The Spinners. Eden Phillpotts

might get to hear something about it next Sunday very like," she said. "I'm going into Bridport to my Aunt Nelly at 'The Seven Stars'; and she's a great friend of Richard Gurd at 'The Tiger'; and 'tis there Mister Raymond spends half his time, they say. So Mr. Gurd may have learned a bit about it."

      "No doubt he'll hear a lot of words, and as for Raymond Ironsyde, his father knew him for a man with a bit of a heart in him and didn't trust him accordingly. But you can take it from me—"

      A bell rang and its note struck Mr. Baggs dumb. He ceased both to speak and work, dropped his hank, turned down his shirt sleeves and put on his coat. Sarah at the stroke of the bell also manifested no further interest in Levi's forebodings but left him abruptly. For it was noon and the dinner-hour had come.

CHAPTER IV

       Table of Contents

      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.