The Spinners

by Eden Phillpotts

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 situation 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 awakened 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 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 invited 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."

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 Ironsyde's marriage before her: it was the gossip of Bridetown; 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 subconsciously and never wholly vanished. Before the engagement 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 existed. She felt indifferent and, before her own approaching problems, was not prepared to decline the offers of help that she knew would quickly come when Ernest Churchouse 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.

She saw him and they spoke together for a long time; but already his force of character began to increase beyond 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 temper 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 significance. 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 impossibility 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 afternoon 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 woodlands 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 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 anybody, 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 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."

"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 Bridetown 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?"

"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 return 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 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 determined on their immediate future.

For herself she knew that it would be necessary to deceive him, yet feared to attempt it after the recent conversation. She felt uneasily proud of him.