Sullenly he accepted her view with outward acknowledgment and inward resentment. Then she said a thing that nearly made him rebel, since it struck at his pride, indicated that Miss Ironsyde was sure of her ground, showed that she had a.s.sumed the outcome of their meeting before the event.

First, however, he thanked her.

"Of course, it is amazingly good and kind. I don't like to accept it.

But I suppose it would hurt you more if I didn't than if I do. It's a condition naturally that I marry Sabina--I quite understand that. Well, I must then. I might have been a better friend to her if I hadn't married; and might love her better and love her longer for that matter.

But, of course, I can't expect you to understand that. I only want to be sporting, and a man's idea of being sporting isn't the same--"

"Now, now--you're forgetting and talking nonsense, Raymond. You really are forgetting. A man's idea of being 'sporting' does not mean telling stories to a trusting and loving girl, does it? I don't want anybody to judge you but yourself. I am perfectly content to leave it to your own conscience. And very sure I am that if you ask yourself the question, you'll answer it as it should be answered. So sure, indeed, that I have done a definite thing about it, which I will tell you in a moment. For the rest you must find a house where you please and be married as soon as you can. And when Daniel understands what a right and proper thing you're doing, I think you'll very soon find all will be satisfactory again in that quarter."

"Thank you, I'm sure. But don't speak to him yet. I won't ask for favours nor let you, Aunt Jenny. If he comes to me, well and good--I certainly won't go to him. As to Sabina, we'll clear out and get married in a day or two."

"Not before a Registrar," pleaded Miss Ironsyde.

"Before the Devil I should think," he said, preparing to leave her.

She chid him and then mentioned certain preparations made for this particular evening.

"Don't be cross any more, and let me see you value my good will and love, Ray, by doing what I'm going to ask you to do, now. So sure was I that, when the little details were cleared up, you would feel with me, and welcome your liberty from constraint, and return to Sabina with the good news, that I asked her to meet you to-night--this very night, my dear, so that you might go home with her and make her happy. She had tea with me--I made her come, and then she went to friends, and she will be in the Lovers' Grove waiting for you at ten o'clock--half an hour from now."

His impulse was to protest, but he recognised the futility for so doing.

He felt baffled and cowed and weary. He hated himself because, weakened by poverty, an old woman had been too much for him. He clutched at a hope. Perhaps by doing as his aunt desired and going through with this thing, he would find his peace of mind return and a consciousness that, after all, to keep his promise was the only thing which would renew his self-respect. It might prove the line of least resistance to take this course. He felt not sorry at the immediate prospect of meeting Sabina.

In his present mood that might be a good thing to happen. Annoyance pa.s.sed, and when he did take leave it was with more expressions of grat.i.tude.

"I don't know why you are so extraordinarily good to me," he said. "I certainly don't deserve it. But the least I can do is throw up the sponge and do as you will, and trust your judgment. I don't say I agree with you, but I'm going to do it; and if it's a failure, I shan't blame you, Aunt Jenny."

"It won't be a failure. I'm as sure as I'm sure of anything that it will be a splendid success, Raymond. Come again, very soon, and tell me what you decide about a house. And remember one thing--don't fly away and take a house goodness knows where. Always reckon with the possibility--I think certainty--that Daniel will soon be friendly, when he hears you're going to be married."

He left her very exhausted, and if her spirits sank a little after his departure, Raymond's tended to rise. The night air and moonlight brisked him up; he felt a reaction towards Sabina and perceived that she must have suffered a good deal. He threw the blame on her mother. Once out of Bridetown things would settle down; and if his brother came to his senses and asked him to return, he would make it a condition that he worked henceforth at Bridport. A feeling of hatred for Bridetown mastered him.

He descended West Street until the town lay behind him, then turned to the left through a wicket, crossed some meadows and reached a popular local tryst and sanct.i.ty: the Lovers' Grove. A certain crudity in the ideas of Miss Ironsyde struck Raymond. How simple and primitive she was after all. Could such an unworldly and inexperienced woman be right? He doubted it. But he went on through the avenue of lime and sycamore trees which made the traditional grove. Beneath them ran pavement of rough stones, that lifted the pathway above possible inundation, and, to-night, the pattern of the naked boughs above was thrown down upon the stones in a black lace work by the moon. The place was very still, but half a mile distant there dreamed great woods, whence came the hooting of an owl.

Raymond stood to listen, and when the bird was silent, he heard a footfall ring on the paving-stones and saw Sabina coming to him. At heart she had been fearful that he would not appear; but this she did not whisper now. Instead she pretended confidence and said, "I knew you'd come!"

He responded with fair ardour and tried to banish his grievances against her. He a.s.sured her that all her alarm and tribulation were not his fault, but her own; and her responsive agreement and servile tact, by its self-evidence defeated its own object and fretted the man's nerves, despite his kindly feelings. For Sabina, in her unspeakable thankfulness at the turn of events, sank from herself and was obsequious. When they met he kissed her and presently, holding his hand, she kissed it. She heaped blame upon herself and praised his magnanimity; she presented the ordinary phenomena of a happy release from affliction and fear; but her intense humility was far from agreeable to Raymond, since its very accentuation served to show his own recent actions in painful colours.

He told her what his aunt was going to do; and where a subtler mind had held its peace, Sabina erred again and praised Miss Ironsyde. In truth, she was not at her best to-night and her excitement acted unfavourably on Raymond. He fought against his own emotions, and listened to her high-strung chatter and plans for the future. A torrent of blame had better suited the contrite mood in which she met him; but she took the blame on her own shoulders, and in her relief said things sycophantic and untrue.

He told her almost roughly to stop.

"For G.o.d's sake don't blackguard yourself any more," he said. "Give me a chance. It's for me to apologise to you, surely. I knew perfectly well you meant nothing, and I ought to have had more imagination and not given you any cause to be nervous. I frightened you, and if a woman's frightened, of course, she's not to be blamed for what she does, any more than a man's to be blamed for what he does when he's drunk."

This, however, she would not allow.

"If I had trusted you, and known you could not do wrong, and remembered what you said when I told you about the child--then all this would have been escaped. And G.o.d knows I did trust you at the bottom of my heart all the time."

She talked on and the man tired of it and, looking far ahead, perceived that his life must be shared for ever with a nature only now about to be revealed to him. He had seen the best of her; but he had never seen the whole truth of her. He knew she was excitable and pa.s.sionate; but the excitation and pa.s.sion had all been displayed for him till now. How different when she approached other affairs of life than love, and brought her emotional characteristics to bear upon them! A sensation of unutterable flatness overtook Raymond. She began talking of finding a house, and was not aware that his brother had dismissed him.

He s.n.a.t.c.hed an evil pleasure from telling her so. It silenced her and made her the more oppressively submissive. But through this announcement he won temporary release. There came a longing to leave her, to go back to Bridport and see other faces, hear other voices and speak of other things. They had walked homeward through the valley of the river and, at West Haven, Raymond announced that she must go the remainder of the way alone. He salved the unexpected shock of this with a cheerful promise.

"I sleep at Bridport, to-night," he said, "and I'll leave you here, Sabina; but be quite happy. I dare say Daniel will be all right. He's a pious blade and all that sort of thing and doesn't understand real life.

And as some fool broke our bit of real life rather roughly on his ear, it was too much for his weak nerves. I shan't take you very far off anyway. We'll have a look round soon. I'll go to a house agent or somebody in a day or two."

"You must choose," she said.

"No, no--that's up to you, and you mustn't have small ideas about it either. You're going to live in a jolly good house, I promise you."

This sweetened the parting. He kissed her and turned his face to Bridport, while she followed the road homeward. It took her past the old store--black as the night under a roof silvered by the moon. A strange shiver ran through her as she pa.s.sed it. She could have prayed for time to turn back.

"Oh, my G.o.d, if I was a maiden again!" she said in a low voice to herself.

Then, growing calmer and musing of the past rather than the future, she asked herself whether in that case she would still be caring for Raymond; but she turned from such a thought and smothered the secret indignation still lying red-hot and hidden under the smoke of the things she had said to him that night.

On his way to Bridport, the man also reflected, but of the future, not the past.

"I must be cruel to be kind," he told himself. What he exactly meant by the a.s.surance, he hardly knew. But, in some way, it a.s.sisted self-respect and promised a course of action likely to justify his coming life.

CHAPTER XIX

JOB LEGG'S AMBITION

A disquieting and wholly unexpected event now broke into the strenuous days of the mistress of 'The Seven Stars.' It followed another, which was now a thing of the past; but Mrs. Northover had scarcely finished being thankful that the old order was restored again, when that occurred to prove the old order could never be restored.

Job Legg had been called away to the deathbed of an aged uncle. For a fortnight he was absent, and during that time Nelly Northover found herself the victim of a revelation. She perceived, indeed, startling truths until then hidden from her, and found the absence of Job created undreamed-of complications. At every turn she missed the man and discovered, very much to her own surprise, that this most una.s.suming person appeared vital to the success of her famous house. On every hand she heard the same words; all progress was suspended; nothing could advance until the return of Mr. Legg. 'The Seven Stars' were arrested in their courses while he continued absent.

Thus his temporary disappearance affected the system and proved that around the sun of Job Legg, quite as much as his mistress, the galaxy revolved; but something more than this remained to be discovered by Mrs.

Northover herself. She found that not only had she undervalued his significance and importance in her scheme of things; but that she entertained a personal regard for the man, unsuspected until he was absent. She missed him at every turn; and when he came back to her, after burying his uncle, Mrs. Northover could have kissed him.

This she did not do; but she was honest; she related the suspension of many great affairs for need of Job; she described to him the dislocation that his departure had occasioned and declared her hearty thankfulness that her right hand had returned to her.

"You was uppermost in my mind a thousand times a day, Job; and when it came to doing the fifty thousand things you do, I began to see what there is to you," said Nelly Northover. "And this I'll say: you haven't been getting enough money along with me."

He was pleased and smiled and thanked her.

"I've missed 'The Stars,'" he said, "and am very glad to be back."

Then when things were settled down and Mrs. Northover happy and content once more, Mr. Legg cast her into much doubt and uncertainty. Indeed his att.i.tude so unexpected, awoke a measure of dismay. Life, that Nelly hoped was becoming static and comfortable again, suddenly grew highly dynamic. Changes stared her in the face and that was done which nothing could undo.

On the night that Raymond Ironsyde left Sabina at West Haven and returned to Bridport, Mr. Legg, the day's work done, drank a gla.s.s of sloe gin in Mrs. Northover's little parlour and uttered a startling proposition--the last to have been expected.

The landlady herself unconsciously opened the way to it, for she touched the matter of his wages and announced her purpose to increase them by five shillings a week. Then he spoke.

"Before we talk about that, hear me," he said. "You were too nice-minded to ask me if I got anything by the death of my old man; but I may tell you, that I got everything. And there was a great deal more than anybody knew. In short he's left me a shade over two hundred pounds per annum, and that with my own savings--for I've saved since I was thirteen years old--brings my income somewhere near the two hundred and fifty mark--not counting wages."

"Good powers, Job! But I am glad. Never none on earth deserved a bit better than you do."