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

mill. He hoped there might be a letter there for him. When he found none among his mail, he hurried back to his home. "Jane would send her letter there," he thought. But there was no letter there. Then his heart sank within him, but he took no further step at that hour. Business from hundreds of looms called him. Hundreds of workers were busy among them. Greenwood was watching for him. Clerks were waiting for his directions and the great House of Labor shouted from all its myriad windows.

With a pitiful and involuntary "God help me!" he buckled himself to his mail. It was larger than ordinary, but he went with exact and patient care over it. He said to himself, "Troubles love to flock together and I expect I shall find a worrying letter from Harry this morning"; but there was no letter at all from Harry and he felt relieved. The only personal note that came to him was a request that he would not fail to be present at the meeting of the Gentlemen's Club that evening, as there was important business to transact.

He sat with this message in his hand, considering. He had for some time felt uneasy about his continuance in the Club, for its social regulations were strict and limited. Composed mostly of the landed gentry in the neighborhood, it had very slowly and reluctantly opened its doors to a few of the most wealthy manufacturers, and Harry's appearance as a public and professional singer negatived his right to its exclusive membership. In case Harry was asked to resign, John would certainly withdraw with his brother. Yet the mere thought of such a social humiliation troubled him.

When the mail was attended to be rose quickly, shook himself, as if he would shake off the trouble that oppressed him, and went through the mill with Greenwood. This duty he performed with such minute attention that the overseer privately wondered whatever was the matter with "Master John," but soon settled the question, by a decision that "he hed been worried by his wife a bit, and it hed put him all out of gear, and no wonder." For Greenwood had had his own experiences of this kind and had suffered many things in consequence of them. So he was sorry for John as he told himself that "whether married men were rich or poor, things were pretty equal for them."

Just as the two men parted, Jonathan said, in a kind of afterthought way, "There's a full meeting of the Gentlemen's Club tonight, sir. I suppose you know."

"Certainly, but how is it _you_ know?"

"You may well ask that, sir. I am truly nobbut one o' John Hatton's overseers, but I hev a son who has married into a landed family, and he told me that some of the old quality were going to propose his father-in-law for membership tonight. I promised my Ben I would ask your vote in Master Akers' favor."

"Akers has bought a deal of land lately, I hear."

"Most of the old Akers' Manor back, and there are those who think he ought to be recognized. I hope you will give him a ball of the right color, sir."

"Greenwood, I am not well acquainted with Israel Akers. I see him at the market dinner occasionally, but----"

"Think of it, sir. It is mebbe right to believe in a man until you find out he isn't worthy of trust."

"That is quite contrary to your usual advice, Greenwood."

"_Privately_, sir, I am a very trusting man. That is my nature--but in business it is different--trusting doesn't work in business, sir. You know that, sir."

John nodded an assent, and said, "Look after loom forty, Greenwood. It was idle. Find out the reason. As to Akers, I shall do the kind and just thing, you may rest on that. Is he a pleasant man personally?"

"I dare say he is pleasant enough at a dinner-table, and I'll allow that he is varry unpleasant at a piece table in the Town Hall. But webs of stuff and pieces of cloth naturally lock up a man's best self. He wouldn't hev got back to be Akers of Akerside if things wern't that way ordered."

This Club news troubled John. He did not believe that Akers cared a penny piece for a membership, and pooh-pooh it as he would, this trifling affair would not let him alone. It gnawed under the great sorrow of Jane's absence, like a rat gnawing under his bed or chair.

But come what will, time and the hour run through the hardest day; the looms suddenly stopped, the mill was locked, the crowd of workers scattered silently and wearily, and John rode home with a sick sense of sorrow at his heart. He had no hope that Jane would be there. He knew the dear, proud woman too well to expect from her such an impossible submission. Tears sprang to his eyes as he thought of her, and yet there was set before him an inexorable duty which he dared not ignore, for the things of Eternity rested on it.

He left his horse at the stable and walked slowly round to the front of the house. As he reached the door it was swiftly opened, and in smiles and radiant raiment Jane stood waiting to receive him.

"John! John, dear!" she said softly, and he took her in his arms and whispered her name over and over on her lips.

"Dinner will be ready in half an hour," she said, "and it is the dinner you like best of all. Do not loiter, John."

He shook his head happily and took the broad low steps as a boy might--two or three at a time. Everything now seemed possible to him. "She is in an angel's temper," he thought. "She has divined between the wrong and the right. She will throw the wrong over forever."

And Jane watched him up the stairs with womanly pleasure. She said to herself, "How handsome he is! How good he is! There are none like him." Then her face clouded, and she went into the parlor and sat down. She knew there was a trying conversation before her, but, "John cannot resist the argument of my beauty," she thought, "It is sure to prevail." In a few moments she continued her reflections. "I may be weak enough to give a promise for the future, but I will never, never, admit I was wrong in the past. Make your stand there, Jane Hatton, for if he ever thinks you did wrong knowingly, you will lose all your influence over him."

During dinner and while the butler was in the room the conversation was kept upon general subjects, and John in this interval spoke of Akers' wish to join the Gentlemen's Club.

"I am not astonished," answered Jane. "Mrs. Will Clough and her daughter arrived in my Club a year ago. They are very pushing and what they call 'advanced.' They do not believe that the earth is the Lord's nor yet that it belongs to man. They think it is woman's own heritage. And they want the name of the Club changed. It has always been the Society Club. Mrs. William Clough thinks a society club is shockingly behind the times; and she proposed changing it to the Progressive Club. She said we were all, she hoped, progressive women."

"Well, Jane, my dear, this is interesting. What next?"

"Mrs. Israel Akers said she had been told that 'very few of the old-fashioned women were left in Hatton, that even the women in the mills were progressing and getting nearer and nearer to the modern ideal'; and she added in a plaintive voice, 'I'm a good bit past seventy, and I hope some old-fashioned women will live as long as I do, that we may be company for each other.' Mrs. Clough told her, 'she would soon learn to love the new woman,' and she said plain out, 'Nay not I! I can't understand her, and I doan't know what she means.' Then Mrs. Brierly spoke of the 'old woman' as a downtrodden 'creature' not to be put in comparison with the splendid 'new woman' who was beginning to arrive. I'm sure, John, it puzzles me."

"I can only say, Jane, that the 'old woman' has filled her position for millenniums with honor and affection, almost with adoration. I would not like to say what will be the result of her taking to men's ways and men's work."

"You know, John, you cannot judge one kind of woman from the other kind. They are so entirely different. Women have been kept so ignorant. Now they place culture and knowledge before everything."

"Surely not before love, Jane?"

"Yes, indeed! Some put knowledge and progress--always progress--before everything else."

"My dear Jane, think of this--all we call 'progress' ends with death. What is that progress worth which is bounded by the grave? If progress in men and women is not united with faith in God, and hope in His eternal life and love, I would not lift my hand or speak one word to help either man or woman to such blank misery."

"Do not put yourself out of the way, John. There will be no change in the women of today that will affect you. But no doubt they will eventually halve--and better halve--the world's work and honors with men. Do you not think so, John?"

"My dear, I know not; women perhaps may cease to be women; but I am positive that men will continue to be men."

"I mean that women will do men's work as well as men do it."

"Nature is an obstinate dame. She offers serious opposition to that result."

"Well, I was only telling you how far progressive ideas had grown in Hatton town. Women propose to share with men the honors of statecraft and the wealth of trading and manufacturing."

"Jane, dear, I don't like to hear you talking such nonsense. The mere fact that women _can not fight_ affects all the unhappy equality they aim at; and if it were possible to alter that fact, we should be equalizing _down_ and not up." Then he looked at his watch and said he must be at the Club very soon.

"Will you remain in the parlor until I return, Jane?" he asked. "I will come home as quickly as possible."

"No, John, I find it is better for me to go to sleep early. Indeed, as you are leaving me, I will go to my room now. Good night, dear!"

He said good night but his voice was cold, and his heart anxious and dissatisfied. And after Jane had left the room he sat down again, irresolute and miserable. "Why should I go to the Club?" he asked himself. "Why should I care about its small ways and regulations? I have something far more important to think of. I will not go out tonight."

He sat still thinking for half an hour, then he looked again at his watch and found that it was yet possible to be at the Club in time. So with a great sigh he obeyed that urging of duty, which even in society matters he could not neglect and be at rest.

There was no light in Jane's room when he returned home and he spent the night miserably. Waking he felt as if walking through the valley of the shadows of loss and intolerable wrong. Phantoms created by his own sorrow and fear pressed him hard and dreams from incalculable depths troubled and terrified his soul. In sleep it