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

and tell her so."

After this confession it seemed easier for John to tell his wife that he must close the mill in the morning. They were sitting together on the hearth. Dinner was over and the room was very still. John was smoking a cigar whose odor Jane liked, and her head leaned against his shoulder, and now and then they said a low, loving word, and now and then he kissed her.

"John," she said finally, "I had a letter from Aunt Harlow today. She is in trouble."

"I am sorry for it."

"Her only child has been killed in a skirmish with the Afghans--killed in a lonely pass of the mountains and buried there. It happened a little while since and his comrades had forgotten where his grave was. The man who slew him, pointed it out. He had been buried in his uniform, and my uncle received his ring and purse and a scarf-pin he bought for a parting present the day he sailed for India."

"I do not recollect. I never saw him, I am sure."

"Oh, no! He went with his regiment to Simla seventeen years ago. Then he married a Begum or Indian princess or something unusual. She was very rich but also very dark, and Uncle would not forgive him for it. After the marriage his name was never mentioned in Harlow House, but he was not forgotten and his mother never ceased to love him. When they heard of his death, Uncle sent the proper people to make investigations because of the succession, you know."

"I suppose now the nephew, Edwin Harlow, will be heir to the title and estate?"

"Yes, and Uncle and Aunt so heartily dislike him. Uncle has spent so many, many years in economizing and restoring the fortune of the House of Harlow, and now it will all go to--Edwin Harlow. I am sorry to trouble you with this bad news, when you have so much anxiety of your own."

"Listen, dearest--I must--shut--the mill--tomorrow--some time."

"O John!"

"There is no more cotton to be got--and if there was, I have not the money to buy it. Would you like to go to London and see your uncle and aunt? A change might do you good."

"Do you think I would leave you alone in your sorrow? No, no, John! The only place for me is here at your side. I should be miserable anywhere else."

John was much moved at this proof of her affection, but he did not say so. He clasped her hand a little tighter, drew her closer to his side, and kissed her, but the subject dropped between them into a silence filled with emotion. John could not think of anything but the trial of the coming day. Jane was pondering two circumstances that seemed to have changed her point of view. Do as she would, she could not regard things as she had done. Of a stubborn race and family, she had hitherto regarded her word as inviolable, her resolves, if once declared, as beyond recall. She quite understood Lord and Lady Harlow's long resentment against their son, and she knew instinctively that her uncle's extreme self-denial for the purpose of improving the Harlow estate was to say to his heir, "See how I have loved you, in spite of my silence."

Now Jane had declared her mind positively to John on certain questions between them, and it never occurred to her that retraction was possible. Or if it did occur, she considered it a weakness to be instantly conquered. Neither Jane Harlow nor Jane Hatton could say and then unsay. And she was proud of this racial and family characteristic, and frequently recalled it in the motto of her house--_"I say! I do!"_

It is evident then that some strong antagonistic feeling would be necessary to break down this barrier raised by a false definition of honor and yet the circumstances that initially assailed it were of ordinary character. The first happened a few weeks previously. Jane had gone out early to do some household shopping and was standing just within the open door of the shop where she had made her purchases. Suddenly she heard John's clear, joyous laugh mingling with the clatter of horses' feet. The sound was coming near and nearer and in a moment or two John passed on his favorite riding-horse and with him was his nephew Stephen Hatton on a pretty pony suitable to his size. John was happy, Stephen was happy, and _she! She_ had absolutely no share in their pleasure. They were not thinking of her. She was outside their present life.

An intense jealousy of the boy took possession of her. She went home in a passion of envy and suspicion. She was a good rider, but John in these late years had never found time to give her a gallop, and indeed had persuaded her to sell her pretty riding-horse and outfit. Yet Stephen had a pony and she was sure John must have bought it. Stephen must have been at the mill early. _Why?_ Then she recalled John's look of love and pride in the boy, his watchful care over him, his laughter and apparent cheerfulness.

She brooded over these things for some hours, then gave her thought speech and in slow, icy tones said with intense feeling, "Of course, he regards Stephen as the future master of Hatton Hall and Hatton factory. He is always bringing Stephen and my Martha together. He intends them to marry. They shall not. Martha is mine--she is Harlow"--then after a long pause, "They are cousins. I shall have religious scruples."

She did not name this incident to John and it was some days before John said, "Stephen is going to be a fine horseman. His grandfather bought him a pony, a beautiful spirited animal, and Steve was at once upon his back. Yorkshire boys take to horses, as ducks to the water. Mother says I leaped into the saddle before I was five years old."

Jane smiled faintly at this last remark and John said no more on the subject. He understood it to be the better way. But it had been ever since a restless, unhappy thought below all other thoughts in Jane's mind, and finally she had swift personal whispers and slow boring suppositions which, if she had put them into words, would have sounded very like, "Lucy may be disappointed yet! John might have a son of his own. Many things happen as the clock goes round."

She was in one of these jealous moods on the morning after John had told her he must close the mill. Then Mrs. Levy called, and asked if she would drive with her to Brent's Farm. "We have received a large number of young children from Metwold," she said, "and I want to secure milk for them."

"Brent's Farm!" replied Jane. "I never heard of the place."

"O my dear Mrs. Hatton, it is only a small farm on the Ripon road. The farmer is a poor man but he has five or six cows and he sells their milk in Hatton. I want to secure it all."

"Is that fair to the rest of his customers?" asked Jane, with an air of righteous consistency.

"I do not know," was the answer. "I never asked myself. I think it is fair to get it for babies who cannot bargain for their milk--the people they take it from can speak for themselves."

They found Brent's Farm to be a rough, roomy stone cottage on the roadside. There was some pasture land at the back of the house and some cows feeding on it. A stone barn was not far off, and the woman who answered their call said, "If you be wanting Sam Brent, you'll find him in the barn, threshing out some wheat."

Mrs. Levy went to interview the milk dealer; Jane was cold and went into the cottage to warm herself. "It is well I'm at ironing today," said Mrs. Brent, "for so I hev a good fire. Come your ways in, ma'am, and sit on the hearth. Let me make you a cup o' tea."

"My friend will be here in a few minutes," Jane answered. "She only wants to make a bargain with Mr. Brent for all his milk."

"Then she won't be back in a few minutes; Sam Brent does no business in a hurry. It's against his principles. You bed better hev a cup o' hot tea."

It seemed easier to Jane to agree than to dispute, and as the kettle was simmering on the hob it was ready in five minutes. "You see," continued Mrs. Brent, "I hev a big family, and washing and ironing does come a bit hard on me now, but a cup o' tea livens me up, it does that!"

"How many children have you, Mrs. Brent?"

"I hev been married seventeen years, and I hev ten lads and lasses--all of them fair and good and world-like. God bless them!"

"Ten! Ten! How do you manage?"

"Varry well indeed. Sam Brent is a forelooking man. They hev a good father, and I try to keep step with him. We are varry proud of our childer. The eldest is a boy and helps his father with the cows main well. The second is a girl and stands by her mother--the rest are at school, or just babies. It _is_ hard times, it is that, but God blesses our crust and our cup, and we don't want. We be all well and healthy, too."

"I wonder you are not broken down with bearing so many children."

"Nay, not I! Every fresh baby gives me fresh youth and health--if I do it justice. Don't you find it so, ma'am?"

"No."

"How many hev you hed?"

"One. A little girl."

"Eh, but that's a shame! What does your good man say?"

"He would like more."

"I should think he _would_ like more. And it is only fair and square he should _hev_ more! Poor fellow!"

"I do not think so."

"Whatever is the matter with thee?"

"I think it is a shame and a great wrong for a woman to spend her life in bearing and rearing children."

"To bear and to rear children for His glory is exactly and perfectly what God sent her into the world to do. It is her work in the days which the Lord her God gives her. Men He told to work. Women He told to hev children and plenty o' them."

"There are more women working in the factories than men now."

"They hev no business there. They are worse for it every way. They ought to be in some kind of a home, making happiness and bringing up boys and girls. Look at the whimpering, puny, sick babies factory women bear--God, how I pity them!"

"Tell me the truth, Mrs. Brent. Were you really glad to have ten children?"

"To be sure, I was glad. Every one of them was varry welcome. I used to say to mysen, 'God must think Susy Brent a good mother, or He wouldn't keep on sending her children to bring up for Him.' It is my work in this life, missis, to bring up the children God sends me, and _I like my work_!" With the last four words, she turned a beaming face to Jane and sent them home with an emphatic thump of her iron on the little shirt she was smoothing.


CHAPTER XII


PROFIT AND LOSS

The trifles of our daily