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 preserved 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 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 smallest
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 virtue. If conduct were
'sporting,' he demanded no more from any man; while, conversely,
'unsporting' deeds condemned the doer in all relations of life and
rendered him untrustworthy from every standpoint.
"Depends what you call 'sporting,'" answered Raymond, whose estimate of
the word was not so comprehensive. "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 justice 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 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," explained 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 valuable 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 material. 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 hundred quid a year.
In fact there's such a mixture of fairness 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-breeding 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 beginning. 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
foreman, and learn all the practical side of the business. It 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 sympathises with me tremendously,
however, and finally got Daniel to promise he would pay off every penny
I owed--a paltry two hundred or so."
"A very sporting arrangement. Make the coffee, Estelle, then we'll take
a walk on the downs."
"I'm going to Uncle Ernest to tea," explained Raymond. "I shall tell him
then that I'm not coming to him, thanks to your great kindness."
"He will be disappointed," declared Estelle. "It 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 because 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 interested 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 develop 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 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 distastefully 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, buttercups 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 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 bumble-bee than anything. Perhaps you've
never seen a bumble-bee either?"
"Oh, yes, I have--they don't sting." Estelle laughed.
"I thought that once. A boy in the village told me that bumble-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."
"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, familiar 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 objection to youth, my dear boy, but I can't pretend that the
manners and customs of youth are agreeable to me. Tobacco, for example,
causes me the most acute uneasiness. Then the robustness and general
exaggeration of the youthful mind and body! It rises beyond fatigue,
above the middle-aged desire for calm and comfort. 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."
"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 master'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 Raymond praised her enthusiastically.
"By Jove, what a pretty housemaid!" he exclaimed.
"Pretty, yes; a housemaid, no," explained Mr. Churchouse. "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 spinner 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?"
"Oh--why--she's lost, don't you see. Working in a stuffy mill, she's
lost. If she was on the stage, then thousands 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."
"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 coming 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 always modifies its tone in the presence of age,
and that those of ripe years never hear the real truth concerning the
opinions 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 ancient 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 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 decease 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.