The Measure of a Man, Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr [free children's ebooks pdf TXT] 📗

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"I will buy your share of the mill."

"Thank you, John. I know you are good to me, but you cannot tell how certain I am about Lucy; yes, and the mill, too."

"Well, my dear lad, I believe you tonight; but what I want you to believe is that tomorrow some new light may shine and you may see your thoughts on these two subjects in a different way. Just keep your mind open to whatever you may see or hear that can instruct your intentions. That is all I ask. If you are willing to be instructed, the Instructor will come, not perhaps, but certainly."

Four days after this conversation life in Hatton had broken apart, and Harry was speeding down the Bay of Biscay and singing the fine old sea song called after it, to the rhythm and music of its billowy surge. The motion of the boat, the wind in the sails, the "chanties" of the sailors as they went about their work, and the evident content and happiness around him made Harry laugh and sing and toss away his cap and let the fresh salt wind blow on his hot brain in which he fancied the clack and clamor of the looms still lingered. He thought that a life at sea, resting or sailing as the mood took him, would be a perfect life if only Lucy were with him.

Sitting at dinner he very pointedly made the absence of women the great want in this otherwise perfect existence. The captain earnestly and strongly denied it. "There is nowhere in the world," he said, "where a woman is less wanted than on a ship. They interfere with happiness and comfort in every way. If we had a woman on board tonight, she would be deathly seasick or insanely frightened. A ship with a woman's name is just as much as any captain can manage. You would be astonished at the difference a name can make in a ship. When this yacht belonged to Colonel Brotherton, she was called the _Dolphin_, and God and angels know she tried to behave like one, diving and plunging and careering as if she had fins instead of sails. I was captain of her then and I know it. Well, your father bought her, and your mother threw a bottle of fine old port over her bow, and called her the _Martha Hatton_, and she has been a different ship ever since--ladylike and respectable, no more butting of the waves, as if she was a ram; she lifts herself on and over them and goes curtseying into harbor like a duchess."

As they talked the wind rose, and the play of its solemn music in the rigging of the yacht and in the deep bass of the billows was, as Harry said, "like a chant of High Mass. I heard one for the sailors leaving Hull last Christmas night," he said, "and I shall never forget it."

"But you are a Methodist, sir?"

"Oh, that does not hinder! A good Methodist can pray wherever there is honest prayer going on. John was with me, and I knew by John's face he was praying. I was but a lad, but I said 'Our Father,' for I knew that Christ's words could not be wrong wherever they were said."

"Well, sir, I hope you will recover your health soon and be able to return to your business."

"My health, Captain, is firstrate! I have not come to sea for my health. Surely to goodness, John did not tell you that story?"

"No, he did not, and I saw that you were well enough as soon as you came on board."

"Well, Captain, I am here to try how a life of pleasure and idleness will suit me. I hate the mill, I hate its labor and all about it, and John thought a few months of nothing to do would make me go cheerfully back to work."

"Do you think it will?"

"I say no--downright."

"And what then, sir?"

"I really cannot say what I may do. I have a bit of money from my father, and I know lots of good fellows who seem happy enough without business or work of any kind. They just amuse themselves or have some fad of pleasure-making like fast horses."

"Such men ought never to have been born, sir. They only cumber the mills and the market-places, the courts of law and the courts of the church--yes, even the wide spaces of the ocean."

"Are you not a bit hard, Captain?"

"No; I am not hard enough. Do you think God sent any man that had his five senses into this busy world to _amuse_ himself?"

"Are you preaching me a sermon, Captain?"

"Nay, not I! Preaching is nothing in my line. But you are on a new road, sir, and no one can tell where it may lead to, so I'll just remind you to watch your beginnings; the results will manage themselves."


CHAPTER VI


LOVE'S YOUNG DREAM

Love is the only link that binds us to those gone; the only link that binds us to those who remain. Surely it _is_ the spiritual world--the abiding kingdom of heaven, not far from any one of us.

On a day of grace, she came of God's grace to me.

One night at the end of October Mrs. Hatton was sitting in the living-room of the Hall. To say "sitting," however, is barely true, for she was in that irritably anxious mood which both in men and women usually runs into motion, and Mrs. Hatton was more frequently off her chair than on it. She lifted the brass tongs and put a few pieces of coal on the fire; she walked to the window and looked down the long vista of trees; she arranged chairs and cushions, that did not need arranging; she sent away the large tortoise-shell cat that was watching as eagerly as herself for John's return; and finally her restlessness found a tongue.

"What for are you worrying about the lad, Martha Hatton? He's grown up, you know, and he isn't worrying about you. I'll warrant that some way or other he's with that Harlow girl, and where's his poor mother then? Clean forgotten, of course. Sons and daughters, indeed! They are a bitter pleasure, they are that. Here's John getting on to thirty years old, and I never knew it in his shoes to run after a girl before--but there--I'm down-daunted with the changes that will have to come--yes, that will have to come--well, well, life is just a hurry-push! One trouble after another--that's John's horse, I know its gallop, and it is high time he was here, it is that. Besides, it's dribbling rain, and I wouldn't wonder if it was teeming down in half an hour--and there's Tom crying for all he's worth--I may as well let him in--come in, Tom!"--and Tom walked in with an independent air to the rug and lay down by John's footstool. Indeed, his attitude was impudent enough to warrant Mrs. Hatton's threat to "turn him out-of-doors, if he did not carry himself more like a decent cat and less like a blackguard."

The creature knew well enough what was said to him. He lay prone on the rug, with his head on his forepaws, watching Mrs. Hatton; and she was a little uncomfortable and glad when John entered the room. The cat ran to meet him, but John went straight to his mother's side and said,

"Dear mother, I want your kiss and blessing tonight. God has given me the desire of my heart, but I am not satisfied until you share my joy."

"That means that God has given you the love and promise of Jane Harlow."

"Yes, that is what I mean. Sit down, mother; I must talk the matter over with you, or I shall miss some of the sweetest part of it."

Then she lifted her face and looked at him, and it was easy to see that Love and the man had met. Never before in all his life had she seen him so beautiful--his broad, white forehead, his bright contemplative eyes, his sweet, loving, thoughtful face breaking into kind smiles, his gentle manner, and his scrupulously refined dress made a picture of manhood that appealed to her first, as a mother, and secondly, as a woman. And in her heart an instantaneous change took place. She put her hands on his shoulders and lifted her face for his kiss.

"My good son!" she said. "Thy love is my love, and thy joy is my joy! Sit thee down, John, and tell me all about it."

So they sat down together on the bright hearth, sat down so close that John could feel the constant touch of his mother's hand--that white, firm hand which had guided and comforted him all his life long.

"Mother," he said, "if anyone had told me this morning that I should be Jane's betrothed husband before I slept this night, I would hardly have believed in the possibility. But Love is like a flower; it lies quiet in its long still growth, and then in some happy hour it bursts into perfect bloom. I had finished my business at Overton and stayed to eat the market dinner with the spinners. Then in the quiet afternoon I took my way home, and about a mile above the village I met Jane. I alighted and took the bridle off Bendigo's neck over my arm, and asked permission to walk with her. She said she was going to Harlow House, and would be glad of my company. As we walked she told me they intended to return there; she said she felt its large rooms with their faded magnificence to be far more respectable than the little modern villa with its creaking floors and rattling windows in which they were living."

"She is quite right," said Mrs. Hatton. "I wonder at them for leaving the old place. Many a time and oft I have said that."

"She told me they had been up there a good deal during the past summer and had enjoyed the peace and solitude of the situation; and the large silent rooms were full of stories, she said--love stories of the old gay Regency days. I said something about filling them with love stories of the present day, and she laughed and said her mother was going there to farm the land and make some money out of it; and she added with a smile like sunshine, 'And I am going to try and help her. That accounts for our walk this afternoon, Mr. Hatton,' and I told her I was that well pleased with the walk, I cared little for what had caused it.

"In a short time we came in sight of the big, lonely house and entered the long neglected park and garden. I noticed at once a splendid belt of old ash-trees that shielded the house from the north and northeast winds. I asked Jane if she knew who planted them, and she said she had heard that the builder of the house planted the trees. Then I told her I suspected the builder had been a very wise man, and when she asked why I answered, Because he could hardly have chosen a better tree. The ash represents some of the finest qualities in human nature.'"

"That wasn't much like love talk, John."

"It was the best kind of talk, mother. There had to be some commonplace conversation to induce that familiarity which made love talk possible. So I told her how the ash would