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 principles under experience, and the strain and stress, that, sooner or later, bear fruit in action? Even autobiography, as all other history, needs must be incomplete, since no man himself exactly appreciated the vital experiences 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 responsible 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 induces an autobiography; while the biographist, being ignorant 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 of Raymond Ironsyde, Sabina Dinnett and their son, together 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 relation 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 emotion as it operates upon physical life; and ten years left no single situation at Bridetown or Bridport unchallenged. 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 corrosives, 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 enthusiasms, 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 raptures to a placid contentment, built as much on the convenience 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 altogether perished and gave place to indifference; some persisted 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.
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 Raymond 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 happiness, 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 common 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 sufficient, 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 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, retained 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 increasing 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 wisdom of the world. The result is ugly or beautiful, according 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 impenetrable—preserved in a vacuum. For only a vacuum 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 unchanging 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.' Indeed, 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 obtain. Mr. Gurd grew less energetic than of yore, while Mrs. Legg put on much flesh and daily perceived her wisdom 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. People hinted that Mr. Legg was not the meek and mild spirit of ancient opinion and that Nelly knew it; but this suggestion 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 himself 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 retired 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 now; Sarah Roberts still minded the spreader, and Nicholas 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 master, 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 interest 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 delighted 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 understood. He exhausted his energy and patience in endeavours 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 receive from him any assistance in the education and nurture 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 unimportance 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 and Ironsyde's indifferent acquiescence 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, however, 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 barren—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 occupation 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, reported to Estelle such development of character as he perceived. In secret, inspired by the rival claims of heredity and environment, Ernest strove to cast a scientific horoscope of little Abel's probable future. But to-day contradicted yesterday, and to-morrow proved both untrustworthy. 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. Churchouse, who had long deplored her influence for Abel's sake, was hopeful that this departure might prove a blessing.
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, gradually 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 progress from light to darkness, or stay the eager young feet tramping outward of the dayspring to take their places 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 negative 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 mental 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 Raymond 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 prosperity 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.