THE SPINNERS 
 
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 
 
 HEW YORK BOSTON CHICAGO DALLAS 
 ATLANTA SAN FRANCISCO 
 
 MACMILLAN & CO., LIMITED 
 
 LONDON BOMBAY CALCUTTA 
 MELBOURNE 
 
 THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, Lnt 
 
 TORONTO 
 
THE SPINNERS 
 
 BY 
 
 EDEN PHILLPOTTS 
 
 Author of 
 "Old Delabole," "Brunei's Tower," etc. 
 
 gork 
 
 THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 
 
 1918 
 
 All rights reserved, 
 
COPYRIGHT, 1918 
 BY THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 
 
 Set up and electrotyped. Published, October, 1918 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 BOOK I 
 
 CHAPTER PAGE 
 
 I THE FUNERAL . . , V * 1 
 
 II AT 'THE TIGER' . ^f ^> ri/ L^^.t . . 16 
 
 III THE HACKLER . . v^i^* A:*- n-v-^T -H 23 
 
 IV CHAINS FOR RAYMOND . ^<H *>ntT /< -29 
 V IN THE MILL . . . ^>r>,iT $&& #;;.! V|- 42 
 
 VI ' THE SEVEN STARS ' . vp.#*!>:>4, vWk - 50 
 
 VII A WALK . . ^^^v^r-^^^airT/J^^^f '-V 57 
 
 VIII THE LECTURE . . ^4, U \.>. ^. H ^t U V 69 
 
 IX THE PARTY . . .... n*zi*&\ 81 
 
 X WORK . . . .:,, MX ,w& *& a ?. 89 
 
 XI THE OLD STORE-HOUSE ;;?*-';- fr ji^vfAsi^r 99 
 
 XII CREDIT . . . >mx/^rU!. >w-.^i. r*ttii' 4>1* 16 
 
 XIII IN THE FOREMAN'S GARDEN .*,. , i. $j\* . . 115 
 
 XIV THE CONCERT . . . . v ^ # f .^- r jf. '.$&? . . 122 
 
 XV A VISIT TO Miss IRONSYDE 133 
 
 XVI AT CHILCOMBE . ... M.)^ru>) .."'/& 144 
 
 XVII CONFUSION .^>y%^^M.^. 153 
 
 XVIII THE LOVERS' GROVE . < ; x , ^ 161 
 
 XIX JOB LEGG'S AMBITION . ; /* f //.> . Vl/i 180 
 
 XX A CONFERENCE ^r>n*./s *^..- ; :*f/.^-v '.';< 186 
 
 XXI THE WARPING MILL .'.. ',.>;- k . ^,?a) .^^4 193 
 
 XXII THE TELEGRAM fct) ,,, M) ^. . y. 202 
 
 XXIII A LETTER FOR SABINA . . ; -^?H ^^f U f. 212 
 
 XXIV MRS. NORTHOVER DECIDES . , , . . . 222 
 
 XXV THE WOMAN'S DARKNESS ... . 232 
 
 397193 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER PAGE 
 
 XXVI OF HUMAN NATURE 239 
 
 XXVII THE MASTER OF THE MILL 246 
 
 XXVIII CLASH OF OPINIONS 257 
 
 XXIX THE BUNCH OF GRAPES 267 
 
 XXX A TRIUMPH OF REASON .274 
 
 XXXI THE OFFER DECLINED 282 
 
 BOOK II 
 
 I THE FLYING YEARS 291 
 
 II THE SEA GARDEN 300 
 
 III A TWIST FRAME 306 
 
 IV THE RED HAND ........ 311 
 
 V AN ACCIDENT 321 
 
 VI THE GATHERING PROBLEM 328 
 
 VII THE WALK HOME 335 
 
 VIII EPITAPH 346 
 
 IX THE FUTURE OF ABEL 354 
 
 X THE ADVERTISEMENT 363 
 
 XI THE HEMP BREAKER 369 
 
 XII THE PICNIC 377 
 
 XIII THE RUNAWAY 387 
 
 XIV THE MOTOR CAR 397 
 
 XV CRITICISM 410 
 
 XVI THE OFFER OF MARRIAGE 418 
 
 XVII SABINA AND ABEL 428 
 
 XVIII SWAN SONG 437 
 
 XIX NEW WORK FOR ABEL 446 
 
 XX IDEALS 455 
 
 XXI ATROPOS 464 
 
 XXII THE HIDING-PLACE . 470 
 
BOOK I 
 SABINA 
 
THE SPINNERS 
 
 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 con- 
 verged, drawn to the grey tower by a tolling bell; and 
 while the sun shone and a riot of many flowers made hedge- 
 rows 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 
 sunbonnets nodded bright as butterflies among them, and 
 even their dull raiment was more cheerful than the gath- 
 ering company in black who now began to mass their num- 
 bers and crane their heads along the highway. 
 
 Bridetown lies near the sea in a valley under a range of 
 
2 THE SPINNERS 
 
 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 snap- 
 dragon. Indeed Bridetown was decked with blooms. 
 
 Here and there in the midst stood better houses, with 
 some expanse of lawn before them and fine shrubs that 
 throve in that snug vale. Good walnut trees and mul- 
 berries 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. Blooth 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 mead- 
 ows, and so slips uneventfully away to sea, where the cliffs 
 break and there stretches a little strand. To the last she 
 
THE FUNERAL 3 
 
 is crowned with flowers, and the meadowsweets and violets 
 that decked her cradle give place to sea poppies, sea hol- 
 lies, 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-col- 
 oured horns and yellow eyes, trotted contentedly along to- 
 gether 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 ap- 
 peared a layer of yellow dust. She spoke to others of the 
 little crowd who surrounded her. They came from Bride- 
 town Spinning Mill, for work was suspended because 
 Henry Ironsyde, the mill owner, had died and now ap- 
 proached 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 dis- 
 contented 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 
 
4 THE SPINNERS 
 
 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. 
 
 " 1 saw him once, with another young fellow called Mot- 
 yer," answered Sarah Northover. " He's very good-look- 
 ing 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 house- 
 keeper, 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 shoul- 
 ders were high, and his legs short. Walking irked him, 
 
THE FUNERAL 5 
 
 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 Mag- 
 nolias, 5 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 Iron- 
 sydes, 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. 
 
6 THE SPINNERS 
 
 " 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 in- 
 clined 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. Church- 
 ouse. " 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 prepon- 
 derate 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 
 
THE FUNERAL 7 
 
 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 attri- 
 tion 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 eter- 
 nity, 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 for- 
 ward with a little wreath of wild roses, were pushed back. 
 
8 THE SPINNERS 
 
 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 as- 
 sisted 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 con- 
 sternation. 
 
 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 be- 
 hind the chief mourners came certain servants and depend- 
 ents, 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. 
 
THE FUNERAL 9 
 
 " Not at his father's funeral ! " he kept thinking to him- 
 self. 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 t 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 com- 
 pany 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 daugh- 
 ter, Estelle, and sport. No other considerations chal- 
 lenged 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 sport- 
 ing tastes and so on, never threatened anything like this." 
 
10 THE SPINNERS 
 
 " 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 4 The 
 Magnolias ' a small, ancient house whose face was cov- 
 ered with green things and whose lawn spread to the river 
 bank. 
 
 Mrs. Dinnett had prepared a special meal of a sort asso- 
 ciated 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 after- 
 wards," 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 
 
THE FUNERAL 11 
 
 would have liked to see me. He has made a very definite 
 and clear statement, and I should be disloyal to him dis- 
 honest 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 your- 
 self, ' 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 un- 
 thinking 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 
 
12 THE SPINNERS 
 
 thought of your Aunt Jenny's that your father has hon- 
 oured 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. Ray- 
 mond 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 al- 
 ways 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 Ray- 
 mond to you." 
 
 " I only want to do my duty," said the young man. 
 
THE FUNERAL 13 
 
 " 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 Iron- 
 sydes; 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 hence- 
 forth 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 circum- 
 stances, 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. 
 
14 THE SPINNERS 
 
 " 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 Iron- 
 sydes 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 now- 
 adays." 
 
 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 non- 
 sense of that sort. No, it is merely a question of time and 
 energy. My antiquarian work demands both, and so I am 
 
THE FUNERAL 15 
 
 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 com- 
 mon 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 imagi- 
 nation, so you can't say he hasn't got any." 
 
 " You can never say anybody hasn't got anything," de- 
 clared Mr. Churchouse. " Human nature defeats all cal- 
 culations. The wisest only generalise about it." 
 
CHAPTER II 
 
 AT 
 
 THE municipal borough of Bridport stretches itself luxuri- 
 ously from east to west beneath a wooded hill. South- 
 ward 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 ami- 
 ably 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. 
 
AT ' THE TIGER ' 17 
 
 Not far from the workhouse two inns face each other in 
 Barrack Street c The Tiger 9 upon one side of the way, 
 6 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 ' pri- 
 vate 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," de- 
 clared 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 educa- 
 tion 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 
 
18 THE SPINNERS 
 
 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 any- 
 body, 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 monoto- 
 nous inflection and rather chanted in a minor key than 
 spoke. 
 
 " Mrs. Northover's compliments and might we have the 
 
AT ' THE TIGER ' 19 
 
 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 lunch- 
 eons. 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 nat- 
 ural, thoughtless insolence of youth to say Nelly North- 
 over'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 ap- 
 peared frank and receptive ; but to-day his face wore a look 
 half anxious, half ferocious. He was clad in tweed knick- 
 erbockers and a Norfolk jacket, of different pattern but 
 similar material. His tie was light blue and fastened with 
 
so THE SPINNERS 
 
 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 occu- 
 pied with personal problems. 
 
AT ' THE TIGER ' 21 
 
 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 remem- 
 ber 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, how- 
 ever 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 need- 
 less 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 Iron- 
 syde after his back was turned. A few stood up for him 
 
22 THE SPINNERS 
 
 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 church- 
 yard wall and its northern windows looked down upon the 
 burying ground. The store came first and then the fore- 
 man'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 communi- 
 cated 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 pe- 
 culiar 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 store- 
 rooms and drew the light to their shining surfaces. Tall, 
 
 23 
 
* THE SPINNERS 
 
 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 Arch- 
 angel 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 under- 
 stood. 
 
 " 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 accord- 
 ing." 
 
 " You can move two ways backward as well as for- 
 ward," 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 now- 
 adays. 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 yes- 
 
THE HACKLER 25 
 
 terday are the Radicals of to-morrow, we have every rea- 
 son 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 out- 
 put 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 wheel- 
 barrow 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 
 
26 THE SPINNERS 
 
 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 power- 
 ful 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 rub- 
 bish 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 pres- 
 sure, regulated and applied with skill, and he always ex- 
 ulted in the thought that he, at least, of all the workers 
 performed hand labour far more perfectly than any ma- 
 chine. But still it was not the least of his many grievances 
 that Government showed too little concern for his com- 
 fort. 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 
 
THE HACKLER 27 
 
 is astonished to see how the broad strips and ribbons run- 
 ning through the machines and torn by innumerable sys- 
 tems 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 hack- 
 ler 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." 
 
28 THE SPINNERS 
 
 " 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, how- 
 ever, 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 Ray- 
 mond 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 It 
 
 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 pre- 
 served 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 
 
 29 
 
30 THE SPINNERS 
 
 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 small- 
 est 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 vir- 
 tue. If conduct were * sporting,' he demanded no more 
 from any man ; while, conversely, * unsporting ' deeds con- 
 demned the doer in all relations of life and rendered him 
 untrustworthy from every standpoint. 
 
 " Depends what you call * sporting,' " answered Ray- 
 mond, whose estimate of the word was not so comprehen- 
 sive. " 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 jus- 
 tice 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 
 
CHAINS FOR RAYMOND 31 
 
 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," ex- 
 plained 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 valu- 
 able 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 mate- 
 rial. 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 hun- 
 
32 THE SPINNERS 
 
 dred quid a year. In fact there's such a mixture of fair- 
 ness 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-breed- 
 ing 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 begin- 
 ning. 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 fore- 
 man, and learn all the practical side of the business. It 
 
CHAINS FOR RAYMOND 33 
 
 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 sympa- 
 thises with me tremendously, however, and finally got Dan- 
 iel to promise he would pay off every penny I owed a 
 paltry two hundred or so." 
 
 " A very sporting arrangement. Make the coffee, Es- 
 telle, then we'll take a walk on the downs." 
 
 " I'm going to Uncle Ernest to tea," explained Ray- 
 mond. " I shall tell him then that I'm not coming to him, 
 thanks to your great kindness." 
 
 "He will be disappointed," declared Estelle. "It 
 
3* THE SPINNERS 
 
 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 be- 
 cause 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 inter- 
 ested 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 de- 
 velop 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 
 
CHAINS FOR RAYMOND 35 
 
 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 dis- 
 tastefully 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, but- 
 tercups 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 
 
36 THE SPINNERS 
 
 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 humble-bee 
 than anything. Perhaps you've never seen a humble-bee 
 either?" 
 
 " Oh, yes, I have they don't sting." 
 
 Estelle laughed. 
 
 " I thought that once. A boy in the village told me 
 that humble-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." 
 
CHAINS FOR RAYMOND 37 
 
 " 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, fa- 
 miliar 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 obj ection to youth, my dear boy, but I can't 
 pretend that the manners and customs of youth are agree- 
 able to me. Tobacco, for example, causes me the most 
 acute uneasiness. Then the robustness and general exag- 
 geration of the youthful mind and body ! It rises beyond 
 fatigue, above the middle-aged desire for calm and com- 
 fort. 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." 
 
38 THE SPINNERS 
 
 " 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 mas- 
 ter'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 Ray- 
 mond praised her enthusiastically. 
 
 " By Jove, what a pretty housemaid ! " he exclaimed. 
 
 " Pretty, yes ; a housemaid, no," explained Mr. Church- 
 ouse. " 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 spin- 
 ner 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 ? " 
 
CHAINS FOR RAYMOND 39 
 
 " Oh why she's lost, don't you see. Working in a 
 stuffy mill, she's lost. If she was on the stage, then thou- 
 sands 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." 
 
40 THE SPINNERS 
 
 " 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 com- 
 ing 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 al- 
 ways modifies its tone in the presence of age, and that those 
 of ripe years never hear the real truth concerning the opin- 
 ions 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 an- 
 cient 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 
 
CHAINS FOR RAYMOND 41 
 
 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 de- 
 cease 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 spin- 
 ning mill, but the foreman had his own theory and pro- 
 posed 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 pene- 
 trating din. The bass to this harsh treble arose from 
 humming belts and running wheels ; the crash that punctu- 
 ated 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 impossi- 
 ble. 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 
 
 42 
 
IN THE MILL 43 
 
 bright ribbons of hemp or flax, that caught the light and 
 shone. This was the ' sliver,' the wrought, textile mate- 
 rial passing through its many changes before it came to 
 the spinners. The amber and lint-white coils of the wind- 
 ing 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 Din- 
 nett, 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 ac- 
 tivity of their work and the charm of their swift, supple 
 figures, where, never still, they danced about, with a thou- 
 sand, 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 agahr 
 
44 THE SPINNERS 
 
 twisted and stood on tip-toe in a thousand fascinating atti- 
 tudes. 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 Ray- 
 mond, 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 concen- 
 trate and missed fundamental essentials from the desire to 
 examine more advanced and obviously interesting oper- 
 ations. 
 
 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. 
 
IN THE MILL 45 
 
 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, ani- 
 mate and inanimate, laboured together for its manufac- 
 ture; 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 over- 
 alls, to emerge in brighter colours. Blouses of pink and 
 
46 THE SPINNERS 
 
 blue and red flashed out, straw hats and sun-bonnets ap- 
 peared, and all streamed away like magic to their neigh- 
 bouring 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 senti- 
 ments 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 senti- 
 mental 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 
 
IN THE MILL 47 
 
 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 sailorman, 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, 
 
48 THE SPINNERS 
 
 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 after- 
 noon. 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 Ray- 
 mond 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 recog- 
 nise 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 
 

 IN THE MILL *9 
 
 model in a moment, or settle down to the business of fixed 
 hours and clerical work without a few lapses from the nar- 
 row 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 Ray- 
 mond had already convinced the foreman of this probabil- 
 ity, 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 new- 
 comer and his impatience of detail, he presently discovered 
 an interest in mechanical contrivances, a spark of orig- 
 inality, and a feeling for new things that might lead to 
 results, if only the necessary application were forthcom- 
 ing 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 
 
 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 Bar- 
 rack 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 en- 
 joyed 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 gener- 
 ous 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 under- 
 stood by her staff, and if her emotional quality did in- 
 justice, an innate sense of what was reasonable ultimately 
 righted the wrong. 
 
 Sarah helped Job Legg and others to prepare for the 
 
 50 
 
'THE SEVEN STARS' 51 
 
 coming party, while Mrs. Northover roamed the herba- 
 ceous 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. North- 
 over, 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 spa- 
 cious inn yard and stables. 
 
 " I'm always coming to have a look round at your won- 
 derful 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 her- 
 self 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 pub- 
 lic; 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." 
 
52 THE SPINNERS 
 
 " I don't deny it," admitted Nelly. " Sometimes, in a 
 calm moment, I run my mind over Job Legg, and I'm al- 
 most 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 an- 
 swered. " 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 sen- 
 sible 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 an- 
 swered, " 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." 
 
'THE SEVEN STARS' 53 
 
 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 
 
54 THE SPINNERS 
 
 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 enter- 
 tainment under preparation in a shady corner of the gar- 
 den. 
 
 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 amuse- 
 ment 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. 
 
 " Fve 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 pub- 
 
' THE SEVEN STARS ' 55 
 
 lican and the wife of a publican; and so do you, don't 
 you, Job? " 
 
 " Most steadfast," he replied. " When I took on bar- 
 man 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 peer- 
 age." 
 
 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 every- 
 thing. 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 laugh- 
 ing. 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 
 
56 THE SPINNERS 
 
 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 pass- 
 age 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 stricks. 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 al- 
 though covered in tow dust from head to foot and pow- 
 dered 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 experi- 
 ence 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 
 
 57 
 
58 THE SPINNERS 
 
 shook the stuff to its integral fibres before building it up 
 again. Despite the thunder and the suggestion of im- 
 mense forces exerted upon the frail material, utmost deli- 
 cacy 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!" 
 
A WALK 59 
 
 " 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 whisper- 
 ing 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 overheels he 
 can't hide it. He don't even try to. And he's a gentle- 
 man 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 prom- 
 ised nothing but sunshine. 
 
 She had agreed to go for a walk with Raymond Iron- 
 syde 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 un- 
 derstanding 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 
 
60 THE SPINNERS 
 
 with that ardour and enthusiasm until now reserved for 
 sport, Sabina, who had otherwise been much more cau- 
 tious, 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 re- 
 fused 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 tre- 
 mendous 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 de- 
 clared 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 uneasi- 
 ness 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 some- 
 thing altogether sublime as soon as she found that he 
 
A WALK 61 
 
 liked her. He filled her head, and while her common-sense 
 vainly tried to talk as Sally Groves had talked, each meet- 
 ing with the young man threw her back upon the tre- 
 mendous 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 sug- 
 gested 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 honour- 
 able, 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 cer- 
 tain 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 
 
 
62 THE SPINNERS 
 
 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 any- 
 body 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 essen- 
 tial to his life's happiness and completion. He knew noth- 
 thing about women, for his athletic pursuits and ambi- 
 tions 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 
 
A WALK 63 
 
 swam together upon it, and round about the grey stone 
 banks were washed with silver pink, where the thrift pros- 
 pered. 
 
 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 tri- 
 umphs of the past, and explained his trials and tribula- 
 tions 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 antici- 
 pated 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. Peo- 
 ple think it is the most unnatural thing on earth that I 
 should suddenly begin to work. But it's just as unnat- 
 ural 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 
 
64 THE SPINNERS 
 
 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. When- 
 ever 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. Some- 
 times 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 
 
A WALK 65 
 
 suits hemp and flax don't suit humans. If some clever 
 man could solve these difficulties, it would be more com- 
 fortable 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 them- 
 selves. 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 
 
66 THE SPINNERS 
 
 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 Cap- 
 ital ' instead of whining about the Trades Unions, get to 
 work and make them needless.' ' 
 
 But these gigantic ideas, uttered on the spur of the mo- 
 ment by one who knew less than nothing of his subject, 
 did not interest Sabina as much as he expected. The rea- 
 son, 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 de- 
 lighted, because it meant her name must have been often 
 in his thoughts, she was doubtful, because its argued per- 
 haps 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 9 
 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 
 
A WALK 67 
 
 Sabina speculated as to what Raymond thought; but he 
 showed no emotion and took off his hat to Sarah North- 
 over 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 en- 
 during and tend to alter the whole tenor of his life. 
 Marriage was one of the stock jokes in his circle, yet, 
 
68 THE SPINNERS 
 
 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, be- 
 cause 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 horse-back. 
 
 " 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 re- 
 tired. 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 suf- 
 ferer 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 will- 
 ingly 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 overmastering. 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," an- 
 swered 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." 
 
 69 
 
70 THE SPINNERS 
 
 " He might be," said Jenny Ironsyde, " but he's a gen- 
 tleman." 
 
 " 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 satis- 
 fied 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. In- 
 stead 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 ex- 
 cuse 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, be- 
 cause 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 won- 
 derfully patient always for such a young man, so be pa- 
 tient with your brother. But try Uncle Ernest first. He 
 might ask Raymond to lunch, or tea, and give him a seri- 
 ous talking to. He'll know what to say." 
 
THE LECTURE 71 
 
 " 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 Dor- 
 setshire, 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 Dan- 
 iel. 
 
 " 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 com- 
 pany 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 edu- 
 cation, 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 
 
7 THE SPINNERS 
 
 follow their mothers. So Sabina found the thought of the 
 spinning attractive and is now, Mr. Best tells me, an amaz- 
 ingly clever spinner his very first in fact. And it can- 
 not 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 per- 
 mit 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 under- 
 stand 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 ? " 
 
THE LECTURE 73 
 
 " 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 earnest- 
 ness and self -discipline as he devotes to running and play- 
 ing 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 in- 
 terest 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 
 
74 THE SPINNERS 
 
 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 sup- 
 ply 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 Wal- 
 dron was paying her first visit to the spinners and, de- 
 lighted 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 ap- 
 proached their work from a new angle and saw in it mys- 
 teries 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. 
 
THE LECTURE 75 
 
 " 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 im- 
 purities 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 Es- 
 telle; " 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." 
 
76 THE SPINNERS 
 
 " Of course I don't mind. That's nothing, but I want 
 to speak to you on the general question. I do wish, Ray- 
 mond, 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 non- 
 sense 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 every- 
 thing 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 biassed 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 
 
THE LECTURE 77 
 
 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 mas- 
 ter, 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 prom- 
 ise 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 ex- 
 periments." 
 
 " 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 your'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 
 
78 THE SPINNERS 
 
 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 any- 
 thing 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 spin- 
 ning 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 any- 
 thing 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, 
 
THE LECTURE 79 
 
 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 thank- 
 ful 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 ex- 
 pected. 
 
 " 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," 
 
80 THE SPINNERS 
 
 " 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. 
 
 91 
 
82 THE SPINNERS 
 
 Mr. Waldron was not a ladies' man, and after helping 
 with the tea, served under a big mulberry tree in the gar- 
 den, he turned his attention to Mr. Roberts, already known 
 favourably to him as a cricketer, and Benny Cogle, the en- 
 gine 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 thought- 
 ful 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 ma- 
 chinery 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 regula- 
 tion 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 sub- 
 ject, 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, 
 
THE PARTY 83 
 
 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 Cathe- 
 rine 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 spin- 
 ning, 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 astound- 
 ing 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 admira- 
 tion, for though very fine, each was twisted of three hun- 
 dred 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 hun- 
 
84 THE SPINNERS 
 
 dred 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 ex- 
 pect," said Estelle. 
 
 " True true, child ; nor has man learned the secret 
 of the caterpillar's silken spinning. Talking of caterpil- 
 lars, 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 them- 
 selves 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 
 
THE PARTY 85 
 
 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 flow- 
 ers. 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 shin- 
 ing 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 look- 
 ing at the seagulls, you'd be sorry for me." 
 
 " Of course, I'd be sorry for you if there was any- 
 thing 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 any- 
 body 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 
 
86 THE SPINNERS 
 
 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 no- 
 body 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 spin- 
 ner 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 instrumen- 
 tal 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 
 
THE PARTY 87 
 
 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 any- 
 thing 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 
 
88 THE SPINNERS 
 
 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 Levia- 
 than 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 tend- 
 ing the Spread Board. To this came the ' long line ' from 
 the hackler those stricks 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 spread- 
 ing 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 Wal- 
 dron 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." 
 
 89 
 
90 THE SPINNERS 
 
 " 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 some- 
 times 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 mat- 
 ter 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 Spin- 
 ner, a machine which took sliver straight from the Draw- 
 ing Frames and spun it into a large coarse yarn. A nov- 
 ice 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 
 
WORK 91 
 
 admiration before a big frame of a hundred spindles. 
 
 Sabina was spinning with a heart very full of happi- 
 ness. 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 unchang- 
 ing, 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 
 
92 THE SPINNERS 
 
 a monster reared above her, stupendous and insa- 
 tiable. 
 
 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 trans- 
 lates 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 
 
WORK 93 
 
 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 Brid- 
 port 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 
 
94 THE SPINNERS 
 
 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. Some- 
 times 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 vis- 
 itor, regarding Sabina's machine with suspicion and some- 
 thing 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 draw- 
 ing 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." 
 
WORK 95 
 
 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 machin- 
 ery 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 morn- 
 ing. 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 dis- 
 pense 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 van- 
 ished, and they took him as a good natured, rather ' soft ' 
 young man, who meant well and was friendly and harm- 
 
96 THE SPINNERS 
 
 less. 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 rela- 
 tions he had established with the workers, and Mr. Best 
 did not hesitate to warn him again and again that dis- 
 cipline 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 af- 
 fair and could not pretend to his fellow creatures any- 
 thing he did not feel. Always amiable and accessible, 
 his romance made him still more so, and he was constitu- 
 tionally unable at this moment to take a serious view of 
 anything or anybody. 
 
 One ray of hope, however, Mr. Best recognised : Ray- 
 mond did show an honest and genuine interest in the ma- 
 chines. He had told the foreman that he believed the 
 great problem lay there, and where machinery was con- 
 cerned 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 per- 
 ceived 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, be- 
 cause they help the workers and give good results. In 
 
WORK 97 
 
 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 al- 
 ways 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 thou- 
 sand, 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 fright- 
 ened 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, con- 
 scious 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 
 
98 THE SPINNERS 
 
 us women, if we try for adventures, we come to a bad end." 
 
 " Nobody's more adventurous than you," answered Ray- 
 mond. " 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 holi- 
 day. 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 cham- 
 bers 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 
 
 99 
 
100 THE SPINNERS 
 
 place was rat-haunted and full of strange holes and cor- 
 ners. 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 r 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 ad- 
 ventures 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 mould- 
 ering 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 com- 
 pany had she ever felt, for did not perfect love cast out 
 fear, and why should a woman hesitate to trust her- 
 
THE OLD STOREHOUSE 101 
 
 self 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 re- 
 minded 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, lis- 
 some, 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 
 creatures. A spirit at best can only be an un- 
 
102 THE SPINNERS 
 
 finished 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. Per- 
 haps 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 ar- 
 rived 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 
 
THE OLD STORE-HOUSE 103 
 
 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 lit- 
 tle inn at Chideock and spent an hour there. 
 
 The weather changed as the sun went westerly; the 
 wind sank to a sigh and brought with it rail} 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 
 
104 THE SPINNERS 
 
 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 be- 
 cause 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 Ray- 
 mond decided for dinner. 
 
THE OLD STORE-HOUSE 105 
 
 " We'll go to the < Brit Arms, 5 " 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 whis- 
 pered 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 chiv- 
 alry 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 recog- 
 nising 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 trans- 
 parent veil of their imagined secrecy was already rent, 
 though the lovers did not guess it. 
 
 Then Raymond's chivalry wore thinner. Ruling pas- 
 sions, 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. 
 
 106 
 
CREDIT 107 
 
 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 aston- 
 ished 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 de- 
 manding to be done, the necessity for it began to be ques- 
 tioned 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 con- 
 templated 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 thou- 
 sand 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. Selfish- 
 ness is the parent of sophistry, and Raymond found him- 
 self 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 
 
108 THE SPINNERS 
 
 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 con- 
 trasted with the girl, cried louder and reminded how neces- 
 sary 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 
 
CREDIT 109 
 
 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 Mot- 
 yer. " 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." 
 
 66 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." 
 
no THE SPINNERS 
 
 " I know." 
 
 The dinner bell had rung and now there came a knock at 
 Raymond's door. Then Sabina entered and was depart- 
 ing 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 ex- 
 ceedingly charming to Sabina. He stopped and chatted 
 another five minutes, then mentioned the smoking concert 
 again and so took his departure. Raymond spoke slight- 
 ingly 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 be- 
 ginning 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 an- 
 swered with a flash of colour. " We'll leave you out, Ray- 
 
CREDIT 111 
 
 mond, 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 de- 
 light 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 her- 
 self 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, 
 
THE SPINNERS 
 
 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, be- 
 cause 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 cstme 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 any- 
 body 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 
 
CREDIT 113 
 
 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 
 6 a show ' to you ; but it's my life to me." 
 
 " I'm sorry I used the expression. Words aren't any- 
 thing. 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 par- 
 doned, we'll tell everybody. It won't kill you to wait an- 
 other 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 pro- 
 posal that they should see less of each other both hurt and 
 angered her. The quarrel culminated. 
 
 " Caution seems to me rather a cowardly thing, Ray- 
 mond, 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 my- 
 self." .,:: V 
 
THE SPINNERS 
 
 " 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 
 
 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 van- 
 ished 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 tempta- 
 tion 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. 
 
 115 
 
116 THE SPINNERS 
 
 " And welcome." 
 
 An unusual air of gloom sat on Mr. Best and the other 
 was quick to observe it. 
 
 "All well, I hope? "he said. 
 
 " Not exactly. I'm rather under the weather ; but I 
 dare say it's my own fault." 
 
 " It often is," admitted Ernest ; " but in my experience 
 that doesn't make it any better. In fact, the most dis- 
 agreeable sort of depression is that which we know we are 
 responsible for ourselves. When other people annoy us, 
 we have the tonic effect of righteous indignation ; but not 
 when we annoy ourselves and know ourselves to blame." 
 
 " I wouldn't go so far as to say it's all my own fault, 
 however," answered Mr. Best. " It is and it isn't my 
 fault. To be a father of children is your own fault in a 
 manner of speaking; and yet to be a father is not any 
 wrong, other things being as they should." 
 
 " On the contrary, it's part of the whole duty of man 
 other things being equal, as you say." 
 
 " We look to see ourselves reflected in our offspring, yet 
 how often do we ? " asked the foreman. 
 
 " Perhaps we might oftener, if we didn't suffer from 
 constitutional inability to recognise ourselves, John. I've 
 thought of this problem, let me tell you, for you are one of 
 many who feel the same. So far as I can see, parents 
 worry about what their children look like to them; but 
 never about what they look like to their children." 
 
 66 You speak as a childless widower," answered the other. 
 " Believe me, Mister Churchouse, children nowadays never 
 hesitate to tell us what we look like to them or what they 
 think of us either. Even my sailor boy will do it." 
 
 " It's the result of education," said Ernest. " There is 
 no doubt that education has altered the outlook of the child 
 on the parent. The old relation has disappeared and the 
 fifth commandment does not make its old appeal. Chil- 
 dren are better educated than their parents." 
 
 " And what's the result ? They'd kill the home goose 
 
I 
 
 IN THE FOREMAN'S GARDEN 117 
 
 that lays the golden eggs to-morrow, if they could. In 
 fact,. they're doing it. Those that remain reasonable and 
 obedient to their fathers and mothers feel themselves mar- 
 tyrs. That's the best sort ; but it ain't much fun having 
 a house full of martyrs whether or no ; and it ain't much 
 fun to know that your offspring are merely enduring you, 
 as a necessary affliction. As for the other sort, who can't 
 stick home life and old-fashioned ideas, they just break 
 loose and escape as quick as ever they know how and 
 no loss either." 
 
 " A gloomy picture," admitted Mr. Churchouse ; " but, 
 like every other picture, it has two sides. I think time 
 may be trusted to put it right. After the young have left 
 the nest, and hopped out into the world, and been sharply 
 pecked now and again, they begin to see home in its true 
 perspective and find that there is nothing like the affection 
 of a mother and father." 
 
 " They don't want anything of that," declared John. 
 " If you stand for sense and experience and try to learn 
 them, they think you're a fossil and out of sight of reality ; 
 and if you attempt to be young and interest yourself in 
 their wretched little affairs and pay the boy with the boys 
 and the girl with the girls, they think you're a fool." 
 
 " No doubt they see through any effort on the part of 
 the middle-aged to be one with them," admitted Ernest. 
 " And for my part I deprecate such attempts. Let us 
 grow old like gentlemen, John, and if they cannot perceive 
 the rightness and stateliness of age, so much the worse for 
 them. Some of us, however, err very gravely in this mat- 
 ter. There are men who have not the imagination to see 
 themselves growing old; they only feel it. And they try 
 to hide their feelings and think they are also hiding the 
 fact. Such men, of course, become the laughing-stocks of 
 the rising generation and the shame of their own." 
 
 " All the young are alike, so I needn't grumble at my 
 own family for that matter," confessed Mr. Best. " Their 
 generation is all equally headstrong and opinionated 
 
118 THE SPINNERS 
 
 high and low, the same. If I've hinted to Raymond Iron- 
 syde once, I've hinted a thousand times, that he's not going 
 about his business in a proper spirit." 
 
 " He is at present obviously in love, John, and must not 
 therefore be judged. But I share your uneasiness." 
 
 " It's wrong, and he knows it, and she ought to know it, 
 too. Sabina, I mean. I should have given her credit for 
 more sense myself. I thought she had plenty of self- 
 respect and brains too." 
 
 " Things are coming to a crisis in that quarter," proph- 
 esied Ernest. " It is a quality of love that it doesn't stand 
 still, John ; and something is going to happen very shortly. 
 Either it will be given out that they are betrothed, or else 
 the thing will fade away. Sabina has very fine instincts ; 
 and on his side, he would, I am sure, do nothing unbecom- 
 ing his family." 
 
 " He has plenty," declared Mr. Best. 
 
 " Nothing about which there would not be two opinions, 
 believe me. The fact that he has let it go so far makes me 
 think they are engaged. The young will go their own way 
 about things." 
 
 " If it was all right, Sabina Dinnett wouldn't be so 
 miserable," argued John Best. " She was used to be as 
 cheerful as a bird on a bough ; and now she is not." 
 
 " Merely showing that the climax is at hand. I have 
 seen myself lately that Sabina was unhappy and even taxed 
 her with it; but she denied it. Her mother, however, 
 knows that she is a good deal perturbed. We must hope 
 for the best." 
 
 " And what is the best ? " asked John. 
 
 " There is not the slightest difficulty about that ; the 
 best is what will happen," replied Mr. Churchouse. " As 
 a good Christian you know it perfectly well." 
 
 But the other shook his head. 
 
 " That won't do," he answered, " that's only evasion, 
 Mister Ernest. There's lots and lots of things happen, 
 
IN THE FOREMAN'S GARDEN 119 
 
 and the better the Christian you are, the better you know 
 they ought not to happen. And whether they are en- 
 gaged to be married, or whether they quarrel, trouble must 
 come of it. If people do wrong, it's no good for Chris- 
 tians to say the issue must be right. That's simply weak- 
 minded. You might as well argue nothing wrong ever 
 does happen, since nothing can happen without the will of 
 God." 
 
 " In a sense that's true," admitted Ernest. " So true, 
 in fact, that we'd better change the subject, John. We 
 thinking and religious men know there's a good deal of thin 
 ice in Christianity, where we've got to walk with caution 
 and not venture without a guide. One needs professional 
 theologians to skate over these dangerous places safely. 
 But, for my part, I have my reason well under control, as 
 every religious person should. I can perfectly accept the 
 fact that evil happens, and yet that nothing happens with- 
 out the sanction of an all powerful and all good God." 
 
 " You'd better come and get your string then," said Mr. 
 Best. " And long may your fine faith flourish. You're a 
 great lesson to us people cursed with too much common- 
 sense, I'm sure." 
 
 " Where our religion is concerned, we should be too 
 proud to submit it to common-sense," declared Ernest. 
 " Common-sense is all very well in everyday affairs ; in 
 fact, this world would not prosper without it; but I 
 strongly deprecate common-sense as applied to the next 
 world, John. The next world, from what one glimpses of 
 it in prophecy and revelation, is outside the category of 
 common-sense altogether." 
 
 " I stand corrected," said Mr. Best. " But it's a 
 startler to leave common-sense out of what matters 
 most to thinking men." 
 
 " We shall be altered in the twinkling of an eye," ex- 
 plained Ernest, " and so, doubtless, will be our humble, 
 earthly intelligence, our reliance on reason and other mun- 
 
120 THE SPINNERS 
 
 dane virtues. From the heavenly standpoint, earth will 
 seem a very sordid business altogether, I suspect, and even 
 our good qualities appear very peddling. In fact, we may 
 find, John, that we were in the habit of putting up statues 
 to the wrong persons, and discover the most unexpected 
 people at the right hand of the Throne." 
 
 " I dare say we shall," admitted Mr. Best ; " for if com- 
 mon-sense is going by the board and the virtues all to be 
 scrapped also, then we that think we stand had better take 
 heed lest we fall you and me included, Mister Church- 
 ouse. However, I'm glad to say I'm not with you there. 
 The Book tells us very clear what's good and what's evil ; 
 and whatever else Heaven will do, it won't go back on the 
 Book. I suppose you'll grant that much? " 
 
 " Most certainly," said the elder. " Most certainly and 
 surely, John. That, at least, we can rely upon. Our 
 stronghold lies in the fact that we know good from evil, 
 and though we don't know what ' infinite ' goodness is, we 
 do know that it is still goodness. Therefore, though God 
 is infinitely good, He is still good; the difference between 
 His goodness and ours is one of degree, not kind. So 
 metaphysics and quibbling leave us quite safe, which is all 
 that really matters." 
 
 " I hope you're right," answered Best. " Life puts 
 sharp questions to religion, and I can't pretend my re- 
 ligion's always clever enough to answer them." 
 
 Ernest took his twine and departed; but the subject of 
 Raymond and Sabina was not destined to slumber, for 
 now he met Raymond on his way to North Hill House. 
 
 He asked him to come into tea and, to his surprise, the 
 young man refused. 
 
 " That means Sabina isn't at home then," said Mr. 
 Churchouse blandly. 
 
 " I don't know where she is." 
 
 At this challenge Ernest spoke and struck into the mat- 
 ter very directly. He blamed Raymond and feared that 
 his course of action was not that of a gentleman. 
 
IN THE FOREMAN'S GARDEN 121 
 
 " You would be the very first to protest and criticise un- 
 favourably, my dear boy, if you saw anybody else treating 
 a girl in this fashion," he concluded. 
 
 " I'm going to clear it up," answered the culprit. 
 " Don't you worry. These things can't be done in a 
 minute. This infernal place is always so quick to think 
 evil, apparently, and judges decent people by its own dirty 
 opinions. I've asked Daniel to give me a holiday, so that 
 I may go away and think over life in general. And he 
 won't give me a holiday. It's very clear to me, Uncle 
 Ernest, that no self-respecting man would be able to work 
 under Daniel for long. Things are coming to a climax. I 
 doubt if I shall be able to keep on here." 
 
 " You evade the subject, which is your friendship with 
 Sabina, Raymond. As to Daniel, there ought to be no 
 difficulty whatever, and you know it very well in your 
 heart and head. Your protest deceives nobody. But 
 Sabina?" 
 
 Here the conversation ceased abruptly, for Raymond 
 committed an unique offence. He told Mr. Churchouse to 
 go to the devil, and left him, standing transfixed with 
 amazement, at the outer gate of ' The Magnolias.' 
 
 With the insult to himself Ernest was not much con- 
 cerned. His regretful astonishment centred in the spec- 
 tacle of Raymond's downfall. 
 
 " To what confusion and disorder, must his mind have 
 been reduced, before he could permit himself such a lapse," 
 reflected Mr. Churchouse. 
 
CHAPTER XIV 
 
 THE CONCERT 
 
 THE effect of Raymond's attitude on Sabina's mind proved 
 very serious. It awoke in her first anger and then dismay. 
 She was a woman of fine feeling and quick perception. 
 Love and ambition had pointed the same road, and the 
 hero, being, as it seemed, without guile, had convinced her 
 that she might believe every word that he spoke and trust 
 everything that he did. She had never contemplated any 
 sacrifice before marriage, and, indeed, when it came, the 
 consummation of their worship proved no sacrifice to her, 
 but an added joy. Less than many a married woman had 
 she mourned the surrender, for in her eyes it made all 
 things complete between them and bound them inseparably 
 with the golden links of love and honour. 
 
 When, therefore, upon this perfect union, sinister light 
 from without had broken, she felt it no great thing to ask 
 Raymond that their betrothal should be known. Reason 
 and justice demanded it. She did not for an instant sup- 
 pose that he would hesitate, but rather expected him to 
 blame his own blindness in delay. But finding he desired 
 further postponement, she was struck with consternation 
 that rose to wrath; and when he persisted, she became 
 alarmed and now only considered what best she might do 
 for her own sake. Her work suffered and her friends per- 
 ceived that all was not well with her. With the shortening 
 days and bad weather, the meetings with Raymond became 
 more difficult to pursue and she saw less of him. They 
 had patched their quarrel and were friendly enough, but 
 the perfect understanding had departed. They preserved 
 
 122 
 
THE CONCERT 123 
 
 a common ground and she did not mention subjects likely 
 to annoy him. He appeared to be working steadily, sel- 
 dom came into the shops and was more reserved to every- 
 body in the Mill. 
 
 Sabina had not yet spoken to her mother, though many 
 times tempted to do so. Her loyalty proved strong in the 
 time of trial; but the greater the strain on herself, the 
 greater the strain on her love for the man. She told her- 
 self that no such cruel imposition should have been placed 
 upon her ; and she could not fail closely to question the need 
 for it. Why did Raymond demand continued silence even 
 in the face of offences put upon her by her neighbours? 
 How could he endure to hear that people had been rude to 
 her, and uttered coarse jests in her hearing aimed only at 
 her ear? Would a man who loved her, as she deserved to 
 be loved, suffer this ? Then fear grew. With her he was 
 always kind kind and considerate in every matter but 
 the vital matter. Yet there were differences. The future, 
 in which he had delighted to revel, bored him now, and 
 when she spoke of it, he let the matter drop. He was on 
 good terms with his brother for the moment, and appeared 
 to be winning an increasing interest in his business to the 
 exclusion of other affairs. He would become animated on 
 the subject of Sabina's work, rather than the subject of 
 Sabina. He stabbed her unconsciously with many little 
 shafts of speech, yet Joiew not that he was doing so. He 
 grew more grave and self-controlled in their relations. 
 Her personal touch began to lose power and waken his 
 answering fire less often. It was then that she found her- 
 self with child, and knowing that despite much to cause 
 concern, Raymond was still himself, she rejoiced, since this 
 fact must terminate his wavering and establish her future. 
 Here at least was an event beyond his power to evade. 
 He loved her and had promised to wed her. He was a 
 man who might be weak, but had never explicitly behaved 
 in a manner to make her tremble for such a situation as the 
 present. Procrastination ceased to be possible. What 
 
THE SPINNERS 
 
 now had happened must demand instant recognition of 
 her rights, and that given, she assured herself the future 
 held no terrors. Now he must marry her, or contradict 
 his own record as a gentleman and a man of honour. 
 
 Yet she told him with a tremor and, until the last mo- 
 ment, could not banish from her heart the shadow of fear. 
 He had never spoken of this possibility, or taken it into 
 account, and she felt, seeing his silence, that it would be 
 a shock. 
 
 The news came to him as they walked from the Mill on a 
 Saturday when the works closed at noon. He was on his 
 way to Bridport and she went beside him for a mile through 
 the lanes. 
 
 For a moment he said nothing, then, seeing the road 
 empty, he put his arms round her and kissed her. 
 
 " You clever girl ! " he said. 
 
 " Don't tell me you're sorry, for God's sake, or I shall 
 go and drown myself," she answered. Her face was anx- 
 ious and she looked haggard in the cold light of a sunless, 
 winter day. But a genuine, generous emotion had touched 
 him, and with it woke pangs of remorse and contrition. 
 He knew very well what she had been suffering mentally 
 on his account, and he knew that the frightened voice in 
 which she told him the news and the trembling mouth and 
 the tear in her eyes ought not to have been there. Every 
 fine feeling in the man and every honest instinct was 
 aroused. For the moment he felt glad that no further de- 
 lay was possible. His self-respect had already suffered ; 
 but now life offered him swift means to regain it. He did 
 not, however, think of himself while his arms were round 
 her; he thought of her and her only, while they remained 
 together. 
 
 " ' Sorry '? " he said. " Can you think I'm sorry? I'm 
 only sorry that I didn't do something sooner and marry 
 you before this happened, Sabina. Good Lord it 
 throws a lot of light. I swear it does. I'm glad I'm 
 honestly glad and you must be glad and proud and 
 
THE CONCERT 16 
 
 happy and all the rest of it. We'll be married in a month. 
 And you must tell your mother we're engaged to-day ; and 
 I'll tell my people. Don't you worry. Damn me, I've 
 been worrying you a lot lately ; but it was only because I 
 couldn't see straight. Now I do and I'll soon atone." 
 
 She wept with thankful heart and begged him to turn 
 with her and tell Mrs. Dinnett himself. But that he would 
 not do. 
 
 " It will save time if I go on to Bridport and let Aunt 
 Jenny hear about it. Of course the youngster is our 
 affair and nobody need know about that. But we must be 
 married in a j iffey and you must give notice at the mill 
 to-day. Go back now and tell Best." 
 
 " How wonderful you are ! " she said. " And yet I 
 feared you might be savage about it." 
 
 " More shame to me that you should have feared it," he 
 answered ; " for that means that I haven't been sporting. 
 But you shall never be frightened of me again, Sabina. 
 To see you frightened hurts me like hell. If ever you are 
 again, it will be your fault, not mine." 
 
 She left him very happy and a great cloud seemed to fall 
 off her life as she returned to the village. She blamed 
 herself for ever doubting him. Her love rose from its 
 smothered fires. She soared to great heights and dreamed 
 of doing mighty things for Raymond. Straight home to 
 her mother she went and told Mrs. Dinnett of her engage- 
 ment and swiftly approaching marriage. The light had 
 broken on her darkness at last and she welcomed the child 
 as a blessed forerunner of good. The coming life had 
 already made her love it. 
 
 Meantime Raymond preserved his cheerful spirit for a 
 season. But existence never looked the same out of 
 Sabina's presence and before he had reached Bridport, his 
 mood changed. He recognised very acutely his duty and 
 not a thought stirred in him to escape it ; but what for a 
 little while had appeared more than duty and promised 
 to end mean doubts and fears for ever, began now to pre- 
 
126 THE SPINNERS 
 
 sent itself under other aspects. The joy of a child and a 
 wife and a home faded. For what sort of a home could 
 he establish? He leaned to the hope that Daniel might 
 prove generous under the circumstances and believed that 
 his aunt might throw her weight on his side and urge his 
 brother to make adequate provision; but these reflections 
 galled him unspeakably, for they were sordid. They 
 argued weakness in him. He must come as a beggar and 
 eat humble pie ; he must for ever sacrifice his independence 
 and, with it, everything that had made life worth living. 
 The more he thought upon it, the more he began to hate 
 the necessity of taking this story to his relations. Better 
 men than he had lived in poverty and risen from humble 
 beginnings. It struck him that if he went his own way, 
 redoubled his official energies and asked for nothing more 
 on the strength of his marriage, his own self-respect would 
 be preserved as well as the respect of his aunt and brother. 
 He pictured himself as a hero, yet knew that what he con- 
 templated was merely the conduct of an honest man. 
 
 The thought of approaching anybody with his intentions 
 grew more distasteful, and by the time he reached Brid- 
 port, he had determined not to mention the matter, at any 
 rate until the following day. So great a thing demanded 
 more consideration than he could give it for the moment, 
 because his whole future depended on the manner in which 
 he broke it to his people. It was true that the circum- 
 stances admitted of no serious delay; Sabina must, of 
 course, be considered before everything; but twenty-four 
 hours would make no difference to her, while it might 
 make all the difference to him. 
 
 He reduced the courses of action to two. Either he 
 would announce that he was going to be married imme- 
 diately as a fact accomplished ; or he would invite his aunt's 
 sympathies, use diplomacy and win her to his side with a 
 view to approaching Daniel. Daniel appeared the danger, 
 because it was quite certain that he would strongly disap- 
 prove of Raymond's marriage. This certainty induced 
 
THE CONCERT 127 
 
 another element of doubt. For suppose, far from seeking 
 to help Raymond with his new responsibilities, Daniel took 
 the opposite course and threatened to punish him for any 
 such stupidity? Suppose that his brother, from a per- 
 sonal standpoint, objected and backed his objection with a 
 definite assurance that Raymond must leave the mill if he 
 took this step ? The only way out of that would be to tell 
 Daniel that he was compromised and must wed Sabina for 
 honour. But Raymond felt that he would rather die than 
 make any such confession. His whole soul rose with loath- 
 ing at the thought of telling the truth to one so frozen and 
 unsympathetic. Moreover there was not only himself to 
 be considered, but Sabina. What chance would she have 
 of ever winning Daniel to acknowledge and respect her if 
 the facts came to his ears? 
 
 Raymond thought himself into a tangle and found a 
 spirit of great depression settling upon him. But, at last, 
 he decided to sleep on the situation. He did not go home, 
 but turned his steps to ' The Tiger,' ate his luncheon and 
 drank heartily with it. 
 
 Then he went to see a boxer, who was training with Mr. 
 Gurd, and presently when Neddy Motyer appeared, he 
 turned into the billiard room and there killed some hours 
 before the time of the smoking concert. 
 
 He imbibed the intensely male atmosphere of * The 
 Tiger ' with a good deal of satisfaction ; but surging up 
 into the forefront of his mind came every moment the truth 
 concerning himself and his future. It made him bitter. 
 For some reason he could not guess, he found himself play- 
 ing billiards very much above his form. Neddy was full 
 of admiration. 
 
 " By Jove, you've come on thirty in a hundred," he said. 
 " If you only gave a fair amount of time to it, you'd soon 
 beat anybody here but Waldron." 
 
 " My sporting days are practically over," answered 
 Raymond. " I've got to face real life now, and as soon as 
 you begin to do that, you find sport sinks under the horizon 
 
128 THE SPINNERS 
 
 a bit. I thought I should miss it a lot, but I shan't." 
 
 " If anybody else said that, I should think it was the fox 
 who had lost his brush talking," replied Neddy ; " but I 
 suppose you mean it. Only you'll find, if you chuck sport, 
 you'll soon be no good. Even as it is, going into the 
 works has put you back a lot. I doubt if you could do a 
 hundred in eleven seconds now." 
 
 " There are more important things than doing a hundred 
 in eleven seconds or even time, either, for that matter." 
 
 " You won't chuck football, anyway ? You'll be fast 
 enough for outside right for years yet if you watch your- 
 self." 
 
 " Damned easy to say ' watch yourself.' Yes, I shall 
 play footer a bit longer if they want me, I suppose." 
 
 Arthur Waldron dropped in a few minutes later. 
 
 He was glad to see Raymond. 
 
 " Good," he said. " I thought yon were putting in a 
 blameless evening with your people." 
 
 " No, I'm putting in a blameless evening here." 
 
 " He's playing enormous billiards, Waldron," declared 
 Motyer. " I suppose you've been keeping him at it. He's 
 come on miles." 
 
 " He didn't learn with me, anyway. It's not once in a 
 blue moon that he plays at North Hill. But if he's come 
 on, so much the better." 
 
 They played, but Raymond's form had deserted him. 
 Waldron was much better than the average amateur and 
 now he gave Raymond fifty in two hundred and beat him 
 by as much. They dined together presently, and Job 
 Legg, who often lent a hand at ' The Tiger ' on moments 
 of extra pressure, waited upon them. 
 
 " How's your uncle, Job? " asked Arthur Waldron, who 
 was familiar with Mr. Legg, and not seldom visited ' The 
 Seven Stars,' when Estelle came with him to Bridport. 
 
 " He's a goner, sir. I'm off to the funeral on Monday." 
 
 " Hope the will was all right ? " 
 
 " Quite all right, sir, thank you, sir." 
 
THE CONCERT 129 
 
 " Then you'll leave, no doubt, and what will Missis 
 Northover do then? " 
 
 Legg smiled. 
 
 " It's hid in the future, sir," he answered. 
 
 A comedian, who was going to perform at the smoking 
 concert, came in with Mr. Gurd, and the innkeeper intro- 
 duced him to Neddy and Raymond. He joined them and 
 added an element of great hilarity to the meal. He 
 abounded in good stories, and understood horse-racing as 
 well as Neddy Motyer himself. Neddy now called himself 
 a * gentleman backer,' but admitted that, so far, it had not 
 proved a lucrative profession. 
 
 Their talk ranged over sport and athletics. They 
 buzzed one against the other, and not even the humour of 
 the comic man was proof against the seriousness of Arthur 
 Waldron, who demonstrated, as always, that England's 
 greatness had sprung from the pursuit of masculine pas- 
 times. The breed of horses and the breed of men alike 
 depended upon sport. The Empire, in Mr. Waldron's 
 judgment, had arisen from this sublime foundation. 
 
 " It reaches from the highest to the lowest," he de- 
 clared. " The puppy that plays most is the one that 
 always turns into the best dog." 
 
 The smoking concert, held in Mr. Gurd's large dining- 
 room, went the way of such things with complete success. 
 The boxing was of the best, and the local lad, Tim Chick, 
 performed with credit against his experienced antagonist. 
 All the comic man's songs aimed at the folly of marriage 
 and the horrors of domesticity. He seemed to be singing 
 at Raymond, who roared with the rest and hated the 
 humourist all the time. The young man grew uneasy and 
 morose before the finish, drank too much whiskey, and felt 
 glad to get into the cold night air when all was over. 
 
 And then there happened to him a challenge very unex- 
 pected, for Waldron, as they walked back together through 
 the night-hidden lanes, chose the opportunity to speak of 
 Raymond's private affairs. 
 
130 THE SPINNERS 
 
 " You can't accuse me of wanting to stick my nose into 
 other people's business, can you, Ray? And you can't 
 fairly say that you've ever found me taking too much upon 
 myself or anything of that sort." 
 
 " No ; you're unique in that respect." 
 
 " Well, then, you mustn't be savage if I'm personal. 
 You know me jolly well and you know that you're about the 
 closest friend I've got. And if you weren't a friend and a 
 great deal to me, I shouldn't speak." 
 
 " Go ahead I can guess. There's only one topic in 
 Bridetown, apparently. No doubt you've seen me in the 
 company of Sabina Dinnett? " 
 
 " I haven't, I can honestly say. But Estelle is very 
 keen about the mill girls. She wants to do all sorts of fine 
 things for them ; and she's specially friendly with Missis 
 Dinnett's daughter. And she's heard things that puzzled 
 her young ears naturally, and she told me that some peo- 
 ple say you're being too kind to Sabina and other people 
 say you're treating her hardly. Of course, that puzzled 
 Estelle, clever though she is ; but, as a man of the world, 
 I saw what it meant and that kindness may really be 
 cruelty in the long run. You'll forgive me, won't you ? " 
 
 " Of course, my dear chap. If one lives in a hole like 
 Bridetown, one must expect one's affairs to be common 
 property." 
 
 " And if they are, what does it matter as long as they 
 are all straightforward ? I never care a button what any- 
 body says about me, because I know they can't say any- 
 thing true that is up against me ; and as to lies, they don't 
 matter." 
 
 " And d'you think I care what they say about me? " 
 
 " Rather not. Only if a girl is involved, then the case 
 is altered. I'm not a saint ; but " 
 
 " When anybody says they're not a saint, you know 
 they're going to begin to preach, Arthur." 
 
 Waldron did not answer for a minute. He stopped and 
 lighted his pipe. To Raymond, Sabina appeared unmeas- 
 
THE CONCERT 131 
 
 urably distant at this midnight hour. His volatile mind 
 was quick to take colour from the last experience, and in 
 the aura of the smoking concert, woman looked a slight and 
 inferior thing; marriage, a folly; domestic life, a jest. 
 
 Waldron spoke again. 
 
 " You won't catch me preaching. I only venture to say 
 that in a little place like this, it's a mistake to be identified 
 with a girl beneath you in every way. It won't hurt you, 
 and if she was a common girl and given to playing abdut, 
 it wouldn't hurt her ; but the Dinnetts are different. How- 
 ever, you know a great deal more about her than I do, and 
 if you tell me she's not all she seems and you're not the 
 first and won't be the last, then, of course I'm wrong and 
 enough said. But if she's all right and all she's thought 
 to be, and all Estelle thinks her for Estelle's a jolly good 
 student of character then, frankly, I don't think it's 
 sporting of you to do what you're doing." 
 
 The word ' sporting ' summed the situation from Wal- 
 dron's point of view and he said no more. 
 
 Raymond grew milder. 
 
 " She's all Estelle thinks her. I have a great admira- 
 tion for her. She's amazingly clever and refined. In fact, 
 I never saw any girl a patch on her in my life." 
 
 " Well then, what follows ? Surely she ought to be re- 
 spected in every way." 
 
 " I do respect her." 
 
 " Then it's up to you to treat her as you'd treat any- 
 body of your own class, and take care that nothing you do 
 throws any shadow on her. And, of course, you know it. 
 I'm not suggesting for a second you don't. I'm only sug- 
 gesting that what would be quite all right with a girl in 
 your own set, isn't exactly fair to Sabina her position 
 in the world being what it is." 
 
 It was on Raymond's tongue to declare his engagement ; 
 but he did not. He had banished Sabina for that night 
 and the subject irked him. The justice of Waldron's 
 criticism also irked him ; but he acknowledged it. 
 
132 THE SPINNERS 
 
 "Thank you," he answered. " It's jolly good of you 
 to say these things, Arthur, because they're not in your 
 line, and I know you hate them. But you're dead right. 
 I dare say I'll tell you something that will astonish you 
 before long. But I'm not doing anything to be ashamed 
 of. I haven't made any mistake ; and if I had, I shouldn't 
 shirk the payment." 
 
 " You can't, my dear chap. A mistake has always got 
 to be paid for in full often with interest added. As a 
 sportsman you know that, and it holds all through life in 
 my experience." 
 
 " I shan't make one. But if I do, I'm quite prepared to 
 pay the cost." 
 
 " We all say that till the bill comes along. Better avoid 
 the mistake, and I'm glad you're going to." 
 
 Far away from the scrub on North Hill came a sharp, 
 weird sound. 
 
 " Hark ! " said Waldron. " That's a dog fox ! I hope 
 the beggar's caught a rabbit." 
 
CHAPTER XV 
 
 A VISIT TO MISS IRONSYDE 
 
 ON the following day Raymond did not appear at break- 
 fast, and Estelle wondered at so strange an event. 
 
 " He's going for a long walk with me this afternoon," 
 she told her father. " It's a promise ; we're going all the 
 way to Chilcombe, for me to show him that dear little 
 chapel and the wonderful curiosity in it." 
 
 " Not much in his line, but if he said he'll go, he'll go, 
 no doubt," answered her father. 
 
 They went to church together presently, for Waldron 
 observed Sunday. He held no definite religious opinions ; 
 but inclined to a vague idea that it was seemly to go, be- 
 cause it set a good example and increased your authority. 
 Pie believed that church-going was a source of good to the 
 proletariat, and though he did not himself accept the doc- 
 trine of eternal punishment, since it violated all sporting 
 tenets, he was inclined to think that acceptation of the 
 threat kept ignorant people straight and made them better 
 members of society. He held that the parson and squire 
 must combine in this matter and continue to claim and en- 
 force, as far as possible, a beneficent autocracy in thorpe 
 and hamlet; and he perceived that religion was the only 
 remaining force which upheld their sway. That super- 
 natural control was crumbling under the influences of edu- 
 cation he also recognised ; but did his best to stem the 
 tide, and trusted that the old dispensation would at least 
 last out his time. 
 
 On returning from worship they found Raymond in the 
 garden, and when Estelle reminded him of his promise, he 
 agreed and declared that he looked forward to the tramp. 
 He was cheerful and apparently welcomed Estelle's pro- 
 
 133 
 
134- THE SPINNERS 
 
 gramme, but there happened that which threatened to in- 
 terfere with it. 
 
 Waldron had retired to his study and a new book on 
 ' The Fox Terrier,' which he reserved for Sabbath reading, 
 and Estelle and Raymond were just setting out for Chil- 
 combe when there came Sabina. She had called to see her 
 lover and entered the garden in time to stop him. She had 
 never openly asked to see him in this manner before, and 
 Raymond was quick to mark the significance of the change. 
 It annoyed him, while inwardly he recognised its reason- 
 ableness. He turned and shook hands with her, and 
 Estelle did the same. 
 
 " We're just starting for Chilcombe," she said. 
 
 Sabina looked her surprise. She had been expecting 
 Raymond all the morning, to bring the great news to 
 Ernest Churchouse, and was puzzled to know why he had 
 not come. She could not wait longer, and while her mother 
 advised delay, found herself unable to delay. 
 
 Now she perceived that Raymond had made plans inde- 
 pendently of her. 
 
 " I was coming in this evening," he said, in answer to 
 her eyes. 
 
 " May I speak to you a moment before you start with 
 Miss Waldron? " she asked, and together they strolled into 
 Estelle's rose garden where still a poor blossom or two 
 crowned naked sprays. 
 
 " I don't understand," began the girl. " Surely 
 surely after yesterday? " 
 
 " I'd promised to go for this walk with her." 
 
 "What then? Wasn't there all the morning? My 
 mother and I didn't go to church expecting you every 
 minute." 
 
 " You must keep your nerve, Sabina both of us must. 
 You mustn't be hysterical about it." 
 
 She perceived how mightily his mood had changed since 
 their leave-taking of the day before. 
 
A VISIT TO MISS IRONSYDE 135 
 
 " What's the matter? " she asked. " I suppose your 
 people have not taken this well." 
 
 " They don't know yet nobody does." 
 
 " You didn't tell them? " 
 
 " Things prevented it. We must choose the right mo- 
 ment to spring this. It's bound to knock them over for a 
 minute. I'm thinking it all out. Probably you don't 
 quite realise, Sabina, what this means from their point of 
 view. The first thing is to get my aunt on my side; 
 Daniel's hopeless, of course." 
 
 She stared at him. 
 
 "What in God's name has come over you? You talk 
 as though you hadn't a drop of blood in your veins. Were 
 you deaf yesterday? Didn't you hear me tell you I was 
 with child by you? ' Their point of view ' ! What about 
 my point of view ? " 
 
 " Don't get excited, my dear girl. Do give me credit 
 for some sense. This is a very ticklish business, and the 
 whole of our future yours, of course, quite as much as 
 mine will depend on what I do during the next few days. 
 Do try to realise that. If I make a mistake now, we may 
 repent it for fifty years." 
 
 "What d'you call making a mistake? What choice of 
 action have you got if you're a gentleman ? It kills me 
 kills me to hear you talking about making a mistake ; and 
 your hard voice means that you think you've made one. 
 What have I done but love you with all my heart and soul? 
 What have I ever done to make you put other people's 
 points of view before mine? " 
 
 " I'm not I'm not, Sabina." 
 
 " You are. You used to understand me so well and 
 know what was in my mind before I spoke, and now now 
 before this the greatest thing in the world for me 
 you " 
 
 " Talk quietly, for goodness' sake. You don't want all 
 Bridetown to hear us." 
 
136 THE SPINNERS 
 
 " You can say that ? And you go out walking with a 
 child and " 
 
 " Look here, Sabina, you must pull yourself together, or 
 else you stand a very good chance of bitching up our show 
 altogether," he answered calmly. " This thing has got to 
 be carried out by me, not you ; and if you are not going 
 to let me do it my own way, then so much the worse for 
 both of us. I won't be dictated to by you, or anybody, 
 and if you're not contented to believe in me, then I can only 
 say you're making a big mistake and you'll very soon find 
 it out." 
 
 " What are you going to do, then? " she asked, " and 
 when are you going to do it? I've a right to know that, 
 I suppose? " 
 
 " To think you can talk in that tone of voice to me to 
 me of all people ! " 
 
 " To think you can force me to ! And now you'll say 
 you've seen things in me you never thought were there, and 
 turn it over in your mind and and oh, it's cowardly 
 it's cruel. And you call yourself an honourable man 
 and could tell me and swear to me only yesterday that I 
 was more to you than anything else in the world ! " 
 
 " D'you know what you're doing? " he asked. " D'you 
 want to make me there I won't speak it I won't 
 come down to your level and forget myself and say things 
 that I'd break my heart to think of afterwards. I must 
 go now, or that girl will be wondering what the deuce has 
 happened. She's told her father already that you weren't 
 happy or something; so I suppose you must have been 
 talking. I'll come in this evening. You'd better go home 
 now as quick as you can." 
 
 He left her abruptly and she sat down shaking on a 
 stone seat, to prevent herself from falling. Grief and 
 terror shared her spirit. She watched him hurry away 
 and, after he was gone, arose to find her legs trembling 
 under her. She went home slowly ; then thoughts came to 
 her which restored her physical strength. Her anger gave 
 
A VISIT TO MISS IRONSYDE 137 
 
 place to fear and her fear beckoned her to confide in 
 somebody with greater power over Raymond than her 
 own. 
 
 She returned to her mother, described her repulse and 
 then declared her intention of going immediately to see 
 Miss Ironsyde. She concentrated her thoughts on the 
 lady, of whom Raymond had often spoken with admiration 
 and respect. She argued with herself that his aunt would 
 only have to hear her story to take her side ; she told her- 
 self and her mother that since Raymond had feared to ap- 
 proach his aunt, Sabina might most reasonably do so. 
 She grew calm and convinced herself that not only might 
 she do this, but that when Raymond heard of it, he would 
 very possibly be glad that the necessity of confession was 
 escaped. His Aunt Jenny was very fond of him, and would 
 forgive him and help him to do right. Sabina found her- 
 self stronger than Raymond, and that did not astonish her, 
 for she had suspected it before. 
 
 Her mother, now in tears, agreed with her and she 
 started on foot for Bridport, walked quickly, and within 
 an hour, reached the dwelling of the Ironsydes a large 
 house standing hidden in the trees above the town. 
 
 Miss Ironsyde was reading and looking forward to her 
 tea when Sabina arrived. She had heard of the girl 
 through Ernest Churchouse, but she had never met her 
 and did not connect her in any way with Raymond. Jenny 
 received her and was impressed with her beauty, for Sabina, 
 albeit anxious and nervous, looked handsome after her 
 quick walk. 
 
 " I've heard of you from your mother and Mr. Church- 
 ouse," said Miss Ironsyde, shaking hands. " You come 
 from him, I expect. I hope he is well? Sit down by the 
 fire." 
 
 Her kindly manner and gentle face set the younger at 
 ease. 
 
 " He's quite well, thank you, miss. But I'm here for 
 myself, not him. I'm in a great deal of terrible anxiety, 
 
138 THE SPINNERS 
 
 and you'll excuse me for coming, I do hope, when I explain 
 why I've come. It was understood between me and Mr. 
 Raymond Ironsyde very clearly yesterday that he was 
 going to tell you about it. He left me yesterday to do so. 
 But I've seen him to-day and I find he never came, so I 
 thought I might venture to come even though it was 
 Sunday." 
 
 " The better the day, the better the deed. Something 
 is troubling you. Why did not my nephew come, if he 
 started to come? " 
 
 " I don't know. Indeed, he should have come." 
 
 " I'm afraid he starts to do a great many things he 
 doesn't carry through," said Jenny, and the words, lightly 
 spoken, fell sinister on Sabina's ear. 
 
 " There are some things a man must carry through if 
 he starts to do them," she said quietly, and her tone threw 
 light for Raymond's aunt. She grew serious. 
 
 " Tell me," she said. " I know my nephew very well and 
 have his interests greatly at heart. He is somewhat un- 
 disciplined still and has had to face certain difficulties and 
 problems, not much in themselves, but much to one with his 
 temperament." 
 
 Then Sabina, who felt that she might be fighting for her 
 life, set out to tell her story. She proved at her best and 
 spoke well. She kept her temper and chose her words. 
 The things that she had thought to speak, indeed, escaped 
 her, but her artless and direct narrative did not fail to 
 convince the listener. 
 
 " You're more to him than anybody in the world, but 
 me," she said ; " but I'm first, Miss Ironsyde. I must be 
 first now. Even if to-day he had been different but 
 what seemed so near yesterday is far off to-day. He was 
 harsh to-day. He terrified me, and I felt you'd think no 
 worse of me than you must, if I ventured to come. I don't 
 ask you to believe anything I say until you have seen him ; 
 but I'm not going to tell you anything but the sacred 
 truth. Thanks to Mr. Churchouse I was well educated, 
 
A VISIT TO MISS IRONSYDE 139 
 
 and he took kind pains to teach me when I was young and 
 helped me to get fond of books. So when Mr. Raymond 
 came to the Mill, he found I was intelligent and well ftian- 
 nered. And he fell in love with me and asked me to marry 
 him. And I loved him very dearly, because I had never 
 seen or known a man with such a beautiful face and mind. 
 And I promised to marry him. He wished it kept secret 
 and we loved in secret and had great joy of each other for 
 a long time. Then people began to talk and I begged him 
 to let it be known we were engaged ; but he would not. And 
 then I told him yesterday that it must be known and 
 that he must marry me as quickly as he could, for right 
 and honour. And he seemed very glad almost thankful 
 I thought. He rejoiced about it and said it was splendid 
 news. Then he left me to come straight to you and I was 
 happy and thankful. But to-day I went to see him and 
 he had changed and was rough to me and said he must 
 choose his own time ! This to me, who am going to be 
 mother of his child next year! I nearly fainted when he 
 said that. He told me to go ; and I went. But I could 
 not sit down under the shock ; I had to do something and 
 thought of you. So I came to implore you to be on my 
 side not only for my sake, but his. It's a very fearful 
 thing only I know how fearful, because I know all he's 
 said and promised ; and well I know he meant every word 
 while he was saying it. And I do humbly beg you, miss, 
 for love of him, to reason with him and hear what he's got 
 to say. And if he says a word that contradicts what I've 
 said, then I'll be content for you to believe him and I'll 
 trouble you no more. But he won't. He'll tell you every- 
 thing I've told you. He couldn't say different, for he's 
 truthful and straight. And if it was anything less than 
 the whole of my future life I wouldn't have come. But I 
 feel there are things hidden in his mind I can't fathom 
 else after what I told him yesterday, he never, never could 
 have been cruel to me, or changed his mind about coming to 
 see you. And please forgive me for taking up your time. 
 
140 THE SPINNERS 
 
 Only knowing that you cared for him so much made me 
 come to you." 
 
 Miss Ironsyde did not answer immediately. Her intui- 
 tion inclined her to believe every word at its face value; 
 but her very readiness to do so made her cautious. The 
 story was one of every day and bore no marks of improba- 
 bility ; yet among Raymond's faults she could not remem- 
 ber any unreasonable relations with the other sex. It had 
 always been one bright spot in his dead father's opinion 
 that the young man did not care about drink or women, 
 and was not intemperate, save in his passion for athletic 
 exercises and his abomination of work. It required no 
 great perception to see that Sabina was not the type that 
 entangles men. She had a beautiful face and a comely 
 figure, but she belonged not to the illusive, distracting type. 
 She was obvious and lacked the quality which attracts men 
 far more than open features, regular modelling and steady 
 eyes. It was, in fact, such a face as Raymond might have 
 admired, and Sabina was such a girl as he might have loved 
 when he did fall in love. She was apparently his proto- 
 type and complement in directness and simplicity of out- 
 look; that Miss Ironsyde perceived, and the more she re- 
 flected the less she felt inclined to doubt. 
 
 Sabina readily guessed the complex thoughts which kept 
 the listener silent after she had finished, and sat quietly 
 without more speech until Jenny chose to answer her. 
 That no direct antagonism appeared was a source of com- 
 fort. Unconsciously Sabina felt happier for the presence 
 of the other, though as yet she had heard no consoling 
 word. Miss Ironsyde regarded her thoughtfully ; then she 
 rose and rang the bell. Sabina's heart sank for she sup- 
 posed that she was to be immediately dismissed, and that 
 meant defeat in a quarter very dangerous. But her mind 
 was set at rest, for Jenny saw the fear in her eyes. 
 
 " I'm ringing for tea," she said. " I will ask you to 
 stop and drink a cup with me. You've had a long walk," 
 
A VISIT TO MISS IRONSYDE 141 
 
 Then came tears ; but Sabina felt such weakness did not 
 become her and smothered them. 
 
 " Thank you, gratefully. Miss Ironsyde," she said. 
 
 Tea was a silent matter, for Jenny had very little to say. 
 Her speech was just and kind, however. It satisfied 
 Sabina, whose only concern was justice now. She had 
 spoken first. 
 
 " I think I'm sure it's only some hitch in Mr. Ray- 
 mond's mind. He's been so wonderful to me so tender 
 and thoughtful and he's such a gentleman in all he does 
 and says, that I'm sure he never could dream of going back 
 on his sacred word. He wants to marry me. He'll never 
 tell you different from that. But he cannot realise, per- 
 haps, the need and yet I won't say that neither, for, of 
 course, he must realise." 
 
 " Say nothing more at all," answered Jenny. " You 
 have said everything there was to say and I'm glad you 
 have come to me and told me about it. But I'm not going 
 to say anything myself until I've seen my nephew. You 
 are satisfied that he will tell me the truth? " 
 
 " Yes, I am. Don't think I don't trust him. Only if 
 there's something hidden from me, he might explain to you 
 what it is, and what I've done to anger him." 
 
 Miss Ironsyde did not lack experience of men and could 
 have thrown light on Sabina's problem ; but she had not the 
 heart. She began to suspect it was the girl's own compli- 
 ance and his easy victory that had made Raymond weary 
 before the reckoning. There is nothing more tasteless 
 than paying after possession, unless the factors combine 
 to make the payment a pleasure and possession an undying 
 delight. Miss Ironsyde indeed guessed at the truth more 
 accurately than she knew ; but her sympathies were entirely 
 with Sabina and it was certain that if Raymond, when the 
 time came, could offer no respectable and sufficient excuse 
 for a change of mind, he would find little support from 
 her. 
 
THE SPINNERS 
 
 Of her intentions, however, she said nothing, nor indeed 
 while Sabina drank a cup of tea had Miss Ironsyde any- 
 thing to say. She was not unsympathetic, but she was 
 guarded. 
 
 " I will see Raymond to-morrow without fail," she said 
 when Sabina departed. " I share your belief, Miss Din- 
 nett, that he is a truthful and straightforward man. At 
 least I have always found him so. And I feel very sure 
 that you are truthful and straightforward too. This will 
 come right. I will give you one word of advice, if I may, 
 and ask one question. Does anybody know of your en- 
 gagement except my nephew and myself? " 
 
 " Only my mother. Yesterday he told me to go straight 
 home and tell her. And I did. Whether he's told any- 
 body, I don't know." 
 
 " Be sure he has not. He would tell nobody before me, 
 I think. My advice, then, is to say nothing more until 
 you hear from him, or me." 
 
 " I shouldn't, of course, Miss Ironsyde." 
 
 " Good-bye," said the other kindly. " Be of good heart 
 and be patient for a few hours longer. It's hard to ask 
 you to be, but you'll understand the wisdom." 
 
 When Sabina had gone, Miss Ironsyde nibbled a hot 
 cake and reflected deeply on an interview full of pain. The 
 story so fresh and terrific to the teller was older than 
 the hills and presented no novel feature whatever to her 
 who listened. But in theory, Jenny Ironsyde entertained 
 very positive views concerning the trite situation. 
 Whether she would be able to sustain them before her 
 nephew remained to be seen. She already began to fear. 
 She saw the dangers and traversed the arguments. 
 Though free from class prejudice, she recognised its 
 weight in such a situation. A break must mean Sabina's 
 social ruin; but would union mean ruin to Raymond? 
 And if the problem was reduced to that, what became of 
 her theories? She decided that since her theories were 
 based in righteousness and justice, she must prefer his 
 
A VISIT TO MISS IRONSYDE 143 
 
 downfall to the woman's. For if, indeed, he fell as the 
 result of a mistaken marriage, he would owe the fall to 
 himself and his attitude after the event. He need not fall. 
 A tendency to judge him hardly, however, drew Jenny up. 
 He had yet to be heard. 
 
 She went to her writing-desk and wrote him a letter di- 
 recting him to see her on the following day without fail. 
 " It is exceedingly important, my dear boy," she said, 
 " and I shall expect you not later than ten o'clock to- 
 morrow morning." 
 
CHAPTER XVI 
 
 AT CHILCOMBE 
 
 MEANTIME Raymond had kept his promise and devoted 
 some hours to Estelle's pleasure. The girl was proud of 
 such an event, anticipated it for many days and won 
 great delight from it when it came. She perceived, as 
 they started, that her friend was perturbed and wondered 
 dimly a moment as to what Sabina could have said to annoy 
 him; but he appeared to recover quickly and was calm, 
 cheerful and attentive to her chatter after they had gone a 
 mile. 
 
 " To think you've never been to Chilcombe, Ray," she 
 said. " You and father go galloping after foxes, or shoot- 
 ing the poor pheasants and partridges and don't care a bit 
 for the wonderful tiny church at Chilcombe the tiniest 
 in England almost, I do believe. And then there's a beau- 
 tiful thing in it a splendid treasure ; and many people 
 think it was a piece of one of the ships of the Spanish 
 Armada, that was wrecked on the Chesil Bank ; and I 
 dare say it is." 
 
 " You must tell me about it." 
 
 " I'm going to." 
 
 " Not walking too fast for you? " 
 
 " Not yet, but still you might go a little slower, or else 
 I shall get out of breath and shan't be able to tell you 
 about things." 
 
 He obeyed. 
 
 " There are no flowers for you to show me now," he said. 
 
 " No, but there are interesting things. For instance, 
 away there to the right is a wonderful field. And the old 
 story is that everything that is ever planted in it comes 
 up red red." 
 
 144 
 
AT CHILCOMBE 145 
 
 " What nonsense. 5 ' 
 
 " Yes, it is, but it's creepy, nice nonsense. Because of 
 the story. Once there were two murderers at Swire vil- 
 lage, and one turned upon the other and told the secret of 
 the murder and got his friend caught and hanged. And 
 the bad murderer was paid a great deal of money for tell- 
 ing the Government about the other murderer; and that 
 was blood-money, you see. Then the bad murderer bought 
 a field, and because he bought it with blood-money, every- 
 thing he planted came up red. I wish it was true; but, 
 of course, I know it can't be, though a good many things 
 would come up red, like sanfoin and scarlet clover and 
 beetroots." 
 
 " A jolly good yarn," declared Raymond. 
 
 They tramped along through a network of winding lanes, 
 and presently Estelle pointed to a lofty hillock that rose 
 above the high lands on which they walked. 
 
 " That's Shipton Hill," she said, pointing to the dome- 
 like mound. " And I believe it's called so, because from 
 one point it looks exactly like a ship upside down." 
 
 " I'll bet it is, and a very good name for it." 
 
 The diminutive chapel of Chilcombe stood in a farmyard 
 beside a lofty knoll of trees. It was a stout little place of 
 early English architecture, lifted high above the surround- 
 ing country and having a free horizon of sea and land. It 
 consisted of a chancel, nave and south porch. Its bell 
 cote held one bell ; and within was a Norman font, a trefoil 
 headed piscina, and sitting room for thirty-four people. 
 
 " Isn't it a darling little church? " asked Estelle, her 
 voice sunk to a whisper; and Raymond nodded and said 
 that it was ' ripping.' 
 
 Then they examined the mediaeval treasure of the reredos 
 a panel of cedar wood, some ten feet in length, that 
 surmounted the altar. It was set in a deep oaken frame, 
 and displayed two circular drawings with an oblong pic- 
 ture in the midst. In the left circle was the scourging of 
 Christ; in the right, the Redeejner rose from the toinb; 
 
146 THE SPINNERS 
 
 while between them the crucifixion had been depicted, with 
 armies of mail-clad soldiers about the cross. The winged 
 symbols of the evangelists appeared in other portions of 
 the panel with various separate figures, and there were 
 indications that the work was unfinished. 
 
 Estelle, who had often studied every line of it, gave her 
 explanations and ideas to Raymond, while he listened with 
 great attention. Then they went to the ancient manor 
 house now converted into a farm; and there the girl had 
 friends who provided them with tea. She made no at- 
 tempt to hide her pride at her companion, for she was a 
 lonely little person and the expedition with Raymond 
 had been a great event in her life. 
 
 Exceedingly happy and contented, she walked beside 
 him homeward in the fading light and ceased not to utter 
 her budding thoughts and reflections. He proved a good 
 listener and encouraged her, for she amused him and really 
 interested him. In common with her father, Raymond was 
 often struck by the fact that a child would consider sub- 
 jects which had never entered his head ; but so it was, since 
 Estelle's mind had been wrought in a larger plan and 
 compassed heights and depths, even in its present imma- 
 turity, to which neither Waldron's nor Raymond's had 
 aspired. Yet the things she said were challenging, though 
 often absurd. Facts which he knew, though Estelle as 
 yet did not, served to block her ideals and explain her 
 mysteries, yet he recognised the girl's simple dreams, un- 
 vexed by practical considerations, or the ' nay ' that real 
 life must make to them, were beautiful. 
 
 She spoke a good deal about the Mill, where now her 
 chief interest centred; and Raymond spoke about it too. 
 And presently, after brisk interchange of ideas, she pointed 
 out a fact that had not struck him. 
 
 " It's a funny thing, Ray," she said, " but what you 
 love best about the works is the machinery; and what I 
 love best about them is the people. Yet I don't see how % 
 machine can be as interesting as a girl/' 
 
AT CHILCOMBE 147 
 
 " Perhaps you're wrong, Estelle. Perhaps I wish you 
 were right. If I hadn't found a girl more interest- 
 ing " He broke off and turned from the road she 
 
 had innocently opened into his own thoughts. 
 
 " Of course the people are more interesting, really. 
 But because I'm keen about the machines, you mustn't 
 think I'm not keener still about the people. You see the 
 better the machines, the better time the people will have, 
 and the less hard and difficult and tiring for them will be 
 their work." 
 
 She considered this and suddenly beamed. 
 
 " How splendid ! Of course I see. You are clever, 
 Ray. And it's really the people you think of all the time." 
 
 She gave him a look of admiration. 
 
 " I expect presently they'll all see that ; and gradually 
 you'll get them more and more beautiful machines, till 
 their work is just pleasure and nothing else. And do in- 
 vent something to prevent Sabina and Nancy and Alice 
 hurting their hands. They have to stop the spindles so 
 often, and it wounds them, and Nancy gets chilblains in 
 the winter, so it's simply horrid for her." 
 
 " That's right. It's one of the problems. I'm not 
 forgetting these things." 
 
 " And if I think of anything may I tell you? " 
 
 " I hope you will, Estelle." 
 
 She talked him into a pleasant humour, and it took 
 a practical form unknown to Estelle, for before they had 
 reached home again, there passed through Raymond's 
 mind a wave of contrition. The contrast between Estelle's 
 steadfast and unconscious altruism and his own irresolu- 
 tion and selfishness struck into him. She made him think 
 more kindly of Sabina, and when he considered the events 
 of that day from Sabina's standpoint, he felt ashamed 
 of himself. For it was not she who had done anything 
 unreasonable. The blame was his. He had practically 
 lied to her the Jay before, and to-day he had been harsh 
 and cruel. She had a right the best possible right 
 
148 THE SPINNERS 
 
 to come and see him; she had good reason to be angry on 
 learning that he had not kept his word. 
 
 He determined to see Sabina as quickly as possible, and 
 about seven o'clock in the evening after the return from 
 the walk, he went down to * The Magnolias ' and rang the 
 bell. Mrs. Dinnett came to the door, and said something 
 that hardened the young man's heart again very rapidly. 
 
 Sabina's mother was unfriendly. Since her daughter 
 returned, she had learned all there was to know, and for 
 the moment felt very antagonistic. She had already an- 
 nounced the betrothal to certain of her friends, and the 
 facts that day had discovered made her both anxious and 
 angry. She was a woman of intermittent courage, but 
 her paroxysms of pluck soon passed and between them she 
 was craven and easily cast down. For the moment, how- 
 ever, she felt no fear and echoed the mood in which Sabina 
 had returned from Bridport an hour earlier. 
 
 " Sabina can't be seen to-night," she said. " You 
 wouldn't have anything to do with her this afternoon, Mr. 
 Ironsyde, and treated her like a stranger; and now she 
 won't see you." 
 
 " Why not, Missis Dinnett? " 
 
 " She's got her pride, and you've wounded it and 
 worse. And I may tell you we're not the people to be 
 treated like this. It's a very ill-convenient business alto- 
 gether, and if you're a gentleman and a man of 
 honour " 
 
 He cut her short. 
 
 " Is she going to see me, or isn't she? " 
 
 " She is not. She's very much distressed, and every 
 reason to be, God knows ; and she's not going to see you 
 to-night." 
 
 Raymond took it quietly and his restraint instantly 
 alarmed Mrs. Dinnett. 
 
 " It's not my fault, Mr. Ironsyde. But seeing how 
 things are between you, she was cruel put about this after- 
 
AT CHILCOMBE 149 
 
 noon, and she's got to think of herself if you can do 
 things like that at such a moment." 
 
 " She must try and keep her nerve better. There was 
 no reason why I should break promises. She ought to 
 have waited for me to come to her." 
 
 Mary Dinnett flamed again. 
 
 " You can say that ! And didn't she wait all the morn- 
 ing to see if you'd come to her and me ? And as to 
 promises it don't trouble you to break promises, else 
 you'd have seen your family yesterday, as you told Sabina 
 you were going to do." 
 
 " Is she going to the mill to-morrow? " he asked, 
 ignoring the attack. 
 
 " No, she ain't going to the mill. It isn't a right and 
 fitting thing that the woman you're going to marry and 
 the mother of your future child should be working in a 
 spinning mill; and if you don't know it, others do." 
 
 " She told you then against my wishes ? " 
 
 " And what are your wishes alongside of your acts ? 
 You're behaving very wickedly, Mr. Ironsyde, and driving 
 my daughter frantic ; and if she can't tell her mother her 
 sorrows, who should know? " 
 
 " She has disobeyed me and done a wrong thing," he 
 said quietly. " This may alter the whole situation, and 
 you can tell her so." 
 
 " For God's sake don't talk like that. Would you ruin 
 the pair of us ? " 
 
 " What am I to do if I can't trust her? " he asked, and 
 then went abruptly away before Mary could answer. 
 
 She was terribly frightened and soon drowned in tears, 
 for when she returned to Sabina and related the conversa- 
 tion, her daughter became passionate and blamed her with 
 a shower of bitter words. 
 
 " I only told you, because I thought you had sense 
 enough to keep your mouth shut about it," she cried. 
 " Now he'll think it's common news and hate me hate 
 
150 THE SPINNERS 
 
 me for telling. You've ruined me that's what you've 
 done, and I may as well go and make a hole in the water as 
 not, for he'll never marry me now." 
 
 " You told Miss Ironsyde," sobbed the mother. 
 
 " That was different. She'll keep it to herself, and I 
 had to tell her to show how serious it was for me. For 
 anything less than that, she'd have taken his side against 
 me. And now he'll find I've been to her, and that may 
 oh, my God, why didn't I keep quiet a little longer, and 
 trust him?" 
 
 " You had every right to speak, when you found he was 
 telling lies," said Mrs. Dinnett. 
 
 And while they quarrelled, Raymond returned to North 
 Hill in a mood that could not keep silence. He and 
 Arthur Waldron smoked after supper, and when Estelle 
 had gone to bed, the younger spoke and took up the con- 
 versation of the preceding night where he had dropped it. 
 The speech that now passed, however, proceeded on a false 
 foundation, for Raymond only told Arthur what he pleased 
 and garbled the facts by withholding what was para- 
 mount. 
 
 " You were talking of Sabina Dinnett last night," he 
 said. " What would you think if I told you I was going 
 to marry her, Waldron ? " 
 
 " A big ' if.' But you're not going to tell me so. You 
 would surely have told me yesterday if you had meant 
 that." 
 
 " Why shouldn't I if I want to? " 
 
 " I always keep out of personal things even with 
 pals. I strained a point with you last night for friend- 
 ship, Ray. Is the deed done, or isn't it? If it is, there 
 is nothing left but to congratulate you and wish you both 
 luck." 
 
 "If it isn't?" 
 
 Mr. Waldron was cautious. 
 
 " You're not going to draw me till I know as much as 
 
AT CHILCOMBE 151 
 
 you know, old chap. Either you're engaged, or you're 
 not." 
 
 " Say it's an open question then what? " 
 
 " How can I say it's an open question after this ? I'm 
 not going to say a word about it." 
 
 " Well, I thought we were engaged ; but it seems there's 
 a bit of doubt in the air still." 
 
 " Then you'd better clear that doubt, before you men- 
 tion the subject again. Until you and she agree about it, 
 naturally it's nobody else's business." 
 
 " And yet everybody makes it their business, including 
 you. Why did you advise me to look out what I was do- 
 ing last night? " 
 
 " Because you're young, boy, and I thought you might 
 make a mistake and do an unsporting thing. That was 
 nothing to do with your marrying her. How was I to 
 know such an idea was in your mind? Naturally nobody 
 supposed any question of that sort had arisen." 
 
 "Why not?" 
 
 Waldron felt a little impatient. 
 
 " You know as well as I do. Men in your position 
 don't as a rule contemplate marriage with women, however 
 
 charming and clever, who . But this is nonsense. 
 
 I'm not going to answer your stupid questions." 
 
 "Then you'd say ?" 
 
 " No, I wouldn't. I'll say nothing about it. You're 
 wanting to get something for nothing now, and presently 
 I daresay you'd remind me of something I had said. We 
 can go back to the beginning if you like, but you're not 
 going to play lawyer with me, Ray. It's in a nutshell, 
 I suppose. You're going to marry Miss Dinnett, or else 
 you're not. Of course, you know which. And if you 
 won't tell me which, then don't ask me to talk about it." 
 
 " I've not decided." 
 
 " Then drop it till you have." 
 
 " You're savage now." 
 
152 THE SPINNERS 
 
 " I'm never savage you know that very well. Or, if 
 I am, it's only with men who are unsporting." 
 
 " Let's generalise, then. I suppose you'd say a man 
 was a fool to marry out of his own class." 
 
 " As a rule, yes. Because marriage is difficult enough 
 at best without complicating it like that. But there are 
 exceptions. You can't find any rule without exceptions." 
 
 " I'll tell you the truth then, Arthur. I meant to 
 marry Sabina. I believed that she was the only being in 
 the world worth living for. But things have happened 
 and now I'm doubtful whether it would be the best possi- 
 ble." 
 
 " And what about her? Is she doubtful too? " 
 
 " I don't know. Anyway I've just been down to see 
 her and she wouldn't see me." 
 
 " See her to-morrow then and clear it up. If there's 
 a doubt, give yourselves the benefit of the doubt. She's 
 tremendously clever, Estelle says, and she may be clever 
 enough to believe it wouldn't do. And if she feels like 
 that, you'll be a fool to press it." 
 
 They talked on and Waldron, despite his caution, was 
 too ingenuous to hide his real opinions. He made it 
 very clear to Raymond that any such match, in his judg- 
 ment, would be attended by failure. But he spoke in 
 ignorance of the truth. 
 
 The younger went to bed sick of himself. His instincts 
 of right and honour fought with his desires to be free. 
 His heart sank now at the prospect of matrimony. He 
 assured himself that he loved Sabina as steadfastly as ever 
 he had loved her; but that there might yet be a shared 
 life of happiness for them without the matrimonial chains. 
 He considered whether it would be possible to influence 
 Sabina in that direction ; he even went so far as to specu- 
 late on what would be his future feelings for her if she 
 insisted upon the sanctity of his promises. 
 
CHAPTER XVII 
 
 CONFUSION 
 
 MR. CHURCHOUSE was standing in his porch when a post- 
 man brought him a parcel. It was a book, and Ernest dis- 
 played mild interest. 
 
 " What should that be, I wonder? " he said. Then he 
 asked a question. 
 
 " Have you seen Bert, the newspaper boy ? For the 
 second morning he disappoints me." 
 
 But Bert himself appeared at the same moment and the 
 postman went his way. 
 
 " No newspaper on Saturday how was that? " asked 
 Mr. Churchouse. 
 
 " I was dreadful ill and my mother wouldn't let me go 
 outdoors," explained the boy. " I asked Neddy Prichard 
 to go down to the baker's and get it for you; but he 
 wouldn't." 
 
 " Then I say no more, except to hope you're better." 
 
 " It's my froat," explained Bert, a sturdy, flaxen 
 youngster of ten. 
 
 " One more point I should like to raise while you are 
 here. Have you noticed that garden chair in the porch ? " 
 
 " Yes, I have, and wondered why 'twas left there." 
 
 " Wonder no more, Bert. It is there that you may put 
 the paper upon it, rather than fling the news on a dirty 
 door-mat." 
 
 " Fancy ! " said Bert. " I never ! " 
 
 " Bear it in mind henceforth, and, if you will delay a 
 moment, I will give you some black currant lozenges for 
 your throat." 
 
 A big black cat stood by his master listening to this 
 conversation and Bert now referred to him. 
 
 153 
 
15* THE SPINNERS 
 
 " Would thicky cat sclow me? " he asked. 
 
 " No, Bert have no fear of Peter Grim," answered 
 Mr. Churchouse. " His looks belie him. He has a for- 
 bidding face but a friendly heart." 
 
 " He looks cruel fierce." 
 
 " He does, but though a great sportsman, he has a most 
 amiable nature." 
 
 Having ministered to Bert, Mr. Churchouse retired with 
 his book and paper. Then came Mary Dinnett, red-eyed 
 and in some agitation. But for a moment he did not 
 observe her trouble. He had opened his. parcel and re- 
 vealed a volume bound in withered calf and bearing signs 
 of age and harsh treatment. 
 
 " A work I have long coveted it is again * a well- 
 wisher,' Missis Dinnett, who has sent it to me. There is 
 much kindness in the world still." 
 
 But Mrs. Dinnett was too preoccupied with her own 
 affairs to feel interest in Ernest's pleasant little experi- 
 ence. By nature pessimistic, original doubts, when she 
 heard of Sabina's engagement, were now confirmed and 
 she felt certain that her daughter would never become 
 young Ironsyde's wife. Regardless of the girl's injunc- 
 tion to silence, and feeling that both for herself and 
 Sabina this disaster might alter the course of their lives 
 and bring her own hairs with sorrow to the grave, Mary 
 now took the first opportunity to relate the facts to Mr. 
 Churchouse. They created in him emotions of such deep 
 concern that neither his book nor his newspaper were 
 opened on the day of the announcement. 
 
 Mrs. Dinnett rambled through her disastrous recital, 
 declared that for her own part, she had already accepted 
 the horror of it and was prepared to face the worst that 
 could happen, and went so far as to predict what Ernest 
 himself would probably do, now that the scandal had 
 reached his ears. She was distraught and for the mo- 
 ment appeared almost to revel in the accumulated horrors 
 of the situation. 
 
CONFUSION 155 
 
 She told the story of promise and betrayal and summed 
 up with one agonised prophecy. 
 
 " And now you'll cast her out you'll turn upon us and 
 throw us out I know you will." 
 
 " * Cast her out ' ? Good God of Mercy ! Who am I to 
 cast anybody out, Missis Dinnett? Shall an elderly and 
 faulty fellow creature rise in judgment at the weakness of 
 youth? What have I done in the past to lead you to any 
 such conclusion? I feel very certain, indeed, that you 
 are permitting yourself a debauch of misery wallowing 
 in it, Mary Dinnett as misguided wretches often wallow 
 in drink out of an unmanly despair at their own human 
 weakness. Fortify yourself! Approach the question on 
 a higher plane. Remember no sparrow falls to the ground 
 without the cognisance of its Creator! As for Sabina, I 
 love her and have devoted many hours to her education. 
 I also love Raymond Ironsyde for his own sake as 
 well as his family's. I am perfectly certain that you 
 exaggerate the facts. Such a thing is quite incredible. 
 Shall I quarrel with a gracious flower because a wander- 
 ing bee has set a seed? He may be an inconsiderate and 
 greedy bee but " 
 
 Mr. Churchouse broke off, conscious that his simile 
 would land him in difficulties. 
 
 " No," he said, " we must not pursue this subject on a 
 pagan or poetical basis. We are dealing with two young 
 Christians, Missis Dinnett a man and a woman of good 
 nurture and high principle. I will never believe not 
 if he said it himself that Raymond Ironsyde would 
 commit any such unheard-of outrage. You say that he 
 has promised to marry her. That is enough for me. The 
 son of Henry Ironsyde will keep his promise. Be sure of 
 that. For the moment leave the rest in my hands. Ex- 
 ercise discretion, and pray, pray keep silence about it. 
 I do trust that nobody has heard anything. Publicity 
 might complicate the situation seriously." 
 
 As a matter of fact Mrs. Dinnett had told everything to 
 
156 THE SPINNERS 
 
 her bosom friend a woman who dwelt in a cottage one 
 hundred yards from * The Magnolias.' She did not men- 
 tion this, however. 
 
 " If you say there's hope, I'll try to believe it," she 
 answered. " The man came here last night and Sabina 
 wouldn't see him, and God knows what'll be the next 
 thing." 
 
 " Leave the next thing to me." 
 
 " She's given notice at the works. He told her to." 
 
 " Of course quite properly. Now calm down and 
 fetch me my walking boots." 
 
 In half an hour Ernest was on his way to Bridport. 
 As Sabina, before him, his instinct led to Miss Ironsyde 
 and he felt that the facts might best be imparted to her. 
 If anybody had influence with Raymond, it was she. His 
 tone of confidence before Mrs. Dinnett had been partly 
 assumed, however. His sympathies were chiefly with 
 Sabina, for she was no ordinary mill hand ; she had en- 
 enjoyed his tuition and possessed native gifts worthy of 
 admiration. But she was as excitable as her mother, and 
 if this vital matter went awry, there could be no doubt 
 that her life must be spoiled. 
 
 Mr. Churchouse managed to get a lift on his way from 
 a friendly farmer, and he arrived at Bridport Town Hall 
 soon after ten o'clock. While driving he put the matter 
 from his mind for a time, and his acquaintance started 
 other trains of thought. One of them, more agreeable 
 to a man of his temperament than the matter in hand, still 
 occupied his mind when he stood before Jenny Ironsyde. 
 
 " You ! " she said. " I had an idea you never came into 
 the world till afternoon." 
 
 " Seldom seldom. I drove a good part of the way 
 with Farmer Gate, and he made a curious remark. He 
 said that a certain person might as well be dead for all 
 the good he was. Now what constitutes life? I've been 
 asking myself that." 
 
 " It's certainly difficult to decide about some people, 
 
CONFUSION 157 
 
 whether they're alive or dead. Some make you doubt if 
 they ever were alive." 
 
 " A good many certainly don't know they're born ; and 
 plenty don't know they're dead," he declared. 
 
 " To be in your grave is not necessarily to be dead, and 
 to be in your shop, or office, needn't mean that you're 
 alive," admitted the lady. 
 
 " Quite so. Who doesn't know dead people personally, 
 and go to tea with them, and hear their bones rattle? 
 And whose spirit doesn't meet in their thoughts, or works, 
 the dead who are still living? " 
 
 " Most true, I'm sure ; but you didn't come to tell me 
 that? " 
 
 " No ; yet it has set me wondering whether, perhaps, I 
 am dead at any rate deader than I need be." 
 
 " We are probably all deader than we need be." 
 
 " But to-day there has burst into my life a very waken- 
 ing thing. It may have been sent. For mystery is every- 
 where, and what's looking exceedingly bad for those in- 
 volved, may be good for me. And yet, one can hardly 
 claim to win goodness out of the threatened misfortunes 
 to those who are dear to one." 
 
 "What's the matter? Something's happened, or you 
 wouldn't come to see me so early." 
 
 " Something has happened," he answered, " and one 
 turns to you in times of stress, just as one used to turn 
 to your dear brother, Henry. You have character, 
 shrewdness and decision." 
 
 Miss Ironsyde saw light. 
 
 " You've come for Raymond," she said. 
 
 " Now how did you divine that? But, as a matter of 
 fact, I've come for somebody else. A very serious thing 
 has happened and if we older heads " 
 
 " Who told you about it? " 
 
 " This morning, an hour ago, it was broken to me by 
 Sabina's mother." 
 
 " Tell me just what she told you, Ernest." 
 
158 THE SPINNERS 
 
 He obeyed and described the interview exactly. 
 
 " I cannot understand that, for Sabina saw me last 
 night and explained the situation. I impressed upon her 
 the importance of keeping the matter as secret as possible 
 for the present." 
 
 " Nevertheless Mary Dinnett told me. She is a very 
 impulsive person so is Sabina ; but in Sabina's case 
 there is brain power to control impulse ; in her mother's 
 case there is none." 
 
 " I'm much annoyed," declared Miss Ironsyde " not 
 of course, that you should know, but that there should be 
 talking. Please go home and tell them both to be quiet. 
 This chattering is most dangerous and may defeat every- 
 thing. Last night I wrote to Raymond directing him to 
 come and see me immediately. I did not tell him why; 
 but I told him it was urgent. I made the strongest ap- 
 peal possible. When you arrived, I thought it was he. 
 He should have been here an hour ago." 
 
 " If he is coming, I will go," answered Ernest. " I 
 don't wish to meet him at present. He has done very 
 wrongly wickedly, in fact. The question is whether 
 marriage with Sabina " 
 
 " There is no question about that in my opinion," de- 
 clared the lady. " I am a student of character, and had 
 
 she been a different sort of girl . But even as it is 
 
 I suspend judgment until I have seen Raymond. It is 
 quite impossible, however, after hearing her, to see what 
 excuse he can offer." 
 
 " She is a very superior girl indeed, and very clever 
 and refined. I always hoped she would marry a school- 
 master, or somebody with cultured tastes. But her great 
 and unusual beauty doubtless attracted Raymond." 
 
 " I think you'd better go home, Ernest. I'll write to 
 you after I've seen the boy. Do command silence from 
 both of them. I'm very angry and very distressed, but 
 really nothing can be done till we hear him. My sym- 
 
CONFUSION 159 
 
 pathy is entirely with Sabina. Let her go on with her life 
 for a day or two and " 
 
 " She's changed her life and left the Mill. I under- 
 stand Raymond told her to do so." 
 
 " That is a good sign, I suppose. If she's done that, 
 the whole affair must soon be known. But we talk in 
 the dark." 
 
 Mr. Churchouse departed, forgot his anxieties in a sec- 
 ond-hand book shop and presently returned home. 
 
 But he saw nothing of Raymond on the way ; and Miss 
 Ironsyde waited in vain for her nephew's arrival. He 
 did not come, and her letter, instead of bringing him 
 immediately as she expected, led to a very different course 
 of action on his part. 
 
 For, taken with Sabina's refusal to see him, he guessed 
 correctly at what had inspired it. Sabina had threatened 
 more than once in the past to visit Miss Ironsyde and he 
 had forbidden her to do so. Now he knew from her mother 
 why she had gone, and while not surprised, he clutched at 
 the incident and very quickly worked it into a tremendous 
 grievance against the unlucky girl. His intelligence told 
 him that he could not fairly resent her attempt to win a 
 powerful friend at this crisis in her fortunes ; but his own 
 inclinations and growing passion for liberty fastened on 
 it and made him see a possible vantage point. He worked 
 himself up into a false indignation. He knew it was false, 
 yet he persevered in it, as though it were real, and acted 
 as though it were real. 
 
 He tore up his aunt's letter and ignored it. 
 
 Instead of going to Bridport, he went to his office and 
 worked as usual. 
 
 At dinner time he expected Sabina, but she did not come 
 and he heard from Mr. Best that she was not at the works. 
 
 " She came in here and gave notice on Saturday after- 
 noon," said the foreman, shortly, and turned away from 
 Raymond even as he spoke. 
 
160 THE SPINNERS 
 
 Then the young man remembered that he had bade 
 Sabina do this. His anger increased, for now everybody 
 must soon hear of what had happened. 
 
 In a sort of subconscious way he felt glad, despite his 
 irritation, at the turn of events, for they might reconcile 
 him with his conscience and help to save the situation in 
 the long run. 
 
CHAPTER XVIII 
 
 THE LOVERS' GROVE 
 
 A LITTLE matter now kindled a great fire, and a woman's 
 reasonable irritation, which he had himself created, pro- 
 duced for Raymond Ironsyde a very complete catastrophe. 
 
 His aunt, indeed, was not prone to irritation. Few 
 women preserved a more level mind, or exhibited that self- 
 control which is a prime product of common-sense ; but, for 
 once, it must be confessed that Jenny broke down and did 
 that which she had been the first to censure in another. 
 The spark fell on sufficient fuel and the face of the earth 
 was changed for Raymond before he slept that night. 
 
 For his failure to answer her urgent appeal, his con- 
 temptuous disregard of the strongest letter she had ever 
 written, annoyed her exceedingly. It argued a callous 
 indifference to her own wishes and a spirit of extraordinary 
 unkindness. She had been a generous aunt to him all 
 his life; he had very much for which to thank her; and 
 yet before this pressing petition he could remain dumb. 
 That his mind was disordered she doubted not; but noth- 
 ing excused silence at such a moment. 
 
 After lunch on this day Daniel spent some little while 
 with his aunt, and then when a post which might have 
 brought some word from Raymond failed to do so, Jenny's 
 gust of temper spoke. It was the familiar case of a stab 
 at one who has annoyed us ; but to point such stabs, the 
 ear of a third person is necessary, and before she had 
 quite realised what she was doing, Miss Ironsyde sharply 
 blamed her nephew to his brother. 
 
 " The most inconsiderate, selfish person on earth is 
 Raymond," she said as a servant brought her two letters, 
 neither from the sinner. " I asked him and prayed 
 
 161 
 
162 THE SPINNERS 
 
 him to see me to-day about a subject of the gravest 
 importance to him and to us all ; and he neither comes nor 
 takes the least notice of my letter. He is hopeless." 
 
 "What's he done now?" 
 
 " I don't know exactly at least never mind. Leave 
 it for the minute. Sorry, I was cross. You'll know 
 what there is to know soon enough. If there's trouble in 
 store, we must put a bold face on it and think of him." 
 
 " I rather hoped things were going smoother. He 
 seems to be getting more steady and industrious." 
 
 " Perhaps he reserved his industry for the works and 
 leaves none for anything else, then," she answered ; " but 
 don't worry before you need." 
 
 " You'll tell me if there's anything I ought to know, 
 Aunt Jenny." 
 
 " He'll tell you himself, I should hope. And if he 
 doesn't, no doubt there will be plenty of other people to 
 do so. But don't meet trouble half way. Shall you be 
 back to tea?" 
 
 " Probably not. I'm going to Bridetown this after- 
 noon. I have an appointment with Best. He was to see 
 some machinery that sounded all right ; but he's very con- 
 servative and I can always trust him to be on the safe 
 side. One doesn't mean to be left behind, of course." 
 
 " Always ask yourself what your father would have 
 thought, Daniel. And then you'll not make any mis- 
 takes." 
 
 He nodded. 
 
 " I ask myself that often enough, you may be sure." 
 
 An hour later the young man had driven his trap to 
 the Mill and listened to John Best on the subject of im- 
 mediate interest. The foreman decided against any in- 
 novation for the present and Daniel was glad. Then he 
 asked for his brother. 
 
 " Is Mister Raymond here? " 
 
 " He was this morning ; but he's not down this after- 
 
THE LOVERS' GROVE 163 
 
 noon. At least he wasn't when I went to his office just 
 before you came." 
 
 " Everything's all right, I suppose? " 
 
 Mr. Best looked uncomfortable. 
 
 " I'm afraid not, sir ; but I hate talking. You'd better 
 hear it from him." 
 
 Daniel's heart sank. 
 
 " Tell me," he said. " You're one of us, John my 
 father's right hand for twenty years and our good is 
 your good. If you know of trouble, tell me the truth. It 
 may be better for him in the long run. Miss Ironsyde 
 was bothered about him, to-day." 
 
 " If it's better for him, then I'll speak," answered Best. 
 " He's a very clever young man and learning fast now. 
 He's buckling to and getting on with it. But Sabina 
 Dinnett, our first spinner, gave notice on Saturday. She's 
 not here to-day." 
 
 " What does that mean? " 
 
 " You'd better ask them that know. I've heard a lot 
 of rumours, and they may be true or not, and I hope 
 they're not. But if they are, I suppose it means the old 
 story where men get mixed up with girls." 
 
 Daniel was silent, but his face flushed. 
 
 " Don't jump to the conclusion it's true," urged the 
 foreman. " Hear both sides before you do anything about 
 it." 
 
 " I know it's true." 
 
 Mr. Best did not answer. 
 
 " And you know it's true," continued the younger. 
 
 " What everybody says nobody should believe," ven- 
 tured Best. " What happened was this Sabina came 
 in on Saturday afternoon, when I was working in my 
 garden, and gave notice. Not a month, but to go right 
 away. Of course I asked her why, but she wouldn't tell 
 me. She was as happy as a lark about it, and what she 
 said was that I'd know the reason very soon and be the 
 first to congratulate her. Of course, I thought she was 
 
164. THE SPINNERS 
 
 going to be married. And still I hope she is. That's 
 all you can take for truth. The rest is rumour. You 
 can guess how a place like this will roll it over their 
 tongues." 
 
 " I'll go and see Mister Churchouse." 
 " Do, sir. You can trust him to be charitable." 
 Daniel departed; but he did not see Ernest Churchouse. 
 The antiquary was not at home and, instead, he heard 
 Mrs. Dinnett, who poured the approximate truth into his 
 ears with many tears. His brother had promised to 
 marry Sabina, but on hearing the girl was with child, had 
 apparently refused to keep his engagement. 
 
 Then it was Daniel Ironsyde's turn to lose his temper. 
 He drove straight to North Hill House, found his brother 
 in the garden with Estelle Waldron, took him aside and 
 discharged him from the Mill. 
 
 Raymond had been considering the position and grow- 
 ing a little calmer. With a return of more even temper, 
 he had written to Miss Ironsyde and promised to be with 
 her on the following evening without fail. He had begged 
 her to keep an open mind so far as he was concerned and 
 he hoped that when the time came, he might be able to 
 trust to her life-long friendship. What he was going to 
 say, he did not yet know; but he welcomed the brief res- 
 pite and was in a good temper when his brother chal- 
 lenged him. 
 
 The attack was direct, blunt and even brutal. It burst 
 like a thunder-bolt on Raymond's head, staggered him, and 
 then, of course, enraged him. 
 
 " I won't keep you," said Daniel. " I only want to 
 know one thing. Sabina Dinnett's going to have a baby. 
 Are you the father of it, or aren't you? " 
 
 " What the devil business is that of yours ? " 
 " As one of my mill hands, I consider it is my busi- 
 ness. One thinks of them as human beings as well as 
 machines machines for work, or amusement accord- 
 ing to the point of view. So answer me." 
 
THE LOVERS' GROVE 165 
 
 " You cold-blooded cur ! What are you but a ma- 
 chine? " 
 
 " Answer my question, please." 
 
 " Go to hell." 
 
 " You blackguard ! You do a dirty, cowardly thing 
 like this, despite my warnings and entreaties; you foul 
 our name and drag it in the gutter and then aren't man 
 enough to acknowledge it." 
 
 The younger trembled with passion. 
 
 " Shut your mouth, or I'll smash your face in ! " he 
 cried. 
 
 His sudden fury calmed his brother. 
 
 " You refuse to answer, and that can only mean one 
 thing, Raymond. Then I've done with you. You've 
 dragged us all through the mud made us a shame and 
 a scandal proud people. You can go the further 
 off, the better. I dismiss you and I never want to see your 
 face again." 
 
 " Don't worry you never shall. God's my judge, I'd 
 sooner sweep a crossing than come to you for anything. 
 I know you well enough. You always meant to do this. 
 You saved your face when my father robbed me from the 
 grave and left me a pauper you saved your face by 
 putting me into the works ; but you never meant me to 
 stop there. You only waited your chance to sack me 
 and keep the lot for yourself. And you've jumped at 
 this and were glad to hear of this damned glad, I'll 
 bet!" 
 
 Daniel did not answer, but turned his back on his 
 brother, and a minute or two later was driving away. 
 When he had gone, the panting Raymond went to his 
 room and flung himself on his bed. Under his cooling 
 anger again obtruded the old satisfaction amorphous, 
 vile, not to be named that he had felt before. This 
 brought ultimate freedom a step nearer. If ostracism 
 and punishment were to be his portion, then let him earn 
 them. If the world his world was to turn against 
 
166 THE SPINNERS 
 
 him, let the reversal be for something. Poverty would 
 be a fair price for liberty, and those who now seemed so 
 ready to hound him out of his present life and crush his 
 future prospects, should live to see their error. For a 
 time he felt savagely glad that this had happened. He 
 regretted his letter to his aunt; he thought of packing 
 his portmanteau on the instant and vanishing for ever; 
 yet time and reflection abated his dreams. He began to 
 grow a little alarmed. He even regretted his harsh words 
 to his brother before the twilight fell. 
 
 Then his mind was occupied with Sabina; but Sabina 
 had wounded him to the quick, for it was clear she and her 
 mother had shamelessly published the truth. Sabina, then, 
 had courted ruin. She deserved it. He soon argued that 
 the disaster of the day was Sabina's work, and he dis- 
 missed her with an oath from his thoughts. Then he 
 turned to Miss Ironsyde and found keen curiosity waken 
 to know what she was thinking and feeling about him. 
 Did she know that Daniel had dismissed him? Could she 
 have listened to so grave a determination on Daniel's part 
 and taken no step to prevent it? 
 
 He found himself deeply concerned at being flung out of 
 his brother's business. The more he weighed all that this 
 must mean and its effect upon his future, the more over- 
 whelmed he began to be. He had worked very hard of 
 late and put all his energy and wits into spinning. He 
 was beginning to understand its infinite possibilities and 
 to see how, Daniel's trust once won, he might have ad- 
 vanced their common welfare. 
 
 From this point he ceased to regret his letter to Miss 
 Ironsyde, but was glad that he had written it. He now 
 only felt concerned that the communication was not 
 penned with some trace of apology for his past indifference 
 to her wishes. He began to see that his sole hope now 
 lay with his aunt, and the supreme point of interest centred 
 in her attitude to the situation. 
 
 He despatched a second letter, confirming the first, and 
 
THE LOVERS' GROVE 167 
 
 expressing some contrition at his behaviour to her. But 
 this rudeness he declared to have been the result of pecu- 
 liarly distressing circumstances ; and he assured her, that 
 when the facts came to her ears, she would find no diffi- 
 culty in forgiving him. 
 
 Their meeting was fixed for the following evening, and 
 until it had taken place, Raymond told nobody of what had 
 happened to him. He went to work next morning, to 
 learn indirectly whether Best had heard of his dismissal; 
 but it seemed the foreman had not. The circumstance 
 cheered Raymond; he began to hope that his brother had 
 changed his mind, and the possibility put him into a 
 sanguine mood at once. He found himself full of good 
 resolutions ; he believed that this might prove the turn- 
 ing point; he expected that Daniel would arrive at any 
 moment and he was prepared frankly to express deep re- 
 gret for his conduct if he did so. But Daniel did not 
 come. 
 
 Sabina constantly crossed Raymond's mind, to be as 
 constantly dismissed from it. He was aware that some- 
 thing definite must be done; but he determined not even 
 to consider the situation until he had seen his aunt. 
 A hopeful mood, for which no cause existed, somehow 
 possessed him upon this day. For no reason and spun 
 of nothing in the least tangible, there grew around him 
 an ambient intuition that he was going to get out of 
 this fix with the help of Jenny Ironsyde. The impres- 
 sion created a wave of generosity to Sabina. He felt 
 a large magnanimity. He was prepared to do every- 
 thing right and reasonable. He felt that his aunt would 
 approve the line he purposed to take. She was practical, 
 and he assured himself that she would not consent to 
 pronounce the doom of marriage upon him. 
 
 In this sanguine spirit Raymond went to Bridport and 
 dined at ' The Tiger 9 before going to see his aunt at the 
 appointed time. And here there happened events to upset 
 the level optimism that had ruled him all day. Raymond 
 
168 THE SPINNERS 
 
 had the little back-parlour to himself and Richard Gurd 
 waited upon him. They spoke of general subjects and 
 then the older man became personal. 
 
 " If you'll excuse me, Mister Raymond," he said, " if 
 you'll excuse me, as one who's known you ever since you 
 went out of knickers, sir, I'd venture to warn you as a 
 good friend, against a lot that's being said in Bridetown 
 and Bridport, too. You know how rumours fly about. 
 But a good deal more's being said behind your back than 
 ought to be said; and you'll do well to clear it up. And 
 by the same token, Mister Motyer's opening his mouth the 
 widest. As for me, I got it from Job Legg over the way 
 at ' The Seven Stars ' ; and he got it from a young woman 
 at Bridetown Mills, niece of Missis Northover. So these 
 things fly about." 
 
 Raymond was aware that Richard Gurd held no puritan 
 opinions. He possessed tolerance and charity for all sorts 
 and conditions, and left morals alone. 
 
 " And what did you do, Dick ? I should think you'd 
 learned by this time to let the gossip of a public-house go 
 in at one ear and out of the other." 
 
 " Yes for certain. I learned to do that before you 
 were born ; but when things are said up against those I 
 value and respect, it's different. I've told three men they 
 were liars, to-day, and I may have to tell thirty so, to- 
 morrow." 
 
 Raymond felt his heart go slower. 
 
 " What the deuce is the matter? " 
 
 " Just this : they say you promised to marry a mill girl 
 at Bridetown and the usual sort of thing - and, know- 
 ing you, I told them it was a lie." 
 
 The young man uttered a scornful ejaculation. 
 
 " Tell them to mind their own business," he said. 
 " Good heavens what a storm in a teacup it is ! They 
 couldn't bleat louder if I'd committed a murder." 
 
 " There's more to it than to most of these stories," ex- 
 plained Richard. " You see it sounds a very disgraceful 
 
THE LOVERS' GROVE 169 
 
 sort of thing, you being your brother's right hand at 
 the works." 
 
 " I'm not that, anyway." 
 
 " Well, you're an Ironsyde, Mister Raymond, and to 
 have a story of this sort told about an Ironsyde is meat 
 and drink for the baser sort. Sx> I hope you'll author- 
 ise me to contradict it." 
 
 " Good God is there no peace, even here? " burst out 
 Raymond. " Can even a man I thought large-minded and 
 broad-minded and all the rest of it, go on twaddling about 
 this as if he was an old washer-woman ? Here get me 
 my bill I've finished. And if you're going to begin 
 preaching to people who come here for their food and 
 drink, you'd better chuck a pub and start a chapel." 
 
 Mr. Gurd was stricken dumb. A thousand ghosts from 
 the grave had not startled him so much as this rebuke. 
 Indeed, in a measure, he felt the rebuke deserved, and it 
 was only because he held the rumour of Raymond's achieve- 
 ments an evil lie, that he had cautioned the young man, and 
 with the best motives, desired to put him on his guard. 
 But that the story should be true or based on truth 
 as now appeared from Raymond's anger, had never oc- 
 curred to Richard. Had he suspected such a thing, he 
 must have deplored it, but he certainly would not have 
 mentioned it. 
 
 He went out now without a word and held it the wisest 
 policy not to see his angry customer again that night. 
 He sent Raymond's account in by a maid, and the young 
 man paid it and went out to keep his appointment with 
 Miss Ironsyde. 
 
 But again his mood was changed. Gurd had hit him 
 very hard. Indeed, no such severe blow had been struck 
 as this unconscious thrust of Richard's. For it meant 
 that an incident that Raymond was striving to reconcile 
 with the ways of youth a sowing of wild oats not 
 destined to damage future crops had appeared to the 
 easy-going publican as a thing to be stoutly contra- 
 
170 THE SPINNERS 
 
 dieted an act quite incompatible with Raymond's record 
 and credit. Coming from Gurd this attitude signified a 
 great deal ; for if the keeper of a sporting inn took such a 
 line about the situation, what sort of line were others 
 likely to take? Above all, what sort of line would his 
 Aunt Jenny take ? His nebulous hopes dwindled. He be- 
 gan to fear that she would find the honour of the family 
 depended not on his freeing himself from Sabina, but the 
 contrary. 
 
 And he was right. Miss Ironsyde welcomed him kindly, 
 but left no shadow of doubt as to her opinion ; and the 
 fact that the situation had been complicated by publicity, 
 which in the last resort he argued, by no means turned 
 her from her ultimatum. 
 
 " Sit down and smoke and listen to me, Raymond," she 
 began, after kissing him. " I forgive you, once for all, 
 that you could be so rude to me and fail to see me despite 
 my very pressing letter. No doubt some whim or sus- 
 picion inspired you to be unkind. But that doesn't mat- 
 ter now. That's a trifle. We've got to thresh out some- 
 thing that isn't a trifle, however, for your honour and 
 good name are both involved and with yours, ours." 
 
 " I argue that a great deal too much is being made of 
 this, Aunt Jenny." 
 
 " I hope so I hope everything has been exaggerated 
 through a misunderstanding. Delay in these cases is often 
 simply fatal, Raymond, because it gives a lie a start. And 
 if you give a lie a start, it's terribly hard to catch. 
 Sabina Dinnett came to see me on Sunday afternoon 
 and I trust with all my heart she told me what wasn't 
 true." 
 
 He felt a sudden gleam of hope and she saw it. 
 
 " Don't let any cheerful feeling betray you ; this is far 
 from a cheerful subject for any of us. But again, I say, 
 I hope that Sabina Dinnett has come to wrong conclusions. 
 What she said was this. Trust me to be accurate, and 
 when I have done, correct her statement if it is false. 
 
THE LOVERS' GROVE 171 
 
 Frankly, I thought her a highly intelligent young woman, 
 with grace of mind and fine feeling. She was fighting for 
 her future and she did it like a gentlewoman." 
 
 Miss Ironsyde then related her conversation with Sabina 
 and Raymond knew it to be faithful in every particular. 
 
 " Is that true, or isn't it? " she concluded. 
 
 " Yes, it's perfectly true, save in her assumption that I 
 had changed my mind," he said. " What I may have 
 done since, doesn't matter ; but when I left her, I had not 
 changed my mind in the least ; if she had waited for me to 
 act in my own time, and come to see you, and so on, as 
 I meant to do, and broken it to Daniel myself, instead of 
 hearing him break it to me and dismiss me as though I 
 were a drunken groom, then I should have kept my word to 
 her. But these things, and her action, and the fact that 
 she and her fool of a mother have bleated the story all 
 over the county these things have decided me it would 
 be a terrible mistake to marry ^Sabina now. She's not 
 what I thought. Her true character is not trustworthy 
 in fact well, you must see for yourself that they 
 don't trust me and are holding a pistol to my head. And 
 no man is going to stand that. We could never be mar- 
 ried now, because she hates me. There's another reason 
 too a practical one." 
 
 "What?" 
 
 " Why, the best. I'm a pauper. Daniel has chucked 
 me out of the works." 
 
 Miss Ironsyde showed very great distress. 
 
 " Do you honestly mean that you could look the world 
 in the face if you ruin this woman? " 
 
 " Why use words like that ? She's not ruined, any 
 more than thousands of other women." 
 
 " I'm ashamed of you, Raymond. I hope to God you've 
 never said a thing so base as that to anybody but me. 
 And if I thought you meant it, I think it would break my 
 heart. But you don't mean it. You loved the girl and 
 you are an honourable man without a shadow on your 
 
172 THE SPINNERS 
 
 good name so far. You loved Sabina, and you do love her, 
 and if you said you didn't a thousand times, I should not 
 believe it. You're chivalrous and generous, and that's 
 the precious point about you. Granted that she made a 
 mistake, is her mistake to wreck her whole life? Just 
 think how she felt what a shock you gave her. You 
 part with her on Saturday the real Raymond, fully con- 
 scious that you must marry her at once for her own 
 honour and yours. Then on Sunday, you are harsh and 
 cruel for no visible reason. You frighten her ; you 
 raise up horrible fears and dangers in her young, nerv- 
 ous spirit. She is in a condition prone to terrors and 
 doubts, and upon this condition you came in a surly 
 mood and imply that you yourself are changed. What 
 wonder she lost her head? Yet I do not think that it 
 was to lose her head to come to me. She had often heard 
 you speak of me. She knew that I loved you well and 
 faithfully. She felt that if anybody could put this dread- 
 ful fear to rest, I should be the one. Don't say she wasn't 
 right." 
 
 He listened attentively and began to feel something of 
 his aunt's view. 
 
 " Forgive her first for coming to me. If mistaken, ad- 
 mit at least it was largely your own fault that she came. 
 She has nothing but love and devotion for you. She told 
 nothing but the truth." 
 
 He asked a question, which seemed far from the point, 
 but none the less indicated a coming change of attitude. 
 At any rate Jenny so regarded it. 
 
 " What d'you think of her? " 
 
 " I think she's a woman of naturally fine character. 
 She has brains and plenty of sense and if she had not loved 
 you unspeakably and been very emotional, I do not think 
 this could have happened to her." 
 
 She talked on quietly, but with the unconscious force 
 of one who feels her subject to the heart. The man 
 began to yield not for love of Sabina, but for love of 
 
THE LOVERS' GROVE 173 
 
 himself. For Miss Ironsyde continued to make him see his 
 own position must be unbearable if he persisted, while first 
 she implied and finally declared, that only through mar- 
 riage with Sabina could his own position be longer re- 
 tained. 
 
 But he put forward his dismissal as an argument against 
 marriage. 
 
 " Whatever I feel, it's too late now," he explained. 
 " Daniel heard some distorted version of the truth in 
 Bridetown, and, of course, believed it, and came to me 
 white with rage and sacked me. Well, you must see that 
 alters the case if nothing else does. Granted, for the 
 sake of argument, that I can overlook the foolish, clumsy 
 way she and her mother have behaved and go on as we 
 were going, how am I to live and keep a wife on nothing? " 
 
 " That is a small matter," she answered. " You need 
 not worry about it in the least. And you know in your 
 heart, my dear, you need not. I have had plenty of time 
 to think over this, and I have thought over it. And I am 
 very ready and willing to come between you and any tem- 
 poral trouble of that sort. As to Daniel, when he hears 
 that you are going to marry and always meant to do so, 
 it must entirely change his view of the situation. He is 
 just and reasonable. None can deny that." 
 
 " You needn't build on Daniel, however. I'd rather 
 break stones than go back to the Mill after what he said 
 to me." 
 
 " Leave him, then. Leave him out of your calculation 
 and come to me. As I tell you, I've thought about it a 
 great deal, and first I think Sabina is well suited to be a 
 good wife to you. With time and application she will 
 become a woman that any man might be proud to marry. 
 I say that without prejudice, because I honestly think it. 
 She is adaptable, and, I believe, would very quickly de- 
 velop into a woman in every way worthy of your real 
 self. And I am prepared to give you five hundred a year, 
 Raymond. After all, why not? All that I have is yours 
 
THE SPINNERS 
 
 and your brother's, some day. And since you need it 
 now, you shall have it now." 
 
 At another time he had been moved by this generosity; 
 to-night, knowing what it embraced, he was not so grateful 
 as he might have been. His instinct was to protest that 
 he would not marry Sabina ; but shame prevented him from 
 speaking, since he could advance no decent reason for 
 such a change of mind. He felt vaguely, dimly at the 
 bottom of his soul that, despite events, he ought not to 
 marry her. He believed, apart from his own intense aver- 
 sion from so doing now, that marriage with him would 
 not in the long run conduce to Sabina's happiness. But 
 where were the words capable of lending any conviction 
 to such a sentiment? Certainly he could think of none 
 that would change his aunt's opinion. 
 
 Sullenly he accepted her view with outward acknowl- 
 edgment and inward resentment. Then she said a thing 
 that nearly made him rebel, since it struck at his pride, 
 indicated that Miss Ironsyde was sure of her ground, 
 showed that she had assumed the outcome of their meet- 
 ing before the event. 
 
 First, however, he thanked her. 
 
 " Of course, it is amazingly good and kind. I don't 
 like to accept it. But I suppose it would hurt you more if 
 I didn't than if I do. It's a condition naturally that I 
 marry Sabina I quite understand that. Well, I must 
 then. I might have been a better friend to her if I hadn't 
 married ; and might love her better and love her longer for 
 that matter. But, of course, I can't expect you to un- 
 derstand that. I only want to be sporting, and a man's 
 idea of being sporting isn't the same " 
 
 " Now, now you're forgetting and talking nonsense, 
 Raymond. You really are forgetting. A man's idea of 
 being * sporting ' does not mean telling stories to a trust- 
 ing and loving girl, does it? I don't want anybody to 
 judge you but yourself. I am perfectly content to leave 
 it to your own conscience. And very sure I am that 
 
THE LOVERS' GROVE 175 
 
 if you ask yourself the question, you'll answer it as it 
 should be answered. So sure, indeed, that I have done a 
 definite thing about it, which I will tell you in a moment. 
 For the rest you must find 'a house where you please and 
 be married as soon as you can. And when Daniel un- 
 derstands what a right and proper thing you're doing, I 
 think you'll very soon find all will be satisfactory again in 
 that quarter." 
 
 " Thank you, I'm sure. But don't speak to him yet. 
 I won't ask for favours nor let you, Aunt Jenny. If he 
 comes to me, well and good I certainly won't go to him. 
 As to Sabina, we'll clear out and get married in a day or 
 two." 
 
 " Not before a Registrar," pleaded Miss Ironsyde. 
 
 " Before the Devil I should think," he said, preparing 
 to leave her. 
 
 She chid him and then mentioned certain preparations 
 made for this particular evening. 
 
 " Don't be cross any more, and let me see you value my 
 good will and love, Ray, by doing what I'm going to ask 
 you to do, now. So sure was I that, when the little de- 
 tails were cleared up, you would feel with me, and wel- 
 come your liberty from constraint, and return to Sabina 
 with the good news, that I asked her to meet you to-night 
 this very night, my dear, so that you might go home 
 with her and make her happy. She had tea with me 
 I made her come, and then she went to friends, and she will 
 be in the Lovers' Grove waiting for you at ten o'clock 
 half an hour from now." 
 
 His impulse was to protest, but he recognised the futil- 
 ity for so doing. He felt baffled and cowed and weary. 
 He hated himself because, weakened by poverty, an old 
 woman had been too much for him. He clutched at a hope. 
 Perhaps by doing as his aunt desired and going through 
 with this thing, he would find his peace of mind return 
 and a consciousness that, after all, to keep his promise 
 was the only thing which would renew his self-respect, 
 
176 THE SPINNERS 
 
 It might prove the line of least resistance to take this 
 course. He felt not sorry at the immediate prospect of 
 meeting Sabina. In his present mood that might be a 
 good thing to happen. Annoyance passed, and when he 
 did take leave it was with more expressions of gratitude. 
 
 " I don't know why you are so extraordinarily good to 
 me," he said. " I certainly don't deserve it. But the 
 least I can do is throw up the sponge and do as you will, 
 and trust your judgment. I don't say I agree with you, 
 but I'm going to do it ; and if it's a failure, I shan't 
 blame you, Aunt Jenny." 
 
 " It won't be a failure. I'm as sure as I'm sure of any- 
 thing that it will be a splendid success, Raymond. Come 
 again, very soon, and tell me what you decide about a 
 house. And remember one thing don't fly away and 
 take a house goodness knows where. Always reckon with 
 the possibility I think certainty that Daniel will 
 soon be friendly, when he hears you're going to be mar- 
 ried." 
 
 He left her very exhausted, and if her spirits sank a little 
 after his departure, Raymond's tended to rise. The night 
 air and moonlight brisked him up; he felt a reaction to- 
 wards Sabina and perceived that she must have suffered 
 a good deal. He threw the blame on her mother. Once 
 out of Bridetown things would settle down ; and if his 
 brother came to his senses and asked him to return, he 
 would make it a condition that he worked henceforth at 
 Bridport. A feeling of hatred for Bridetown mastered 
 him. 
 
 He descended West Street until the town lay behind 
 him, then turned to the left through a wicket, crossed 
 some meadows and reached a popular local tryst and 
 sanctity: the Lovers' Grove. A certain crudity in the 
 ideas of Miss Ironsyde struck Raymond. How simple 
 and primitive she was after all. Could such an unworldly 
 and inexperienced woman be right? He doubted it. But 
 be went on through the avenue of lime and sycamore trees 
 
THE LOVERS' GROVE 177 
 
 which made the traditional grove. Beneath them ran 
 pavement of rough stones, that lifted the pathway above 
 possible inundation, and, to-night, the pattern of the 
 naked boughs above was thrown down upon the stones in 
 a black lace work by the moon. The place was very still, 
 but half a mile distant there dreamed great woods, whence 
 came the hooting of an owl. 
 
 Raymond stood to listen, and when the bird was silent, 
 he heard a footfall ring on the paving-stones and saw 
 Sabina coming to him. At heart she had been fearful that 
 he would not appear; but this she did not whisper now. 
 Instead she pretended confidence and said, " I knew you'd 
 
 come! 
 
 I 99 
 
 He responded with fair ardour and tried to banish his 
 grievances against her. He assured her that all her alarm 
 and tribulation were not his fault, but her own; and her 
 responsive agreement and servile tact, by its self-evidence 
 defeated its own object and fretted the man's nerves, de- 
 spite his kindly feelings. For Sabina, in her unspeakable 
 thankfulness at the turn of events, sank from herself and 
 was obsequious. When they met he kissed her and pres- 
 ently, holding his hand, she kissed it. She heaped blame 
 upon herself and praised his magnanimity; she presented 
 the ordinary phenomena of a happy release from affliction 
 and fear ; but her intense humility was far from agreeable 
 to Raymond, since its very accentuation served to show 
 his own recent actions in painful colours. 
 
 He told her what his aunt was going to do ; and where 
 a subtler mind had held its peace, Sabina erred again and 
 praised Miss Ironsyde. In truth, she was not at her 
 best to-night and her excitement acted unfavourably on 
 Raymond. He fought against his own emotions, and 
 listened to her high-strung chatter and plans for the 
 future. A torrent of blame had better suited the contrite 
 mood in which she met him ; but she took the blame on her 
 own shoulders, and in her relief said things sycophantic 
 and untrue. 
 
178 THE SPINNERS 
 
 He told her almost roughly to stop. 
 
 " For God's sake don't blackguard yourself any more," 
 he said. " Give me a chance. It's for me to apologise to 
 you, surely. I knew perfectly well you meant nothing, and 
 I ought to have had more imagination and not given you 
 any cause to be nervous. I frightened you, and if a 
 woman's frightened, of course, she's not to be blamed for 
 what she does, any more than a man's to be blamed for 
 what he does when he's drunk." 
 
 This, however, she would not allow. 
 
 " If I had trusted you, and known you could not do 
 wrong, and remembered what you said when I told you 
 about the child then all this would have been escaped. 
 And God knows I did trust you at the bottom of my heart 
 all the time." 
 
 She talked on and the man tired of it and, looking far 
 ahead, perceived that his life must be shared for ever 
 with a nature only now about to be revealed to him. He 
 had seen the best of her; but he had never seen the whole 
 truth of her. He knew she was excitable and passionate ; 
 but the excitation and passion had all been displayed for 
 him till now. How different when she approached other 
 affairs of life than love, and brought her emotional char- 
 acteristics to bear upon them! A sensation of unutter- 
 able flatness overtook Raymond. She began talking of 
 finding a house, and was not aware that his brother had 
 dismissed him. 
 
 He snatched an evil pleasure from telling her so. It 
 silenced her and made her the more oppressively submis- 
 sive. But through this announcement he won temporary 
 release. There came a longing to leave her, to go back to 
 Bridport and see other faces, hear other voices and 
 speak of other things. They had walked homeward 
 through the valley of the river and, at West Haven, Ray- 
 mond announced that she must go the remainder of the 
 way alone. He salved the unexpected shock of this with a 
 cheerful promise. 
 
THE LOVERS' GROVE 179 
 
 " I sleep at Bridport, to-night," he said, " and I'll leave 
 you here, Sabina ; but be quite happy. I dare say Daniel 
 will be all right. He's a pious blade and all that sort of 
 thing and doesn't understand real life. And as some fool 
 broke our bit of real life rather roughly on his ear, it was 
 too much for his weak nerves. I shan't take you very far 
 off anyway. We'll have a look round soon. I'll go to a 
 house agent or somebody in a day or two." 
 
 " You must choose," she said. 
 
 " No, no that's up to you, and you mustn't have 
 small ideas about it either. You're going to live in a j oily 
 good house, I promise you." 
 
 This sweetened the parting. He kissed her and turned 
 his face to Bridport, while she followed the road home- 
 ward. It took her past the old store black as the night 
 under a roof silvered by the moon. A strange shiver ran 
 through her as she passed it. She could have prayed for 
 time to turn back. 
 
 " Oh, my God, if 1 was a maiden again ! " she said in a 
 low voice to herself. 
 
 Then, growing calmer and musing of the past rather 
 than the future, she asked herself whether in that case she 
 would still be caring for Raymond; but she turned from 
 such a thought and smothered the secret indignation still 
 lying red-hot and hidden under the smoke of the things she 
 had said to him that night. 
 
 On his way to Bridport, the man also reflected, but of 
 the future, not the past. 
 
 " I must be cruel to be kind," he told himself. What 
 he exactly meant by the assurance, he hardly knew. But, 
 in some way, it assisted self-respect and promised a course 
 of action likely to justify his coming life. 
 
CHAPTER XIX 
 
 JOB LEGO'S AMBITION 
 
 A DISQUIETING and wholly unexpected event now broke into 
 the strenuous days of the mistress of ' The Seven Stars.' 
 It followed another, which was now a thing of the past; 
 but Mrs. Northover had scarcely finished being thankful 
 that the old order was restored again, when that occurred 
 to prove the old order could never be restored. 
 
 Job Legg had been called away to the deathbed of an 
 aged uncle. For a fortnight he was absent, and during 
 that time Nelly Northover found herself the victim of a 
 revelation. She perceived, indeed, startling truths until 
 then hidden from her, and found the absence of Job 
 created undreamed-of complications. At every turn she 
 missed the man and discovered, very much to her own 
 surprise, that this most unassuming person appeared vital 
 to the success of her famous house. On every hand she 
 heard the same words ; all progress was suspended ; noth- 
 ing could advance until the return of Mr. Legg. ' The 
 Seven Stars ' were arrested in their courses while he con- 
 tinued absent. 
 
 Thus his temporary disappearance affected the system 
 and proved that around the sun of Job Legg, quite as 
 much as his mistress, the galaxy revolved; but something 
 more than this remained to be discovered by Mrs. North- 
 over herself. She found that not only had she under- 
 valued his significance and importance in her scheme of 
 things ; but that she entertained a personal regard for 
 the man, unsuspected until he was absent. She missed 
 him at every turn; and when he came back to her, after 
 
 180 
 
JOB LEGG'S AMBITION 181 
 
 burying his uncle, Mrs. Northover could have kissed 
 him. 
 
 This she did not do; but she was honest; she related 
 the suspension of many great affairs for need of Job ; she 
 described to him the dislocation that his departure had 
 occasioned and declared her hearty thankfulness that her 
 right hand had returned to her. 
 
 " You was uppermost in my mind a thousand times a 
 day, Job; and when it came to doing the fifty thousand 
 things you do, I began to see what there is to you," said 
 Nelly Northover. " And this I'll say : you haven't been 
 getting enough money along with me." 
 
 He was pleased and smiled and thanked her. 
 
 " I've missed ' The Stars,' " he said, " and am very glad 
 to be back." 
 
 Then when things were settled down and Mrs. North- 
 over happy and content once more, Mr. Legg cast her 
 into much doubt and uncertainty. Indeed his attitude so 
 unexpected, awoke a measure of dismay. Life, that Nelly 
 hoped was becoming static and comfortable again, sud- 
 denly grew highly dynamic. Changes stared her in the 
 face and that was done which nothing could undo. 
 
 On the night that Raymond Ironsyde left Sabina at 
 West Haven and returned to Bridport, Mr. Legg, the 
 day's work done, drank a glass of sloe gin in Mrs. North- 
 over's little parlour and uttered a startling proposition 
 the last to have been expected. 
 
 The landlady herself unconsciously opened the way to 
 it, for she touched the matter of his wages and announced 
 her purpose to increase them by five shillings a week. 
 Then he spoke. 
 
 " Before we talk about that, hear me," he said. " You 
 were too nice-minded to ask me if I got anything by the 
 death of my old man; but I may tell you, that I got 
 everything. And there was a great deal more than any- 
 body knew. In short he's left me a shade over two hun- 
 dred pounds per annum, and that with my own savings 
 
188 THE SPINNERS 
 
 for I've saved since I was thirteen years old brings 
 my income somewhere near the two hundred and fifty mark 
 not counting wages." 
 
 " Good powers, Job ! But I am glad. Never none 
 on earth deserved a bit better than you do." 
 
 " And yet," he said, u I only ask myself if all this lifts 
 me high enough to say what I want to say. You know 
 me for a modest man, Mrs. Northover." 
 
 " None more so, Job." 
 
 " And therefore I've thought a good deal about it and 
 come to it by the way of reason as well as inclination. In 
 fact I began to think about what I'm going to say now, 
 many years ago after your husband died. And I just 
 let the idea go on till the appointed time, if ever it should 
 come; and when my uncle died and left a bit over four 
 thousand pounds to me, I felt the hour had struck ! " 
 
 Nelly's heart sank. 
 
 " You're going? " she said. " All this means that you 
 are going into business on your own, Legg." 
 
 " Let me finish. But be sure of one thing ; I'm not going 
 if I can stay with peace and honour. If I can't, then, of 
 course, I must go. To go would be a terrible sad thing 
 for me, for I've grown into this place and feel as much a 
 part of it as the beer engine, or the herbaceous border. 
 But I had to weigh the chances, and I may say my cautious 
 bent of mind showed very clearly what they were. And, 
 so, first, I'll tell what a flight I've took and what a 
 thought I've dared, and then I'll ask you, being a woman 
 with a quick mind and tongue, to answer nothing for the 
 moment, and say no word that you may wish to recall 
 after." 
 
 " All very wise and proper, I'm sure." 
 
 " If it ain't, God forgive me, seeing I've been working it 
 out in my mind for very near twenty years. And I say 
 this, that being now a man of capital, and a healthy and 
 respectable man, and well thought of, I believe, and noth- 
 
JOB LEGG'S AMBITION 183 
 
 ing against me to my knowledge, I offer to marry you, 
 Nelly Northover. The idea, of course, comes upon you 
 like a bolt from the blue, as I can see by your face; but 
 before you answer * No,' I must say I've loved you in a 
 respectful manner for many years, and though I knew 
 my place too well to say so, I let it appear by faithful 
 service and very sharp eyes always on your interests 
 day and night you may say." 
 
 " That is true," she said. " I didn't know my luck." 
 " I don't say that. Any honourable man would have 
 done so much, very likely ; but perhaps -* however, I'm not 
 here to praise myself but to praise you ; and I may add I 
 never in a large experience saw the woman maid, wife or 
 widow to hold a candle to you for brains and energy and 
 far-reaching fine qualities in general. And therefore I 
 never could be worthy of you, and I don't pretend to it, 
 and the man who did would be a very vain and windy fool ; 
 but such is my high opinion and great desire to be your 
 husband that I risk, you may say, everything by offering 
 myself." 
 
 " This is a very great surprise, Job." 
 " So great that you must do me one good turn and' not 
 .answer without letting it sink in, if you please. I have a 
 right to beg that. Of course I know on the spur of the 
 moment the really nice-minded woman always turns down 
 the adventurous male. 'Tis their delicate instinct so to 
 do. But you won't do that for fairness to me. And 
 there's more to it yet, because we've got to think of fair- 
 ness to you also. I wouldn't have you buy a pig in a 
 poke and take a man of means without knowing where 
 you stood. So I may say that if you presently felt the 
 same as I do about it, I should spend a bit of my capital on 
 * The Seven Stars,' which, in my judgment, is now crying 
 for capital expenditure." 
 
 " It is," admitted Mrs. Northover, " I grant you that." 
 " Very well, then. It would be my pride " 
 
184. THE SPINNERS 
 
 He was interrupted, for the bell of the inn rang and a 
 moment later Raymond Ironsyde appeared in the hall. 
 He had come for supper and bed. 
 
 " Good evening, Mrs. Northover," he said. " I'm be- 
 lated and starving into the bargain. Have you got a 
 room? " 
 
 " For that matter, yes," she answered not very enthusi- 
 astically. " But surely * The Tiger's ' your house, sir? " 
 
 " I'm not bound to * The Tiger,' and very likely shall 
 never go there again. Gurd is getting too big for his 
 shoes and seems to think he's called upon to preach sermons 
 to his customers, besides doing his duty as a publican. If 
 I want sermons I can go to church for them, not to an 
 inn. Give me some supper and a bottle of your best claret. 
 I'm tired and bothered." 
 
 A customer was a customer and Mrs. Northover had far 
 too much experience to take up the cudgels for her friend 
 over the way. She guessed pretty accurately at the sub- 
 ject of Richard Gurd's discourse, yet wondered that he 
 should have spoken. For her own part, while quite as 
 indignant as others and more sorry than many that this 
 cloud should have darkened a famous local name, she held 
 it no personal business of hers. 
 
 " I'll see what cold meat we've got. Would you like a 
 chicken, sir? " 
 
 " No beef, and plenty of it. And let me have a 
 room." 
 
 Job Legg, concealing the mighty matters in his own 
 bosom, soon waited upon Raymond and found him in a 
 sulky humour. The claret was not to his liking and he 
 ordered spirits. He began to smoke and drink, and from 
 an unamiable mood soon thawed and became talkative. 
 He bade Job stay and listen to him. 
 
 " I've got a hell of a lot on my mind," he said, " and 
 it's a relief to talk to a sensible man. There aren't many 
 knocking about so far as I can see." 
 
 He rambled on touching indirectly, as he imagined, at 
 
JOB LEGG'S AMBITION 185 
 
 his own affairs, but making it clear to the listener that a 
 very considerable tumult raged in Raymond's own mind. 
 Then came Mrs. Northover, told the guest that it was 
 nearer two o'clock than one, and hoped he was soon going 
 to bed. 
 
 He promised to do so and she departed ; but the faithful 
 Job, himself not sleepy, kept Raymond company. Un- 
 availingly he urged the desirability of sleep, but young 
 Ironsyde sat on until he was very drunk. Then Mr. Legg 
 helped him upstairs and assisted him to his bed. 
 
 It was after three o'clock before he retired himself and 
 found his mind at liberty to speculate upon the issue of his 
 own great adventure. 
 
CHAPTER XX 
 
 A CONFERENCE 
 
 JENNY IRONSYDE came to see Ernest Churchouse upon the 
 matter of the marriage. She found him pensive and a 
 little weary. According to his custom he indulged in ideas 
 before approaching the subject just then uppermost in all 
 minds in Bridetown. 
 
 " I have been suffering from rather a severe dose of 
 the actual," he said ; " at present, in the minds of those 
 about me, there is no room for any abstraction. We are 
 confronted with facts painful facts a most depress- 
 ing condition for such a mind as mine. There are three 
 orders of intelligence, Jenny. The lowest never reaches 
 higher than the discussion of persons ; the second talks 
 about places, which is certainly better ; the third soars into 
 the region of ideas ; and when one finds a person indulge 
 in ideas, then court their friendship, for ideas are the only 
 sound basis of intellectual interchanges. It is so strange 
 to see an educated person, who might be discussing the 
 deepest mysteries and noblest problems of life, preferring 
 to relate the errors of a domestic servant, or deplore the 
 price of sprats." 
 
 " All very well for you," declared Miss Ironsyde ; " from 
 your isolated situation, above material cares and anxieties, 
 you can affect this superiority ; but what about Mrs. Din- 
 nett? You would very soon be grumbling if Mrs. Dinnett 
 put the deepest mysteries and noblest problems of life 
 before the price of sprats. It is true that man cannot 
 live by bread alone ; and it is equally true that he cannot 
 live without it. The highest flights are impossible with- 
 out cooking, and cooking would be impossible if all aspired 
 
 to the highest flights." 
 
 186 
 
A CONFERENCE 187 
 
 " As a matter of fact, Mrs. Dinnett is my present source 
 of depression," he said. " All is going as it should go, I 
 suppose. The young people are reconciled, and I have 
 arranged that Sabina should be married from here a fort- 
 night hence. Thus, as it were, I shield and protect her 
 and support her against back-biting and evil tongues." 
 
 " It is splendid of you." 
 
 " Far from it. I am only doing the obvious. I care 
 much for the girl. But Mary Dinnett, despite the need 
 to be sanguine and expeditious, permits herself an amount 
 of obstinate melancholy which is most ill-judged and quite 
 unjustified by the situation. Nothing will satisfy her. 
 She scorns hope. She declines to take a cheerful view. 
 She even confesses to a premonition they are not going 
 to be married after all. She says that her grandmother 
 had second sight -and believes that the doubtful gift has 
 been handed down to her." 
 
 " This is very bad for Sabina." 
 
 " Of course it is. I impress that upon her mother. 
 The girl has been through a great deal. She is highly 
 strung at all times, and these affairs have wrought havoc 
 with her intelligence for the moment. Her one thought 
 and feverish longing is to be married, and her mother's 
 fatuous prophecies that she never will be are causing 
 serious nervous trouble to Sabina. I feel sure of it. 
 They may even be doing permanent harm." 
 
 " You should suppress Mary." 
 
 " I endeavour to do so. I put much serving upon her ; 
 but her frame of mind is such that her energy is equal to 
 anything. You had better see her and caution her. From 
 another woman, words of wisdom would carry more weight 
 than mine. As to Sabina, I have warned her against her 
 mother a strong thing to do, but I felt it to be my 
 duty." 
 
 They saw Mary Dinnett then, and Miss Ironsyde quickly 
 realised that there were subtle tribulations and shades of 
 doubt in the mother's mind beyond Mr. Churchouse's power 
 
188 THE SPINNERS 
 
 to appreciate. Indeed, Mrs. Dinnett, encouraged so to 
 do by the sympathetic presence of Jenny Ironsyde, strove 
 to give reasons for her continued gloom. 
 
 " You must be more hopeful and put a brighter face on 
 it, Mary, if only for the sake of the young people," de- 
 clared the visitor. " You're not approaching the mar- 
 riage from the right point of view. We must forget the 
 past and keep our minds on the future and proceed with 
 this affair just as though it were an ordinary marriage 
 without any disquieting features. We have to remember 
 that they love each other and really are well suited. The 
 future is chequered by certain differences between my 
 nephews, which have not yet been smoothed out; but I am 
 sure that they will be; and meantime you need feel no 
 fear of any inconvenience for Sabina. I am responsible." 
 
 " I know all that," said Mrs. Dinnett, " and your name 
 is in my prayers when I rise up and when I go to bed. 
 But while there's a lot other people can do for 'em, there's 
 also a deal they can only do for themselves ; and, in my 
 opinion, they are not doing it. It's no good us play- 
 acting and forgetting the past and pretending everything 
 is just as it should be, if they won't." 
 
 " But they have." 
 
 " Sabina has. I doubt if he has. I don't know how you 
 find him, but when I see him he's not in a nice temper and 
 not taking the situation in the spirit of a happy bride- 
 groom very far from it. And my second-sight, which 
 I get from my grandmother, points to one thing: that 
 there won't be no wedding." 
 
 " This is preposterous," declared Miss Ironsyde. " The 
 day is fixed and every preparation far advanced." 
 
 " That's nought to a wayward mind like his. He's 
 got in a state now when I wouldn't trust him a yard. And 
 I hope to God you'll hold the reins tight, miss, and not 
 slacken till they're man and wife. Once let him see his 
 way clear to bolt, and bolt he will." 
 
 Mr. Churchouse protested, while Jenny only sighed. 
 
A CONFERENCE 189 
 
 Sabina's mother was echoing her own secret uneasiness, 
 but she lamented that others had marked it as well as 
 herself. 
 
 " He is in a very moody state, but never speaks of any 
 change of mind to me." 
 
 " Because he well knows you hold the purse," said Mrs. 
 Dinnett. " I don't want to say anything uncharitable 
 against the man, though I might ; but I will say that there's 
 danger and that I do well to be a miserable woman till the 
 danger's past. You tell me to cheer up, and I promise 
 to cheer up quick enough when there's reason to do so. 
 Mr. Churchouse here is the best gentleman on God's earth ; 
 but he don't understand a mother's heart how should 
 he? and he don't know what a lot women have got to hide 
 from men for their own self-respect, and because men 
 as a body are such clumsy-minded fools speaking gen- 
 erally, of course." 
 
 To see even Mrs. Dinnett dealing thus in ideas excited 
 Ernest and filled him with interest. He forgot every- 
 thing but the principle she asserted and would have dis- 
 cussed it for an hour ; but Mary, having thus hit back ef- 
 fectively, departed, and Miss Ironsyde brought the master 
 of ' The Magnolias ' back to tK^ir subject. 
 
 " There's a lot of truth in what she says and it shows 
 how trouble quickens the wits," she declared ; " and I can 
 say to you, what I wouldn't to her, that Raymond is not 
 taking this in a good spirit, or as I hoped and expected. 
 I feel for him, too, while being absolutely firm with him. 
 Stupid things were done and the secret of his folly made 
 public. He has a grudge against them and, of course, 
 that is rather a threatening fact, because a grudge against 
 anybody is a deadly thing to get into one's mind. It 
 poisons character and ruins your steady outlook, if it is 
 deep seated enough." 
 
 " Would you say that he bore Sabina a grudge? " 
 
 " I'm afraid so ; but I do my best to dispel it by point- 
 ing out what she thought herself faced with. And I tell 
 
190 THE SPINNERS 
 
 him what is true, that Sabina in her moments of greatest 
 fear and exasperation, always behaved like a lady. But in 
 your ear only, Ernest, I confess to a new sensation a 
 sickly sensation of doubt. It comes over my religious 
 certainty sometimes, like a fog. It's cold and shivery. 
 Of course from every standpoint of religion and honour 
 and justice, they ought to be married. But " 
 
 He stopped her. 
 
 " Having named religion and honour and justice, there 
 is no room for ' but/ Indeed, Jenny, there is not." 
 
 " Let me speak, all the same. Other people can have 
 intuitions besides Mrs. Dinnett. It's an intuition not 
 second sight but it is alive. Supposing this marriage 
 doesn't really make for the happiness of either of them? " 
 
 " If they put religion and honour and justice first, it 
 must," he repeated. " You cannot, I venture to say, 
 have happiness without religion and honour and justice; 
 and if Raymond were to go back on his word now, he 
 would be the most miserable man in the country." 
 
 " I wonder." 
 
 " Don't wonder. Be sure of it. Granted he finds him- 
 self miserable that is because he has committed a fault. 
 Will it make him less miserable to go on and commit a 
 greater? Sorrow is a fair price to pay for wisdom, Jenny. 
 He is a great deal wiser now than he was six months ago, 
 and to shirk his responsibilities and break his word will 
 not mend matters. Besides, there is another considera- 
 tion, which you forget. These young people are no 
 longer free. Even if they both desired to remain single, 
 honour, justice and religion actually demand marriage. 
 There was a doubt in my own mind once, too, whether 
 their happiness would be assured by union. Now there 
 is no doubt. A child is coming into the world. Need 
 I say more ? " 
 
 " I stand corrected," she answered. " There is really 
 nothing more to be said. For the child's sake, if for 
 no other reason, marry they must. We know too well the 
 
A CONFERENCE 191 
 
 fate of the child born out of wedlock in this country." 
 
 " It is a shameful and cruel fate ; and while the Church 
 of England cowardly suffers the State to impose it, and 
 selfish men care not, we, with some enthusiasm for the 
 unborn and some indignation to see their disabilities, must 
 do what lies in our power for them." 
 
 He rambled off into generalities inspired by this grave 
 theme. 
 
 " * Suffer the little children to come unto Me,* said 
 Christ; and we make it almost impossible for fifty thou- 
 sand little children to come unto Him every year; and 
 those who stand for Him, the ministers of His Church, 
 lift not a finger. The little children of nobody they are. 
 They grow up conscious of their handicap ; they come into 
 the world to trust and hope and find themselves pariahs. 
 Is that conducive to a religious trust in God, or a rational 
 trust in man for these outlawed thousands ? " 
 
 She brought him back again to Raymond and Sabina. 
 
 " Apart from the necessity and justice," she said, " and 
 taking it for granted that the thing must happen, what is 
 your opinion of the future? You know Sabina well and 
 ought to be in a position to say if you think she will have 
 the wit and sense to make it a happy marriage." 
 
 66 1 should wish to think so. They are a gracious pair 
 at least they were. I liked both boy and girl exceed- 
 ingly and I happened to be the one who introduced them 
 to each other. It was after Henry's death. Sabina came 
 in with our tea and one could almost see an understanding 
 spring up and come to life under one's eyes. They've 
 been wicked, Jenny ; but such is my hopelessly open mind 
 in the matter of goodness and wickedness, that I often 
 find it harder to forgive some people for doing their duty 
 than others for being wicked. In fact, some do their duty 
 in a way that is perfectly unforgivable, while others fail 
 in such an affecting and attractive manner that they make 
 you all the fonder of them." 
 
 " I feel so, too, sometimes," she admitted, " but I never 
 
192 THE SPINNERS 
 
 dared to confess it. Once married, I think Raymond 
 would steady down and realise his responsibilities. We 
 must both do what we can to bring the brothers together 
 again. It will take a long time to make Daniel forgive 
 this business." 
 
 " It is just the Daniel type who would take it most seri- 
 ously, even if we are able soon to say ' all's well that ends 
 well.' For that reason, one regrets he heard particulars. 
 However, we must trust and believe the future will set all 
 right and reinstate Raymond at the works. For my own 
 part I feel very sure that will happen." 
 
 " Well, I always like to see hope triumphing over ex- 
 perience," she said, " and one need never look further 
 than you for that." 
 
 " Thank yourself," he answered. " Your steadfast 
 optimism always awakes an echo in me. If we make up 
 our minds that this is going to be all right, that will at 
 least help on the good cause. We can't do much to 
 make it all right, but we can do something. They are in 
 Bridport house-hunting this morning, I hear." 
 
 " They are ; and that reminds me they come to lunch 
 and, I hope, to report progress. Of course anything 
 Raymond likes, Sabina approves ; but he isn't easily satis- 
 fied. However, they may have found something. Daniel, 
 rather fortunately, is from home just now, in the North." 
 
 " If we could get him to the wedding, it would be a 
 great thing." 
 
 " I'm afraid we mustn't hope for that ; but we can both 
 urge him to come. He may." 
 
 " I will compose a very special letter to him," said Mr. 
 Churchouse. " How's your rheumatism? " 
 
 " Better, if anything." 
 
CHAPTER XXI 
 
 THE WARPING MII/L 
 
 IN the warping shed Mercy Gale plied her work. It was a 
 separate building adjoining the stores at Bridetown Mill 
 and, like them, impregnated with the distinctive, fat smell 
 of flax and hemp. Under dusty rafters and on a floor of 
 stone the huge warping reels stood. They were light, open 
 frameworks that rose from floor to ceiling and turned upon 
 steel rods. Hither came the full bobbins from the spin- 
 ning machines to be wound off. Two dozen of the bobbins 
 hung together on a flat frame or ' creel ' and through eyes 
 and slots the yarn ran through a * hake,' which deftly 
 crossed the strands so that they ran smoothly and freely. 
 The hake box rose and fell and lapped the yarn in perfect 
 spirals round the warping reels as they revolved. The 
 length of a reel of twine varies in different places and coun- 
 tries ; but at Bridetown, a Dorset reel was always meas- 
 ured, and it represented twenty-one thousand, six hundred 
 yards. 
 
 Mercy Gale was chaining the warp off the reels in great 
 massive coils which would presently depart to be polished 
 and finished at Bridport. All its multiple forms sprang 
 from the simple yarn. It would turn into shop and parcel 
 twines ; fishing twines for deep sea lines and nets ; and by 
 processes of reduplication, swell to cords and shroud laid 
 ropes, hawsers and mighty cables. 
 
 A little figure filled the door of the shed and Estelle 
 Waldron appeared. She shook hands and greeted the 
 worker with friendship, for Estelle was now free of the Mill 
 and greatly prided herself on personally knowing every- 
 body within them. 
 
 193 
 
194 THE SPINNERS 
 
 " Good morning, Mercy," she said. " I've come to see 
 Nancy Buckler." 
 
 " Good morning, miss. I know. She's going to run in 
 at dinner time to sing you her song." 
 
 " It's a wonderful song, I believe," declared Estelle, 
 " and very, very old. Her grandfather taught it to her 
 before he died, and I want to write it down. Do you like 
 poetry, Mercy? " 
 
 " Can't say as I do," confessed the warper. She was a 
 fair, tall girl. " I like novels," she added. " I love 
 stories, but I haven't got much use for rhymes." 
 
 " Stories about what ? " asked Estelle. " I have a sort 
 of an idea to start a library, if I can persuade my father 
 to let me. I believe I could get some books from friends 
 to make a beginning." 
 
 " Stories about adventure," declared Mercy. " Most 
 of the girls like love stories ; but I don't care so much about 
 them. I like stories where big things happen in his- 
 tory." 
 
 " So do I ; and then you know you're reading about what 
 really did happen and about great people who really lived. 
 I think I can lend you some stories like that." 
 
 Mercy thanked her and Estelle fell silent considering 
 which book from her limited collection would best meet 
 the other's demand. Herself she did not read many novels, 
 but loved her books about plants and her poets. Poetry 
 was precious food to her, and Mr. Churchouse, who also 
 appreciated it, had led her to his special favourites. For 
 the present, therefore, Estelle was content with Longfellow 
 and Cowper and Wordsworth. The more dazzling light 
 of Keats and Shelley and Swinburne had yet to dawn for 
 her. 
 
 Nancy Buckler arrived presently to sing her song. Her 
 looks did not belie Nancy. She was sharp of countenance, 
 with thin cheeks and a prominent nose. Her voice, too, 
 had a pinch of asperity about it. By nature she was criti- 
 cal of her fellow creatures. No man had desired her, and 
 
THE WARPING MILL 195 
 
 the fact soured her a little and led to a general contempt 
 of the sex. 
 
 She smiled for Estelle, however, because the ingenuous 
 child had won her friendship. 
 
 " Good morning, miss," she said. " If you've got a 
 pencil and paper, you can take down the words." 
 
 " But sing them first," begged the listener. " I want to 
 hear you sing them to the old tune, because I expect the 
 tune is as old as the words, Nancy." 
 
 " It's a funny old tune for certain. I can't sing it like 
 grandfather did, for all his age. He croaked it like a ma- 
 chine running, and that seemed the proper way. But I've 
 not got much of a voice." 
 
 " 'Tis loud enough, anyway," said Mercy, " and that's 
 a virtue." 
 
 " Yes, you can hear what I'm saying," admitted Miss 
 Buckler, then she sang her song. 
 
 " When a twister, a twisting, will twist him a twist, 
 With the twisting his twist, he the twine doth entwist; 
 But if one of the twines of the twist doth untwist, 
 The twine that untwisteth, untwisteth the twist, 
 Untwisting the twine that entwineth between, 
 He twists with his twister the two in a twine. 
 Then, twice having twisted the twines of his twine, 
 He twisteth the twine he had twined in twine. 
 The twain, that in twining before in the twine, 
 As twines were entwisted, he now doth untwine, 
 'Twixt the twain intertwisting a twine more between." 
 
 Nancy gave her remarkable performance in a clear, thin 
 treble. It was a monotonous melody, but suited the words 
 very well. She sang slowly and her face and voice ex- 
 hibited neither light nor shade. Yet her method suited the 
 words in their exceedingly unemotional appeal. 
 
 " It's the most curious song I ever heard," cried Estelle, 
 " and you sing it perfectly, because I heard every 
 word." 
 
 Then she brought out pencil and paper, sat in the deep 
 alcove of the window and transcribed Nancy's verse. 
 
196 THE SPINNERS 
 
 " You must sing that to my father next time you come 
 up," she said. " It's like no other song in the world, I'm 
 sure." 
 
 Sally Groves came in. She had brought Estelle the seed 
 of a flower from her garden. 
 
 " I put it by for you, Miss Waldron," said the big 
 woman, " because you said you liked it in the fall." 
 
 They talked together while Mercy Gale doffed her over- 
 all and woollen bonnet. 
 
 " Tell me," said Estelle, " of a very good sort of wedding 
 present for Mr. Ironsyde, when he marries Sabina next 
 week." 
 
 " A new temper, I should think," suggested Nancy. 
 
 " He can't help being rather in a temper," explained 
 Estelle, " because they can't find a house." 
 
 " Sabina can find plenty," answered the spinner. " It's 
 him that's so hard to please." 
 
 Sally Groves strove to curb Nancy's tongue. 
 
 " You mind your own business," she said. " Mr. Iron- 
 syde wants everything just so, and why not? " 
 
 " Because it ain't a time to be messing about, I should 
 think," retorted Nancy. " And it's for the woman to be 
 considered, not him." 
 
 Then Estelle, in all innocence, asked a shattering ques- 
 tion. 
 
 "Is it true Sabina is going to have a baby? One or 
 two girls in the mill told me she was, but I asked my father, 
 and he seemed to be annoyed and said, of course not. But 
 I hope it's true it would be lovely for Sabina to have a 
 baby to play with." 
 
 "So it would then," declared Sally Groves, "but I 
 shouldn't tell nothing about it for the present, miss." 
 
 " Least said, soonest mended," said Mercy Gale. 
 
 " It's like this," explained Sally Groves with clumsy 
 goodness : " they'll want to keep it for a surprise, miss, and 
 I dare say they'd be terrible disappointed if they thought 
 anybody knew anything about it yet." 
 
THE WARPING MILL 197 
 
 Nancy Buckler laughed. 
 
 " I reckon they would," she said. 
 
 " So don't you name it, miss," continued Sally. " Don't 
 you name the word yet awhile." 
 
 Estelle nodded. 
 
 " I won't then," she promised. " I know how sad it is, 
 if you've got a great secret, to find other people know it 
 before you want them to." 
 
 " Beastly sad," said Nancy, as she went her way, and 
 the child looked after her puzzled. 
 
 " I believe Nancy's jealous of Sabina," she said. 
 
 Then it was Sally Groves who laughed and her merri- 
 ment shook the billows of her mighty person. 
 
 Estelle found herself somewhat depressed as she went 
 home. Not so much the words as the general spirit of 
 these comments chilled her. After luncheon she visited 
 her father's study and talked to him while he smoked. 
 
 " What perfectly beautiful thing can I get for Ray and 
 Sabina for a wedding present ? " 
 
 He cleaned his pipe with one of the crow's feathers 
 Estelle was used to collect for him. They stood in vases 
 on the mantel-shelf. 
 
 " It's a puzzler," confessed Arthur Waldron. 
 
 " D'you think Ray has grown bad-tempered, father? " 
 
 "Do you?" 
 
 " No, I'm sure I don't. He is a little different, but 
 that's because he's going to be married. No doubt people 
 do get a little different, then. But Nancy Buckler at the 
 Mill said she thought the best wedding present for him 
 would be a new temper." 
 
 " That's the sort of insolent things people say, I sup- 
 pose, behind his back. It's all very unfortunate in my 
 opinion, Estelle." 
 
 " It's frightfully unfortunate Ray leaving us, because, 
 after he's married, he must have a house of his own; but 
 it isn't unfortunate his marrying Sabina, I'm sure." 
 
 " I'm not sure at all," confessed her father. His opin- 
 
198 THE SPINNERS 
 
 ion always carried the greatest weight, and she was so 
 much concerned at this announcement that Arthur felt 
 sorry he had spoken. 
 
 "You see, Estelle how can I explain? I think Ray 
 in rather too young to marry." 
 
 " He's well over twenty." 
 
 " Yes, but he's young for his age, and the things that he 
 is keen about are not the things that a girl is keen about. 
 I doubt if he will make Sabina happy." 
 
 " He will if he likes, and I'm sure he will like. He can 
 always make me happy, so, of course, he can make Sabina. 
 He's really tremendously clever and knows all sorts of 
 things. Oh, don't think it's going to be sad, father. I'm 
 sure they're both much too wise to do anything that's 
 going to be sad. Because if Ray " 
 
 She stopped, for Raymond himself came in. He had 
 left early that morning to seek a house with Sabina. 
 
 " What luck? " said Waldron. 
 
 " We've found something that'll do, I think. Two miles 
 out towards Chideock. A garden and a decent paddock 
 and a stable. But he'll have to spend some money on the 
 stable. There's a doubt if he will the landlord, I mean. 
 Sabina likes the house, so I hope it will be all right." 
 
 Waldron nodded. 
 
 " If it's Thornton, the horse-dealer, he'll do what you 
 want. He's got houses up there." 
 
 " It isn't. I haven't seen the man yet." 
 
 " Well," said his friend, " I don't know what the deuce 
 Estelle and I are going to do without you. We shall miss 
 you abominably." 
 
 "What shall I do without you? That's more to the 
 point. You've got each other for pals I " 
 
 He broke off and Arthur filled the pregnant pause. 
 
 " Look here Estelle wants to give you a wedding 
 present, old man ; and so do I. And as we haven't the 
 remotest idea what would be the likeliest thing, don't stand 
 on ceremony, but tell us." 
 
THE WARPING MILL 199 
 
 " I don't want anything except to know I shall al- 
 ways be welcome when I drop in." 
 
 " We needn't tell you that." 
 
 " But you must want thousands of things," declared 
 Estelle, " everybody does when they're married. And if 
 you don't, I'm sure Sabina does knives and forks and 
 silver tea kettles and pictures for the walls." 
 
 " Married people don't want pictures, Estelle ; they 
 never look at anything but one another." 
 
 She laughed. 
 
 " But the poor walls want pictures if you don't. I 
 believe the walls wouldn't feel comfortable without pic- 
 tures. Besides you and Sabina can't sit and look at each 
 other all day." 
 
 " What about a nice little handy ' jingle ' for her to 
 trundle about in? " asked Waldron. 
 
 " As I can't pull it, old chap, it wouldn't be much good. 
 I'm keeping the hunter; but I shan't be able to keep 
 anything else if that." 
 
 " How would it be if you sold the hunter and got a 
 nice everyday sort of horse that you could ride, or that 
 Sabina could drive? " asked Estelle. 
 
 "No," said Waldron firmly. "He doesn't sell his 
 hunter or his guns. These things stand for a link with 
 the outer world and represent sport, which is quite as im- 
 portant as marriage in the general scheme." 
 
 " I thought to chuck all that and take up golf," said 
 Raymond. " There's a lot in golf they tell me." 
 
 But Waldron shook his head. 
 
 " Golf's all right," he admitted, " and a great game. 
 I'm going to take it up myself, and I'm glad it's coming in, 
 because it will add to the usefulness of a lot of us men who 
 have to fall out of cricket. There's a great future for 
 golf, I believe. But no golf for you yet. You won't run 
 any more and you'll drop out of football, as only * pros.' 
 play much after marriage. But you must shoot as much 
 as possible, and hunt a bit, and play cricket still." 
 
200 THE SPINNERS 
 
 This comforting programme soothed Raymond. 
 
 " That's all right, but I've got to find work. I was just 
 beginning to feel keen on work ; but now flit, Estelle, my 
 duck. I want to have a yarn with father." 
 
 The girl departed. 
 
 " Do let it be a * jingle,' Ray," she begged, and then was 
 gone. 
 
 " It's my damned brother," went on Raymond. 
 
 " He'll come round and ask you to go back, as soon as 
 you're fixed up and everything's all right." 
 
 " Everything won't be all right. Everything's con- 
 foundedly wrong. Think what it is for a proud man to be 
 at the mercy of an aunt, and to look to her for his keep. 
 If anything could make me sick of the whole show, it's 
 that." 
 
 " I shouldn't feel it so. She's keen on you, and keen 
 on Sabina ; and she knows you can't live upon air. You 
 may be sure also she knows that it won't last. Daniel will 
 come round." 
 
 "And if he does? It's all the same taking his 
 money." 
 
 " You won't be taking it ; you'll be earning it." 
 
 " 1 hate him, like hell, and I hate the thought of work- 
 ing under him all my life." 
 
 " You won't be under him. You've often said the time 
 was coming when you'd wipe Daniel's eye and show you 
 were the moving spirit of the Mill. Well now, when you 
 go back, you must work double tides to do it." 
 
 " He may not take me back, and for many things I'd 
 sooner he didn't. We should never be the same to one 
 another after that row. For two pins, even now, I'd make 
 a bolt, Arthur, and disappear altogether and go abroad 
 and carve out my own way." 
 
 " Don't talk rot. You can't do that." 
 
 But Waldron, in spite of his advice and sanguine proph- 
 ecies, hid a grave doubt at heart whether, so far as Ray- 
 mond's own future was concerned, such a course might not 
 
THE WARPING MILL 201 
 
 be the wisest. He felt confident, however, that the younger 
 man would keep his engagements. Raymond had plenty 
 of pluck and did not lack for a heart, so far as Waldron 
 knew. Had Sabina been no more than engaged, he must 
 strongly have urged Raymond to drop her and endure the 
 harsh criticism that would have followed: for an engage- 
 ment broken appeared a lesser evil than an unhappy mat- 
 ing; but since the position was complicated, he could not 
 feel so and stoutly upheld the marriage on principle, while 
 extremely doubtful of its practical outcome. 
 
 They talked for two hours to no purpose and then 
 Estelle called them to tea. 
 
CHAPTER XXII 
 
 THE TELEGRAM 
 
 RAYMOND and Sabina spent a long afternoon at the house 
 they had taken; and while he was interested with the 
 stables and garden, she occupied herself indoors. She was 
 very tired before they had finished, and presently, return- 
 ing to Bridport, they called at * The Seven Stars ' and 
 ordered tea. 
 
 The famous garden was dismantled now and Job Legg 
 spent some daily hoifrs in digging there. To-morrow Job 
 was to hear what Mrs. Northover had to say concerning 
 his proposal, and, meantime, the pending decision neither 
 unsettled him nor interfered with his usual placidity and 
 enterprise. 
 
 Nelly Northover herself waited upon the engaged couple. 
 She was somewhat abstracted with her own thoughts, but 
 so far banished them that she could show and feel interest 
 in the visitors. Raymond described the house, and Sabina, 
 glad to see Raymond in a cheerful mood, expatiated on 
 the charms of her future home. 
 
 They delayed somewhat longer than Mrs. Northover ex- 
 pected and she left them presently, for she had an ap- 
 pointment bearing on the supreme subject of her offer of 
 marriage. Mrs. Northover was, in fact, going to take 
 another opinion. Such indecision seemed foreign to her 
 character, which seldom found her in two minds ; but it 
 happened that upon one judgment she had often relied 
 since her husband's death and, before the great problem 
 at present challenging Nelly, she believed another view 
 
 might largely assist her. That she could not decide her- 
 
 202 
 
THE TELEGRAM 203 
 
 self, she felt to be very significant. The fact made her 
 cautious and anxious. 
 
 She put on her bonnet now, left a maid to settle with the 
 customers and presently stepped across the road to ' The 
 Tiger,' for it was Richard Gurd in whom Mrs. Northover 
 put her trust. She designed to place Job's offer before her 
 friend and invite a candid and unprejudiced criticism. 
 For so doing more reasons than one may have existed ; we 
 seldom seek the judgment of a friend without mixed mo- 
 tives ; but, at any rate, Nelly believed very thoroughly in 
 her neighbour, and if, in reality, it was as much a wish 
 that he should know what had happened, as a desire to 
 learn his opinion upon it, she none the less felt that opinion 
 would be precious and probably decide her. 
 
 Richard was waiting in his office a small apartment 
 off the bar, to which none had access save himself. 
 
 " Come in here and we shan't be disturbed," he said. 
 " Of course, when you tell me you want my advice on a 
 matter of the greatest importance, all else has to stand by. 
 My old friend's wife has a right to come to me, I should 
 hope, and I'm glad you've done so. Sit here by the fire." 
 
 It did not take Mrs. Northover long to relate the situa- 
 tion, nor was Mr. Gurd much puzzled to declare his view. 
 In brief words she told him of Job Legg's greatly increased 
 prosperity and his proposal to wed. Having made her 
 statement, she advanced a few words for Job. 
 
 "In fairness and beyond all this, I must tell you, 
 Richard, that he's a very uncommon sort of man. That 
 you know, of course, as well as I do. But what you don't 
 know is that when he was away, I badly missed him and 
 found out, for the first time, what an all-round, valuable 
 creature he has become at * The Seven Stars.' When he 
 was along with his dying relation, I missed the man a 
 thousand times in every twelve hours and I felt properly 
 astonished to find how he was the prop and stay of my 
 business. That may seem too much to say, seeing I'm a 
 fairly clever woman and know how to run ' The Seven 
 
204 THE SPINNERS 
 
 Stars ' in a pretty prosperous way ; but there is no doubt 
 Legg is very much more than what he seems. He's a very 
 human man and I'll go so far as to say this : I like him. 
 There's great self-respect to him and you feel, under his 
 level temper and unfailing readiness to work at anything 
 and everything, that he's a power for good in fact a 
 man with high principles so high as my own, if not 
 higher." 
 
 " Stop there, or you'll over-do it," said Richard. 
 " Higher than yours his principles won't take him and I 
 refuse to hear you say so. You ask me in plain words if 
 you shall marry Job Legg, or if you shan't. And before 
 I speak, I may tell you that, as a man of the world, I 
 shan't quarrel with you if you don't take my advice. As 
 a rule I have found that good advice is more often given 
 than taken and, whether or no, the giving of advice nearly 
 always means one thing. And that is that the giver loses 
 a friend. If the advice is bad, it is generally taken, and 
 him that takes it finds out in due course it was bad, and so 
 the giver makes an enemy. And if 'tis good, the same 
 thing happens, for then 'tis not taken and, looking back, 
 the sufferer sees his mistake, and human nature works, and 
 instead of kicking himself, he feels like kicking the wise man 
 that gave him the good advice. But between me and you 
 that won't happen, for there's the ghost of William North- 
 over to come between. You and me are high spirited, and 
 I dare say there are some people who would say we are 
 short tempered ; but we know better." 
 
 " That's all true as gospel ; and now you tell me if I 
 ought to marry Job. Or, if 'tis too great a question to 
 decide in a minute, as I find it myself, then leave it till 
 to-morrow and I'll pop in again." 
 
 " No need to leave it. My mind is used to make itself 
 up swift. First, as to Legg. Legg's a very good man, 
 indeed, and I'd be the first to praise him. He's all you say 
 or nearly all and I've often been very much impressed 
 
THE TELEGRAM 205 
 
 by him. And if he was anybody's servant but yours, I 
 dare say I'd have tempted him to 4 The Tiger ' before now. 
 But there are some that shine in the lead, like you and me, 
 and some that only show their full worth when they've got 
 to obey. Job can obey to perfection ; but I'm not so sure 
 if he's fitted to command." 
 
 " Remember," she said, " that if I say ' no ' to the man, 
 I lose him. He can't be my right hand no more then, 
 because he'd leave. And my heart sinks at the thought of 
 another potman at my age." 
 
 " When you say * potman ' you come to the root of the 
 matter, and your age has nothing to do with it," answered 
 Richard. " The natural instinct at such times is to advise 
 against, and when man or woman asks a fellow creature as 
 to the wisdom of marrying, they'll always pull a long face 
 and find fifty good reasons why not. But I'm taking this 
 in a larger spirit. There's no reason why you shouldn't 
 marry again, and you'd make another as happy as you did 
 your first, no doubt. But Job Legg is a potman; he's 
 been a potman for a generation ; he thinks like a potman, 
 and his outlook in life is naturally the potman outlook. 
 Mind, I'm not saying anything against him as a man when 
 I tell you so; I'm only looking at him now as a husband 
 for you. He's got religion and a good temper, and dollops 
 of sense, and I'll even go so far as to say, seeing that he is 
 now a man of money, that he was within his right to offer, 
 if he did it in a modest manner. But I won't say more 
 than that. He's simple and faithful and a servant worthy 
 of all respect, but that man haven't the parts to rise to 
 mastership. A good stick, but if he was your crutch, he'd 
 fail you. For my part, I'm very sure that people of much 
 greater importance than him would offer for you if they 
 knew you were for a husband." 
 
 " I wouldn't say I was for a husband, Richard. The 
 idea never came into my mind till Job Legg put it there." 
 
 " Just your modesty. There's no more reason why you 
 
206 THE SPINNERS 
 
 shouldn't wed than why I shouldn't. You're a comely and 
 highly marriageable person still, and nobody knows it bet- 
 ter than what I do." 
 
 " You advise against, then? " 
 
 " In that quarter, yes. I'm thinking of you, and only 
 you, and I don't believe Job is quite man enough for the 
 part. Leave it, however, for twenty-four hours." 
 
 " He was to have his answer, to-morrow." 
 
 " He's used to waiting. Tell him you're coming to it 
 and won't keep him much longer. It's too big a thing to be 
 quite sure about, and you were right when you said so. 
 I'll come across and see you in the morning." 
 
 " I'm obliged to you, Richard. And if you'll turn it 
 over, I'll thank you. I wouldn't have come to any other 
 than you, bachelor though you are." 
 
 " I'll weigh it," he promised, " but I warn you I'm very 
 unlikely to see it different. What you've told me have 
 put other side issues into my head. You'll hunt a rabbit 
 and flush a game bird, sometimes. In fact, great things 
 often come out of little ones." 
 
 " I know you'll be fair and not let anything influence 
 your judgment," she said. 
 
 He promised, but with secret uneasiness, for already it 
 seemed that his judgment was being influenced. For that 
 reason he had postponed a final decision until the following 
 day. Mrs. Northover departed with grateful thanks and 
 left behind her, though she guessed it not, problems far 
 more tremendous than any she had brought. 
 
 Meantime Raymond and Sabina, on their way to Miss 
 Ironsyde, were met by Mr. Neddy Motyer. Neddy had 
 not seen his friend for some time and now saluted and 
 stopped. It was nearly dark and they stood under a 
 lamp-post. 
 
 " Cheero ! " said Mr. Motyer. " Haven't cast an eye 
 on you for a month of Sundays, Ironsyde." 
 
 Raymond introduced Sabina and Neddy was gallant and 
 reminded her they had met before at the Mill. Then, 
 
THE TELEGRAM 207 
 
 desiring a little masculine society, Sabina's betrothed pro- 
 posed that she should go on and report that he was com- 
 ing. 
 
 " Aunt Jenny will expect us to stop for dinner, so there's 
 no hurry. I'll be up in half an hour." 
 
 She left them and Neddy suggested drinking. 
 
 " You might as well be dead and buried for all the boys 
 see of you nowadays," he said, as they entered ' The Bull ' 
 Hotel. 
 
 " I'm busy." 
 
 " I know, but I hope you'll have a big night off before 
 the deed is done and you take leave of freedom what? " 
 
 " I'm not taking leave of freedom. You godless bache- 
 lors don't know you're born." 
 
 "Bluff bluff!" declared Neddy. "You can't de- 
 ceive me, old sport." 
 
 " You wait till you find the right one." 
 
 " I shall," promised Neddy. " And very well content to 
 wait. Nothing is easier than not to be married." 
 
 " Nothing is harder, my dear chap, if you're in love with 
 the right girl." 
 
 Neddy felt the ground delicate. He knew that Ray- 
 mond had knocked down a man for insulting him a week 
 before, so he changed the subject. 
 
 " I thought you'd be at the fight," he said. " It was a 
 pretty spar interesting all through. Jack Buckler 
 won. Blades practically let him. Not because he wanted 
 to, but because Solly Blades has got a streak of softness 
 in his make-up. That's fatal in a fighter. If you've got 
 a gentle heart, it don't matter how clever you are: you 
 can't take full advantage of your skill and use the opening 
 when you've won it. Blades didn't punish Buckler's 
 stupidity, or weakness just when he could have done it. 
 So he lost, because he gave Jack time to get strong again ; 
 and when Blades in his turn went weak, Buckler got it 
 over and outed him." 
 
 " Your heart often robs you of what your head won," 
 
208 THE SPINNERS 
 
 said another man in the bar. " Life's like prize-fighting 
 in that respect. If you don't hit other people when you 
 can, the time will probably come when they'll hit you." 
 
 It was an ugly philosophy and Raymond, looking within, 
 applied to it himself. Then he put his own thoughts 
 away. 
 
 " And how are the gee-gees ? " he asked. 
 
 " As a * gentleman backer,' I can't say I'm going very 
 strong," confessed Neddy. " On the whole, I think it's a 
 mug's game. Anyway, I shall chuck it when flat racing 
 comes again. My father's getting restive. I shall have 
 to do something pretty soon." 
 
 Raymond stayed for an hour and was again urged to 
 give a bachelor-supper before he married ; but he declined. 
 
 " Shan't chuck away a tenner on a lot of wasters," he 
 said. " Got something better to do with it." 
 
 Several men promised to come to church and see the 
 event, now near at hand, but he told them that they might 
 be disappointed. 
 
 " I'm not too sure about that," he said. " I may put 
 my foot down on that racket and be married at a regis- 
 trar's. Anyway church is no certainty. I've got no use 
 for making a show of my private affairs." 
 
 On the way to Miss Ironsyde's he grew moody and gloom 
 settled upon him. A glimpse of the old free and easy life 
 threw into darker colours the new existence ahead. He 
 remembered the sentiments of the strange man in the bar 
 how weakness is always punished and the heart often 
 robs the head of victory. His heart was robbing his head 
 of freedom; and that meant victory also; for what sort 
 of success can life offer to those who begin it by flinging 
 liberty to the winds? Yes, he had been "bluffing," as 
 Neddy declared ; and to bluff was foreign to his nature. 
 Nobody was deceived, for everybody knew the truth, and 
 though none dared laugh at him in public, secretly all his 
 acquaintance were doubtless doing so. 
 
 Sabina saw that he was perturbed when presently he 
 
THE TELEGRAM 209 
 
 joined Miss Ironsyde. He had drunk more than enough 
 and proved irritable. 
 
 He was, however, silent at first, while his aunt discussed 
 the wedding. She took it for granted that it would be in 
 church and reminded Raymond of necessary steps. 
 
 " And certain people should be asked," she said. 
 " Have you any friends you particularly wish to be there? 
 Mr. Churchouse is planning a wedding breakfast " 
 
 " No none of my friends will be there if I can help it. 
 They're not that sort." 
 
 " Have you written to Daniel ? " 
 
 " ' Written to Daniel ' ! Good God, no ! What should 
 I write to Daniel, but to tell him he's the biggest cur and 
 hound on earth? " 
 
 " You've passed all that. You're not going back again, 
 Raymond. You know what you said last time when we 
 talked about it." 
 
 " If he's evef to be more than a name to me, he must 
 apologise for being a low down brute, first. Pve got 
 plenty on my mind without thinking about him. He's 
 going to rue the day he treated me as he has done. I'll 
 bring him and Bridetown Mill to the gutter, yet." 
 
 " Don't, don't, please. I thought you felt last time we 
 were talking about him " 
 
 " Drop him don't mention his name to me I won't 
 hear it. If you want me to go on with my life with self- 
 respect, then keep his name out of my life. I've cursed 
 him to hell once and for all, so talk of something else ! " 
 
 Jenny Ironsyde saw that her nephew was in a dark 
 temper, and while at heart she felt indignant and ashamed, 
 more for Sabina's sake than his own, she humoured him, 
 spoke of the future and strove to win him back into a 
 cheerful mind. 
 
 Then as they were going to dinner, at half-past seven 
 o'clock, the maid who announced the meal, brought with her 
 a telegram. It was directed to ' Ironsyde ' only, and, 
 putting on her glasses, Jenny read it, 
 
210 THE SPINNERS 
 
 Daniel had been very seriously injured in a railway ac- 
 cident at York. 
 
 Remorse strikes the young with cruel bitterness. Ray- 
 mond turned pale and staggered. While he had been 
 cursing his brother, the man lay smitten, perhaps at the 
 door of death. His aunt it was who steadied him and 
 turned to the time-table. Then she went to her store of 
 ready money. In an hour Raymond was on his way. It 
 might be possible for him to catch a midnight train for the 
 North from London and reach York before morning. 
 
 When he had gone, Jenny turned to Sabina, who had 
 spoken no word during this scene. 
 
 " Much may come of this," she said. " God works 
 in mysterious ways. I have no fear that Raymond will 
 fail in his duty to dear Daniel at such a time. Come back 
 early to-morrow, Sabina. I shall get a telegram, as soon 
 as Raymond can despatch it, and shall hold myself in 
 readiness to go at once and stop with Daniel. Tell 
 Mister Churchouse what has happened." 
 
 The lady spent the night in packing. Her sufferings 
 and anxieties were allayed by occupation ; but the long 
 hours seemed unending. 
 
 She was ready to start at dawn, but not until ten o'clock 
 came the news from York. Mr. Churchouse was already 
 with her when the telegram arrived. He had driven from 
 Bridetown with Sabina. Daniel Ironsyde was dead and 
 had passed many hours before Raymond reached him. 
 
 Sabina went home on hearing this news, and Ernest 
 Churchouse remained with Miss Ironsyde. 
 
 She was prostrated and, for a time, he could not com- 
 fort her. But the practical nature of her mind asserted 
 itself between gusts of grief. She despatched a telegram 
 to Raymond at York, and begged him to bring back his 
 brother's body as soon as it might be done. Concerning 
 the future she also spoke to Ernest. 
 
 " He has made no will," she said. " That I know, be- 
 
THE TELEGRAM an 
 
 cause when last we were speaking of Raymond, he told me 
 he felt it impossible at present to do so." 
 
 " Then the whole estate belongs to Raymond, now? " 
 he asked. , 
 
 " Yes, everything is his." 
 
CHAPTER XXIII 
 
 A LETTER FOR SABINA 
 
 A HUMAN machine, under stress of personal tribulation 
 and lowered vitality, had erred in a signal box five miles 
 from York, with the result that several of his fellow crea- 
 tures were killed and many injured. Daniel Ironsyde had 
 only lived long enough to direct the telegram to his home. 
 
 Three days later Raymond returned with the body, and 
 once more Bridetown crowded to its windows and open 
 spaces, to see the funeral of another master of the Mill. 
 
 To an onlooker the scene might have appeared a repeti- 
 tion in almost every particular of Henry Ironsyde's ob- 
 sequies. 
 
 The spinners crowded on the grassy triangle under the 
 sycamore tree and debated their future. They wondered 
 whether Raymond would come to the funeral; and a new 
 note entered into all voices when they spoke his name, for 
 he was master now. Mr. Churchouse attended the burial, 
 and Arthur Waldron walked down from North Hill House 
 with his daughter. In the churchyard, where Daniel's 
 grave waited for him beside his father, old Mr. Baggs 
 stood and looked down, as he had done when Henry Iron- 
 syde came to his grave. 
 
 " Life, how short eternity, how long," he said to 
 John Best. 
 
 Ernest Churchouse opened the door of the mourning 
 coach as he had done on the previous occasion, and Miss 
 Ironsyde alighted, followed by Raymond. He had come. 
 But he had changed even to the visible eye. The least 
 observing were able to mark differences of voice and 
 
 manner. 
 
 212 
 
A LETTER FOR SABINA 213 
 
 Raymond's nature had responded to the stroke of cir- 
 cumstance with lightning swiftness. The pressure of his 
 position, thus suddenly relieved, caused a rebound, a libera- 
 tion of the grinding tension. It remained to be seen what 
 course he might now pursue ; yet those who knew him best 
 anticipated no particular reaction. But when he returned 
 it was quickly apparent that tremendous changes had al- 
 ready taken place in the young man's outlook on life and 
 that, whatever his future line of conduct might be, he 
 realised very keenly his altered position. He was now 
 free of all temporal cares ; but against that fact he found 
 himself faced with great new responsibilities. 
 
 Remorse hit him hard, but he was through the worst of 
 that, and life had become so tremendous, that he could not 
 for very long keep his thoughts on death. 
 
 At his brother's funeral he allowed his eye to rest on no 
 familiar face and cast no recognising glance at man or 
 woman. He was haggard and pale, but more than that: 
 a new expression had come into his countenance. Al- 
 ready consciousness of possession marked him. He had 
 grasped the fact of the change far quicker than Daniel 
 had grasped it after their father's death. 
 
 He was returning immediately with his aunt to Brid- 
 port ; but Mr. Churchouse broke through the barrier and 
 spoke to him as he entered the carriage. 
 
 " Won't you see Sabina before you go, Raymond ? 
 You must realise that, even under these terrible conditions, 
 we cannot delay. I understand she wrote to you when you 
 came back ; but that you have not answered her letter. As 
 things are it seems to me you might like to be quietly and 
 privately married away from Bridetown? " 
 
 Raymond hardly seemed to hear. 
 
 " I can't talk about that now. A great deal falls upon 
 me at present. I am enormously busy and have to take 
 up the threads of all poor Daniel was doing in the North. 
 There is nobody but myself, in my opinion, who can go 
 through with it. I return to London to-night." 
 
814 THE SPINNERS 
 
 "But Sabina?" 
 
 Raymond answered calmly. 
 
 " Sabina Dinnett will hear from me during the next 
 twenty-four hours," he said. 
 
 Ernest gazed aghast. 
 
 " But, my dear boy, you cannot realise the situation if 
 you talk like that. Surely you " 
 
 " I realise the situation perfectly well. Good-bye, 
 Uncle Ernest." 
 
 The coach drove away. Miss Ironsyde said nothing. 
 She had broken down beside the grave and was still 
 weeping. 
 
 Then came Mr. Best, where Mr. Churchouse stood at the 
 lich-gate. He was anxious for information. 
 
 " Did he say anything about his plans? " he asked. 
 
 66 Only that he is proceeding with his late brother's busi- 
 ness in the North. I perceive a most definite change in 
 the young man, John." 
 
 " For the better, we'll hope. What's hid in people ! 
 You never would have thought Mister Raymond would 
 have carried himself like that. It wasn't grief at his loss, 
 but a sort of an understanding of the change. He even 
 looked at us differently even me." 
 
 " He's overwrought and not himself, probably. I don't 
 think he quite grasps the immediate situation. He seems 
 to be looking far ahead already, whereas the most pressing 
 matter should be a thing of to-morrow." 
 
 "Is the wedding day fixed? " 
 
 " It is not. He writes to Sabina." 
 
 " Writes ! Isn't he going to see her to-day ! " 
 
 " He returns to London to-night." 
 
 Arthur Waldron also asked for news, for Raymond had 
 apparently been unconscious of his existence at the funeral. 
 He, too, noted the change in Ironsyde's demeanour. 
 
 "What was it?" he asked, as Mr. Churchouse walked 
 beside him homeward. " Something is altered. It's more 
 his manner than his appearance. Of course, he looks 
 
A LETTER FOR SABINA 215 
 
 played out after his shock, but it's not that. Estelle 
 thinks it's his black clothes." 
 
 " Stress of mind and anxiety, no doubt. I spoke to him ; 
 but he was rather distant. Not unfriendly he called 
 me ' Uncle Ernest ' as usual but distant. His mind is 
 entirely preoccupied with business." 
 
 "What about Sabina? " 
 
 " I asked him. He's writing to her. She wasn't at the 
 funeral. She and her mother kept away at my advice. 
 But I certainly thought he would come and see them aft- 
 erwards. However, the idea hadn't apparently occurred 
 to him. His mind is full of other things. There was a 
 suggestion of strength of power something new." 
 
 " He must be very strong now," said Estelle. " He will 
 have to be strong, because the Mill is all his and every- 
 thing depends upon him. Doesn't Sabina feel she must be 
 strong, too, Mr. Churchouse? " 
 
 " Sabina is naturally excited. But she is also puzzled, 
 because it seems strange that anything should come be- 
 tween her and Raymond at a time like this even the 
 terrible death of dear Daniel. She has been counting on 
 hearing from him, and to-day she felt quite sure he would 
 see her." 
 
 " Is the wedding put off then ? " 
 
 " I trust not. She is to hear from him to-morrow." 
 
 Raymond kept his word and before the end of the follow- 
 ing day Sabina received a letter. She had alternated, 
 since Daniel's sudden death, between fits of depression and 
 elation. She was cast down, because no communication of 
 any kind had reached her since Raymond hurried off on the 
 day of the accident ; and she was elated, because the future 
 must certainly be much more splendid for Raymond now. 
 
 She explained his silence easily enough, for much work 
 devolved upon him ; but when he did not come to see her on 
 the day of the funeral, she was seriously perturbed and 
 grew excited, unstrung and full of forebodings. Her 
 
216 THE SPINNERS 
 
 mother heard from those who had seen him that Raymond 
 appeared to be abstracted and * kept himself to himself ' 
 entirely ; which led to anxiety on her part also. 
 The letter defined the position. 
 
 " MY DEAREST SABINA, A thing like the death of my 
 brother, with all that it means to me, cannot happen with- 
 out having very far-reaching results. You may have no- 
 ticed for some time before this occurred that I felt uneasy 
 about the future not only for your sake, but my own 
 and I had long felt that we were doing a very doubtful 
 thing to marry. However, as circumstances were such 
 then, that I should have been in the gutter if I did not 
 marry, I was going to do so. There seemed to be no 
 choice, though I felt all the time that I was not doing 
 the fair thing to you, or myself. 
 
 " Now the case is altered and I can do the fair thing to 
 you and myself, because circumstances make it possible. 
 I have got tons of money now, and it is not too much to say 
 that I want you to share it. But not on the old under- 
 standing. I hate and loathe matrimony and everything 
 to do with it, and now that it is possible to avoid the in- 
 stitution, I intend to do so. 
 
 " What you have got to do is to put a lot of stupid, 
 conventional ideas out of your mind, and not worry about 
 other people, and the drivel they talk, or the idiotic things 
 they say. We weren't conventional last year, so why the 
 dickens should we be this? I'm awfully keen about you, 
 Sabina, and awfully keen about the child too ; but let us 
 be sane and be lovers and not a wretched married couple. 
 
 " If you will come and be my housekeeper, I shall wel- 
 come you with rejoicings, and we can go house-hunting 
 again and find something worthier of us and take bigger 
 views. 
 
 " Don't let this bowl you over and make you savage. It 
 is simply a question of what will keep us the best friends, 
 
A LETTER FOR SABINA 217 
 
 and wear best. I am perfectly certain that in the long 
 run we shall be happier so, than chained together by a lot 
 of cursed laws, that will put our future relations on a 
 footing that denies freedom of action to us both. Let's 
 be pioneers and set a good example to people and help 
 to knock on the head the imbecile marriage laws. 
 
 " I am, of course, going to put you all right from a 
 worldly point of view and settle a good income upon you, 
 which you will enjoy independently of me; and I also 
 recognise the responsibility of our child. He or she will be 
 my heir, and nothing will be spared for the youngster. 
 
 " I do hope, my dearest girl, you will see what a sensible 
 idea this is. It means liberty, and you can't have real 
 love without liberty. If we married, I am certain that in a 
 year or two we should hate each other like the devil, and 
 I believe you know that as well as I do. Marriage is out- 
 grown it's a barbaric survival and has a most damnable 
 effect on character. If we are to be close chums and pre- 
 serve our self-respect, we must steer clear of it. 
 
 " I am very sure I am right. I've thought a lot about it 
 and heard some very shrewd men in London speak about 
 it. We are up against a sort of battle nowadays. The 
 idea of marriage is the welfare of the community, and the 
 idea of freedom is the welfare of the individual ; and I, for 
 one, don't see in the least why the individual should go 
 down for the community. What has the community done 
 for us, that we should become slaves for it? 
 
 " Wealth at any rate, ample means does several 
 things for a man. It opens his eyes to the meaning of 
 power. Power is a fine thing if it's coupled with sense. 
 Already I see what a poor creature I was owing to the 
 accident of poverty. Now you'll find what a huge differ- 
 ence power makes. It changes everything and turns a 
 child into a man. At any rate, I've been a child till now. 
 You've got to be child-like if you're poor. 
 
 " So I hope you'll take this in the spirit I write, Sabina, 
 
218 THE SPINNERS 
 
 and trust me, for I'm straight as a line, and my first 
 thought is to make you a happy woman. That I certainly 
 can do, if you'll let me. 
 
 " I shall be coming home presently ; but, for the moment, 
 I must stop here. There is a gigantic deal of work wait- 
 ing for me ; but working for myself and somebody else are 
 two very different things. I don't grudge the work now, 
 since the result of the work means more power. 
 
 " I hope this is all clear. If it isn't, we must thresh it 
 out when we meet. All I want you to grasp for the mo- 
 ment is that I love you as well as ever better than any- 
 thing in the world and, because I want us to be the 
 dearest friends always, I'm not going to marry you. 
 
 " Your mother and Uncle Ernest will of course take the 
 conventional line, and my Aunt Jennie will do the same; 
 but I hope you won't bother about them. Your welfare 
 lies with me. Don't let them talk you into making a 
 martyr of yourself, or any nonsense of that sort. 
 
 " Always, my dearest Sabina, 
 " Your faithful pal, 
 
 RAY." 
 
 Half an hour later Mrs. Dinnett took the letter in to 
 Mr. Churchouse. 
 
 " Death," she said. " Death is in the air. Sabina has 
 gone to bed and I'm going for the doctor. He's broke off 
 the engagement and wants her to be his housekeeper. And 
 this is a Christian country, or supposed to be. Says it's 
 going to be quite all right and offers her money and a 
 lifetime of sin ! " 
 
 " Be calm, Mary, be calm. You must have misread the 
 letter. Go and get the doctor by all means if Sabina has 
 succumbed. And leave the letter with me. I will read it 
 carefully. That is if it is not private." 
 
 " No, it ain't private. He slaps at us all. We're all 
 conventional people, which means, I suppose, that we fear 
 God and keep the laws. But if my gentleman thinks " 
 
A LETTER FOR SABINA 219 
 
 " Go and get the doctor, Mary. Two heads are better 
 than one in a case of this sort. I feel sure you and 
 Sabina are making a mistake." 
 
 " The world shall ring," said Mrs. Dinnett, " and we'll 
 see if he can show his face among honest men again. We 
 that have abided by the law all our days now we'll see 
 what the law can do for us against this godless wretch." 
 
 She went off to the village and Ernest cried after her to 
 say nothing at present. He knew, however, as he spoke 
 that it was vain. 
 
 Then he put away his own work and read the letter very 
 carefully twice through. 
 
 Profound sorrow came upon him and his innate optimism 
 was over-clouded. This seemed no longer the Raymond 
 Ironsyde he had known from childhood. It was not even 
 the Raymond of a month ago. He perceived how poten- 
 tial qualities of mind had awakened in the new conditions. 
 He was philosophically interested. So deeply indeed did 
 the psychological features of the change occupy his re- 
 flections, that for a time he overlooked their immediate 
 and crushing significance in the affairs of another person. 
 
 Traces of the old Raymond remained in the promises of 
 unbounded generosity and assurances of devotion ; but Mr. 
 Churchouse set no store upon them. The word that rang 
 truest was Raymond's acute consciousness of power and 
 appreciation thereof. It had, as he said, opened his eyes. 
 Under any other conditions than those embracing Sabina 
 and right and wrong, as Ernest accepted the meaning of 
 right and wrong, he had won great hope from the letter. 
 It was clear that Raymond had become a man at a bound 
 and might be expected to develop into a useful man ; but 
 that his first step from adolescence was to involve the de- 
 struction of a woman and child, soon submerged all lesser 
 considerations in the thinker's mind. Righteousness was 
 implicated, and to start his new career with a cold-blooded 
 crime made Mr. Churchouse tremble for the entire future 
 of the criminal. 
 
THE SPINNERS 
 
 Yet he saw very little hope of changing Ironsyde's deci- 
 sion. Raymond had evidently considered the matter, 
 and though his argument was abominable in Ernest's view, 
 and nothing more than a cowardly evasion of his promises, 
 he suspected that the writer found it satisfy his con- 
 science, since its further education in the consciousness of 
 power. He did not suppose that any whose opinion he 
 respected would alter Raymond. It might even be that he 
 was honest in his theories, and believed himself when he 
 said that marriage would end by destroying his love for 
 Sabina. But Mr. Churchouse did not pursue that line of 
 argument. Had not Mary Dinnett just reminded him 
 that this was a Christian country? 
 
 It was, of course, an immoral and selfish letter. Ernest 
 knew exactly how it would strike Miss Ironsyde ; but he 
 also knew that many people without principle would view 
 it as reasonable. 
 
 He had to determine what he was going to do, and soon 
 came back to the attitude he had always taken. An un- 
 born, immortal soul must be considered, and it was idle 
 for Raymond to talk about making the coming child his 
 heir. Such undertakings were vain. The young man 
 was volatile and his life lay before him. That he could 
 make this offer argued an indifference to Sabina's honour 
 which no promises of temporal comfort condoned. For 
 that matter he must surely have known while he wrote 
 that it would be rejected. 
 
 The outlook appeared exceedingly hopeless. Mr. 
 Churchouse rose from his desk and looked out of the win- 
 dow. It was a grey and silent morning. Only a big mag- 
 nolia leaf tapped at the casement and dripped rain from 
 its point. And overhead, in her chamber, Sabina was ly- 
 ing stricken and speechless. With infinite commiseration 
 Mr. Churchouse considered what this must mean to her. 
 It was as though Mrs. Dinnett's hysterical words had come 
 true. Indeed, the tender-hearted man felt that death was 
 
A LETTER FOR SABINA 881 
 
 in his house death of fair hopes, death of a young and 
 trusting spirit. 
 
 " The rising generation puts a strain on Christianity 
 that I'm sure it was never called to bear in my youth," 
 reflected Mr. Churchouse. 
 
CHAPTER XXIV 
 
 MRS. NORTHOVER DECIDES 
 
 WHEN Richard Gurd began to consider the case of Nelly 
 Northover, his mind was very curiously affected. To de- 
 velop the stages by which he arrived at his startling con- 
 clusions might be attractive, but the destination is more 
 important than the journey. After twenty-four hours 
 devoted to this subject alone, Richard had not only de- 
 cided that Nelly Northover must not marry Job Legg; 
 he had pushed the problem of his friend far beyond that 
 point and found it already complicated by a greater than 
 Job. 
 
 Indeed, the sudden reminder that Nelly was a comely 
 and personable woman had affected Richard Gurd, and the 
 thought that she should contemplate marriage caused him 
 some preliminary uneasiness. He could no more see her 
 married again than he could see himself taking a wife; 
 yet from this attitude, progress was swift, and the longer 
 he thought upon Mrs. Northover, the more steadily did 
 his mind drive him into an opinion that she might reason- 
 ably wed again if she desired to do so. And then he pro- 
 ceeded to the personal concession that there was no radical 
 necessity to remain single himself. Because he had 
 reached his present ripe age without a wife, it did not fol- 
 low he must remain for ever unmarried. He had no ob- 
 jection to marriage, and continued a bachelor merely be- 
 cause he had never found any woman desirable in his eyes. 
 Moreover he disliked children. 
 
 He had reached this stage of the argument before he 
 slept, and when he woke again, he found his mind consider- 
 ably advanced along the road to Nelly. He now came to 
 
 222 
 
MRS. NORTHOVER DECIDES 
 
 the deliberate conclusion that he wanted her. The dis- 
 covery amazed him, but he could not escape it ; and in the 
 light of such a surprise he became a little dazzled. Sudden 
 soul movements of such force and complexity made Richard 
 Gurd selfish. It is a fact, that before he went at the ap- 
 pointed time to see the mistress of ' The Seven Stars,' he 
 had forgotten all about Job Legg and was entirely con- 
 cerned with his own tremendous project. Full grown and 
 complete at all vital points it sprang from his energetic 
 brain. He had reached the high personal ambition of 
 wanting to marry Mrs. Northover himself, and their 
 friendship of many years had been so complete, that he felt 
 sanguine from the moment that his great determination 
 dawned. 
 
 But she spoke and quickly reminded him of what she was 
 expecting. 
 
 " And how d'you think about it? Shall it be, or shan't 
 it, Richard?" 
 
 They were in the private parlour. 
 
 " Leave that," he said. " I can assure you that little 
 affair is already a thing of the past. In fact, my mind 
 has moved such a long way since you came to see me yes- 
 terday, that I'd forgot what you came about. But, after 
 all, that was the starting point. Now a very curious thing 
 has fallen out, and looking back, I can only say that the 
 wonder is it didn't fall out long years ago." 
 
 " It did, so far as he was concerned," explained Mrs. 
 Northover. " Mr. Legg has been hoping for this for 
 years." 
 
 " The Lord often chooses a fool to light the road of the 
 wise, my dear. Not that Job's a fool, and a more self- 
 respecting man you won't find. In fact I shall always feel 
 kindly to your potman, for, in a manner of speaking, you 
 may say he's helped to show me my own duty." 
 
 " I dare say he has ; he's a lesson to us all." 
 
 " He is, but, all the same, it's confounding class with 
 class tp think of him as a. husband for you. Not that I've 
 
224 THE SPINNERS 
 
 got any class prejudice myself. You can't keep a hotel 
 year in, year out, and allow yourself the luxury of class 
 prejudice; but be that as it may, Legg, though he adorns 
 his class, wouldn't adorn ours in my opinion. And yet I'll 
 say this : I believe it was put to him by Providence to offer 
 for you, so that you might be lifted to higher things." 
 
 " Speak English, my dear man. I don't exactly know 
 what you're talking about. But I suppose you mean I'd 
 better not? " 
 
 Mrs. Northover was a little disappointed and Richard 
 perceived it. 
 
 " Be calm, and don't let me sweep you off your feet as 
 I've been swept off mine," he answered. " Since I dis- 
 covered marriage was a possibility in your mind, I am 
 obliged to confess that it's grown up to be a possibility in 
 mine. And why not? " 
 
 " No reason at all. 'Twas the wonder of Bridport, you 
 might say for years, why you remained single." 
 
 " Well, this I'll tell you, Nelly ; I'm not going to have 
 you marrying any Dick, Tom or Harry that's daring 
 enough to lift his eyes to you and cheeky enough to offer. 
 And when the thought came in my mind, I very soon found 
 that this event rose up ideas that might have slumbered 
 till eternity, but for Job Legg. And that's why I say 
 Providence is in it. I've felt a great admiration for your 
 judgment, and good sense, and fine appearance, ever since 
 the blow fell and your husband was taken. And we know 
 each other pretty close and have got no secrets from each 
 other. And now you may say I've suddenly seen the light ; 
 and if you've got half the opinion of me that I have of 
 you, no doubt you'll thank your God to hear what I'm 
 saying and answer according." 
 
 "Good powers! You want to marry me yourself?" 
 gasped Mrs. Northover. 
 
 " By all your < Seven Stars ' I do," he said. " In fact, 
 I want for ' The Tiger ' to swallow the ' Seven Stars,' in a 
 poetical way of speaking. I'm a downright man and 
 
MRS. NORTHOVER DECIDES 
 
 never take ten minutes where five's enough, so there it is. 
 It came over me last night as a thing that must be like 
 the conversion of Paul. And I'll go further ; I won't have 
 you beat about the bush, Nelly. You're the sort of 
 woman that can make up your mind in a big thing as quick 
 as you can in a small thing. I consider there's been a good 
 deal of a delicate and tender nature going on between us, 
 though we were too busy to notice it ; but now the bud have 
 burst into flower, and I see amazing clear we were made for 
 each other. In fact, I ain't going to take c no ' for an 
 answer, my dear. I've never asked a female to marry me 
 until this hour; and I have not waited into greyness and 
 ripeness to hear a negative. I'm sure of myself, naturally, 
 and I well know that you'd only be a thought less fortunate 
 than I shall be." 
 
 " Stop ! " she said, " and let me think. I'm terrible 
 flattered at this, and I'll go so far as to say there's rhyme 
 and reason in it, Richard. But you run on so. I feel my 
 will power fairly oozing out of me." 
 
 " Not at all," he answered. " Your will power's what I 
 rely upon. You're a forceful person yourself and you 
 naturally approve of forcefulness in others. There's no 
 reason why you shouldn't love me as well as I love you ; 
 and, for that matter, you do." 
 
 " Well, I must have time. I must drop Legg civilly 
 and break it to him gradual." 
 
 " I'll meet you there. You needn't tell him you're going 
 to be married all in a minute. He'll find that out for him- 
 self very quick. So will everybody. If a thing's worth 
 doing, try to do it that's my motto. But, for the mo- 
 ment, you can say that your affections are given in another 
 quarter." 
 
 " Of course, it's a great thing for me, Richard. I'm 
 very proud of it." 
 
 " And so am I. And Job Legg was the dumb instru- 
 ment, so I am the last to quarrel with him. Just tell him, 
 that failing another, you might have thought on him; 
 
226 THE SPINNERS 
 
 but that the die is cast ; and when he hears his fate, he'll 
 naturally want to know who 'tis. And then the great 
 secret must come out. I should reckon after Easter would 
 be a very good time for us to wed." 
 
 " I can't believe my senses," she said. 
 
 " You will in a week," he assured her ; " and, meanwhile, 
 I shall do my best to help you. In a week the joyful tid- 
 ings go out to the people." 
 
 He kissed her, shook her hand and squeezed it. Then 
 he departed leaving Mrs. Northover in the extremity of 
 bewilderment. But pleasure and great pride formed no 
 small part of her mingled emotions. 
 
 One paramount necessity darkened all, however. Nelly 
 felt a very sharp pang when she thought upon Mr. Legg, 
 and her sufferings increased as the day advanced until they 
 quite mastered the situation and clouded the brightness of 
 conquest. Other difficulties and doubts also obtruded as 
 she began to estimate the immensity of the thing that Mr. 
 Gurd's ardour had prompted her to do ; but Job was the 
 primal problem and she knew that she could not sleep until 
 she had made her peace with him. 
 
 She determined to leave him in no doubt concerning his 
 successful rival. The confession would indeed make it 
 easier for them both. At least she hoped it might do so. 
 
 He came for keys after closing time and she bade him sit 
 down in the chair which Richard Gurd had that morning 
 filled. One notes trifles at the supremest moments of life, 
 and the trifles often stick, while the great events which 
 accompany them fade into the past. Mrs. Northover ob- 
 served that while Richard Gurd had filled the chair and 
 overflowed, Mr. Legg by no means did so. He occupied 
 but the centre of the spacious seat. There seemed a sig- 
 nificance in that. 
 
 " Sit down, Job, and listen. I've got to say something 
 that will hurt you, my dear man. I've made my choice, 
 after a good bit of deep thought I assure you, and I've 
 I've chosen the other, Job," 
 
MRS. NORTHOVER DECIDES 
 
 He stared and his thin jaws worked. His nostrils also 
 twitched. 
 
 " I didn't know there was another." 
 
 " More didn't I," answered she. " I'm nothing if not 
 honest, and I tell you frankly that I didn't know it either 
 till he offered. He was a lifelong friend, and I asked him 
 about what I ought to be doing, and then it came out he 
 had already thought of me as a wife and was biding his 
 time. He had nought but praise for you, as all men have ; 
 but there it is Richard Gurd is very wishful to marry 
 me ; and you must understand this clearly, Job. If it had 
 been any lesser man than him, or any other man in the 
 world, for that matter, I wouldn't have taken him. I'm 
 very fond of you, and a finer character I've never known ; 
 but when Richard offered well, you're among the clever 
 ones and I'm sure you'd be the last to put yourself up 
 against a man of his standing and fame. And my first 
 husband's lifelong friend, you must remember. And 
 though, after all these years, it may seem strange to a 
 great many people, it won't seem strange to you, I hope." 
 
 " It's a very ill-convenient time to hear this," said Mr. 
 Legg mildly. 
 
 Then he stopped and regarded her with his little, shrewd 
 eyes. He seemed less occupied with the tremendous pres- 
 ent than the future. Presently he went on again, while 
 Mrs. Northover stared at him with an expression of genu- 
 ine sadness. 
 
 " All I can say is that I wish Gurd had offered sooner, 
 and not led me into this tremendous misfortune. Of 
 course, him and me aren't in the same street and I won't 
 pretend it, for none would be deceived if I did. But I say 
 again it's very unfortunate he hung fire till he heard that 
 I had made my offer. For if he'd spoke first, I should have 
 held my peace and gone on my appointed way and stopped 
 at ' The Seven Stars.' But now, if this happens, all is 
 over and the course of my life is changed. In fact, it is 
 not too much to say I shall leave Bridport, though how 
 
228 THE SPINNERS 
 
 any person can live comfortably away from Bridport, I 
 don't know." 
 
 Mrs. Northover felt relief that he should thus fasten 
 on such a minor issue, and never liked him better than at 
 that moment. " Thank God, he's took it, lying down ! " 
 she thought, then spoke. 
 
 " Don't you leave, my dear man. Bridport won't be 
 Bridport without you, and you've always been a true and 
 valued friend to me, and such a helpful and sensible crea- 
 ture that I shall only know in the next world all I owe 
 you. And between us, I don't see no reason at all why 
 you shouldn't go on as my potman and * more than that 
 why shouldn't you marry a nice woman yourself and 
 bring her here, if you've got a mind to it ! " 
 
 He expressed no indignation. Again, it seemed that the 
 future was his sole concern and that he designed to waste 
 no warmth on his disappointment. 
 
 " There never was but one woman for me and never will 
 be ; and as to stopping here, I might, or I might not, for 
 I've always had my feelings under very nice control and 
 shouldn't break the rule of a lifetime. But you won't be 
 at 4 The Seven Stars ' yourself much longer, and I cer- 
 tainly don't serve under any other but you. In fact this 
 house and garden would only be a deserted wilderness to my 
 view, if you wasn't reigning over 'em." 
 
 He spoke in his usual emotionless voice, but he woke 
 very active phenomena in Mrs. Northover. Her face grew 
 troubled and she looked into his eyes with a frown. 
 
 " Me gone ! What do you mean, Legg? Me leave ' The 
 Seven Stars ' after thirty-four years ? " 
 
 " No doubt your first would turn in his grave if you did," 
 he admitted; " but what about it? When you're mistress 
 of ' The Tiger ' well, then you're mistress of * The 
 Tiger, 5 and you can't be in two places at once clever as 
 you are." 
 
 He had given her something to think about. The pos- 
 sibility of guile in Mr. Legg had never struck the least, 
 
MRS. NORTHOVER DECIDES 889 
 
 or greatest, of his admirers. He was held a simple soul 
 of transparent probity, yet, for a moment, it almost 
 seemed as though his last remark carried an inner mean- 
 ing. Nelly dismissed the suspicion as unworthy of Job; 
 but none the less, though he had doubtless spoken without 
 any sinister purpose, his opinions gave her pause. Indeed, 
 they shook her. She had been too much excited to look 
 ahead. Now she was called to do so. 
 
 Mr. Legg removed the bunch of keys from its nail and 
 prepared to go on his way. 
 
 She felt weak. 
 
 " To play second fiddle for the rest of your life after 
 playing first for a quarter of a century is a far-reaching 
 thought," she said. 
 
 "Without a doubt it would be," he admitted. "Of 
 course, with some men you wouldn't be called to do it. 
 With Richard Gurd, you would." 
 
 " To leave 6 The Seven Stars ' ! Somehow I'd always 
 regarded our place as a higher class establishment than 
 * The Tiger ' along of the tea-gardens and pleasure 
 ground and the class of company." 
 
 " And quite right to do so. But that's only your opin- 
 ion, and mine. It won't be his. Good night." 
 
 He left her deep in thought, then five minutes after- 
 wards thrust his long nose round the door again. 
 
 " The English of it is you can't have anything for 
 nothing not in this weary world," he said. 
 
 Then he disappeared. 
 
 A week later Sarah Northover came to see her aunt and 
 congratulate her on the great news. 
 
 " Now people know it," said Sarah, " they all wonder 
 how ever 'twas you and Mister Gurd didn't marry long 
 ago." 
 
 " We've been wondering the same, for that matter, and 
 Richard takes the blame naturally, since I couldn't say 
 the word before he asked the question. But for your ear 
 
230 THE SPINNERS 
 
 and only yours, Sarah, I can whisper that this thing didn't 
 go by rule. And in sober honesty I do believe if he hadn't 
 heard another man wanted me, Mister Gurd would never 
 have found out he did. But such are the strange things 
 that happen in human nature, no doubt." 
 
 " Another ! " said Sarah. " They're making up for lost 
 time, seemingly." 
 
 " Another, and a good man," declared her aunt ; " but 
 his name is sacred, and you mustn't ask to know it." 
 
 Sarah related events at Bridetown. 
 
 " You've heard, of course, about the goings on? Mister 
 Ironsyde don't marry Sabina, and her mother wants to 
 have the law against him; but though Sabina's in a sad 
 state and got to be watched, she won't have the law. We 
 only hear scraps about it, because Nancy Buckler, her 
 great friend, is under oath of secrecy. But if he shows 
 his face at Bridetown, it's very likely he'll be man-handled. 
 Then, against that, there's rumours in the air he'll make 
 great changes at the Mill, and may put up all our money. 
 In that case, I don't think he'd be treated very rough, be- 
 cause, as my Mister Roberts says, * Self-preservation is 
 the first law of nature,' and always have been ; and if he's 
 going to better us it will mean a lot." 
 
 " Don't you be too hopeful, however," warned Mrs. 
 Northover. " There's a deal of difference between holding 
 the reins yourself and saying sharp things against them 
 who are. He's hard, and last time he was in this house but 
 one, he got as drunk as a lord and Legg helped him to bed. 
 And he quarrelled very sharp with Mister Gurd for giving 
 him good advice ; and Richard says the young man is iron 
 painted to look like wood. And he's rarely mistook." 
 
 " But he always did tell us we never got enough money 
 for our work," argued Sarah. " And if anything comes 
 of it and Nicholas and me earn five bob more a week 
 between us, it means marriage. So I'm in a twitter." 
 
 "What does John Best say?" 
 
 " Nought. We can't get a word out of him. All we 
 
MRS. NORTHOVER DECIDES 
 
 know is we're cruel busy and orders flow in like a river. 
 But that was poor Mister Daniel's work, no doubt." 
 
 " Marriage is in the air, seemingly," reflected Nelly. 
 " It mightn't be altogether a bad thing if you and me 
 went to the altar together, Sarah. 'Twas always under- 
 stood you'd be married from ' The Seven Stars,' and the 
 sight of a young bride and bridegroom would soften the 
 ceremony a bit and distract the eye from me and Richard." 
 
 " Good Lord ! " answered the girl. " There won't be 
 no eyes for small folks like us on the day you take Mister 
 Gurd. 'Twould be one expense without a doubt ; but I'm 
 certain positive he wouldn't like for us little people to 
 be mixed up with it. 'Twould lessen the blaze from his 
 point of view, and a man such as him wouldn't approve 
 of that." 
 
 " Perhaps you're right," admitted her aunt, with a 
 massive sigh. " He's a masterful piece, and the affair will 
 be carried out as he wills." 
 
 " I can't see you away from 4 The Seven Stars,' some- 
 how, Aunt Nelly." 
 
 " That's what everybody says. More can't I see my- 
 self away for that matter. But Richard said ' The Tiger ' 
 would swallow * The Seven Stars,' and I know what he 
 meant now." 
 
CHAPTER XXV 
 
 THE WOMAN'S DARKNESS 
 
 THE blood of Sabina Dinnett was poisoned through an 
 ordeal of her life when it should have run at its purest and 
 sweetest. That the man who had promised to marry her, 
 had exhausted the vocabulary of love for her, should thus 
 cast her off, struck her into a frantic calenture which, for 
 a season, threatened her existence. The surprise of his 
 decision was not absolute and utter, otherwise such a shock 
 might indeed have killed her; but there lacked not many 
 previous signs to show that Raymond Ironsyde had strayed 
 from his old enthusiasm and found the approach of mar- 
 riage finally quench love. The wronged girl could look 
 back and see a thousand such warnings, while she re- 
 membered also a dark dread in her heart as to what might 
 possibly overtake her on the death of Daniel. True the 
 shadow had lasted but a moment; she banished it, as un- 
 worthy, and preferred to dwell on the increased happiness 
 and prosperity that must accrue to Raymond; but the 
 passing fear had touched her first, and she could look back 
 now and mark how deeply doubt tinctured all her waking 
 hours since the necessity arose for Raymond to wed. 
 
 For a few days she raged and was only comforted with 
 difficulty. Mr. Churchouse and Jenny Ironsyde both 
 visited Sabina and bade her control herself and keep calm, 
 lest worst things should happen to her. Ernest was still 
 sanguine that the young man would regret his suggestions ; 
 but Jenny quenched this hope. 
 
 " It is all of a piece," she said, " and, looking back, I 
 see it. His instinct and will are against any such binding 
 thing as marriage. He wants to make her happy ; but if 
 to do so is to make himself miserable, then she must go un- 
 
 232 
 
THE WOMAN'S DARKNESS 233 
 
 happy. Some bad girls might accept his offer; but 
 Sabina, of course, cannot. She is not made of the stuff 
 to sink to this, and it was only because he always insisted 
 on the vital need for her to complete his life, that she for- 
 got her wisdom in the past and believed they were really 
 the complement of each other. As if a woman ever was, 
 or ever will be, the real complement of a man, or a man, 
 the complement of a woman ! They are only complemen- 
 tary as meat and drink to the hungry." 
 
 After some days Sabina read Raymond's letter again 
 and it now awoke a new passion. At first she had hated 
 herself and talked of doing herself an injury ; but this was 
 hysteria bred of suffering, since she had not the tempera- 
 ment to commit self-destruction. Now her rage burned 
 against the child that she was doomed to bring into the 
 world, and she brooded secretly on how its end might be 
 accomplished. She knew the peril to herself of any such 
 attempt; but while she could not have committed suicide, 
 she faced the thought of the necessary risks. If the child 
 lived, the hateful link must exist forever, if it perished, 
 she would be free. So she argued. 
 
 Full of this idea, she rose from her bed, went about and 
 found some little consolation in the sympathy of her 
 friends. They cursed the man until they heard what he 
 had written to her. Then a change came over their criti- 
 cism, for they were not tuned to Sabina's pitch, and it 
 seemed to them, from their more modest standards of edu- 
 cation, combined with the diminished self-respect where 
 ignorance obtains, that Raymond's offer was fair even 
 handsome. Some, indeed, still mourned with her and 
 shared her fierce indignation; some simulated anger to 
 please her; but most confessed to themselves that she had 
 not much to grumble at. 
 
 A wise woman warned her against any attempt to tam- 
 per with the child. It was too late and the danger far 
 too serious. So she passed through the second phase of 
 her sufferings and went from hatred of herself and loath- 
 
THE SPINNERS 
 
 ing of her load, to acute detestation of the man who had 
 destroyed her. 
 
 His offer seemed to her more villainous than his deser- 
 tion. His ignorance of her true self, the insolence and 
 contempt that prompted such a proposal, the view of her 
 ? these thoughts lashed her into fury. She longed for 
 some one to help her against him and treat him as he de- 
 served to be treated. She felt equal to making any sacri- 
 fice, if only he might be debased and scorned and pointed 
 at as he deserved to be. She felt that her emotions must 
 be shared by every honourable woman and decent man. 
 Her spirit hungered for a great revenge. 
 
 At first she dreamed of a personal action. She longed 
 to tear him with her nails, outrage him in people's eyes and 
 make him suffer in his flesh ; but that passed : she knew 
 she could not do it. A man was needed to extort punish- 
 ment from Raymond. But no man existed who would un- 
 dertake the task. She must then find such a man. She 
 even sought him. But she did not find him. The search 
 led to bitter discoveries. If women could forgive her be- 
 trayer; if women could say, as presently they said, that 
 she did not know her luck, men were still more indifferent. 
 
 The attitude of the world to her sufferings horrified 
 Sabina. She had none to love her none, at least, to 
 show his love by assaulting and injuring her enemy. Only 
 a certain number even took up the cudgels for her in 
 speech. Of these Levi Baggs, the hackler, was the strong- 
 est. But his misanthropy embraced her also. He had 
 said harsh things of his new master; but neither had he 
 spared the victim. 
 
 Upon these three great periods, of rage, futile passion, 
 and hate, there followed a lethargy from which Ernest 
 Churchouse tried in vain to rouse Sabina. He appre- 
 hended worse results from this coma of mind and body 
 than from the flux of her natural indignation. He spent 
 much time with her and bade her hope that Raymond 
 might still reconsider his future. 
 
THE WOMAN'S DARKNESS 235 
 
 None had yet seen him since his brother's funeral, and 
 his aunt received no answer to a very strenuous plea. He 
 wrote to her, indeed, about affairs, and even asked her for 
 advice upon certain matters ; but they affected the past 
 and Daniel rather than the future and himself. She could 
 not fail to notice the supreme change that power had 
 brought with it ; his very handwriting seemed to have ac- 
 quired a firmer line; while his diction certainly showed 
 more strength of purpose. Could power modify charac- 
 ter? It seemed impossible. She supposed, rather, that 
 character, latent till this sudden change of fortune, had 
 been revealed by power. Her first fears for the future of 
 the business abated ; but with increasing respect for Ray- 
 mond, the former affection perished. She was firm in her 
 moral standards, and to find his first use of power an eva- 
 sion of solemn and sacred promises, made Miss Ironsyde 
 Raymond's enemy. That he ignored her appeals to his 
 manhood and honesty did not modify her changed attitude. 
 She found herself much wounded by his callous conduct, 
 and while his past weakness had been forgiven, his new 
 strength proved unforgivable. 
 
 Her appeal was, however, indirectly acknowledged, for 
 Sabina received another letter from Raymond in which he 
 mentioned Miss Ironsyde's communication. 
 
 " My aunt," he wrote, " does not realise the situation, 
 or appreciate the fact that love may remain a much more 
 enduring and lively emotion outside marriage than inside 
 it. There are, of course, people who find chains bearable 
 enough, and even grow to like them, as convicts were said 
 to do ; but you are not such a craven, no more am I. We 
 must think of the future, not the past, and I feel very sure 
 that if we married, the result would be death to our friend- 
 ship. We had a splendid time, and we might still have a 
 splendid time, if you could be unconventional and realise 
 how many other women are also. But probably you have 
 decided against my suggestions, or I should have heard 
 from you. So I suppose you hate me, and I'm awfully 
 
236 THE SPINNERS 
 
 sorry to think it. You won't come to me, then. But that 
 doesn't lessen my obligations, and I'm going to take every 
 possible care of you and your child, Sabina, whether you 
 come or not. He is my child, too, and I shan't forget it. 
 If you would like to see me you shall when I return to 
 Bridport, pretty soon now ; but if you would rather not do 
 so, then let me know who represents you, and I will hear 
 what you and your mother would wish." 
 
 She wrote several answers to this and destroyed them. 
 They were bitter and contemptuous, and as each was fin- 
 ished she realised its futility. She could but sting; she 
 could not seriously hurt. Even her sting would not 
 trouble him much, for a man who had done what he had 
 done, was proof against the scorn and hate of a woman. 
 Only greater power than his own could make him feel. 
 Her powerlessness maddened her her powerlessness con- 
 trasted with his remorseless strength. But he used his 
 strength like a coward. 
 
 Some of her friends urged her to take legal action 
 against Raymond Ironsyde and demand mighty damages. 
 
 " You can hurt him there, if you can't anywhere else," 
 said Nancy Buckler. " You say you're too weak to hurt 
 him, but you're not. Knock his money out of him; you 
 ought to get thousands." 
 
 Her mother, for a time, was of the same opinion. It 
 seemed a right and reasonable thing that Sabina should 
 not be called upon to face her ruined life without some 
 compensation, but she found herself averse from this. 
 The thought of touching his money, or availing herself of 
 it in any way, was horrible to her. She knew, moreover, 
 that such an arrangement would go far to soothe Ray- 
 mond's conscience ; and the more he paid, probably the 
 happier he would feel. For other causes also she declined 
 to take any legal steps against him, and in this decision 
 Ernest Churchouse supported her. 
 
 He had been her prime consolation indeed, and though, 
 at first, his line of argument only left Sabina impatient. 
 
THE WOMAN'S DARKNESS 237 
 
 by degrees by very slow degrees she inclined to him 
 and suffered herself to hope he might not be mistaken. 
 He urged patience and silence. He held that Raymond 
 Ironsyde would presently return to that better and wor- 
 thier self, which could not be denied him. His own 
 abounding charity, where humanity was concerned, hon- 
 estly induced Ernest to hope and almost believe that the 
 son of Henry Ironsyde had made these proposals under 
 excitation of mind ; that he was thrown off his balance by 
 the pressure of events ; and that, presently, when he had 
 time to remember the facts concerning Sabina, he would 
 be heartily ashamed of himself and make the only ade- 
 quate amends. 
 
 It was not unnatural that the girl should find in this 
 theory her highest consolation. She clung to it desper- 
 ately, though few but Mr. Churchouse himself accounted 
 it of any consequence. Him, however, she had been ac- 
 customed to consider the fountain of wisdom, and though, 
 with womanhood, she had lived to see his opinions mis- 
 taken and his trust often abused, yet disappointments did 
 not change a sanguine belief in his fellow creatures. 
 
 So, thankful to repose her mind on another, Sabina for 
 a while came to standing-ground in her storm-stricken 
 journey. Each day was an eternity, but she strove to be 
 patient. And, meantime, she wrote and posted a letter to 
 her old lover. It was not angry, or even petulant. In- 
 deed, she made her appeal with dignity and good choice of 
 words. Before all she insisted on the welfare of the child, 
 and reminded him of the cruelty inflicted from birth on 
 any baby unlawfully born in England. 
 
 Mr. Churchouse had instructed her in this matter, and 
 she asked Raymond if he could find it in his heart to allow 
 the child of their common love and worship to come into 
 the world unrecognised by the world, deprived of recogni- 
 tion and human rights. 
 
 He answered the letter vaguely and Mr. Churchouse 
 read a gleam of hope into his words, but neither Sabina 
 
238 THE SPINNERS 
 
 nor her mother were able to do so. For he spoke only of 
 recognising his responsibilities and paternal duty. He 
 bade her fear nothing for the child, or herself, and assured 
 her that her future would be his care and first obligation 
 as long as he lived. 
 
 In these assertions Mr. Churchouse saw a wakening 
 dawn, but Mary Dinnett declared otherwise. The man 
 was widening the gap ; his original idea, that Sabina should 
 live with him, had clearly been abandoned. 
 
 Then the contradictions of human nature appeared, and 
 Mary, who had been the first to declare her deep indigna- 
 tion at Raymond's cynical proposal, began to weaken and 
 even wonder if Sabina had done wisely not to discuss that 
 matter. 
 
 " Not that ever you should have done it," she hastened 
 to add ; " but if you'd been a bit crafty and not ruled it 
 out altogether, you might have built on it and got friendly 
 again and gradually worked him back to his duty.'* 
 
 Then Mr. Churchouse protested, in the name of right- 
 eousness, while she argued that God helps those that help 
 themselves, and that wickedness should be opposed with 
 craft. Sabina listened to them helplessly and her last 
 hope died out. 
 
CHAPTER XXVI 
 
 OF HUMAN NATURE 
 
 NICHOLAS ROBERTS drove his lathes in a lofty chamber 
 separated by wooden walls from the great central activi- 
 ties of the spinning mill. Despite the flying sparks from 
 his emery wheels, he always kept a portrait of Sarah 
 Northover before him; and certain pictures of notable 
 sportsmen also Jiung with Sarah above the benches 
 whereon Nicholas pursued his task. His work was to put 
 a fresh face on the wooden reels and rollers that formed a 
 part of the machines ; for running hemp or flax will groove 
 the toughest wood in time, and so ruin the control of the 
 rollers and spoil the thread. 
 
 The wood curled away like paper before the teeth of the 
 lathes, and the chisels of these, in their turn, had often to 
 be set upon spinning stones. It was noisy work, and 
 Nicholas now stopped his grindstone that he might hear 
 his own voice and that of Mr. Best, who came suddenly 
 into the shop. 
 
 The foreman spoke of some new wood for roller turning. 
 
 " It should be here this week," he said. " I told them 
 we were running short. You may expect a good batch of 
 plane and beech by Thursday." 
 
 They discussed the work of Roberts and presently 
 turned to the paramount question in every mind at the 
 Mill. All naturally desired to know when Raymond Iron- 
 syde would make his appearance and what would happen 
 when he did so ; but while some, having regard for his con- 
 duct, felt he would not dare to appear again himself, others 
 believed that one so insensible to honesty and decency 
 
 239 
 
240 THE SPINNERS 
 
 would be indifferent to all opinions entertained of him. 
 Such suspected that the criticisms of Bridetown would 
 be too unimportant to trouble the new master. 
 
 And it seemed that they were right, for now came Ernest 
 Churchouse seeking Mr. Best. He looked into the turn- 
 ing-shop, saw John and entered. 
 
 " He's coming next week, but perhaps you know it," he 
 began. " And if you haven't heard, be sure you will at 
 any moment." 
 
 " Then our fate is in store," declared Nicholas. " Some 
 hope nothing, but, seeing that with all his faults he's a 
 sportsman, I do hope a bit. There's plenty beside me who 
 remember his words very well, and they pointed to an all- 
 around rise for men and women alike." 
 
 " There was a rumour of violence against him. You 
 don't apprehend anything of that sort, I hope? " asked 
 Ernest of Best. 
 
 " A few more women than men had a plot, I be- 
 lieve, but I haven't heard any more about it. Baggs is the 
 ringleader ; but if there was any talk of raising the money, 
 he'd find himself deserted. He's very bitter just now, 
 however, and as he's got the pleasant experience of being 
 right for once, you may be sure he's making the most of 
 it." 
 
 " I'll see him," said Mr. Churchouse. " I always find 
 him the most difficult character possible ; but he must know 
 that to answer violence with violence is vain. Patience 
 may yet find the solution. I have by no means given up 
 hope that right will be done." 
 
 " Come and tell Levi, then. Him and me are out for 
 the moment, because I won't join him in calling down evil 
 on Mister Ironsyde's head. But what's the sense of los- 
 ing your temper in other people's quarrels? Better keep 
 it for your own, I say." 
 
 They found Levi Baggs grumbling to himself over a 
 mass of badly scutched flax ; but when he heard that Ray- 
 mond Ironsyde was coming, he grew philosophic. 
 
OF HUMAN NATURE 841 
 
 " If we could only learn from what we work in," he 
 said, " we'd have the lawless young dog at our mercy. 
 But, of course, we shall not. Why don't the yarn teach 
 us a lesson? Why don't it show us that, though the 
 thread is nought, and you can break it, same as Raymond 
 Ironsyde can break me or you, yet when you get to the 
 twist, and the doubling and the trebling, then it's strong 
 enough to defy anything. And if we combined as we 
 ought, we shouldn't be waiting here to listen to what he's 
 got to say ; we should be waiting here to tell him what 
 we've got to say. If we had the wit and understanding to 
 twist our threads into one rope against the wickedness of 
 the world, then we should have it all our own way." 
 
 " Yes all your own way to do your own wickedness," 
 declared Best. " We know very well what your idea of 
 fairness is. You look upon capital as a natural enemy, 
 and if Raymond Ironsyde was an angel with wings, you'd 
 still feel to him that he was a foe and not a friend." 
 
 " The tradition is in the blood," declared Levi. " Cap- 
 ital is our natural enemy, as you say. Our fathers knew 
 it, and we know it, and our children will know it." 
 
 " Your fathers had a great deal more sense than you 
 have, Baggs," declared Mr. Churchouse. " And if you 
 only remember the past a little, you wouldn't grumble 
 quite so loudly at the present. But labour has a short 
 memory and no gratitude, unfortunately. You're always 
 shouting out what must be done for you ; you never spare 
 a thought on what has been done. You never look back at 
 the working-class drudgery of bygone days to the ' for- 
 ties ' of last century, when your fathers went to work at the 
 curfew bell and earned eight een-pence a week as appren- 
 tices, and two shillings a week and a penny for themselves 
 after they had learned their business. A good spinner in 
 those days might earn five shillings a week, Levi and 
 that out of doors in fair weather. In foul, he, or she, 
 wouldn't do so well. If you had told your fathers sev- 
 enty years ago that all the spinning walks would be done 
 
84* THE SPINNERS 
 
 away with and the population better off notwithstanding, 
 they would never have believed it." 
 
 " That's the way to look at the subject, Levi," declared 
 John Best. " Think what the men of the past would have 
 said to our luck and our education." 
 
 " Machinery brought the spinning indoors," continued 
 Ernest. " I can remember forty spinning walks in St. 
 Michael's Lane alone. And with small wages and long 
 hours, remember the price of things, Levi; remember the 
 fearful price of bare necessities. Clothes were so dear 
 that many a labourer went to church in his smock frock 
 all his life. Many never donned broadcloth from their 
 cradle to their grave. And tea five shillings a pound, 
 Levi Baggs ! They used to buy it by the ounce and brew 
 it over and over again. Think of the little children, too, 
 and how they were made to work. Think of them and 
 feel your heart ache." 
 
 " My heart aches for myself," answered the hackler, 
 " because I very well remember what my own childhood 
 was. And I'm not saying the times don't better. I'm 
 saying we must keep at 'em, or they'll soon slip back again 
 into the old, bad ways. Capital's always pulling against 
 labour and would get back its evil mastery to-morrow if it 
 could. So we need to keep awake, to see we don't lose what 
 we've won, but add to it. Now here's a man that's a serv- 
 ant by instinct, and it's in his blood to knuckle under." 
 
 He pointed to Best. 
 
 " I'm for no man more than another," answered John. 
 " I stand not for man or woman in particular. I'm for 
 the Mill first and last and always. I think of what is best 
 for the Mill and put it above the welfare of the individual, 
 whatever he represents capital or labour." 
 
 " That's where you're wrong. The people are the Mill 
 and only the people," declared Baggs. " The rest is iron 
 and steel and flax and hemp and steam dead things 
 all. We are the Mill, not the stuff in it, or the man that 
 happens to be the new master." 
 
OF HUMAN NATURE 
 
 " Mr. Raymond has expressed admirable sentiments in 
 my hearing," declared Ernest Churchouse. " For so 
 young a man, he has a considerable grasp of the situation 
 and progressive ideas. You might be in worse hands." 
 
 " Might we? How worse? What can be worse than a 
 man that lies to women and seduces an innocent girl under 
 promise of marriage? What can be worse than a coward 
 and traitor, who does a thing like that, and when he finds 
 he's strong enough to escape the consequences, escapes 
 them?" 
 
 " Heaven knows I'm not condoning his conduct, Levi. 
 He has behaved as badly as a young man could, and not a 
 word of extenuation will you hear from me. I'm not 
 speaking of him as a part of the social order ; I'm speaking 
 of him as master of the Mill. As master here he may be 
 a successful man and you'll do well to bear in mind that 
 he must be judged by results. Morally, he's a failure, 
 and you are right to condemn him; but don't let that 
 make you an enemy to him as owner of the works. Be 
 just, and don't be prejudiced against him in one capacity 
 because he's failed in another." 
 
 " A bad man is a bad man," answered Baggs stoutly, 
 " and a blackguard's a blackguard. And if you are equal 
 to doing one dirty trick, your fellow man has a right to 
 distrust you all through. You've got to look at a ques- 
 tion through your own spectacles, and I won't hear no 
 nonsense about the welfare of the Mill, because the welfare 
 of the Mill means to me Levi Baggs my welfare 
 and, no doubt, it means to that godless rip, his welfare. 
 You mark me a man that can ruin one girl won't be 
 very tender about fifty girls and women. And if you think 
 Raymond Ironsyde will take any steps to better the work- 
 ers at the expense of the master, you're wrong, and don't 
 know nothing about human nature." 
 
 John Best looked at Mr. Churchouse doubtfully. 
 
 " There's sense in that, I'm fearing," he said. 
 
 " When you say ' human nature,' Levi, you sum the 
 
THE SPINNERS 
 
 whole situation," answered Ernest mildly. " Because 
 human nature is like the sea you never know when you 
 put a net into it what you'll drag up to the light of day. 
 Human nature is never exhausted, and it abounds in con- 
 tradictions. You cannot make hard and fast laws for it, 
 and you cannot, if you are philosophically inclined, pre- 
 sume to argue about it as though it were a consistent and 
 unchanging factor. History is full of examples of men 
 defeating their own characters, of falling away from their 
 own ideals, yet struggling back to them. Careers have 
 dawned in beauty and promise and set in blood and failure ; 
 and, again, you find people who make a bad start, yet 
 manage to retrieve the situation. In a word, you cannot 
 argue from the past to the future, where human nature is 
 concerned. It is a series of surprises, some gratifying and 
 some very much the reverse. There's always room for 
 hope with the worst and fear with the best of us." 
 
 " It's easy for you to talk," growled Mr. Baggs. " But 
 talk don't take the place of facts. I say a blackguard's 
 always a blackguard and defy any man to disprove it." 
 
 " If you want facts, you can have them," replied Ernest. 
 " My researches into history have made me sanguine in 
 this respect. Many have been vicious in youth and proved 
 stout enemies to vice at a later time. Themistocles did 
 much evil. His father disowned him < and he drove his 
 mother to take her own life for grief at his sins. Yet, 
 presently, the ugly bud put forth a noble flower. Nich- 
 olas West was utterly wicked in his youth and committed 
 such crimes that he was driven from college after burning 
 his master's dwelling-house. Yet light dawned for this 
 young man and he ended his days as Bishop of Ely. Titus 
 Vespasianus emulated Nero in his early rascalities ; but 
 having donned the imperial purple, he cast away his evil 
 companions and was accounted good as well as great. 
 Henry V. of England was another such man, who reformed 
 himself to admiration. Augustine began badly, and de- 
 clared as a jest that he would rather have his lust satis- 
 
OF HUMAN NATURE 
 
 fied than extinguished. Yet this man ended as a Saint of 
 Christ. I could give you many other examples, Levi." 
 
 " Then we'll hope for the best," said John. 
 
 But Mr. Baggs only sneered. 
 
 " We hear of the converted sinners," he said ; " but we 
 don't hear of the victims that suffered their wickedness 
 before they turned into saints. Let Raymond Ironsyde be 
 twenty saints rolled into one, that won't make Sabina 
 Dinnett an honest woman, or her child a lawful child." 
 
 " Never jump to conclusions," advised Ernest. " Even 
 that may come right. Nothing is impossible." 
 
 " That's a great thought that nothing's impossible." 
 declared Mr. Best. 
 
 They argued, each according to his character and bent 
 of mind, and, while the meliorists cheered each other, Mr. 
 Baggs laughed at them and held their aspirations vain. 
 
CHAPTER XXVII 
 
 THE MASTER OF THE MILL 
 
 RAYMOND IRONSYDE came to Bridetown. He rode in from 
 Bridport, and met John Best by appointment early on a 
 March morning. 
 
 With the words of Ernest Churchouse still in his ears, 
 the foreman felt profound interest to learn what might be 
 learned considering the changes in his master's character. 
 
 He found a new Raymond, yet as the older writing of a 
 parchment palimpsest will sometimes make itself apparent 
 behind the new, glimpses of his earlier self did not lack. 
 The things many remembered and hoped that Ironsyde 
 would remember were not forgotten by him. But instead 
 of the old, vague generalities and misty assurance of 
 goodwill, he now declared definite plans based on knowl- 
 edge. He came armed with figures and facts, and his 
 method of expression had changed from ideas to intentions. 
 His very manner chimed with his new power. He was 
 decisive, and quite devoid of sentimentality. He feared 
 none, but his attitude to all had changed. 
 
 They spoke in Mr. Best's office and he marked how the 
 works came first in Raymond's regard. 
 
 " I've been putting in a lot of time on the machine ques- 
 tion," he said. " As you know, that always interested me 
 most before I thought I should have much say in the 
 matter. Well, there's no manner of doubt we're badly 
 behind the times. You can't deny it, John. You know 
 better than anybody what we want, and it must be your 
 work to go on with what you began to do for my brother. 
 I don't want to rush at changes and then find I've wasted 
 capital without fair results ; but it's clear to me that a 
 good many of our earlier operations are not done as well 
 and swiftly as they might be." 
 
 246 
 
THE MASTER OF THE MILL 
 
 "That's true. The Carder is out of date and the 
 Spreader certainly is." 
 
 " The thing is to get the best substitutes in the market. 
 You'll have to go round again in a larger spirit. I'm not 
 frightened of risks. Is there anybody here who can take 
 your place for a month or six weeks ? " 
 
 Mr. Best shook his head. 
 
 " There certainly is not," he said. 
 
 " Then we must look round Bridport for a man. I'm 
 prepared to put money into the changes, provided I have 
 you behind me. I can trust you absolutely to know; but 
 I advocate a more sporting policy than my poor brother 
 did. After that we come to the people. I've got my busi- 
 ness at my fingers' ends now and I found I was better at 
 figures than I thought. There must be some changes. 
 There are two problems : time and money. Either one or 
 other ; or probably both must be bettered that's what 
 I am faced with." 
 
 " It wants careful thinking out, sir." 
 
 " Well, you are a great deal more to me than my fore- 
 man, and you know it. I look to you and only you to 
 help me run the show at Bridetown, henceforth. And, 
 before everything, I want my people to be keen and feel 
 my good is their good and their good is mine. Anyway, 
 I have based changes on a fair calculation of future profits, 
 plus necessary losses and need to make up wear and tear." 
 
 " And remember, raw products tend to rise in price all 
 the time." 
 
 " As to that, I'm none too sure we've been buying in 
 the best market. When I know more about it, I may 
 travel a bit myself. Meantime, I'm changing two of our 
 travellers." 
 
 Mr. Best nodded. 
 
 " That's to the good," he said. " I know which. Poor 
 Mr. Daniel would keep them, because his father had told 
 him they were all they ought to be. But least said, soon- 
 est mended." 
 
248 THE SPINNERS 
 
 " As to the staff, it's summed up in a word. I mean for 
 them a little less time and a little more money. Some 
 would like longer hours and much higher wages ; some 
 would be content with a little more money ; some only 
 talked about shorter time. I heard them all air their 
 opinions in the past. But I've concluded for somewhat 
 shorter hours and somewhat better money. You must rub 
 it into them that new machinery will indirectly help them, 
 too, and make the work lighter and the results better." 
 
 " That's undoubtedly true, but it's no good saying so. 
 You'll never make them feel that new machinery helps 
 them. But they'll be very glad of a little more money." 
 
 " We must enlarge their minds and make them under- 
 stand that the better the machinery, the better their pros- 
 pects. As I go up and I mean to so they shall go 
 up. But our hope of success lies in the mechanical means 
 we employ. They must grasp that intelligently, and be 
 patient, and not expect me to put them before the Mill. 
 If the works succeed, then they succeed and I succeed. 
 If the works hang fire and get behindhand, then they will 
 suffer. We're all the servants of the machinery. I want 
 them to grasp that." 
 
 " It's difficult for them ; but no doubt they'll get to see 
 it," answered John. 
 
 " They must. That's the way to success in my opinion. 
 It's a very interesting subject the most interesting to 
 me always was. The machinery, I mean. I may go to 
 America, presently. Of course, they can give us a start 
 and a beating at machinery there." 
 
 " We must remember the driving power," said Best. 
 
 " The driving power can be raised, like everything else. 
 If we haven't got enough power, we must increase it. I've 
 thought of that, too, as a matter of fact." 
 
 " You can't increase what the river will do ; but, of 
 course, you can get a stronger steam engine." 
 
 " Not so sure about the river. There's a new thing 
 American, of course called a turbine. But no hurry 
 
THE MASTER OF THE MILL 249 
 
 for that. We've got all the power we want for the min- 
 ute. That's one virtue of some of the new machinery: it 
 doesn't demand so much power in some cases." 
 
 But Best was very sceptical on this point. They dis- 
 cussed other matters and Raymond detailed his ideas as to 
 the alteration of hours and wages. For the most part his 
 foreman had no objections to offer, and when he did ques- 
 tion the figures, he was overruled. But he felt constrained 
 to praise. 
 
 " It's wonderful how you've gone into it," he said. " I 
 never should have thought you'd have had such a head for 
 detail, Mister Raymond." 
 
 " No more should I, John. I surprised myself. But 
 when you are working for another person that's one 
 thing; when you are working for yourself that's an- 
 other thing. Not much virtue in what I've done, as it is 
 for myself in the long run. When you tell them, explain 
 that I'm not a philanthropist only a man of business 
 in future. But before all things fair and straight. I 
 mean to be fair to them and to the machinery, too. And 
 to the machinery I look to make all our fortunes. I 
 should have done a little more to start with for the 
 people I mean; but the death duties are the devil. In 
 fact, I start crippled by them. Tell them that and make 
 them understand what they mean on an enterprise of this 
 sort." 
 
 They went through the works together presently and it 
 was clear that the new owner fixed a gulf between the past 
 and the future. His old easy manner had vanished 
 and, while friendly enough, he made it quite clear that a 
 vast alteration had come into his mind and manners. 
 It seemed incredible that six months before Raymond was 
 chaffing the girls and bringing them fruit. He called them 
 by their names as of yore ; but they knew in a moment he 
 had moved with his fortunes and their own manner in- 
 stinctively altered. 
 
 He was kind and pleasant, but far more interested in 
 
250 THE SPINNERS 
 
 their work than them ; and they drew conclusions from the 
 fact. They judged his attitude with gloom and were 
 the more agreeably surprised when they learned what ad- 
 vantages had been planned for them. Levi Baggs and 
 Benny Cogle, the engineman, grumbled that more was not 
 done; but the women, who judged Raymond from his 
 treatment of Sabina and hoped nothing from his old prom- 
 ises, were gratified and astonished at what they heard. 
 An improved sentiment towards the new master was mani- 
 fest. The instinct to judge people at your own tribunal 
 awoke, and while Sally Groves and old Mrs. Chick held out 
 for morals, the other women did not. Already they 
 had realised that the idle youth they could answer was 
 gone. And with him had gone the young man who amused 
 himself with a spinner. Of course, he could not be ex- 
 pected to marry Sabina. Such things did not happen out 
 of story books ; and if you tried to be too clever for your 
 situation, this was the sort of thing that befell you. 
 
 So argued Nancy Buckler and Mercy Gale; nor did 
 Sarah Northover much differ from them. None had been 
 fiercer for Sabina than Nancy, yet her opinion, before the 
 spectacle of Raymond himself and after she heard his 
 intentions, was modified. To see him so alert, so aloof 
 from the girls, translated to a higher interest, had altered 
 Nancy. Despite her asperity and apparent independence 
 of thought, her mind was servile, as the ignorant mind is 
 bound to be. She paid the unconscious deference of weak- 
 ness to power. 
 
 Raymond lunched at North Hill House now his prop- 
 erty. He had not seen Waldron since the great change 
 in his fortunes and Arthur, with the rest, was quick to 
 perceive the difference. They met in friendship and Es- 
 telle kissed Raymond as she was accustomed to do ; but 
 the alteration in him, while missed by her, was soon appar- 
 ent to her father. It took the shape of a more direct and 
 definite method of thinking. Raymond no longer uttered 
 his opinions inconsiderately, as though confessing they 
 
THE MASTER OF THE MILL 251 
 
 were worthless even while he spoke them. He weighed his 
 words, jested far less often, and did no' turn serious sub- 
 jects into laughter. 
 
 Waldron suggested certain things to his new landlord 
 that he desired should be done ; but he was amused in secret 
 that some work Raymond had blamed Daniel for not 
 doing, he now refused to do himself. 
 
 " I've no objection, old chap none at all. The other 
 points you raise I shall carry out at my own expense ; 
 but the French window in the drawing-room, while an ex- 
 cellent addition to the room, is not a necessity. So you 
 must do that yourself." Thus he spoke and Arthur 
 agreed. 
 
 Estelle only found him unchanged. Before her he was 
 always jovial and happy. He liked to hear her talk and 
 listen to her budding theories of life and pretty dreams 
 of what the world ought to be, if people would only take a 
 little more trouble for other people. But Estelle was 
 painfully direct. She thought for herself and had not yet 
 learned to hide her ideas, modify their shapes, or muffle 
 their outlines when presenting them to another person. 
 Mr. Chur chouse and her father were responsible for this. 
 They encouraged her directness and, while knowing that 
 she outraged opinion sometimes, could not bring them- 
 selves to warn her, or stain the frankness of her views, 
 with the caution that good manners require thought 
 should not go nude. 
 
 Now the peril of Estelle's principles appeared when 
 lunch was finished and the servants had withdrawn. 
 
 " I didn't speak before Lucy and Agnes," she said, 
 " because they might talk about it afterwards." 
 
 " Bless % me! How cunning she's getting!" laughed 
 Raymond. But he did not laugh long. Estelle handed 
 him his coffee and lit a match for his cigar ; while Arthur, 
 guessing what was coming, resigned himself helplessly to 
 the storm. 
 
 " Sabina is fearfully unhappy, Ray. She loves you so 
 
THE SPINNERS 
 
 much, and I hope you will change your mind and marry 
 her after all, because if you do, she'll love her baby, too, 
 and look forward to it very much. But if you don't, she'll 
 hate her baby. And it would be a dreadful thing for the 
 poor little baby to come into the world hated." 
 
 To Waldron's intense relief Raymond showed no annoy- 
 ance whatever. He was gentle and smiled at Estelle. 
 
 " So it would, Chicky it would be a dreadful thing 
 for a baby to come into the world hated. But don't you 
 worry. Nobody's going to hate it." 
 
 " I'll tell Sabina that. Sabina's sure to have a nice 
 baby, because she's so nice herself." 
 
 . " Sure to. And I shall be a very good friend to the 
 baby without marrying Sabina." 
 
 " If she knows that, it ought to comfort her," declared 
 Estelle. " And I shall be a great friend to it, too." 
 
 Her father bade the child be off on an errand presently 
 and expressed his regrets to the guest when she was gone. 
 
 " Awfully sorry, old chap, but she's so unearthly and 
 simple ; and though I've often told myself to preach to her, 
 I never can quite do it." 
 
 " Never do. She'll learn to hide her thoughts soon 
 enough. Nothing she can say would annoy me. For that 
 matter she's only saying what a great many other people 
 are thinking and haven't the pluck to say. The truth is 
 this, Arthur; when I was a poor man I was a weak man, 
 and I should have married Sabina and we should both 
 have had a hell of a life, no doubt. Now the death of 
 Daniel has made me a strong man, and I'm not doing 
 wrong as the result ; I'm doing right. I can afford to do 
 right and not mind the consequences. And the truth 
 about life is that half the people who do wrong, only do it 
 because they can't afford to do right." 
 
 " That's a comforting doctrine for the poor." 
 
 " It's like this. Sabina is a very dear girl, and I loved 
 her tremendously, and if she'd gone on being the same 
 
THE MASTER OF THE MILL 253 
 
 afterwards, I should have married her. But she changed, 
 and I saw that we could never be really happy together 
 as man and wife. There are things in her that would have 
 ruined my temper, and there are things in me she would 
 have got to hate more and more. As a matter of brutal 
 fact, Arthur, she got to dislike me long before things came 
 to a climax. She had to hide it, because, from her stand- 
 point and her silly mother's, marriage is the only sort of 
 salvation. Whereas for us it would have been damnation. 
 It's very simple; she's got to think as I think and then 
 she'll be all right." 
 
 " You can't make people think your way, if they prefer 
 to think their own." 
 
 " It's merely the line of least resistance and what will 
 pay her best. I want you to grasp the fact that she had 
 ceased to like me before there was any reason why she 
 should cease to like me. I'll swear she had. My first 
 thought and intention, when I heard what had happened, 
 was to marry her right away. And what changed my 
 feeling about it, and showed me devilish clear it would be 
 a mistake, was Sabina herself. We needn't go over that. 
 But I'm not going to marry her now under any circum- 
 stances whatever, while recognising very clearly my duty 
 to her and the child. And though you may say it's hum- 
 bug, I'm thinking quite as much for her as myself when 
 I say this." 
 
 " I don't presume to judge. You're not a humbug - 
 no good sportsman is in my experience. If you do every- 
 thing right for the child, I suppose the world has no rea- 
 son to criticise." 
 
 " As long as I'm right with myself, I don't care one 
 button what the world says, Arthur. There's nothing 
 quicker opens your eyes, or helps you to take larger views, 
 than independence." 
 
 " I see that." 
 
 " All the same, it's a steadying thing if you're honest 
 
THE SPINNERS 
 
 and have got brains in your head. People thought I was 
 a shallow, easy, good-natured and good-for-nothing fool 
 six months ago. Well, they thought wrong. But don't 
 think I'm pleased with myself, or any nonsense of that 
 sort. Only a fool is pleased with himself. I've wasted 
 my life till now, because I had no ambition. Now I'm be- 
 ginning it and trying to get things into their proper per- 
 spective. When I had no responsibilities, I was irre- 
 sponsible. Now they've come, I'm stringing myself up to 
 meet them." 
 
 " Life's given you your chance." 
 
 " Exactly ; and I hope to show I can take it. But I'm 
 not going to start by making an ass of myself to please a 
 few old women." 
 
 "Where shall you live?" 
 
 " Nowhere in particular for the minute. I shall roam 
 and see all that's being done in my business and take John 
 Best with me for a while. Then it depends. Perhaps, if 
 things go as I expect about machinery, I shall ask you 
 for a corner again in the autumn." 
 
 Mr. Waldron nodded ; but he was not finding himself in 
 complete agreement with Raymond. 
 
 " Always welcome," he said. 
 
 "Perhaps you'd rather not? Well see how things 
 go. Estelle may bar me. I'm at Bridport to-night and 
 return to London to-morrow. But I shall be back again 
 in a week." 
 
 " Shall you play any cricket this summer? " 
 
 " I should like to if I have time ; but it's very improb- 
 able. I'm not going to chuck sport though. Next year 
 I may have more leisure." 
 
 " You're at ' The Seven Stars,' I hear haven't for- 
 given Dick Gurd he tells me." 
 
 " Did we quarrel ? I forget. Seems funny to think I 
 had enough time on my hands to wrangle with an inn- 
 keeper. But I like Missis Northover's. It's quiet." 
 
 " Shall I come in and dine this evening? " 
 
THE MASTER OF THE MILL 255 
 
 " Wait till I'm back again. I've got to talk to my 
 Aunt Jenny to-night. She's one of the old brigade, but 
 I'm hoping to make her see sense." 
 
 " When sense clashes with religion, old man, nobody sees 
 sense. I'm afraid your opinions won't entirely commend 
 themselves to Miss Ironsyde." 
 
 " Probably not. I quite realise that I shall have to ex- 
 ercise the virtue of patience at Bridport and Bridetown 
 for a year or two. But while I've got you for a friend, 
 Arthur, I'm not going to bother." 
 
 Waldron marked the imperious changes and felt some- 
 what bewildered. Raymond left him not a little to think 
 about, and when the younger had ridden off, Arthur 
 strolled afield with his thoughts and strove to bring order 
 into them. He felt in a vague sort of way that he had 
 been talking to a stranger, and his hope, if he experienced 
 a hope, was that the new master of the Mill might not take 
 himself too seriously. " People who do that are invaria- 
 bly one-sided," thought Waldron. 
 
 Upon Ironsyde's attitude and intentions with regard to 
 Sabina, he also reflected uneasily. What Raymond had 
 declared sounded all right, yet Arthur could not break 
 with old rooted opinions and the general view of conduct 
 embodied in his favourite word. Was it " sporting " ? 
 And more important still, was it true? Had Ironsyde 
 arrived at his determination from honest conviction, or 
 thanks to the force of changed circumstances? Mr. 
 Waldron gave his friend the benefit of the doubt. 
 
 " One must remember that he is a good sportsman," he 
 reflected, " and he can't have enough brains to make him a 
 bad sportsman." 
 
 For the thinker had found within his experience, that 
 those who despised sport, too often despised also the sim- 
 ple ethics that he associated with sportsmanship. In fact, 
 Arthur, after one or two painful experiences, had ex- 
 plicitly declared that big brains often went hand in hand 
 with a doubtful sense of honour. He had also, of course, 
 
256 THE SPINNERS 
 
 known numerous examples of another sort of dangerous 
 people who assumed the name and distinction of " sports- 
 man " as a garment to hide their true activities and unwor- 
 thy selves. 
 
CHAPTER XXVIII 
 
 CLASH OF OPINIONS 
 
 MR. JOB LEGG, with a persistence inspired by private pur- 
 pose, continued to impress upon Nelly Northover the 
 radical truth that in this world you cannot have anything 
 for nothing. He varied the precept sometimes, and re- 
 minded her that we must not hope to have our cake and eat 
 it too; and closer relations with Richard Gurd served to 
 impress upon Mrs. Northover the value of these verities. 
 Nor did she resent them from Mr. Legg. He had pre- 
 served an attitude of manly resignation under his supreme 
 disappointment. He was patient, uncomplaining and self- 
 controlled. He did not immediately give notice of de- 
 parture, but, for the present, continued to do his duty 
 with customary thoroughness. He showed himself a most 
 tactful man. New virtues were manifested in the light 
 of the misfortune that had overtaken him. Affliction and 
 reverse seemed to make him shine the brighter. Nelly 
 could hardly understand it. Had she not regarded his 
 character as one of obvious simplicity and incapable of 
 guile, she might have felt suspicious of any male who be- 
 haved with such exemplary distinction under the circum- 
 stances. 
 
 It was, of course, clear that the mistress of * The Seven 
 Stars ' could not become Mr. Gurd's partner and continue 
 to reign over her own constellation as of old. Yet Nelly 
 did not readily accept a fact so obvious, even under Mr. 
 Legg's reiterated admonitions. She felt wayward al- 
 most wilful about it; and there came an evening when 
 Richard dropped in for his usual half hour of courting to 
 
 257 
 
258 . THE SPINNERS 
 
 find her in such a frame of mind. Humour on his part 
 had saved the situation; but he lacked humour, and while 
 Nelly, even as she spoke, knew she was talking nonsense 
 and only waited his reminder of the inevitable in a friendly 
 spirit, yet, when the reminder came, it was couched in 
 words so forcible and so direct, that for a parlous mo- 
 ment her own sense of humour broke down. 
 
 The initial error was Mr. Gurd's. The elasticity of 
 youth, both mental and physical, had departed from him, 
 and he took her remarks, uttered more in mischief than 
 in earnest, with too much gravity, not perceiving that 
 Nelly herself was in a woman's mood and merely uttering 
 absurdities that he might contradict her. She was ready 
 enough to climb down from her impossible attitude; but 
 Richard abruptly threw her down; which unchivalrous 
 action wounded Mrs. Northover to the quick and begat 
 in her an obstinate and rebellious determination to climb 
 up again. 
 
 " I'm looking on ahead," she began, while they sat in 
 her parlour together. " This is a great upheaval, Rich- 
 ard, and I'm just beginning to feel how great. I'm won- 
 dering all manner of things. Will you be so happy and 
 comfortable along with me, at ' The Seven Stars,' as you 
 are at ' The Tiger ' ? You must put that to yourself, 
 you know." 
 
 It was so absurd an assumption, that she expected his 
 laughter; and if he had laughed and answered with in- 
 spiration, no harm could have come of it. But Richard 
 felt annoyed rather than amused. The suggestion seemed 
 to show that Mrs. Northover was a fool the last thing 
 he bargained for. He exhibited contempt. Indeed, he 
 snorted in a manner almost insulting. 
 
 " Woman comes to man, I believe, not man to woman," 
 he said. 
 
 " That is so," she admitted with a touch of colour in 
 her cheeks at his attitude, " but you must think all round 
 it which you haven't done yet, seemingly." 
 
CLASH OF OPINIONS 259 
 
 Then Richard laughed too late ; for a laugh may lose 
 all its value if the right moment be missed. 
 
 " Where's the fun? " she asked. " I thought, of course, 
 that you'd be business-like as well as lover-like and would 
 see ' The Seven Stars ' had got more to it than * The 
 Tiger.' " 
 
 Even now the situation might have been saved. The 
 very immensity of her claim rendered it ridiculous; but 
 Richard was too astonished to guess an utterance so 
 hyperbolic had been made to offer him an easy victory. 
 
 " You thought that, Nelly? ' The Seven Stars ' more 
 to it than < The Tiger'?" 
 
 "Surely!" 
 
 " Because you get a few tea-parties and old women at 
 nine-pence a head on your little bit of grass ? " 
 
 A counter so terrific destroyed the last glimmering 
 hope of a peaceful situation, and Mrs. Northover per- 
 ceived this first. 
 
 "It's war then?" she said. "So perhaps you'll tell 
 me what you mean by my little bit of grass. Not the 
 finest pleasure gardens in Bridport, I suppose? " 
 
 " Be damned if this ain't the funniest thing I've ever 
 heard," he answered. 
 
 " You never was one to see a joke, we all know; and if 
 that's the funniest thing you ever heard, you ain't heard 
 many. And you'll forgive me, please, if I tell you there's 
 nothing funny in my speaking about my pleasure gardens, 
 though it does sound a bit funny to hear 'em called ' a bit of 
 grass ' by a man that's got nothing but a few apple trees, 
 past bearing, and a strip of potatoes and weeds, and a 
 fowl-run. But, as you've got no use for a garden, per- 
 haps you'll remember the inn yard, and how many hosses 
 you can put up, and how many I can." 
 
 " It's the number of hosses that comes not the num- 
 ber you put up," he answered ; " and if you want to tell 
 me you've often obliged with a spare space in your yard, 
 perhaps I may remind you that you generally got quite 
 
260 THE SPINNERS 
 
 as good as you gave. But be that as it will, the point 
 lies in one simple question, and I ask you if you really 
 thought, as a woman nearer sixty than fifty and with 
 credit for sense, that I was going to chuck ' The Tiger ' 
 and coming over to your shop. Did you really think 
 that? " 
 
 Not for an instant had she thought it ; but the time was 
 inappropriate for saying so. She might have confessed 
 the truth in the past; she might confess the truth in the 
 future ; she was not going to do so at present. He should 
 have a stab for his stab. 
 
 " You've often told me I was the sensiblest woman in 
 Dorset, Richard, and being that, I naturally thought you'd 
 drop your bar-loafers' place and come over to me and 
 glad to come." 
 
 " Good God ! " he said, and stared at her with open 
 nostrils, from which indignant air exploded in gusts. 
 
 She began to make peace from that moment, feeling 
 that the limit had been reached. Indeed she was rather 
 anxious. The thrust appeared to be mortal. Mr. Gurd 
 rolled in his chair, and after his oath, could find no fur- 
 ther words. 
 
 She declared sorrow. 
 
 " There forgive me I didn't mean to say that. 
 'Tis a crying shame to see two old people dressing one 
 another down this way. I'm sorry if I hurt your feel- 
 ings, but don't forget you've properly trampled on mine. 
 My pleasure grounds are my life-blood you might say; 
 and you knew it." 
 
 " You needn't apologise now. c The Tiger ' a bar- 
 loafers' place! The centre of all high-class sport in the 
 district a bar-loafers' place ! Well, well ! No wonder you 
 thought I'd be glad to come and live at ' The Seven 
 Stars'!" 
 
 " I didn't really," she confessed. " I knew very well 
 you wouldn't ; but I had to say it. The words just flashed 
 
CLASH OF OPINIONS 261 
 
 out. And if I'd remembered a joke was nothing to you, 
 I might have thought twice." 
 
 " I laughed, however." 
 
 " Yes, you laughed, I grant what you can do in that 
 direction, which ain't much." 
 
 Mr. Gurd rose to his full height. 
 
 " Well, that lets me out," he said. " We'd better turn 
 this over in a forgiving spirit; and since you say you're 
 sorry, I won't be behind you, though my words was whips 
 to your scorpions and you can't deny it." 
 
 " We'll meet again in a week," said Mrs. Northover. 
 
 " Make it a fortnight," he suggested. 
 
 " No say a month," she answered " or six weeks." 
 
 Then it was Richard's turn to feel the future in danger. 
 But he had no intention to eat humble pie that evening. 
 
 " A month then. But one point I wish to make bitter 
 clear, Nelly. If you marry me, you come to ' The 
 Tiger.' " 
 
 " So it seems." 
 
 " Yes bar-loafers, or no bar-loafers." 
 
 " I'll bear it in mind, Richard." 
 
 The leave-taking lacked affection and they parted with 
 full hearts. Each was smarting under consciousness of 
 the other's failure in nice feeling; each was amazed as at 
 a revelation. Richard kept his mouth shut concerning 
 this interview, for he was proud and did not like to con- 
 fess even to himself that he stood on the verge of disaster ; 
 but Mrs. Northover held a familiar within her gates, and 
 she did not hesitate to lay the course of the adventure 
 before Job Legg. 
 
 " The world is full of surprises," said Nelly, " and you 
 never know, when you begin talking, where the gift of 
 speech will land you. And if you're dealing with a man 
 who can't take a bit of fun and can't keep his eyes on his 
 tongue and his temper at the same time, trouble will often 
 happen." 
 
262 THE SPINNERS 
 
 She told the story with honesty and did not exaggerate ; 
 but Mr. Legg supported her and held that such a self-, 
 respecting woman could have done and said no less. He 
 declared that Richard Gurd had brought the misfortune 
 on himself, and feared that the innkeeper's display re- 
 vealed a poor understanding of female nature. 
 
 " It isn't as if you was a difficult and notorious sort of 
 woman," explained Job ; " for then the man might have 
 reason on his side; but to misunderstand you and over- 
 look your playful touch that shows he's got a low 
 order of brain; because you always speak clearly. Your 
 word is as good as your bond and none can question your 
 judgment." 
 
 He proceeded to examine the argument earnestly and 
 had just proved that Mrs. Northover was well within her 
 right to set * The Seven Stars ' above * The Tiger,' when 
 Raymond Ironsyde entered. 
 
 He returned from dining with his aunt, and an inter- 
 view now concluded was of very painful and far-reaching 
 significance. For they had not agreed, and Miss Iron- 
 syde proved no more able to convince her nephew than 
 was he, to make her see his purpose combined truest wis- 
 dom and humanity. 
 
 They talked after dinner and she invited him to justify 
 his conduct if he could, before hearing her opinions and 
 intentions. He replied at once and she found his argu- 
 ments and reasons all arrayed and ready to his tongue. 
 He spoke clearly and stated his case in very lucid lan- 
 guage ; but he irritated her by showing that his mind was 
 entirely closed to argument and that he was not prepared 
 to be influenced in any sort of way. Her power had van- 
 ished now and she saw how only her power, not her persua- 
 sion, had won Raymond before his brother's death. He 
 spoke with utmost plainness and did not spare himself in 
 the least. 
 
 " I've been wrong," he said, " but I'm going to try and 
 be right in the future. I did a foolish thing and fell in 
 
CLASH OF OPINIONS 263 
 
 love with a good and clever girl. Once in love, of course, 
 everything was bent and deflected to be seen through that 
 medium and I believed that nothing else mattered or ever 
 would. Then came the sequel, and being powerless to 
 resist, I was going to marry. For some cowardly reason 
 I funked poverty, and the thought of escaping it made me 
 agree to marry Sabina, knowing all the time it must prove 
 a failure. That was my second big mistake, and the 
 third was asking her to come and live with me without 
 marrying her. I suggested that, because I wanted her 
 and felt very keen about the child. I ought not to have 
 thought of such a thing. It wasn't fair to her I quite 
 see that." 
 
 " Can anything be fair to her short of marriage? " 
 
 " Not from her point of view, Aunt Jenny." 
 
 " And what other point of view, in keeping with honour 
 and religion, exists ? " 
 
 " As to religion, I'm without it and so much the freer. 
 I don't want to pretend anything I don't feel. I shall 
 always be very sorry, indeed, for what I did; but I'm 
 not going to wreck my life by marrying Sabina." 
 
 "What about her life?" 
 
 " If she will trust her life to me, I shall do all in my 
 power to make it a happy and easy life. I want the child 
 to be a success. I know it will grow up a reproach to 
 me and all that sort of thing in the opinion of many peo- 
 ple; but that won't trouble me half as much as my own 
 regrets. I've not done anything that puts me beyond the, 
 pale of humanity nor has Sabina ; and if she can keep 
 her nerve and go on with her life, it ought to be all right 
 for her, presently." 
 
 " A very cynical attitude and I wish I could change it, 
 Raymond. You've lost your self-respect and you know 
 you've done a wrong thing. Can't you see that you'll 
 always suffer it if you take no steps to right it ? You are 
 a man of feeling, and power can't lessen your feeling. 
 Every time you see that child, you will know that you 
 
THE SPINNERS 
 
 have brought a living soul into the world cruelly handi- 
 capped by your deliberate will." 
 
 " That's not a fair argument," he answered. " If our 
 rotten laws handicap the baby, it will be my object to 
 nullify the handicap to the best of my ability. The laws 
 won't come between me and my child, any more than 
 they came between me and my passion. I'm not the sort 
 to hide behind the mean English law of the natural child. 
 But I'm not going to let that law bully me into marriage 
 with Sabina. I've got to think of myself as well as other 
 people. I won't say, what's true that if Sabina mar- 
 ried me she wouldn't be happy in the long run ; but I will 
 say that I know I shouldn't be, and I'm not prepared to 
 pay any penalty whatever for what I did, beyond the pen- 
 alty of my own regrets." 
 
 " If you rule religion out and think you can escape 
 and keep your honour, I don't know what to say," she 
 answered. " For my part I believe Sabina would make 
 you a very good and loving wife. And don't fancy, if you 
 refuse her what faithfully you promised her, she will be 
 content with less." 
 
 " That's her look out. You won't be wise, Aunt Jenny, 
 to influence her against a fair and generous offer. I want 
 her to live a good life, and I don't want our past love- 
 making to ruin that life, or our child to ruin that life. 
 If she's going to pose as a martyr, I can't help it. That's 
 the side of her that wrecked the show, as a matter of fact, 
 and made it very clear to me that we shouldn't be a happy 
 married couple." 
 
 " Self-preservation is a law of nature. She only did 
 what any girl would have done in trying to find friends to 
 save her from threatened disaster." 
 
 " Well, I dare say it was natural to her to take that 
 line, and it was equally natural to me to resent it. At any 
 rate we know where we stand now. Tell me if there's 
 anything else." 
 
CLASH OF OPINIONS 265 
 
 " I only warn you that she will accept no benefits of 
 any kind from you, Raymond. And who shall blame 
 her? " 
 
 " That's entirely her affair, of course. I can't do more 
 than admit my responsibilities and declare my interest in 
 her future." 
 
 " She will throw your interest back in your face and 
 teach her child to despise you, as she does." 
 
 " How d'you know that, Aunt Jenny? " 
 
 " Because she's a proud woman. And because she 
 would lose the friendship of all proud women and clean 
 thinking men if she condoned what you intend to do. It's 
 horrible to see you turned from a simple, stupid, but hon- 
 ourable boy, into a hard, selfish, irreligious man and all 
 the result of being rich. I should never have thought it 
 could have made such a dreadful difference so quickly. 
 But I have not changed, Raymond. And I tell you this : 
 if you don't marry Sabina ; if you don't see that only so 
 can you hold up your head as an honest man and a re- 
 spectable member of society, worthy of your class and 
 your family, then, I, for one, can have no more to do with 
 you. I mean it." 
 
 " I'm sorry you say that. You've been my guardian 
 angel in a way and I've a million things to thank you for 
 from my childhood. It would be a great grief to me, 
 Aunt Jenny, if you allowed a difference of opinion to make 
 you take such a line. I hope you'll think differently." 
 
 " I shall not," she said. " I have not told you this on 
 the spur of the moment, or before I had thought it out 
 very fully and very painfully. But if you do this out- 
 rageous thing, I will never be your aunt any more, Ray- 
 mond, and never wish to see you again as long as I live. 
 You know me; I'm not hysterical, or silly, or even senti- 
 mental; but I'm jealous for your father's name and 
 your brother's. You know where duty and honour and 
 solemn obligation point. There is no reason whatever 
 
266 THE SPINNERS 
 
 why you should shirk your duty, or sully your honour; 
 but if you do, I decline to have any further dealings with 
 you." 
 
 He rose to go. 
 
 " That's definite and clear. Good-bye, Aunt Jenny." 
 
 " Good-bye," she said. " And may God guide you to 
 recall that * good-bye,' nephew." 
 
 Then he went back to ' The Seven Stars,' and won- 
 dered as he walked, how the new outlook had shrunk up 
 this old woman too, and made one, who bulked so largely 
 in his life of old, now appear as of no account whatever. 
 He was heartily sorry she should have taken so unreason- 
 able a course ; but he grieved more for her sake than his 
 own. She was growing old. She would lack his company 
 in the time to come, and her heart was too warm to endure 
 this alienation without much pain. 
 
 He suspected that if Sabina's future course of action 
 satisfied Miss Ironsyde, she would be friendly to her and 
 the child and, in time, possibly win some pleasure from 
 them. 
 
 
CHAPTER XXIX 
 
 THE BUNCH OF GRAPES 
 
 RAYMOND proceeded with his business at Bridetown oblivi- 
 ous of persons and personalities. He puzzled those who 
 were prepared to be his enemies, for it seemed he was 
 becoming as impersonal as the spinning machines, and one 
 cannot quarrel with a machine. 
 
 It appeared that he was to be numbered with those who 
 begin badly and retrieve the situation afterwards. So, at 
 least, hoped Ernest Churchouse, yet, since the old man 
 was called to witness and endure a part of the sorrows 
 of Sabina and her mother, it demanded large faith on his 
 part to anticipate brighter times. He clung to it that 
 Raymond would yet marry Sabina, and he regretted that 
 when the young man actually offered to see Sabina, she 
 refused to see him. For this happened. He came to 
 stop at North Hill House for two months, while certain 
 experts were inspecting the works, and during this time he 
 wished to visit ' The Magnolias ' and talk with Sabina, 
 but she declined. 
 
 The very active hate that he had awakened sank grad- 
 ually to smouldering fires of bitter resentment and con- 
 tempt. She spoke openly of destroying their babe when 
 it should be born. 
 
 Then the event happened and Sabina became the mother 
 of a man child. 
 
 Raymond was still with Arthur Waldron when Estelle 
 brought the news, and the men discussed it. 
 
 " I hope she'll be reasonable now," said Ironsyde. " It 
 bothered me when she refused to see me, because you can't 
 
 267 
 
268 THE SPINNERS 
 
 oppose reason to stupidity of that sort. If she's going 
 to take my aunt's line, of course, I'm done, and shall 
 be powerless to help her. I spoke to Uncle Ernest about 
 it two days ago. He says that it will have to be marriage, 
 or nothing, and seemed to think that would move me to 
 marriage ! Some people can't understand plain English. 
 But why should she cut off her nose to spite her face and 
 refuse my friendship and help because I won't marry 
 her? " 
 
 " She's that sort, I suppose. Of course, plenty of 
 women would do the same." 
 
 " I'm not convinced it's Sabina really who is doing this. 
 That's why I wanted to see her. Very likely Aunt Jenny 
 is inspiring such a silly attitude, or her mother. They 
 may think if she's firm I may yield. They don't seem to 
 realise that love's as dead as a doornail now. But my 
 duty is clear enough and they can't prevent me from doing 
 it, I imagine." 
 
 " You want to be sporting to the child, of course." 
 
 " And to the mother of the child. Damn it all, I'm 
 made of flesh and blood. I'm not a fiend. But with 
 women, if you have a grain of common-sense and reason- 
 ing power, you become a fiend the moment there's a row. 
 I want Sabina and my child to have a good show in the 
 world, Arthur." 
 
 " Well, you must let her know it." 
 
 " I'll see her, presently. I'll take no denial about that. 
 It may be a pious plot really, for religious people don't 
 care how they intrigue, if they can bring off what they 
 want to happen. It was very strange she refused to see 
 me. Perhaps they never told her that I offered to come." 
 
 " Yes, they did, because Estelle heard Churchouse tell 
 her. Estelle was with her at the time, and she said she 
 was so sorry when Sabina refused. It may have been 
 because she was ill, of course." 
 
 " I must see her before I go away, anyway. If they've 
 been poisoning her mind against me, I must put it right." 
 
THE BUNCH OF GRAPES 269 
 
 " You're a rum 'un ! Can't you see what this means to 
 her? You talk as if she'd no grievance, and as though it 
 was all a matter of course and an everyday thing." 
 
 " So it is, for that matter. However, there's no reason 
 for you to bother about it. I quite recognise what it is to 
 be a father, and the obligations. But because I happen 
 to be a father, is no reason why I should be asked to do 
 impossibilities. Because you've made a fool of yourself 
 once is no reason why you should again. By good chance 
 I've had unexpected luck in life and things have fallen out 
 amazingly well and I'm very willing indeed that other 
 people should share my good luck and good fortune. I 
 mean that they shall. But I'm not going to negative my 
 good fortune by doing an imbecile thing." 
 
 " As long as you're sporting I've got no quarrel with 
 you," declared Waldron. " I'm not very clever myself, 
 but I can see that if they won't let you do what you want 
 to do, it's not your fault. If they refuse to let you play 
 the game but, of course, you must grant the game looks 
 different from their point of view. No doubt they think 
 you're not playing the game. A woman's naturally not 
 such a sporting animal as a man, and what we think is 
 straight, she often doesn't appreciate, and what she thinks 
 is straight we often know is crooked. Women, in fact, 
 are more like the other nations which, with all their ex- 
 cellent qualities, don't know what ' sporting ' means." 
 
 " I mean to do right," answered Raymond, " and prob- 
 ably I'm strong enough to make them see it and wear them 
 down, presently. I'm really only concerned about Sabina 
 and her child. The rest, and what they think and what 
 they don't think, matter nothing. She may listen to rea- 
 son when she's well again." 
 
 Two days later Raymond received a box from London 
 and showed Estelle an amazing bunch of Muscat grapes, 
 destined for Sabina. 
 
 " She always liked grapes," he said, " and these are as 
 good as any in the world at this moment." 
 
270 THE SPINNERS 
 
 On his way to the Mill he left the grapes at ' The Mag- 
 nolias,' and spoke a moment with Mr. Churchouse. 
 
 " She is making an excellent recovery," said Ernest, 
 " and I am hoping that, presently, the maternal instinct 
 will assert itself. I do everything to encourage it. But, 
 of course, when conditions are abnormal, results must be 
 abnormal. She's a very fine and brave woman and worthy 
 of supreme admiration. And worthy of far better and 
 more manly treatment than she has received from you. 
 But you know that very well, Raymond. Owing to the 
 complexities created by civilisation clashing with nature, 
 we get much needless pain in the world. But a reason- 
 able being should have recognised the situation, as you 
 did not, and realise that we have no right to obey nature 
 if we know at the same time we are flouting civilisation. 
 You think you're doing right by considering Sabina's fu- 
 ture. You are a gross materialist, Raymond, and the 
 end of that is always dust and ashes and defeated hopes. 
 I won't bring religion into it, because that wouldn't carry 
 weight with you ; but I bring justice into it and your debt 
 to the social order, that has made you what you are and 
 to which you owe everything. You have done a grave 
 and wicked wrong to the new-born atom of life in this 
 house, and though it is now too late wholly to right that 
 wrong, much might yet be done. I blame you, but I hope 
 for you I still hope for you." 
 
 He took the grapes, and Raymond, somewhat staggered 
 by this challenge, found himself not ready to answer it. 
 
 " We'll have a talk some evening, Uncle Ernest," he 
 answered. " I don't expect your generation to see this 
 thing from my point of view. It's reasonable you 
 shouldn't, because you can't change; and it's also reason- 
 able that I shouldn't see it from your point of view. If 
 I'm material, I'm built so ; and that won't prevent me from 
 doing my duty." 
 
 " I would talk the hands round the clock if I thought I 
 
THE BUNCH OF GRAPES 271 
 
 could help you to see your duty with other eyes than your 
 own," replied the old man. " I am quite ready to speak 
 when you are to listen. And I shall begin by reminding 
 you that you are a father. You expect Sabina to be a 
 mother in the full meaning of that beautiful word ; but a 
 child must have a father also." 
 
 " I am willing to be a father." 
 
 " Yes, on your own values, which ignore the welfare of 
 the community, justice to the next generation, and the 
 respect you should entertain for yourself." 
 
 " Well, we'll thresh it out another time. You know I 
 respect you very much, Uncle Ernest ; and I'm sure you'll 
 weigh my point of view and not let Aunt Jenny influence 
 you." 
 
 " I have a series of duties before me," answered Mr. 
 Churchouse ; " and not least among them is to reconcile 
 you and your aunt. That you should have broken with 
 your sole remaining relative is heartbreaking." 
 
 " I'd be friends to-morrow; but you know her." 
 
 He went away to the works and Ernest took the grapes 
 to Mrs. Dinnett. 
 
 " You'd better not let her have them, however, unless 
 the doctor permits it," said Mr. Churchouse, whereupon, 
 Mary, not trusting herself to speak, took the grapes and 
 departed. The affront embodied in the fruit affected a 
 mind much overwrought of late. She took the present to 
 Sabina's room. 
 
 " There," she said. " He's sunk to sending that. I'd 
 like to fling them in his face." 
 
 " Take them away. I can't touch them." 
 
 " Touch them ! And poisoned as likely as not. A man 
 that's committed his crimes would stick at nothing." 
 
 " He uses poison enough," said the young mother ; " but 
 only the poison he can use safely. It matters nothing to 
 him if I live or die. No doubt he'd will me dead, and this 
 child too, if he could ; but seeing he can't, he cares noth* 
 
THE SPINNERS 
 
 ing. He'll heap insult on injury, no doubt. He's made 
 of clay coarse enough to do it. But when I'm well, I'll 
 see him and make it clear, once for all." 
 
 " You say that now. But I hope you'll never see him, 
 or breathe the same air with him." 
 
 " Once when I'm strong. I don't want him to go on 
 living his life without knowing what I'm thinking of him. 
 I don't want him to think he can pose as a decent man 
 again. I want him to know that the road-menders and 
 road-sweepers are high above him." 
 
 " Don't you get in a passion. He knows all that well 
 enough. He isn't deceiving himself any more than any- 
 body else. All honest people know what he is foul 
 wretch. Yes, he's poisoned three lives, if no more, and 
 they are yours and mine and that sleeping child's." 
 
 " He's ruined his aunt's life, too. She's thrown him 
 over." 
 
 " That won't trouble him. War against women is what 
 you'd expect. But please God, he'll be up against a man 
 some day then we shall see a different result. May the 
 Almighty let me live long enough to see him in the gutter, 
 where he belongs. I ask no more." 
 
 They poured their bitterness upon Raymond Ironsyde ; 
 then a thought came into Mary Dinnett's mind and she 
 left Sabina. Judging the time, she put on her bonnet 
 presently and walked out to the road whence Raymond 
 would return from his work at the luncheon hour. 
 
 She stood beside the road at a stile that led into the 
 fields, and as Raymond, deep in thought, passed her with- 
 out looking up, he saw something cast at his feet and for 
 a moment stood still. With a soft thud his bunch of 
 grapes fell ruined in the dust before him and, starting 
 back, he looked at the stile and saw Sabina's mother gaz- 
 ing at him red-faced and furious. Neither spoke. The 
 woman's countenance told her hatred and loathing; the 
 man shrugged his shoulders and, after one swift glance 
 
THE BUNCH OF GRAPES 273 
 
 at her, proceeded on his way without quickening or slack- 
 ening his stride. 
 
 He heard her spit behind him and found time to regret 
 that a woman of Mary's calibre should be at Sabina's side. 
 Such concentrated hate astonished him a little. There 
 was no reason in it ; nothing could be gained by it. This 
 senseless act of a fool merely made him impatient. But 
 he smiled before he reached North Hill House to think that 
 but for the interposition of chance and fortune, this brain- 
 less old woman might have become his mother-in-law. 
 
CHAPTER XXX 
 
 A TRIUMPH OF REASON 
 
 MRS. NORTHOVER took care that her interrupted conver- 
 sation with Job Legg should be completed; and he, too, 
 was anxious, that she should know his position. But he 
 realised the danger very fully and was circumspect in his 
 criticism of Richard Gurd's attitude toward * The Seven 
 Stars.' 
 
 " For my part," said Job on the evening that preceded 
 a very important event, " I still repeat that you have a 
 right to consider we're higher class than ' The Tiger ' ; 
 and to speak of the renowned garden as a ' bit of grass ' 
 was going much too far. It shows a wrong disposition, 
 and it wasn't a gentlemanly thing, and if it weren't such a 
 wicked falsehood, you might laugh at it for jealousy." 
 
 " Who ever would have thought the man jealous? " she 
 asked. 
 
 " These failings will out," declared Mr. Legg. " And 
 seeing you mean to take him, it is as well you know it." 
 
 She nodded rather gloomily. 
 
 " Your choice of words is above praise, I'm sure, Job," 
 she said. " For such a simple and straightforward man, 
 you've a wonderful knowledge of the human heart." 
 
 " Through tribulation I've come to it," he answered. 
 " However, I'm here to help you, not talk about my own 
 bitter disappointments. And very willing I am to help 
 you when it can be done." 
 
 " D'you think you could speak to Richard for me, and 
 put out the truth concerning ' The Seven Stars ' ? " she 
 asked. But Mr. Legg, simple though he might be, was 
 not as simple as that. 
 
 " No," he replied. " There's few things I wouldn't do 
 
 374 
 
A TRIUMPH OF REASON 275 
 
 for you, on the earth or in the waters under the earth, and 
 I say that, even though you've turned me down after 
 lifting the light of hope. But for me to see Gurd on this 
 subject is impossible. It's far too delicate. Another 
 man might, but not me, because he knows that I stand in 
 the unfortunate position of the cast out. So if there's 
 one man that can't go to Gurd and demand reparation on 
 your account, I'm that man. In a calmer moment, you'll 
 be the first to see it." 
 
 " I suppose that is so. He'd think, if you talked sense 
 to him, you had an axe to grind and treat you according. 
 You've suffered enough." 
 
 " I have without a doubt, and shall continue to do so," 
 he answered her. 
 
 " I think just as much of you as ever I did notwith- 
 standing," said Mrs. Northover. " And I'll go so far as 
 to say that your simple goodness and calm sense under all 
 circumstances might wear better in the long run than 
 Richard's overbearing way and cruel conceit. Be honest, 
 Job. Do you yourself think ' The Tiger ' is a finer house 
 and more famous than my place? " 
 
 Mr. Legg perceived very accurately where Nelly suf- 
 fered most. 
 
 " This house," he declared, " have got the natural ad- 
 vantages and Gurd have got the pull in the matter of 
 capital. My candid opinion, what I've come to after 
 many years of careful thought on the subject, is that if 
 we I say ' we ' from force of habit, though I'm in the 
 outer darkness now if we had a few hundred pounds 
 spending on us and an advertisement to holiday people in 
 the papers sometimes, then in six months we shouldn't 
 hear any more about ' The Tiger.' Cash, spent by the 
 hand of a master on ' The Seven Stars,' would lift us into 
 a different house and we should soon be known to cater 
 for a class that wouldn't recognise ' The Tiger.' What 
 we want is a bit of gold and white paint before next sum- 
 mer and all those delicate marks about the place that 
 
276 THE SPINNERS 
 
 women understand and value. I've often thought that a 
 new sign for example, with seven golden stars on a sky 
 blue background, and perhaps even a flagstaff in the 
 pleasure grounds, with our own flag flying upon it, would, 
 as it were, widen the gulf between him and you. But, of 
 course, that was before these things happened, and when 
 I was thinking, day and night you may say, how to catch 
 the custom." 
 
 Mrs. Northover sighed. 
 
 " In another man, it would be craft to say such clever 
 things," she answered; " but, in you, I know it's just sim- 
 ple goodness of heart and Christian fellowship. 'Tis 
 amazing how we think alike." 
 
 " Not now," he corrected her. " Too late now. I wish 
 to God we had thought alike ; for then, instead of looking 
 at my money as I'd look at a pile of road scrapings, I 
 should see it with very different eyes. My windfall would 
 have been poured out here in such a fashion that the 
 people would have wondered. This place is my life, in a 
 manner of speaking. My earthly life, I mean ; which you 
 may say is ended now. I was, in my own opinion, as 
 much a part of ' The Seven Stars,' as the beer engine. 
 And when uncle died this was my first thought. Or I 
 should say my second, because in the natural course of 
 events, you were the first." 
 
 She sighed again and Mr. Legg left this delicate ground. 
 
 " If the man can only be brought to see he's wrong 
 about his fanciful opinion of ' The Tiger,' all may go 
 right for you," he continued. " I don't care for his feel- 
 ings over-much, but your peace of mind I do consider. At 
 present he dares to think you're a silly woman whose goose 
 is a swan. That's very disorderly coming from the man 
 who's going to marry you. Therefore you must get some 
 clear-sighted person to open his eyes, and make it bitter 
 clear to him that ' The Tiger ' never was and never will be 
 a place to draw nice minds and the female element like us." 
 
A TRIUMPH OF REASON 277 
 
 " There's nobody could put it to him better than you," 
 she said. 
 
 " At another time, perhaps not now. I'm not clever, 
 Nelly; but I'm too clever to edge in between a man like 
 Gurd and his future wife. If we stood different, then 
 nobody would open his mouth quicker than me." 
 
 " We may stand different yet," she answered. " There 
 was a good deal of passion when we met, and not the sort 
 of passion you expect between lovers, either." 
 
 " If that is so," he answered, " then we can only leave 
 it for the future. But this I'll certainly say: if you tell 
 me presently that you're free to the nation once more and 
 have changed your mind about Richard, then I'd very soon 
 let him know there's a gulf fixed between ' The Tiger ' 
 and * The Seven Stars ' ; and if you said the word, he'd see 
 that gulf getting broader and broader under his living 
 eyes." 
 
 " I'd have overlooked most anything but what he 
 actually said," she declared. " But to strike at the gar- 
 den However, I'll see him, and if I find he's feeling 
 
 like what I am, it's quite in human reason that we may 
 undo the past before it's too late." 
 
 " And always remember it's his own will you shall live 
 at ' The Tiger,' " warned Job. " Excuse my bluntness 
 in reminding you of his words ; which, no doubt, you com- 
 mitted to memory long before you told me about 'em ; but 
 the point lies there. You can't be in two places at once, 
 and so sure as you sign yourself * Gurd,' you'll sell, or 
 sublet * The Seven Stars.' In fact, even a simple brain 
 like mine can see you'll sell, for Richard will never be con- 
 tent to let you serve two masters ; and where the treasure 
 is, there will the heart be also. And to one of your deli- 
 cate feelings, to know strange hands are in this house, 
 and strange things being done, and liberties taken with the 
 edifice and the garden, very likely. But I don't want to 
 paint any such dreadful picture as that, and, of course, 
 
278 THE SPINNERS 
 
 if you honestly love Richard, though you're the first 
 woman that ever could then enough said." 
 
 " The question is whether he loves me. However, I'll 
 turn it over ; and no doubt he will," she answered. " I see 
 him to-morrow." 
 
 " And don't leave anything uncertain, if I may advise," 
 concluded Mr. Legg. " I speak as a child in these mat- 
 ters ; but, if he's looking at this thing same as you are, 
 and if you both feel you'd be finer ornaments of society 
 apart, than married, all I say is don't let any false man- 
 hood on his part, or modesty on yours, keep you to it. 
 Better be good neighbours than bad partners. And if I've 
 said too much, God forgive me." 
 
 Fired by these opinions Nelly went to her meeting with 
 Richard and the first words uttered by Mr. Gurd sent a 
 ray of warmth to her heart, for it seemed he also had re- 
 viewed the situation in a manner worthy of his high in- 
 telligence. 
 
 But he approached the subject uneasily and Mrs. 
 Northover was too much a woman to rescue him at once. 
 She had been through a good deal and felt it fair that the 
 master of * The Tiger ' should also suffer. 
 
 " It's borne in upon me," he said, after some generalities 
 and vague hopes that Nelly was well, " that, perhaps, 
 there's no smoke without fire, as the saying is." 
 
 " Meaning what ? " asked she. 
 
 " Meaning, that though we flared up a bit and forgot 
 what we owe to ourselves, there must have been a reason 
 for so much feeling." 
 
 " There certainly was." 
 
 " We needn't go back over the details ; but you may be 
 sure there must have lurked more behind our row than 
 just a difference of opinion. People don't get properly 
 hot with each other unless there's a reason, Nelly, and I'm 
 beginning to fear that the reason lies deeper than we 
 thought." 
 
 He waited for her to speak ; but she did not. 
 
A TRIUMPH OF REASON 279 
 
 " You mustn't think me shifty, or anything of that 
 kind ; but I do feel, where there was such a lot of smoke 
 and us separated all these weeks, and none the worse for 
 separation apparently, that, if we was to take the step 
 in a word, it's come over me stronger and stronger that we 
 might do well to weigh what we're going to do in the bal- 
 ance before we do it." 
 
 Her delight knew no bounds. But still she did not 
 reply, and Mr. Gurd began to grow red. 
 
 " If, by your silence, you mean that I'm cutting a poor 
 figure before you, and you think I want to be off our bar- 
 gain, you're wrong," he said. " Your mind ought to move 
 quicker and I don't mind telling you so. I'm not off my 
 bargain, because I'm a man of honour, and my word, given 
 to man, woman or child, is kept. And if you don't know 
 that, you're the only party in Bridport that don't. But 
 I say again, there's two sides to it, and look before you 
 leap, though not a maxim women are very addicted to fol- 
 lowing, is a good rule for all that. So I'll ask you how 
 the land lies, if you please. You've turned this over 
 same as me ; and I'll be obliged if you'll tell me how you're 
 viewing it." 
 
 " In other words you've changed your mind? " 
 
 " My mind can wait. I may have done so, or I may 
 not; but to change my mind ain't to change my word, so 
 you need have no anxiety on that account." 
 
 " Far from being anxious," answered Mrs. Northover, 
 " I never felt so light-hearted since I was a girl, Richard. 
 For why? My name for honest dealing is as high as 
 yours, I believe, and if you'd come back to me and asked 
 for bygones to be bygones, I should have struggled with 
 it, same as you meant to do. But, seeing you're shaken, 
 I'm pleased to tell, that I'm shaken also. In fact, 
 * shaken ' isn't a strong enough word. I'm thankful to 
 Heaven you don't want to go on with it, because, more 
 don't I." 
 
 " If anything could make me still wish to take you, it's 
 
280 THE SPINNERS 
 
 to hear such wisdom," declared Mr. Gurd, after a noisy 
 expiration of thanksgiving. " I might have known you 
 wasn't behind me in brain power, and I might have felt 
 you'd be bound to see this quite as quick as me, if not 
 quicker. And I'm sure nothing could make me think 
 higher of you than to hear these comforting words." 
 
 Mrs. Northover used an aphorism from Mr. Legg. 
 
 " Our only fault was not to see each other's clever- 
 ness," she said, " or to think for a moment, after what 
 passed between us, we could marry without loss of self- 
 respect. It's a lot better, Richard, to be good neighbours 
 than bad partners. And good neighbours we always have 
 been and shall be ; and whether we'd be good partners or 
 not is no matter; we won't run the risk." 
 
 " God bless you ! " he answered. " Then we part true 
 friends, and if anything could make me feel more friendly 
 than I always have felt, it is your high-mindedness, Nelly. 
 For high-mindedness there never was your equal. And if 
 many and many a young couple, that flies together and 
 then feels the call to fly apart again, could only approach 
 the tender subject with your fair sight and high reasoning 
 powers, it would be a happier world." 
 
 " There's only one thing left," concluded Mrs. North- 
 over, " and that's to let the public know we've changed our 
 minds. With small people, that wouldn't matter; but 
 with us, we can't forget we've been on the centre of the 
 stage lately ; and it would never do to let the people sup- 
 pose that we had quarrelled, or sunk to anything vulgar." 
 
 " Leave it to me," he answered. " It only calls for a 
 light hand. I shall pass it off with one of my jokes, and 
 then people will treat it in a laughing spirit and not brood 
 over it. Folk are quick to take a man's own view on 
 everything concerning himself if he's got the art to con- 
 vince." 
 
 " We'll say that more marriages are made on the 
 tongues of outsiders than ever come to be celebrated in 
 church," suggested Mrs. Northover, " and then people 
 
A TRIUMPH OF REASON 281 
 
 will begin to doubt if it wasn't all nonsense from the first." 
 " And they won't be far wrong if they do. It was non- 
 sense ; and if we say so in the public ear, none will dare to 
 doubt it." 
 
CHAPTER XXXI 
 
 THE OFFER DECLINED 
 
 ESTELLE talked to Raymond and endeavoured to interest 
 him in Sabina's child. 
 
 " Everybody who understands babies says that he's a 
 lovely and perfect one," declared Estelle. " I hope you're 
 going to look at him before you go away, because he's 
 yours. And I believe he will be like you, some day. Do 
 the colours of babies' eyes change, like kittens' eyes, 
 Ray?" 
 
 " Haven't the slightest idea," he answered. " You may 
 be quite sure I shall take care of it, Estelle, and see that 
 it has everything it wants." 
 
 " Somehow they're not pleased with you all the same," 
 she answered. " I don't understand about it, but they 
 evidently feel that you ought to have married Sabina. I 
 suppose you're not properly his father if you don't marry 
 her?" 
 
 " That's nonsense, Estelle. I'm quite properly his 
 father, and I'm going to be a jolly good father too. But 
 I don't want to be married. I don't believe in it." 
 
 " If Sabina knew you were going to love him and be 
 good to him, she would be happier, I hope." 
 
 " I'm going to see her presently," he said. 
 
 "And see the baby?" 
 
 " Plenty of time for that." 
 
 " There's time, of course, Ray. But he's changing. 
 He's five weeks old to-morrow, and I can see great changes. 
 He can just begin to laugh now. Things amuse him we 
 don't know. I expect babies are like dogs and can see 
 
 what we can't." 
 
 282 
 
THE OFFER DECLINED 283 
 
 " I'll look at him if Sabina likes." 
 
 " Of course she'll like. It's rather horrid of you, in a 
 way, being able to go on with your work for so many 
 weeks without looking at him. It's really rather a slight 
 on Sabina, Ray. If I'd had a baby, and his father 
 wouldn't look at him for week after week, I should be 
 vexed. And so is Sabina." 
 
 " Next time you see her, ask her to name a day and I'll 
 go whenever she likes." 
 
 Estelle was delighted. 
 
 " That's lovely of you and it will cheer her up very 
 much, for certain," she answered. Then she ran away, 
 for to arrange such a meeting seemed the most desirable 
 thing in the .world to her at that moment. To Sabina 
 she went as fast as her legs could take her, and appreci- 
 ating that he had sent this guileless messenger to ensure a 
 meeting without preliminaries and without prejudice, Sa- 
 bina hid her feelings and specified a time on the following 
 day. 
 
 " If he'll come to see me to-morrow in the dinner-hour, 
 that will be best. I'll be alone after twelve o'clock." 
 
 " You'll show him the baby, won't you, Sabina? " 
 
 " He won't want to see it." 
 
 "Why not?" 
 
 "Does he want to?" 
 
 " Honestly he doesn't seem to understand how wonder- 
 ful the baby is,"' explained the child. " Ray's going to be 
 a splendid father to him, Sabina. He's quite interested; 
 only men are different from us. Perhaps they never feel 
 much interest till babies can talk to them. My father 
 says he wasn't much interested in me till I could talk, so 
 it may be a general thing. But when Ray sees him, he'll 
 be tremendously proud of him." 
 
 Sabina said no more, and when Raymond arrived to see 
 her at the time she appointed, he found her waiting near 
 the entrance of * The Magnolias.' 
 
 She wore a black dress and was looking very well and 
 
THE SPINNERS 
 
 very handsome. But the expression in her eyes had 
 changed. He put out his hand, but she did not take it. 
 
 " Mister Churchouse has kindly said we can talk in the 
 study, Mister Ironsyde." 
 
 He followed her, and when they had come to the room, 
 hoped that she was quite well again. Then he sat in a 
 chair by the table and she took a seat opposite him. She 
 did not reply to his wish for her good health, but waited 
 for him to speak. She was not sulky, but apparently 
 indifferent. Her fret and fume were smothered of late. 
 Now that the supreme injury was inflicted and she had 
 borne a child out of wedlock, Sabina's frenzies were over. 
 The battle was lost. Life held no further promises, and 
 the denial of the great promise that it had offered and 
 taken back again, numbed her. She was weary of the 
 subject of herself and the child. She could even ask Mr. 
 Churchouse for books to occupy her mind during con- 
 valescence. Yet the slumbering storm in her soul awoke 
 in full fury before the man had spoken a dozen words. 
 
 She looked at Raymond with tired eyes, and he felt that, 
 like himself, she was older, wiser, different. He measured 
 the extent of her experiences and felt sorry for her. 
 
 " Sabina," he said. " I must apologise for one mis- 
 take. When I asked you to come back to me and live with 
 me, I did a caddish thing. It wasn't worthy of me, or 
 you. I'm awfully sorry. I forgot myself there." 
 
 She flushed. 
 
 "Can that worry you?" she asked. "I should have 
 thought, after what you'd already done, such an added 
 trifle wouldn't have made you think twice. To ruin a 
 woman body and soul to lie to her and steal all she's 
 got to give under pretence of marriage that wasn't 
 caddish, I suppose that wasn't anything to make you 
 less pleased with yourself. That was what we may ex- 
 pect from men of honour and right bringing up? " 
 
 " Don't take this line, or we shan't get on. If, after 
 certain things happened, I had still felt we " 
 
THE OFFER DECLINED 285 
 
 " Stop," she said, " and hear me. You're making my 
 blood burn and my fingers itch to do something. My 
 hands are strong and quick they're trained to be quick. 
 I thought I could come to this meeting calm and patient 
 enough. I didn't know I'd got any hate left in me for 
 you, or the world. But I have you've mighty soon 
 woke it again; and I'm not going to hear you maul the 
 past into your pattern and explain everything away and 
 tell me how you came gradually to see we shouldn't be 
 happy together and all the usual dirty, little lies. Tell 
 yourself falsehoods if you like you needn't waste time 
 telling them to me. I'll tell you the truth; and that is 
 that you're a low, mean coward and bully a creature 
 to sicken the air for any honest man or woman. And 
 you know it behind your big talk. What did you do? 
 You seduced me under promise of marriage, and when your 
 brother heard what you'd done and flung you out of the 
 Mill, you ran to your aunt. And she said, ' Choose be- 
 tween ruin and no money, and Sabina and money from 
 me.' And so you agreed to marry me to keep your- 
 self in cash. And then, when all was changed and you 
 found yourself a rich man, you lied again and deserted me, 
 and wronged your child ruined us both. That's what 
 you did, and what you are." 
 
 " If you really believe that's the one and only version, 
 I'm afraid we shan't come to an understanding," he said 
 quietly. " You mustn't think so badly of me as that, 
 Sabina." 
 
 " Your aunt does. That's how she sees it, being an 
 honest woman." 
 
 " I must try to show you you're wrong in time. For 
 the moment I'm only concerned to do everything in my 
 power to make your future secure and calm your mind." 
 
 " Are you ? Then marry me. That's the only way 
 you can make my future secure, and you well know 
 it." 
 
 " I can't marry you. I shall never marry. I am very 
 
286 THE SPINNERS 
 
 firmly convinced that to marry a woman is to do her a 
 great injury nine times out of ten." 
 
 " Worse than seducing her and leaving her alone in the 
 world with a bastard child, I suppose? " 
 
 " You're not alone in the world, and your child is my 
 child, and I recognise the fullest obligations to you both." 
 
 " Liar ! If you'd recognised your obligations, you 
 wouldn't have let it come into the world nameless and 
 fatherless." 
 
 She rose. 
 
 " You want everything your own way, and you think 
 you can bend everything to your own way. But you'll not 
 bend me no more. You've broke me, and you've broke 
 your child. We're rubbish rubbish on the world's rub- 
 bish heap flung there by you. I, that was so proud of 
 myself ! We'll go to the grave shamed and outcast 
 failures for people to laugh at or preach over. Your 
 child's doomed now. The State and the Church both 
 turn their backs on such as him. You can't make him 
 your lawful son now." 
 
 " I can do for him all any father can do for a son." 
 
 " You shall do nought for him ! He's part of me not 
 you. If you hold back from me, you hold back from him. 
 God's my judge he shan't receive a crust from your hands. 
 You've given him enough. He's got you to thank for a 
 ruined life. He shan't have anything more from you 
 while I can stand between. Don't you trouble for him. 
 You go on from strength to strength and the people will 
 praise your hard work and your goodness to the workers 
 such a pattern master as you'll be." 
 
 " May time make you feel differently, Sabina," he an- 
 swered. " I've deserved this all of it. I'm quite ready 
 to grant I've done wrong. But I'm not going to do more 
 if I can help it. I want to be your friend in the highest 
 and worthiest sense possible. I want to atone to you for 
 the past, and I want to stand up for your child through 
 thick and thin, and bear the reproach that he must be to 
 
THE OFFER DECLINED 287 
 
 me as long as I live. I've weighed all that. But power 
 can challenge the indifference of the State and the cow- 
 ardice of the Church. The dirty laws will be blotted out 
 by public opinion some day. The child can grow up to 
 be my son and heir, as he will be my first care and thought. 
 Everything that is mine can be his and yours " 
 
 " That's all one now," she said. " He touches nothing 
 of yours while I touch nothing of yours. There's only 
 one way to bring me and the child into your life, Raymond 
 Ironsyde, and that's by marrying me. Without that we'll 
 not acknowledge you. I'd rather go on the streets than 
 do it. I'd rather tie a brick round your child's neck and 
 drown him like an unwanted dog than let him have comfort 
 from you. And God judge me if I'll depart from that if 
 I live to be a hundred." 
 
 " You're being badly advised, Sabina. I never thought 
 to hear you talk like this. Perhaps it's the fact that I'm 
 here myself annoys you. Will you let my lawyer see 
 you?" 
 
 " Marry me marry me you that loved me. All 
 less than that is insult." 
 
 " We must leave it, then. Would you like me to see my 
 child?" 
 
 " See him! Why? You'll never see him if I can help 
 it. You'd blast his little, trusting eyes. But I won't 
 drown him you needn't fear that, ."ril fight for him, 
 and find friends for him. There's a few clean people left 
 who won't make him suffer for your sins. He'll live to 
 spit on your grave yet." 
 
 Then she left the room, and he got up and went from 
 the house. 
 
BOOK II 
 ESTELLE 
 
CHAPTER I 
 
 THE FLYING YEARS 
 
 BUT little can even the most complete biography furnish 
 of a man's days. It is argued that essentials are all that 
 matter, and that since one year is often like another, and 
 life merely a matter of occasional mountain peaks in flat 
 country, the outstanding events alone need be chronicled 
 with any excuse. But who knows the essential, since 
 biographists must perforce omit the spade work of life 
 on character, the gradual attrition or upbuilding of prin- 
 ciples under experience, and the strain and stress, that, 
 sooner or later, bear fruit in action? Even autobiog- 
 raphy, as all other history, needs must be incomplete, 
 since no man himself exactly appreciated the vital expe- 
 riences that made him what he is, or turns him from what 
 he was ; while even if the secret belongs to the protagonist, 
 and intellect and understanding have enabled him to grasp 
 the reality of his progress, or retrogression, he will be 
 jealous to guard such truths and, for pride, or modesty, 
 conceal the real fountains of inspiration that were re- 
 sponsible for progress, or the temptations to error that 
 found his weakest spots, blocked his advance, and rendered 
 futile his highest hopes. The man who knows his inner 
 defeats will not declare them honestly, even if egotism in- 
 duces an autobiography; while the biographist, being ig- 
 norant of his hero's real, psychological existence, secret 
 life, and those thousand hidden influences that have 
 touched him and caused him to react, cannot, with all the 
 will in the world to be true, relate more than superficial 
 truths concerning him. 
 
 Ten years may only be recorded as lengthening the lives 
 
 291 
 
THE SPINNERS 
 
 of Raymond Ironsyde, Sabina Dinnett and their son, to- 
 gether with those interested in them. Time, the supreme 
 solvent, flows over existence, submerging here, lifting 
 there, altering the relative attitudes of husband and wife, 
 parent and child, friend and enemy. For no human rela- 
 tion is static. The ebb and flow forget not the closest 
 or remotest connection between members of the human 
 family ; not a friendship or interest stands still, and not 
 a love or a hate. Time operates upon every human emo- 
 tion as it operates upon physical life; and ten years left 
 no single situation at Bridetown or Bridport unchal- 
 lenged. Death cut few knots ; since accident willed that 
 one alone fell among those with whom we are concerned. 
 For the rest, years brought their palliatives and corro- 
 sives, soothed here, fretted there; here buried old griefs 
 and healed old sores ; here calloused troubles, so that they 
 only throbbed intermittently ; here built up new enthusi- 
 asms, awakened new loves, barbed new enmities. 
 
 Things that looked impossible on the day that Ironsyde 
 heard Sabina scorn him, happened. Threats evaporated, 
 danger signals disappeared; but, in other cases, while the 
 jagged edges and peaks of bitterness and contempt were 
 worn away by a decade of years, the solid rocks from 
 which they sprang persisted and the massive reasons for 
 emotion were not moved, albeit their sharpest expressions 
 vanished. Some loves faded into likings, and their rap- 
 tures to a placid contentment, built as much on the con- 
 venience of habit as the memories of a passionate past; 
 other affections, less fortunate, perished and left nothing 
 but remains unlovely. Hates also, with their sharpest 
 bristles rubbed down, were modified to bluntness, and left 
 a mere lumpish aversion of mind. Some dislikes alto- 
 gether perished and gave place to indifference; some per- 
 sisted as the shadow of their former selves ; some were 
 kept alive by absurd pride in those who pretended, for 
 their credit's sake, a steadfastness they were not really 
 built to feel. 
 
THE FLYING YEARS 293 
 
 Sabina, for example, was constitutionally unequal to 
 any supreme and all-controlling passion unless it had been 
 love ; yet still she preserved that inimical attitude to Ray- 
 mond Ironsyde she had promised to entertain; though in 
 reality the fire was gone and the ashes cold. She knew 
 it, but was willing to rekindle the flame if material offered, 
 as now it threatened to do. 
 
 Ernest Churchouse had published his book upon ' The 
 Bells of Dorset ' and, feeling that it represented his life 
 work, declared himself content. He had grown still less 
 active, but found abundant interests in literature and 
 friendship. He undertook the instruction of Sabina's 
 son and, from time to time, reported upon the child. His 
 first friend was now Estelle Waldron, who, at this stage of 
 her development, found the old and childlike man chime 
 with her hopes and aspirations 
 
 Estelle was passing through the phase not uncommon 
 to one of her nature. For a time her early womanhood 
 found food in poetry, and her mind, apparently fashioned 
 to advance the world's welfare and add to human happi- 
 ness, reposed as it seemed <on an interlude of reading and 
 the pursuit of beauty. She developed fast to a point 
 the point whereat she had established a library and com- 
 mon room for the Mill hands ; the point at which the girls 
 called her ' Our Lady,' and very honestly loved her for 
 herself as well as for the good she brought them. Now, 
 however, her activities were turned inward and she sought 
 to atone for an education incomplete. She had never 
 gone to school, and her governesses, while able and suffi- 
 cient, could not do for her what only school life can do. 
 This experience, though held needless and doubtful in 
 many opinions, Estelle felt to miss and her conscience 
 prompted her to go to London and mix with other people, 
 while her inclination tempted her to stop with her father. 
 She went to London for two years and worked upon a 
 woman's newspaper. Then she fell ill and came home 
 and spent her time with Arthur Waldron, with Raymond 
 
294. THE SPINNERS 
 
 Ironsyde, and with Ernest Churchouse. A girl friend 
 or two from London also came to visit her. 
 
 She recovered perfect health, and having contracted a 
 great new worship for poetry in her convalescence, re- 
 tained it afterwards. Ernest was her ally, for he loved 
 poetry an understanding denied to her other friends. 
 So Estelle passed through a period of dreaming, while her 
 intellect grew larger and her human sympathy no less. 
 She had developed into a handsome woman with regular 
 features, a large and almost stately presence and a direct, 
 undraped manner not shadowed as yet by any ray of sex 
 instinct. Nature, with her many endowments, chose to 
 withhold the feminine challenge. She was as stark and 
 pure as the moon. Young men, drawn by her smile, fled 
 from her self. Her father's friends regarded her much as 
 he did: with a sort of uneasy admiration. The people 
 were fond of her, and older women declared that she would 
 never marry. 
 
 Of such was Miss Jenny Ironsyde. " Estelle's children 
 will be good works," she told Raymond. For she and her 
 nephew were friends again. The steady tides of time had 
 washed away her prophecy of eternal enmity, and increas- 
 ing infirmity made her seek companionship where she could 
 find it. Moreover, she remembered a word that she had 
 spoken to Raymond in the past, when she told him how 
 a grudge entertained by one human being against another 
 poisons character and ruins the steadfast outlook upon 
 life. She escaped that danger. 
 
 It is a quality of small minds rather than of great to 
 remain unchanged. They fossilise more quickly, are more 
 concentrated, have a power to freeze into a mould and 
 preserve it against the teeth of time, or the wit and wis- 
 dom of the world. The result is ugly or beautiful, ac- 
 cording to the emotion thus for ever embalmed. The 
 loves of such people are intuitive shared with instinct 
 and above, or below, reason; their hate is similarly im- 
 penetrable preserved in a vacuum. For only a vacuum 
 
THE FLYING YEARS 295 
 
 can hold the sweet for ever untainted, or the bitter for ever 
 unalloyed. Mary Dinnett belonged to this order. She 
 was now dead, and concerning the legacy of her unchang- 
 ing attitude more will presently appear. 
 
 As for Nelly Northover, she had long been the wife of 
 Mr. Job Legg. That pertinacious man achieved his end 
 at last, and what his few enemies declared was guile, and 
 his many friends held to be tact, won Nelly to him a year 
 after her adventure with Mr. Gurd. None congratulated 
 them more heartily than the master of * The Tiger.' In- 
 deed, when ; The Seven Stars ' blazed out anew on an azure 
 firmament the least of many changes that refreshed 
 and invigorated that famous house ' The Tiger ' also 
 shone forth in savage splendour and his black and orange 
 stripes blazed again from a mass of tropical vegetation. 
 
 And beneath the inn signs prosperity continued to ob- 
 tain. Mr. Gurd grew less energetic than of yore, while 
 Mrs. Legg put on much flesh and daily perceived her wis- 
 dom in linking Job for ever to the enterprise for which 
 she lived. He became thinner, if anything, and Time 
 toiled after him in vain. * Immense success rewarded his 
 innovations, and the tea-gardens of * The Seven Stars ' 
 had long become a feature of Bridport's social life. Peo- 
 ple hinted that Mr. Legg was not the meek and mild spirit 
 of ancient opinion and that Nelly knew it; but this sug- 
 gestion may be held no more than the penalty of fame 
 an activity of the baser sort, who ever drop vinegar of 
 detraction into the oil of content. 
 
 John Best still reigned at the Mill, though he had him- 
 self already chosen the young man destined to wear his 
 mantle in process of time. To leave the works meant to 
 leave his garden; and that he was unprepared to do until 
 failing energies made it necessary. A decade saw changes 
 among the workers, but not many. Sally Groves had re- 
 tired to braid for the firm at home, and old Mrs. Chick 
 was also gone ; but the other hands remained and the staff 
 had slightly increased. Nancy Buckler was chief spinner 
 
296 THE SPINNERS 
 
 now; Sarah Roberts still minded the spreader, and Nicho- 
 las continued at the lathes. Benny Cogle had a new Otto 
 gas engine to look after, and Mercy Gale, now married 
 to him, still worked in the warping chamber. Levi Baggs 
 would not retire, and since he hackled with his old mas- 
 ter, the untameable man, now more than sixty years old, 
 still kept his place, still flouted the accepted order, still 
 read sinister motives into every human activity. New 
 machinery had increased the prosperity of the enterprise, 
 but to no considerable extent. Competition continued 
 keen as ever, and each year saw the workers winning 
 slightly increased power through the advance of labour 
 interests. 
 
 Raymond Ironsyde was satisfied and remained largely 
 unchanged. He had hardened in opinion and increased in 
 knowledge. He lacked imagination and, as of old, trusted 
 to the machine ; but he was rational and proved a capable, 
 second class man of sound judgment and trustworthy in 
 all his undertakings. Sport continued to be a living in- 
 terest of his life, and since he had no ties that involved 
 an establishment, he gladly accepted Arthur Waldron's 
 offer of a permanent home. 
 
 It came to him after he had travelled largely and been 
 for three years master of the works. Arthur was de- 
 lighted when Raymond accepted his suggestion and made 
 his abode at North Hill. They hunted and shot together ; 
 and Waldron, who now judged that the time for golf had 
 come in his case, devoted the moiety of his life to that 
 pastime. 
 
 Ironsyde worked hard and was held in respect. The 
 circumstance of his child had long been accepted and un- 
 derstood. He exhausted his energy and patience in en- 
 deavours to maintain and advance the boy; and those 
 justified in so doing lost no opportunity to urge on Sabina 
 Dinnett the justice of his demand ; but here nothing could 
 change her. She refused to recognise Raymond, or re- 
 ceive from him any assistance in the education and nurture 
 
THE FLYING YEARS 297 
 
 of his son. She had called him Abel, and as Abel Dinnett 
 the lad was known. He resembled her in that he was dark 
 and of an excitable and uneven temperament. He might 
 be easily elated and as easily cast down. Raymond, who 
 kept a secret eye upon the child, trusted that in a few 
 years his turn would come, though at present denied. At 
 first he resented the resolution that shut him out of his 
 son's life; but the matter had long since sunk to unim- 
 portance and he believed that when Abel came to years of 
 understanding, he would recognise his own interests and 
 blame those responsible for ignoring them in his childhood. 
 Upon this opinion hinged the future of not a few persons. 
 It developed into a conviction permanently established at 
 the back of his mind; but since Sabina and others came 
 between, he was content to let them do so and relied upon 
 his son's intelligence in time to come. For years he did 
 not again seek the child's acquaintance after a rebuff, 
 and made no attempt to interfere with the operations of 
 Abel's grandmother and mother to keep them wholly 
 apart. Thus, after all, the gratification of their purpose 
 was devoid of savour an$ Ironsyde's indifferent acquies- 
 cence robbed their will of its triumph. He had told 
 Mary Dinnett, through Ernest Churchouse, that she and 
 her daughter must proceed as they thought fit and that, 
 in any case, the last word would be with him. Here, how- 
 ever, he misvalued the strength of the forces arrayed 
 against him, and only the future proved whether the seed 
 sowed in Abel Dinnett's youthful heart was fertile or bar- 
 ren whether, by the blood in his own veins, he would 
 offer soil of character to develop enmity to the man who 
 got him, or reveal a nature slow to anger and impatient of 
 wrath. 
 
 For Ernest Churchouse these problems offered occupa- 
 tion and he stood as an intermediary between the interests 
 that clashed in the child. He made himself responsible 
 for a measure of the boy's education and, sometimes, re- 
 ported to Estelle such development of character as he per- 
 
298 THE SPINNERS 
 
 ceived. In secret, inspired by the rival claims of heredity 
 and environment, Ernest strove to cast a scientific horo- 
 scope of little Abel's probable future. But to-day con- 
 tradicted yesterday, and to-morrow proved both untrust- 
 worthy. The child was always changing, developing new 
 ideas, indicating new possibilities. It appeared too soon 
 yet to say what he would be, or predict his character and 
 force of purpose. 
 
 Thus he grew, and when he was eight years old, his first 
 friend and ally his grandmother died. Mr. Chur- 
 chouse, who had long deplored her influence for Abel's 
 sake, was hopeful that this departure might prove a bless- 
 ing. 
 
 Now Sabina had taken her mother's place and she 
 looked after Ernest well enough. He always hoped that 
 she would marry, and she had been asked to do so more 
 than once, but felt tempted to no such step. 
 
 Thus, then, things stood, and any change of focus and 
 altered outlook in these people, that may serve to suggest 
 discontinuity with their past, must be explained by the 
 passage of ten years. Such a period had renewed all 
 physically a fact full of subtle connotations. It had 
 sharpened the youthful and matured the adult mind ; it 
 had dimmed the senses sinking upon nature's night time 
 and strengthened the dawning will and opening intellect. 
 For as a ship furls her spread of sail on entering harbour, 
 so age reduces the scope of the mind and its energies to 
 catch every fresh ripple of the breeze that blows out of 
 progress and change. The centre of the stage, too, grad- 
 ually reveals new performers ; the gaze of manhood is 
 turned on new figures ; the limelight of human interest 
 throws up the coming forces of activity and intellect; 
 while those who yesterday shone supreme, slowly pass into 
 the penumbra that heralds eclipse. And who bulk big 
 enough to arrest the eternal march, delay their own prog- 
 ress from light to darkness, or stay the eager young feet 
 tramping outward of the dayspring to take their places 
 
THE FLYING YEARS 299 
 
 in the day? Life moves so fast that many a man lives 
 to see the dust thick on his own name in the scroll of merit 
 and taste a regret that only reason can allay. 
 
 Fate had denied Sabina Dinnett her brief apotheosis. 
 From dark to dark she had gone ; yet time had purged her 
 mind of any large bitterness. She looked on and watched 
 Raymond's sojourn in the light from a standpoint nega- 
 tive and indifferent. The future for her held interest, for 
 she could not cease to be interested in him, though she 
 knew that he had long since ceased to be interested in her. 
 From the cool cloisters of her obscurity she watched and 
 was only strong in opinion at one point. She dreamed of 
 her son making his way and succeeding in the world; she 
 welcomed Mr. Churchouse's assurance as to the lad's men- 
 tal progress and promise ; but she was determined as ever 
 that not, if she could help it, should Abel enter terms of 
 friendship with his father. 
 
 Thus the relations subsisted, while, strange to record, 
 in practice they had long been accepted as part of the 
 order of things at Bridetown. They ceased even to form 
 matter for gossip. For Haymond Ironsyde was greater 
 here than the lord of the manor, or any other force. The 
 Mill continued to be the heart of the village. Through 
 the Mill the lifeblood circulated ;. by the Mill the prosper- 
 ity of the people was regulated ; and since the master saw 
 that on his own prosperity reposed the prosperity of those 
 whom he employed, there was none to decry him, or echo 
 a disordered past in the ear of the well-ordered present. 
 
CHAPTER II 
 
 THE SEA GARDEN 
 
 BRIDE river still flowed her old way to her work and came, 
 by goldilocks and grasses, by reedmace and angelica, to 
 the mill-race and water-wheel. But now, where the old 
 wheel thundered, there yawned a gap, for the river's power 
 was about to be conserved to better purpose than of old, 
 and as the new machines now demanded greater forces to 
 drive them, so human skill found a way to increase the 
 applied strength of a streamlet. Against the outer wall 
 of the Mill now hung a turbine and Raymond, Estelle and 
 others had assembled to see it in operation for the first 
 time. Bride was bottled here, and instead of flashing and 
 foaming over the water wheel as of yore, now vanished 
 into the turbine and presently appeared again below it. 
 
 Raymond explained the machine with gusto, and Estelle 
 mourned the wheel, yet as one who knew its departure was 
 inevitable. 
 
 It was summer time, and after John Best had displayed 
 the significance of the turbine and the increased powers 
 generated thereby, Raymond strolled down the valley be- 
 side the river at Estelle's invitation. 
 
 She had something to show him at the mouth of the 
 stream a sea garden, now in all its beauty and precious 
 to her. For though her mind had winged far beyond 
 the joys of childhood and was occupied with greater mat- 
 ters than field botany, still she loved the wild flowers and 
 welcomed them again in their seasons. 
 
 Their speech drifted to the people, and he told how some 
 welcomed the new appliance and some doubted. Then 
 Raymond spoke of Sabina Dinnett in sympathetic ears. 
 
 For now Estelle understood the past; but she had never 
 
 300 
 
THE SEA GARDEN 301 
 
 wavered in her friendship with Sabina, any more than had 
 diminished her sister-like attachment to Raymond. Now, 
 as often, he regretted the attitude his child preserved to- 
 wards him and expressed sorrow that he could not break 
 down Abel's distrust. 
 
 " More than distrust, in fact, for the kid dislikes me," 
 he said. " You know he does, Chicky. But I never can 
 understand why, because he's always with his mother and 
 Uncle Ernest, and Sabina doesn't bear me any malice now, 
 to my knowledge. Surely the child must come round 
 sooner or later? " 
 
 " When he's old enough to understand, I expect he 
 will," she said. " But you'll have to be patient, Ray." 
 
 " Oh, yes that's my strong suit nowadays." 
 
 " He's a clever little chap, so Sabina says ; but he's 
 difficult and wayward. He won't be friends with me." 
 
 Raymond changed the subject and praised the valley as 
 it opened to the sea. 
 
 " What a jolly place! I believe there are scores of de- 
 lightful spots at Bridetown within a walk, and I'm always 
 too busy to see them." , 
 
 " That's certain. I could show you scores." 
 
 " I ought to know the place I live in, better. I don't 
 even know the soil I walk on awful ignorance." 
 
 " The soil is oolite and clay, and the subsoil, which you 
 see in the cliffs, is yellow sandstone the loveliest, golden- 
 est soil in the world," declared Estelle. 
 
 " The colour of a bath sponge," he said, and she pre- 
 tended despair. 
 
 " Oh dear I And I really thought I had seen the dawn- 
 ing of poetry in you, Ray." 
 
 " Merely reflected from yourself, Chicky. Still I'm 
 improving. The turbine has a poetic side, don't you 
 think?" 
 
 " I suppose it has. Science is poetic at any rate, 
 the history of science is full of poetry if you know what 
 poetry means." 
 
802 THE SPINNERS 
 
 " I wish I had more time for such things," he said. 
 " Perhaps I shall have some day. To be in trade is rather 
 deadening though. There seems so little to show for all 
 my activities only hundreds of thousands of miles of 
 string. In weak moments I sometimes ask myself if, after 
 all, it is good enough." 
 
 " They must be very weak moments, indeed," said Es- 
 telle. " Perhaps you'll tell me how the world could get on 
 without string? " 
 
 " I don't know. But you, with all your love of beau- 
 tiful things, ought to understand me instead of jumping 
 on me. What is beauty? No two people feel the same 
 about it, surely? You'd say a poem was beautiful; I'd 
 say a square cut for four, just out of reach of cover point, 
 was beautiful. Your father would say, a book on shoot- 
 ing high pheasants was beautiful, if he agreed with it; 
 John Best would say a good sample of shop twine was 
 beautiful." 
 
 " We should all be right, beauty is in all those things. 
 I can see that. I can even see that shooting birds with 
 great skill, as father does, is beautiful not the slaughter 
 of the bird, which can't be beautiful, but the way it's done. 
 But those are small things. With the workers you want 
 to begin at the beginning and show them what Mister 
 Best knows that the beauty of the thing they make 
 depends on it being well and truly made." 
 
 " They're restless." 
 
 " Yes ; they're reaching out for more happiness, like 
 everybody else." 
 
 " I wouldn't back the next generation of capitalists to 
 hold the fort against labour." 
 
 " Perhaps the next generation won't want to," she said. 
 " Perhaps by that time we shall be educated up to the 
 idea that rich people are quite as anti-social as poor peo- 
 ple. Then we shall do away with both poverty and riches. 
 To us, educated on the old values, it would come as a 
 shock, but the generation that is born into such a world 
 
THE SEA GARDEN 303 
 
 would accept it as a matter of course and not grumble." 
 
 He laughed. 
 
 " Don't believe it, Chicky. Every generation has its 
 own hawks and eagles as well as its sheep. The strong 
 will always want the fulness of the earth and always try 
 to inspire the weak to help them get it. With great lead- 
 ership you must have equivalent rewards." 
 
 " Why? Cannot you imagine men big enough to work 
 for humanity without reward? Have there not been 
 plenty of such men before Christ, as well as since ? " 
 
 " Power is reward," he answered. " No man is so great 
 that he is indifferent to power, for his greatness depends 
 upon it; and if power was dissipated to-morrow and di- 
 luted until none could call himself a leader, we should have 
 a reaction at once and the sheep would grow frightened 
 and bleat for a shepherd. And the shepherd would very 
 soon appear." 
 
 They stood where the cliffs broke and Bride ended her 
 journey at the sea. She came gently without any splen- 
 did nuptials to the lover of rivers. Her brief course run, 
 her last silver loop wound through the meadows, she ended 
 in a placid pool amid the sand ridges above high-water 
 mark. The yellow cliffs climbed up again on either side, 
 and near the chalice in the grey beach whence, invisible, 
 the river sank away to win the sea by stealth, spread Es- 
 telle's sea garden an expanse of stone and sand enriched 
 by many flowers that seemed to crown the river pool with 
 a garland, or weave a wreath for Bride's grave in the 
 sand. Here were pale gold of poppies, red gold of lotus 
 and rich lichens that made the sea-worn pebbles shine. 
 Sea thistle spread glaucous foliage and lifted its blue blos- 
 soms ; stone-crops and thrifts, tiny trefoils and couch 
 grasses were woven into the sand, and pink storks-bill and 
 silvery convolvulus brought cool colour to this harmony 
 spread beside the purple sea. The day was one of shadow 
 and sunshine mingled, and from time to time, through 
 passages of grey that lowered the glory of Estelle's sea 
 
304. THE SPINNERS 
 
 garden, a sunburst came to set all glittering once more, 
 to flash upon the river, lighten the masses of distant elm, 
 and throw up the red roofs and grey church tower of 
 Bridetown and her encircling hills. 
 
 " What a jolly place it is," he said taking out his cigar 
 case. 
 
 Then they sat in the shadow of a fishing boat, drawn up 
 here, and Raymond lamented the unlovely end of the river. 
 
 While he did so, the girl regarded him with affection 
 and a secret interest and entertainment. For it amused 
 her often to hear him echo thoughts that had come to her 
 in the past. In a lesser degree her father did the like; 
 but he belonged to a still older generation, and it was 
 with Raymond that she found herself chiefly concerned, 
 when he announced, as original, ideas and discoveries that 
 reflected her own dreams in the past. Sometimes she 
 thought he was catching up; sometimes, again, she dis- 
 tanced him and felt herself grown up and Raymond still 
 a boy. Then, sometimes, he would flush a covey of ideas 
 outside her reflections, and so remind her of the things 
 that interested men, in which, as yet, women took no inter- 
 est. When he spoke of such things, she strove to learn 
 all that he could teach concerning them. But soon she 
 found that was not much. He did not think deeply and 
 she quickly caught him up, if she desired to do so. 
 
 Now he uttered just the same, trivial lament that she 
 had uttered when she was a child. She was pleased, for 
 she rather loved to feel herself older in mind than Ray- 
 mond. It added a lustre to friendship and made her 
 happy why, she knew not. 
 
 66 What a wretched end to be choked up in the shin- 
 gle like that," he said, " instead of dashing out gloriously 
 and losing yourself in the sea ! " 
 
 She smiled gently to herself. 
 
 " I thought that once, then I was ever so sorry for poor 
 little Bride." 
 
 " A bride without a wedding," he said. 
 
THE SEA GARDEN 305 
 
 " No. She steals to him ; she wins his salt kisses and 
 finds them sweet enough. They mate down deep out of 
 sight of all eyes. So you needn't be sorry for her really." 
 
 " It's like watching people try ever so hard to do some- 
 thing and never bring it off." 
 
 " Yes even more like than you think, Ray ; because 
 we feel sad at such apparent failures, and yet what we 
 are looking at may be a victory really, only our dull eyes 
 miss it." 
 
 " I daresay many people are succeeding who don't ap- 
 pear to be," he admitted. 
 
 " Goodness can't be wasted. It may be poured into the 
 sand all unseen and unsung; but it conquers somehow and 
 does something worth doing, even though no eye can see 
 what. Plenty of good things happen in the world good 
 and helpful things that are never recorded, or even 
 recognised." 
 
 " Like a stonewaller in a cricket match. The people 
 cuss him, but he may determine who is going to win." 
 
 She laughed at the simile. 
 
 They went homeward* presently, Estelle quietly content 
 to have shown Raymond the flower-sprinkled strand, and 
 he well pleased to have pleasured her. 
 
CHAPTER III 
 
 A TWIST FRAME 
 
 RAYMOND IRONSYDE grumbled sometimes at the Factory 
 Act and protested against grandmotherly legislation. 
 Yet in some directions he anticipated it. He went, for ex- 
 ample, beyond the Flax Mill Ventilation Regulations. He 
 loved fresh air himself, and took vast pains to make his 
 works sweet and wholesome for those who breathed therein. 
 Even Levi Baggs could not grumble, for the exhaust 
 draught in his hackling shop was stronger than the law 
 demanded, and the new cyclone separators in the main 
 buildings served to keep the air far purer than of old. 
 
 Ironsyde had established also the Kestner System of 
 atomising water, to regulate temperature and counteract 
 the electrical effects of east wind, or frost, on the light 
 slivers. He was always on the lookout for new auto- 
 matic means to regulate the drags on the bobbins. He 
 had installed an automatic doffing apparatus, and made 
 a departure from the usual dry spinning in a demi-sec, 
 or half-dry, spinning frame, which was new at that time, 
 and had offered excellent results and spun a beautifully 
 smooth yarn. 
 
 These things all served to assist and relieve the workers 
 in varying degree, but, as Raymond often pointed out, 
 they were taken for granted and, sometimes, in his gloom- 
 ier moments, he accused his people of lacking gratitude. 
 They, for their part, were being gradually caught up in 
 the growing movements of labour. The unintelligent for- 
 got to credit the master with his consideration ; while those 
 who could think, were often soured by suspicion. These 
 
 ignorant spirits doubted not that he was seeking to win 
 
 306 
 
A TWIST FRAME 307 
 
 their friendship against the rainy days in store for capi- 
 tal. 
 
 Ironsyde came to the works one morning to watch a 
 new Twist Frame and a new operator. The single strand 
 yarn for material from the spinners was coming to the 
 Twist Frame to be turned into twines and fishing lines. 
 Four full bobbins from the spinning machine went to each 
 spindle of the Twist Frame, and from it emerged a strong 
 4 four-ply.' It was a machine more complicated than the 
 spinner; and, as only a good billiard player can appre- 
 ciate the cleverness of a great player, so only a spinner 
 might have admired the rare technical skill of the woman 
 who controlled the Twist Frame. 
 
 The soul of the works persisted, though the people and 
 the machines were changed. The old photographs and 
 old verses had gone, but new pictures and poems took their 
 places in the workers' corners; and new fashion-plates 
 hung where the old ones used to hang. The drawers, and 
 the rovers, the spreaders and the spinners still, like bower- 
 birds, adorned the scenes of their toil. A valentine or two 
 and the portrait of a gamekeeper and his dog hung beside 
 the carding machine; for Sally Groves had retired and a 
 younger woman was in her place. She, too, fed the Card 
 by hand, but not so perfectly as Sally was wont to do. 
 
 Estelle had come to see the Twist Frame. She cared 
 much for the Mill women and spent a good portion of her 
 hours with them. A very genuine friendship, little tainted 
 with time-serving, or self-interest, obtained for her in the 
 works. On her side, she valued the goodwill of the work- 
 ers as her best possession, and found among them a field 
 for study in human nature and, in their work, matter for 
 poetry and art. For were not all three Fates to be seen 
 at their eternal business here? Clotho attended the 
 Spread Board ; the can-minders coiling away the sliver, 
 stood for Lachesis ; while in the spinners, who cut the 
 thread when the bobbin was full, Estelle found Atropos, 
 the goddess of the shears. 
 
308 THE SPINNERS 
 
 Mr. Best, grown grizzled, but active still and with no 
 immediate thoughts of retirement, observed the operations 
 of the new spinner at the Twist Frame. She was a woman 
 from Bridport, lured to Bridetown by increase of wages. 
 
 John, who was a man of enthusiasms, turned to Estelle. 
 
 " The best spinner that ever came to Bridetown," he 
 whispered. 
 
 "Better than Sabina Dinnett? " she asked; and Best 
 declared that she was. So passage of time soon deadens 
 the outline of all achievement, and living events that hap- 
 pen under our eyes, offer a statement of the quick and real 
 with which beautiful dead things, embalmed in the amber 
 of memory, cannot cope. 
 
 " Sabina, at her best, never touched her, Miss Waldron." 
 
 " Sabina braids still in her spare time. Nobody makes 
 better nets." 
 
 " This is a cousin of Sarah Roberts," explained the 
 foreman. " Spinning runs in the Northover family, and 
 though Sarah is a spreader and never will be anything 
 else, there have been wondrous good spinners in the clan. 
 This girl is called Milly Morton, and her mother and 
 grandmother spun before her. Her father was Jack 
 Morton, one of the last of the old hand spinners. To 
 see him walking backwards from his wheel, and paying out 
 fibre from his waist with one hand and holding up the 
 yarn with the other, was a very good sight. He'd spin 
 very nearly a hundred pounds of hemp in a ten hours' day, 
 and turn out seven or eight miles of yarn, and walk every 
 yard of it, of course. The rope makers swore by him." 
 
 " I'm sure spinning runs in the blood ! " agreed Estelle. 
 " Both Sarah's little girls are longing for the time when 
 they can come into the Mill and mind cans ; and, of course, 
 the boy wants to do his father's work and be a lathe 
 hand." 
 
 Best nodded. 
 
 " You've hit it," he declared. " It runs in the blood in 
 a very strange fashion. Take Sabina's child. By all 
 
A TWIST FRAME 309 
 
 accounts, his old grandmother did everything in her power 
 to poison his mind against the Mill as well as the master. 
 She was a lot bitterer than Sabina herself, as the years 
 went on ; and if you could look back and uncover the past, 
 you'd find it was her secret work to make that child what 
 he is. But the Mill draws him like cheese draws a mouse. 
 I'll find him here a dozen times in a month just popping 
 in when my back's turned. Why he comes I couldn't say ; 
 but I think it is because his mother was a spinner and the 
 feeling for the craft is in him." 
 
 " His father is a spinner, too, for that matter," sug- 
 gested Estelle. 
 
 " In the larger sense of ownership, yes ; but it isn't that 
 that draws him. His father's got no great part in him 
 by all accounts. It's the mother in him that brings him 
 here. Not that she knows he comes so often, and I dare 
 say she'd be a good deal put about if she did." 
 
 " Why shouldn't he come, John ? " 
 
 He shrugged his shouders. 
 
 " I see no reason against. One gets so used to the situ- 
 ation that its strangeness passes off, but it's very awk- 
 ward, so to say, that ziothing can be done for Abel by his 
 father. Sabina's wrong to hold out there, and so I've 
 told her." 
 
 " She doesn't influence Abel one way or the other. The 
 child seems to hate Mister Ironsyde." 
 
 " Well, he loves the Mill, though you'd think he might 
 hate that for his father's sake." 
 
 " He's hard for a little creature of ten years old," said 
 Estelle. " He won't make friends with me, but holds off 
 and regards me just as rabbits and things regard one, 
 before they finally run away. I pretend I don't notice it. 
 He'll listen and even talk if I meet him with his mother; 
 but if I meet him alone, he flies. He generally bolts 
 through a hole in the hedge, or somewhere." 
 
 " He links you up with Mister Raymond," explained 
 Mr. Best. " He knows you live at North Hill House, 
 
310 THE SPINNERS 
 
 and so he's suspicious. You can disarm him, however, for 
 he's got reasoning parts quite up to the average if not 
 above. He's the sort of boy that if you don't want him 
 to steal your apples, you've only got to give him a few 
 now and then ; and then he rises to the situation and feels 
 in honour bound to be straight, because you've lifted him 
 to be your equal." 
 
 " I call that a very good character." 
 
 " It might be a lot worse, no doubt." 
 
 " I wanted him to come to our outing, but he won't do 
 that, though his mother asked him to go." 
 
 The outing, an annual whole holiday, was won for the 
 Mill by Estelle, and for the past four years she had taken 
 all who cared to come for a long day by the sea. They 
 always went to Weymouth, where amusement offered to 
 suit every taste. 
 
 " More than ever are coming this year," John told her. 
 " In fact, I believe pretty well everybody's going but Levi 
 Baggs." 
 
 " I'm glad. We'll have the two wagonettes from ' The 
 Seven Stars ' as usual. If you are going into Bridport 
 you might tell Missis Legg." 
 
 " The two big ones we shall want, and they must be here 
 sharp at six o'clock," declared Mr. Best. " There's noth- 
 ing like getting off early. I'll speak to Job Legg about it 
 and tell him to start 'em off earlier. You can trust it to 
 Job as to the wagonettes being opened or covered. He's 
 a very weather-wise person and always smells rain twelve 
 hours in advance." 
 
CHAPTER IV 
 
 THE BED HAND 
 
 THE Mill had a fascination for all Bridetown children and 
 they would trespass boldly and brave all perils to get a 
 glimpse of the machinery. The thunder of the engines 
 drew them, and there were all manner of interesting frag- 
 ments to be picked up round and about. That they were 
 not permitted within the radius of the works was also a 
 sound reason for being there, and many boys could tell 
 of great adventures and hairbreadth escapes from Mr. 
 Best, Mr. Benny Cogle and, above all, Mr. Baggs. For 
 Mr. Baggs, to the mind of youth, exhibited ogre-like quali- 
 ties. They knew him as a deadly enemy, for which rea- 
 son there was no part of the works that possessed a 
 greater or more horrid fascination than the hackling shop. 
 To have entered the den of Mr. Baggs marked a Bride- 
 town lad as worthy of* highest respect in his circle. But 
 proofs were always demanded of such a high achievement. 
 When Levi caught the adventurer, as sometimes happened, 
 proofs were invariably apparent and a posterior evidence 
 never lacked of a reverse for the offensive ; but youth will 
 be served, even though age sometimes serves it rather 
 harshly, and the boys were untiring. Unless Levi locked 
 the shop, when he went home at noon to dinner, there was 
 always the chance of a raid with a strick or two possibly 
 missing as proof of success. 
 
 Sabina had told Abel that he must keep away from the 
 works, but he ignored her direction and often revolved 
 about them at moments of liberty. He was a past mas- 
 ter in the art of scouting and evading danger, yet loved 
 
 danger, and the Mill offered him daily possibilities of both 
 
 311 
 
312 THE SPINNERS 
 
 courting and escaping peril. Together with other little 
 boys nourished on a penny journal, Abel had joined the 
 6 Band of the Red Hand.' They did no harm, but hoped 
 some day, when they grew older, to make a more painful 
 impression on Bridetown. At present their modest ambi- 
 tion was to leave the mark of their secret society in every 
 unexpected spot possible. On private walls, in church 
 and chapel, or the house-places of the farms, it was their 1 
 joy to write with chalk, * The Red Hand has been here.' 
 Then followed a circle and a cross the dark symbol of 
 the brotherhood. Once a former chief of the gang had 
 left his mark in the hackling shop and more than one mem- 
 ber had similarly adorned the interior of the Mill ; but the 
 old chief had gone to sea at the age of thirteen, and, 
 though younger than some of the present members, Abel 
 was now appointed leader and always felt the demand to 
 attempt things that should be worthy of so high a state. 
 
 They were not the everyday boys who thus combined, 
 but a sort of child less common, yet not uncommon. Such 
 lads scent one another out by parity of taste and care 
 less for gregarious games than isolated or lonely adven- 
 tures. They would rather go trespassing than play 
 cricket ; they would organise a secret raid before a public 
 pastime. Intuitively they desire romance, and feeling 
 that law and order is opposed to romance, find the need 
 to flout law and order in measure of their strength, and, 
 of course, applaud the successful companion who does so 
 with most complete results. 
 
 Now ' the old Adam ' a comprehensive term for inde- 
 pendence of view and unpreparedness to accept the tried 
 values of pastors and masters was strong in Abel Din- 
 nett. He loved life, but hated discipline, and for him the 
 Mill possessed far more significance than it could offer 
 to any lesser member of the band, since his father owned it. 
 For that much Abel apprehended, though the meaning of 
 paternity was as yet hidden from him. 
 
 That Raymond Tronsyde was his father he understood, 
 
THE RED HAND 313 
 
 and that he must hate him heartily he also understood: 
 his dead grandmother had poured this precept into his 
 young mind at its most receptive period. For the present 
 he was still too youthful to rise beyond this general 
 principle, and he was far too busy with his own adven- 
 tures to find leisure to hate any one more than fitfully. 
 He told the Red Handers that some day he designed a 
 terrific attack on Raymond Ironsyde; and they promised 
 to assist and support him; but they all recognised their 
 greater manifestations must be left until they attained 
 more weight in the cosmic and social schemes, and, for 
 the moment, their endeavour rose little higher than to set 
 their fatal sign where least it might be expected. 
 
 To this end came dark-eyed Abel to the Mill at an hour 
 when he should have been at his dinner. Ere long his 
 activities might be curtailed, for he was threatened with a 
 preparatory school in the autumn ; but before that hap- 
 pened, the Red Hand must be set in certain high places, 
 and the hackling shop of Levi Baggs was first among them. 
 
 Abel wore knickerbockers and his feet and legs were 
 bare, for he had just waded across the river beyond the 
 Mill, and meant to retreat by the same road. He had 
 hidden in a may bush till the people were all gone to their 
 meal, and then crossed the stream into the works. That 
 the door of the hackler's would be open he did not expect, 
 for Levi locked it when he went home ; but there was a little 
 window, and Abel, who had a theory that where his head 
 could go, his body could follow, believed that by the win- 
 dow it would be possible to make his entrance. The 
 contrary of what he expected happened, however, for the 
 window was shut and the door on the latch. Fate willed 
 that on the very day of Abel's attack, Mr. Baggs should 
 be spending the dinner-hour in his shop. His sister, who 
 looked after him, was from home until the evening, and 
 Levi had brought his dinner to the works. He was eat- 
 ing it when the boy very cautiously opened the door, and 
 since Mr. Baggs sat exactly behind the door, this action 
 
314 THE SPINNERS 
 
 served to conceal him. The intruder therefore thought 
 the place empty, and proceeded with his operations while 
 Levi made no sound, but watched him. 
 
 Taking a piece of chalk from his pocket Abel wrote the 
 words of terror, ' The Red Hand has been here,' and set 
 down the circle and cross. Then he picked up one of the 
 bright stricks, that lay beside the hackling board, and 
 was just about to depart in triumph, when Mr. Baggs 
 banged the door and revealed himself. 
 
 Thus discomfited, Abel grew pale and then flushed. 
 Mr. Baggs was a very big and strong man and the culprit 
 knew that he must now prepare for the pangs that at- 
 tended failure. But he bore pain well. He had been 
 operated upon for faulty tendons when he was five and 
 proved a Spartan patient. He stood now waiting for 
 Mr. Baggs. Other victims had reported that it was 
 Levi's custom to use a strap from his own waist when he 
 beat a boy, and Abel, even at this tense moment, wondered 
 whether he would now do so. 
 
 "It's you, is it?" said Mr. Baggs. "And the Red 
 Hand has been here, has it? And perhaps the red some- 
 thing else will go away from here. You're a darned young 
 thief that's what you are." 
 
 " I ain't yet," argued Abel. His voice fluttered, for 
 his heart was beating very fast. 
 
 " You're as good, however, for you was going to take 
 my strick. The will was there, though I prevented the 
 deed." 
 
 " I had to show the Band as I'd been here." 
 
 " Why did you come ? What sense is there to it ? " 
 
 Abel regarded Mr. Baggs doubtfully and did not reply. 
 
 " Just to show you're a bit out of the common, per- 
 haps? " 
 
 Abel clutched at the suggestion. His eyes looked side- 
 ways slyly at Mr. Baggs. The ogre seemed inclined to 
 talk, and through speech might come salvation, for he had 
 acted rather than talked on previous occasions. 
 
THE RED HAND 315 
 
 " We want to be different from common boys," said the 
 marauder. 
 
 " Well, you are, for one, and there's no need to trouble 
 in your case. You was born different, and different 
 you've got to be. I suppose you've been told often enough 
 who your father is ? " 
 
 " Yes, I have." 
 
 " Small wonder then that you've got your knife into the 
 world at large, I reckon. What thinking man, or boy, 
 has not for that matter? So you're up against the laws 
 and out for the liberties? Well, I don't quarrel with that. 
 Only you're too young yet to understand what a lot you've 
 got to grumble at. Some day you will." 
 
 Abel said nothing. He hardly listened, and thought 
 far less of what Mr. Baggs was saying than of what he 
 himself would say to his companions after this great ad- 
 venture. To make friends with the ogre was no mean 
 feat, even for a member of the Red Hand. 
 
 What motiveless malignity actuated Levi Baggs mean- 
 while, who can say? He was now a man in sight of sev- 
 enty, yet his crabbed soul would exude gall under pressure 
 as of yore. None was ever cheered or heartened by any- 
 thing he might say ; but to cast a neighbour down, or 
 make a confident and contented man doubtful and discon- 
 tented, affected Mr. Baggs favourably and rendered him 
 as cheerful as his chronic pessimism ever permitted him 
 to be. 
 
 He bade the child sit and gave him his portion of cur- 
 rant dumpling. 
 
 " Put that down your neck," he said, " and don't you 
 think so bad of me in future. I treat other people same 
 as they treat me, and that's a rule that works out pretty 
 fair in practice, if you've got the power to follow it. But 
 some folks are too weak to treat other people as they are 
 treated you, for example. You're one of the unlucky 
 ones, you are, Abel Dinnett." 
 
 Abel enjoyed the pudding; and still his mind dwelt 
 
316 THE SPINNERS 
 
 more on future narration of this great incident than on the 
 incident itself. With unconscious art, he felt that the 
 moment when this tale was told, would be far greater for 
 him than the moment when it happened. 
 
 " I ain't unlucky, Mister Baggs. I would have been 
 unlucky if you'd beat me; but you've give me your pud- 
 ding, and I'm on your side till death now." 
 
 " Well, that's something. I ain't got many my side, 
 I believe. The fearless thinker never has. You can come 
 and see me when you mind to, because I'm sorry for you, 
 owing to your bad fortune. You've been handicapped 
 out of winning the race, Abel. You know what a handi- 
 cap is in a race? Well, you won't have no chance of win- 
 ning now, because your father won't own you." 
 
 " I won't own him," said the boy. " Granny always 
 told me he was my bitterest enemy, and she knew, and I 
 won't trust him never." 
 
 " I should think not nor any other wise chap 
 wouldn't trust him. He's a bad lot. He only believes in 
 machines, not humans." 
 
 The boy began to be receptive. 
 
 " He wants to be friends, but I won't be his friend, 
 because I hate him. Only I don't tell mother, because she 
 don't hate him so much as me." 
 
 " More fool her, then. She ought to hate him. She's 
 got first cause. Do you know who ought to own these 
 works when your father dies ? " 
 
 " No, Mister Baggs." 
 
 " You. Yes, they did ought to belong to you in jus- 
 tice, because you are his eldest son. Everything ought 
 to be yours, if the world were run by right and fairness 
 and honour. But it's all took from you and you can't 
 lift a finger to better yourself, because you're only his 
 natural son, and Nature may go to hell every time for 
 all the Law and the Church care. Church and Law both 
 hate Nature. So that's why I say you're an unlucky 
 boy; and that's why I say that, despite your father's 
 
THE RED HAND 317 
 
 money and fame and being popular and well thought on 
 and all that, he's a cruel rogue." 
 
 Abel was puzzled but interested. 
 
 " If I'm his boy, why ain't my mother his wife, like all 
 the other chaps' fathers have got wives ? " 
 
 " Why ain't your mother his wife? Yes, why? After 
 ten years he'll find that question as hard to answer as it 
 was before you were born, I reckon. And the answer to 
 the question is the same as the answer to many questions 
 about Raymond Ironsyde. And that is, that he is a 
 crooked man who pretends to be a straight one ; in a word, 
 a hypocrite. And you'll grow up to understand these 
 things and see what should be yours taken from you and 
 given to other pople." 
 
 " When I grow up, I'll have it out with him," said 
 Abel. 
 
 " No, you won't. Because he's strong and you're weak. 
 You're weak and poor and nobody, with no father to fight 
 for you and give you a show in the world. And you'll al- 
 ways be the same, so you'll never stand any chance against 
 him." 
 
 The boy flushed and showed anger. 
 
 " I won't be weak and poor always." 
 
 " Against him you will. Suppose you went so far as to 
 let him befriend you, could he ever make up for not marry- 
 ing your mother? Can he ever make you anything but a 
 bastard and an outcast? No, he can't ; and he only wants 
 to educate you and give you a bit of money and decent 
 clothes for the sake of his own conscience. He'll come to 
 you hat in hand some day not because he cares a damn 
 for you, but that he may stand well in the eyes of the 
 world." 
 
 Abel now panted with anger, and Mr. Baggs was mildly 
 amused to see how easily the child could be played upon. 
 
 " I'll grow up and then " 
 
 " Don't you worry. You must take life as you find it, 
 and as you haven't found it a very kind thing, you must 
 
318 THE SPINNERS 
 
 put up with it. Most people draw blanks, and that's why 
 it's better to stop out of the world than in it. And if 
 we could see into the bottom of every heart, we should 
 very likely find that all draw blanks, and even what looks 
 like prizes are not." 
 
 Levi laughed after this sweeping announcement. It 
 appeared to put him in a good temper. He even relaxed 
 in the gravity of his prophecies. 
 
 " However, life is on the side of youth," he said, " and 
 you may come to the front some day, if you've got enough 
 brains. Brains is the only thing that'll save you. Your 
 mother's clever and your father's crafty, so perhaps you'll 
 go one better than either. Perhaps, some day, if you wait 
 long enough, you'll get back on your father, after all." 
 
 " I will wait long enough," declared Abel. " I don't 
 care how long I wait, but I'll best him, Mister Baggs." 
 
 " You keep in that righteous spirit and you'll breed a 
 bit of trouble for him some day, I daresay. And now be 
 off, and if you want to come and see me at work and learn 
 about hackling and the business that ought to be yours 
 but won't be, then you can drop in again when you mind 
 to." 
 
 " Thank you, sir," said Abel. " I will come, and if I 
 say you let me, nobody can stop me." 
 
 " That's right. I like brave boys that ain't frightened 
 of their betters so called." 
 
 Then Abel went off, crossed Bride among the sedges and 
 put on his shoes and stockings again. He had a great 
 deal to think about, and this brief conversation played its 
 part in his growing brain to alter old opinions and waken 
 new ideas. That he had successfully stormed the hackling 
 shop and found the ogre friendly was, of course, good; 
 but already, and long before he could retail the incident, it 
 began to lose its rare savour. He perceived this himself 
 dimly, and it made him uncomfortable and troubled. 
 Something had happened to him ; he knew not what, but it 
 dwarfed the operations of the Red Hand, and it even made 
 
THE RED HAND 319 
 
 his personal triumph look smaller than it appeared a little 
 while before. 
 
 Abel stared at the Mill while he pulled on his stockings 
 and listened to the bell calling the people back to work. 
 
 By right, then, all these wonders should be his some 
 day; but his father would never give them to him now. 
 He vaguely remembered that his grandmother had said 
 something like this ; but it remained for Mr. Baggs to re- 
 kindle the impression until Abel became oppressed with its 
 greatness. 
 
 He considered the problem gloomily for a long time and 
 decided to talk to his mother about it. But he did not. 
 It was characteristic of him that he seldom went to Sa- 
 bina for any light on his difficulties. Indeed he attached 
 more importance to Mr. Churchouse's opinions than his 
 mother's. He determined to see Levi Baggs again and, 
 meantime, he let a sense of wrong sink into him. Here 
 the Band of the Red Hand offered comfort. It seemed 
 proper to his dawning intelligence that one who had been 
 so badly treated as he, should become the head of the Red 
 Hand. Yet, as the possible development of the movement 
 occurred to Abel, the child began to share the uneasiness 
 of all conspiracy and feI a weakness inherent in the Band. 
 Seen from that modest standard of evil-doing which be- 
 longed to Tommy and Billy Reep, Amos Whittle and 
 Jacky Gale, the Red Handers appeared a futile organisa- 
 tion even in Abel's eyes. He felt, as greater than he have 
 felt, that an ideal society should embrace one member only : 
 himself. There were far too many brothers of the Red 
 Hand, and before he reached home he even contemplated 
 resignation. He liked better the thought of playing his 
 own hand, and keeping both its colour and its purpose 
 secret from everybody else in the world. His head was, 
 for the moment, full of unsocial thoughts ; but whether the 
 impressions created by Mr. Baggs were likely to persist 
 in a mind so young, looked doubtful. 
 
 He told his mother nothing, as usual. Indeed, had she 
 
320 THE SPINNERS 
 
 guessed half that went on in Abel's brains, she might have 
 sooner undertaken what presently was indicated, and re- 
 moved herself and her son to a district far beyond their 
 native village. 
 
 But the necessity did not exist in her thoughts, and when 
 she recognised it, since the inspiration came from without, 
 she was moved to resent rather than accept it. 
 
CHAPTER V 
 
 AN ACCIDENT 
 
 THERE was a cricket luncheon at ' The Tiger ' when Brid- 
 port played its last match for the season against Ax- 
 minster. The western township had won the first encoun- 
 ter, and Bridport much desired to cry quits over the sec- 
 ond. 
 
 Raymond played on this occasion, and though he failed, 
 the credit of BrideiOwn was worthily upheld by Nicholas 
 Roberts, the lathe-worker. He did not bowl as fast as 
 of yore, but he bowled better, and since Axminster was out 
 for one hundred and thirty in their first innings, while 
 Bridport had made seventy for two wickets before lunch- 
 eon, the issue promised well. 
 
 Job Legg still helped Richard Gurd at great moments 
 as he was wont to do, for prosperity had not modified 
 Job's activity, or diminished his native goodwill. Gurd 
 carved, while Job looked after the bottles. Arthur Wal- 
 dron, who umpired for Bridport, sat beside Raymond at 
 lunch and condoled with him, because the younger, who 
 had gone in second wicket down, had played himself in 
 very carefully before the interval. 
 
 " Now you'll have to begin all over again," said Wal- 
 dron. " I always say luncheon may be worth anything 
 to the bowlers. It rests them, but it puts the batsman's 
 eye out." 
 
 " Seeing how short of practice you are this year, you 
 were jolly steady, Ray," declared Neddy Motyer, who sat 
 on the other side of Ironsyde. " You stopped some very 
 hot ones." 
 
 Neddy preserved his old interest in sport, but was now 
 
 a responsible member of society. He had married and 
 
 321 
 
322 THE SPINNERS 
 
 joined his father, a harness-maker, in a prosperous busi- 
 ness. 
 
 " I can't time 'em, like I could. That fast chap will get 
 me, I expect." 
 
 And Raymond proved a true prophet. Indeed far 
 worse happened than he anticipated. 
 
 Estelle came to watch the cricket after luncheon. She 
 had driven into Bridport with her father and Raymond in 
 the morning and gone on to Jenny Ironsyde for the mid- 
 day meal. Now she arrived in time to witness a catastro- 
 phe. A very fast bowler went on immediately after lunch. 
 He was a tall and powerful youth with a sinister reputa- 
 tion for bowling at the man rather than the wicket. At 
 any rate he pitched them short and with his lofty delivery 
 bumped them very steeply on a lively pitch. Now/ in his 
 second over, he sent down a short one at tremendous speed, 
 and the batsman, failing to get out of the way, was hit on 
 the point of the jaw. He fell as though shot and proved 
 to be quite unconscious when picked up. 
 
 They carried him to the pavilion, and it was not until 
 twenty minutes had passed that Raymond came round 
 and the game went on. But Ironsyde could take no fur- 
 ther part. There was concussion of doubtful severity and 
 he found himself half blind and suffering great pain in the 
 neck and head. 
 
 Estelle came to him and advised that he should go to 
 his aunt's house, which was close at hand. He could not 
 speak, but signified agreement, and they took him there 
 in an ambulance, while the girl ran on to advise his aunt of 
 the accident. 
 
 A doctor came with him and helped to get him to bed. 
 His mind seemed affected and he wandered in his speech. 
 But he recognised Estelle and begged her not to leave him. 
 She sat near him, therefore, in a darkened room and Miss 
 Ironsyde also came. 
 
 Waldron dropped in before dusk with the news that 
 Bridport had won, by a smaller margin than promised, on 
 
AN ACCIDENT 
 
 the first innings. But he found Raymond sleeping and did 
 not waken him. Estelle believed the injured man would 
 want her when he woke again. The doctor could say noth- 
 ing till some hours had passed, so she went home, but re- 
 turned a few hours later to stop the night and help, if 
 need be, to nurse the patient. A professional nurse shared 
 the vigil; but their duties amounted to nothing, for Ray- 
 mond slept through the greater part of the night and de- 
 clared himself better in the morning. 
 
 He had to stop with his aunt, however, for two or three 
 days, and while Estelle, her ministration ended, was going 
 away after the doctor pronounced Raymond on the road 
 to recovery, the patient begged her to remain. He ap- 
 peared in a sentimental vein, and the experience of being 
 nursed was so novel that Ironsyde endured it without a 
 murmur. To Estelle, who did not guess he was rather 
 enjoying it, the spectacle of his patience under pain awoke 
 admiration. Indeed, she thought him most heroic and he 
 made no effort to undeceive her. 
 
 Incidentally, during his brief convalescence the man saw 
 more of his aunt than he had seen for many days. She 
 also must needs nurse him and exhaust her ingenuity to 
 pass the time. The room was kept dark for eight-and- 
 f orty hours, so her method of entertaining her nephew con- 
 sisted chiefly in conversation. 
 
 Of late years Raymond seldom let a week elapse without 
 seeing Miss Ironsyde if only for half an hour. Her wan- 
 ing health occupied him on these occasions and, at his sug- 
 gestion, she had gone to Bath to fight the arthritis that 
 slowly gained upon her. But during his present sojourn 
 at Bridport as her guest, Raymond let her lead their talk 
 as she would, indeed, he himself sometimes led it into chan- 
 nels of the past, where she would not have ventured to go. 
 
 Life had made an immense difference to the man and he 
 was old for his age now, even as until his brother's death 
 he had been young for his age. She could not fail to note 
 the steadfastness of his mind, despite its limitations. As 
 
THE SPINNERS 
 
 Estelle had often done, she perceived how he set his faith 
 on material things the steel and steam to bring about 
 a new order and advance the happiness of mankind; but 
 he was interested in social questions far more than of old 
 time, and she felt no little surprise to hear him talk about 
 the future. 
 
 " The air is full of change," she said, on one occasion. 
 
 " It always is," he answered. " There is always move- 
 ment, although the breath of advance and progress seems 
 to sink to nothing, sometimes. Now it's blowing a stiff 
 breeze and may rise to a hurricane in a few years." 
 
 " It is for the stable, solid backbone of the nation we 
 of the middle-class to withstand such storms," she de- 
 clared, and he agreed. 
 
 " If you've got a stake in the world, you must certainly 
 see its foundations are driven deep and look to the stake 
 itself, that it's not rotting. Some stakes are certainly not 
 made of stuff stout enough to stand against the storms 
 ahead. Education is the great, vital thing. I often feel 
 mad to think how I wasted my own time at school, and 
 came to man's work a raw, ignorant fool. We talk of the 
 education of the masses and what I see is this : they will 
 soon be better educated than we ourselves; for we bring 
 any amount of sense and modern ideas to work on their 
 teaching, while our own prehistorical methods are left 
 severely alone. I believe the boys who come to working 
 age now are better taught than I was at my grammar 
 school. I wish I knew more." 
 
 " Yet we see education may run us into great dangers," 
 said Jenny Ironsyde. " It can be pushed to a perilous 
 point. One even hears a murmur against the Bible in the 
 schools. It makes my blood run cold. And we need not 
 look farther than dear Estelle to see the peril." 
 
 " What do you think of Estelle? " he asked. " I almost 
 welcome this stupid collapse, nuisance though it is, be- 
 cause it's made a sort of resting-place and brought me 
 nearer to you and Estelle. You've both been so kind. A 
 
AN ACCIDENT 325 
 
 man such as I am, is so busy and absorbed that he forgets 
 all about women ; then suddenly lying on his back done 
 for and useless he finds they don't forget all about him." 
 
 " You ask what I think about Estelle? " she said. " I 
 never think about Estelle no more than I do about the 
 sunshine, or my comfortable bed, or my tea. She's just 
 one of the precious things I take for granted. I love her. 
 She is a great deal to me, and the hours she spends with a 
 rather old-fashioned and cross-grained woman are the 
 happiest hours I know." 
 
 " I'm like her father," he said. " I give Estelle best. 
 Nothing can spoil her, because she's so utterly uninter- 
 ested in herself. Another thing : she's so fair almost 
 morbidly fair. The only thing that makes her savage is 
 injustice. If she sees an injustice, she won't leave it alone 
 if it's in her power to alter it. That's her father in her. 
 What he calls ' sporting,' she calls * justice.' And, of 
 course, the essence of sport is justice, if you think it out." 
 
 " I don't know anything about sport, but I suppose I 
 have to thank cricket for your company at present. As 
 for Estelle, I think she has a great idea of your judgment 
 and opinion." 
 
 He laughed. 
 
 " If she does, it's probably because I generally agree 
 with her. Besides " 
 
 He broke off and lighted a cigarette. 
 
 " < Besides ' what? " asked the lady. 
 
 " Well oh I hardly know. I'm tremendously fond of 
 her. Perhaps I've taken her too much as you say we take 
 the sun and our meat and drink as a matter of course. 
 Yes, like the sun, and as unapproachable." 
 
 Miss Ironsyde considered. 
 
 " I suppose you're right. I can well imagine that to 
 the average man a ' Una,' such as Estelle, may seem rather 
 unapproachable." 
 
 " We're very good friends, though how good I never 
 quite guessed till this catastrophe. She seemed to come 
 
326 THE SPINNERS 
 
 and help look after me as a matter of course. Didn't 
 think it a bit strange." 
 
 " She's simple, but in a very noble way. I've only one 
 quarrel with her the faith of her fathers " 
 
 " Leave it. You'll only put your foot into it, Aunt 
 Jenny." 
 
 " Never," she said. " I shall never put my foot into 
 it where right and wrong are concerned with Estelle 
 or you, or anybody else. I'm nearly seventy, remember, 
 Raymond, and one knows what is imperishable and to be 
 trusted at that age." 
 
 Thus she negatived Mr. Churchouse's dictum that 
 mere age demanded no particular reverence, since many 
 years are as liable to error as few. 
 
 Her nephew was doubtful. 
 
 " Right and wrong are a never-ending puzzle," he said. 
 " They vary so from the point of view. And if you once 
 grant there are more view points than one, where are 
 
 JOU? 
 
 " Right and wrong are not doubtful," she assured him, 
 " and all the science in the world can't turn one into the 
 other any more than light can turn into darkness." 
 
 " Light can turn into darkness easily enough. I've 
 learned that during the last three days," he answered. 
 " If you fill this room with light, I can't see. If you keep 
 it dark, I can." 
 
 Estelle came to tea and read some notes that Mr. Best 
 had prepared for Raymond. They satisfied him, and the 
 meal was merry, for he found himself free of pain and in 
 the best spirits. Estelle, too, had some gossip that 
 amused him. Her father was already practising at clay 
 pigeons to get his eye in for the first of September; and 
 he wished to inform Raymond that he was shooting well 
 and hoped for a better season than the last. He had also 
 seen a vixen and three cubs on North Hill at five o'clock 
 in the morning of the preceding day. 
 
 " In fact, it's the best of all possible worlds so far as 
 
AN ACCIDENT 327 
 
 father is concerned," said Estelle, " and now he hears 
 you're coming home early next week, he will go to church 
 on Sunday with a thankful heart. He said yesterday that 
 Raymond's accident had a bright side. D'you know what 
 it is? Ray meant to give up cricket altogether after this 
 year; but father points out that he cannot do so now. 
 Because it is morally impossible for Ray to stop playing 
 until he stands up again to that bowler who hurt him so 
 badly. ' Morally impossible,' is what father said." 
 
 " He's quite right too," declared the patient. " Till 
 I've knocked that beggar out of his own ground for six, I 
 certainly shan't chuck cricket. We must meet again next 
 season, if we're both alive. Everybody can see that." 
 
CHAPTER VI 
 
 THE GATHERING PROBLEM 
 
 SABINA DINNETT found that her mind was not so indiffer- 
 ent to her fortunes as she supposed. Upon examining it, 
 with respect to the problem of leaving Bridetown for 
 Abel's sake, which Ernest had now raised, she discovered 
 a very keen disinclination to depart. Here was the only 
 home that she, or her child, had ever known, and though 
 that mattered nothing, she shrank from beginning a new 
 life away from ' The Magnolias ' under the increased re- 
 sponsibility of sole control where Abel was concerned. 
 Moreover, Mr. Churchouse had more power with Abel than 
 anybody. The boy liked him and must surely win sense 
 and knowledge from him, as Sabina herself had won them 
 in the past. She knew that these considerations were 
 superficial and the vital point in reason was to separate the 
 son from the father; so that Abel's existing animus might 
 perish. Both Estelle and Ernest Churchouse had im- 
 pressed the view upon her; but here crept in the personal 
 factor, and Sabina found that she had no real desire to 
 mend the relationship. Considerations of her child's 
 future pointed to more self-denial, but only that Abel 
 might in time come to be reconciled to Raymond and accept 
 good at his hands. And when Sabina thought upon this, 
 she soon saw that her own indifference, where Ironsyde was 
 concerned, did not extend to the future of the boy. She 
 could still feel, and still suffer, and still resent certain 
 possibilities. She trusted that in time to come, when Mr. 
 Churchouse and Miss Ironsyde were gone, the measure of 
 her son's welfare would be hers. She was content to see 
 herself depending upon him ; but not if his own prosperity 
 
 came from his father. She preferred to picture Abel as 
 
 328 
 
THE GATHERING PROBLEM 329 
 
 making his way without obligations to that source. She 
 might have married and made her own home, but that al- 
 ternative never tempted her, since it would have thrust her 
 off the pedestal which she occupied, as one faithful to the 
 faithless, one bitterly wronged, a reproach to the good 
 name perhaps, even a threat to the sustained prosperity 
 of Raymond Ironsyde. She could feel all this at some 
 moments. 
 
 She determined now to let the matter rest, and when 
 Ernest Churchouse ventured to remind her of the subject 
 and to repeat the opinion that it might be wise for Sabina 
 to take the boy away from Bridetown, she postponed deci- 
 sion. 
 
 " I've thought upon it," she said, " and I feel it can very 
 well be left to the spring, if you see nothing against. I've 
 promised to do some braiding in my spare time this winter 
 for a firm at Bridport that wants netting in large quanti- 
 ties. They are giving it out to those who can do it; and 
 as for Abel, he'll go to his day-school through the winter. 
 And it means a great deal to me, Mister Churchouse, that 
 you are as good and helpful to him as you were to me 
 when I was young. I don't want to lose that." 
 
 " I wish I'd been more helpful, my dear." 
 
 " You taught me a great many things valuable to know. 
 I should have been in my grave years ago, but for you, I 
 reckon. And the child's only a child still. If you work 
 upon him, you'll make him meek and mild in time." 
 
 " He'll never be meek and mild, Sabina any more than 
 you were. He has plenty of character ; he's good material 
 excellent stuff to be moulded into a fine pattern, I hope. 
 But a little leaven leavens the whole lump of a child, and 
 what I can do is not enough to outweigh other influences." 
 
 " I don't fear for him. He's got to face facts, and as 
 he grows he must use his own wits and get his own liv- 
 ing." 
 
 " The fear is that he may be spoiled and come to settled, 
 rooted prejudices, too hard to break down afterwards. 
 
330 THE SPINNERS 
 
 He is a very interesting boy, just as you were a very 
 interesting girl, Sabina. He often reminds me of you. 
 There are the possibilities of beauty in his character. He 
 is sentimental about some things and strangely indifferent 
 about others. He is a mixture of exaggerated kindness in 
 some directions and utter callousness in others. Senti- 
 mental people often are. He will pick a caterpillar out of 
 the road to save it from death, and he will stone a dog 
 if he has a grudge against it. His attitude to Peter Grim 
 is one of devotion. He actually told me that it was very 
 sad that Peter had now grown too old to catch mice. 
 Again, he always brings me the first primrose and spares 
 no pains to find it. Such little acts argue a kindly nature. 
 But against them, you have to set his unreasoning dislike 
 of human beings and a certain shall I say buccaneering 
 spirit." 
 
 " He feels, and so he'll suffer as I did. The more 
 you feel, the more you suffer." 
 
 " And it is therefore our duty to prevent him from feel- 
 ing mistakenly and wanting to make others suffer. He 
 may sometimes catch allusions in his quick ears that cause 
 him doubt and even pain. And it is certain that the sight 
 of his father does wake wrong thoughts. Removed from 
 here, the best part of him would develop, and when the 
 larger questions of his future begin to be considered in a 
 few years time, he might then approach them with an open 
 mind." 
 
 " There can be no harm in leaving it till the spring. 
 He'd hate going away from here." 
 
 " I don't think so. The young welcome a change of en- 
 vironment. There is nothing more healthy for their minds 
 as a rule than to travel about. However, we will get him 
 used to the idea of going and think about it again in the 
 spring." 
 
 So the subject was left, and when the suggestion of 
 departing from Bridetown came to Abel, he belied the 
 prophecy of Mr. Chur chouse and declared a strong objec- 
 
THE GATHERING PROBLEM 331 
 
 tion to the thought of going. His mother influenced him 
 in this. 
 
 During the autumn he had a misfortune, for, with two 
 other members of the * Red Hand,' he was caught stealing 
 apples at the time of cider-making. Three strokes of a 
 birch rod fell on each revolutionary, and not Ernest Chur- 
 chouse nor his mother could console Abel for this reverse. 
 He gleaned his sole comfort at a dangerous source, and 
 while the kindly ignored the event and the unkindly dwelt 
 upon it, only Levi Baggs applauded Abel and preached 
 privi-conspiracy and rebellion. Raymond Ironsyde was 
 much perturbed at the adventure, but his friend Waldron 
 held the event desirable. As a Justice of the Peace, it was 
 Arthur who prescribed the punishment and trusted in it. 
 
 Thus he, too, incurred Abel's enmity. The company of 
 the * Red Hand ' was disbanded to meet no more, and if 
 his fellow sufferers gained by their chastisement, it was 
 certain that Sabina's son did not. Insensate law fits the 
 punishment to the crime rather than to the criminal, as 
 though a doctor should only treat disease, without thought 
 of the patient enduring it. 
 
 Neither did Abel's mother take the reverse with philoso- 
 phy. She resented it as cruel cowardice ; but it reminded 
 her of the advantages to be gained by leaving her old home. 
 
 Then fell an unexpected disaster and Mr. Churchouse 
 was called to suffer a dangerous attack of bronchitis. 
 
 The illness seemed to banish all other considerations 
 from Sabina's mind and, while the issue remained in doubt, 
 she planned various courses of action. Incidentally, she 
 saw more of Estelle and Miss Ironsyde than of late, for 
 Mr. Churchouse, whose first pleasure on earth was now 
 Estelle, craved her presence during convalescence, as Ray- 
 mond in like case had done ; and Miss Ironsyde also drove 
 to see him on several occasions. The event filled all with 
 concern, for Ernest had a trick to make friends and, what 
 is more rare, an art to keep them. Many bevond his own 
 circle were relieved and thankful when he weathered danger 
 
332 THE SPINNERS 
 
 and began to build up again with the lengthening days of 
 the new year. 
 
 Abel had been very solicitous on his behalf, and he 
 praised the child to Jenny and Estelle, when they came to 
 drink tea with him on a day in early spring. 
 
 " I believe there are great possibilities in him and, when 
 I am stronger, I shall resume my attack on Sabina to go 
 away," he said. " The boy's mind is being poisoned and 
 we might prevent it." 
 
 " It's a most unfortunate state of affairs," declared Miss 
 Ironsyde. " Yet it was bound to happen in a little place 
 like this. Raymond is not sensitive, or he would feel it far 
 more than he does." 
 
 " He can't do more and he does feel it a great deal," 
 declared Estelle. " I think Sabina sees it clearly enough* 
 but it's very hard on her too, to have to go from Mister 
 Churchouse and her home." 
 
 " Nothing is more mysterious than the sowing and ger- 
 mination of spiritual seed," said the old man. " The 
 enemy sowed tares by night, and what can be more devilish 
 than sowing the tares of evil on virgin soil? It was done 
 long ago. One hesitates to censure the dead, though I 
 daresay, if we could hear them talking in another world, 
 we should find they didn't feel nearly so nice about us and 
 speak their minds quite plainly. We know plenty of peo- 
 ple who must be criticising. But truth will out, and the 
 truth is that Mary Dinnett planted evil thoughts and 
 prejudices in Abel. He was not too young, unfortunately, 
 to give them room. A very curious woman obstinate 
 and almost malignant if vexed and quite incapable of keep- 
 ing silence even when it was most demanded. If you are 
 going to give people confidences, you must have a good 
 memory. Mary would confide all sorts of secrets to me 
 and then, perhaps six months afterwards, be quite furious 
 to find I knew them ! She came to me for advice on one 
 occasion and I reminded her of certain circumstances she 
 had confided to me in the past, and she lost her temper 
 
THE GATHERING PROBLEM 
 
 entirely. Yet a woman of most excellent qualities and 
 most charitable in other people's affairs." 
 
 " The question is Abel, and I have told Sabina she must 
 decide about him," said Jenny. " We are all of one mind, 
 and Raymond himself thinks it would be most desirable. 
 As soon as you are well again, Sabina must go." 
 
 " I shall miss her very much. To find anybody who will 
 fall into my ways may be difficult. When I was younger, 
 I used to like training a domestic. I found it was better 
 to rule by love than fear. You may lose here and there, 
 but you gain more than you lose. Human character is 
 really not so profoundly difficult, if you resolutely try to 
 see life from the other person's standpoint. That done, 
 you can help them and yourself through them." 
 
 " People who show you their edges, instead of their 
 rounds, are not at all agreeable," said Miss Ironsyde. 
 " To conquer the salients of character is often a very for- 
 midable task." 
 
 " It is," he admitted, " yet I have found the comforta- 
 ble, convex and concave characters often really more diffi- 
 cult in the long run. You must have some hard and dura- 
 ble rock on which to found understanding and security. 
 The soft, crumbling people may be lovable; but they are 
 useless as sand at a crisis. They are always slipping away 
 and threatening to smother their best friends with the 
 debris." 
 
 He chattered on until a fit of coughing stopped him. 
 
 " You mustn't talk so much," warned Estelle. " It's 
 lovely to hear you talking again ; but it isn't good for you, 
 yet." 
 
 Then she turned to Miss Ironsyde. 
 
 " The first time I came in and found him reading a book 
 catalogue, I knew he was going to be all right." 
 
 " By the same token another gift has reached me," he 
 answered ; " a book on the bells of Devon, which I have 
 long wanted to possess." 
 
 " I'm sure it is not such a perfect book as yours." 
 
334 THE SPINNERS 
 
 " Indeed it is very excellently done. The bell mot- 
 toes in Devonshire are worthy of all admiration. But a 
 great many of the bells in ancient bell-chambers are crazed 
 a grave number. People don't think as much of a ring 
 of bells in a parish as they used to do." 
 
 Miss Ironsyde brought the conversation back to Abel ; 
 but Ernest was tired of this. He viewed Sabina's depar- 
 ture with great personal regret. 
 
 " Things will be as they will, my dears," he told them, 
 " and I have such respect for Sabina's good sense that I 
 shall be quite content to leave decision with her. It would 
 not become me to dictate or command in such a delicate 
 matter. To return to the bells, I have received a rather 
 encouraging statement from the publishers. Four copies 
 of my book have been sold during the last six months." 
 
CHAPTER VII 
 
 THE WALK HOME 
 
 UPON a Bank Holiday Sabina took Abel to West Haven 
 for a long day on the beach and pier. He enjoyed him- 
 self very thoroughly, ate, drank and played to his heart's 
 content. But his amusements brought more pleasure to 
 the child than his mother, for he found the wonderful old 
 stores and discovered therein far more entertaining occu- 
 pation than either sea or shore could offer. 
 
 The place was deserted to-day, and while Sabina sat 
 outside in a corner of the courtyard and occupied herself 
 with the future, Abel explored the mysteries of the ancient 
 building and found all manner of strange nooks and mys- 
 terious passages. He wove dreams and magnified the least 
 incident into an adventure. He inhabited the dark cor- 
 ners and sombre, subterranean places with enemies that 
 wanted to catch him; he most potently believed that hid- 
 den treasures awaited him under the hollow-echoing floors. 
 Once he had a rare fright, for a bat hanging asleep in its 
 folded wings, was wakened by him and suddenly flew into 
 his face. He climbed and crawled and crept about, stole 
 a lump of putty and rejoiced at the discovery of some 
 paint pots and a brush. The ' Red Hand ' no longer ex- 
 isted ; but the opportunity once more to set up its sinister 
 symbol was too good to resist. He painted it on the 
 walls in several places and then called his mother to look 
 at the achievement. 
 
 She climbed up a long flight of stone steps that led to 
 the lofts, and suffered a strange experience presently, for 
 the child was playing in the chamber sacred to her sur- 
 render. She stood where twelve years before she had come 
 with Raymond Ironsyde after their day at Golden Cap. 
 
 Light fell through a window let into the roof. It was 
 
 335 
 
336 THE SPINNERS 
 
 broken and fringed with cobwebs. The pile of fishermen's 
 nets had vanished and a carpenter's bench had taken its 
 place. On the walls and timbers were scrawled names and 
 initials of holiday folk, who had explored the old stores 
 through many years. 
 
 Sabina, perceiving where she stood, closed her eyes and 
 took an involuntary step backward. Abel called attention 
 to his sign upon the walls. 
 
 " The carpenter will shiver when he sees that," he said. 
 
 Then he rambled off, whistling, and she sat down and 
 stared round her. She told herself that deep thoughts 
 must surely wake under this sudden experience and the 
 fountains of long sealed emotion bubble upwards, to drown 
 her before them. Instead she merely found herself incapa- 
 ble of thinking. A dull, stale, almost stagnant mood crept 
 over her. Her mind could neither walk nor fly. After 
 the first thrill of recognition, the light went out and she 
 found herself absolutely indifferent. Not anger touched 
 her, nor pain. That the child of that perished passion 
 should play here, and laugh and be merry was poignant, 
 but it did not move her and she felt a sort of surprise that 
 it should not. There was a time when such an experience 
 must have shaken her to the depths, plunged her into some 
 deep pang of soul and left indelible wounds ; now, no such 
 thhig happened. 
 
 She gazed mildly about her and almost smiled. Then 
 she rose from her seat on the carpenter's bench, went out 
 and descended the staircase again. 
 
 When she called him to a promised tea at an inn, Abel 
 came at once. He was weary and well content. 
 
 " I shall often come here," he said. " It's the best place 
 I know better than the old kiln on North Hill. I could 
 hide there and nobody find me, and you could bring me 
 food at night." 
 
 " What do you want to hide for, pretty ? " she asked. 
 
 " I might," he answered and looked at her cautiously 
 For a moment he seemed inclined to say more, but did not. 
 
THE WALK HOME 337 
 
 After tea they set out for home, and the fate, which, 
 through the incident of the old store, had subtly prepared 
 and paved a way to something of greater import, sent Ray- 
 mond Ironsyde. They had passed the point at which the 
 road from West Haven converges into that from Bridport, 
 and a man on horseback overtook them. They were all 
 going in the same direction and Abel, as soon as he saw 
 who approached, left his mother, went over a convenient 
 gate upon their right and hastened up a hedge. Thus he 
 always avoided his father, and when blamed for so doing, 
 would silently endure the blame without explanation or 
 any offer of excuse. Raymond had seen him thus escape 
 on more than one occasion, and the incident, clashing at 
 this moment upon his own thoughts, prompted him to a 
 definite and unusual thing. The opportunity was good; 
 Sabina walked alone, and if she rebuffed him, he could 
 endure the rebuff. 
 
 He determined to speak to her and break a silence of 
 many years. The result he could not guess, but since he 
 was actuated by friendly motives alone, he hoped the sud- 
 den inspiration might prove fertile of good. At worse 
 she could only decline his advance and refuse to speak with 
 him. 
 
 Their thoughts that day, unknown to each, had been 
 upon the other and there was some emotion in the man's 
 voice when he spoke, though none in hers when she an- 
 swered. For to him that chance meeting came as a sur- 
 prise and prompted him to a sudden approach he might 
 not have ventured on maturer consideration; to her it 
 seemed to carry on the experience of the day and, un- 
 guessed by Raymond, brought less amazement than he im- 
 agined. She was a fatalist perhaps, had always been 
 so, as her mother before her; yet she knew it not. They 
 had passed and repassed many times during the vanished 
 years ; but since the moment that she had dismissed him 
 with scorn and hoped her child would live to insult his 
 grave, they had never spoken, 
 
338 THE SPINNERS 
 
 He inquired now if he might address her. 
 
 " May I say a few words to you? " he asked. 
 
 Not knowing what was in her mind, he felt surprised at 
 her conventional reply. 
 
 " I suppose so, if you wish to do so." 
 
 Her voice seemed to roll back time. Yet he guessed her 
 to be less indifferent than her words implied. 
 
 He dismounted and walked beside her. 
 
 " I dare say you can understand a little what I feel, 
 when I see that child run away whenever he sets eyes on 
 me," he began ; but she did not help him. His voice to her 
 ear was changed. It had grown deeper and hardened. 
 It was more monotonous and did not rise and fall as 
 swiftly as of old. 
 
 " I don't know at all what you feel about him. I didn't 
 know that you felt anything about him." 
 
 This was a false note and he felt pained. 
 
 " Indeed, Sabina, you know very well I want his friend- 
 ship I need it even. Before anything I wish to be- 
 friend him." 
 
 " You can't help him. He's a very affectionate child 
 and loves me dearly. You wouldn't understand him. He's 
 all heart." 
 
 He marked now the great change in Sabina. Her voice 
 was cold and indifferent. But a cynic fate willed this 
 mood. Had she not spent the day at West Haven and 
 stood in the old store, it is possible she might have listened 
 to him in another spirit. 
 
 " I know he's a clever boy, with plenty of charm about 
 him. And I do think, whatever you may feel, Sabina, it is 
 doubtfully wise of you to stand between him and me." 
 
 " If you fancy that, it is a good thing you spoke," she 
 answered. " Because nothing further from the truth 
 could be. I don't stand between him and you. I've never 
 influenced him against you. He's heard nothing but the 
 fact that you're his father from me. I've been careful to 
 
THE WALK HOME 339 
 
 leave it at that, and I've never answered more than the 
 truth to his many questions." 
 
 " It is a very great sorrow to me, and it will largely ruin 
 my life if I cannot win his friendship and plan his future." 
 
 " A child's friendship is easily won. If he denies it, you 
 may be sure it is for a natural instinct." 
 
 " Such an instinct is most unnatural. He has had 
 nothing but friendly words and friendly challenges from 
 me." 
 
 She felt herself growing impatient. It was clear that 
 he had spoken out of interest for the child alone, and any 
 shadowy suspicion that he designed to declare interest in 
 herself departed from Sabina's mind. 
 
 " Well, what's that to me? I can't alter him. I can't 
 make him regard you as a hero and a father to be proud 
 of. He's not hard-hearted or anything of that. He's 
 pretty much like other boys of his age more sensitive, 
 that's all. He can suffer very sharply and bitterly and he 
 did when that cruel, blundering fool at North Hill House 
 had him whipped. He gets the cursed power to suffer 
 from his mother. And, such is his position in the world, 
 that his power to suffer no doubt will be proved to the 
 utmost." 
 
 " I don't want him to suffer. At least it is in my reach 
 to save him a great deal of needless suffering." 
 
 "That's just what it isn't not with his nature. 
 He'd rather suffer than be beholden to you for anything. 
 Young as he is, he's told me so in so many words. He 
 knows he's different from other boys already he knows 
 it and that breeds bitterness. He's like a dog that's 
 been ill-treated and finds it hard to trust anybody in con- 
 sequence. Unfortunately for you, he's got brains enough 
 to judge; and the older he grows, the harder he'll judge." 
 
 " That's what I want to break down, Sabina. It's aw- 
 fully sad to feel, that for a prejudice against things that 
 can't be altered, he should stand in his own light and be a 
 
340 THE SPINNERS 
 
 needless martyr and make me a greater villain than I am." 
 
 " Are you a villain? If you are, it isn't my child that 
 made you one nor me, either. No doubt it's awkward 
 to see him running about and breathing the same air with 
 you." 
 
 He felt an impulse of anger, but easily checked it. 
 
 " You're rather hard on me, I think. It's a great deal 
 more than awkward to have my child take this line. It's 
 desperately sad. And you must know thinking purely 
 and only of him that nothing can be gained and much 
 lost by it. You say he'll hate me more as he grows older. 
 But isn't that a thing to avoid? What good comes into 
 the world with hate? Can't you see that it's your place, 
 Sabina, to use your influence on my side? " 
 
 " My God ! " she said, " was there ever such a selfish 
 man as you ! Out of your own mouth you condemn your- 
 self, for it's your inconvenience and discomfort that's trou- 
 bling you not his fate. He's a living witness against 
 you a running sore in your side and that's why you 
 want his friendship, to ease yourself and heal your con- 
 science. Anybody could see that." 
 
 He did not answer; but this indictment astonished him. 
 Could she still be so stern after the years that had swept 
 over their quarrel? 
 
 " You wrong me there, Sabina. Indeed, it's not for my 
 own comfort only, but much more largely for his that I 
 am so much concerned. Surely we can meet on the com- 
 mon ground of his welfare and leave the rest? " 
 
 "What common ground is there? Why must I think 
 your friendship and your money are the best possible 
 things for him? Why should I advise him to take what 
 I refused for myself twelve years and more ago? You 
 offered me your friendship and your money as a substi- 
 tute for being your wife. You were so stark ignorant of 
 the girl you'd promised to marry, that you offered her 
 cash and the privilege of your company after your child 
 was born. And now you offer your child cash and the 
 
THE WALK HOME 341 
 
 privilege of your company that's all. You deny him 
 your name, as you denied his mother your name ; and why 
 should he pick up the crumbs from your table that his 
 mother would have starved rather than eaten? I've never 
 spoken against you to him and never shall, but I'm not 
 a fool now whatever I was and I'm not going to urge 
 my son to seek you and put his little heart into your keep- 
 ing; because well I know what you do with hearts. I'm 
 outside your life and so is he ; and if he likes to come into 
 your life, I shan't prevent it. I couldn't prevent it. He'll 
 do about it as he chooses, when he's old enough to measure 
 it up. But I'm not for you, or against you. I'm only 
 the suffering sort, not the fighting sort. You know 
 whether you deserve the love and worship of that little, 
 nameless boy." 
 
 He was struck into silence, not at her bitter words, but 
 at his own thoughts. For he had often speculated on 
 future speech with her and wondered when it would hap- 
 pen and what it would concern. He had hoped that she 
 would let the past go and be his friend again on another 
 plane. He had pictured some sort of amity based on the 
 old romance. He had desired nothing so much in life 
 as a friendly understanding and the permission to contrib- 
 ute to the ease and comfort of Sabina and the prosperity 
 of his son. He hoped that in course of time and faced with 
 the rights of the child, she would come round. He had 
 pictured her coming round. But now it seemed that he 
 was not to plan their future on his own terms. What he 
 offered had not grown sweeter to her senses. ND gifts 
 that he could devise would be anything but poor in the 
 light of the unkind past. And that light burned stead- 
 fastly still. She was not changed. As he listened to her, 
 it seemed that she was merely picking up the threads 
 where they were dropped. He feared that if he stopped 
 much longer beside her, she would come back to the old 
 anger and wake into the old wrath. 
 
 " I'd dearly hoped that you didn't feel like that, any 
 
342 THE SPINNERS 
 
 more. You've got right on your side up to a point, 
 though human differences are so involved that it very sel- 
 dom happens you can get a clean cut between right and 
 wrong. However, the time is past for arguing about that, 
 Sabina. Granted you are right in your personal attitude, 
 don't carry it on into the next generation and assume I 
 cannot even yet, after all these years, be trusted to be- 
 friend my own child." 
 
 " He's only your child in nature. He's only your child 
 because your blood's in his veins. He's my child, not 
 yours." 
 
 " But if I want to make him mine? If I want to lift 
 him up and assure his future? If I want to assume pa- 
 ternity claim it, adopt him as my son to succeed me 
 some day? " 
 
 " He must decide for himself whether that's the high- 
 water mark for his future life to be your adopted son. 
 We can't have it all our own way in this world not even 
 you, I suppose. A child has to have a mother as well as 
 a father, and a mother's got her rights in her child. Even 
 the law allows that." 
 
 " Who'd deny them, Sabina? You're possessed, as you 
 always were, with the significance of legal marriage. You 
 don't know that marriage is merely a human contrivance 
 and, nine times out of ten, an infernally clumsy makeshift 
 and a long-drawn pretence. Like every other human 
 shift, it is a thing that gets out-grown by the advance of 
 humanity towards higher ideals and cleaner liberties. We 
 are approaching a time when the edifice will be shaken to 
 its mouldering foundations, and presently, while the 
 Church and the State are wrangling and quibbling, as they 
 soon must be, over the loathsome divorce laws, these man- 
 darins will wake up to find the marriage laws themselves 
 are being threatened by a new generation sick of the ar- 
 chaic tomfoolery that controls them. If you could only 
 take a larger view and not let yourself be bound down by 
 your own experience -" 
 
THE WALK HOME 343 
 
 "You'd better go," she said. "If you'd spoken so 
 twelve years ago on Golden Cap, and not hid your heart 
 and lied to me and promised what you never meant to per- 
 form, I'd not be walking the world a lonely, despised 
 woman to-day. And law, or no law, the law of the natural 
 child is the law of the land cruel and vile though it may 
 be." 
 
 " I'll go, Sabina ; but I must say what I want to say, 
 first. I must stand up for Abel even against you. 
 Childish impressions and dislikes can be rooted out if taken 
 in time ; if left to grow, they get beyond reach. So I ask 
 you to think of him. And don't pretend to yourself that 
 my friendship is dangerous, or can do him anything but 
 good. I'm very different from what I was. Life hasn't 
 gone over me for nothing. I know what's right well 
 enough, and I know what I owe your son and my son, and 
 I want to make up to him and more than make up to him 
 for his disadvantages. Don't prevent me from doing that. 
 Give me a chance, Sabina. Give me a chance to be a good 
 father to him. Your word is law with him, and if you 
 left Bridetown and took him away from all the rumours 
 and unkind things he may hear here, it would let his mind 
 grow empty of me for a few years ; and then, when he's 
 older and more sensible, I think I could win him." 
 
 " You want us away from this place." 
 
 " I do. I never should have spoken to you until I knew 
 you wished it, but for this complication; but since the 
 boy is growing up prejudiced against me, I do feel that 
 some strong effort should be taken to nip his young hatred 
 in the bud for his sake, Sabina." 
 
 " Are you sure it's all for his sake? Because I'm not. 
 They say you think of nothing on God's earth but ma- 
 chinery nowadays, and look to machines to do the work of 
 hands, and speak of ' hands ' when you ought to speak of 
 * souls.' They say if you could, you'd turn out all the 
 people and let everything be done by steam and steel. 
 There's not much humanity in you, I reckon. And why 
 
344 THE SPINNERS 
 
 should you care for one little, unwanted boy? Perhaps, 
 if you looked deeper into yourself, you'd find it was your 
 own peace, rather than his, that's making you wish us 
 away from Bridetown. At any rate, that's how one or 
 two have seen and said it, when they heard how everybody 
 was at me to go. I've had to live down the past for long, 
 slow, heart-breaking years and seen the fingers pointed at 
 me; and now, with the child growing up, it's your turn 
 I daresay, and you so strong and masterful have 
 had enough of pointing fingers and mean to pack us out of 
 our home for your comfort." 
 
 He stared at her in the gathering dusk and stood and 
 uttered a great sigh from deep in his lungs. 
 
 " I'm sorry for you, Sabina sorrier than I am for 
 myself. This is cruel. I didn't know, or dream, that 
 time had stood still for you like this." 
 
 " Time ended for me then." 
 
 " For me it had to go on. I must think about this. I 
 didn't guess it was like this with you. Don't think I want 
 you away ; don't think you're the only thorn in my pillow 
 and that I'm not used to pain and anxiety, or impatient 
 of all the implicit meaning of your lonely life. Stop, if 
 you want to stop. I'll see you again, Sabina, please. 
 Now I'll be gone." 
 
 When he had mounted his horse and ridden away with- 
 out more words from her, Abel, who had been lurking along 
 on the other side of the hedge, crept through it and re- 
 joined his mother. 
 
 They walked on in silence for some time. Then the 
 child spoke. 
 
 " Fancy your talking to Mister Ironsyde, mother ! " 
 
 " He talked to me." 
 
 " I lay you dressed him down then? " 
 
 " I told him the truth, Abel. He wants everything for 
 nothing, Mister Ironsyde does. He wants you for 
 nothing." 
 
THE WALK HOME 345 
 
 " He's a beast, and I hate him, and he'll know I hate him 
 some day." 
 
 " Don't hate him. He's not worth hating." 
 
 " I will hate him, I tell you. But for him I'd be the 
 great man in Bridetown when he dies. Mister Baggs told 
 me that." 
 
 " You mustn't give heed to what people say. You've 
 got mother to look after you." 
 
 The boy was tired and spoke no more. He padded 
 silently along beside her and presently she heard him laugh 
 to himself. His thoughts had wandered back to the joy 
 of the old store. 
 
 And she was thinking of what had happened. She, too, 
 even as Raymond, had imagined what speech would fall 
 out between them after the long years and wondered con- 
 cerning the form it would take. She had imagined no such 
 conversation as this. Half of her regretted it; but the 
 other half was glad. He had gone on, but it was well that 
 he should know she had stood still. Could there be any 
 more terrible news for him than to hear that she had stood 
 still to feel that he had turned a living woman into a 
 pillar of stone? 
 
CHAPTER VIII 
 
 EPITAPH 
 
 IT cannot be determined by what train of reasoning Abel 
 proceeded from one unfortunate experience to create an- 
 other, or why the grief incidental on a loss should now 
 have nerved him to an evil project long hidden in his 
 thoughts. But so it was ; he suffered a sorrow and, under 
 the influence of it, found himself strong enough to attempt 
 a crime. 
 
 There was no sort of connection between the two, for 
 nothing could bear less upon his evil project than the 
 death of Mr. Churchouse's old cat ; yet thus it fell out and 
 the spirit of Abel reacted to his own tears. 
 
 He came home one day from school to learn how the 
 sick cat prospered and was told to go into the study. His 
 mother knew the child to be much wrapped up in Peter 
 Grim, and dreading to break the news, begged Mr. Chur- 
 chouse to do so. 
 
 " Your old playfellow has left us, daddy," said Ernest. 
 " I am glad to say he died peacefully while you were at 
 school. I think he only had a very little bit of his ninth 
 and last life left, for he was fifteen years old and had suf- 
 fered some harsh shocks." 
 
 " Dead? " asked Abel with a quivering mouth. 
 
 " And I think that we ought to give him a nice grave 
 and put up a little stone to his memory." 
 
 Thus he tried to distract the boy from his loss. 
 
 " We will go at once," he said, " and choose a beautiful 
 spot in the garden for his grave. You can take one of 
 those pears and eat it while we search." 
 
 But Abel shook his head. 
 
 346 
 
EPITAPH 347 
 
 " Couldn't eat and him lying dead," he answered. He 
 was crying. 
 
 They went through the French window from the study. 
 
 " Do you know any particular place that he liked? " 
 
 Slowly the child's sorrow lessened in the passing interest 
 of finding the grave. 
 
 " You must dig it, please, when you come back from 
 afternoon school." 
 
 Abel suggested spots not practical in the other's opin- 
 ion. 
 
 " A more secluded site would be better," he declared. 
 " He was very fond of shade. In fact, rather a shady 
 customer himself in his young days. But not a word 
 against the dead. His old age was dignified and blame- 
 less. You don't remember the time when he used to steal 
 chickens, do you? " 
 
 " He never did anything wrong that I know of," said 
 Abel. " And he always came and padded on my bed of a 
 morning, like as if he was riding a bicycle and 
 and " 
 
 He wept again. 
 
 " If I thought anybody had poisoned him, I'd poison 
 them," he said. 
 
 " Think no such thing. He simply died because he 
 couldn't go on living. You shall have another cat, and it 
 shall be your own." 
 
 " I don't want another cat. I hate all other cats but 
 him." 
 
 They found a spot in a side walk, where lily of the val- 
 ley grew, and later in the day Abel dug a grave. 
 
 Estelle happened to visit Mr. Churchouse and he ex- 
 plained the tragedy. 
 
 " If you attend the funeral, the boy might tolerate you," 
 he said. " Once break down his suspicion and get to his 
 wayward heart, good would come of it He is feeling this 
 very much and in a melting mood." 
 
 " I'll stop, if he won't be vexed." 
 
348 THE SPINNERS 
 
 Mr. Churchouse went into the garden and praised Abel's 
 energies. 
 
 " A beautiful grave ; and it is right and proper that 
 Peter Grim should lie here, because he often hunted here." 
 
 " He caught the mice that live in holes at the bottom of 
 the wall," said Abel. 
 
 " If you are ready, we will now bury him. Mother must 
 come to the funeral, and Estelle must come, because she 
 was very, very fond of poor Peter and she would think 
 it most unkind of us if we buried him while she was not 
 there. She will bring some flowers for the grave, and you 
 must get some flowers, too, Abel. We must, in fact, each 
 put a flower on him." 
 
 The boy frowned at mention of Estelle, but forgot her 
 in considering the further problem. 
 
 " He liked the mint bed. I'll put mint on him," he said. 
 
 " An excellent thought. And I shall pluck one of the 
 big magnolias myself." 
 
 Returning, Ernest informed Estelle that she must be at 
 the funeral and she went home for a bunch of blossoms to 
 grace the tomb. She picked hot-house flowers, hoping to 
 propitiate Abel. There woke a great hope in her to win 
 him. But she failed. 
 
 He glowered at her when she appeared walking beside 
 his mother, while before them marched Mr. Churchouse 
 carrying the departed. When the funeral was ended and 
 Abel left alone, he sat down by the grave, cried, worked 
 himself into a very mournful mood and finally exhibited 
 anger. Why he was angry he did not know, or against 
 whom his temper grew ; but his great loss woke resentment. 
 When he felt miserable, somebody was always blamed by 
 him for making him feel so. No immediate cause for quar- 
 rel with anything smaller than fate challenged his unset- 
 tled mind ; then his eyes fixed upon Estelle's flowers, and 
 since Estelle was always linked in his thoughts with his 
 father, and his father represented an enemy, he began to 
 hate the flowers and wish them away. He heard his 
 
EPITAPH 349 
 
 mother calling him, but hid from her and when she was 
 silent, came back to the grave again. 
 
 Meantime Estelle and Ernest drank tea and spoke of 
 Abel. 
 
 " When grief has relaxed the emotions, we may often 
 get in a kindly word and give an enemy something to think 
 about afterwards," he said. " But the boy was obdurate. 
 He is the victim of confused thinking precocious to a 
 degree in some directions, but very childish in others. At 
 times he alarms me. Poor boy. You must try again to 
 win him. The general sentiment is that the young should 
 be patient with the old ; but for my part I think it is quite 
 as difficult sometimes for the old to be patient with the 
 young." 
 
 He turned to his desk. 
 
 " When I found my dear cat was not, I composed an 
 epitaph for him, Estelle. I design to have it scratched on 
 a stone and set above his sleeping place." 
 
 " Do let me hear it," she said, and Ernest, fired with 
 the joy of composition, read his memorial verse. 
 
 " Criticise freely," he said. " I value your criticism and 
 you understand poetry. Not that this is a poem 
 merely an epitaph ; but it may easily be improved, I doubt 
 not." 
 
 He put on his glasses and read: 
 
 "'Ended his mingled joy and strife, 
 Here lies the dust of Peter Grim. 
 Though life was very kind to him, 
 He proved not very kind to life.'" 
 
 Estelle applauded. 
 
 " Perfect," she said. " You must have it carved on his 
 tombstone." 
 
 " I think it meets the case. I may have been prejudiced 
 in my affection for him, owing to his affection for me. He 
 came to me at the age of five weeks, and his attitude to me 
 from the first was devoted." 
 
350 THE SPINNERS 
 
 " Cats have such cajoling ways." 
 
 " He was not himself honest, yet, I think, saw the value 
 of honesty in others. Plain dealers are a temptation to 
 rogues and none, as a rule, is a better judge of an honest 
 man than a dishonest cat." 
 
 " He wasn't quite a rogue, was he? " 
 
 " He knew that I am respected, and he traded on my 
 reputation. His life has been spared on more than one 
 occasion for my sake." 
 
 " On the whole he was not a very model cat, I'm afraid," 
 said Estelle. 
 
 " Yes, that is just what he was : a model cat." 
 
 They went out to look at the grave again, and some- 
 thing hurried away through the bushes as they did so. 
 
 " Friends, or possibly enemies," suggested Mr. Chur- 
 chouse, but Estelle, sharper-eyed, saw Abel disappear. 
 She also noted that her bouquet of flowers had gone from 
 Peter's mound. 
 
 " Oh dear, he's taken away my offering," she said. 
 
 " What a hard-hearted boy ! Are there no means of 
 winning him? " 
 
 They spoke of Abel and his mother. 
 
 " We all regretted her decision to stop. It would have 
 been better if she had gone away." 
 
 " Raymond saw her some time ago." 
 
 " So she told me ; and so did he. Misfortune seems to 
 dog the situation, for I believe Sabina was half in a mind 
 to take our advice until that meeting. Then she changed. 
 Apparently she misunderstood him." 
 
 " Ray was very troubled. Somehow he made Sabina 
 angry the last thing he meant to do. He's sorry now 
 that he spoke. She thought he was considering himself, 
 and he really was thinking for Abel." 
 
 " We must go on being patient. Next year I shall urge 
 her to let Abel be sent to a boarding-school. That will be 
 a great advantage every way." 
 
 So they talked and meantime Abel's sorrow ran into the 
 
EPITAPH 351 
 
 channels of evil. It may be that the presence of Estelle 
 had determined this misfortune ; but he was ripe for it and 
 his feeling prompted him to let his misery run over, that 
 others might drink of the cup. He had long contemplated 
 a definite deed and planned a stroke against Raymond 
 Ironsyde ; but he had postponed the act, partly from fear, 
 partly because the thought of it was a pleasure. In- 
 verted instincts and a mind fouled by promptings from 
 without, led him to understand that Ironsyde was his moth- 
 er's enemy and therefore his own. Baggs had told him 
 so in a malignant moment and Abel believed it. To injure 
 his enemy was to honour his mother. And the time had 
 come to do so. He was ripe for it to-night. He told 
 himself that Peter Grim would have approved the blow, 
 and with his mind a chaos of mistaken opinions, at once 
 ludicrous and mournful, he set himself to his task. He 
 ate his supper as usual and went to bed; but when the 
 house was silent in sleep, he rose, put on his clothes and 
 hastened out of doors. He departed by a window on the 
 ground floor and slipped into a night of light and shade, 
 for the moon was full and rode through flying clouds. 
 
 The boy felt a youthful malefactor's desire to get his 
 task done as swiftly as possible. He was impatient to feel 
 the deed behind him. He ran through the deserted village, 
 crossed a little bridge over the river, and then approached 
 the Mill by a meadow below them. Thus he always came 
 to see Mr. Baggs, or anybody who was friendly. 
 
 The roof of the works shone in answer to fitful moon- 
 light, and they presented to his imagination a strange and 
 unfamiliar appearance. Under the sleight of the hour 
 they were changed and towered majestically above him. 
 The Mill slept and in the creepy stillness, the river's voice, 
 which he had hardly heard till now, was magnified to a 
 considerable murmur. From far away down the valley 
 came the song of the sea, where a brisk, westerly wind 
 threw the waves on the shingle. 
 
 A feeling of awe numbed him, but it was not powerful 
 
352 THE SPINNERS 
 
 enough to arrest his purpose. His plans had been ma- 
 tured for many days. 
 
 He meant to burn down the Mill. 
 
 Nothing was easier and a match in the inflammable ma- 
 terial, of which the hackler's shop was usually full, must 
 quickly involve the mass of the buildings. 
 
 It was fitting that where he had been impregnated by 
 Mr. Baggs with much lawless opinion, Abel should give 
 expression to his evil purpose. From the tar-pitched 
 work-room of the hackler, fire would very quickly leap to 
 the main building against which it stood, and might, in- 
 deed, under the strong wind, involve the stores also and 
 John Best's dwelling between them. But it was fated 
 otherwise. A very small incident served to prevent a con- 
 siderable catastrophe, and when Abel broke the window 
 of the hackling room, turned the hasp, raised it, and got 
 in, a man lay awake in pain not thirty yards distant. 
 The lad lighted a candle, which he had brought with him, 
 and it was then, while he collected a heap of long hemp 
 and prepared to set it on fire, that John Best, in torture 
 from toothache, went downstairs for a mouthful of brandy. 
 
 Upon the staircase he passed a window and, glancing 
 through it, he saw a light in the hackling shop. It was 
 not the moon and meant a presence there that needed in- 
 stant explanation. Mr. Best forgot his toothache, called 
 his sailor son, who happened to be holiday-making at 
 home, and hastened as swiftly and silently as possible over 
 the bridge to the Mill. John Best the younger, an agile 
 man of thirty, may be said to have saved the situation, 
 for he was far quicker than his father could be and man- 
 aged to anticipate the disaster by moments. Half a min- 
 ute more might have made all the difference, for the heap 
 of loose hemp and stricks once ignited, no power on earth 
 could have saved a considerable conflagration ; but the 
 culprit had his back turned to the window and was still 
 busily piling the tow when Best and his son looked in 
 upon him ? and the sailor was already half through the 
 
EPITAPH 353 
 
 window before Abel perceived him. The youngster dashed 
 for his candle, but he was too late, a pair of strong hands 
 gripped his neck roughly enough, and he fainted from the 
 shock. 
 
 They took him out as he had gone in, for the door was 
 locked and Levi Baggs had the key. Then the sailor went 
 back to his home, dressed himself and started for a police- 
 man, while Mr. Best kept guard over Abel. 
 
 When he came to his senses, the boy found himself in 
 the moonlight with a dozen turns of stout fisherman's 
 twine round his hands and ankles The foreman stood over 
 him, and now that the house was roused, his wife had 
 brought John a pair of trousers and a great coat, for he 
 was in his night shirt. 
 
 " You'll catch your death," she said. 
 
 " It's only by God's mercy we didn't all catch our 
 death," he answered. " Here's Sabina Dinnett's boy plot- 
 ted to destroy the works, and we've yet to find whether he's 
 the tool of others, or has done the deed on his own." 
 
 " On my own I did it," declared Abel; " and I'll do it 
 yet." 
 
 u You shut your mouth, you imp of Satan ! " cried the 
 exasperated man. " Not a word, you scamp. You've 
 done for yourself now, and everybody knew you'd come to 
 it, sooner or later." 
 
 In half an hour Abel was locked up, and when Mr. 
 Baggs heard next morning concerning the events of the 
 night, he expressed the utmost surprise and indignation. 
 
 " Young dog 1 And after the friend I've been to him. 
 Blood will tell. That's his lawless father coming out in 
 the wretch," he said. 
 
CHAPTER IX 
 
 THE FUTURE OF ABEL 
 
 ISSUES beyond human sight or calculation lay involved in 
 the thing that Abel Dinnett had done. He had cast down 
 a challenge to society, and everything depended on how 
 society answered that challenge. Not only did the child's 
 own future turn on what must follow, but vital matters 
 for those who were called to act hung on their line of 
 action. That, however, they could not know. The tre- 
 mendous significance of the sinner's future training and 
 the result of what must now happen to him lay far beyond 
 their prescience. 
 
 It became an immediate question whether Abel might, or 
 might not, be saved from the punishment he had deserved. 
 Beyond that rose another problem, not less important, and 
 his father doubted whether, for the child's own sake, it 
 would be well to intervene. Waldron strongly agreed with 
 him ; but Estelle did not, and she used her great influence 
 on the side of intervention. Miss Ironsyde and Ernest 
 Churchouse were also of her opinion. Indeed, all con- 
 cerned, save his mother and Arthur Waldron, begged Ray- 
 mond to interfere, if possible. 
 
 He did not decide immediately. 
 
 " The boy will be sent to a reformatory for five years 
 if I do nothing," he told Estelle, " and that's probably the 
 very best thing on earth that can happen to him. It will 
 put the fear of God into him and possibly obliterate his 
 hate of me. He's bad all through, I'm afraid." 
 
 " No he isn't far from it. That's the point," she 
 argued. " These things are a legacy a hateful legacy 
 from his grandmother. Mister Churchouse knows him 
 
 354 
 
THE FUTURE OF ABEL 355 
 
 far better than anybody else, and he says there is great 
 sensibility and power of feeling in him. He's tender to 
 animals." 
 
 " That's not much good if he's going to be tough to me. 
 Tell me why his mother doesn't come to me about him." 
 
 " Mister Churchouse says she's in a strange state and 
 doesn't seem to care. She told him the sins of the fathers 
 were being visited on the children." 
 
 66 The sins of the fathers are being visited on the fathers, 
 I should think." 
 
 " That's fair at any rate," she said. " I know just 
 how you must feel. You've been so patient, Ray, and 
 taken such a lot of trouble. But I believe it's all part of 
 the fate that links you to the child. His future is made 
 your business now, whether you will or no. It is thrust 
 upon you. Nobody but you would be listened to by the 
 law; but you can give an undertaking and do something 
 to save him from the horror of a reformatory." 
 
 Estelle and Raymond were having tea together at ' The 
 Seven Stars ' during this conversation. Her father was 
 returning home to Bridport by an evening train and she 
 had driven to meet him. Nelly Legg waited upon them, 
 and knowing the matter occupied many tongues, Raymond 
 spoke to her. 
 
 " You can guess this is a puzzler, Nelly," he said. 
 " What would you do? Miss Waldron says it's up to me 
 to try and get the boy off; but the question is shall I be 
 serving him best that way ? " 
 
 " My husband and me have gone over it," she confessed ; 
 " of course, everybody has done so. You can't pretend 
 the people aren't interested, and if one has asked Job his 
 opinion, a hundred have. People bring him their puzzles 
 and troubles as a sort of habit. From a finger ache to the 
 loss of a fortune they pour their difficulties into his wise 
 head, and for patience he's a very good second to the 
 first of the name. And I may tell you a curious thing, 
 Mister Raymond, for I've seen it happen. As the folks 
 
356 THE SPINNERS 
 
 talk and talk to Legg, they get more and more cheerful 
 and he gets more and more depressed. Then, after 
 they've let off all their woes on the man, sometimes they'll 
 have the grace to apologise and say it's too bad to give 
 him such a dose. And they always wind up by assuring 
 him he's done them a world of good; but they never stop 
 to think what they have done to him." 
 
 " Vampires of sympathy blood-suckers," declared 
 Raymond. " Such kindly men as your husband must pay 
 for their virtues, Nelly." 
 
 " Sympathetic people have to work hard," added Es- 
 telle. 
 
 " Not that he wants the lesser people's gratitude, so 
 long as he has my admiration," explained Mrs. Legg. 
 " And that he always will have, for he's more than human 
 in some particulars. And only I know the full extent of 
 his wonders. A master of stratagems too the iron 
 hand in the velvet glove though if you was to tell half 
 the people in Bridport he's got an iron hand, they never 
 would believe it. And as to this sad affair, he's given his 
 opinion and won't change it. You may think him right or 
 wrong, but so it is." 
 
 " And what does he say, Nelly? " 
 
 " He says the child may be saved as a brand from the 
 burning if the law takes its course. He thinks that if 
 you, or anybody, was to go bail for the child and save 
 him from the consequences of his wicked deed, that a great 
 mistake would be made. In justice to you I should say 
 that they don't all agree. Some hope you'll interfere 
 mostly women." 
 
 " What do you think? " asked Raymond. 
 
 " As Missis Legg, I think the same as him ; and I'll tell 
 you another thing you may not know. The young boy's 
 mother is by no means sure if she don't feel the same. 
 My married niece is her friend, and last time she saw her, 
 Sabina spoke about it. From what Sarah says I think 
 she feels it might be better for the boy to put him away. 
 
THE FUTURE OF ABEL 357 
 
 I can't say as to her motives. Naturally she's only con- 
 cerned as to the welfare of the child and knows he'll never 
 be trained to any good where he is." 
 
 That Sabina had expressed so strong an opinion inter- 
 ested Raymond. But Estelle refused to believe it. 
 
 " I'm sure Sarah misunderstood," she said. " Sabina 
 couldn't mean that." 
 
 They went to the station presently, met Arthur Wal- 
 dron and drove him home. Estelle urged Raymond to see 
 Sabina before he decided what to do ; and since little time 
 was left before he must act, he went to ' The Magnolias ' 
 that evening and begged for an interview. 
 
 Sabina had a small sitting-room of her own in which 
 evidence of Abel did not lack. Drawings that he had made 
 at school were hung on the walls, and a steam-engine a 
 present from Mr. Churchouse on his twelfth birthday 
 stood upon the mantelshelf. 
 
 " It's just this, Sabina," he said; "I won't keep you; 
 but I feel the future of the boy is in the balance and I 
 can't do anything without hearing your opinion. And 
 first I want you to understand I have quite forgiven him. 
 He's not all to blame. Certain fixed, false ideas he has 
 got. They were driven into him at his most impression- 
 able age ; and until his reason asserts itself no doubt he'll 
 go on hating me. But that'll all come right. I don't 
 blame you for it." 
 
 " You should blame me all the same," she said. " It's 
 as much me in his blood as his grandmother at his ear, 
 that turned him to hate you. I don't hate you now or 
 anybody, or anything. I've not got strength and fight in 
 me now to hate, or love either. But I did hate you and I 
 was full of hate before he was born, and the milk was cur- 
 dled with hate that fed him. Now I don't care what hap- 
 pens. I can't prevent the future of my child from shap- 
 ing itself. The time for preventing things and doing 
 things and fixing character and getting self-respect is over 
 and past. What he's done is the natural result of what 
 
358 THE SPINNERS 
 
 was done to him. And who'll blame him? Who'll blame 
 me for being bad and indifferent wicked if you like? 
 Life's made me so hard cold to others. But I should 
 have been different if I'd had love and common justice. 
 So would he. It's natural in him to hate you; and now 
 the poor little wretch will get what he deserves same as 
 his mother did before him, and so all's said. What we 
 deserved, that's all." 
 
 " I don't think so. I'm very willing to fight for him if 
 I can do him good by fighting. The situation is unusual. 
 You probably do not realise what this means to me. Is 
 there to be no finality in your resentment ? Honestly I get 
 rather tired of it." 
 
 " I got rather tired of it twelve years ago." 
 
 " You're not prepared to help me, then, or make any 
 suggestion for the child's sake? " 
 
 " I'll not help, or hinder. I've been looking on so long 
 now that I'm only fit to look on. My child has everything 
 against him, and he knows it ; and you can't save him 
 from his fate any more than I can. So what's the good 
 of wasting time talking as though you could ? Fate's fate 
 beyond us." 
 
 " We make our own fate. I may tell you that I should 
 have been largely influenced by you, Sabina. The ques- 
 tion admits of different answers and I recognise my re- 
 sponsibility. Some say that I must intervene now and 
 some say that I should not." 
 
 " And the only one not asked to give an opinion is Abel 
 himself. A child is never asked about his own hopes and 
 fears." 
 
 " We know what his hopes were to burn down the 
 Mill. So we may take it for the present he's not the best 
 judge of what's good for him." 
 
 " I've done my duty to him," she said, " and that's all I 
 could do. I'm very sorry for him, and what love I've got 
 for him is the sort that's akin to pity. It's contrary to 
 reason that I should take any deep joy in him, or worship 
 
THE FUTURE OF ABEL 359 
 
 the ground he walks on, like other mothers do towards their 
 children. For he stands there before me for ever as the 
 sign and mark of my own failure in life. But I don't think 
 any less of him for trying to destroy the works. I'd de- 
 cided about him long ago." 
 
 Raymond found nothing to the purpose in this illusive 
 talk. It argued curious impassivity in Sabina he thought, 
 and he felt jarred to find the conventional attitude of 
 mother to son was not acknowledged by her. Estelle had 
 showed far more feeling, had taken a much more active 
 part in the troubles of Abel. Estelle had spared no pains 
 in arguing for the child and imploring Ironsyde to exhaust 
 his credit on Abel's behalf. 
 
 He told Sabina this and she explained it. 
 
 " I dare say she has. A woman can see why, though 
 doubtless you cannot. It isn't because he's himself that 
 she's active for him; and it isn't because he's my child, 
 either. It's because he's your child. Your blood's sacred 
 in her eyes you may be sure. She was a child herself when 
 you ruined me; she forgets all that. Why? Because 
 ever since she's grown to womanhood and intelligence to 
 note what happens, you have been a saint of virtue and the 
 friend of the weak and the champion of the poor. So, of 
 course, she feels that such a great and good man's son only 
 wants his father's care to make him great and good too." 
 
 " To think you can talk so after all these years, Sa- 
 bina," he said. 
 
 "How should I talk? What are the years to me? 
 You never knew, or understood, or respected the stuff I 
 was made of; and you'll never understand your child, 
 either, or the stuff he's made of; and you can tell the 
 young woman that loves you so much, that she's wrong 
 as wrong as can be. Nothing's gained by your having any 
 hand in Abel's future. You won't win him with sugar- 
 plums now, any more than you will with money later on. 
 He's made of different stuff from you and better stuff 
 and rarer stuff. There's very little of you in him and 
 
360 THE SPINNERS 
 
 very little of me, either. He's himself, and the fineness 
 that might have made him a useful man under fair condi- 
 tions, is turned to foulness now. Your child was ruined 
 in the making not by me, but by you yourself. And 
 such is his mind that he knows it already. So be warned 
 and let him alone." 
 
 " If anything could make me agree with Miss Waldron, 
 Sabina, it would be what you tell me," he answered. " And 
 if I can live to show you that you are terribly wrong I 
 shall be glad." 
 
 " That you never will." 
 
 " At least you'll do nothing to come between us ? " 
 
 " I never have. I was very careful not to do that. If 
 he can look at you as a friend presently, I shan't prevent 
 it. I shan't warn him against you though I've warned 
 you against him. The weak use poisonous weapons, be- 
 cause they haven't got the strength to use weapons of 
 might. That's why he tried to burn down the Mill. He'll 
 be stronger some day." 
 
 " He's clever, I'm told, and if we can only interest him 
 in some intelligent business and find what his bent is, we 
 may fill his mind to good purpose. At any rate, I thank 
 you for leaving me free to act. Now I can decide what 
 course to take. It was impossible until I heard what you 
 felt." 
 
 She said no more and he left her to make up his mind. 
 Doubt persisted there, for he still suspected, that five years 
 in a reformatory might be better for Abel than anything 
 else. Such an experience he felt would develop his charac- 
 ter, crush his malignant instincts and leave him only too 
 ready to accept his father as his friend; but against such 
 a fate for Abel, was his own relationship to the culprit, 
 and the question whether Raymond would not suffer very 
 far-reaching censure if he made no effort to come to the 
 boy's rescue. Truest wisdom might hold a severe course 
 of correction very desirable; but sentiment and public 
 
THE FUTURE OF ABEL 361 
 
 opinion would be likely to condemn him if he did nothing. 
 People would say that he had taken a harsh revenge on his 
 own, erring child. 
 
 He fumed at a situation intolerable and was finally 
 moved to accept Estelle's advice. From no considerations 
 for Bridport, or Bridetown, did she urge his active inter- 
 vention. For Abel's sake she begged it and was more in- 
 sistent than before, when she heard of Sabina's indifference. 
 
 " He's yours," she said. "You've been so splendidly 
 patient. So do go on being patient, and the result will be 
 a fine character and a reward for you. It isn't what peo- 
 ple would say ; but if he goes to a reformatory, far from 
 wanting you and your help when he comes out again, 
 he'll know in the future that you might have saved him from 
 it and given him a first-rate education among good, up- 
 right boys. But if he went to a reformatory, he must 
 meet all sorts of difficult boys, like himself, and they 
 wouldn't help him, and he'd come out harder than he 
 went in." 
 
 His heart yielded to her at last, even though his head 
 still doubted, for Raymond's attitude to Estelle had begun 
 insensibly to change since his accident in the cricket field. 
 From that time he won a glimpse of things that apparently 
 others already knew. Sabina, in their recorded conversa- 
 tion, had bluntly told him that Estelle loved him; and 
 while the man dismissed the idea as an absurdity, it was 
 certain that from this period he began to grow somewhat 
 more sentimentally interested in her. The interest de- 
 veloped very slowly, but this business of Abel brought 
 them closer together, for she haunted him during the days 
 before the child came to his trial, and when, perhaps for 
 her sake as much as any other reason, Raymond decided 
 to undertake his son's defence, her gratitude was great. 
 
 He made it clear to her that she was responsible for his 
 determination. 
 
 "I've let you over-rule me, Estelle," he told her. 
 
362 THE SPINNERS 
 
 " Don't forget it, Chicky. And now that the boy will, I 
 hope, be in my hands, you must strengthen my hands all 
 you can and help me to make him my friend." 
 
 She promised thankfully. 
 
 " Be sure I shall never, never forget," she said, " and 
 I shall never be happy till he knows what you really are, 
 and what you wish him. You must win him now. It's 
 surely contrary to all natural instinct if you can't. The 
 mere fact that you can forgive him for what he tried to do, 
 ought to soften his heart." 
 
 " I trust more to you than myself," he answered. 
 
CHAPTER X 
 
 THE ADVERTISEMENT 
 
 RAYMOND IRONSYDE had his way, and local justices, famil- 
 iar with the situation, were content not to commit Abel, 
 but leave the boy in his father's hands. He took all re- 
 sponsibility and, when the time came, sent his son to a 
 good boarding-school at Yeovil. Sabina so far met him 
 that the operation was conducted in her name, and since 
 the case of Abel had been kept out of local papers, his 
 fellow scholars knew nothing of his errors. But his diffi- 
 culties of character were explained to those now set over 
 him, and they were warned that his moral education, while 
 attempted, had not so far been successful. 
 
 Perhaps only one of those concerned much sympathised 
 with Ironsyde in his painful ordeal. Those who did not 
 openly assert that he was reaping what he had sown, 
 were indifferent. Some, like Mr. Motyer, held the inci- 
 dent a joke; one only possessed imagination sufficient to 
 guess what these public events must mean to the father 
 of Abel. Indeed, Estelle certainly suffered more for Ray- 
 mond than he suffered for himself. She pictured poig- 
 nantly his secret thoughts and sorrows at this challenge, 
 and she could guess what it must be to have a child who 
 hated you. In her maiden mind, however, the man's emo- 
 tions were exaggerated, and she made the mistake of sup- 
 posing that this grievous thing must be dominating Ray- 
 mond's existence, instead of merely vexing it. In truth 
 he suffered, but he was juster than Estelle, and, looking 
 back, measured his liabilities pretty accurately. He had 
 none but himself to thank for these inconveniences, and 
 
 when he weighed them against the alternative of marriage 
 
 363 
 
364 THE SPINNERS 
 
 with Sabina, he counted them as bearable. Abel tried him 
 sorely, but he did not try him as permanent union with 
 Abel's mother must have tried him. Since he had renewed 
 speech with her, his conviction was increased that supreme 
 disaster must have followed marriage. Moreover, there 
 began to rise a first glimmer of the new situation already 
 indicated. It had grown gradually and developed more 
 intensely during his days of enforced idleness in his aunt's 
 house. From that time, at any rate, he marked the change 
 and saw his old regard and respect for Estelle wakening 
 into something greater. Her sympathy quickened the 
 new sentiments. He thought she was saner over Abel than 
 anybody, for she never became sentimental, or pretended 
 that nothing had happened which might not have been 
 predicted. Her support was both human and practical. 
 It satisfied him and showed him her good sense. 
 
 Miss Ironsyde had often reminded her nephew that he 
 was the last of his line, and urged him to take a wife and 
 found a family. That Raymond should marry seemed 
 desirable to her; but she had not considered Estelle as a 
 wife for him. Had she done so, Jenny must have feared 
 the girl too young and too doubtful in opinions to promise 
 complete success and safety for the master of the Mill. 
 He would marry a mature woman and a steadfast Chris- 
 tian so hoped Miss Ironsyde then. 
 
 There came a day when Raymond called on Mr. Church- 
 ouse. Business brought him and first he discussed the 
 matter of an advertisement. 
 
 66 In these days," he said, " the competition grows 
 keener than ever. And I rather revel in it as I do in 
 the east wind. It's not pleasant at the time, but, if you're 
 healthy, it's a tonic." 
 
 " And if you're not, it finds the weak places," added Mr. 
 Churchouse. " No man over sixty has much good to say 
 of the east wind." 
 
 |C Well, the works are healthy enough and competition is 
 merely a tonic to us. We hold our own from year to year, 
 
THE ADVERTISEMENT 365 
 
 and I've reached a conviction that my policy of ruthlessly 
 scrapping machinery the moment it's even on the down 
 grade, is the only sound principle and pays in the long run. 
 And now I want something new in the advertisement line 
 something not mechanical at all, but human and inter- 
 esting calculated to attract, not middlemen and retail- 
 ers, but the person who buys our string and rope to use 
 it. In fact I want a little book about the romance of spin- 
 ning, so that people may look at a ball of string, or shoe- 
 thread, or fishing-line, intelligently, and realise about one 
 hundredth part of all that goes to its creation. Now you 
 could do a thing like that to perfection, Uncle Ernest, be- 
 cause you know the business inside out." 
 
 Mr. Churchouse was much pleased. 
 
 " An excellent idea a brilliant idea, Raymond ! We 
 must insist on the romance of spinning the poetry." 
 
 " I don't want it to be too flowery, but just interesting 
 and direct. A glimpse of the raw material growing, then 
 the history of its manufacture." 
 
 Ernest's eyes sparkled. 
 
 " From the beginning from the very beginning," he 
 said. " Pliny tells us how the Romans used hemp for their 
 sails at the end of the first century. Is not the English 
 word * canvas ' only ' cannabis ' over again? Herodotus 
 speaks of the hempen robes of the Thracians as equal to 
 linen in fineness. And as for cordage, the ships of Syra- 
 cuse in 200 B. c. " 
 
 He was interrupted. 
 
 " That's all right, but what I rather fancy is the de- 
 velopment of the modern industry here in Dorset." 
 
 " Good that would follow with all manner of modern 
 instances." 
 
 Mr. Churchouse drew a book from one of his shelves. 
 
 " In Tudor times it was ordered by Act of Parliament 
 that ropes should be twisted and made nowhere else than 
 here. Leland, that industrious chronicler, came to grief 
 in this matter, for he calls Bridport ' a fair, larg town, 5 
 
366 THE SPINNERS 
 
 where ' be made good daggers.' He shows the danger of 
 taking words too literally, since a ' Bridport dagger ' is 
 only another name for the hangman's rope." 
 
 " That's the sort of thing," said Raymond. " An 
 article we can illustrate, showing the hemp and flax grow- 
 ing in Russia and Italy, then all the business of pulling, 
 steeping and retting, drying and scutching. That would 
 be one chapter." 
 
 " It shall be done. I see it I see the whole thing 
 an elegant brochure and well within my power. I am fired 
 with the thought. There is only one objection, however." 
 
 " None in the world. I see you know just what I'm 
 after a little pamphlet well illustrated." 
 
 " The objection is that Estelle Waldron would do it a 
 thousand times better than I can. She has a more modern 
 outlook and a more modern touch. I feel confident that 
 with me to supply the matter, she would produce a much 
 more attractive and readable work." 
 
 Raymond considered. 
 
 " I suppose she would. I hadn't thought of her." 
 
 " Believe me, she would succeed to admiration. For 
 your sake as well as mine, she would produce a little mas- 
 terpiece." 
 
 " She'd do anything to please you, we all know ; but I've 
 no right to bother her with details of business. Of course, 
 if you do it, it is a commission and you would name your 
 honorarium, Uncle Ernest." 
 
 The old man laughed. 
 
 " We'll see we'll see. Perhaps I should ask too high 
 a price. But Estelle will not be so grasping. And as to 
 your right to bother her with the details of business, any- 
 thing she can do for you is a very great privilege to 
 her." 
 
 " I believe I owe her more than a man can ever pay a 
 woman, already." 
 
 " Most men are insolvent to the other sex. Woman's 
 noble tradition is to give more than she gets, and let us off 
 
THE ADVERTISEMENT 367 
 
 the reckoning, quite well knowing it beyond our feeble 
 powers to cry quits with her." 
 
 Raymond was moved at this challenge, for in the light 
 that Estelle threw upon them, women interested him more 
 to-day than they had for ten years. 
 
 " One takes old Arthur's daughter for granted rather 
 too much," he said ; " we always take good women for 
 granted too much, I suppose. It's the other sort who look 
 out we shan't take them for granted, but at their own 
 valuation. Estelle she's so many-sided difficult, too, 
 in some things." 
 
 " She is," admitted Ernest. " And just for this reason. 
 She always argues on her own basis of perfect ingenuous 
 honesty. She assumes certain rational foundations for 
 all human relations ; and if such bases really existed, then 
 it would be the best possible world, no doubt, and we should 
 all do to our neighbour as we would have him do to us. 
 But the Golden Rule doesn't actuate the bulk of mankind, 
 unfortunately. Men and women are not as good as Es- 
 telle thinks them." 
 
 Raymond agreed eagerly. 
 
 You've hit it," he said. " It is just that. She's right 
 in theory every time ; and if people were all as straight and 
 altruistic and high-principled as she is, there'd really be no 
 more bother about morals in the world. Native good sense 
 would decide. Even as it is, the native good sense of man- 
 kind is deciding certain questions and will presently push 
 the lawyers into codifying their mouldy laws, and then give 
 reason a chance to cleanse the whole archaic lump of them ; 
 
 but as it is, Estelle Take Marriage, for example. I 
 
 agree with her all the way in theory. But when you 
 come to view the situation in practice you're up against 
 things as they are, and you never want people you love to 
 be martyrs, however noble the cause. Estelle says the law 
 of sex relationships is barbaric, and that marriage is being 
 submitted to increasing rational criticism, which the law 
 and the Church both conspire to ignore. She thinks that 
 
368 THE SPINNERS 
 
 these barriers to progress ought to be swept away, because 
 they have a vicious effect on the institution and degrade 
 men and women. She's always got her eye on the future, 
 and the result is sometimes that she doesn't focus the 
 present too exactly. It's noble, but not practical." 
 
 " The institution of marriage will last Estelle's time, I 
 think," declared Mr. Churchouse. 
 
 " One hopes so heartily for her own sake. One knows 
 very well it's an obsolescent sort of state, and can't bear 
 the light of reason, and must be reformed, so that intelli- 
 gent people can enter it in a self-respecting spirit ; but if 
 there is one institution that defies the pioneers, it is mar- 
 riage. The law's far too strong for us there. And I 
 don't want to see her misunderstood." 
 
 They parted soon after this speech, and the older man, 
 who had long suspected the fact, now perceived that Ray- 
 mond was beginning to think of Estelle in new terms and 
 elevating her to another place in his thoughts. 
 
 It was the personal standpoint that challenged Iron- 
 syde's mind. His old sentiments and opinions respecting 
 the marriage bond took a very different colour before the 
 vision of an Estelle united to himself. Thus circumstances 
 alter opinions, and the theories he had preached to Sabina 
 went down the wind when he thought of Estelle. The 
 touchstone of love vitiates as well as purifies thinking. 
 
CHAPTER XI 
 
 THE HEMP BREAKER 
 
 IRONSYDE attached increasing importance to the fullest 
 possible treatment of the raw material before actual spin- 
 ning, and was not only always on the lookout for the best 
 hemps and flaxes grown, but spared no pains to bring them 
 to the Card and Spread Board as perfect as possible. 
 
 To this end he established a Hemp Break, a Hemp 
 Breaker and a Hemp Softener. The first was a wooden 
 press used to crush the stalks of retted hemp straw, so 
 that the harl came away and left the fibre clean. The 
 second shortened long hemp, that it might be more con- 
 veniently hackled and drawn. The third served greatly to 
 improve the spinning quality of soft hemps by passing 
 them through a system of callender rollers. There were 
 no hands available for the breakers and softeners, so 
 Raymond increased his staff. He also took over ten acres 
 of the North Hill House estate, ploughed up permanent 
 grass, cleaned the ground with a root crop, and then 
 started to renew the vanishing industry of flax growing. 
 He visited Belgium for the purpose of mastering the mod- 
 ern methods, found the soil of North Hill well suited to the 
 crop, and was soon deeply interested in the enterprise. He 
 first hoped to ret his flax in the Bride river, as he had seen 
 it retted on the Lys, but was dissuaded from making this 
 trial and, instead, built a hot water rettery. His experi- 
 ments did not go unchallenged, and while the women al- 
 ways applauded any change that took strain off their 
 muscles and improved the possibility of rest, the men were 
 indifferent to this advantage. Mr. Baggs even con- 
 demned it. 
 
 He came to see the working of the Hemp Breaker, and 
 
 369 
 
370 THE SPINNERS 
 
 perceived without difficulty that its operations must di- 
 rectly tend to diminish his own labour. 
 
 " You'll pull tons less of solid weight in a day, Levi," 
 said Best, " when this gets going." 
 
 " And why should I be asked to pull tons less of solid 
 weight? What's the matter with this?" 
 
 He thrust out his right arm with hypertrophied muscles 
 hard as steel. 
 
 " It seems to me that a time's coming when the people 
 won't want muscles any more," he said. " Steam has 
 lowered our strength standards as it is, and presently 
 labour will be called to do no more than press buttons in 
 the midst of a roaring hell of machines. The people won't 
 want no more strength than a daddy-long-legs ; they that 
 do the work will shrink away till they're gristle and bones, 
 like grasshoppers. And the next thing will be that they'll 
 not be wanted either, but all will be done by just a handful 
 of skilled creatures, that can work the machines from their 
 desks, as easy as the organist plays the organ in church. 
 God help the human frame then ! " 
 
 " We shall never arrive at that, be sure," answered Best ; 
 " for that's to exalt the dumb material above the worker, 
 and if things were reduced to such a pitch of perfection 
 all round, there would be no need of large populations. 
 But we're told to increase and multiply at the command 
 of God, so you needn't fear machines will ever lower our 
 power to do so. If that happened, it would be as much as 
 to say God allowed us to produce something to our own 
 undoing." 
 
 " He allows us to produce a fat lot of things to our own 
 undoing," answered the hackler. " Ain't Nature under 
 God's direction? " 
 
 " Without doubt, Levi." 
 
 " And don't Nature tickle us to our own undoing morn- 
 ing, noon, and night? Ain't she always at it always 
 tempting us to go too far along the road of our particular 
 weakness? And ain't laziness the particular weakness of 
 
THE HEMP BREAKER 371 
 
 all women and most men? 'Tis pandering to laziness, 
 these machines, and for my part I wish Ironsyde would get 
 a machine to hackle once and for all. Then I'd leave him 
 and go where they still put muscles above machinery." 
 
 "Funny you should say that," answered the foreman. 
 " He's had the thought of your retirement in his mind for 
 a good bit now. Only consideration for your feelings has 
 prevented him dropping a hint. He always likes it to 
 come from us, rather than him, when anybody falls out." 
 
 Mr. Baggs took this with tolerable calm. 
 
 " I'll think of it next year," he said. " If I could get 
 at him by a side wind as to the size of the pension " 
 
 " That's hid with him. He'll follow his father's rule, 
 you may be sure, and reward you according to your 
 deserts." 
 
 " I don't expect that," said Mr. Baggs. " He don't 
 know my deserts." 
 
 " Well, I shouldn't be in any great hurry for your own 
 sake," advised Best. " You're well and hard, and can do 
 your work as it should be done; but you must remember 
 you've got no resources outside your hackling shop. Take 
 you away from it and you're a blank. You never read a 
 book, or go out for a walk, or even till your allotment 
 ground. All you do is to sit at home and criticise other 
 people. In fact, you're a very ignorant old man, Baggs, 
 and if you retired, you'd find life hang that heavy on your 
 hands you'd hardly know how to kill time between meals. 
 Then you'd get fat and eat too much and shorten your 
 days. I've known it to happen, where a man who uses his 
 muscles gives up work before his flesh fails him." 
 
 Raymond Ironsyde joined them at this juncture and 
 presently, when Levi went back to his shop and the Hemp 
 Breaker had been duly applauded, the master took John 
 Best aside and discussed a private matter. 
 
 " The boy has come back for his holidays," he said ; and 
 Best, who knew that when Raymond spoke of ' the boy ' he 
 meant Sabina's son, nodded. 
 
872 THE SPINNERS 
 
 " I hope all goes well with him and that you hear good 
 accounts," he answered. 
 
 " The reports are all much the same, term after term. 
 He's said to have plenty of ability, but no perseverance." 
 
 " Think nothing of that," advised the foreman. 
 " Schoolmasters expect boys to persevere all round, which 
 is more than you can ask of human nature. The thing is 
 to find out what gets hold of a boy and what he does per- 
 severe at then a sensible schoolmaster wouldn't make him 
 waste half his working hours at other things, for which the 
 boy's mind has got no place. Mechanics will be that boy's 
 strong point, if I know anything about boys. And I be- 
 lieve all the fearful wickedness that prompted him to burn 
 the place down is pretty well gone out of him by now." 
 
 " I've left him everely alone," said Raymond. " I've 
 said to myself that not for three whole years will I ap- 
 proach him again. Meantime I don't feel any too satisfied 
 with the school. I fancy they are a bit soft there. 
 Private schools are like that. They daren't be too strict 
 for fear the children will complain and be taken away. 
 But there are others. I can move him if need be. And 
 I'll ask you, Best, to keep your eye on him these holidays, 
 as far as you reasonably can, when he comes here. It is 
 understood he may. Try and get him to talk and see if 
 he's got any ideas." 
 
 " He puts me a good bit in mind of what poor Mister 
 Daniel was at that age. He's keen about spinning, and if 
 I was to let him mind a can now and again he'd be very 
 proud of himself." 
 
 " Rum that he should like the works and hate me. Yes, 
 he hates me all right still, for Mister Churchouse has 
 sounded him and finds that it is so. It's in the young 
 beggar's blood and there seems to be no operation that will 
 get it out." 
 
 Best considered. 
 
 " He'll come round. No doubt his schooling is making 
 
THE HEMP BREAKER 373 
 
 i 
 
 his mind larger, and, presently, he'll feel the force of 
 Christianity also ; and that should conquer the old Adam 
 in him. By the same token the less he sees of Levi, the 
 better. Baggs is no teacher for youth, but puts his own 
 wrong and rebellious ideas into their heads, and they think 
 it's fine to be up against law and order. I'll always say 
 'twas half the fault of Baggs the boy thought to burn us 
 down ; yet, of course, nobody was more shocked and scan- 
 dalised than Levi when he heard about it. And until the 
 boy's come over to your side, he'll do well not to listen to 
 the seditious old dog." 
 
 " Keep him out of the hackling shop, then. Tell him 
 he's not to go there." 
 
 Best shook his head. 
 
 " The very thing to send him. He's like that. He'd 
 smell a rat very quick if he was ordered not to see Baggs. 
 And then he'd haunt Baggs. I shan't trust the boy a 
 yard, you understand. You mustn't ask me to do that 
 after the past. But I'm hopeful that his feeling for the 
 craft will lift him up and make him straight. To a crafts- 
 man, his work is often more powerful for salvation than his 
 faith. In fact, his work is his faith; and from the way 
 things run in the blood, I reckon that Sabina's son might 
 rise into a spinner." 
 
 " I don't want anything of that sort to happen, and 
 Pm sure she doesn't." 
 
 " There's a hang-dog look in his eyes I'd like to see 
 away," confessed John. " He's been mismanaged, I 
 reckon, and hasn't any sense of righteousness yet. All for 
 justice he is, so I hear he tells Mister Churchouse. Many 
 are who don't know the meaning of the word. I'll do what 
 I can when he comes here." 
 
 " He's old for his age in some ways and young in 
 others," explained Raymond. " I feel nothing much can 
 be done till he gets friendly with me." 
 
 " You're doing all any man could do." 
 
374 THE SPINNERS 
 
 " At some cost too, John. You, at any rate, can under- 
 stand what a ghastly situation this is. There seems no 
 end to it." 
 
 " Consequences often bulk much bigger than causes," 
 said Best. " In fact, to our eyes, consequences do gen- 
 erally look a most unfair result of causes ; as a very small 
 seed will often grow up into a very big tree. You'll never 
 find any man, or woman, satisfied with the price they're 
 called to pay for the privilege of being alive. And in this 
 lad's case, him being built contrary and not turned true 
 warped no doubt by the accident of his career you've 
 got to pay a far heavier price than you would have been 
 called to pay if you'd been his lawful begetter. But seeing 
 the difficulty lies in the boy's nature alone, we'll hope that 
 time will cure it, when he's old enough to look ahead and 
 see which side his bread's buttered, if for no higher rea- 
 son." 
 
 Ironsyde left the Mill depressed; indeed, Abel's recur- 
 ring holidays always did depress him. As yet no hoped- 
 for sign of reconciliation could be chronicled. 
 
 To-day, however, a gleam appeared to dawn, for on 
 calling at ' The Magnolias ' to see Ernest Churchouse, 
 Raymond was cheered by a promised event which might 
 contain possibilities. Estelle had scored a point and got 
 Abel to promise to come for a picnic. 
 
 " He made a hard bargain though," she said. " He's to 
 light a fire and boil the kettle. And we are to stop at the 
 old store in West Haven for one good hour on the road 
 home. I've agreed to the terms and shall give him the 
 happiest time I know how." 
 
 " Is his mother going? " 
 
 " Yes he insists on that. And Sabina will come." 
 
 " But don't hope too much of it," said Ernest. " I re- 
 gard this as the thin end of the wedge no more than 
 that. If Estelle can win his confidence, then she may do 
 great things ; but she won't win it at one picnic. I know 
 him too well. He's a mass of contradictions. Some days 
 
THE HEMP BREAKER 375 
 
 most communicative, other days not a syllable. Some 
 days he seems to trust you with his secrets, other days he 
 is suspicious if you ask him the simplest question. He's 
 still a wild animal, who occasionally, for his own con- 
 venience, pretends to be tame." 
 
 " I shan't try to tame him," said Estelle. " I respect 
 wild things a great deal too much to show them the charms 
 of being tame. But it's something that he's coming, and 
 if once he will let me be his chum in holidays, I might bring 
 him round to Ray." 
 
 She planned the details of the picnic and invited Ray- 
 mond to imagine himself a boy again. This he did and 
 suggested various additions to the entertainment. 
 
 " Did Sabina agree easily? " he asked, still returning to 
 the event as something very great and gratifying. 
 
 " Not willingly, but gradually and cautiously." 
 
 " She's softer and gentler than she was, however. I 
 can assure you of that," said Mr. Churchouse. 
 
 " She thought it might be a trap at first," confessed 
 Estelle. 
 
 " A trap, Chicky ! You to set a trap? " 
 
 " No, you, Ray. She fancied you might mean to sur- 
 prise the boy and bully him." 
 
 " How could she think so ? " 
 
 " I assured her that you'd never dream of any such 
 thing. Of course I promised, as she wished me to do so, 
 that you wouldn't turn up at the picnic. I reminded her 
 how very particular you were, and how entirely you leave 
 it to Abel to come round and take the first step." 
 
 " Be jolly careful what you say to him. He's a mass 
 of prejudice, where I'm concerned, and doesn't even know 
 I'm educating him." 
 
 " I'll keep off you," she promised. " In fact, I only 
 intend to give him as good a day as I can. I'm not going 
 to bother about you, Ray; I'm going to think of myself 
 and do everything I can to get his friendship on my own 
 account. If I can do that for a start, I shall be satisfied." 
 
376 THE SPINNERS 
 
 " And so shall I," declared Ernest. " Because it 
 wouldn't stop at that. If you succeed, then much may 
 come of it. In my case, I can't lift his guarded friendship 
 for me into enthusiasm. He associates me with learning 
 to read and other painful preliminaries to life. Moreover, 
 I have tried to awaken his moral qualities and am regarded 
 with the gravest suspicion in consequence. But you come 
 to him freshly and won't try to teach him anything. Join 
 him in his pleasure and add to it all you can. There is 
 nothing that wins young creatures quicker than sharing 
 their pleasures, if you can do so reasonably and are not 
 removed so far from them by age that any attempt would 
 be ridiculous. Fifteen and twenty-seven may quite well 
 have a good deal in common still, if twenty-seven is not too 
 proud to confess it." 
 
CHAPTER XII 
 
 THE PICNIC 
 
 FOR a long day Estelle devoted herself whole-heartedly to 
 winning the friendship of Abel Dinnett. Her chances of 
 success were increased by an accident, though it appeared 
 at first that the misadventure would ruin all. For when 
 Estelle arrived at ' The Magnolias ' in her pony carriage, 
 Sabina proved to be sick and quite unequal to the proposed 
 day in the air. 
 
 Abel declined to go without his mother, but, after con- 
 siderable persuasion, allowed the prospect of pleasure to 
 outweigh his distrust. 
 
 Estelle promised to let him drive, and that privilege in 
 itself proved a temptation too great to resist. His 
 mother's word finally convinced him, and he drove an 
 elderly pony so considerately that his hostess praised him. 
 
 " I see you are kind to dumb things," she said. " I am 
 glad of that, for they are very understanding and soon 
 know who are their friends and who are not." 
 
 " If beasts treat me well," he answered, " then I treat 
 them well. And if they treated me badly, then I'd treat 
 them badly." 
 
 She did not argue about this ; indeed, all that day her 
 care was to amuse him and hear his opinions without 
 boring him if she could avoid doing so. 
 
 He remained shy at first and quiet. From time to time 
 she was in a fair way to break down his reserve; but he 
 seemed to catch himself becoming more friendly and, once 
 or twice, after laughing at something, he relapsed into 
 long silence and looked at her from under his eyelids sus- 
 piciously when he thought she was not looking at him. 
 
 377 
 
378 THE SPINNERS 
 
 Thus she won, only to lose what she had won, and when 
 they reached the breezy cliffs of Eype, Estelle reckoned 
 that she stood towards him pretty much as she stood at 
 starting. But slowly, surely, inevitably, before such good 
 temper and tact he thawed a little. They tethered the 
 pony, gave it a nosebag and then spread their meal. Abel 
 was quick and neat. She noticed that his hands were like 
 his mother's finely tapered, suggestive of art. But on 
 that subject he seemed to have no ideas, and she found, 
 after trying various themes, that he cared not in the least 
 for music, or pictures, but certainly shared his father's 
 interest in mechanics. 
 
 Abel talked of the Mill self-consciously at first ; yet 
 when he found that Estelle ignored the past, and under- 
 stood spinning, he forgot himself entirely for a time under 
 the spell of the subject. 
 
 They compared notes, and she saw he was more familiar 
 than she with detail. Then, while still forgetting his 
 listener, Abel remembered himself and his talk of the Mill 
 turned into a personal channel. There is no more confi- 
 dential thing, by fits and starts, than a shy child; and just 
 as Estelle felt the boy would never come any closer, or give 
 her a chance to help him, suddenly he startled her with the 
 most unexpected utterance. 
 
 " You mightn't know it," he said, " but by justice and 
 right I should have the whole works for my very own when 
 Mister Ironsyde died. Because he's my father, though I 
 daresay he pretends to everybody he isn't." 
 
 " I'm very sure Mister Ironsyde doesn't feel anything 
 but jolly kind and friendly to you, Abel. He doesn't pre- 
 tend he isn't your father. Why should he? You know 
 he's often offered to be friends, and he even forgave you 
 for trying to burn down the Mill. Surely that was a 
 pretty good sign he means to be friendly? " 
 
 " I don't want his friendship, because he's not good to 
 mother. He served her very badly. I understand things 
 a lot better than you might think." 
 
THE PICNIC 379 
 
 " Well, don't spoil your lunch," she said. " We'll talk 
 afterwards. Are you ready for another bottle of ginger- 
 beer? I don't like this gingerbeer out of glass bottles. I 
 like it out of stone bottles." 
 
 " So do I," he answered, instantly dropping his own 
 wrongs. " But the glass bottles have glass marbles in 
 them, which you can use ; and so it's better to have them, 
 because it doesn't matter so much about the taste after 
 it's drunk." 
 
 She asked him concerning his work and he told her that 
 he best liked history. She asked why, and he gave a 
 curious reason. 
 
 " Because it tells you the truth, and you don't find good 
 men always scoring and bad men always coming to grief. 
 In history, good men come to grief sometimes and bad 
 men score." 
 
 " But you can't always be sure what is good and what 
 is bad," she argued. 
 
 " The people who write the histories don't worry you 
 about that," he answered, " but just tell you what hap- 
 pened. And sometimes you are jolly glad when a beast 
 gets murdered, or his throne is taken away from him ; and 
 sometimes you are sorry when a brave chap comes to 
 grief, even though he may be bad." 
 
 " Some historians are not fair, though," she said. 
 " Some happen to feel like you. They hate some people 
 and some ideas, and always show them in an unfriendly 
 light. If you write history, you must be tremendously 
 fair and keep your own little whims out of it." 
 
 After their meal Estelle smoked a cigarette, much to 
 Abel's interest. 
 
 " I never knew a girl could smoke," he said. 
 
 "Why not? Would you like one? I don't suppose a 
 cigarette once in a way can hurt you." 
 
 " I've smoked thousands," he told her. " And a pipe, 
 too, for that matter. I smoked a cigar once. I found it 
 and smoked it right through." 
 
380 THE SPINNERS 
 
 " Didn't it make you ill? " 
 
 " Yes fearfully ; but I hid till I was all right again." 
 
 He smoked a cigarette, and Estelle told him that his 
 father was a great smoker and very fond of a pipe. 
 
 " But he wouldn't let you smoke, except now and again 
 in holiday times not yet. Nobody ought to smoke till 
 he's done growing." 
 
 " What about you, then? " asked Abel. 
 
 " I've done growing ages ago. I'm nearly twenty- 
 eight." 
 
 He looked at her and his eyes clouded. He entered a 
 phase of reserve. Then she, guessing how to enchant him, 
 suggested the next step. 
 
 " If you help me pack up now, we'll harness the pony 
 and go down to West Haven for a bit. I want to see the 
 old stores I've heard such a lot about. You must show 
 them to me." 
 
 " Yes part. I know every inch of them, but I can't 
 show you my own secret den, though." 
 
 " Do. I should love to see it." 
 
 He shook his head. 
 
 " No good asking," he said. " That's my greatest 
 secret. You can't expect me to tell you. Even mother 
 doesn't know." 
 
 " I won't ask, then. I've got a den, too, for that mat- 
 ter in fact, two. One on North Hill and one in our 
 garden." 
 
 " D'you know the lime-kiln on North Hill? " 
 
 " Rather. The bee orchis grows thereabout." 
 
 He thought for a moment. " If I showed you my den 
 in the store, would you swear to God never to tell? " 
 
 " Yes, I'd swear faithfully not to." 
 
 " Perhaps I will, then." 
 
 But when presently they reached his haunt, he had 
 changed his mood. She did not remind him, left him to 
 his devices and sat patiently outside while he was hidden 
 
THE PICNIC 881 
 
 within. Occasionally his head popped out of unexpected 
 places aloft, then disappeared again. Once she heard a 
 great noise, followed by silence. She called to him and, 
 after a pause, he shouted down that he was all right. 
 
 When an hour had passed she called out again to tell 
 him to come back to her. 
 
 " We're going to Bridport to tea," she said. 
 
 He came immediately and revealed a badly torn trouser 
 leg. 
 
 " I fell," he explained. " I fell through a rotten ceil- 
 ing, and I've cut my leg. When I was young the sight of 
 blood made me go fainty, but I laugh at it now." 
 
 He pulled up his trousers and showed a badly barked 
 shin. 
 
 " We'll go to a chemist and get him to wash it, and I'll 
 get a needle and thread and sew it up," said Estelle. 
 
 She condoled with him as they drove to Bridport, but 
 he was impatient of sympathy. 
 
 " I don't mind pain," he said. " I've tried the Red 
 Indian tests on myself before to-day. Once I had to see a 
 doctor after; but I didn't flinch when I was doing it." 
 
 A chemist dressed the wounded leg and presently they 
 arrived at ' The Seven Stars,' where the pony was stabled 
 and tea taken in the garden. Mrs. Legg provided a needle 
 and thread and produced a very excellent tea. 
 
 Abel enjoyed the swing for some time, but would not let 
 Estelle help him. 
 
 " I can swing myself," he said, " but I'll swing you aft- 
 erwards." 
 
 He did so until they were tired. Then he walked round 
 the flower borders and presently picked Estelle a rose. 
 
 She thanked him very heartily and told him the names 
 of the blossoms which he did not know. 
 
 Job came and talked to them for a time, and Estelle 
 praised the garden, while Abel listened. Then Mr. Legg 
 turned to the boy. 
 
382 THE SPINNERS 
 
 " Holidays round again, young man? I dare say we 
 shall see you sometimes, and, if you like flowers, you can 
 always come in and have a look." 
 
 " I don't like flowers," said the boy. " I like fruit." 
 
 He went back to the swing and Job asked after Mr. 
 Waldron. 
 
 Estelle reminded him that he had promised to come and 
 see her garden some day. 
 
 " Be sure I shall, miss," he answered, " but, for the 
 minute, work fastens on me from my rising up to my going 
 down." 
 
 " However do you get through it all? " 
 
 " Thanks to method. It's summed up in that. With- 
 out method, I should be a lost man." 
 
 " You ought to slack off," she said. " I'm sure that 
 Nelly doesn't like to see you work so hard." 
 
 " She'd work hard too, but Nature and not her will 
 shortens her great powers. She grows into a mountain 
 of flesh and her substance prevents activity ; but the mind 
 is there unclouded. In my case the flesh doesn't gain on 
 me and work agrees with my system." 
 
 " You're a very wonderful man," declared Estelle ; " but 
 no doubt plenty of people tell you that." 
 
 " Only by comparison," he explained. " The wonder 
 is all summed up in the one word * method,' coupled with a 
 good digestion and no strong drink. I'd like to talk more 
 on the subject, but I must be going." 
 
 " And tell them to put in the pony. We must be going, 
 too." 
 
 On the way home Estelle tried to interest Abel in sport. 
 She had been very careful all day to keep Raymond off 
 her lips, but now intentionally she spoke of him. It was 
 done with care and she only named him casually in the 
 course of general remarks. Thus she hoped that, in time, 
 he would allow her to mention his father without oppo- 
 sition. 
 
THE PICNIC 383 
 
 " I think you ought to play some games with your old 
 friends at Bridetown these holidays," she said. 
 
 " I haven't any old friends there. I don't want friends. 
 I never made that fire you promised." 
 
 " You shall make it next time we come out ; and every- 
 body wants friends. You can't get on without friends. 
 And the good of games is that you make friends. I'm very 
 keen on golf now, though I never thought I should like 
 sport. Did you play any cricket at school? " 
 
 " Yes, but I don't care about it." 
 
 " How did you play? You ought to be rather a dab 
 at it." 
 
 " I played very well and was in the second eleven. But 
 I don't care about it. It's all right at school, but there 
 are better things to do in the holidays." 
 
 " If you're a good cricketer, you might get some 
 matches. Your father is a very good cricketer, and would 
 have played for the county if he'd been able to practise 
 enough. And Mister Roberts at the mill is a splendid 
 player." 
 
 His nervous face twitched and his instant passion ran 
 into his whip hand. He gave the astonished pony a lash 
 and made it start across the road, so that Estelle was 
 nearly thrown from her seat. 
 
 " Don't ! Don't ! " she said. " What's the matter? " 
 
 But she knew. 
 
 He showed his teeth. 
 
 " I won't hear his name I won't hear it. I hate him, 
 I hate him. Take the reins I'll walk. You've spoilt 
 everything now. I always wish he was dead when I hear 
 his name, and I wish he was dead this minute." 
 
 " My dear Abel, I'm sorry. I didn't think you felt so 
 bad as that about him. He doesn't feel at all like that 
 about you." 
 
 " I hate him, I tell you, and I'm not the only one that 
 hates him. And I don't care what he feels about me. 
 
384 THE SPINNERS 
 
 He's my greatest enemy on earth, and people who under- 
 stand have told me so, and I won't be beholden to him for 
 anything and and you can stick up for him till 
 you're black in the face for all I care. I know he's bad 
 and I'll be his enemy always." 
 
 " You're a little fool," she said calmly. " Let me drive 
 and you can listen to me now. If you listen to stupid, 
 wicked people talking of your father, then listen to me 
 for a change. You don't know anything whatever about 
 him, because you won't give him a chance to talk to you 
 himself. If you once let him, you'd very soon stop all 
 this nonsense." 
 
 "You're bluffing," he said. "You think you'll get 
 round me like that, but you won't. You're only a girl. 
 You don't know anything. It's men tell me about my 
 father. You think he's good, because you love him; but 
 he's bad, really as bad as hell as bad as hell." 
 
 " What's he done then? I'm not bluffing, Abel. 
 There's nothing to bluff about. What's your father done 
 to you? You must have some reason for hating him? " 
 
 " Yes, I have." 
 
 "What is it, then?" 
 
 " It's because the Mill ought to be mine when he dies 
 there ! " 
 
 She did not answer immediately. She had often 
 thought the same thing. Instinct told her that frankness 
 must be the only course. Through frankness he might 
 still be won. 
 
 He did not speak again after his last assertion, and 
 presently she answered in a manner to surprise him. 
 Directness was natural to Estelle and both her father and 
 her friend, Mr. Churchouse, had fostered it. People either 
 deprecated or admired this quality of her talk, for direct- 
 ness of speech is so rare that it never fails to appear 
 surprising. 
 
 : I think you're right there, Abel. Perhaps the Mill 
 
 .. 
 
THE PICNIC 385 
 
 ought to be yours some day. Perhaps it will be. The 
 things that ought to happen really do sometimes." 
 
 Then he surprised her in his turn. 
 
 " I wouldn't take the Mill not now. I'll never take 
 anything from him. It's too late now." 
 
 She realised the futility of argument. 
 
 " You're tired," she said, " and so am I. We'll talk 
 about important things again some day. Only don't 
 don't imagine people aren't your friends. If you'd only 
 think, you'd see how jolly kind people have been to you 
 over and over again. Didn't you ever wonder how you 
 got off so well after trying to burn down the works ? You 
 must have. Anyway, it showed you'd got plenty of good 
 friends, surely?" 
 
 " It didn't matter to me. I'd have gone to prison. I 
 don't care what they do to me. They can't make me feel 
 different." 
 
 " Well, leave it. We've had a good day and you needn't 
 quarrel with me, at any rate." 
 
 " I don't know that. You're his friend." 
 
 " You surely don't want to quarrel with all his friends 
 as well as him? We are going to be friends, anyway, and 
 have some more good times together. I like you." 
 
 " I thought I liked you," he said, " but you called me a 
 little fool." 
 
 " That's nothing. You were a little fool just now. 
 We're all fools sometimes. I've been a fool to-day, my- 
 self. You're a little fool to hate anybody. What good 
 does it do you to hate? " 
 
 " It does do me good ; and if I didn't hate him, I should 
 hate myself," the boy declared. 
 
 " Well, it's better to hate yourself than somebody else. 
 It's a good sign I should think if we hate ourselves. We 
 ought to hate ourselves more than we do, because we know 
 better than anybody else how hateful we can be. Instead 
 of that, we waste tons of energy hating other people, and 
 
386 THE SPINNERS 
 
 think there's nobody so fine and nice and interesting as we 
 are ourselves." 
 
 " Mister Churchouse says the less we think about our- 
 selves the better. But you've got to if you've been ill- 
 used." 
 
 In, the dusk twinkled out a glow-worm beside the hedge, 
 and they stopped while Abel picked it up. Gradually he 
 grew calmer, and when they parted he thanked her for her 
 goodness to him. 
 
 " It's been a proper day, all but the end," he said, " and 
 I will like you and be your friend. But I won't like my 
 father and be his friend, because he's bad and served 
 mother and me badly. You may think I don't understand 
 such things, but I do. And I never will be beholden to him 
 as long as I live never." 
 
 He left her at the outer gate of his home and she drove 
 on and considered him rather hopelessly. He had some 
 feeling for beauty on which she had trusted to work, but 
 it was slight. He was vain, very sensitive, and disposed to 
 be malignant. As yet reason had not come to his rescue 
 and his emotions, ill-directed, ran awry. He was evi- 
 dently unaware that his father had so far saved the situa- 
 tion for him. What would he do when he knew it? 
 
 Estelle felt the picnic not altogether a failure, yet saw 
 little signs of a situation more hopeful at present. 
 
 " I can win him," she decided ; " but it looks as though 
 his father never would." 
 
CHAPTER XIII 
 
 THE RUNAWAY 
 
 ESTELLE was as good as her word and devoted not a few 
 of his holidays to the pleasure of Sabina's son. Uncon- 
 sciously she hastened the progress of other matters, for 
 her resolute attempt to win Abel, at any cost of patience 
 and trouble, brought her still deeper into the hidden life 
 and ambitions of the boy's father. 
 
 She was frank with Raymond, and when Abel had gone 
 back to school and made no sign, Estelle related her ex- 
 periences. 
 
 " He's sworn eternal friendship with me," she said, " but 
 it's not a friendship that extends to you, or anybody else. 
 He's very narrow. He concentrates in a terrifying way 
 and wants everything. He told me that he hated me to 
 have any other friends but him. It took him a long time 
 to decide about me ; but now he has decided. He extracts 
 terrific oaths of secrecy and then imparts his secrets. 
 Before giving the oaths, I always tell him I shan't keep 
 them if he's going to confide anything wicked ; but his 
 secrets are harmless enough. The last was a wonderful 
 hiding-place. He spends many hours in it. I nearly 
 broke my neck getting there. That's how far we've 
 reached these holidays; and after next term I shall try 
 again." 
 
 " He's got a heart, if one could only reach it, I sup- 
 pose." 
 
 " A very hot heart. I shall try to extend his sympa- 
 thies when he comes back." 
 
 Her intention added further fuel to the fire burning in 
 Raymond's own thoughts. He saw both danger and hope 
 
 387 
 
388 THE SPINNERS 
 
 in the situation, as it might develop from this point. The 
 time was drawing nearer when he meant to ask Estelle to 
 marry him, and since he looked now at life and all its 
 relations from this standpoint, he began to consider his 
 son therefrom. 
 
 On the whole he was cheered by Estelle's achievements 
 and argued well of them. The danger he set aside, and 
 chose rather to reflect on the hope. With Abel back at 
 school again and his mother in a more placid temper, there 
 came a moment of peace. Ironsyde was able to forget 
 them and did so thankfully, while he concentrated on the 
 task before him. He felt very doubtful, both of Estelle's 
 response and her father's view. The girl herself, however, 
 was all that mattered, for Waldron would most surely ap- 
 prove her choice whatever it might be. Arthur had of 
 late, however, been giving it as his opinion that his daugh- 
 ter would not marry. He had decided that she was not 
 the marrying sort, and told Raymond as much. 
 
 " The married state's too limited for her : her energies 
 are too tremendous to leave any time for being a wife. To 
 bottle Estelle down to a husband and children is impos- 
 sible. They wouldn't be enough for her intellect." 
 
 This had been said some time before, when unconscious 
 of Ironsyde's growing emotions ; but of late he had sus- 
 pected them and was, therefore, more guarded in his 
 prophecies. 
 
 Then came a shock, which delayed progress, for Abel 
 thrust himself to the front of his mind again. Estelle cor- 
 responded with her new friend, and the boy had heard 
 from her that in future he must thank his father for his 
 education. She felt that it was time he knew this, and 
 hoped that he would now be sane enough to let the fact 
 influence him. It did, but not as she had expected. In- 
 stead there came the news that Abel had been expelled. 
 He deliberately refused to proceed with his work, and, 
 when challenged, explained that he would learn no more at 
 his father's expense. 
 
THE RUNAWAY 389 
 
 Nothing moved him, and Estelle's well-meant but ill- 
 judged action merely served to terminate Abel's education 
 for good and all. 
 
 The boy was rapidly becoming a curse to his father. 
 Puritans, who knew the story, welcomed its development 
 and greeted each phase with religious enthusiasm; but 
 others felt the situation to be growing absurd. Raymond 
 himself so regarded it, and when Abel returned home again 
 he insisted on seeing him. 
 
 " You can be present if you wish to be," he told Sabina, 
 but she expressed no such desire. Her attitude was modi- 
 fied of late, and, largely under the influence of Estelle, she 
 began to see the futility of this life-enmity declared against 
 Raymond by her son. Of old she had thought it natural, 
 and while not supporting it had made no effort to crush 
 it out of him. Now she perceived that it could come to 
 nothing and only breed bitterness. She had, therefore, 
 begun to tone her indifference and withhold the little bitter 
 speeches that only fortified Abel's hate. She had even 
 argued with him lamely enough and advised him not 
 to persist in a dislike of his father that could not serve him 
 in after life. 
 
 But he had continued to rejoice in his hatred. While 
 Estelle hoped with Sabina to break down his obstinacy, 
 he actually looked forward to the time when Estelle would 
 hate his enemy also. He had been sorry to see his mother 
 weakening and even blaming him for his opinions. 
 
 But now he was faced with his father under conditions 
 from which there was no escape. The meeting took place 
 in Mr. Churchouse's study and Abel was called to listen, 
 whether he would or no. Raymond knew that the child 
 understood the situation and he did not mince words. He 
 kept his temper and exhausted his arguments. 
 
 " Abel," he said, " you've got to heed me now, and what- 
 ever you may feel, you must use your self-control and your 
 brains. I'm speaking entirely for your sake and I'm only 
 concerned for your future. If you would use your reason, 
 
390 THE SPINNERS 
 
 it would show you that the things you have done and are 
 doing can't hurt me; they can only hurt yourself; and 
 what is the good of hurting yourself, because you don't 
 like me? If you had burned down the works, the insurance 
 offices would have paid me back all the money they were 
 worth, and the only people to suffer would have been the 
 men and women you threw out of work. So, when you 
 tried to hurt me, you were only hurting other people and 
 yourself. Boys who do that sort of thing are called 
 embryo criminals, and that's what they are. But for me 
 and the great kindness and humanity of other men my 
 friends on the magistrates' bench you would have been 
 sent to a reformatory after that affair; but your fellow 
 creatures forgave you and were very good to me also, and 
 let you go free on consideration that I would be responsible 
 for you. Then I sent you to a good school, where noth- 
 ing was known against you. Now you have been expelled 
 from that school, because you won't work, or go on with 
 your education. And your reason is that I am paying 
 for your education and you won't accept anything at my 
 hands. 
 
 " But think what precisely this means. It doesn't hurt 
 me in the least. As far as I am concerned, it makes not a 
 shadow of difference. I have no secrets about things. 
 Everybody knows the situation, and everybody knows I 
 recognise my obligations where you are concerned and 
 wish to be a good father to you. Therefore, if you refuse 
 to let me be, nobody is hurt but yourself, because none can 
 take my place. You don't injure my credit; you only 
 lose your own. The past was past, and people had begun 
 to forget what you did two years ago. Now you've re- 
 minded them by this folly, and I tell you that you are too 
 old to be so foolish. There is no reason why you should 
 not lead a dignified, honourable and useful life. You have 
 far better opportunities than thousands and thousands of 
 boys, and far better and more powerful friends than 
 ninety-nine boys out of a hundred. 
 
THE RUNAWAY 391 
 
 " Then why fling away your chances and be impossible 
 and useless and an enemy to society, when society only 
 wants to be your friend? What is the good? What do 
 you gain? And what do I lose? You're not hurting me; 
 but you're hurting and distressing your mother. You're 
 old enough to understand all this, and if your mother can 
 feel as I know she feels and ask you to consider your own 
 future and look forward in a sensible spirit, instead of 
 looking back in a senseless one, then surely, for her sake 
 alone, you ought to be prepared to meet me and turn over 
 a new leaf. 
 
 " For you won't tire out my patience, or break my 
 heart. I never know when I'm beat, and since my wish is 
 only your good, neither you, nor anybody, will choke me 
 off it. I ask you now to promise that, if I send you to 
 another school, you'll work hard and complete your educa- 
 tion and qualify yourself for a useful place in the world 
 afterwards. That's what you've got to do, and I hope 
 you see it. Then your future will be my affair, for, as my 
 son, I shall be glad and willing to help you on in whatever 
 course of life you may choose. 
 
 " So that's the position. You see I've given you the 
 credit of being a sane and reasonable being, and I want 
 you to decide as a sane and reasonable being. You can 
 go on hating me as much as you please ; but don't go on 
 queering your own pitch and distressing your mother and 
 making your future dark and difficult, when it should be 
 bright and easy. Promise me that you'll go back to a 
 new school and work your hardest to atone for this non- 
 sense and I'll take your word for it. And I don't ask for 
 my own sake always remember that. I ask you for 
 your own sake and your mother's." 
 
 With bent head the boy scowled up under his eyebrows 
 during this harangue. He answered immediately Ray- 
 mond had finished and revealed passion. 
 
 " And what, if I say < no '? " 
 
 " I hope you won't be so foolish." 
 
392 THE SPINNERS 
 
 " I do say ' no,' then a thousand times I say it. Be- 
 cause if you bring me up, you get all the credit. You 
 shan't get credit from me. And I'll bring myself up with- 
 out any help from you. I know I'm different from other 
 boys, because you didn't marry my mother. And that's 
 a fearful wrong to her, and you're not going to get out 
 of that by anything I can do. You're wicked and cow- 
 ardly to my mother, and she's Mister Churchouse's serv- 
 ant, instead of being your wife and having servants of her 
 own, and I'm a poor woman's son instead of being a rich 
 man's son, as I ought to be. All that's been told me by 
 them who know it. And you're a bad man, and I hate 
 you, and I shall always hate you as long as you live. And 
 I'll never be beholden to you for anything, because my life 
 is no good now, and my mother's life is no good neither. 
 And if I thought she was taking a penny of -your monev, 
 I'd " 
 
 His temper upset him and he burst into tears. The 
 emotion only served to increase his anger. 
 
 " I'm crying for hate," he said. " Hate, hate, hate ! " 
 
 Raymond looked at the boy curiously. 
 
 " Poor little chap, I wish to God I could make you see 
 sense. You've got the substance and are shouting for the 
 shadow, which you can never have. You talk like a man, 
 so I'll answer you like a man and advise you not to listen 
 to the evil tongue of those who bear no kindly thought to 
 me, or you either. What is the sense of all this hate? 
 Granted wrong things happened, how are you helping to 
 right the wrong? Where is the sense of this blind enmity 
 against me? I can't call back the past, any more than 
 you can call back the tears you have just shed. Then 
 whv waste nervous energy and strength on all this silly 
 hate?" 
 
 " Because it makes me better and stronger to hate you. 
 It makes me a man quicker to hate you. You say I talk 
 like a man that's because I hate like a man." 
 
THE RUNAWAY 393 
 
 " You talk like a very silly man, and if you grow up into 
 a man hating me, you'll grow up a bitter, twisted sort of 
 man no good to anybody. A man with a grievance is 
 only a nuisance to his neighbours ; and seeing what your 
 grievance is, and that I am ready and willing to do every- 
 thing in a father's power to lessen that grievance and 
 retrieve the mistakes of the past remembering, too, that 
 everybody knows my good intentions you'll really get 
 none to care for your troubles. Instead, all sensible peo- 
 ple will tell you that they are largely of your own making." 
 
 " The more you talk, the more I hate you," said the 
 boy. " If I never heard your voice again and never saw 
 your face again, still I'd always hate you. I don't hate 
 anything else in the world but you. I wouldn't spare a 
 bit of hate for anything but you. I won't be your son 
 now never." 
 
 " Well, run away then. You'll live to be sorry for feel- 
 ing and speaking so, Abel. I won't trouble you again. 
 Next time we meet, I hope you will come to me." 
 
 The boy departed and the man considered. It seemed 
 that harm irreparable was wrought, and a reconciliation, 
 that might have been easy in Abel's childhood, when he 
 was too young to appreciate their connection, had now 
 become impossible, since he had grown old enough to un- 
 derstand it. He would not be Raymond's son. He de- 
 clined the filial relationship doubtless prompted thereto 
 from his earliest days, first on one admonition, then at 
 another. The leaven had been mixed with his blood by his 
 mother, in his infant mind by his grandmother, in his soul 
 by fellow men as he grew towards adolescence. 
 
 Yet from Sabina herself the poison had almost passed 
 away. In the light of these new difficulties she grew 
 anxious, and began to realise how fatally Abel's possession 
 was standing in his own light. She loved him, but not pas- 
 sionately. He would soon be sixteen and her point of view 
 changed. She had listened long to Estelle and began to 
 
394 THE SPINNERS 
 
 understand that, whatever dark memories and errors be- 
 longed to Raymond Ironsyde's past, he designed nothing 
 but generous goodness for their son in the future. 
 
 After the meeting with Abel, Raymond saw Sabina and 
 described what had occurred; but she could only express 
 her regrets. She declared herself more hopeful than he 
 and promised to reason with the boy to the best of her 
 power. 
 
 " I've never stood against you with him, and I've never 
 stood for you with him. I've kept out of it and not influ- 
 enced for or against," she said. " But now I'll do more 
 than that; I'll try and influence him for you." 
 
 Raymond was obliged. 
 
 " I shall be very grateful to you if you can. If there's 
 any human being who carries weight with him, you do. 
 Such blistering frankness such crooked, lightning looks 
 of hate fairly frighten me. I had no idea any young 
 creature could feel so much." 
 
 " He's going through what I went through, I suppose," 
 she said. " I don't want to hurt you, or vex you any 
 more. I'm changed now and tired of quarrelling with 
 things that can't be altered. When we find the world's 
 sympathy for us is dead, then it's wiser to accept the situ- 
 ation and cease to run about trying to wake it up again. 
 So I'll try to show him what the world will be for the 
 likes of him if he hasn't got you behind him." 
 
 " Do and don't do it bitterly. You can't talk for 
 two minutes about the past without getting bitter un- 
 consciously, quite unconsciously, Sabina. And your un- 
 conscious bitterness hurts me far more than it hurts you. 
 But don't be bitter with him, or show there's another side 
 of your feelings about it. Keep that for me, if you must. 
 My shoulders are broad enough to bear it. He is brim- 
 ming with acid as it is. Sweeten his mind if it is in your 
 power. That's the only way of salvation, and the only 
 chance of bringing him and me together." 
 
 She promised to attempt it. 
 
THE RUNAWAY 395 
 
 " And if I'm bitter still," she said, " it is largely uncon- 
 scious, as you say. You can't get the taste of trouble 
 out of your mouth very easily after you've been deluged 
 with it and nigh drowned in it, as I have. It's only 
 an echo and won't reach his ear, though it may reach 
 yours." 
 
 " Thank you, Sabina. Do what you can," he said, and 
 left her, glad to get away from the subject and back to his 
 own greater interests. 
 
 He heard nothing more for a few days, then came the 
 news that Abel had disappeared. By night he had van- 
 ished and search failed to find him. 
 
 Sabina could only state what had gone before his de- 
 parture. She had spoken with him on Raymond's behalf 
 and urged him to reconsider his attitude and behave 
 sensibly and worthily. And he, answering nothing, had 
 gone to bed as usual; but when she called him next morn- 
 ing, no reply came and she found that he had ridden away 
 on his bicycle in the night. The country was hunted, but 
 without result, and not for three days did his mother learn 
 what had become of Abel. Then, in reply to police notices 
 of his disappearance, there came a letter from a Devon- 
 shire dairy farm, twenty miles to the west of Bridport. 
 The boy had appeared there early in the morning and 
 begged for some breakfast. Then he asked for something 
 to do. He was now working on trial for a week, but 
 whether giving satisfaction or no they did not learn. 
 
 His mother went to see him and found him well pleased 
 with himself and proud of what he had accomplished. He 
 explained to her that he had now taken his life into his own 
 hands and was not going to look to anybody in future but 
 himself. 
 
 The farmer reported him civil spoken, willing to learn, 
 and quick to please. Indeed, Abel had never before won 
 such a good character. 
 
 She left him there happy and content, and took no im- 
 mediate steps to bring the boy home. 
 
396 THE SPINNERS 
 
 It was decided that a conference should presently be 
 held of those interested in Abel. 
 
 " Since he is safe and cheerful and doing honest work, 
 you need not be in distress about him at present, Sabina," 
 said Ernest Churchouse ; " but Raymond Ironsyde has no 
 intention that the boy should miss an adequate education, 
 and wishes him to be at school for a couple of years yet, 
 if possible. It is decided that we knock our heads together 
 on the subject presently. We'll meet and try to hit upon 
 a sensible course. Meantime this glimpse of reality and 
 hard work at Knapp Farm will do him good. He may 
 show talent in an agricultural direction. In any case, 
 you can feel sure that whatever tastes he develops, short 
 of buccaneering, or highway robbery, will be gratified." 
 
CHAPTER XIV 
 
 THE MOTOR CAR 
 
 RAYMOND IRONSYDE felt somewhat impatient of the confer- 
 ence to consider the situation of his son. But since he had 
 no authority and Sabina was anxious to do something, he 
 agreed to consult Mr. Churchouse. 
 
 They met at ' The Magnolias,' where Miss Ironsyde 
 joined them; but her old energy and forcible opinions had 
 faded. She did little more than listen. 
 
 Ironsyde came first and spoke to Ernest in a mood some- 
 what despondent. They were alone at the time, for 
 Sabina did not join them until Estelle came. 
 
 "Is there nothing in paternity?" asked Raymond. 
 " Isn't nature all powerful and blood thicker than water? 
 What is it that over-rides the natural relationship and 
 poisons him against me? Isn't a good father a good 
 father? " 
 
 " So much is implied in this case," answered the elder. 
 " He's old enough now to understand what it means to be 
 a natural child. Doubtless the disabilities they labour 
 under have been explained to him. That fact is what poi- 
 sons his mind, as you say, and makes him hate the blood 
 in his veins. We've got to get over that and find anti- 
 dotes for the poison, if we can." 
 
 " I'm beginning to doubt if we ever shall, Uncle Ernest." 
 
 Sabina and Estelle entered at this moment and heard 
 Mr. Churchouse make answer. 
 
 " Be sure it can be done. Every year makes it more 
 certain, because with increase of reasoning power he'll 
 see the absurdity of this attitude. It is no good to him to 
 continue your enemy." 
 
 " Increase of reason cuts both ways. It shows him his 
 
 397 
 
398 THE SPINNERS 
 
 grievances, as well as what will pay him best in the future. 
 He's faced with a clash of reason." 
 
 " Reason I grant springs from different inspirations," 
 admitted Ernest. " There's the reason of the heart and 
 the reason of the head yes, the heart has its reasons, 
 too. And though the head may not appreciate them, they 
 exercise their weight and often conquer." 
 
 Soon there came a carriage from Bridport and Miss 
 Ironsyde joined them. 
 
 " Oh ! I'm glad to see a fire," she said, and sat close 
 beside it in an easy chair. 
 
 Then Raymond spoke. 
 
 " It is good of you all to come and lend a hand over this 
 difficult matter. I appreciate it, and specially I thank 
 Sabina for letting us consider her son's welfare. She 
 knows that we all want to befriend him and that we all are 
 his friends. It's rather difficult for me to say much ; but 
 if you can show me how to do anything practical and 
 establish Abel's position and win his goodwill, at any cost 
 to myself, I shall thank you. I've done what I could, but 
 I confess this finds me beaten for the moment. You'd 
 better say what you all think, and see if you agree." 
 
 The talk that followed was inconsequent and rambling. 
 For a considerable time it led nowhere. Miss Ironsyde 
 was taciturn. It occupied all her energies to conceal the 
 fact that she was suffering a good deal of physical pain. 
 She made no original suggestions. Churchouse, accord- 
 ing to his wont, generalised ; but it was through a general- 
 isation that they approached something definite. 
 
 " He has yet to learn that we cannot live to ourselves, 
 or design life's pattern single-handed," declared Ernest. 
 " Life, in fact, is rather like a blind man weaving a basket : 
 we never see our work, and we have to trust others for the 
 material. And if we better realised how blind we were, we 
 should welcome and invite criticism more freely than 
 we do." 
 
 " No man makes his own life I've come to see that," 
 
THE MOTOR CAR 399 
 
 admitted Raymond. " The design seems to depend much 
 on your fellow creatures ; your triumph or failure is 
 largely the work of others. But it depends on your own 
 judgment to the extent that you can choose what fellow 
 creatures shall help you." 
 
 Estelle approved this. 
 
 " And if we could only show Abel that, and make him 
 feel this determination to be independent of everybody is a 
 mistake. But he told me once, most reasonably, that he 
 didn't mind depending on those who were good to him. He 
 said he would trust them." 
 
 " Trust's everything. It centres on that. Can I get 
 his trust, or can't I? " 
 
 " Not for the present, Ray. I expect his mind is in a 
 turmoil over this running away. It's all my fault and I 
 take the blame. Until he can think calmly you'll never get 
 any power over him. The thing is to fill his mind full 
 with something else." 
 
 " Find out if you can what's in his thoughts," advised 
 Sabina. " We say this and that and the other, and plan 
 what must be done, but I judge the first person to ask for 
 an opinion is Abel himself. When people are talking 
 about the young, the last thought in their minds is what 
 the young are thinking themselves. They never get asked 
 what's in their minds, yet, if we knew, it might make all 
 the difference." 
 
 " Very sound, Sabina," admitted Mr. Churchouse ; 
 " and you should know what's in his mind if anybody 
 does." 
 
 " I should no doubt, but I don't. I've never been in the 
 boy's secrets, or I might have been more to him. But 
 that's not to say nobody could win them. Any clever boy 
 getting on for sixteen years should have plenty of ideas, 
 and if you could find them, it might save a lot of trouble." 
 
 She turned to Estelle as she spoke. 
 
 " He's often told me things," said Estelle, " and he's 
 often been going to tell me others and stopped not be- 
 
400 THE SPINNERS 
 
 cause he thought I'd laugh at him; but because he was 
 doubtful of me. But he knows I can keep secrets now." 
 
 " He must be treated as an adult," decided Ernest. 
 " Sabina is perfectly right. We must give him credit for 
 more sense than he has yet discovered, and appeal directly 
 to his pride. I think there are great possibilities about 
 him if he can only be brought to face them. His ruling 
 passion must be discovered. One has marked a love of 
 mystery in him and a wonderful power of make-believe. 
 These are precious promises, rightly guided. They point 
 to imagination and originality. He may have the makings 
 of an artist. Without exaggeration, I should say he had 
 an artist's temperament without being an artist; but art 
 is an elastic term. It must mean creative instinct, how- 
 ever, and he has shown that. It has so far taken the 
 shape of a will to create disaster ; but why should we not 
 lead his will into another channel and help it to create 
 something worthy? " 
 
 " He's fond of machinery," said Sabina, " and very 
 clever with his hands." 
 
 " Could your child be anything but clever with his 
 hands, Sabina? " said Estelle. 
 
 " Or mine be anything but fond of machinery? " asked 
 Raymond. 
 
 He meant no harm, but this blunt and rather brutal 
 claim to fatherhood made Sabina flinch. It was natural 
 that she never could school herself to accept the situation 
 in open conversation without reserve, and all but Ironsyde 
 himself appreciated the silence which fell upon her. His 
 speech, indeed, showed lack of sensibility, yet it could 
 hardly be blamed, since only through acceptation of 
 realities might any hopeful action be taken. But the harm 
 was dorie and the delicate poise of the situation between 
 Abel's parents upset. Sabina said no more, and in the 
 momentary silence that followed she rose and left them. 
 
 '* What clumsy fools even nice men can be," sighed Miss 
 Ironsyde, and Churchouse spoke. 
 
THE MOTOR CAR 401 
 
 " Leave Sabina to me," he said. " I'll comfort her when 
 you've gone. There is a certain ingrained stupidity from 
 which no man escapes in the presence of women. They 
 may, or may not, conceal their feelings ; but we all uncon- 
 sciously bruise and wound them. Sabina did not conceal 
 hers. She is quick in mind as well as body. What mat- 
 ters is that she knows exceedingly well we are all on her 
 side and all valuable friends for the lad. Now let us re- 
 turn to the point. I think with Estelle that Abel may 
 have something of the artist in him. He drew exceedingly 
 well as a child. You can see his pictures in Sabina's room. 
 Such a gift if developed might waken a sense of power." 
 
 " If he knew great things were within his reach, he would 
 not disdain the means to reach them," said Miss Ironsyde. 
 " I do think if the boy felt his own possibilities more if 
 we could waken ambition he would grow larger-minded. 
 Hate always runs counter to our interests in the long run, 
 because it wastes our energy and, if people only knew it, 
 revenge is really not sweet, but exceedingly bitter." 
 
 " I suggest this," said Ironsyde : " that Uncle Ernest 
 and Estelle visit the boy not in any spirit of weakness, 
 or with any concessions, or attempts to change his mind ; 
 but simply to learn his mind. Sabina was right there. 
 We'll approach him as we should any other intelligent be- 
 ing, and invite his opinion, and see if it be reasonable, or 
 unreasonable. And if it is reasonable, then I ought to be 
 able to serve him, if he'll let me do so." 
 
 " I shall certainly do what you wish," agreed Ernest. 
 " Estelle and I will form a deputation to this difficult cus- 
 tomer and endeavour to find out what his lordship really 
 proposes and desires. Then, if we can prove to him that 
 he must look to his fellow creatures to advance his wel- 
 fare ; if we can succeed in showing him that not even the 
 youngest of us can stand alone, perhaps we shall achieve 
 something." 
 
 " And if he won't let me help, perhaps he'll let you, or 
 Estelle, or Aunt Jenny. Agree if he makes any possible 
 
402 THE SPINNERS 
 
 stipulation. It doesn't matter a button where he sup- 
 poses help is coming from: the thing is that he should not 
 know it is really coming from me." 
 
 " I hope we may succeed without craft of that sort, 
 Raymond," declared Mr. Churchouse ; " but I shall not 
 hesitate to employ the wisdom of the serpent if the olive 
 branch of the dove fails to meet the situation. I trust, 
 however, more to Estelle than myself. She is nearer Abel 
 in point of time, and it is very difficult to bridge a great 
 gulf of years. We old men talk in another language than 
 the young use, and the scenery that fills their eyes why, 
 it has already vanished beneath our horizons. Narrowing 
 vision too often begets narrowing sympathies and we de- 
 press youth as much as youth puzzles us." 
 
 " True, Ernest," said Miss Ironsyde. " Have you 
 noticed how a natural instinct makes the young long to 
 escape from the presence of age? The young breathe 
 more freely out of sight of grey heads." 
 
 " And the grey heads survive their absence without diffi- 
 culty," confessed Mr. Churchouse. " But we are a tonic 
 to each other. They help us to see, Jenny, and we must 
 help them to feel." 
 
 " Abel shall help us to see his point of view, and we'll 
 help him to feel who his best friends are," promised Estelle. 
 
 Raymond had astonished Bridport and staggered Bride- 
 town with a wondrous invention. The automobile was 
 born, and since it appealed very directly to him, he had 
 acquired one of the first of the new vehicles at some cost, 
 and not only did he engage a skilled mechanic to drive it, 
 but himself devoted time and pains to mastering the ma- 
 chine. He believed in it very stoutly, and held that in time 
 to come it must bulk as a most important industrial fac- 
 tor. Already he predicted motor traction on a large 
 scale, while yet the invention was little more than a new 
 toy for the wealthy. 
 
 And now this car served a useful purpose and Mr. 
 
THE MOTOR CAR 403 
 
 Churchouse, in some fear and trembling, ventured a first 
 ride. Estelle accompanied him and together they drove 
 through the pleasant lands where Dorset meets Devon, to 
 Knapp Farm under Knapp Copse, midway between Coly- 
 ton and Ottery St. Mary, on a streamlet tributary of the 
 Sid. 
 
 Mr. Churchouse was amazed and bewildered at this new 
 experience; Estelle, who had already enjoyed some long 
 rides, supported him, lulled his anxieties and saw that he 
 kept warm. 
 
 Soon they sighted the ridge which gave Knapp its name, 
 and presently met Abel, who knew that they were coming. 
 He stood on the tumuli at the top of the knoll and awaited 
 them with interest. His master, from first enthusiasms, 
 now spoke indifferently of him, declared him an average 
 boy, and cared not whether they took him, or left him. 
 As for Abel himself, he slighted both Estelle and Mr. Chur- 
 chouse at first, and appeared for a time quite oblivious to 
 their approaches. He was only interested in the car, 
 which stood drawn up in an open shed at the side of the 
 farmyard. He concentrated here, desired the company 
 of the driver alone, and could with difficulty be drawn away 
 to listen to the travellers and declare his own ambitions. 
 
 He was, however, not sorry to see Estelle, and when, 
 presently, they lured him away from the motor, he talked 
 to them. He bragged about his achievement in running 
 away and finding work ; but he was not satisfied with the 
 work itself. 
 
 " It was only to see if I could live in the world on my 
 own," he said, " and now I know I can. Nobody's got any 
 hold on me now, because if you can earn your food and 
 clothes, you're free of everybody. I don't tell them here, 
 but I could work twice as hard and do twice as much if it 
 was worth while; only it isn't." 
 
 " If you get wages, you ought to earn them," said 
 Estelle. 
 
 " I do," he explained. " I get a shilling a day and my 
 
404 THE SPINNERS 
 
 grub, and I earn all that. But, of course, I'm not going 
 to be a farmer. I'm just learning about the land then 
 I'm going. Nobody's clever here. But I like taking it 
 easy and being my own master." 
 
 " You oughtn't to take it easy at your time of life, 
 Abel," declared Estelle. " You oughtn't to leave school 
 yet, and I very much hope you'll go back." 
 
 " Never," he said. " I couldn't stop there after I knew 
 he was paying for it. Or anywhere else. I'm not going 
 to thank him for anything." 
 
 " But you stand in the light of your own usefulness," 
 she explained. " The thing is for a boy to do all in his 
 power to make himself a useful man, and by coming here 
 and doing ploughboy's work, when you might be learning 
 and increasing your own value in the world, you are being 
 an idiot, Abel. If you let your father educate you, then, 
 in the future, you can pay him back splendidly and with 
 interest for all he has done for you. There's no obliga- 
 tion then simply a fair bargain." 
 
 His face hardened and he frowned. 
 
 " I may pay him for all he's done for me, whether or 
 no," he answered. " Anyway, I don't want any more book 
 learning. I'm a man very nearly, and a lot cleverer, as it 
 is, than the other men here. I shall stop here for a bit. 
 I want to be let alone and I will be let alone." 
 
 " Not at all," declared Mr. Churchouse. " You're 
 going back on yourself, Abel, and if you stop here, hoeing 
 turnips and what not, you'll soon find a great disaster 
 happening to you. You will indeed just the very thing 
 you don't want to happen. You pride yourself on being 
 clever. Well, cleverness can't stand still, you know. You 
 go back, or forward. Here, you'll go back and get as 
 slow-witted as other ploughboys. You think you won't, 
 but you will. The mud on your boots will work up into 
 your mind, and instead of being full of great ideas for the 
 future, you'll gradually forget all about them. And that 
 would be a disgrace to you." 
 
THE MOTOR CAR 405 
 
 Abel showed himself rather impressed with this peril. 
 
 " I shall read books," he said. 
 
 "Where will you get them? " asked Estelle. " Besides, 
 after long days working out of doors, you'll be much too 
 tired to read books, or go on with your studies. I know, 
 because I've tried it." 
 
 " Quies was the god of rest in ancient Rome," proceeded 
 Mr. Churchouse, " but he was no god for youth. The 
 elderly turned their weary bodies to his shrine and deco- 
 rated his altars not the young. But for you, Abel, 
 there are radiant goddesses, and their names are Stim- 
 ula and Strenua. To them you must pay suit and 
 service, and your motto should be * Able and Will- 
 ing.' 
 
 " Of course," cried Estelle ; " but instead of that, you 
 ask to be let alone, to turn slowly and surely into a plough- 
 boy! Why, the harm is already beginning! And you 
 may be quite sure that nobody who cares for you is going 
 to see you turn into a ploughboy." 
 
 They produced some lunch presently and Abel enjoyed 
 the good fare. For a time they pressed him no more, but 
 when the meal was taken, let him show them places of in- 
 terest. While Estelle visited the farm with him and heard 
 all about his work, Mr. Churchouse discussed the boy with 
 his master. Nothing could then be settled, and it was 
 understood that Abel should stop at Knapp until the 
 farmer heard more concerning him. 
 
 Estelle advanced the good cause very substantially, how- 
 ever, and felt sanguine of the future; for alone with her, 
 Abel confessed that farming gave him no pleasure and that 
 his ambition was set on higher things. 
 
 " I shall be an engineer some day," he said. " Presently 
 I shall go where there is machinery, and begin at the bot- 
 tom and work up to the top. I know a lot more about it 
 than you might think, as it is." 
 
 " I know you do," she said. " And there's nothing your 
 mother would like better than engineering for you. Be- 
 
406 THE SPINNERS 
 
 sides, a boy begins that when he's young, and I believe 
 you ought to be in the shops soon." 
 
 " I shall be soon. Very likely the next thing you hear 
 about me will be that I have disappeared again. Then I 
 shall turn up in a works somewhere. Because you needn't 
 think I'm going to be a ploughboy. I shouldn't get level 
 with my father by being a ploughboy." 
 
 " Your father would be delighted for you to get level 
 with him and know as much as he does," she answered, 
 pretending to mistake his meaning. " If you said you 
 wanted to know as much about machinery and machines 
 in general as he does, then he would very soon set to work 
 to help you on." 
 
 Abel considered. 
 
 " I won't take any help from him ; but I'll do this to 
 suit myself, not him. I'd do it so as I could be near 
 mother and could look after her. Because, when Mister 
 Churchouse dies, I'll have to look after her." 
 
 " You needn't be anxious about your mother, Abel. 
 She's got plenty of friends." 
 
 " Her friends don't count if they're his friends, because 
 you can't be my mother's friend and his friend, too. But 
 I'll go into the spinning Mill, and be like anybody else, 
 and work for wages just the same wages as any other 
 boy going in. That won't be thanking him for anything." 
 
 Estelle could hardly hide her satisfaction at this unex- 
 pected concession. She dared not show her pleasure for 
 fear that Abel would see it and draw back. 
 
 " Then you could live with mother and Mister Chur- 
 chouse," she said. " It would be tremendously interest- 
 ing for you. I wonder if you would begin with Roberts 
 at the lathes, or Cogle at the engines? " 
 
 " I don't know. Before I ran away, Nicholas Roberts 
 wanted somebody to help him turning. I've turned some- 
 times. I'd begin like that and rise to better things." 
 
 She was careful not to mention his father again. 
 
THE MOTOR CAR 407 
 
 " I believe Mister Roberts would like to have you in his 
 shop very much. Sarah, his wife, hopes that her son will 
 be a lathe-worker some day, but he's too young to go yet." 
 
 " He'll never be any good at machinery," declared Abel. 
 " I know him. He's all for the sea." 
 
 They took their leave presently, after Ernest had heard 
 the boy's offer. He, too, was careful, but applauded the 
 suggestion and assured Abel he would be very welcome at 
 his old home. 
 
 " I like you, you know ; in fact, as a rule, we have got 
 on very well together. I believe you'll make an engineer 
 some day if you remember the Roman goddesses. To be 
 ambitious is the most hopeful thing we can wish for youth. 
 Always be ambitious that's the first essential for suc- 
 cess." 
 
 But the old man surprised Estelle by failing to share 
 her delight at Abel's decision. She for her part felt that 
 the grand difficulty was passed, and that once in his 
 father's Mill, the boy must sooner or later come to reason, 
 if only by the round of self-interest; but Mr. Churchouse 
 reminded her that another had to be reckoned with. 
 
 " A most delicate situation would be created in that 
 case," he said. " Of course I can't pretend to say how 
 Raymond will regard it. He may see it with your eyes. 
 He sees so many things with your eyes more and more, 
 in fact that I hope he will ; but you mustn't be very 
 disappointed if he does not. This cannot look to him as 
 it does to you, or even to me. His point of view may re- 
 ject Abel's suggestion altogether for various reasons; and 
 Sabina, too, will very likely feel it couldn't happen without 
 awakening a great many painful memories." 
 
 " She advised us to consult Abel and hear what he 
 thought." 
 
 " We have. We return with the great man's ultimatum. 
 But I'm afraid it doesn't follow that his ultimatum will be 
 accepted. Even if Sabina felt she could endure such an 
 
408 THE SPINNERS 
 
 arrangement, it is doubtful in the extreme whether Ray- 
 mond will. Indeed I'll go so far as to prophesy that he 
 won't." 
 
 Estelle saw that she had been over-sanguine. 
 
 " There's one bright side, however," he continued. 
 " We have got something definite out of the boy and should 
 now be able to help him largely in spite of himself. Every 
 day he lives, he'll become more impressed with the neces- 
 sity for knowledge, and if, for the moment, he declines any 
 alternative, he'll soon come round to one. He knows 
 already that he can't stop at Knapp, so this great and 
 perilous adventure of the automobile has been successful 
 though how successful we cannot tell yet." 
 
 He knew, however, before the day was done, for Sabina 
 felt very definitely on the subject. Yet her attitude was 
 curious : she held it not necessary to express an opinion. 
 
 Mr. Churchouse came home very cold, and while she 
 attended to his needs, brought him hot drink and lighted 
 a fire, Sabina listened. 
 
 " The boy is exceedingly well," he said. " I never saw 
 his eye so bright, or his skin so clear and brown. But a 
 farmer he won't be for anybody. Of course, one never 
 thought he would." 
 
 When she had heard Abel's idea, she answered without 
 delay. 
 
 " It's a thousand pities he's set his heart on that, be- 
 cause it won't happen. What I think doesn't matter, of 
 course, but for once you'll find his father is of a mind with 
 me. He'll not suffer such an arrangement for a moment. 
 It's bringing the trouble too near. He doesn't want his 
 skeleton walking out of the cupboard into the Mill, and 
 whatever happens, that won't." 
 
 She was right enough, for when Raymond heard all that 
 Estelle could tell him, he decided instantly against any 
 such arrangement. 
 
 " Impossible," he said. " One needn't trouble even to 
 argue about it. But that he would like to be an engineer 
 
THE MOTOR CAR 409 
 
 is quite healthy. He shall be; and he shall begin at the 
 beginning and have every advantage possible not his 
 way, but mine. I argue ultimate success from this. It 
 eases my mind." 
 
 " All the same, if you don't do anything, he'll only run 
 away again," said Estelle, who was disappointed. 
 
 " He won't run far. Let him stop where he is for a few 
 months, till he's heartily sick of it and ready to listen to 
 sense. Then perhaps I'll go over and see him myself. 
 You've done great things, Estelle. I feel more sanguine 
 than I have ever felt about him. I wish I could do what 
 he wants ; but that's impossible his way. However, I'U do 
 it in my own. Sense is beginning in him, and that is the 
 great and hopeful discovery you've made." 
 
 " I'm ever so glad you're pleased about it," she said. 
 " He loved the motor car much better than the sight of us. 
 Yet he was glad to see us too. He's really a very human 
 boy, you know, Ray." 
 
CHAPTER XV 
 
 CRITICISM 
 
 UPON a Sunday afternoon, Sarah Roberts and her hus- 
 band were drinking tea at * The Seven Stars.' They sat 
 in Nelly Legg's private room, and by some accident all 
 took rather a gloomy view of life. 
 
 As for Nelly, she had been recently weighed, and de- 
 spite drastic new treatment, was found to have put on two 
 pounds in a month. 
 
 " Lord knows where it'll end," she said. " You can't 
 go on getting heavier and heavier for ever more. Even a 
 vegetable marrow, and such like things, reach their limit ; 
 and if they can it's hard that a creature with an immortal 
 soul have got to go growing larger and larger, to her own 
 misery and her husband's grief. To be smothered with 
 your own fat is a proper cruel end I call it ; and I haven't 
 deserved it ; and it shakes my faith in an all-wise God, to 
 feel myself turning into a useless mountain of flesh. 
 Worse than useless in fact, because them that can't work 
 themselves are certain sure to make work for others. 
 Which I do." 
 
 " I never knew anything so aggravating, I'm sure," as- 
 sented Nicholas ; " but so far as I can see, if life don't 
 fret you from within, it frets you from without. It can't 
 leave you alone to go on your way in a dignified manner. 
 It's always intruding, so to speak. In fact, life comes 
 between us and our living, if you understand me, and 
 sometimes for my part I can look on to the end of it with 
 a lot of resignation." 
 
 Sentiments so unusual from her husband startled Mrs. 
 
 Roberts as well as her aunt. 
 
 410 
 
CRITICISM 411 
 
 " Lor, Nicholas ! What's the matter with you? " asked 
 Sarah. 
 
 " It ain't often I grumble," he answered, " and if any- 
 body's better at taking the rough with the smooth than 
 me, I'd like to see him; but there are times when nature 
 craves for a bit of pudding, and gets sick to death of its 
 daily meal of bread and cheese. I speak in a parable, 
 however, because I don't mean the body but the mind. 
 Your body bothers you, Missis Legg, as well it may ; but 
 your mind, thanks to your husband, is pretty peaceful 
 year in year out. In my case, my body calls for no atten- 
 tion. Thin as a rake I am and so shall continue. But 
 the tissue is good, and no man is made of better quality 
 stuff. It's my mind that turns in upon itself and gives me 
 a pang now and again. And the higher the nature of 
 the mind, the worse its troubles. In fact the more you 
 can feel, the more you are made to feel ; and what the mind 
 is built to endure, that, seemingly, it will be called to 
 endure." 
 
 But Nelly had no patience with the philosophy of Mr. 
 Roberts. 
 
 6 You're so windy when you've got anything on your 
 chest," she said. " You keep talking and don't get any 
 forwarder. What's the fuss about now?" 
 
 " You've been listening to Baggs, I expect," suggested 
 the wife of Nicholas. " Baggs has got the boot at last 
 and leaves at Christmas, and his pension don't please him, 
 so he's fairly bubbling over with verjuice. I should hope 
 you'd got too much sense to listen to him, Nick." 
 
 " So should I. He's no more than the winter wind in a 
 hedge at any time," answered Mr. Roberts. " Baggs gets 
 attended to same as a wasp gets attended to because 
 of his sting. All bad-tempered people win a lot more at- 
 tention and have their way far quicker than us easy and 
 amiable ones. Why, we know, of course. Human na- 
 ture's awful cowardly at bottom and will always choose 
 the easiest way to escape the threatened wrath of a bad 
 
412 THE SPINNERS 
 
 temper. In fact, fear makes the world go round, not love, 
 as silly people pretend. In my case I feel much like Sa- 
 bina Dinnett, who was talking about life not a week ago 
 in the triangle under the sycamore tree. And she said, 
 ' Those who do understand don't care, and those who don't 
 understand, don't matter ' so there you are one's left 
 all alone." 
 
 " I'm sure you ain't more's Sabina. She's got lots 
 of friends, and you've got your dear wife and children," 
 said Nelly. 
 
 " I have ; but the mind sometimes takes a flight above 
 one's family. It's summed up in a word: there's nothing 
 so damned unpleasant as being took for granted, and 
 that's what's the matter with me." 
 
 " Not in your home, you ain't," declared Sarah. " No 
 good, sensible wife takes her husband for granted. He's 
 always made a bit of a fuss over under his own roof." 
 
 " That's true ; but in my business I am. To see people 
 I'll name no names to see other people purred over, 
 and then to find your own craft treated as just a common- 
 place of Nature, no more wonderful than the leaves on a 
 bush beastly, I call it." 
 
 Mr. Legg had joined them and he admitted the force of 
 the argument. 
 
 " We're very inclined to put our own job higher in the 
 order of the universe than will other people," he said; 
 " and better men than you have hungered for a bit of 
 notice and a pat on the back and never won it. But time 
 covers that trouble. I grant, all the same, that it's a bit 
 galling when we find the world turns a cold shoulder to 
 our best." 
 
 " It's a human weakness, Nicholas, to want to be pat- 
 ted," said Nelly, and her husband agreed. 
 
 " It is. We share it with dogs," he declared. " But 
 the world in general is too busy to pat us. I remember 
 in my green youth being very proud of myself once and 
 pointing to a lot of pewter in a tub, that I'd worked up 
 
CRITICISM 413 
 
 till it looked like silver; and I took some credit, and an 
 old man in the bar said that scouring pots was nothing 
 more than scouring pots, and that any other honest fool 
 could have done them just as well as me." 
 
 " That's all right and I don't pretend my work on the 
 lathe is a national asset, and I don't pretend I ought to 
 have a statue for doing it," answered Nicholas ; " but what 
 I do say is that I am greater than my lathe and ought to 
 get more attention according. I am a man and not a 
 cog-wheel, and when Ironsyde puts cog-wheels above men 
 and gives a dumb machine greater praise than the mechanic 
 who works it then it's wrong and I don't like it." 
 
 " He can't make any such mistake as that," argued 
 Job. " It's rumoured he's going to stand for Parliament 
 at the next General Election, so his business is with men, 
 not machines, and he'll very soon find all about the human 
 side of politics." 
 
 " He'll be human enough till he gets in. They always 
 are. They'll stoop to anything till they're elected," said 
 Mrs. Legg, " but once there, the case is often altered with 
 'em." 
 
 " I want to be recognised as a man," continued Roberts, 
 " and Ironsyde don't do it. He isn't the only human being 
 with a soul and a future. And now, if he's for Parliament, 
 I dare say he'll become more indifferent than ever. He 
 may be a machine himself, with no feelings beyond work; 
 but other people are built different." 
 
 " A man like him ought to try and do the things him- 
 self," suggested Sarah. " If employers had to put in a 
 day laying the stricks on the spreadboard, or turning the 
 rollers on the lathe, or hackling, or spinning, they'd very 
 soon get a respect for what the workers do. In fact, if 
 labour had its way, it ought to make capital taste what 
 labour means, and get out of bed when labour gets out, and 
 do what labour does, and eat what labour eats. Then 
 capital would begin to know it's born." 
 
 " It never will happen," persisted Nicholas. " Nothing 
 
414 THE SPINNERS 
 
 opens the eyes of the blind, or makes the man who can buy 
 oysters, eat winkles. The gulf is fixed between us and it 
 won't be crossed. If he goes into Parliament, or stops 
 out, he'll be himself still, and look on us doubtfully and 
 wish in his soul that we were made of copper and filled 
 with steam." 
 
 " A master must follow his people out of the works into 
 their homes if he's worth a rap," declared Job. " Your 
 aunt always did so with her maidens, and I do so with the 
 men. And it's our place to remember that men and women 
 are far different from metal and steam. You can't turn 
 the power off the workers and think they're going to be all 
 right till you turn it on again. They go on all the time 
 same as the masters and mistresses do. They sleep and 
 eat and rest; they want their bit of human interest, and 
 bit of fun, and pinch of hope to salt the working day. 
 And as for Raymond Ironsyde, I've seen his career un- 
 folding since he was a boy and marked him in bad moments 
 and seen his weakness ; which secrets were safe enough with 
 me, for I'd always a great feeling for the young. And I 
 say that he's good as gold at heart and his faults only 
 come from a lack of power to put himself in another man's 
 place. He could never look very much farther than his 
 own place in the world and the road that led to it. He 
 did wrong, like all of us, and his faults found him out; 
 which they don't always do. But he's the sort that takes 
 years and years to ripen. He's not yet at his best you'll 
 find ; but he's a learner, and he may learn a great many 
 useful things if he goes into Parliament if it's only what 
 to avoid." 
 
 " There's one thing that will do him a darned sight 
 more good than going into Parliament, and that's getting 
 married," said Sarah. " In fact, a few of us, that can see 
 further through a milestone than some people, believe it's 
 in sight." 
 
 " Miss Waldron, of course? " asked Nelly. 
 
 " Yes her. And when that happens, she'll make of 
 
CRITICISM 415 
 
 Mister Ironsyde a much more understanding man than 
 going into Parliament will. He's fair and just not one 
 of us, bar Levi Baggs, ever said he wasn't that but she's 
 more she's just our lady, and our good is her good, and 
 what she's done for us would fill a book ; and if she could 
 work on him to look at us through her eyes, then none of 
 us, that deserved it, as we all do, would lose our good 
 word." 
 
 " What do you say to that, Job? " asked Mrs. Legg. 
 
 " I say nothing better could happen," he answered. 
 " But don't feel too hopeful. The things that promise 
 best to the human eye ain't the things that Providence very 
 often performs. To speak in a religious spirit and with- 
 out feeling, there's no doubt that Providence does take a 
 delight in turning down the obvious things and bringing 
 us up against the doubtful and difficult and unexpected 
 ones. That's why there's such a gulf between story books 
 and real life. The story books that I used to read in my 
 youth, always turned out just as a man of good will and 
 good heart and kindly spirit would wish them to do ; but 
 you'd be straining civility to Providence and telling a lie 
 if you pretended real life does. Therefore I say, hope it 
 may happen ; but don't bet on it." 
 
 Job finished his tea and bustled away. 
 
 " The wisdom of the man ! " said Nicholas. " He's the 
 most comforting person I know, because he don't pretend. 
 There's some think that everything that happens to us is 
 our own fault, and they drive you silly with their bleat- 
 ing. Job knows it ain't so." 
 
 " A far-seeing man," admitted Nelly, " and a great 
 reader of the signs of the times. People used to think he 
 was a simple sort God forgive me, I did myself ; but I 
 know better now. All through that business with poor 
 Richard Gurd, Job understood our characters and bided 
 his time and knew that the crash must come between us. 
 He's told me since that he never really feared Gurd, be- 
 cause he looked ahead and felt that two such natures as 
 
416 THE SPINNERS 
 
 mine and Richard's were never meant to join in matrimony. 
 Looking back, I see Job's every move and the brain be- 
 hind it. Talk about Parliament ! If Bridport was to send 
 Legg there, they'd be sending one that's ten times wiser 
 than Raymond Ironsyde and ten times deeper. In 
 fact, the nation's very ill served by most that go there. 
 They are the showy, rich, noisy sort, who want to bulk 
 in the public eye without working for it ciphers who do 
 what they're told, and don't understand the inner nature 
 of what they're doing more than a hoss in a plough. But 
 men like Job, though not so noisy, would get to the root, 
 and use their own judgment, and rise superior to party 
 politics and the pitiful need to shout with your side, right 
 or wrong." 
 
 " Miss Waldron is very wishful for him to get in, and 
 she says he's got good ideas," replied Nicholas. 
 
 " If so, he has to thank her for them," added Sarah. 
 
 " And I hope," continued Nicholas, " that if he does get 
 in, he'll be suffered to make a speech, and his words will 
 fall stone dead on the ears of the members, and his schemes 
 will fail. 'Then he'll know what it is to be flouted and to 
 see his best feats win not a friendly sign." 
 
 " Electors are a lot too easy going in my opinion," 
 said Nelly. " I'm old enough to have seen their foolish 
 ways in my time, and find, over and over again, that they 
 are mostly gulls to be took with words. They never ask 
 what a man's record is and turn over the pages of his 
 past. They never trouble about what he's done, or how 
 he's made his money, or where he stands in public report. 
 It isn't what he has done, but what he's going to do. Yet 
 you can better judge of a man from his past than his 
 promises, and measure, in the light of his record, whether 
 he's going to the House of Commons for patriotic, decent 
 reasons, or for mean ones. And never you vote for a 
 lawyer, Nicholas Roberts. 'Tis a golden rule with Job 
 that never, under any manner of circumstances, will he 
 help to get a lawyer into Parliament. They stand in the 
 
CRITICISM 417 
 
 way of all progress but their own; they suck our blood in 
 every affair of life; they baffle all honest thinking with 
 their cunning, and look at right and wrong only from the 
 point of expediency. Job says there ought to be a law 
 against lawyers going in at all. But catch them making 
 it! In fact, we're in their clutches more than the fly in 
 the web, because they make the laws ; and they'll never 
 make any laws to limit their own powers over us, though 
 always quick enough to increase them. Job says that the 
 only bright side to a revolution would be that the law and 
 the lawyers would be swept into the street orderly bin 
 together. Then we'd start clean and free, and try to keep 
 clean and free." 
 
 Upon this subject Mrs. Legg always found plenty to 
 say. Indeed she continued to open her mind till they grew 
 weary. 
 
 " We must be moving if we're going to church," said 
 Sarah. " I think we'd better go and pick up a bit of 
 charity to our neighbour Sunday and all." 
 
CHAPTER XVI 
 
 THE OFFER OF MARRIAGE 
 
 RAYMOND met Estelle on his way from the works and to- 
 gether they walked home. Here and there in the cottage 
 doorways sat women braiding. Among them was Sally 
 Groves now grown too old and slow to tend the ' Card ' 
 and accident willed that she should make an opening 
 for thoughts that now filled Ironsyde's mind. They 
 stopped, for Sally was an old acquaintance of both, and 
 Estelle valued the big woman for her resolute character 
 and shrewd sense. Now Sally, on strength of long-stand- 
 ing friendship, grew personal. It was an ancient joke to 
 chaff Miss Groves about marriage, but to-day, when Ray- 
 mond asked if the net she made was to catch a husband, 
 Sally retorted with spirit. 
 
 " All very fine for you two to be poking fun at me," she 
 said. " But what about you? It's time you made up 
 your minds I'm sure, for everybody knows you're in love 
 with each other though you don't yourselves seem- 
 ingly.'; 
 
 " Give us a lead, Sally," suggested Raymond; but she 
 shook her head. 
 
 ' You're old enough to know your own business," she 
 answered ; " but don't you go lecturing other people about 
 matrimony while you're a bachelor yourself else you'll 
 get the worst of it as you have now." 
 
 They left her and laughed together. 
 
 ' Yet I've heard you say she was the most sensible 
 woman that ever worked in the mills," argued Raymond. 
 
 Estelle made no direct reply, but spoke of Sally in the 
 
 418 
 
THE OFFER OF MARRIAGE 419 
 
 past at one of her parties, when the staff took holiday 
 and spent a day at Weymouth. 
 
 Their conversation faded before they reached North 
 Hill House, and then, as they entered the drive, Raymond 
 reminded Estelle of a time long vanished and an expedition 
 taken when she was a child. 
 
 " Talking of good things, d'you remember our walk to 
 Chilcombe in the year one? Or, to be more exact, when 
 you were in short frocks." 
 
 " I remember well enough. How my chatter must have 
 bored you." 
 
 " You never bored me in your life, Chicky. In fact, 
 you always seem to have been a part of my life since I 
 began to live. That event happened soon after our walk, 
 if I remember rightly. You really seem as much a part 
 of my life as my right hand, Estelle." 
 
 " Well, your right hand can't bore you, certainly." 
 
 " Some of the things that it has done have bored me. 
 But let's go to Chilcombe again not in the car but 
 just tramp it as we did before. How often have you been 
 there since we went ? " 
 
 She considered. 
 
 " Twice, I think. My friends there left ten years ago 
 and my girl friend died. I haven't been there since I grew 
 up." ' 
 
 " Well, come this afternoon." 
 
 " It's going to rain, Ray." 
 
 " Since when did rain frighten you? " 
 
 " I'd love to come." 
 
 " A walk will do me good," he said. " I'm getting jolly 
 lazy." 
 
 " So father thinks. He hates motors says they are 
 going to make the next generation flabby and good-for- 
 nothing." 
 
 They started presently under low grey clouds, but the 
 sky was not grey for them and the weather of their minds 
 made them forget the poor light and sad south-west wind 
 
420 THE SPINNERS 
 
 laden with rain. It held off until they had reached Chil- 
 combe chapel, entered the little place of prayer and stood 
 together before the ancient reredos. The golden-brown 
 wood made a patch of brightness in the little building. 
 They were looking at it and recalling Estelle's description 
 of it in the past, when the storm broke and the rain beat 
 on the white glass in the windows above them. 
 
 " How tiny it's all grown," said Estelle. " Surely 
 everything has shrunk ? " 
 
 They had the chapel to themselves and, sitting beside 
 her in a pew, Raymond asked her to marry him. Thunder 
 had wakened in the sky, and the glare of lightning touched 
 their faces now and then. But they only remembered that 
 afterwards. 
 
 " Sally Groves was no more than half right," he said, 
 " so her fame for wisdom is shaken. She told us we didn't 
 know we loved one another, Estelle. But I know I love 
 you well enough, and I've been shaking in my shoes to tell 
 you so for months and months. I knew I was getting too 
 old every minute and yet couldn't say the word. But I 
 must say it now at any cost. Chicky, I love you 
 dearly, dearly I love you because I'm calm and steady, 
 that doesn't mean I'm not in a blaze inside. I never 
 thought of it even while you were growing up. But a 
 time came when I did begin to think of it like the deuce; 
 and when once I did, the thought towered up like the ef- 
 f reet let out of the bottle that story you loved when 
 you were small. But my only fear and dread is that 
 you've always been accustomed to think of me as so much 
 older than you are. If you once get an idea into your 
 head about a person's age, you can't get it out again. 
 At least, I can't; so I'm afraid you'll regard me as quite 
 out of the question for a husband. If that's so, I'll begin 
 over again." 
 
 Her eyes were round and her mouth a little open. She 
 did not blink when the lightning flashed. 
 
THE OFFER OF MARRIAGE 421 
 
 " But but " she said. 
 
 " If I'm not too old, there are no ' buts ' left," he de- 
 clared firmly. " Ten years is no great matter after all, 
 and from the point of view of brains, I'm an infant beside 
 you. Then say ' yes,' my darling say ' yes ' to me." 
 
 " I wonder I wonder, Ray? " 
 
 " Haven't you ever guessed what I felt ? " 
 
 " Yes, in a vague way. At least I knew there was some- 
 thing growing up between us." 
 
 " It was love, my beautiful dear." 
 
 She smiled at him doubtfully. The colour had come 
 back to her face, but she did not respond when he lifted his 
 arms to her. 
 
 "Are you sure can you be sure, Ray? It's so dif- 
 ferent, so shattering. It seems to smash up all the past 
 into little bits and begin the world all over again for 
 you and me. It's such a near thing. I've seen the mar- 
 ried people and wondered about it. You might get so 
 weary of always having me so close." 
 
 " I want you close closer and closer. I want you as 
 the best part of myself to make me happier first and, 
 because happier, more useful in the world. I want you at 
 the helm of my life to steer me, Chicky. What couldn't 
 we do together ! It's selfish it's one-sided, I know that. 
 I get everything you only get me. But I'll try and 
 rise to the occasion. I worship you, and no woman ever 
 had a more devout worshipper. I feel that your father 
 wouldn't be very mad with me. But it's for you to decide, 
 nothing else matters either way." 
 
 " I love to think you care for me so much," she said. 
 " And I care for you, Ray, and have cared for you 
 more than either of us know. Yes, I have. Sally Groves 
 knew somehow. I should like to say ' yes ' this moment ; 
 but I can't. I know I shall say it presently ; but I'm not 
 going to say it till I've thought a great many thoughts 
 and looked into the future and considered all this means 
 
422 THE SPINNERS 
 
 for you as well as for me. It's life or death really, for 
 both of us, and the more certain sure we are before, the 
 happier we should be afterwards, I expect." 
 
 " I'm sure enough, Estelle. I've been sure enough for 
 many a long day. I know the very hour I began to be 
 
 " I think I am too ; but I can't say ' yes ' and mean 
 6 yes ' for the present. I've got to thresh out a lot of 
 things. I dare say they'd be absurd to you ; but they're 
 not to me." 
 
 Can I help you? " 
 
 " I don't know. You can, I expect. I shall come to 
 you again to throw light on the difficult points." 
 
 " How long are you going to take? " 
 
 "How can I tell? But I can all the same, I'm not 
 going to take long." 
 
 " Say you love me do say that." 
 
 " I should have told you if I didn't." 
 
 " That's all right, but not so blessed as hearing you say 
 with your own lips you do. Say it say it, Chicky. I 
 won't take advantage of it. I only want to hear it. Then 
 I'll leave you in peace to think your thoughts." 
 
 " I do love you," she said gently and steadily. " It can 
 be nothing smaller than that. You are a very great part 
 of my life the greatest. I know that, because when you 
 go away life is at evening, and when you come back again 
 life is at morning. Let me have a little time, Ray only 
 a very little. Then I'll decide." 
 
 " I hope your wisdom will let you follow your will, then, 
 and not forbid the banns." 
 
 " You mustn't think it cold and horrid of me." 
 
 " You couldn't be cold and horrid, my sweet Estelle. 
 We're neither of us capable of being cold, or horrid. We 
 are not babies. I don't blame you a bit for wanting to 
 think about it. I only blame myself. If I was all I might 
 have been, you wouldn't want to think about it." 
 
 This challenge shook her, but did not change her. 
 
THE OFFER OF MARRIAGE 423 
 
 " Nobody's all they might be, Ray ; but many people 
 are a great deal more than they might be. That's what 
 makes you love people best, I think to see how 
 brave and patient and splendid men and women can be. 
 Life's so difficult even for the luckiest of us ; but it isn't 
 the luckiest who are the pluckiest generally is it ? I've 
 had such a lot more than my share of luck already. So 
 have you at least people think so. But nobody knows 
 one's luck really except oneself." 
 
 " It's the things that are going to happen will make 
 our good luck," he said. " You'll find men are seldom sat- 
 isfied with the past, whatever women may be. God knows 
 I'm'not." 
 
 " You were always one of my two heroes when I was 
 a child ; and father was the other. He is still my hero 
 and so are you, Ray." 
 
 " A pretty poor hero. I wouldn't pretend that to my 
 dog. I only claim to have something worth while in me 
 that you might bring out raw material for you to turn 
 into the finished article." 
 
 She laughed to hear this. 
 
 " Come come you're not as modest as all that. 
 You're much too clever even to pretend any such thing. 
 Women don't turn strong men into finished articles. At 
 best, perhaps, they can only decorate a little of the out- 
 side." 
 
 " You laugh," he answered, " but you know better. If 
 you love me, be ambitious for me. That's the most help- 
 ful love a woman can give a man to see his capabilities 
 better than he can, and fire him on the best and biggest he 
 can do, and help him to grasp his opportunities." 
 
 " So it is." 
 
 " You've got to decide whether it's worth while marry- 
 ing me, Chicky. You do love me, as I love you because 
 you can't help it. But you can help marrying me. 
 You've got to think of your own show as well as mine. 
 I quite understand that. You must be yourself and make 
 
424 THE SPINNERS 
 
 your own mark, and take advantage of all the big new 
 chances offered to the rising generation of women. I love 
 you a great deal too much to want to lessen you, or drift 
 you into a back-water. It's just a question whether my 
 work, and the Mill, and so on, give you the chance you 
 want if, working together, we can each help on the 
 other. You could certainly help me hugely and you know 
 it ; but whether I could help you that's what you've got 
 to think about I suppose." 
 
 " Yes, I suppose it is, Ray." 
 
 " Your eyes say ' yes ' already, and they're terrible true 
 eyes." 
 
 But she only lowered them and neither spoke any more 
 for a little while. The worst of the storm had passed, and 
 its riot and splash gave place to a fine drizzle as the night 
 began to close in. 
 
 They started for home and, both content to think their 
 own thoughts, trudged side by side. For Raymond's part, 
 he knew the woman too well to suffer any doubt of the 
 issue and he was happy. For he felt that she was quietly 
 happy too, and if instincts had brought grave doubts, or 
 prompted her to deny him, she would not have been happy. 
 
 Estelle did not miss the romance from his offer of mar- 
 riage. She had dreamed of man's love in her poetry- 
 reading days, but under the new phase and the practical 
 bent, developed by a general enthusiasm for her kind, per- 
 sonal emotions were not paramount. There could be but 
 little sex in her affection for Raymond: she had lived too 
 near him for that. Indeed, she had grown up beside him, 
 and the days before he came to dwell at North Hill seemed 
 vague and misty. Thus his challenge came as an experi- 
 ence both less and greater than love. It was less, in that 
 no such challenge can be so urgent and so mighty as the 
 call of hungry hearts to each other; it was greater, be- 
 cause the interests involved were built on abiding princi- 
 ples. They arrested her intellectual ambitions and 
 pointed to a sphere of usefulness beyond her unaided 
 
THE OFFER OF MARRIAGE 425 
 
 power. What must have made his prosaic offer flat in 
 the ear of an amorous woman, edged it for her. He had 
 dwelt on the aspect of their union that was likely most to 
 attract her. 
 
 There was a pure personal side where love came in and 
 made her heart beat warmly enough ; but, higher than that, 
 she saw herself of living value to Raymond and helping 
 him just where he stood most in need of help. She be- 
 lieved that they might well prove the complement of each 
 other in those duties, disciplines, and obligations to which 
 life had called them. 
 
 That night she went closely, searchingly over old 
 ground again from the new point of vision. What had 
 always been interesting to her, became now vital, since 
 these characteristics belonged to the man who wanted to 
 wed her. She tried to be remorseless and cruel that she 
 might be kind. But the palette of thought was only set 
 with pleasant colours. She had been intellectually in love 
 with him for a long time, and he had offered problems 
 which made her love him for the immense interest they 
 gave her. Now came additional stimulus in the knowledge 
 that he loved her well enough to share his life, his hopes, 
 and his ambitions with her. 
 
 She believed they might be wedded in very earnest. He 
 was masterful and possessed self-assurance ; but what man 
 can lead and control without these qualities? His self- 
 assurance was less than his self-control, and his instinct 
 for self-assertion had nearly always been counted by a 
 kind heart. It seemed to her that she had never known 
 a man who balanced reason and feeling more judicially, or 
 better preserved a mean between them. 
 
 She had found that men could differentiate in a way 
 beyond woman's power and be unsociable if their duty de- 
 manded it. But to be unsociable is not to be unsocial. 
 Raymond took long views, and if his old, genial and jolly 
 attitude to life was a thing of the past, there had been 
 substituted for it a wiser understanding and saner recog- 
 
426 THE SPINNERS 
 
 nition of the useful and useless. Men did take longer 
 views than women so Estelle decided : and there Ray- 
 mond would help her; but the all-important matter that 
 night was to satisfy herself how much she could help him. 
 In this reverie she found such warmth and light as set her 
 glowing before dawn, for she built up the spiritual pic- 
 ture of Raymond, came very close to its ultimate realities, 
 quickened by the new inspiration, and found that it should 
 be well within her power to serve him generously. She 
 took no credit to herself, but recognized a happy accident 
 of character. 
 
 There were weak spots in all masculine armour, that 
 only a woman could make strong, and by a good chance 
 she felt that her particular womanhood might serve this 
 essential turn for Raymond's manhood. To strengthen 
 her own man's weak spots surely that was the crown 
 and completion of any wedded life for a woman. To 
 check, to supplement, to enrich: that he would surely do 
 for her ; and she hoped to deal as faithfully with him. 
 
 She was not clear-sighted here, for love, if it be love at 
 all, must bring the rosy veil with it and dim the seeing of 
 the brightest eyes. While the fact that she had grown up 
 with Raymond made her view clear enough in some direc- 
 tions, in others it served, of course, to dim judgment. She 
 credited him with greater intellect than he possessed, and 
 dreamed that higher achievements were in his power than 
 was the truth. But there existed a mean, below her dream 
 yet above his present ambition, that it was certainly pos- 
 sible with her incentive he might attain. She might make 
 him more sympathetic and so more synthetic also, and 
 show him how his own industry embraced industrial prob- 
 lems at large how it could not be taken by itself, but 
 must hold its place only by favour of its progress, and 
 command respect only as it represented the worthiest rela- 
 tion between capital and labour. Thus, from the personal 
 interest of his work, she would lift him to measure the 
 world-wide needs of all workers. And then, in time to 
 
THE OFFER OF MARRIAGE 427 
 
 come, he would forget the personal before the more splen- 
 did demands of the universal. The trend of machinery 
 was towards tyranny ; he must never lose sight of that, or 
 let the material threaten the spiritual. Private life, as well 
 as public life, was open to the tyranny of the machine; 
 and there, too, it would be her joyful privilege to fight be- 
 side him for added beauty, added liberty, not only in their 
 own home, but all homes wherein they had power to increase 
 comfort and therefore happiness. The sensitiveness of 
 women should be linked to the driving force of men, as the 
 safety valve to the engine. Thus, in a simile surely destined 
 to delight him, she summed her intentions and desires. 
 
 She had often wondered what must be essential to the 
 fullest employment of her energies and the best and purest 
 use of her thinking; and now she saw that marriage an- 
 swered the question not marriage in the abstract, but 
 just marriage with this man. He, of all she had known, 
 was the one with whom she felt best endowed to mingle 
 and merge, so that their united forces should be poured 
 to help the world and water with increase the modest 
 territory through which they must flow. 
 
 She turned to go to sleep at last, yet dearly longed to 
 tell Raymond and amaze her father with the great tidings. 
 
 An impulse prompted her to leave her lover not a mo- 
 ment more in doubt. She rose, therefore, and descended 
 to his room, which opened beside his private study on the 
 ground floor. The hour was nearly four on an autumn 
 morning. She listened, heard him move restlessly and 
 knew that he did not sleep. He struck a match and lighted 
 a cigarette, for he often smoked at night. 
 
 Then she knocked at the door. 
 
 " Who the devil's that? " he shouted. 
 
 " I," she said, opening the door an inch and talking 
 softly. " Stop where you are and stop worrying and go 
 to sleep. I'm going to marry you, Ray, and I'm happier 
 than ever I was before in all my life." 
 
 Then she shut the door and fled away. 
 
CHAPTER XVII 
 
 SABINA AND ABEL, 
 
 Now was Raymond Ironsyde too busy to think any 
 thought but one, and though distractions crowded down 
 on the hour, he set them aside so far as it was possible. 
 His betrothal very completely dominated his life and the 
 new relation banished the old attitude between him and 
 Estelle. The commonplace existence, as of sister and 
 brother, seemed to perish suddenly, and in its place, as a 
 butterfly from a chrysalis, there reigned the emotional 
 days of prelude to marriage. The mere force of the situ- 
 ation inspired them and they grew as loverly as any boy 
 and girl. It was no make-believe that led them to follow 
 the immemorial way and glory only in the companionship 
 of each other ; they felt the desire, and love that had awak- 
 ened so tardily and moved in a manner so desultory, seemed 
 concerned to make up for lost time. 
 
 Arthur Waldron was not so greatly astonished as they 
 expected, and whatever may have been his private hopes 
 and desires for his daughter, he never uttered them, but 
 seeing her happiness, echoed it. 
 
 " No better thing could have happened from my point 
 of view," he declared, " for if she'd married anybody else 
 in the world, I should have been called to say ' good-bye ' 
 to her. Since she's chosen you, there's no necessity for 
 me to do so. I hope you're going on living at North Hill, 
 and I trust you're going to let me do the same. Of course, 
 it would be an impossible arrangement if you were dealing 
 with anybody but me ; but since we are what we are in 
 spirit and temper and understanding, I claim that I may 
 stop. The only difference I can see is this : that whereas 
 
 428 
 
SABINA AND ABEL 429 
 
 at present, when we dine, you sit between Estelle and me, 
 in future I shall sit between Estelle and you." 
 
 " Not even that," vowed the lover. " Why shouldn't I 
 go on sitting between you? " 
 
 " No you'll be the head of the house in future." 
 
 " The charm of this house is that there's no head to it," 
 said Estelle, " and Raymond isn't going to usurp any such 
 position just because he means to marry me." 
 
 But distractions broke in upon their happiness. Ernest 
 Churchouse fell grievously ill and lacked strength to fight 
 disease ; while there came news from Knapp that the 
 farmer was tired of Abel and wished him away. 
 
 For their old friend none could prolong his life; in the 
 case of the boy, Raymond decided that Sabina had better 
 see him and go primed with a definite offer. Abel's father 
 did not anticipate much more trouble in that quarter. 
 He guessed that the lad, now in his seventeenth year, was 
 sufficiently weary of the land and would be glad to take up 
 engineering. He felt confident that Sabina must find him 
 changed for the better, prepared for his career and willing 
 to enter upon it without greater waste of time. He in- 
 vited the boy's mother to learn if he felt more friendly 
 to him, and hoped that Abel had now revealed a frame of 
 mind and a power of reasoning, that would serve to solve 
 the problem of his career, and finally abolish his animosity 
 to his father. 
 
 Sabina went to see her son and heard the farmer first. 
 He was not unfriendly, but declared Abel a responsibility 
 he no longer desired to incur. 
 
 " He's just at a tricky age and he's shifty and secret 
 unlike other lads. You never know what's going on 
 in his mind, and he never laughs, or takes pleasure in 
 things. He's too difficult for me, and my wife says she's 
 frightened of him. As to work, he does it, but you always 
 feel he's got no love for it. And I know he means to bolt 
 any day. I've marked signs ; so it will be better for you 
 people to take the first step." 
 
430 THE SPINNERS 
 
 The farmer's wife spoke to similar purpose and added 
 information that made Sabina more than uneasy. 
 
 " It's about this friend of his, Miss Waldron, that came 
 to see him backalong," she explained. " He'd talk pretty 
 free about her sometimes and was very proud of it when he 
 got a letter now and again. But since she's wrote and 
 told him she's going to be married, he's turned a gloomier 
 character than ever. He don't like the thought of it and 
 it makes him dark. 'Tis almost as if he'd been in love 
 with the lady. You do hear of young boys falling in love 
 before their time like that." 
 
 Sabina was on the point of explaining, but did not do 
 so. Her first care was to see Abel and learn the truth of 
 this report. Perhaps she felt not wholly sorry that he 
 resented this conclusion. Not a few had spoken of Iron- 
 syde's marriage before her: it was the gossip of Bride- 
 town ; but none appeared to consider how it must affect 
 her, or sympathise with her emotions on the subject. 
 What these emotions were, or whither they tended, she 
 hardly knew herself. Unowned even to her innermost 
 heart, a sort of dim hope had not quite died, that he 
 might, after all, come back to her. She blushed at the 
 absurdity of the idea now, but it had struck in her sub- 
 consciously and never wholly vanished. Before the en- 
 gagement was announced she had altered her attitude to 
 Raymond and used him civilly and shared his desire that 
 Abel should be won over by his father. The old hatred 
 at receiving anything from Ironsyde's hands no longer ex- 
 isted. She felt indifferent and, before her own approach- 
 ing problems, was not prepared to decline the offers of 
 help that she knew would quickly come when Ernest Chur- 
 chouse died. 
 
 She intended to preach patience and reason in the ears 
 of Abel, and she hoped he would not make her task difficult ; 
 but now it was clear that Estelle's betrothal had troubled 
 the boy. 
 
SABINA AND ABEL 431 
 
 She saw him and they spoke together for a long time; 
 but already his force of character began to increase be- 
 yond his mother's. Despite her purpose and sense of the 
 gravity of the situation, he had more effect upon her than 
 she had upon him. Yet her arguments were rational and 
 his were not. But the old, fatal, personal element of tem- 
 per crept in and, during her speech with him, Sabina found 
 fires that she believed long quenched, were still smouldering 
 in the depths of memory. The boy could not indeed fan 
 them to flame again ; but the result of his attitude served 
 to weaken hers. She did not argue with conviction after 
 finding his temper. By some evil chance, that seemed 
 more like art than accident, he struck old wounds, and she 
 was interested and agitated to find that now he knew all 
 there was to be known of the past and its exact signifi- 
 cance. The dream hidden so closely in her heart: that 
 there might yet be a reconciliation the dream finally 
 killed when she perceived that Ironsyde had fallen in love 
 with Estelle Waldron was no dream in her son's mind. 
 What she knew was impossible, till now represented no im- 
 possibility to him. He actually declared it as a thing 
 which, in his moral outlook, ought to be. Only so could 
 the past be retrieved, or the future made endurable. But 
 to that matter they did not immediately come. She dined 
 at the farmer's table with Abel and three men. Then he 
 was told that he might make holiday and spend the after- 
 noon with his mother where he pleased. He took her 
 therefore to the old barrows nigh Knapp, and there on a 
 stone they sat, watched the sun sink over distant wood- 
 lands and talked together till the dusk was down. 
 
 " I ought never to have trusted her," he said. " But 
 I did. And, if I'd thought she would ever have married 
 him, I wouldn't have trusted her. I thought she was the 
 right sort ; but if she was, she would never have married a 
 man who had sworn to marry you." 
 
 " Good gracious, Abel ! Whatever are you talking 
 
432 THE SPINNERS 
 
 about?" she asked, concerned to find the matter in his 
 mind. 
 
 " I'm talking about things that happened," he answered. 
 " I'm not a child now. I'm nearly seventeen and older than 
 that, for I overheard two of the men say so. You needn't 
 tell me these things ; I found them out for myself, and I 
 hated Raymond Ironsyde from the time I could hate any- 
 body, because the honest feeling to hate him was in me. 
 And nobody has the right to marry him but you, and he's 
 got no right to marry anybody but you. But he doesn't 
 know the meaning of justice, and she is not fine, or brave, 
 or clever, or any of the things I thought she was, because 
 she wants to marry him." 
 
 His mother considered this speech. 
 
 " It's no good vexing yourself about the past," she said. 
 " You and me have got to look to the future, Abel, and 
 not to dwell on all that don't make the future any easier. 
 It's difficult enough, but, for us, the luxury of pride and 
 hate isn't possible. I know very well what you feel. It 
 all went through me like fire before you were born and 
 after; but we've got to go on living, and things are going 
 to change, and we must cut our coats according to our 
 cloth you and me." 
 
 " What does that mean? " he asked. 
 
 " It means we're not independent. There's not enough 
 for your education and my keep. So it's got to be him, 
 or one other, and the other is an old woman his aunt. 
 But it's all the same really, and he'll see that it comes out 
 of his pocket in the end. He's all powerful and we must 
 do according. Christianity's a very convenient thing for 
 the likes of us. It teaches that the meek are blessed and 
 the weak the worthy ones. You must look to your father 
 if you want to succeed in the world." 
 
 " Never," he said. " He's got everything else in the 
 world, but he shan't have me. I don't care much about 
 being alive at best, seeing I must be different from other 
 
SABINA AND ABEL 433 
 
 people all my life; but I'd rather die twenty times than 
 owe anything to him. He knew before I was born that he 
 was going to wreck my life, and he did it, and he wrecked 
 yours, and his marriage with any other woman but you is 
 a lie and a sham, and Estelle knows it very well. Now I 
 hate her as much as him, and I hate those who let her 
 marry him, and I hate the clergyman that will do it ; and 
 if I could ruin them by killing myself on their doorstep, I 
 would. But he wouldn't care for that. If I was to do 
 that, it would just suit the devil, because he'd know I'd 
 gone and could never rise up against him any more." 
 
 She made a half-hearted attempt to distract his 
 thoughts. She began to argue and, as usual, ended in 
 bitterness. 
 
 " You mustn't talk nonsense, like that. He means well 
 by you, and you mustn't cut off your nose to spite your 
 face. You'll find plenty of people to take his side and 
 you mustn't only listen to his enemies. There's always 
 wise people to stand up for young men and excuse them, 
 though not many to stand up for young women." 
 
 " Let them stand up for me and excuse me, then," he 
 answered. " Let them explain me and tell me why I should 
 think different, and why I should take his filthy money 
 just to set his mind at rest. What has he done for me 
 that I should ease him and do as he pleases? Is it out of 
 any care for me he'd lift me up? Not likely. It's all to 
 deceive the people and make them say he's a good man. 
 And until he puts you right, he's not a good man, and soon 
 or late I'll have it out with him. God blast me if I don't. 
 But I'll revenge myself clean on him. He shan't make out 
 to the world that he's done what a father should do for 
 a son. He's my natural father and no more, and he never 
 wanted or meant to be more. And no right will take away 
 that wrong. And I'll treat him as other natural creatures 
 treat their fathers." 
 
 " You can't do that," she said. " You're a human, and 
 you've got a conscience and must answer to it." 
 
434 THE SPINNERS 
 
 " I will some day. I know what my conscience says 
 to me. My conscience tells me the truth, not a lot of lies 
 like yours tells you. I know what's right and I know 
 what's justice. I gave the man one chance. I offered to go 
 in his works my works that ought to be some day. But 
 that didn't suit him. I must always knuckle under and 
 bend to his will. But never never. I'd starve first, or 
 throw myself into the sea. He don't want me near him 
 for people to point to, so I must be drove out of Bride- 
 town to the ends of the earth if he chooses. And if the 
 damned world was straight and honest and looked after 
 the women and innocent children, 'tis him, not me, would 
 have been drove out of Bridetown." 
 
 He spoke with amazing bitterness for youth, and echoed 
 much that he had heard, as well as what he had thought. 
 His mother felt some astonishment to find how his mind 
 had enlarged, and some fear, also, to see the hopelessness 
 of the position. 
 
 Already she considered in secret what craft might be 
 necessary to bring him to a more reasonable mind. 
 
 " You'll have to think of me as well as yourself," she 
 said. " Life's hard enough without you making it so much 
 harder. Two things will happen in a few weeks from now 
 and nothing can stop them. First you've got to leave 
 here, because farmer don't want you any more, and then 
 poor Mister Churchouse is going to pass away. He's just 
 fading out like a night-light flickering up and down 
 and bound to be called. And the best man and the truest 
 friend to sorrow that ever trod the earth." 
 
 " I was going from here," he answered. " And you can 
 look to me for making a pound a week, and you can have 
 it all if you'll take nothing from any of my enemies. If 
 you take money from my enemies, then I won't help you." 
 
 " You're a man in your opinions seemingly, though I 
 wish to God you hadn't grown out of childhood so quick, if 
 you were going to grow to this. It'll drive you mad if 
 you're not careful. Then where shall I be? " 
 
SABINA AND ABEL 435 
 
 " I'll drive other people mad not you. I'll come back 
 home, and then I'll find work at Bridport." 
 
 "Where's home going to be that's the question?" 
 Sabina answered. " There's only one choice for you 
 between letting him finish your education and going out to 
 work." 
 
 " We'll live in Bridport, then," he told her, and I'll go 
 into something with machinery. I'll soon rise, and I 
 might rise high enough to ruin him yet, some day. And 
 never you forget he had my offer and turned it down. He 
 didn't know what he was doing when he did that." 
 
 " He couldn't trust you. How was he to know you 
 wouldn't try to burn the works again and succeed next 
 time?" 
 
 Abel laughed. 
 
 " That was a fool's trick. If they'd gone, he'd only 
 have built 'em again, better. But there are some things 
 he can't insure." 
 
 " I know a good few spinners at Bridport. Shall I have 
 a look round for you? " she asked, as they rose to return. 
 
 He considered and agreed. 
 
 " Yes, if it's only through you. I trust you not to go 
 to him about it. If you did and I found you had " 
 
 " No, no. I'll not go to him." 
 
 He came and looked again at the motor car that had 
 brought her. It interested him as keenly as before. 
 
 " That's for him to go about the country in, because 
 he's standing for Parliament," explained Sabina. 
 
 But his anger was spent. He heeded her no more, and 
 even the fact that his father owned the car did not modify 
 his deep interest. 
 
 He rode a mile or two with her when she started to re- 
 turn and remained silent and rapt for the few minutes of 
 the experience. 
 
 His mother tried to use the incident. 
 
 " If you was to be good and patient and let the right 
 thing be done, I daresay in a few years you'd rise to having 
 
436 THE SPINNERS 
 
 a motor of your own," she said, when they stopped and he 
 started to trudge back. 
 
 " If ever I do, I'll get it for myself," he answered. 
 " And when you're old, I'll drive you about, very likely." 
 
 He left her placidly, and it was understood that in a 
 month he would return to her as soon as she had deter- 
 mined on their immediate future. 
 
 For herself she knew that it would be necessary to de- 
 ceive him, yet feared to attempt it after the recent con- 
 versation. She felt uneasily proud of him. 
 
CHAPTER XVIII 
 
 SWAN SONG 
 
 THE doctor said Mr. Churchouse was dying because he 
 didn't wish to go on living, and when Estelle taxed the old 
 man with his indifference, he would not deny it. 
 
 " I have lived long enough," he said. " The machine is 
 worn out. My thinking is become a painful effort. I for- 
 get the simplest matters, and before you are a nuisance 
 to yourself, you may feel very certain you have long been 
 a nuisance to other people." 
 
 He had for some months grown physically weaker, and 
 both Raymond and others had noticed an inconsequence 
 of utterance and an inability to concentrate the mind. He 
 liked friends to come and see him and would listen with 
 obvious effort to follow any argument, or grasp any fresh 
 item of news. But he spoke less and less. Nor could Sa- 
 bina tempt him to eat adequate food. He ignored the 
 doctor's drugs and seemed to shrink physically as well as 
 mentally. 
 
 " I'm turning into my chrysalis," he said once to Es- 
 telle. " One has to go through that phase before one can 
 be a butterfly. Remember, my pretty girl, you are only 
 burying an empty chrysalis when this broken thing is put 
 into the ground." 
 
 " You're very unkind to talk so," she declared. " You 
 might go on living if you liked, and you ought to try 
 for the sake of those who love you." 
 
 But he shook his head. 
 
 " One doesn't control these things. You know I've al- 
 ways told you that the length of the thread is no part of 
 our business, but only the spinning. I should have liked 
 to see you married; yet, after all, why not? I may be 
 
 437 
 
438 THE SPINNERS 
 
 there. I shall hope to beg a holiday on that occasion and 
 be in church." 
 
 He always spoke thus quite seriously. Death he re- 
 garded as no discontinuity, or destruction, of life, but 
 merely an alteration of environment. 
 
 At some personal cost Miss Ironsyde came to take leave 
 of him, when it seemed that his end was near. He kept 
 his bed now, and by conserving his strength gained a little 
 activity of mind. 
 
 He was troubled for Jenny's physical sufferings ; while 
 she, for her part, endeavoured to discuss Sabina's prob- 
 lems, but she could not interest the old man in them. 
 
 " Abel is safe with his father," said Mr. Churchouse. 
 " As for Sabina, I have left her a competency, and so have 
 you. One has been very heartily sorry for her. She will 
 have no anxiety when my will is read. I am leaving you 
 three books, Jenny. I will leave you more if you like. 
 My library as a whole is bequeathed to Estelle Waldron, 
 since I know nobody who values and respects books so 
 well." 
 
 " But Abel," she said. 
 
 " I have tried to establish his character and we may 
 find, after all, I did more than we think. Providence is 
 ever ready to water and tend the good seed that we sow. 
 But he must be made to abandon this fatal attitude to his 
 father. It is uncomfortable and inconvenient and helps 
 nobody. I shall talk to him, I hope, before I die. He is 
 coming home in a day or two." 
 
 But Abel delayed a week, at his master's request, that he 
 might help pull a field of mangels, and Mr. Churchouse 
 never saw him again. 
 
 During his last days Estelle spent much time with him. 
 He seldom mentioned any other person but himself. He 
 wandered in a disjointed fashion over the past and mixed 
 his recollections with his dreams. He remembered jests 
 and sometimes uttered them, then laughed; but often he 
 
SWAN SONG 439 
 
 laughed to himself without giving any reason for his 
 amusement. 
 
 He was thoughtful and apologetic. Indeed, when he 
 looked up into any face, he always said, " I mourn to give 
 you so much trouble." Latterly he confused his visitors, 
 but kept Estelle and Sabina clear in his mind. He fan- 
 cied that they had quarrelled and was always seeking to 
 reconcile them. Every morning he appeared anxious and 
 distressed until they stood by him together and declared 
 that they were the best of friends. Then he became tran- 
 quil. 
 
 " That being so," he said, " I shall depart in peace." 
 
 Estelle relieved the professional nurse and would read, 
 talk, or listen, as he wished. He spoke disjointedly one 
 day and wove reality and imagination together. 
 
 " Much good marble is wasted on graves," he declared. 
 " But it doesn't bring the dead to life. Do you believe in 
 the resurrection of the body, Estelle? I hope you find it 
 easy. That is one of the things I never was honestly 
 able to say I had grasped. Reason will fight against the 
 nobler tyranny of faith. The old soul in a glorified body 
 yet the same body, you understand. We shan't all be 
 in one pattern in heaven. We shall preserve our individ- 
 uality ; and yet I deprecate passing eternity in this taber- 
 nacle. Improvements may be counted upon, I think. 
 The art of the Divine Potter can doubtless make beautiful 
 the humblest and the most homely vessel." 
 
 " Nobody who loves you would have you changed," she 
 assured him. 
 
 Then his mind wandered away and he smiled. 
 
 " I listened to a street preacher once long, long ago 
 when I was young and he said that the road to everlast- 
 ing destruction was lined with women and gin shops. 
 Upon which a sailor-man, who listened to him, shouted out, 
 * Oh death, where is thy sting? ' The meeting dissolved 
 in a very tornado of laughter. Sailors have a great sense 
 
440 THE SPINNERS 
 
 of humour. It can take the place of a fire on a cold day. 
 One touch of humour makes the whole world kin. If you 
 have a baby, teach it to laugh as well as to walk. But I 
 think your baby will do that readily enough." 
 
 On another occasion he laughed suddenly to himself and 
 explained his amusement to Sabina, who sat by him. 
 
 " Eunominus, the heretic, boasted that he knew the 
 nature of God ; whereupon St. Basil instantly puzzled him 
 with twenty-one questions about the body of the ant ! " 
 
 Estelle also tried to make Mr. Churchouse discuss Abel 
 Dinnett. She told him of an interesting fact. 
 
 " I have got Ray to promise a big thing," she said. 
 " He hesitated, but he loved me too well to deny me. Be- 
 sides, feeling as I do, I couldn't take any denial. You see 
 Nature is so much greater than all else to me, and con- 
 trasted with her, our little man-made laws, often so mean 
 and hateful in their cowardly caution and cruel injustice, 
 look pitiful and beneath contempt. And I don't want to 
 come between Raymond and his eldest son. I won't I 
 won't do it. Abel is his first-born, and it may be cold- 
 blooded of me Ray said it was at first but I insist on 
 that. I've made him see, and I've made father see. I 
 feel so much about it, that I wouldn't marry him if he 
 didn't recognize Abel first and treat him as the first-born 
 ought to be treated." 
 
 " Abel Abel Dinnett," said the other, who had not 
 followed her speech. " A good-looking boy, but lawless. 
 He wants the world to bend to him ; and yet, if you'll be- 
 lieve me, there is a vein of fine sentiment in his nature. 
 With tears in his eyes he once told me that he had seen a 
 fellow pupil at school cruelly killing insects with a burning 
 glass ; and he had beaten the cruel lad and broken his glass. 
 That is all to the good. The difficulty for him is that he 
 was born out of wedlock. This great disability could 
 have been surmounted in America, Scotland, Ireland, Ger- 
 many, or, in fact, anywhere but in England. The law of 
 the natural child in this country would bring a blush to 
 
SWAN SONG 441 
 
 the cheek of a gorilla. But neither Church nor State will 
 lift a finger to right the infamy." 
 
 " We are always wanting to pluck the mote out of our 
 neighbour's eyes, and never see the beam in our own," she 
 answered. " Women will alter that some day and the 
 disgusting divorce laws, too. Perhaps these are the first 
 things they will alter, when they have the power." 
 
 " Who is going into Parliament ? " he asked. " Some- 
 body told me, but I forget. He was a friend of mine. 
 I remember that much." 
 
 " Ray hopes to get in. I am going to help him, if I 
 can." 
 
 " It is a great responsibility. Tell him, if he is elected, 
 to fight for the natural child. It would well become him 
 to do so. Let him rise to it. Our Saviour said, * Suffer 
 the little children to come unto Me.' The State, on the 
 contrary, says, ' Suffer the little children to be done to 
 death and put out of the way.' " 
 
 "Yes," she answered, " suffer fifty thousand little chil- 
 dren to be lost every year, because it is kinder to let them 
 perish, than help them to live under the wicked laws we 
 have planned to govern them." 
 
 But his mind collapsed and when she strove to bring it 
 back again, she could not. 
 
 Two days before he died, Estelle found him in deep dis- 
 tress. He begged to see her alone, and explained that he 
 had to confess a great sin. 
 
 " I ought to tell a priest," he said, " but I dare think 
 that you will do as well. If you absolve me, I shall know 
 I may hope to be forgiven. I have lived a double life, Es- 
 telle. I have pretended what was not true not merely 
 once or twice, but systematically, deliberately, callously." 
 
 " I don't believe it, dear Mister Churchouse. You 
 couldn't." 
 
 " I should never have believed it myself. But even the 
 old can surprise themselves, painfully sometimes. I have 
 lived with this perfidy for many years ; but I can't die with 
 
442 THE SPINNERS 
 
 it. There's always an inclination to confess our sins to a 
 fellow creature. To confess them to our Maker is quite 
 needless, because He knows them; but it's a quality of 
 human nature to feel better after imparting its errors to 
 another ear." 
 
 He broke off. 
 
 " What was I saying? I forget." 
 
 " That you'd done something ever so wicked and nobody 
 knew it." 
 
 " Yes, yes. The books the books I used to receive 
 from unknown admirers by post. My child, there were no 
 unknown admirers ! Nobody ever admired me, either se- 
 cretly or openly. Why should they? I used to send the 
 books to myself God forgive me." 
 
 " If I'd only known, I'd have sent you hundreds of 
 books," she said. " I did send you one or two." 
 
 " I know it they are my most precious possessions. 
 They served in some mysterious way to soothe my bad 
 conscience. It would be interesting to examine and find 
 out how they did. But my brain can't look into anything 
 subtle now. I knew you sent the books. My good angel 
 has recorded my thanks. You always increased my vital- 
 ity, Estelle. You are keeping me alive at present. You 
 have risen in the autumn of my life as a gracious dawn; 
 you have been the sun of my Indian summer. You will 
 be a good wife to Raymond. It seems only yesterday that 
 he was a little thing in short frocks, and Henry so proud 
 of him. Now Henry is dead, and Raymond wife-old and 
 in Parliament. A sound Liberal, like his father before 
 him." 
 
 " The election isn't till next year. But I hope he'll get 
 in. They say at Bridport he has a very good chance." 
 
 The day before he died, Mr. Churchouse seemed better 
 and talked to Estelle of another visit from her father. 
 
 " I always esteem his great good humour and fine Brit- 
 ish instinct to live and let live. That is where our secret 
 
SWAN SONG 443 
 
 lies. We ride Empire with such a loose rein, Estelle 
 the only way. You cannot dare to put a curb on proud 
 people. A paradox that that those who fast bind don't 
 fast find. The instinct of England's greatness is in your 
 father ; he is an epitome of our virtues. He has no imag- 
 ination, however. Nor has England. If she had, doubt- 
 less she would not do the great deeds that beggar imagina- 
 tion. That reminds me. There is one little gift that you 
 must have from my own hand. A work of imagination 
 a work of art. Nobody in the world would care about it 
 but you. A poem, in fact. I have written one or two 
 others, but I tore them up. I sent them to newspapers, 
 hoping to astonish you with them; but when they were 
 rejected I destroyed them. This poem I did not send. 
 Nobody has seen it but myself. Now I give it to you, 
 and I want you to read it aloud to me, that I may hear 
 how it sounds." 
 
 " How clever of you ! There's nothing you can't do. 
 I know I shall love it." 
 
 He pointed to a sheaf of papers on a table. 
 
 " The top one. It is a mournful subject, yet I hope 
 treated cheerfully. I wrote it before death was in sight ; 
 but I feel no more alarmed or concerned about death now 
 than I did then. You may think it is too simple. But 
 simplicity, though boring to the complex mind, is really 
 quite worth while. The childlike spirit there is much 
 to be said for it. No doubt I have missed a great deal by 
 limiting my interests ; but I have gained too in direct- 
 ness." 
 
 " There is a greatness about simplicity," she said. 
 
 " To be simple in my life and subtle in my thought was 
 my ambition at one time ; but I never could rise to subtlety. 
 The native bent was against it. The poem I do not 
 err in calling it a poem is called * Afterwards ' unless 
 you can think of a better title. If any obvious and glaring 
 faults strike you, tell me. No doubt there are many." 
 
444 THE SPINNERS 
 
 She read the two pages written in his little, careful and 
 almost feminine hand. 
 
 " When I am dead, the storm and stress 
 Of many-coloured consciousness 
 Like blossom petals fall away 
 And drops the calyx back to clay; 
 A man, not woman, makes the bed 
 When our night comes and we are dead. 
 
 " When I am dead, the ebb and flow 
 Of folk where I was wont to go, 
 Will never stay a moment's pace, 
 Or miss along the street my face. 
 Yet thoughts may wake and things be said 
 By one or two when I am dead. 
 
 " When I am dead, the sunset light 
 Will fill the .gap upon the height 
 In summer time, but on the plain 
 Sink down as winter comes again 
 And none who sees the evening red 
 Will know I loved it, who am dead. 
 
 " When I am dead, upon my mound 
 Exotic flow'rs may first be found, 
 And not until they've blown away 
 Will other blossoms come to stay. 
 A daisy growing overhead 
 Brings gentle pleasure to the dead. 
 
 " When I am dead, I'd love to see 
 An amber thrush hop over me 
 And bend his ear, as he would know 
 What I am whispering down below. 
 May many a song-bird find his bread 
 Upon my grave when I am dead. 
 
 " When I am dead, and years shall pass, 
 The scythe will cut the darnel grass 
 Now and again for decency, 
 Where we forgotten people lie. 
 O'er ancient graves the living tread 
 With great impertinence on the dead. 
 
 " When I am dead, all I have done 
 Must vanish, like the evening sun. 
 My book about the bells may stay 
 
SWAN SONG 445 
 
 Behind me for a fleeting day; 
 But will not very oft be read 
 By anybody when I'm dead." 
 
 She stopped and smiled with her eyes full of tears. 
 
 " I had meant to write another verse," he explained, 
 " but I put it off and it's too late now. Such as it is, it 
 is yours. Does it seem to you to be interesting? " 
 
 " It's very interesting indeed, and very beautiful. I 
 shall always value it as my greatest treasure." 
 
 " Read it to your children," he said, " and if the op- 
 portunity occurs, take them sometimes to see my grave. 
 The spot is long chosen. Let there be no gardening upon 
 it out of good heart but bad taste. I should wish it left 
 largely to Nature. There will be daisies for your babies 
 to pick. I forget the text I selected. It's in my will." 
 
 He bade her good-bye more tenderly than usual, as 
 though he knew that he would never see her again, and the 
 next morning Bridetown heard that the old man had died 
 in his sleep. The people felt sorry, for he left no enemies, 
 and his many kindly thoughts and deeds were remembered 
 for a little while. 
 
CHAPTER XIX 
 
 NEW WORK FOR ABEL, 
 
 WITH a swift weaver's knot John Best mended the flying 
 yarn. Then he turned from a novice at the Gill Spinner 
 and listened, not very patiently, to one who interrupted 
 his lesson. 
 
 " It's rather a doubtful thing that you should always 
 be about the place now you've left it, Levi," he said to Mr. 
 Baggs. " It would be better judgment and more decent 
 on your part if you kept away." 
 
 " You may think so," answered the hackler, " but I do 
 not. And until the figure of my pension is settled, I shall 
 come and go and take no denial." 
 
 " It is settled. He don't change. He's said you shall 
 have ten shillings a week and no more, so that it will be." 
 
 " And what if I decline to take ten shillings a week, 
 after fifty years of work in his beastly Mill ? " 
 
 " Then you can do the other thing and go without. 
 You want it both ways, you do." 
 
 "I want justice no more. Common justice, I sup- 
 pose, can be got in Dorset as elsewhere. I ought to have 
 had a high testimonial when I left this blasted place a 
 proper presentation for all to see, and a public feed and a 
 purse of sovereigns at the least." 
 
 " That's what I mean when I say you can't have it both 
 ways," answered Mr. Best. " To be nice and pick words 
 and consider your feelings is waste of time, so I tell you 
 that you can't grizzle and grumble and find fault with 
 everything and everybody for fifty years, and then expect 
 people to bow down and worship you and collect a purse 
 of gold when you retire. If we flew any flags about you, 
 
 446 
 
NEW WORK FOR ABEL 447 
 
 it would be because we'd got rid of you. Mister Ironsyde 
 don't like you, and why should he? You've always been 
 up against the employer and you've never lost a chance 
 to poison the minds of the employed. There's no good 
 will in you and never was, and where you could hang us 
 up in the Mill and make difficulties without getting your- 
 self into trouble, you've always took great pleasure in so 
 doing. Did you ever pull with me, or anybody, if you 
 could help it? Never. You pulled against. You'd often 
 have liked to treat us like the hemp and tear us to pieces 
 on your rougher's hackle. And how does such a man ex- 
 pect anybody to care about him? There was no reason 
 why you should have had a pension at all, in my opinion. 
 You've been blessed with good health and no family, and 
 you've never spent a shilling on another fellow creature 
 in your life. Therefore, it's more than justice that you 
 get ten shillings, and not less as you seem to think." 
 
 Mr. Baggs glowered at John during this harangue. 
 His was the steadfast attitude of the egoist, who sees all 
 life in terms of his own interest alone. 
 
 " We've got to fight for ourselves in this world since 
 there's none other to fight for us," he said, " and, of 
 course, you take his side. You've licked Ironsyde boots 
 all your life, and nothing an Ironsyde can do is wrong. 
 But I might have known the man that's done the wicked- 
 ness he's done, and deserts his child and let his only son 
 work on the land, wouldn't meet me fair. There's no hon- 
 our or honesty in the creature, but if he thinks I'm going 
 to take this slight without lifting my voice against it, he's 
 wrong. To leave the works and sneak out of 'em un- 
 mourned and without a bit of talk and a testimonial was 
 shameful enough; but ten shilling a week no! The 
 country shall ring about that and he'll find his credit 
 shaken. 'Tis enough to lose him his election to Parlia- 
 ment, and I hope it will do so." 
 
 Best stared. 
 
 " You're a cracked old fool, and not a spark of proper 
 
448 THE SPINNERS 
 
 pride or gratitude in you. Feeling like that, I wonder you 
 dare touch his money ; but you're the sort who would take 
 gifts with one hand and stab the giver with the other. I 
 hope he'll change his mind yet and give you no pension 
 at all." 
 
 Levi, rather impressed with this unusual display of feel- 
 ing from the foreman, growled a little longer, then went his 
 way ; while in John there arose a determination to prevent 
 Mr. Baggs from visiting the scene of his old activities. At 
 present force of habit drew the old man to spend half his 
 time here; and now, when Best had returned to the Gill 
 Spinner, Levi prowled off to his old theatre of work, en- 
 tered the hackling shop and criticised the new hackler. 
 His successor was young and stood in awe of him at first ; 
 but awe was not a quality the veteran inspired for long. 
 Already Joe Ash began to grow restive under Levi's criti- 
 cisms, and dimly to feel that the old hackler was better 
 away. To-day Mr. Baggs allowed the resentment awak- 
 ened by Best's criticisms to take shape in offensive com- 
 ments at the expense of his young successor. He was of 
 that order of beings who, when kicked, rests not until he 
 has kicked somebody again. 
 
 But to-day the evil star of Mr. Baggs was in ascendant, 
 and when he told the youth that he wasted half his strength 
 and had evidently been taught his business by a fool, Levi 
 was called to suffer a spirited retort. Joe Ash came from 
 the Midlands ; his vocabulary was wider than that of Mr. 
 Baggs, and he soon had the old man gasping. Finally he 
 ordered him out of the shop, and told him that if he did 
 not go he would be put out. 
 
 " Strength or no strength," he said, " I've got enough 
 for you, so hop out of this and don't come back. If you're 
 to be free of my shop, I leave; and that's all there is to 
 it." 
 
 Mr. Baggs departed, having hoped that he might live to 
 see the young man hung with his own long line. He then 
 pursued his way by the river, labouring under acute emo- 
 
NEW WORK FOR ABEL 449 
 
 tions, and half a mile down stream met a lad engaged in 
 angling. 
 
 Abel Dinnett had returned home and was making holiday 
 until his mother should discover work for him, or he him- 
 self be able to get occupation. 
 
 For the moment Sabina found herself sufficiently busy 
 packing up her possessions and preparing for the forth- 
 coming sale at ' The Magnolias.' 
 
 She was waiting to find a new home until Abel's future 
 labour appeared; but, in secret, Raymond Ironsyde had 
 undertaken to obtain it, and she knew that henceforth she 
 would live at Bridport. 
 
 Mr. Baggs poured out his wrongs, but he did not begin 
 immediately. Failing adult ears, Abel's served him, and 
 he proceeded to declare that the new hackler was a worth- 
 less rogue, who did not know his business and would never 
 earn his money. 
 
 Abel, however, had reached a standard of intelligence 
 that no longer respected Mr. Baggs. 
 
 " I don't go to the works now," he said, " and never shall 
 again. I don't care nothing about them. My mother 
 and me are going to leave Bridetown when I get a job." 
 
 " No doubt no doubt. Though I dare say your talk 
 is sour grapes seeing as you'll never come by your 
 rights." 
 
 Abel lifted his eyes to the iron-roofed buildings up the 
 valley. 
 
 " Oh yes, I could," he said. " That man wants to win 
 me now. He's going to be married, and she her he's 
 going to marry told my mother that he's wishful for me 
 to be his proper son and be treated according. But I 
 won't have his damned friendship now. It's too late now. 
 You can't drive hate out of a man with gifts." 
 
 " They ain't gifts they're your right and due. 'Tis 
 done to save his face before the people, so they'll forgive 
 his past and help send him into Parliament. Look at me 
 fifty years of service and ten shillings a week pension ! 
 
450 THE SPINNERS 
 
 It shall be known and 'twill lose him countless votes, please 
 God. A dog like that in Parliament ! 'Twould be a dis- 
 grace to the nation. And you go on hating him if you're 
 a brave boy. Every honest man hates him, same as I do. 
 Twenty shillings I ought to have had, if a penny." 
 
 " Fling his money back in his face," said Abel. " No- 
 body did ought to touch his money, or work for it. And 
 if every man and woman refused to go in his works, then 
 he'd be ruined." 
 
 " The wicked flourish like the green bay tree in this 
 country, because there's such a cruel lot of 'em, and they 
 back each other up against the righteous," declared Levi. 
 " But a time's coming, and you'll live to see it, when the 
 world will rise against their iniquity." 
 
 " Don't take his money, then." 
 
 " It ain't his money. It's my money. He's keeping 
 back my money. When that John Best drops out, as he 
 ought to do, for he's long past his work, will he get ten 
 shillings a week? Two pound, more like; and all because 
 he cringes and lies and lets the powers of darkness trample 
 on him ! And may the money turn to poison in his mouth 
 when he does get it." 
 
 " Everything about Ironsyde is poison," added Abel. 
 " And that girl that was a friend to me he's poisoned 
 her now, and I won't know her no more. I won't neigh- 
 bour with anybody that has a good word for him, and I 
 won't breathe the same air with him much longer; and I 
 told my mother if she took a penny from him, I'd throw 
 her over, too." 
 
 " Quite right. I wish you was strong enough to punish 
 him; but if you was, he'd come whining to you and pray 
 you not to. Mn like him only make war on women and 
 the weak." 
 
 Abel listened. 
 
 " I'll punish him if he lives long enough," he said. 
 " That's what I'm after. I'll bide my time." 
 
 " And for him to dare to get up and ask the people to 
 
NEW WORK FOR ABEL 451 
 
 send him to Parliament. But they won't. He's too well 
 known in these parts for that. Who's he that he should 
 be lifted up to represent honest, God-fearing men? " 
 
 " If there was anything to stop him getting in, I'd do 
 it," declared Abel. 
 
 " 'Tis for us, with weight of years and experience, to 
 keep him out. All sensible people will vote against him, 
 and the more that know the truth of him the fewer will 
 support him. And Republican though I am, I'd rather 
 vote for the Tory than him. And as for you, if you stood 
 up at his meetings when the time comes, while they were all 
 cheering the wretch, and cried out that you was his son 
 that would be sure to lose him a good few God-fearing 
 votes. You think of it; you might hinder him and even 
 work him a mint of harm that way." 
 
 The old man left Abel to consider his advice and the 
 angler sat watching his float for another hour. But his 
 thoughts were on what he had heard ; and he felt no more 
 interest in his sport. 
 
 Presently he wound up his line and went home. He 
 was attracted by Levi's suggestion and guessed that he 
 might create great feeling against his father in that way. 
 Himself, he did not shrink from the ordeal in imagination ; 
 indeed his inherent vanity rather courted it. But when he 
 told his mother what he might do, she urged him to at- 
 tempt no such thing. Indeed she criticised him sharply 
 for such a foolish thought. 
 
 " You'll lose all sympathy from the people," she said, 
 " and be flung out ; and none will care twopence for you. 
 When you tried to burn the place down and he forgave 
 you, that made a feeling for him, and since then 'tis well 
 known by those that matter, that he's done all he could 
 for you under the circumstances." 
 
 " That's what he hasn't." 
 
 " That's what he would if you'd let him. So it's silly 
 to think you've got any more grievances, and if you get 
 up and make a row at one of his meetings, you'll only be 
 
452 THE SPINNERS 
 
 chucked into the street. You're nobody now, through 
 your own fault, and you've made people sorry for your 
 father instead of sorry for you, because you're such a pig- 
 headed fool about him and won't see sense." 
 
 The boy flushed and glared at his mother, who seldom 
 spoke in this vein. 
 
 " If you wasn't my mother, I'd hit you down for that," 
 he said, clenching his fists. " What do you know about 
 things to talk to me like that? Who are you to take his 
 side and cringe to him? If you can't judge him, there's 
 plenty that can, and it's you who are pig-headed, not me, 
 because you don't see I'm fighting your battle for you. 
 It may seem too late to fight for you; but it's never too 
 late to hate a wicked beast, and if I can help to keep him 
 from getting what he wants I will, and I don't care how I 
 do it, either." 
 
 She looked at him with little love in her eyes. 
 
 " You're onlv being a scourge to me not to him," she 
 answered. " You can't hurt him, however much you want 
 to, and you can't hurt his name or reputation, because 
 time heals all and he's done much to others that will make 
 them forget what he did to me. I forget myself some- 
 times, so 'tis certain enough the people do. And if I can, 
 surely to God you can, if only for my sake. You're pun- 
 ishing me for being your mother, not him for being your 
 father just contrary to what you want." 
 
 " That's all I get, then, for standing up for you against 
 him, and keeping it before him and the people what he's 
 done against you. Didn't you tell me years and years ago 
 I'd fight your battles some day? And now, when I'm got 
 clever enough to set about it, you curse me." 
 
 " I don't curse you, Abel. But time is past for fight- 
 ing battles. There's nothing to fight about now." 
 
 " We're punishing him cruel by not taking his money ; 
 but there's more to do yet," he said. " And I'll do it if I 
 can. And you mind that I'm fighting against him for 
 your sake, and if you're grown too old and too tired to 
 
NEW WORK FOR ABEL 453 
 
 hate the man any more, I haven't. I can hate him for you 
 as well as myself." 
 
 " And the hate comes back on you," she said. " It's 
 long past the time for all that. You've got plenty of 
 brains and you know that this passion against him is only 
 harming yourself. For God's sake drop it. You say 
 you're a man now. Then be a man and take man's views 
 and look on ahead and think of your future life. Far 
 from helping me, you're only hindering me. We've come 
 to a time when life's altered and the old life here is done. 
 We're going to begin life together you and me and 
 you're going to make our fortunes ; but it's a mad look- 
 out if you mean to put all your strength into hating them 
 that have no hate for you. It will make you bitter and 
 useless, and you'll grow up a sour, friendless creature, like 
 Levi Baggs. What's he got out of all his hate and un- 
 kindness to the world? " 
 
 Abel considered. 
 
 " He hates everybody," he said. " It's no use to hate 
 everybody, because then everybody will hate you. I don't 
 hate everybody. I only hate him." 
 
 She argued, but knew that she had not changed her son. 
 And then, when he was gone again, fearing that he might 
 do what he threatened, she went to see Estelle Waldron. 
 
 They met on the way to see each other, for Estelle had 
 heard from Raymond that work was found for Abel and, 
 as next step in the plot, it was necessary for Sabina to 
 go to a small spinning mill in Bridport herself. Iron- 
 syde's name was not to transpire. 
 
 Gladly enough the mother undertook her task. 
 
 " He's out of hand," she said, " and away from home 
 half his time. He roams about and listens to bad coun- 
 sellors. He's worse than ever since he's idle. He's got 
 another evil thought now, for his thoughts foul his reason, 
 as well I know thoughts can." 
 
 She told Estelle what Abel had declared he would do. 
 
 " You'd best let Mister Ironsyde know," she said, " and 
 
454 THE SPINNERS 
 
 he'll take steps according. If the boy can be kept out 
 from any meeting it would be wisest. But I'm powerless. 
 I've wearied my tongue begging and blaming and praying 
 to him to use his sense ; but it's beyond my power to make 
 him understand. There's a devil in him and nobody can 
 cast it out." 
 
 " He won't speak to me now. Poor Abel yes, it's 
 something like a devil. I'll tell his father. We were very 
 
 hopeful about the future until But if he gets to 
 
 work, it may sweeten him. He'll have good wages and 
 meet nice people." 
 
 " I wish it had been farther off." 
 
 " So did I," answered Estelle ; " but his father wants 
 him under his own eye and will put him into something 
 better the moment he can. You won't mention this to 
 Abel, and he won't hear it there, because the workers don't 
 know it ; but Raymond has a large interest in the Mill 
 really." 
 
 " I'll not mention it. I'll go to-morrow, and the boy 
 will know nothing save that I've got him a good job." 
 
 " He can begin next month ; and that will help him every 
 way, I hope." 
 
 So things fell out, and within a month Abel was at work. 
 He believed his mother solely responsible for this occupa- 
 tion. She had yet to find a home at Bridport, so he came 
 and went from Bridetown. 
 
 He was soon deeply interested and only talked about his 
 labours with a steam engine. Of his troubles he ceased to 
 speak, and for many days never mentioned his father's 
 name. 
 
CHAPTER XX 
 
 IDEAL.S 
 
 AN event which seemed more or less remote, came suddenly 
 to the forefront of Raymond Ironsyde's life, for ill-health 
 hastened the retirement of the sitting member and a parlia- 
 mentary bye-election was called for. 
 
 Having undertaken the constituency he could not turn 
 back, though the sudden demand had not been expected. 
 But he found plenty of enthusiastic helpers and his own 
 personality had made him many friends. 
 
 It was indeed upon the significance of personality that 
 much turned, and incidentally the experiences into which 
 he now entered served to show him all that personality may 
 mean. Estelle rejoiced that he should now so swiftly 
 learn what had so long been apparent to her. She al- 
 ways declared an enthusiasm for personality ; to her it 
 seemed the force behind everything and the mainspring of 
 all movement. Lack of personality meant stagnation ; but 
 granted personality, then advance was possible almost 
 inevitable. 
 
 He caught her meaning and appreciated what followed 
 from it. But he saw that personality demands freedom 
 before its fullest expression and highest altitude are at- 
 tainable. That altitude had never been reached as yet 
 even by the most liberty-loving people. 
 
 " There's no record in all the world of what man might 
 do under conditions of real liberty," said Estelle. " It 
 has never been possible so far; but I do believe history 
 shows that the nearer we approach to it, the more beauti- 
 ful life becomes for everybody." 
 
 Raymond admitted so much and agreed that the world 
 had yet to learn what it might achieve under a nobler dis- 
 pensation of freedom. 
 
 455 
 
456 THE SPINNERS 
 
 " Think of the art, the thought, the leisure for good 
 things, if the ceaseless fight against bad things were only 
 ended; think of the inspirations that personality will be 
 free to express some day," she said. 
 
 But he shattered her dreams sometimes. She would 
 never suffer him to declare any advance impossible ; yet she 
 had to listen, when he explained that countless things she 
 cried for were impracticable under existing circumstances. 
 
 " You want to get to the goal without running the race, 
 sweetheart," he told her once. " Before this and this can 
 possibly happen, that and that must happen. House- 
 building begins at the cellars, not the roof." 
 
 She wrestled with political economy and its bearings on 
 all that was meant by democracy. She was patient and 
 strove to master detail and keep within the domain of 
 reality. But, after all, she taught him more than he could 
 teach her ; because her thoughts sprung from an imagina- 
 tion touched with genius, while he was contented to take 
 things as he found them and distrust emotion and intuition. 
 
 She exploded ideas in the ordered chambers of his mind. 
 The proposition that labour was not a commodity quite 
 took him off his balance. Yet he proved too logical to 
 deny it when Estelle convinced his reason. 
 
 " That fact belongs to the root of all the future, I be- 
 lieve," she said. " From it all the flowers and seed we 
 hope for ought to come, and the interpretation of every- 
 thing vital. Labour and the labourer aren't two different 
 things; they're one and the same thing. His labour is 
 part of every man, and it can no more be measured and 
 calculated away from him than his body and soul can. 
 But it is the body and soul that must regulate labour, not 
 labour the body and soul. So you've got to regard labour 
 and the rights of labour as part of the rights of man, 
 and not a thing to be bought and sold like a pound of 
 tea. You see that? Labour, in fact, is as sacred as hu- 
 manity and its rights are sacred too." 
 
 " So are the rights of property," he answered, but 
 
IDEALS 457 
 
 doubtfully, for he knew at heart that the one proposition 
 did not by any means embrace the other. Indeed Estelle 
 contradicted him very forcibly. 
 
 " Not the least bit in the world," she declared. " They 
 are as far apart as the poles. There's nothing the least 
 sacred about property. The rights of property are cas- 
 ual. They generally depend on all sorts of things that 
 don't matter. They happen through the changes and 
 chances of life, and human whims and fads and the pure 
 accident of heredity and descent. They are all on a lower 
 level; they are all suspect, whereas the rights of labour 
 are a part of humanity." 
 
 But he followed her parry with a sharp riposte. 
 
 " Remember what happened when somebody promised to 
 marry me," he said. " Remember that, as a principle of 
 rectitude, I have recognised my son and accepted your 
 very ' accident of descent ' as chief reason for according 
 him all a first-born's rights. That was your instinct to- 
 wards right his rights of property." 
 
 " It was righteousness, not rights of property that made 
 you decide," she assured him. " Abel has no rights of 
 property. The law ignores his rights to be alive at all, I 
 believe. The law calls him * the son of none,' and if you 
 have no parents, you can't really exist. But the rights 
 of labour are above human law and founded in humanity. 
 They are Abel's, yours, everybody's. The man who 
 works, by that fact commands the rights of labour. Be- 
 sides, circumstances alter cases." 
 
 " Yes, and may again," he replied. " We can't deny the 
 difficulties in this personal experience of mine. But I'm 
 beginning to think the boy's not normal. I very much fear 
 there's a screw loose." 
 
 " Don't think that. He's a very clever boy." 
 
 " And yet Sabina tells me frankly that his bitterness 
 against me keeps pace with his growing intelligence. In- 
 stead of his wits defeating his bad temper, as they do 
 sooner or later with most sane people, the older he gets, the 
 
458 THE SPINNERS 
 
 more his dislike increases and the less trouble he takes to 
 control it." 
 
 66 If that were so, of course circumstances might alter 
 the case again," she admitted. " But I don't believe 
 there's a weak spot like that. There's something retarded 
 some confusion of thought, some kind of knot in his 
 mind that isn't smoothed out yet. You've been infinitely 
 patient and we'll go on being infinitely patient to- 
 gether." 
 
 This difficult matter she dropped for the present; but 
 finding him some days later in a recipient mood, followed 
 up her cherished argument, that labour must be counted 
 a commodity no more. 
 
 " Listen to me, Ray," she said. " Very soon you'll be 
 too busy to listen to me at all these are the last chances 
 for me before your meetings begin. But really what I'm 
 saying will be splendidly useful in speeches." 
 
 " All very well if getting in was all that mattered," he 
 told her. " I can't echo all your ideas, Chicky, and 
 speeches have a way of rising up against one at awkward 
 moments afterwards." 
 
 " At any rate, you grant the main point," she said, 
 " and so you must grant what follows from it ; and if you 
 grant that, and put it in your manifesto, you'll lose a few 
 votes, but you'll gain hundreds. If labour's not a com- 
 modity, but to be regulated by body and soul, then wages 
 must be regulated by body and soul too. Or, if you want 
 to put it in a way for a crowd to understand, you can 
 say that we give even a steam-engine the oil it must have 
 before it begins to work, so how can we deny a man the 
 oil he wants before he begins to work? " 
 
 " That means a minimum of wages." 
 
 " Yes, a minimum consistent with human needs, below 
 which wages cannot and must not fail. That minimum 
 should be just as much taken for granted as the air a 
 man breathes, or the water he drinks, or the free education 
 he gets as a boy. It isn't wages really; it's recognition 
 
IDEALS 459 
 
 of a man's right to live and share the privileges of life, 
 and be self-respecting, just because he is a man. Every- 
 body who is born, Ray, ought to have the unquestioned 
 right to live, and the amplest opportunity to become a 
 good and useful citizen. After that is granted, then wages 
 should begin, and each man, or woman, should have full 
 freedom and opportunity to earn what he, or she, was 
 worth. That does away with the absurd idea of equality, 
 which can only be created artificially and would breed dis- 
 aster if we did create it." 
 
 " There's no such thing as equality in human nature, 
 any more than in any other nature, Estelle. Seeds from 
 the same pod are different some weak, some strong. 
 But I grant the main petition. The idea's first rate a 
 firm basis of right to reasonable life, and security for 
 every human being as our low-water mark; while, on that 
 foundation, each may lift an edifice according to their 
 power. So that none who has the power to rise above the 
 minimum would be prevented from doing so, and no Trades 
 Union tyranny should interfere to prevent the strong man 
 working eight hours a day if he desires to do so, because 
 the weaker one can only work seven." 
 
 " I think the Trades Unions only want to prevent men 
 being handicapped out of the race at the start," she an- 
 swered. " They know as well as we do, that men are not 
 born equal in mind or body ; but rightly and reasonably, 
 they want them all to start equal as far as conditions go. 
 The race is to the strong and the prize is to the strong; 
 but all, at least, should have power to train for the race 
 and start with equal opportunities to win. There's such 
 a lot to be done." 
 
 " There is," he admitted. " The handicap you talk of 
 is created for thousands and thousands before they are 
 born at all." 
 
 " Think of being handicapped out of the race before 
 you are born! " she cried. " What could be more unjust 
 and cruel and wicked than that? " 
 
460 THE SPINNERS 
 
 " Very few will put the unborn before the living, or 
 think of a potential child rather than the desires of the 
 parents selfish though they may be. It's a free coun- 
 try, and we don't know enough to start stopping people 
 from having a hand in the next generation if they decide 
 to do so." 
 
 But her enthusiasm was not quenched by difficulties. 
 
 " We want science and politics and good will to work 
 together," she said. 
 
 He returned to the smaller argument. 
 
 " It's a far cry to what you want, yet I for one don't 
 shrink from it. The better a man is, the larger share he 
 should have of the profits of any enterprise he helps to 
 advance. Then wages would take the shape of his share 
 in the profits, and you might easily find a head workman 
 of genius drawing more out of a business than say, a 
 junior partner, who is a fool and not nearly so vital to 
 the enterprise as he. But, you see, if we say that, we 
 argue in a circle, for the junior partner, ass though he is, 
 represents oil and fuel, which are just as important as the 
 clever workman's brains in fact, his brains can't work 
 without them. Capital and labour are two halves of a 
 whole and depend upon each other, as much as men depend 
 on women and women on men. Capital does a great deal 
 more than pay labour wages, remember. It educates his 
 children, builds his houses and doctors his ailments. Soon 
 so they tell me capital will be appropriated to look 
 after labour's old age also, and cheer his manhood with 
 the knowledge that his age is safe." 
 
 " You don't grudge any of these things, Ray? " 
 
 " Not one. Every man should have security. But, 
 after all, capital cannot be denied its rights. It has got 
 rights of some sort, surely? Socialists would kill the 
 goose that lays the golden eggs ; but though they lack 
 power yet to kill the goose, they possess plenty of power 
 to frighten it away to foreign shores, where it can build 
 
IDEALS 461 
 
 its nest a bit more hopefully than here. Many, who scent 
 repudiation and appropriation, are flying already. Capi- 
 tal is diminishing, and there seems a fair chance of labour 
 being over-coddled, at the expense of capital, when the 
 Liberals come in again. If that happens, labour is weak- 
 ened as well as capital. But both are essential to the 
 power and well-being of the State. If we ever had another 
 war, which God forbid, labour and capital would have 
 to sink all differences and go to battle together unless 
 we meant to be defeated. Both are vital to our salva- 
 tion." 
 
 " Then give labour an interest in the blessing of capi- 
 tal," she said. " Open labour's eyes to the vital values of 
 capital its strength as well as weakness. Let the units 
 of labour share the interests of their employers and each 
 become a capitalist in their own right. What does it 
 matter where the capital is as long as the nation has got 
 it safe? You might make England a thousand times 
 richer if all those in the country, who want to save money, 
 had the power to save." 
 
 " How can we? There's not enough to go round," he 
 told her. But she declared that no argument. 
 
 " Then create conditions under which there might be 
 much more. Let the workers be owners, too. If the own- 
 ers only took their ownership in a different spirit and felt 
 no man is more than a trustee for all if they were like 
 you, Ray, who are a worker and an owner both, what great 
 things might happen ! Make all industry co-operation, 
 in reality as well as theory, and a real democracy must 
 come out of it. It's bound to come." 
 
 " Well, I suppose nothing can help it coming. We are 
 great on free institutions in this country and they get 
 freer every year." 
 
 So they argued, much at one in heart, and an impartial 
 listener had felt that it was within the power of the 
 woman's intelligence and the man's energy and common 
 
462 THE SPINNERS 
 
 sense, to help the world as far as individuals can, did 
 chance and the outcome of their union afford them oppor- 
 tunity. 
 
 But Estelle knew that good ideas were of little value in 
 themselves. Seed is of no account if the earth on which it 
 falls be poisoned, and a good idea above all, needs good 
 will to welcome it. Good will to the inspirations of man is 
 as sunshine, rain, sweet soil to the seed ; without good will 
 all thinking must perish, or at best lie dormant. She 
 wondered how much of good seed had perished under the 
 bad weather of human weakness, prejudice and jealousy. 
 But she was young, and hope her rightful heritage. The 
 blessed word ' reconstruction ' seemed to her as musical as 
 a ring of bells. 
 
 " There are some things you never will be able to ex- 
 press in political terms, and life is one of them," Ernest 
 Churchouse had assured her; but she was not convinced 
 of it. She still reverenced politics and looked to it to play 
 husbandman, triumph over party and presently shine out, 
 like a universal sun, whose sole warmth was good will to 
 man. 
 
 And as she felt personally to Raymond's work, so did 
 she want the world of women to feel to all men's work. 
 She would not have them claim their rights in the argu- 
 ment of parity of intellect, for that she felt to be vain. 
 It was by the virtue of disparity that their equality should 
 appear. Their virtue and essential aid depended on the 
 difference. The world wanted women, not to do what men 
 had done, but to bring to the task the special qualities and 
 distinctive genius of womanhood to complement and crown 
 the labour of manhood. The mighty structure was grow- 
 ing ; but it would never be finished without the saving grace 
 of woman's thought and the touch of woman's hand. The 
 world's work needed them not for the qualities they 
 shared with men, but for the qualities men lacked and they 
 possessed. If Raymond represented the masculine worker, 
 she hoped that she might presently stand in the ranks of 
 
IDEALS 463 
 
 the women, and doubted not that great women would arise 
 to lead her. 
 
 She remembered that the Roman element of humanity 
 was described as representing the male spirit, while the 
 Greek stood for the female; and she could easily dream a 
 blend of the two destined to produce a spirit greater than 
 either. Love quickened her visions and added the glow 
 of life to her hopes. 
 
 So together she and her future husband prepared for 
 their wedded days, and if ever a man and woman faced the 
 future with steadfast determination to do justly and serve 
 their kind with the best of their united powers, this man 
 and woman did. 
 
 They were to be married after the election, and that 
 would take place early in the coming year. 
 
CHAPTER XXI 
 
 ATEOPOS 
 
 IRON,SYDE for once found himself part of a machine, and 
 by no means the most important part. He fought the 
 election resolutely and spared no energy. The attraction 
 of the contest grew upon him, and since he contended 
 against a personal acquaintance, one who rated sports- 
 manship as highly as Arthur Waldron himself, the en- 
 counter proceeded on rational lines. It became exceed- 
 ingly strenuous in the later stages and Raymond's agent, 
 from an attitude of certainty, grew more doubtful. But 
 the personal factor told for the Liberal. He was popular 
 in the constituency and Waldron, himself a strong Con- 
 servative, whose vote must necessarily be cast against his 
 future son-in-law, preached the moral. 
 
 " If you beat us, Ray, it will be entirely owing to the 
 fact that you played cricket and football in the public 
 eye for twenty years," he asserted and believed. 
 
 The Liberal Committee room was at * The Seven Stars/ 
 for Mr. Legg supported the cause of democracy and 
 pinned his highest hopes thereto. He worked hard for 
 Ironsyde and, on the sole occasion when painful incidents 
 threatened to spoil a public meeting, Job exercised tact 
 and saved the situation. 
 
 At one of the last of his gatherings, in the great, new 
 public room of ' The Seven Stars,' Ironsyde had been 
 suddenly confronted with his son. Abel attended this 
 meeting of his father's supporters and attempted to inter- 
 rupt it. He had arrived primed with words and meant to 
 declare himself before the people ; but when the time came, 
 he was nervous and lost his head. Sitting and listening 
 
 grew to an agony. He could not wait till question time 
 
 464 
 
ATROPOS 465 
 
 and felt a force within him crying to him, to get upon his 
 feet and finish the thing he had planned to do. But Job, 
 who was among the stewards, kept watchful eyes upon the 
 benches, and Abel had hardly stood up, when he recognised 
 him. Before the boy had shouted half a dozen incoherent 
 words, Mr. Legg and a policeman were at his side. 
 
 He sat far down the hall, and the little disturbance he 
 had been able to create was hardly appreciated. For 
 Raymond now neared the end of his speech and it had 
 contained matter which aroused attention from all who 
 listened to it, awakened disquiet in some, but enthusiasm 
 among the greater number. He was telling of such hopes 
 and desires as he and Estelle shared, and though an in- 
 different speaker, the purity of his ambitions and their 
 far-reaching significance challenged intelligent listeners. 
 
 In less than half a minute Abel was removed. He did 
 not struggle, but his first instinct was great relief to be 
 outside. Not until later did his reverse breed wrath. His 
 father had not seen him and when Ironsyde inquired after- 
 wards, what the trouble was, Mr. Legg evaded the facts. 
 But he looked to it that Abel should be powerless to renew 
 disturbances. He warned those who controlled the re- 
 maining meetings not to admit him, and henceforth kept 
 at the doors a man who knew Abel. Mr. Legg also saw 
 Sabina, who was now much in Bridport concerned with a 
 little house that she had taken, and the boy's mother im- 
 plored him to do no more evil. To her surprise he ad- 
 mitted that he had been wrong. But he was dark and 
 stormy. She saw but little of him and did not know how 
 he occupied his leisure, or spent his wages. 
 
 There is no doubt that, at this time, Abel sank out of 
 mind with those most interested in him. Estelle was en- 
 tirely preoccupied with the election, and when once the 
 lad's new work had been determined and he went to do it, 
 Raymond dismissed him for the present from his thoughts. 
 He felt grateful to Sabina for falling in with his wishes 
 and hoped that, since she was now definitely on his side, 
 
466 THE SPINNERS 
 
 a time might soon come when she would be able to influence 
 her son. Indeed Sabina herself was more hopeful, and 
 when Estelle came to see her in Bridport, declared that 
 Abel kept regular hours and appeared to be interested in 
 his work. 
 
 Neither she nor anybody belonging to him heard of the 
 boy's escapade at the meeting, for upon that subject Job 
 Legg felt it wisest to be silent. And when the penultimate 
 meeting passed, the spirit of it was such that those best 
 able to judge again felt very sanguine for Ironsyde. He 
 had created a good impression and won a wide measure of 
 support. He had worked hard, traversed all the ground 
 and left the people under no shadow of doubt as to his 
 opinions. Bridetown was for him; West Haven and Brid- 
 port were said to be largely in his favour, but the out- 
 lying agricultural district inclined towards his rival. 
 Raymond had, however, been at great pains to win the 
 suffrage of the farmers, and his last meeting was on their 
 account. 
 
 Before him now lay the promise of two days' rest, and 
 he accepted them very thankfully, for he began to grow 
 weary in mind and body. He had poured his vitality into 
 the stru^s-le which, started more or less as a sporting 
 event, gradually waxed into a serious and all-important 
 matter. And as his knowledge increased and his physical 
 energy waned, a cloud dulled his enthusiasm at times and 
 more than once he asked himself if it was all worth while 
 if this infinite trouble and high tension were expended 
 to the wisest purpose on these ambitions. He had heard 
 things from politicians, who came to speak for him, that 
 discouraged him. He had found that single-mindedness 
 was not the dominant quality of those who followed poli- 
 tics as a profession. The loaves and fishes bulked largely 
 in their calculations, and he heard a distinguished man 
 say things at one of his meetings which Raymond knew 
 that it was impossible he could believe. For example, it 
 was clearly a popular catchword that party politics had 
 
ATROPOS 467 
 
 become archaic, and that a time was near when party 
 would be forgotten in a larger and nobler spirit. Speak- 
 ers openly declared that great changes were in sight, and 
 the constitution must be modified; but, privately, they 
 professed no such opinions. All looked to their party 
 and their party alone for personal advance. It seemed 
 to Ironsyde that their spirits were mean spirits ; that they 
 concealed behind their profession a practice of shrewd 
 calculation and a policy of cynical self-advance. The talk 
 behind the scenes was not of national welfare, but indi- 
 vidual success, or failure. The men who talked the loud- 
 est on the platform of altruism and the greatest good to 
 the greatest number, were most alive in private conversa- 
 tion to the wire-pulling and intrigue which proceeded un- 
 seen ; and it was in the machinery they found their prime 
 interest and excitement, rather than in the great opera- 
 tions the machine was ostensibly created to achieve. The 
 whole business on their lips in private appeared to have no 
 more real significance than a county cricket match, or any 
 other game. 
 
 Thanks largely to the woman he was to wed, Ironsyde 
 took now a statesman-like rather than a political view as 
 far as his inexperience could do so. He had no axe to 
 grind, and from the standpoint of his ignorance, progress 
 looked easy and demanded no more than that good will 
 of which Estelle so often spoke. But in practice he began 
 to perceive the gulf between ideal legislation and practical 
 politics and, in moments of physical depression, as the 
 election approached, his heart failed him. He grew de- 
 spondent at night. Then, after refreshing sleep, the spirit 
 of hope reawakened. He felt very certain now that he 
 was going to get in ; and still with morning light he hailed 
 the victory; while, after a heavy day, he doubted of its 
 fruits and mistrusted himself. His powers seemed puny 
 contrasted with the gigantic difficulties that the machine 
 set up between a private member and any effective or in- 
 dependent activity in the House, 
 
468 THE SPINNERS 
 
 He was cast down as he rode home after his last meeting 
 but one, and his reflections were again most deeply tinged 
 with doubt as to the value of these heroic exertions. 
 Looked at here, in winter moonlight under a sky of stars, 
 this fevered strife seemed vain, and the particular ambi- 
 tion to which he had devoted such tremendous application 
 appeared thin and doubtful almost unworthy. He 
 traversed the enterprise, dwelt on outstanding features of 
 it and comforted himself, as often he had done of late, by 
 reflecting that Estelle would be at his right hand. If, 
 after practical experience and fair trial, he found himself 
 powerless to serve their common interests, or advance their 
 ideals, then he could leave the field of Parliament and seek 
 elsewhere for a hearing. His ingenuous hope was to in- 
 terest his leaders ; for he believed that many who possessed 
 power, thought and felt as he did. 
 
 He had grown placid by the time he left South Street 
 and turned into the road for home. The night was keen 
 and frosty. It braced him and he began to feel cheerful 
 and hungry for the supper that waited him at North Hill. 
 
 Then, where the road forked from Bridetown and an 
 arm left it for West Haven, at a point two hundred yards 
 from outlying farm-houses, a young, slight figure leapt 
 from the hedge, stood firmly in the road and stopped Ray- 
 mond's horse. The moonlight was clear and showed Iron- 
 syde his son. Abel leapt at the bridle rein, and when the 
 rider bade him loose it, he lifted a revolver and fired twice 
 pointblank. 
 
 Ten minutes later, on their way back from the meeting 
 and full of politics, there drove that way John Best, Nicho- 
 las Roberts and a Bridetown farmer. They found a man 
 on his back in the middle of the road and a horse standing 
 quietly beside him. None doubted but that Raymond 
 Ironsyde was dead, yet it was not possible for them to be 
 sure. They lifted him into the farmer's cart therefore, 
 and while Best and Roberts returned with him to Bridport 
 Hospital, the farmer mounted Ironsyde's horse and gal- 
 
ATROPOS 469 
 
 loped to North Hill with his news. Arthur Waldron was 
 from home, but Estelle left the house as quickly as a motor 
 car could be made ready, and in a quarter of an hour 
 stood at Raymond's side. 
 
 He was dead and had, indeed, died instantly when fired 
 upon. He had been shot through the lung and heart, and 
 must have perished before he fell from his horse to the 
 ground. 
 
 They knew Estelle at the hospital and left her with 
 Raymond for a little while. He looked ten years younger 
 than when she had seen him last. All care was gone and 
 an expression of content rested upon his beautiful face. 
 
 The doctor feared to leave her, judging of the shock; 
 but when he returned she was calm and controlled. She 
 sat by the dead man and held his hand. 
 
 " A little longer," she said, and he went out again. 
 
CHAPTER XXII 
 
 THE HIDING-PLACE 
 
 No doubt existed as to* the murderer of Raymond Iron- 
 syde, for on the night of his death, Abel Dinnett did not 
 return home. He had left work at the usual time, but had 
 not taken his bicycle; and from that day he was seen no 
 more. 
 
 It appeared impossible that he could evade the hue and 
 cry, but twenty-four hours passed and there came no re- 
 port of his capture. Little mystery marked the matter, 
 save that of Abel's disappearance. His animosity towards* 
 his father was known and it had culminated thus. None 
 imagined that capture would be long delayed; but forty- 
 eight hours passed and still there came no news of him. 
 
 Estelle Waldron fled from all thought of him at first; 
 then she reflected upon him driven to do so by a con- 
 viction concerning him that commanded action from her. 
 
 On the day after the coroner's inquest, for the first time 
 she sought Sabina. The meeting was of an affecting 
 character, for each very fully realised the situation from 
 the standpoint of the other. Sabina was the more dis- 
 tressed, yet she entertained definite convictions and de- 
 clared herself positive concerning certain facts. Estelle 
 questioned her conclusions and, indeed, refused to believe 
 them. 
 
 " I hope you'll understand my coming, Sabina," she 
 said. 
 
 She was clad, as usual, in a grey Harris tweed, and the 
 elder wondered why she did not wear black. Estelle's face 
 was haggard and worn with much suffering. But it 
 
 seemed that the last dregs of her own cup were not yet 
 
 470 
 
THE HIDING-PLACE 471 
 
 drunk, for an excruciating problem faced her. There was 
 none to help her solve it, yet she took it to Sabina. 
 
 " I thought you'd come, sooner or later. This is a 
 thing beyond any human power to make better. God 
 knows I mourn for you far more than I mourn for myself. 
 I don't mourn for myself. Long ago I saw that the liv- 
 ing can't be happy, though the dead may be. The dead 
 may be we'll hope it for them." 
 
 " It's death to me as well as to him," said Estelle sim- 
 ply. " As far as I'm concerned, I feel that I'm dead from 
 now and shall live on as somebody different somebody 
 I don't know yet. All that we were and had and hoped 
 everything is gone with him. The future was to be spent 
 in trying to do good things. We shared the same ideas 
 about it. But that's all over. I'm left single-handed, 
 Sabina." 
 
 " Yes, I know how you feel." 
 
 " I can't bear to think of it yet. I didn't come to talk 
 about him, or myself. I came to talk about Abel." 
 
 " I can't tell you anything about him." 
 
 " I know you know nothing. I think I know more than 
 you do." 
 
 " Know more of him than I do ? " asked the mother. 
 There was almost a flash of jealousy in her voice. But 
 it faded and she sighed. 
 
 " No, no. You needn't fret for him. They may find 
 him, or they may not ; but they'll not find him alive." 
 
 Estelle started. She believed most steadfastly that 
 Abel was alive, and felt very certain that she knew his 
 hiding-place. 
 
 "Why do you think that?" she asked. "You might 
 hope it; but why do you think it? Have you any good 
 reason for thinking it ? " 
 
 " There are some things you know," answered the 
 mother. " You know them without being told and with- 
 out any reason. You neither hope nor fear you know. 
 I might ask you how you know where he is. But I don't 
 
472 THE SPINNERS 
 
 want to ask you. I've taken my good-bye of him, poor, 
 wasted life. How had God got the heart to let him live 
 for this? People will say it was fitting, and happened by 
 the plan of his Maker. No man's child not even God's. 
 It's all hidden, all dark to me. It's worked itself out to 
 the bitter end. Men would have been too kind to work it 
 out like this. Only God could. I can't say much to you. 
 I'm very sorry for you. You were caught up into the 
 thing and didn't know, or guess, what you were thrusting 
 yourself into. But now it's your turn, and you'll have 
 to wait long years, as I did, before you can look at life 
 again without passion or sorrow." 
 
 u It doesn't matter about me. But, if you feel Abel is 
 dead, I feel just as strongly that he is alive, and that this 
 isn't the end of him." 
 
 Sabina considered. 
 
 " I know him better than you, and I know Providence 
 better than you do," she answered. " It's like the wonder 
 you are to think on him without hate. But you're 
 wasting your time and showing pity for nothing. He's 
 beyond pity. Why, I don't pity him his mother." 
 
 " I'm only doing what Raymond tried to do so often 
 and failed what he would have me do now if he'd lived. 
 And if I know something that nobody else does, I must 
 use that knowledge. I'm sorry I do know, Sabina, but I 
 do." 
 
 " You waste your time, I expect. If the hunt that's 
 going on doesn't find him, how shall you do it? He's at 
 the bottom of the sea, I hope." 
 
 They parted and the same night Estelle set out to sat- 
 isfy her will. She told nobody of her purpose, for she 
 knew that her father would not have allowed her to pursue 
 it. Waldron was utterly crushed by the death of his 
 friend and could not as yet realise the loss. 
 
 Nor did Estelle realise it, save in fitful and fleeting 
 agonies. As yet the full significance of the event was by 
 no means weighed by her. It meant far more than she 
 
THE HIDING-PLACE 473 
 
 could measure and receive and accept in so brief a space 
 of time. Seen from the standpoint of this death, every 
 plan of her life, every undertaking for the future, was 
 dislocated. She left that complete ruin for the present. 
 There was no hurry to restore, or set about rebuilding the 
 fabric of her future. She would have all her life to do it 
 in. 
 
 The thought of Abel came as a demand to her justice. 
 Her knowledge, amounting to a conviction, required ac- 
 tion. The nature of the action she did not know, but 
 something urged her to reach him if she could. For she 
 believed him mad. Great torture of spirit had overtaken 
 her under her loss ; but upon this extreme grief, ugly and 
 incessant, obtruded the thought of Abel, the secret of his 
 present refuge and the impulse to approach him. Her 
 personal suffering established rather than shook her own 
 high standards. She had promised the boy never to tell 
 anybody of the haunt he had shown her under the roof in 
 the old store at West Haven ; and if most women might 
 now have forgotten such a promise, Estelle did not. But 
 she very strenuously argued against the spiritual impulse 
 to seek him, for every physical instinct rose against doing 
 so. To do this was surely not required of her, for where- 
 unto would it lead? What must be the result of any such 
 meeting? It might be dreadful; it could not fail to be 
 futile. Yet all mental effort to escape the task proved 
 vain. Her very grief edged her old, austere, chivalrous 
 acceptance of duty. She felt that justice called her to 
 this ordeal, and she went with no fixed purpose save to 
 see him and urge him to surrender himself for his own 
 peace if he could understand. No personal fear touched 
 her reflections. She might have welcomed fear in these 
 unspeakable moments of her life, for she was little enam- 
 oured of living after Raymond Ironsyde died. The 
 thought of death for herself had not been distasteful at 
 that time. 
 
 She went fearlessly, when all slept and her going and 
 
474 THE SPINNERS 
 
 coming would not be observed. She left her home at a 
 moonless midnight, took candle and matches, dressed in 
 her stoutest clothes and walked over North Hill towards 
 Bridport. But at the eastern shoulder of the downs she 
 descended through a field and struck the road again just 
 at the fork where Raymond had perished. 
 
 Then she struck into the West Haven way and soon 
 slipped under the black mass of the old store. The night 
 was cloudy and still. No wind blew and the sigh of the 
 sea beneath the shelving beaches close at hand, had sunk 
 to a murmur. West Haven lay lost in darkness. The 
 old store had been searched, as many other empty build- 
 ings, for the fugitive; but he was not specially associated 
 with this place, save in the mind of Estelle. The police 
 had hunted it carefully, no more, and she guessed that his 
 eerie under the roof, only reached by a somewhat perilous 
 climb through a broken window, would not be discovered. 
 
 She remembered also that there were some students of 
 Raymond's murder who did not associate Abel with it. 
 Such held that only accident and coincidence had made him 
 run away on the night of Ironsyde's end. They argued 
 that in these cases the obvious always proved erroneous, 
 and the theory most transparently rational seldom led the 
 way to the truth. 
 
 But she had never doubted about that. It seemed al- 
 ready a commonplace of knowledge, a lifetime old, that 
 Abel had destroyed his father, and that he must be insane 
 to have ruined his own life in this manner. 
 
 She ascended cautiously through the darkness, reached 
 a gap once a window from which her ascent must be 
 made, and listened for a few moments to hear if anything 
 stirred above her. 
 
 It seemed as though the old store was full of noises, for 
 the fingers of decay never cease from picking and, in the 
 silence of night, one can best hear their stealthy activities. 
 Little falls of fragments sounded loudly, even echoed, in 
 
THE HIDING-PLACE 475 
 
 this great silence. There was almost a perpetual rustle 
 and whisper ; and once a thud and skurry, when a rat dis- 
 placed a piece of mortar which fell from the rotting plas- 
 ter. Dark though the heaven was and black the outer 
 night, it had the quality that air never loses and she saw 
 the sky as possessed of illumination in contrast with its 
 setting of the broken window. Within all was blankly 
 black ; from above there came no sound. 
 
 She climbed to the window ledge, felt for the nails that 
 Abel had hammered in to hold his feet and soon ascended 
 through a large gap under the eaves of the store. Some 
 shock had thrown out a piece of brickwork here. Seen 
 from the ground the aperture looked trifling and had in- 
 deed challenged no attention; but it was large enough to 
 admit a man. 
 
 For a moment Estelle stood in this aperture before en- 
 tering the den within. She raised her voice, which flut- 
 tered after her climb, and called to him. 
 
 "Abel! Abel! It's Estelle." 
 
 There came the thought, even as she spoke, that he 
 might answer with a bullet ; but he answered not at all. 
 She felt thankful for the silence and hoped that he might 
 have deserted his retreat. Perhaps, indeed, he had never 
 come to it; and yet it seemed impossible that he had for 
 two days escaped capture unless here concealed. It oc- 
 curred to her that he might wander out by night and 
 return before day. He might even now be behind her, to 
 intercept her return. Still no shadow of fear shook her 
 mind or body. She felt not a tremor. All that concerned 
 her conscience was now completed and she hoped that it 
 would be possible to dismiss from her thoughts the fellow 
 creature who had destroyed her joy of life and worked 
 evil so far reaching. She could leave him now to his 
 destiny and feel under no compulsion to relate the inci- 
 dents of her nocturnal search. Had he been there, she 
 would have risked the meeting, urged him to surrender 
 
476 THE SPINNERS 
 
 and then left him if he allowed her to do so. She would 
 never have given him up, or broken her promise to keep 
 his secret. 
 
 But the chamber under the roof was large and she did 
 not leave it without making sure that he was neither hid- 
 ing nor sleeping within it. She entered, lighted her can- 
 dle and examined a triangular recess formed by the con- 
 verging beams of the roof above her and the joists under 
 her feet. 
 
 The boy had been busy here. There were evidences of 
 him evidences of a child rather than a man. Boyish 
 forethought stared her in the face and staggered her by 
 its ghastly incongruities with the things this premeditating 
 youth had done. Here were provisions, not such as a 
 man would have selected to stand a siege, but the taste of 
 a schoolboy. She looked at the supplies spread here 
 tins of preserved food, packets of chocolate, bottles of 
 ginger beer, bananas, biscuits. But it seemed that the 
 hoard had not been touched. One tin of potted salmon 
 had been opened, but no part of the contents was con- 
 sumed. Either accident had changed his purpose and 
 frightened him elsewhere at the last moment, or the ener- 
 gies and activities that had gone to pile this accumulation 
 were all spent in the process and now he did not need them. 
 
 Then she looked further, to the extremity of the den he 
 had made, and there, lying comfortably on a pile of shav- 
 ings, Estelle found him. 
 
 She guessed that the storm and stress of his crime had 
 exhausted him and thrown him into heaviest possible phys- 
 ical slumber after great mental tribulation. She shud- 
 dered as she looked down on him and a revulsion, a loath- 
 ing tempted her to creep away again before he awakened. 
 She did not think of him as a patricide, nor did her own 
 loss entirely inspire the emotion ; she never associated him 
 with that, but kept him outside it, as she would have kept 
 some insensible or inanimate object had such been re- 
 sponsible for Ironsyde's end. It was the sudden thought 
 
THE HIDING-PLACE 477 
 
 of all Raymond's death might mean not to her but the 
 world that turned her heart to stone for a fearful 
 second as she looked down upon the unconscious figure. 
 Her own sorrow was sealed at its fountains for the time. 
 But her sorrow for the world could not be sealed. And 
 then came the thought that the insensible boy at her feet, 
 escaping for a little while through sleep's primeval sanc- 
 tity, was part of the robbed world also. Who had lost 
 more than he by his unreason? If her heart did not melt 
 then, it grew softer. 
 
 But there was more to learn before she left him and the 
 truth can be recorded. 
 
 Abel had killed his father and hastened to his lair ex- 
 ultant. He had provided for what should follow and 
 vaguely hoped that presently, before his stores were spent, 
 the way would be clearer for escape. He assured himself 
 safe from discovery and guessed that when a fortnight 
 was passed, he might safely creep out, reach a port, find 
 work in a ship and turn his back upon England for ever. 
 
 That was his general plan before the deed. Afterwards 
 all changed for him. He then found himself a being 
 racked and over-mastered by new sensations. The desir- 
 able thing that he had done changed its features, even as 
 death changes the features of life ; the ideal, so noble and 
 seemly before, when attained assumed such a shape as, in 
 one of Abel's heredity, it was bound to assume. Not at ' 
 once did the change appear, but as a cloud no bigger than 
 a man's hand in the clear, triumphant sky of his achieve- 
 ment. Even so an apple, that once he had stolen and 
 hidden, was bruised unknown to him and thus contained 
 the seed of death, that made it rot before it was ripe. 
 The decay spread and the fruit turned to filth before he 
 could win any enjoyment from it. 
 
 He shook off the beginnings of doubt impatiently. He 
 retraced his grievances and dwelt on the glory of his 
 revenge as he reached his secret place after the crime. 
 But the stain darkened in the heart of his mind ; and before 
 
478 THE SPINNERS 
 
 dawn crept through cracks in the roof above his lair, dis- 
 solution had begun. 
 
 Through the hours of that first day he lay there with 
 his thoughts for company and a process, deepening, as 
 dusk deepened, into remorse began to horrify him. He 
 fought with all his might against it. He resented it with 
 indignation. His gorge rose against it; he would have 
 strangled it, had it been a ponderable thing within his 
 power to destroy ; but as time passed he began to know 
 it was stronger than he. It gripped his spirit with un- 
 conquerable fingers and slowly stifled him. Time crept 
 on interminable. When the second night came, he was 
 faint and turned to his food. He struggled with himself 
 and opened a tin of salmon. But he could not eat. He 
 believed that he would never eat again. He slept for an 
 hour, then woke from terrifying dreams. His mind wan- 
 dered and he longed to be gone and tear off his clothes 
 and dip into the sea. 
 
 At dawn of the second day men were hunting the old 
 stores, from its cellars to the attics below him. He heard 
 them speaking under his feet and listened to two men who 
 cursed him. They speculated whether he was too young 
 to hang and hoped he might not be. Yet he could take 
 pride in their failure to find him. There was, as he re- 
 membered, only one person in the world who knew of his 
 eerie ; but terror did not accompany this recollection. 
 His exultation at the defeat of the searchers soon van- 
 ished, and he found himself indifferent to the thought that 
 Estelle might remember. 
 
 He knew that his plans could not be fulfilled now : it was 
 impossible for him to live a fortnight here. And then he 
 began stealthily, fearfully, to doubt of life itself. It had 
 changed in its aspect and invitation. Its promises were 
 dead. It could hold nothing for him as he had been told 
 by Levi Baggs. The emotions now threatening his mind 
 were such that he believed no length of days would ever 
 dim them ; from what he suffered now, it seemed that time's 
 
THE HIDING-PLACE 479 
 
 self could promise no escape. Life would be hell and not 
 worth living. At this point in his struggles his mind 
 failed him and became disordered. It worked fitfully, and 
 its processes were broken with blanks and breaks. Chaos 
 marked his mental steps from this point; his feet were 
 caught and he fell down and down, yet tried hard for a 
 while to stay his fall. His consciousness began to decide, 
 while his natural instincts struggled against the decision. 
 Not one, but rival spirits tore him. Reason formed no 
 part in the encounter; no arbiter arose between the con- 
 flicting forces, between a gathering will to die and escape 
 further torment, and the brute will to live, that must be- 
 long to every young creature, happy or wretched. 
 
 The trial was long drawn out; but it had ended some 
 hours before Estelle stood beside him. 
 
 She considered whether she should waken Abel and de- 
 termined that she must do so, since to speak with him, if 
 possible, she held her duty now. He was safe if he wished 
 to be, for she would never tell his secret. So she bent down 
 with her light to find him dead. He had shot him- 
 self through the right temple after sunset time of the sec- 
 ond day. 
 
 Estelle stood and looked at him for a little while, then 
 climbed back to earth and went away through the darkness 
 to tell his mother that she was right. 
 
 THE END 
 
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