AT 'THE TIGER'
The municipal borough of Bridport stretches itself luxuriously from east
to west beneath a wooded hill. Southward the land slopes to broad
water-meadows where rivers meet and Brit and Asker wind to the sea.
Evidences of the great local industry are not immediately apparent; but
streamers and wisps of steam scattered above the red-tiled roofs tell of
work, and westward, where the land falls, there stand shoulder to
shoulder the busy mills.
From single yarn that a child could break, to hawsers strong enough to
hold a battleship, Bridport meets every need. Her twines and cords and
nets are famous the world over; her ropes, cables, cablets and canvas
rigged the fleet that scattered the Spanish Armada.
The broad streets with deep, unusual side-walks are a sign of Bridport's
past, for they tell of the days when men and women span yarn before
their doors, and rope-walks ran their amber and silver threads of hemp
and flax along the pavements. But steel and steam have taken the place
of the hand-spinners, though their industry has left its sign-manual
upon the township. For the great, open side-walks make for distinction
and spaciousness, and there shall be found in all Dorset, no brighter,
cheerfuller place than this. Bridport's very workhouse, south-facing and
bowered in green, blinks half a hundred windows amiably at the noonday
sun and helps to soften the life-failure of those who dwell therein. Off
Barrack Street it stands, and at the time of the terror, when Napoleon
threatened, soldiers hived here and gave the way its name.
Not far from the workhouse two inns face each other in Barrack
Street--'The Tiger' upon one side of the way, 'The Seven Stars' upon the
other; and at the moment when Henry Ironsyde's dust was reaching the
bottom of his grave at Bridetown, a young man of somewhat inane
countenance, clad in garments that displayed devotion to sport and
indifference to taste, entered 'The Tiger's' private bar.
Behind the counter stood Richard Gurd, a middle-aged, broad-shouldered
publican with a large and clean-shaven face, heavy-jaw, rather sulky
eyes and mighty hands.
"The usual," said the visitor. "Ray been here?"
Mr. Gurd shook his head.
"No, Mr. Ned--nor likely to. They're burying his father this morning."
The publican poured out a glass of cherry brandy as he spoke and Mr.
Neddy Motyer rolled a cigarette.
"Ray ain't going," said the customer.
"Not going to his father's funeral!"
"For a very good reason, too; he's cut off with a shilling."
"Dear, dear," said Mr. Gurd. "That's bad news, though perhaps not much
of a surprise to Mr. Raymond."
"It's a devil of a lesson to the rising generation," declared the youth.
"To think our own fathers can do such blackguard things, just because
they don't happen to like our way of life. What would become of England
if every man was made in the pattern of his father? Don't education and
all that count? If my father was to do such a thing--but he won't; he's
too fond of the open air and sport and that."
"Young men don't study their fathers enough in this generation,
however," argued the innkeeper, "nor yet do young women study their
mothers enough."
"We've got to go out in the world and play our parts," declared Neddy.
"'Tis for them to study us--not us them. You must have progress. The
thing for parents to do is to know they're back numbers and act
according."
"They do--most of them," answered Mr. Gurd. "A back number is a back
number and behaves as such. I speak impartial being a bachelor, and I
forgive the young men their nonsense and pardon their opinions, because
I know I was young myself once, and as big a fool as anybody, and put
just the same strain on my parents, no doubt, though they lived to see
me a responsible man and done with childish things. The point for
parents is not to forget what it feels like to be young. That I never
have, and you young gentlemen would very soon remind me if I did. But
the late Mr. Henry Ironsyde found no time for all-round wisdom. He
poured his brains into hemp and jute and such like. Why, he didn't even
make a minute to court and wed till he was forty-five year old. And the
result of that was that when his brace of boys was over twenty, he stood
in sight of seventy and could only see life at that angle. And what made
it worse was, that his eldest, Mister Daniel, was cut just in his own
pattern. So the late gentleman never could forgive Mr. Raymond for being
cut in another pattern. But if what you say is right and Mister Raymond
has been left out in the cold, then I think he's been badly used."
"So he has--it's a damned shame," said Mr. Motyer, "and I hope Ray will
do something about it."
"There's very little we can do against the writing of the dead,"
answered Mr. Gurd. Then he saluted a man who bustled into the bar.
"Morning, Job. What's the trouble?"
Job Legg was very tall and thin. He dropped at the middle, but showed
vitality and energy in his small face and rodent features. His hair was
black, and his thin mouth and chin clean-shaven. His eyes were small and
very shrewd; his manner was humble. He had a monotonous inflection and
rather chanted in a minor key than spoke.
"Mrs. Northover's compliments and might we have the big fish kettle
till to-morrow? A party have been sprung on us, and five-and-twenty sit
down to lunch in the pleasure gardens at two o'clock."
"And welcome, Job. Go round to the kitchen, will 'e?"
Job disappeared and Mr. Gurd explained.
"My good neighbour at 'The Seven Stars'--her with the fine pleasure
gardens and swings and so on. And Job Legg's her potman. Her husband's
right hand while he lived, and now hers. I have the use of their
stable-yard market days, for their custom is different from mine. A
woman's house and famous for her meat teas and luncheons. She does very
well and deserves to."
"That old lady with the yellow wig?"
Mr. Gurd pursed his lips.
"To you she might seem old, I suppose. That's the spirit that puts a bit
of a strain on the middle-aged and makes such men as me bring home to
ourselves what we said and thought when we were young. 'Tis just the
natural, thoughtless insolence of youth to say Nelly Northover's an old
woman--her being perhaps eight-and-forty. And to call her hair a wig,
because she's fortified it with home-grown what's fallen out over a
period of twenty years, is again only the insolence of youth. One can
only say 'forgive 'em, for they know not what they do.'"
"Well, get me another brandy anyway."
Then entered Raymond Ironsyde, and Mr. Gurd for once felt genuinely
sorry to see his customer.
The young man was handsome with large, luminous, grey eyes, curly, brown
hair and a beautiful mouth, clean cut, full, firm and finely modelled in
the lips. His nose was straight, high in the nostril and sensitive. He
resembled his brother, Daniel, but stood three inches taller, and his
brow was fuller and loftier. His expression in repose appeared frank and
receptive; but to-day his face wore a look half anxious, half ferocious.
He was clad in tweed knickerbockers and a Norfolk jacket, of different
pattern but similar material. His tie was light blue and fastened with
a gold pin modelled in the shape of a hunting-horn. He bore no mark of
mourning whatever.
"Whiskey and soda, Gurd. Morning, Neddy."
He spoke defiantly, as though knowing his entrance was a challenge. Then
he flung himself down on a cushioned seat in the bow window of the
bar-room and took a pipe and tobacco pouch from his pocket.
Mr. Gurd brought the drink round to Raymond. He spoke upon some general
subject and pretended to no astonishment that the young man should be
here on this day. But the customer cut him short. There was only one
subject for discussion in his mind.
"I suppose you thought I should go to my father's funeral? No doubt,
you'll say, with everybody else, that it's a disgrace I haven't."
"I shall mind my own business and say nothing, Mister Raymond. It's your
affair, not ours."
"I'd have done the same, Ray, if I'd been treated the same," said Neddy
Motyer.
"It's a protest," explained Raymond Ironsyde. "To have gone, after being
publicly outraged like this in my father's will, was impossible to
anybody but a cur. He ignored me as his son, and so I ignore him as my
father; and who wouldn't?"
"I suppose Daniel will come up to the scratch all right?" hazarded
Motyer.
"He'll make some stuffy suggestion, no doubt. He can't see me in the
gutter very well."
"You must get to work, Mr. Raymond; and I can tell you, as one who
knows, that work's only dreaded by them who have never done any. You'll
soon find that there's nothing better for the nerves and temper than
steady work."
Neddy chaffed Mr. Gurd's sentiments and Raymond said nothing. He was
looking in front of him, his mind occupied with personal problems.
Neddy Motyer made another encouraging suggestion.
"There's your aunt, Miss Ironsyde," he said. "She's got plenty of cash,
I've heard people say, and she gives tons away in charity. How do you
stand with her?"
"Mind your own business, Ned."
"Sorry," answered the other promptly. "Only wanted to buck you up."
"I'm not in need of any bucking up, thanks. If I've got to work, I'm
quite equal to it. I've got more brains than Daniel, anyway. I'm quite
conscious of that."
"You've got tons more mind than him," declared Neddy.
"And if that's the case, I could do more good, if I chose, than ever
Daniel will."
"Or more harm," warned Mr. Gurd. "Always remember that, Mister Raymond.
The bigger the intellects, the more power for wrong as well as right."
"He'll ask me to go into the works, I expect. And I may, or I may not."
"I should," advised Neddy. "Bridetown is a very sporting place and you'd
be alongside your pal, Arthur Waldron."
"Don't go to Bridetown with an idea of sport, however--don't do that,
Mister Raymond," warned Richard Gurd. "If you go, you put your back into
the work and master the business of the Mill."
The young men wasted an hour in futile talk and needless drinking while
Gurd attended to other customers. Then Raymond Ironsyde accepted an
invitation to return home with Motyer, who lived at Eype, a mile away.
"I'm going to give my people a rest to-day," said Raymond as he
departed. "I shall come in here for dinner, Dick."
"Very good, sir," answered Mr. Gurd; but he shook his head when the
young men had gone.
Others in the bar hummed on the subject of young Ironsyde after his back
was turned. A few stood up for him and held that he had been too
severely dealt with; but the majority and those who knew most about him
thought that his ill-fortune was deserved.
"For look at it," said a tradesman, who knew the facts. "If he'd been
left money, he'd have only wasted the lot in sporting and been worse off
after than before; but now he's up against work, and work may be the
saving of him. And if he won't work, let him die the death and get off
the earth and make room for a better man."
None denied the honourable obligation to work for every responsible
human being.