The Spinners Part 65

Sentiments so unusual from her husband startled Mrs. Roberts as well as her aunt.

"Lor, Nicholas! What's the matter with you?" asked Sarah.

"It ain't often I grumble," he answered, "and if anybody's better at taking the rough with the smooth than me, I'd like to see him; but there are times when nature craves for a bit of pudding, and gets sick to death of its daily meal of bread and cheese. I speak in a parable, however, because I don't mean the body but the mind. Your body bothers you, Missis Legg, as well it may; but your mind, thanks to your husband, is pretty peaceful year in year out. In my case, my body calls for no attention. Thin as a rake I am and so shall continue. But the tissue is good, and no man is made of better quality stuff. It's my mind that turns in upon itself and gives me a pang now and again. And the higher the nature of the mind, the worse its troubles. In fact the more you can feel, the more you are made to feel; and what the mind is built to endure, that, seemingly, it will be called to endure."

But Nelly had no patience with the philosophy of Mr. Roberts.

"You're so windy when you've got anything on your chest," she said. "You keep talking and don't get any forwarder. What's the fuss about now?"

"You've been listening to Baggs, I expect," suggested the wife of Nicholas. "Baggs has got the boot at last and leaves at Christmas, and his pension don't please him, so he's fairly bubbling over with verjuice. I should hope you'd got too much sense to listen to him, Nick."

"So should I. He's no more than the winter wind in a hedge at any time,"

answered Mr. Roberts. "Baggs gets attended to same as a wasp gets attended to--because of his sting. All bad-tempered people win a lot more attention and have their way far quicker than us easy and amiable ones. Why, we know, of course. Human nature's awful cowardly at bottom and will always choose the easiest way to escape the threatened wrath of a bad temper. In fact, fear makes the world go round, not love, as silly people pretend. In my case I feel much like Sabina Dinnett, who was talking about life not a week ago in the triangle under the sycamore tree. And she said, 'Those who do understand don't care, and those who don't understand, don't matter'--so there you are--one's left all alone."

"I'm sure you ain't--more's Sabina. She's got lots of friends, and you've got your dear wife and children," said Nelly.

"I have; but the mind sometimes takes a flight above one's family. It's summed up in a word: there's nothing so d.a.m.ned unpleasant as being took for granted, and that's what's the matter with me."

"Not in your home, you ain't," declared Sarah. "No good, sensible wife takes her husband for granted. He's always made a bit of a fuss over under his own roof."

"That's true; but in my business I am. To see people--I'll name no names--to see other people purred over, and then to find your own craft treated as just a commonplace of Nature, no more wonderful than the leaves on a bush--beastly, I call it."

Mr. Legg had joined them and he admitted the force of the argument.

"We're very inclined to put our own job higher in the order of the universe than will other people," he said; "and better men than you have hungered for a bit of notice and a pat on the back and never won it. But time covers that trouble. I grant, all the same, that it's a bit galling when we find the world turns a cold shoulder to our best."

"It's a human weakness, Nicholas, to want to be patted," said Nelly, and her husband agreed.

"It is. We share it with dogs," he declared. "But the world in general is too busy to pat us. I remember in my green youth being very proud of myself once and pointing to a lot of pewter in a tub, that I'd worked up till it looked like silver; and I took some credit, and an old man in the bar said that scouring pots was nothing more than scouring pots, and that any other honest fool could have done them just as well as me."

"That's all right and I don't pretend my work on the lathe is a national a.s.set, and I don't pretend I ought to have a statue for doing it,"

answered Nicholas; "but what I do say is that I am greater than my lathe and ought to get more attention according. I am a man and not a cog-wheel, and when Ironsyde puts cog-wheels above men and gives a dumb machine greater praise than the mechanic who works it--then it's wrong and I don't like it."

"He can't make any such mistake as that," argued Job. "It's rumoured he's going to stand for Parliament at the next General Election, so his business is with men, not machines, and he'll very soon find all about the human side of politics."

"He'll be human enough till he gets in. They always are. They'll stoop to anything till they're elected," said Mrs. Legg, "but once there, the case is often altered with 'em."

"I want to be recognised as a man," continued Roberts, "and Ironsyde don't do it. He isn't the only human being with a soul and a future. And now, if he's for Parliament, I dare say he'll become more indifferent than ever. He may be a machine himself, with no feelings beyond work; but other people are built different."

"A man like him ought to try and do the things himself," suggested Sarah. "If employers had to put in a day laying the stricks on the spreadboard, or turning the rollers on the lathe, or hackling, or spinning, they'd very soon get a respect for what the workers do. In fact, if labour had its way, it ought to make capital taste what labour means, and get out of bed when labour gets out, and do what labour does, and eat what labour eats. Then capital would begin to know it's born."

"It never will happen," persisted Nicholas. "Nothing opens the eyes of the blind, or makes the man who can buy oysters, eat winkles. The gulf is fixed between us and it won't be crossed. If he goes into Parliament, or stops out, he'll be himself still, and look on us doubtfully and wish in his soul that we were made of copper and filled with steam."

"A master must follow his people out of the works into their homes if he's worth a rap," declared Job. "Your aunt always did so with her maidens, and I do so with the men. And it's our place to remember that men and women are far different from metal and steam. You can't turn the power off the workers and think they're going to be all right till you turn it on again. They go on all the time--same as the masters and mistresses do. They sleep and eat and rest; they want their bit of human interest, and bit of fun, and pinch of hope to salt the working day. And as for Raymond Ironsyde, I've seen his career unfolding since he was a boy and marked him in bad moments and seen his weakness; which secrets were safe enough with me, for I'd always a great feeling for the young.

And I say that he's good as gold at heart and his faults only come from a lack of power to put himself in another man's place. He could never look very much farther than his own place in the world and the road that led to it. He did wrong, like all of us, and his faults found him out; which they don't always do. But he's the sort that takes years and years to ripen. He's not yet at his best you'll find; but he's a learner, and he may learn a great many useful things if he goes into Parliament--if it's only what to avoid."

"There's one thing that will do him a darned sight more good than going into Parliament, and that's getting married," said Sarah. "In fact, a few of us, that can see further through a milestone than some people, believe it's in sight."

"Miss Waldron, of course?" asked Nelly.

"Yes--her. And when that happens, she'll make of Mister Ironsyde a much more understanding man than going into Parliament will. He's fair and just--not one of us, bar Levi Baggs, ever said he wasn't that--but she's more--she's just our lady, and our good is her good, and what she's done for us would fill a book; and if she could work on him to look at us through her eyes, then none of us, that deserved it, as we all do, would lose our good word."

"What do you say to that, Job?" asked Mrs. Legg.

"I say nothing better could happen," he answered. "But don't feel too hopeful. The things that promise best to the human eye ain't the things that Providence very often performs. To speak in a religious spirit and without feeling, there's no doubt that Providence does take a delight in turning down the obvious things and bringing us up against the doubtful and difficult and unexpected ones. That's why there's such a gulf between story books and real life. The story books that I used to read in my youth, always turned out just as a man of good will and good heart and kindly spirit would wish them to do; but you'd be straining civility to Providence and telling a lie if you pretended real life does.

Therefore I say, hope it may happen; but don't bet on it."

Job finished his tea and bustled away.

"The wisdom of the man!" said Nicholas. "He's the most comforting person I know, because he don't pretend. There's some think that everything that happens to us is our own fault, and they drive you silly with their bleating. Job knows it ain't so."

"A far-seeing man," admitted Nelly, "and a great reader of the signs of the times. People used to think he was a simple sort--G.o.d forgive me, I did myself; but I know better now. All through that business with poor Richard Gurd, Job understood our characters and bided his time and knew that the crash must come between us. He's told me since that he never really feared Gurd, because he looked ahead and felt that two such natures as mine and Richard's were never meant to join in matrimony.

Looking back, I see Job's every move and the brain behind it. Talk about Parliament! If Bridport was to send Legg there, they'd be sending one that's ten times wiser than Raymond Ironsyde--and ten times deeper. In fact, the nation's very ill served by most that go there. They are the showy, rich, noisy sort, who want to bulk in the public eye without working for it--ciphers who do what they're told, and don't understand the inner nature of what they're doing more than a hoss in a plough. But men like Job, though not so noisy, would get to the root, and use their own judgment, and rise superior to party politics and the pitiful need to shout with your side, right or wrong."

"Miss Waldron is very wishful for him to get in, and she says he's got good ideas," replied Nicholas.

"If so, he has to thank her for them," added Sarah.

"And I hope," continued Nicholas, "that if he does get in, he'll be suffered to make a speech, and his words will fall stone dead on the ears of the members, and his schemes will fail. Then he'll know what it is to be flouted and to see his best feats win not a friendly sign."

"Electors are a lot too easy going in my opinion," said Nelly. "I'm old enough to have seen their foolish ways in my time, and find, over and over again, that they are mostly gulls to be took with words. They never ask what a man's record is and turn over the pages of his past. They never trouble about what he's done, or how he's made his money, or where he stands in public report. It isn't what he has done, but what he's going to do. Yet you can better judge of a man from his past than his promises, and measure, in the light of his record, whether he's going to the House of Commons for patriotic, decent reasons, or for mean ones.

And never you vote for a lawyer, Nicholas Roberts. 'Tis a golden rule with Job that never, under any manner of circ.u.mstances, will he help to get a lawyer into Parliament. They stand in the way of all progress but their own; they suck our blood in every affair of life; they baffle all honest thinking with their cunning, and look at right and wrong only from the point of expediency. Job says there ought to be a law against lawyers going in at all. But catch them making it! In fact, we're in their clutches more than the fly in the web, because they make the laws; and they'll never make any laws to limit their own powers over us, though always quick enough to increase them. Job says that the only bright side to a revolution would be that the law and the lawyers would be swept into the street orderly bin together. Then we'd start clean and free, and try to keep clean and free."

Upon this subject Mrs. Legg always found plenty to say. Indeed she continued to open her mind till they grew weary.

"We must be moving if we're going to church," said Sarah. "I think we'd better go and pick up a bit of charity to our neighbour--Sunday and all."

CHAPTER XVI

THE OFFER OF MARRIAGE

Raymond met Estelle on his way from the works and together they walked home. Here and there in the cottage doorways sat women braiding. Among them was Sally Groves--now grown too old and slow to tend the 'Card'--and accident willed that she should make an opening for thoughts that now filled Ironsyde's mind. They stopped, for Sally was an old acquaintance of both, and Estelle valued the big woman for her resolute character and shrewd sense. Now Sally, on strength of long-standing friends.h.i.+p, grew personal. It was an ancient joke to chaff Miss Groves about marriage, but to-day, when Raymond asked if the net she made was to catch a husband, Sally retorted with spirit.

"All very fine for you two to be poking fun at me," she said. "But what about you? It's time you made up your minds I'm sure, for everybody knows you're in love with each other--though you don't yourselves seemingly."

"Give us a lead, Sally," suggested Raymond; but she shook her head.

"You're old enough to know your own business," she answered; "but don't you go lecturing other people about matrimony while you're a bachelor yourself--else you'll get the worst of it--as you have now."

They left her and laughed together.

"Yet I've heard you say she was the most sensible woman that ever worked in the mills," argued Raymond.

Estelle made no direct reply, but spoke of Sally in the past at one of her parties, when the staff took holiday and spent a day at Weymouth.