In half an hour Ernest was on his way to Bridport. As Sabina, before him, his instinct led to Miss Ironsyde and he felt that the facts might best be imparted to her. If anybody had influence with Raymond, it was she. His tone of confidence before Mrs. Dinnett had been partly a.s.sumed, however. His sympathies were chiefly with Sabina, for she was no ordinary mill hand; she had enjoyed his tuition and possessed native gifts worthy of admiration. But she was as excitable as her mother, and if this vital matter went awry, there could be no doubt that her life must be spoiled.

Mr. Churchouse managed to get a lift on his way from a friendly farmer, and he arrived at Bridport Town Hall soon after ten o'clock. While driving he put the matter from his mind for a time, and his acquaintance started other trains of thought. One of them, more agreeable to a man of his temperament than the matter in hand, still occupied his mind when he stood before Jenny Ironsyde.

"You!" she said. "I had an idea you never came into the world till afternoon."

"Seldom--seldom. I drove a good part of the way with Farmer Gate, and he made a curious remark. He said that a certain person might as well be dead for all the good he was. Now what const.i.tutes life? I've been asking myself that."

"It's certainly difficult to decide about some people, whether they're alive or dead. Some make you doubt if they ever were alive."

"A good many certainly don't know they're born; and plenty don't know they're dead," he declared.

"To be in your grave is not necessarily to be dead, and to be in your shop, or office, needn't mean that you're alive," admitted the lady.

"Quite so. Who doesn't know dead people personally, and go to tea with them, and hear their bones rattle? And whose spirit doesn't meet in their thoughts, or works, the dead who are still living?"

"Most true, I'm sure; but you didn't come to tell me that?"

"No; yet it has set me wondering whether, perhaps, I am dead--at any rate deader than I need be."

"We are probably all deader than we need be."

"But to-day there has burst into my life a very wakening thing. It may have been sent. For mystery is everywhere, and what's looking exceedingly bad for those involved, may be good for me. And yet, one can hardly claim to win goodness out of the threatened misfortunes to those who are dear to one."

"What's the matter? Something's happened, or you wouldn't come to see me so early."

"Something has happened," he answered, "and one turns to you in times of stress, just as one used to turn to your dear brother, Henry. You have character, shrewdness and decision."

Miss Ironsyde saw light.

"You've come for Raymond," she said.

"Now how did you divine that? But, as a matter of fact, I've come for somebody else. A very serious thing has happened and if we older heads--"

"Who told you about it?"

"This morning, an hour ago, it was broken to me by Sabina's mother."

"Tell me just what she told you, Ernest."

He obeyed and described the interview exactly.

"I cannot understand that, for Sabina saw me last night and explained the situation. I impressed upon her the importance of keeping the matter as secret as possible for the present."

"Nevertheless Mary Dinnett told me. She is a very impulsive person--so is Sabina; but in Sabina's case there is brain power to control impulse; in her mother's case there is none."

"I'm much annoyed," declared Miss Ironsyde--"not of course, that you should know, but that there should be talking. Please go home and tell them both to be quiet. This chattering is most dangerous and may defeat everything. Last night I wrote to Raymond directing him to come and see me immediately. I did not tell him why; but I told him it was urgent. I made the strongest appeal possible. When you arrived, I thought it was he. He should have been here an hour ago."

"If he is coming, I will go," answered Ernest. "I don't wish to meet him at present. He has done very wrongly--wickedly, in fact. The question is whether marriage with Sabina--"

"There is no question about that in my opinion," declared the lady. "I am a student of character, and had she been a different sort of girl--.

But even as it is I suspend judgment until I have seen Raymond. It is quite impossible, however, after hearing her, to see what excuse he can offer."

"She is a very superior girl indeed, and very clever and refined. I always hoped she would marry a schoolmaster, or somebody with cultured tastes. But her great and unusual beauty doubtless attracted Raymond."

"I think you'd better go home, Ernest. I'll write to you after I've seen the boy. Do command silence from both of them. I'm very angry and very distressed, but really nothing can be done till we hear him. My sympathy is entirely with Sabina. Let her go on with her life for a day or two and--"

"She's changed her life and left the Mill. I understand Raymond told her to do so."

"That is a good sign, I suppose. If she's done that, the whole affair must soon be known. But we talk in the dark."

Mr. Churchouse departed, forgot his anxieties in a second-hand book shop and presently returned home.

But he saw nothing of Raymond on the way; and Miss Ironsyde waited in vain for her nephew's arrival. He did not come, and her letter, instead of bringing him immediately as she expected, led to a very different course of action on his part.

For, taken with Sabina's refusal to see him, he guessed correctly at what had inspired it. Sabina had threatened more than once in the past to visit Miss Ironsyde and he had forbidden her to do so. Now he knew from her mother why she had gone, and while not surprised, he clutched at the incident and very quickly worked it into a tremendous grievance against the unlucky girl. His intelligence told him that he could not fairly resent her attempt to win a powerful friend at this crisis in her fortunes; but his own inclinations and growing pa.s.sion for liberty fastened on it and made him see a possible vantage point. He worked himself up into a false indignation. He knew it was false, yet he persevered in it, as though it were real, and acted as though it were real.

He tore up his aunt's letter and ignored it.

Instead of going to Bridport, he went to his office and worked as usual.

At dinner time he expected Sabina, but she did not come and he heard from Mr. Best that she was not at the works.

"She came in here and gave notice on Sat.u.r.day afternoon," said the foreman, shortly, and turned away from Raymond even as he spoke.

Then the young man remembered that he had bade Sabina do this. His anger increased, for now everybody must soon hear of what had happened.

In a sort of subconscious way he felt glad, despite his irritation, at the turn of events, for they might reconcile him with his conscience and help to save the situation in the long run.

CHAPTER XVIII

THE LOVERS' GROVE

A little matter now kindled a great fire, and a woman's reasonable irritation, which he had himself created, produced for Raymond Ironsyde a very complete catastrophe.

His aunt, indeed, was not p.r.o.ne to irritation. Few women preserved a more level mind, or exhibited that self-control which is a prime product of common-sense; but, for once, it must be confessed that Jenny broke down and did that which she had been the first to censure in another.

The spark fell on sufficient fuel and the face of the earth was changed for Raymond before he slept that night.

For his failure to answer her urgent appeal, his contemptuous disregard of the strongest letter she had ever written, annoyed her exceedingly.

It argued a callous indifference to her own wishes and a spirit of extraordinary unkindness. She had been a generous aunt to him all his life; he had very much for which to thank her; and yet before this pressing pet.i.tion he could remain dumb. That his mind was disordered she doubted not; but nothing excused silence at such a moment.

After lunch on this day Daniel spent some little while with his aunt, and then when a post which might have brought some word from Raymond failed to do so, Jenny's gust of temper spoke. It was the familiar case of a stab at one who has annoyed us; but to point such stabs, the ear of a third person is necessary, and before she had quite realised what she was doing, Miss Ironsyde sharply blamed her nephew to his brother.

"The most inconsiderate, selfish person on earth is Raymond," she said as a servant brought her two letters, neither from the sinner. "I asked him--and prayed him--to see me to-day about a subject of the gravest importance to him and to us all; and he neither comes nor takes the least notice of my letter. He is hopeless."

"What's he done now?"