marine stores of the fishermen, who used the ruin for
their gear. The place was rat-haunted and full of strange holes and
corners. Even by day, with the frank sunshine breaking through boarded
windows and broken roof, it spoke of incident and adventure; by night it
was eloquent of the past--of smugglers, of lawless deeds, of Napoleonic
spies.

Raymond and Sabina stood and admired the old store. To her it was
something new, for her activities never brought her to West Haven; but
he had been familiar with it from childhood, when, with his brother, he
had spent school holidays at West Haven, caught prawns from the pier,
gone sailing with the fisher folk, and spent many a wet day in the old
store-house.

He smiled upon it now, told her of his childish adventures and took her
in to see an ancient chamber where he and Daniel had often played their
games.

"Our nurse used to call it a 'cubby hole,'" he said. "And she was
always; jolly thankful when she could pilot us in here from the dangers
of the cliffs and the old pier, or the boats in the harbour. The place
is just the same--only shrunk. The plaster from the walls is all
mouldering away, or you might see the pictures we used to draw upon them
with paint from the fishermen's paint pots. Down below they bring the
sand and grade it for the builders. They've carted away millions of tons
of sand from the foreshore in the last fifty years and will cart away
millions more, no doubt, for the sea always renews it."

She wandered with him and listened half-dreaming. The air for them was
electric with their love and they yearned for each other.

"I wish we could spend the whole blessed day in this little den
together," he said suddenly putting his arms round her; and that brought
her to some sense of reality, but none of danger. Not a tremor of peril
in his company had she ever felt, for did not perfect love cast out
fear, and why should a woman hesitate to trust herself with one, to
her, the most precious in the world?

He suggested dawdling awhile; but she would not.

"We are to eat our breakfast at Eype Beach," she reminded him, "and
that's a mile or two yet."

So they went on their way again, breasted the grassy cliffs westward of
the haven, admired the fog bank touched with gold that hung over the
river flats, praised Bridport wakening under its leafy woods, marked the
herons on the river mud in the valley and the sparrow-hawk poised aloft
above the downs. She took his arm up the hill and, like birds
themselves, they went lightly together, strong, lissome, radiant in
health and youth and the joy of a shared worship that made all things
sweet.

They talked of the great day when the world was to know their secret.
The secret itself proved so attractive to both that they agreed to keep
it a little longer. Their shared knowledge proved amusing and each told
the other of the warnings and advice and fears imparted by careful
friends of both sexes, who knew not the splendid truth.

How small the wisdom of the wise appeared--how peddling and foolish and
mean--contrasted with their superb trust. How sordid were the ways of
the world, its fears and suspicions, from the vantage point to which
they had climbed. Material things even suggested this thought to
Raymond, and when before noon, they stood on the green crown of Golden
Cap, with the earth and sea spread out around them in mighty harmonies
of blue and green, he told Sabina so.

"We ought to be perched on a place like this," he said, "because we are
to the rest of the world, in mind and in happiness, as we are here in
body too."

"Only the sea gulls can go higher, and I always feel they're more like
spirits than birds," she answered.

"I've got no use for spirits," he told her. "The splendid thing about us
is that we're flesh and blood and spirit too. That's the really
magnificent combination for happy creatures. A spirit at best can only
be an unfinished thing. People make such a fuss about escaping from the
flesh. What the deuce do you want to escape from your flesh for, if it's
healthy and tough and fine?"

"When they get old, they feel like that."

"Let the old comfort the old then," he said. "I'm proud of my flesh and
bones, and so are you, and so we ought to be; and if I had to give them
up and die, I should hate it. And if I found myself in another world, a
poor shivering idea and nothing else, without flesh and bones to cover
me, or clothes to cover them, I should feel ashamed of myself. And they
might call it Paradise as much as they liked, but it would be Hades to
me. Of course many of the ghosts would pretend that they liked it; but I
bet none would really--so jolly undignified to be nothing but an idea."

She laughed.

"That's just what I feel too; and of course it's utterly wrong of us,"
she said. "It shows we have got a lot to learn. We only feel like this
because we're young. Perhaps young ghosts begin like that; but I expect
they soon get past it."

"I should never want to get past it," he said.

He rolled over on the grass and played with her hand.

"How could you love and cuddle a ghost?"

"No doubt you could love it. I don't suppose you could cuddle it. You
wouldn't want to."

"No--that's true, Sabina. If this cliff carried away this moment, and we
were both smashed to pulp and arrived together in another world without
any clothes and both horribly down on our luck--but it's too ghastly a
picture. I should howl all through eternity--to think what I'd missed."

They talked nonsense, played with their thoughts and came nearer and
nearer together. One tremendous and masterful impulse drew them on--a
raging hunger and thirst on his part and something not widely different
on hers. Again and again they caught themselves in each other's arms,
then broke off, grew serious and strove to steady the trend of their
desires.

Golden Cap was a lonely spot and few visited it that day. Once a
middle-aged man and woman surprised them where they sat behind a rock
near the edge of the great precipices. The man had grown warm and mopped
his face and let the wind cool it.

He was ugly, clumsily built, and displayed large calves in
knickerbockers and a hot, bald head.

"How hideous human beings can be," said Raymond after they had gone.

"He wasn't hideous in his wife's eyes, I expect."

"Middle-age is mercifully blind no doubt to its own horrors," he said.
"You can respect and even admire old age, like other ruins, if it's
picturesque, but middle-age is deadly always."

He smoked and they dawdled the hours away until Sabina declared it was
tea time. Then they sought a little inn at Chidcock and spent an hour
there.

The weather changed as the sun went westerly; the wind sank to a sigh
and brought with it rain clouds. But they were unconscious of such
accidents. Sabina longed for the cliffs again, so they turned homeward
by Seaton and Thorncombe Beacon and Eype Mouth. Their talk ran upon
marriage and Raymond swore that he could not wait long, while she urged
the importance to him of so doing.

"'Twould shake your brother badly if you wed yet awhile, be sure of
that," she said. "He would say that you weren't thinking of the work,
and it might tempt him to change his mind about making you a partner."

"Oh damn him. Don't talk about him--or work either. I shall never want
to work again, or think of work, or anything else on earth
till--till--What does he matter anyway--or his ideas? It's a free
country and a man has the right to plan his life his own way. If he
wants to get the best out of me, he'd better give me five hundred a
year to-morrow and tell me to marry you."

"We don't want five hundred. That's a fortune. I'm a good manager and
know very well how far money can go. With your money and mine."

"Yours? You won't have any--except mine. You'll stop work then and
live--not at Bridetown anyway."

"I was forgetting. It will be funny not to spin."

"You'll spin my happiness and my life and my fate and my children.
You'll have plenty of spinning. I'll spin for you and you'll spin for
me."

"You darling boy! I know you'll spin for me."

"Work! What's the good of working for yourself?" he asked. "Who the
devil cares about himself? It's because I don't care a button for myself
that I haven't bothered about the Mill. But when it comes to you--!
You're worth working for! I haven't begun to work yet. I'll surprise
Daniel presently and everybody else, when I fairly get into my stride. I
didn't ask for it and I didn't want it; but as I've got to work, I will
work--for you. And you'll live to see that my brother and his ways and
plans and small outlook are all nothing to the way I shall grasp the
business. And he'll see, too, when I get the lead by sheer better
understanding. And that won't be my work, Sabina. It will be yours.
Nothing's worth too much toil for you. And if you couldn't inspire a man
to wonderful things, then no woman could."

This fit of exaltation passed and the craving for her dominated him
again and took psychological shape. He grew moody and abstracted. His
voice had a new note in it to her ear. He was fighting with himself and
did not guess what was in her mind, or how unconsciously it echoed to
his.

At dusk the rain came and they ran before a sudden storm down the green
hills back to West Haven. The place already sank into night and a lamp
or two twinkled through the grey. It was past eight o'clock and Raymond
decided for dinner.

"We'll go to the 'Brit Arms,'" he said, "and feed and get dry. The rain
won't last."

"I told mother I should be home by nine."

"Well, you told her wrong. D'you think I'm going to chuck away an hour
of this day for a thousand mothers?"

When they sauntered out into the night again at ten o'clock, the Haven
had nearly gone to sleep and the rain was past. In the silence they
heard the river rushing through the sluices to the sea; and then they
set their faces homeward.

But they had to pass the old store-house. It loomed a black, amorphous
pile heaved up against the stars, and the man's footsteps dragged as he
came to the gaping gates and silent court.

He stopped and she stopped.

His voice was gruff and queer and half-choked.

"Come," he said, "I'm in hell, and you've got to turn it to heaven."

She murmured something, but he put his arm round her and they vanished
into the mass of silent darkness.

It was past midnight when they parted at the door of Sabina's home and
he gave her the cool kiss of afterwards.

"Now we are one, body and soul, for ever," she whispered to him.

"By God, yes," he said.




CHAPTER XII

CREDIT


The mind of Raymond Ironsyde was now driven and tossed by winds of
passion which, blowing against the tides of his own nature, created
unrest and storm. A strain of chivalry belonged to him and at first this
conquered. He felt the magnitude of Sabina's sacrifice and his
obligation to a love so absolute. In this spirit he remained for a time,
during which their relations were of the closest. They spoke of
marriage; they even appointed the day on which the announcement of their
betrothal should be made. And though he had gone thus far at her
entreaty, always recognising when with her the reasonableness of her
wish, after she was gone, the cross seas of his own character, created a
different impression and swept the pattern of Sabina's will away.

For a time the intrigue of meeting her, the planning and the plotting
amused him. He imagined the world was blind and that none knew, or
guessed, the truth. But Bridetown, having eyes as many and sharp as any
other hamlet, had long been familiar with the facts. The transparent
veil of their imagined secrecy was already rent, though the lovers did
not guess it.

Then Raymond's chivalry wore thinner. Ruling passions, obscured for a
season by the tremendous experience of his first love and its success,
began by slow degrees to rise again, solid and challenging, through the
rosy clouds. His love, while he shouted to himself that it increased
rather than diminished, none the less assumed a change of colour and
contour. The bright vapours still shone and Sabina could always kindle
ineffable glow to the fabric; but she away, they shrank a little and
grew less radiant. The truth of himself and his ambitions showed
through. At such times he dinned on the ears of his heart that Sabina
was his life. At other times when the fading fire astonished him by
waking a shiver, he blamed fate, told himself that but for the lack of
means, he would make a perfect home for Sabina; worship and cherish her;
fill her life with happiness; pander to her every whim; devote a large
portion of his own time to her; do all that wit and love could devise
for her pleasure--all but one thing.

He did not want to marry her. With that deed demanding to be done, the
necessity for it began to be questioned sharply. He was not a marrying
man and, in any case, too young to commit himself and his prospects to
such a course. He assured himself that he had never contemplated
immediate marriage; he had never suggested it to Sabina. She herself had
not suggested it; for what advantage could be gained by such a step?
While a thousand disasters might spring therefrom, not the least being a
quarrel with his brother, there was nothing to be said for it. He began
to suspect that he could do little less likely to assure Sabina's
future. He clung to his strand of chivalry at this time, like a drowning
man to a straw; but other ingredients of his nature dragged him away.
Selfishness is the parent of sophistry, and Raymond found himself
dismissing old rules of morality and inherited instincts of religion and
justice for more practical and worldly values. He told himself it was as
much for Sabina's sake as for his own that he must now respect the
dictates of common-sense.

There came a day in October, when the young man sat in his office at the
mills, smoking and absorbed with his own affairs. The river Bride was
broken above the works, and while her way ran south of them, the
mill-race came north. Its labour on the wheel accomplished, the current
turned quickly back to the river bed again. From Raymond's window he
could see the main stream, under a clay bank, where the martins built
their nests in spring, and where rush and sedge and an over-hanging
sallow marked her windings. The sunshine found the stickles, and where
Bride skirted the works lay a pool in which trout moved. Water
buttercups shone silver white in this back-water at spring-time and the
water-voles had their haunts in the bank side.

Beyond stretched meadow-lands and over the hill that rose behind them
climbed the road to the cliffs. Hounds had ascended this road two hours
before and their music came faintly from afar to Raymond's ear, then
ceased. Already his relations with Sabina had lessened his will to
pleasure in other directions. His money had gone in gifts to her,
leaving no spare cash for the old amusements; but the distractions, that
for a time had seemed so tame contrasted with the girl, cried louder and
reminded how necessary and healthy they were.

Life seemed reduced to the naked question of cash. He was sorry for
himself. It looked hard, outrageous, wrong, that tastes so sane and
simple as his own, could not be gratified. A horseman descended the hill
and Raymond recognised him. It was Neddy Motyer. His horse was lame and
he walked beside it. Raymond smiled to himself, for Neddy, though a
zealous follower of hounds, lacked judgment and often met with disaster.

Ten minutes later Neddy himself appeared.

"Come to grief," he said. "Horse put his foot into a rabbit hole and cut
his knee on a flint. I've just taken him to the vet, here to be
bandaged, so I thought I'd look you up. Why weren't you out?"

"I've got more important things to think about for the minute."

Neddy helped himself to a cigarette.

"Growing quite the man of business," he said. "What will power you've
got! A few of us bet five to one you wouldn't stick it a month; but here
you are. Only I can tell you this, Ray: you're wilting under it. You're
not half the man you were. You're getting beastly thin--looking a worm
in fact."

Raymond laughed.

"I'm all right. Plenty of time to make up for lost time."

"It's metal more attractive, I believe," hazarded Motyer. "A little
bird's been telling us things in Bridport. Keep clear of the petticoats,
old chap--the game's never worth the candle. I speak from experience."

"Do you? I shouldn't think any girl would have much use for you."

"Oh yes, they have--plenty of them. But once bit, twice shy. I had an
adventure last year."

"I don't want to hear it."

Neddy showed concern.

"You're all over the shop, Ray. These blessed works are knocking the
stuffing out of you and spoiling your temper. Are you coming to the
'smoker' at 'The Tiger' next month?"

"No."

"Well, do. You want bucking. It'll be a bit out of the common. Jack
Buckler's training at 'The Tiger' for his match with Solly Blades. You
know--eliminating round for middle-weight championship. And he's going
to spar three rounds with our boy from the tannery--Tim Chick."

"I heard about it from one of our girls here--a cousin of Tim's. But I'm
off that sort of thing."

"Since when?"

"You can't understand, Ned; but life's too short for everything. Perhaps
you'll have to turn to work someday. Then you'll know."

"You don't work from eight o'clock at night till eleven anyway. Take my
tip and come to the show and make a night of it. Waldron's going to be
there. He's hunting this morning."

"I know."

The dinner bell had rung and now there came a knock at Raymond's door.
Then Sabina entered and was departing again, but her lover bade her
stay.

"Don't go, Sabina. This is my friend, Mr. Motyer--Miss Dinnett."

Motyer, remembering Raymond's recent snub, was exceedingly charming to
Sabina. He stopped and chatted another five minutes, then mentioned the
smoking concert again and so took his departure. Raymond spoke
slightingly of him when he had gone.

"He's no good, really," he said. "An utter waster and only a hanger-on
of sport--can't do anything himself but talk. Now he'll tell everybody
in Bridport about you coming up here in the dinner-hour. Come and cheer
me up. I'm bothered to death."

He kissed her and put his arms round her, but she would not stop.

"I can't stay here," she said. "I want to walk up the hill with you. If
you're bothered, so am I, my darling."

He put on his hat and they went out together.

"I've had a nasty jar," she told him. "People are beginning to say
things, Raymond--things that you wouldn't like to think are being said."

"I thought we rose superior to the rest of the world, and what it said
and what it thought."

"We do and we always have. We're not moral cowards either of us. But
there are some things. You don't want me to be insulted. You don't want
either of us to lose the respect of people."

"We can't have our cake and eat it too, I suppose," he said rather
carelessly. "Personally I don't care a straw whether people respect me,
or despise me, as long as I respect myself. The people that matter to me
respect me all right."

"Well, the people that matter to me, don't," she answered with a flash
of colour. "We'll leave you out, Raymond, since you're satisfied; but
I'm not satisfied. It isn't right, or fair, that I should begin to get
sour looks from the women here, where I used to have smiles; and looks
from the men--hateful looks--looks that no decent woman ought to suffer.
And my mother has heard a lot of lies and is very miserable. So I think
it's high time we let everybody know we're engaged. And you must think
so, too, after what I've told you, Ray dear."

"Certainly," he answered, "not a shadow of doubt about it. And if I saw
any man insult you, I should delight to thrash him on the spot--or a
dozen of them. How the devil do people find out about one? I thought
we'd been more than clever enough to hoodwink a dead alive place like
this."

"Will you let me tell mother, to-day? And Sally Groves, and one or two
of my best friends at the Mill? Do, Raymond--it's only fair to me now."

Had she left unspoken her last sentence, he might have agreed; but it
struck a wrong note on his ear. It sounded selfish; it suggested that
Sabina was concerned with herself and indifferent to the complications
she had brought into his life. For a moment he was minded to answer
hastily; but he controlled himself.

"It's natural you should feel like that; so do I, of course. We must
settle a date for letting it out. I'll think about it. I'd say this
minute, and you know I'm looking forward quite as much as you are to
letting the world know my luck; but unfortunately you've just raised the
question at an impossible moment, Sabina."

"Why? Surely nothing can make it impossible to clear my good name,
Raymond?"

"I've got a good name, too. At least, I imagine so."

"Our names are one, or should be."

"Not yet, exactly. I wanted to spare you bothers. I do spare you all the
bothers I can; but, of course, I've got my own, too, like everybody
else. You see it's rather vital to your future, which you're naturally
so keen about, Sabina, that I keep in with my brother. You'll admit
that much. Well, for the moment I'm having the deuce of a row with him.
You know what an exacting beggar he is. He will have his pound of flesh,
and he has no sympathy for anything on two legs but himself. I asked him
for a fortnight's holiday."

"A fortnight's holiday, Raymond!"

"Yes--that's not very wonderful, is it? But, of course, you can't
understand what this work is to me, because you look at it from a
different angle. Anyway I want a holiday--to get right away and consider
things; and he won't let me have it. And finding that, I lost my temper.
And if, at the present moment, Daniel hears that we're engaged to be
married, Sabina, it's about fifty to one that he'd chuck me altogether
and stop my dirty little allowance also."

They had reached the gate of 'The Magnolias,' and Sabina did a startling
thing. She turned from him and went down the path to the back entrance
without another word. But this he could not stand. His heart smote him
and he called her with such emotion that she also was sorrowful and came
back to the gate.

"Good God! you frightened me," he said. "This is a quarrel, Sabina--our
first and last, I hope. Never, never let anything come between us.
That's unthinkable and I won't have it. You must give and take, my
precious girl. And so must I. But look at it. What on earth happens to
us if Daniel fires me out of the Mill?"

"He's a just man," she answered. "Dislike him as we may, he's a just man
and you need not fear him, or anybody else, if you do the right thing."

"You oppose your will to mine, then, Sabina?"

"I don't know your will. I thought I did; I thought I understood you so
well by now and was learning better and better how to please you. But
now I tell you I am being wronged, and you say nothing can be done."

"I never said so. I'm not a blackguard, Sabina, and you ought to know
that as well as the rest of the world. I'm poor, unfortunately, and the
poor have got to be politic. Daniel may be just, but it's a
narrow-minded, hypocritical justice, and if I tell him I'm engaged to
you, he'll sack me. That's the plain English of it."

"I don't believe he would."

"Well, I know he would; and you must at least allow me to know more
about him than you do. And so I ask you whether it is common-sense to
tell him what's going to happen, for the sake of a few clod-hoppers, who
matter to nobody, or--"

"But, but, how long is it to go on? Why do you shrink from doing now
what you wanted to do at first?"

"I don't shrink from it at all. I only intend to choose the proper time
and not give the show away at a moment when to do so will be to ruin
me."

"'Give the show away,'" she quoted bitterly. "You can look me in the
face and say a thing like that! It's only 'a show' to you; but it's my
life to me."

"I'm sorry I used the expression. Words aren't anything. It's my life to
me, too. And I've got to think for both of us. In a week, or ten days,
I'll eat humble pie and climb down and grovel to Daniel. Then, when I'm
pardoned, we'll tell everybody. It won't kill you to wait another
fortnight anyway. And in the meantime we'd better see less of each
other, since you're getting so worried about what your friends say about
us."

Now he had said too much. Sabina would have agreed to the suggestion of
a fortnight's waiting, but the proposal that they should see less of
each other both hurt and angered her. The quarrel culminated.

"Caution seems to me rather a cowardly thing, Raymond, from you to me. I
tell you that your wife's good name is at stake. For, since you've
called me your wife so often, I suppose I may do the same. And if you're
so careless for my credit, then I must be jealous for it myself."

"And my credit can go to the devil, I suppose?"

Then she flamed, struck to the root of the matter and left him.

"If the fact that you're engaged to me, by every sacred tie of honour,
ruins your credit--then tell yourself what you are," she said, and her
voice rose to a note he had never heard before.

This time he did not call her back, but went his own way up the hill.




CHAPTER XIII

IN THE FOREMAN'S GARDEN


Mr. Best was a good gardener and cultivated fruit and flowers to
perfection. His rambling patch of ground ran beside the river and some
of his apple trees bent over it. Pear trees also he grew, and a medlar
and a quince. But flowers he specially loved. His house was bowered in
roses to the thatched roof, and in the garden grew lilies and lupins, a
hundred roses and many bright tracts of shining, scented blossoms. Now,
however, they had vanished and on a Saturday afternoon John Best was
tidying up, tending a bonfire and digging potatoes.

He was generous of his treasures and the girls never hesitated to ask
him for a rose in June. Ancient Mrs. Chick, too, won an annual gift from
the foreman. Down one side of his garden ranged great elder bushes, and
Mrs. Chick made of the blooth in summer time, a decoction very precious
for throat troubles.

Now Best stood for a moment and regarded a waste corner where grew
nettles. Somebody approached him in this act of contemplation and he
spoke.

"I often wonder if it would be worth while making an experiment with
stinging nettles," he said to Ernest Churchouse, who was the visitor.

"They have a spinnable fibre, John, without a doubt."

"They have, Mister Churchouse, and they scutch well and can be wrought
into textiles. But there's no temptation to make trial. I'm only
thinking in a scientific spirit."

He swept up the fallen nettles for his bonfire.

"I've come for a few balls of the rough twine," said Mr. Churchouse.

"And welcome."

An unusual air of gloom s

Showing first 200,000 characters. Full text: gutenberg.org/ebooks/15416