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

was the blood of generations of good men and good women that roused in him a passionate protest against the destruction of their race. His private sense of injustice and disloyalty came later. Then the iron entered his soul and it was on this very bread of bitterness he had now to feed it; for on this bread only could he grow to the full stature of a man of God. His heart was bruised and torn, but his soul was unshaken, and the hidden power and strength of life revealed themselves.

First he threw all anger behind him. He thought of his wife with tenderness and pity only. He made himself recall her charm and her love. He decided that it would be better not to argue the fatal subject with her again. "No man can convince a woman," he thought. "She must be led to convince herself. I will trust her to God. He will send some teacher who cannot fail." Then he thought of the days of pleasantness they had passed together, and his heart felt as if it must break, while from behind his closed eyelids great tears rolled down his face.

This incident, though so natural, shocked him. He arrested such evident grief at once and very soon he stood up to pray. So prayed the gray fathers of the world, Terah and Abram, Lot and Jacob; and John stood at the open window with his troubled face lifted to the starlit sky. His soul was seeking earnestly that depth in our nature where the divine and human are one, for when the brain is stupefied by the inevitable and we know not what to abandon and what to defend, that is the sanctuary where we shall find help for every hour of need.

What words, wonderful and secret, were there spoken it is not well to inquire. They were for John's wounded heart alone, and though he came from that communion weeping, it was


--as a child that cries,
But crying, knows his Father near.


Nothing was different but he sat down hushed and strengthened, and in his heart and on his lips the most triumphant words a man or woman can utter, _"Thy Will be done!"_ Then there was a great peace. He had cast all his sorrow upon God and _left it with God_. He did not bring it back with him as we are so ready to do. It was not that he comprehended any more clearly why this sorrow and trial had come to darken his happy home, but Oh, _what matters comprehension when there is faith!_ John did not make inquiries; he knew by experience that there are spiritual conditions as real as physical facts. The shadows were all gone. Nothing was different,


--yet this much he knew,
His soul stirred in its chrysalis of clay,
A strange peace filled him like a cup; he grew
Better, wiser and gladder, on that day:
This dusty, worn-out world seemed made anew,
Because God's Way, had now become his way.


Then he fell into that sleep which God gives to his beloved, and when he awoke it was the dayshine. The light streamed in through the eastern windows, there was a robin singing on his window sill, and there was no trouble in his heart but what he could face.

His business was now urging him to be diligent, and his business--being that of so many others, he durst not neglect it. Jane he did not see. Her maid said she had been ill all night and had fallen asleep at the dawning, and John left her a written message and went earlier to the mill than usual. But Greenwood was there, busily examining bales of cotton and singing and scolding alternately as he worked. John joined him and they had a hard morning's work together, throughout which only one subject occupied both minds--the mill and cotton to feed its looms.

In the afternoon Greenwood took up the more human phase of the question. He told John that six of their unmarried men had gone to America. "They think mebbe they'll be a bit better off there, sir. I don't think they will."

"Not a bit."

"And while you were away Jeremiah Stokes left his loom forever. It didn't put him out any. It was a stormy night for the flitting--thunder and lightning and wind and rain--but he went smiling and whispering,


"There is a land of pure delight!"


"The woman, poor soul, had a harder journey."

"Who was she?"

"Susanna Dobson. You remember the little woman that came from Leeds?"

"Yes. Loom forty. I hope she has not left a large family."

"Nay, if there had been a big family, she would varry likely hev been at her loom today"--then there were a few softly spoken words, and John walked forward, but he could not forget how singularly the empty loom had appealed to him on that last morning he had walked through the mill with Greenwood. There are strange coincidences and links in events of which we know nothing at all--occult, untraceable altogether, material, yet having distinct influences not over matter but over some one mind or heart.

A little before closing time Greenwood said, "Julius Yorke will be spreading himself all over Hatton tonight. A word or two from thee, sir, might settle him a bit."

"I think you settled him very well last night."

"It suited me to do so. I like to threep a man that is my equal in his head piece. Yorke is nobbut a hunchbacked dwarf and he talks a lot of nonsense, but he _feels_ all he says. He's just a bit of crooked humanity on fire and talking at white heat."

"What was he talking about?"

"Rights and wrongs, of course. There was a good deal of truth in what he said, but he used words I didn't like; they came out of some blackguard's dictionary, so I told him to be quiet, and when he wouldn't be quiet, we sung him down with a verse out o' John Wesley's hymn-book."

"All right! You are a match for Yorke, Greenwood. I will leave him to you. I am very weary. The last two days have been hard ones."

There was a tone of pathos in John's words and voice and Greenwood realized it. He touched his cap, and turned away. "Married men hev their own tribulations," he muttered. "I hev had a heartache mysen all day long about the way Polly went on this morning. And her with such a good husband as I am!"

Greenwood went home to such discouraging reflections, and John's were just as discomforting. For he had left his wife on the previous night, in a distressed unsettled condition, and he felt that there was now something in Jane's, and his own, past which must not be referred to, and indeed he had promised himself never to name it.

But a past that is buried alive is a difficult ghost to lay, and he feared Jane would not be satisfied until she had opened the dismal grave of their dead happiness again--and perhaps again and again. He set his lips straight and firm during this reflection, and said something of which only the last four words were audible, "Thy grace is sufficient."

However, there was no trace of a disposition to resume a painful argument in Jane's words or attitude. She looked pale from headache and wakefulness, but was dressed with her usual care, and was even more than usually solicitous about his comfort and satisfaction. Still John noticed the false note of make-believe through all her attentions and he was hardly sorry when she ended a conversation about Harry's affairs by a sudden and unexpected reversion to her own. "John," she said, with marked interest, "I was telling you last night about my visit to Hatton Hall while you were in London. You interrupted and then left me. Have you any objections to my finishing the story now? I shall not go to Hatton Hall again and as mother declines to tell her own fault, it is only fair to me that you know the whole truth. I don't want you to think worse of me than is necessary."

"Tell me whatever you wish, Jane, then we will forget the subject."

"As if that were possible! O John, as if it were possible to forget one hour of our life together!"

"You are right. It is not possible--no, indeed!"

"Well, John, when I left Harlow House that afternoon, I went straight to Hatton Hall. It was growing late, but I expected to have a cup of tea there and perhaps, if asked, stay all night and have a good wise talk over the things that troubled me. When I arrived at the Hall your mother had just returned from the village. She was sitting by the newly-made fire with her cloak and bonnet on but they were both unfastened and her furs and gloves had been removed. She looked troubled, and even angry, and when I spoke to her, barely answered me. I sat down and began to tell her I had been at Harlow all day. She did not inquire after mother's health and took no interest in any remark I made."

"That was very unlike my mother."

"It was, John. Finally I said, 'I see that you are troubled about something, mother,' and she answered sharply, 'Yes, I'm troubled and plenty of reason for trouble.' I asked if I could help in any way."

John sat upright at this question and said, "What reply did mother make?"

"She said, 'Not you! The trouble is past all help now. I might have prevented it a few days ago, but I did not know the miserable lass was again on the road of sin and danger. Nobody knew. Nobody stopped her. And, O merciful God, in three days danger turned out to be death! I have just come back from her funeral.' 'Whose funeral?' I asked. 'Susanna Dobson's funeral,' mother said. 'Did you never hear John speak of her?' I told her you never spoke to me of your hands; I knew nothing about them. 'Well then,' mother continued, 'I'll tell you something about Susanna. Happen it may do you good. She came here with her husband and baby all of three years ago, and they have worked in Hatton factory ever since. She was very clever and got big wages. The day before John went to London she was ill and had to leave her loom. The next day Gammer Denby came to tell me she was very ill and must have a good doctor. I sent one and in the afternoon went to see her. By this time her husband had been called from the mill, and while I was sitting at the dying woman's side, he came in.'"

"Stop, Jane. My dear love, what is the use of bringing that dying bed to our fireside? Mother should not have repeated such a scene."

"She did, however. I was leaving the room when she said, 'Listen a moment, Jane. The man entered angrily, and leaning on the footboard of the bed cried out, "So you've been at your old tricks once more, Susanna! This is the third time. You are a bad woman. I will never live with you again. I am going away forever, and I'll take little Willy with me. If