"He's got his own room and Mister Best wishes he'd bide in it," explained Sarah, "but he says he must learn, and so he's always wandering around. But everybody likes him, except Levi Baggs. He don't like anybody. He'd like to draw us all over his hackling frames if he could."
They chattered awhile, then worked again; but Sarah stayed to supper, and it was not until half-past ten o'clock that she started for home.
Another Bridetown girl—Alice Chick, the spinner—had been spending her half holiday in Bridport. Now she met Sarah, by appointment, at the top of South Street and the two returned together.
CHAPTER VII
A WALK
The Carding Machine was a squat and noisy monster. Mr. Best confessed that it had put him in mind of a passage from Holy Writ, for it seemed to be all eyes, behind and before. The eyes were wheels, and beneath, the mass of the carder opened its mouth—a thin and hungry slit into which wound an endless band. Spread upon this leathern roller was the hemp tow—that mass of short material which Levi Baggs, the hackler, pruned away from his long strides. As for the minder, Sally Groves, she seemed built and born to tend a Carding Machine. She moved with dignity despite her great size, and although covered in tow dust from head to foot and powdered with a layer of pale amber fluff, she stood as well as another for the solemnity of toil, laboured steadfastly, was neither elated, nor cast down, and presented to younger women a spectacle of skill, resolution and good sense. The great woman ennobled her work; through the dust and din, with placid and amiable features, she peered, and ceased not hour after hour, to spread the tow truly and evenly upon the rolling board. One of less experience might have needed to weigh her material, but Sally never weighed; by long practice and good judgment, she produced sliver of even texture.
The carder panted, crashed and shook with its energies. It glimmered all over with the bright, hairy gossamer of the tow, which wound thinly through systems of fast and slow wheels. Between them the material was lashed and pricked, divided and sub-divided, torn and lacerated by thousands of pins, that separated strand from strand and shook the stuff to its integral fibres before building it up again. Despite the thunder and the suggestion of immense forces exerted upon the frail material, utmost delicacy marked the operations of the card. Any real strain must have torn to atoms the fine amber coils in which it ejected the strips of shining sliver. Enormous waste marked the operation. Beneath the machine rose mounds of dust and dirt, and fluff, light as thistledown; while as much was sucked away into the air by the exhaust above.
In a lion-coloured overall and under a hat tied beneath her chin with a yellow handkerchief, Sally Groves pursued her task. Then came to her Sabina Dinnett and, ceasing not to spread her tow the while, Sally spoke serious words.
"I asked Nancy Buckler to send you along when your machine stopped a minute. You won't be vexed with me if I say something, will you?"
"Vexed with you, Sally? Who ever was vexed with you?"
"I'm old enough to be your mother, and 'tis her work if anybody's to speak to you," explained Sally; "but she's not here, and she don't see what I can't help seeing."
"What have you seen then?"
"I've seen a very good-looking young man by the name of Raymond Ironsyde wasting a deuce of a lot of his time by your spinning frame; and wasting your time, too."
Sabina changed colour.
"Fancy you saying that!" she exclaimed. "He's got to learn the business—the practical side, Sally. And he wants to master it carefully and grasp the whole thing."
Miss Groves smiled.
"Ah. He didn't take long mastering the carder," she said. "Just two minutes was all he gave me, and I don't think he was very long at the drawing heads neither; and I ain't heard Sarah Northover say he spent much of his time at the spreader. It all depends on the minder whether Mister Raymond wants to know much about the work!"
"But the spinning is the hardest to understand, Sally."
"Granted, but he don't ask many questions of Alice Chick or Nancy Buckler, do he? I'm not blaming him, Lord knows, nor yet you, but for friendship I'm whispering to you to be sensible. He's a very kind-hearted young gentleman, and if he had a memory as big as his promises, he'd soon ruin himself. But, like a lot of other nice chaps full of generous ideas, he forgets 'em when the accident that woke 'em is out of his mind. And all I say, Sabina, is to be careful. He may be as good as gold, and I dare say he is, but he's gone on you—head over heels—he can't hide it. He don't even try to. And he's a gentleman and you're a spinner. So don't you be silly, and don't think the worse of me for speaking."
Sabina entertained the opinions concerning middle-age common to youth, but she was fond of Sally and set her heart at rest.
"You needn't be frightened," she answered. "He's a gentleman, as you say; and you know I'm not the sort to be a fool. I can't help him coming; and I can't be rude to the young man. For that matter I wouldn't. I won't forget what you've said all the same."
She hurried away and started her machine; but while her mind concentrated on spinning, some subconscious instincts worked at another matter and she found that Sally had cast a cloud upon a coming event which promised nothing but sunshine.
She had agreed to go for a walk with Raymond Ironsyde on the following Sunday, and he had named their meeting-place: a bridge that crossed the Bride in the vale two miles from the village. She meant to go, for the understanding between her and Raymond had advanced far beyond any point dreamed of by Sally Groves. Sabina's mind was in fact exceedingly full of Raymond, and his mind was full of her. Temperament had conspired to this state of things, for while the youth found himself in love for the first time in his life, and pursued the quest with that ardour and enthusiasm until now reserved for sport, Sabina, who had otherwise been much more cautious, was not only in love, but actually felt that shadowy ambitions from the past began to promise realisation. She was not vain, but she knew herself a finer thing in mind and body than most of the girls with whom she worked. She had read a great deal and learned much from Mr. Churchouse, who delighted to teach her, and from Mr. Best, with whom she was a prime favourite. She had refused several offers of marriage and preserved a steady determination not to wed until there came a man who could lift her above work and give her a home that would embrace comfort and leisure. She waited, confident that this would happen, for she knew that she could charm men. As yet none had come who awakened any emotion of love in Sabina; and she told herself that real love might alter her values and send her to a poor man's home after all. If that happened, she was willing; but she thought it improbable; because, in her experience, poor men were ignorant, and she felt very sure no ignorant man would ever make her love him.
Then came into her life one very much beyond her dreams, and from an attitude of utmost caution before a physical beauty that fascinated her, she woke into tremendous excitation of mind at the discovery that he, too, was interested. To her it seemed that he had plenty of brains. His ideas were human and beautiful. He declared the conditions of the workers to be not sufficiently considered. He was full of nebulous theories for the amelioration of such conditions. The spectacle of women working for a living caused Raymond both uneasiness and indignation. To Sabina, it seemed that he was a chivalric knight of romance—a being from a fairy story. She had heard of such men, but never met with one outside a novel. She glorified Raymond into something altogether sublime—as soon as she found that he liked her. He filled her head, and while her common-sense vainly tried to talk as Sally Groves had talked, each meeting with the young man threw her back upon the tremendous fact that he was deeply interested in her and did not care who knew it. Common-sense could not modify that; nor would she listen to common-sense, when it suggested that Raymond's record was uninspiring, and pointed to no great difference between him and other young men. She told herself that he was misunderstood; she whispered to herself that she understood him. It must be so, for he had declared it. He had said that he was an idealist.