The Spinners Part 28

He despatched a second letter, confirming the first, and expressing some contrition at his behaviour to her. But this rudeness he declared to have been the result of peculiarly distressing circ.u.mstances; and he a.s.sured her, that when the facts came to her ears, she would find no difficulty in forgiving him.

Their meeting was fixed for the following evening, and until it had taken place, Raymond told n.o.body 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 circ.u.mstance 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 turning point; he expected that Daniel would arrive at any moment and he was prepared frankly to express deep regret 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 something 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 impression created a wave of generosity to Sabina. He felt a large magnanimity. He was prepared to do everything right and reasonable. He felt that his aunt would approve the line he purposed to take. She was practical, and he a.s.sured himself that she would not consent to p.r.o.nounce the doom of marriage upon him.

In this sanguine spirit Raymond went to Bridport and dined at 'The Tiger' 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 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, d.i.c.k? 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, knowing you, I told them it was a lie."

The young man uttered a scornful e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.o.n.

"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," explained Richard.

"You see it sounds a very disgraceful 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. So I hope you'll authorise me to contradict it."

"Good G.o.d--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 achievements 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 occurred 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 contradicted--an act quite incompatible with Raymond's record and credit. Coming from Gurd this att.i.tude 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 began 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 suspicion inspired you to be unkind. But that doesn't matter now. That's a trifle. We've got to thresh out something 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.

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 a.s.sumption 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 married 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 G.o.d 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 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 Sat.u.r.day the real Raymond, fully conscious 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, nervous spirit. She is in a condition p.r.o.ne 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 dreadful 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, admit 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 att.i.tude. 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 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 marriage with Sabina could his own position be longer retained.

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 temporal 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 develop 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 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 aversion 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.