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

grief would be our most common cause of death. I think Jane will come out of the Valley of the Shadow a finer and better woman--she was always of a very superior kind."

"Mother, you allude to something that troubles me. I have seen Jane bear and do things lately that a year ago she would have indignantly refused to tolerate. Is not this a decadence in her superior nature?"

"Thou art speaking too fine for my understanding. If thou means by 'decadence' that Jane is growing worse instead of better, then thou art far wrong--and if it were that way, I would not wonder if some of the blame--maybe the main part of it--isn't thy fault. Men don't understand women. How can they?"

"Why not?"

"Well, if the Bible is correct, women were made after men. They were the Almighty's improvement on his first effort. There's very few men that I know--or have ever known--that have yet learned to model themselves after the improvement. It's easier for them to manifest the old Adam, and so they go on living and dying and living and dying and remain only men and never learn to understand a woman."

John laughed and asked, "Have you ever known an improved man, mother?"

"Now and then, John, I have come across one. There was your father, for instance, he knew a woman's heart as well as he knew a loom or a sample of cotton, and there's your brother Harry who is just as willing and helpful as his wife Lucy, and I shall not be far wrong, if I say the best improvement I have seen on the original Adam is a man called John Hatton. He is nearly good enough for any woman."

Again John laughed as he answered, "Well, dear mother, this is as far as we need to go. Tell me in plain Yorkshire what you mean by it."

"I mean, John, that in your heart you are hardly judging Jane fairly. I notice in you, as well as in the general run of husbands, that if they hev to suffer at all, they tell themselves that it is their wife's fault, and they manage to believe it. It's queer but then it's a man's way."

"You think I should be kinder to Jane?"

"Thou art kind enough in a way. A mother might nurse her baby as often as it needed nursing, but if she never petted it and kissed it, never gave it smiles and little hugs and simple foolish baby talk, it would be a badly nursed and a very much robbed child. Do you understand?"

"You think I ought to give Jane more petting?"

Mrs. Hatton smiled and nodded. "She calls it _sympathy_, John, but that is what she means. Hev a little patience, my dear lad. Listen! There is a grand wife and a grand mother in Jane Hatton. If you do not develop them, I, your mother, will say, 'somehow it is John's fault.'"

Now life will always be to a large extent what we make it. Jane was trying with all her power to make her life lovable and fair, and the beginning of all good is action, for in this warfare they who would win must struggle. Hitherto, since Martha's death, she had found in nascent, indolent self-pity the choicest of luxuries. Now she had abandoned this position and with courage and resolve was devoting herself to her husband and her house. Unfortunately, there were circumstances in John's special business cares that gave an appearance of Duncan Grey's wooing to all her efforts--when the lassie grew kind, Duncan grew cool. It was truly only an appearance, but Jane was not familiar with changes in Love's atmosphere. John's steadfast character had given her always fair weather.

In reality the long strain of business cares and domestic sorrow had begun to tell even upon John's perfect health and nervous system. Facing absolute ruin in the war years and surrounded by pitiable famine and death, he had kept his cheerful temper, his smiling face, his resolute, confident spirit. Now, he was singularly prosperous. The mill was busy nearly night and day, all his plans and hopes had been perfected; yet he was often either silent or irritable. Jane seldom saw him smile and never heard him sing and she feared that he often shirked her company.

One hot morning at the end of August she had a shock. He had taken his breakfast before she came down and he had left her no note of greeting or explanation. She ran to a window that overlooked the main avenue and she could see him walking slowly towards the principal entrance. Her first instinct was to follow him--to send the house man to delay him--to bring him back by some or any means. Once she could and would have done so, but she did not feel it wise or possible then. What had happened? She went slowly back to her breakfast, but there was a little ball in her throat--she could not swallow--the grief and fear in her heart was surging upward and choking her.

All that her mother-in-law had said came back to her memory. Had John taken that one step away? Would he never take it back to her? She was overwhelmed with a climbing sorrow that would not down. Yet she asked with assumed indifference,

"Was the Master well this morning?"

"It's likely, ma'am. He wasn't complaining. That isn't Master's way."

Then she thought of her own complaining, and was silent.

After breakfast she went through the house and found every room impossible. She flooded them with fresh air and sunshine, but she could not empty them of phantoms and memories and with a little half-uttered cry she put on her hat and went out. Surely in the oak wood she would find the complete solitude she must have. She passed rapidly through the band of ash-trees that shielded the house on the north and was directly in the soft, deep shadow of umbrageous oaks a century old. They whispered among themselves at her coming, they fanned her with a little cool wind from the encircling mountains, and she threw herself gratefully down upon the soft, warm turf at their feet.

Then all the sorrow of the past months overwhelmed her. She wept as if her heart would break and there was a great silence all around which the tinkle of a little brook over its pebbly bed only seemed to intensify. Presently she had no more tears left and she dried her eyes and sat upright and was suddenly aware of a great interior light, pitiless and clear beyond all dayshine. And in it she saw herself with a vision more than mortal. It was an intolerable vision, but during it there was formed in her soul the faculty of prayer.

Out of the depths of her shame and sorrow she called upon God and He heard her. She told Him all her selfishness and sin and urged by some strong spiritual necessity, begged God's forgiveness and help with the conquering prayers that He himself gave her. "Cast me not from Thy Presence," she cried. "Take not Thy holy spirit from me," and then there flashed across her trembling soul the horror and blackness of darkness in which souls "cast from God's presence" must dwell forever. Prostrate in utter helplessness, she cast herself upon the Eternal Father's mercy. If He would forgive her selfish rebellion against the removal of Martha, if He would give her back the joy of the first years of her espousal to her husband, if He would only forgive her, she could do without all the rest--and then in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, she knew she was forgiven. An inexpressible glory filled her soul, washed clean of sin. Love beyond words, peace and joy beyond expression, surrounded her. She stood up and lifted her face and hands to heaven and cried out like one in a swoon of triumph,

"Thou hast called me by my name! I am Thine!"

All doubt, all fear, all sorrow, all pain was gone. She knew as by flashlight, her whole duty to her husband and her relatives and friends. She was willing with all her heart to perform it. She went to the little stream and bathed her face and she thought it said as it ran onward, _"Happy woman! Happy woman!"_ The trees looked larger and greener, and seemed to stand in a golden glow. The shepherd's rose and the stately foxgloves were more full of color and scent. She heard the fine inner tones of the birds' songs that Heaven only hears; and all nature was glorified and rejoiced with her. She had a new heart and the old cares and sorrows had gone away forever.

Such conversions are among the deepest, real facts in the history of the soul of man. They have occurred in all ages, in all countries, and in all conditions of life, for we know that they are the very truth, as we have seen them translated into action. There is no use attempting to explain by any human reason facts of such majesty and mystery, for how can natural reason explain what is supernatural?

In a rapture of joy Jane walked swiftly home. She was not conscious of her movements, the solid earth might have been a road of some buoyant atmosphere. All the world looked grandly different, and she herself was as one born again. Her servants looked at her in amazement and talked about "the change in Missis," while the work of the household dropped from their hands until old Adam Boothby, the gardener, came in for his dinner.

"She passed me," he said, "as I was gathering berries. She came from the oak wood, and O blind women that you be, couldn't you see she hed been with God? The clear shining of His face was over her. She's in a new world this afternoon, and the angels in heaven are rejoicing over her, and I'm sure every man in Hatton will rejoice with her husband; he's hed a middling bad time with her lately or I'm varry much mistaken."

Then these men and women, who had been privately unstinting in their blame of Missis and her selfish way, held their peace. She had been with God. About that communion they did not dare to comment.

As it neared five o'clock, Jane's maid came into the kitchen with another note of surprise. "Missis hes dressed hersen in white from head to foot," she cried. "She told me to put away her black things out of sight. I doan't know what to think of such ways. It isn't half a year yet since the child died."

"I'd think no wrong if I was thee, Lydia Swale. Thou hesn't any warrant for thinking wrong but what thou gives thysen, and thou be neither judge nor jury," said an old woman, making Devonshire cream.

"In white from top to toe," Lydia continued, "even her belt was of white satin ribbon, and she put a white rose in her hair, too. It caps me. It's a queer dooment."

"Brush the black frocks over thy arm and then go and smarten thysen up a bit. It will be dinner-time before thou hes thy work done."

"Happen it may. I'm not caring and Missis isn't caring, either. She'll never wear these frocks again--she might as well give them to me."

In the meantime Jane was looking at herself in the long cheval mirror. The rapture in her heart was still reflected on her face, and the white clothing transfigured her. "John must see that the great miracle of life has