The Measure of a Man. Amelia E. Barr
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John, I won't go to the mill again. I won't be a cotton-spinner, and I'll be glad if you will buy me out at any price."
"I won't do that—not yet. I'll tell you what I will do. I will rent your share of the mill for a year if you will take Captain Cook and the yacht and go to the Mediterranean, and from the yacht visit the old cities and see all the fine picture galleries, and listen to the music of Paris and Milan or even Vienna. You must stay away a year. I want you to realize above all things that to live to amuse yourself is the hardest work the devil can set you to do."
"I promised Fred Naylor I would rent him my share."
"How dared you make such a promise? Did you think that I, standing as I do, for my father, Stephen Hatton, would ever lower the Hatton name to Hatton and Naylor? I am ashamed of you, Harry! I am that!"
"John, I am so unhappy in the mill. You don't understand—"
"Your duty is in the mill. If a man does his duty, he cannot be unhappy. No, he can not."
"I have been doing my duty five years, and hating every hour of it. And I promised the Naylor boys—"
"What?"
"That I would sell or rent my share in this mill to them."
"It is impossible for you to keep that promise. You cannot sell a shilling's worth belonging to the mill property without mine and mother's permission. Neither of us will give it. Your plan won't work, Harry. Mother and I will stand by Hatton mill as firm as an anvil beaten upon. Both of us will do anything we can to make you reasonably happy, but you must never dare to name selling or renting your right to anyone but your brother. The mill is ours! No stranger shall own a bobbin in it! One or both of us will run it until we follow our father, and then—"
"Then what?"
"Our sons will take our place if so it pleases God. Harry, dear, dear lad, go and take a long holiday among the things you love, and after it we will come to a kind and sensible conclusion about your future. While you are away, I will do your work for you and you shall have your full share of whatever money is made. Stay a year if you wish, but try and find yourself before you come home."
"I would like to do as you say, John, but a year is a long time to be away from the girl you love. I should want her every hour and should be utterly miserable without her."
John was silent and troubled. Harry looked entreatingly at him, and it was hard to resist the pleading in the young man's eyes. Finally John asked a little coldly,
"Do you want to get married?"
"Not just yet—if I can get mother to go with me."
"To the Mediterranean?"
"Certainly."
"Who is the girl?"
"Miss Lugur, the schoolmaster's daughter."
"Mother would not go. You could not expect it. I also should be much against her spending a year away from home. Oh, you know it is out of the question!"
"I think mother will go. I shall ask her."
"I wonder how you can find it in your heart to ask such a thing of her!"
"Lucy Lugur, poor little girl, has no mother."
"You cannot expect Mrs. Stephen Hatton to mother her."
"Yes, I do. Mother has often told me she would do anything in the world for me. I am going to ask her to go with me, then I can take Lucy."
"Harry, you must not put her love in such a hard strait. Do be reasonable."
"I cannot be reasonable about Lucy Lugur. I love her, John; she is the most beautiful woman in the world."
"All right, I do not contradict you; but is that any reason for sacrificing mother's comfort to her beauty?"
"Mother likes to give up to me. If I ask her to go, she will go. I do not forget, John, what you have promised; no indeed, and I am sure mother will be quite as kind. I will now go and ask her."
When he arrived at the Hall gate, he had a sudden sense of the injustice of his intention, but the thought of Lucy Lugur put it down; and he heralded his arrival by a long, sweet whistle, whose music penetrated the distance and informed Mrs. Hatton of her son's approach. She was drinking her afternoon cup of tea to angry thoughts of him, telling herself that he ought to have been home on the previous day, that at least he ought to have sent her a few lines when delayed. So troubled was she by these reflections and others rising from them that she had forgotten to put sugar in her tea, and was eating wheat bread when her favorite thin slices of rye loaf were at her hand. The prodigious inquietude of motherhood had her in its grip, and she had just begun to tell herself that poor Harry might be sick in an hotel with no one to look after him when her reverie of love and fear was dispelled in a moment by the cheerful sound of Harry's whistle.
The next moment she was on the porch to welcome him. If his delay was wrong, she had quite forgotten the wrong; there was nothing in her heart but mother love, running over and expressing itself in her beaming eyes, her smiling face, her outstretched hands, and her joyful words. She kissed him fondly and between laughing and crying led him into the house and straight to her little tea-table.
"There is room enough for you, my dear, dear lad! Where have you been this ever so long?" she asked. "I was looking for you last Saturday night—and John is home again, thank God, and——"
"I know John is home, mother. I was at the mill. My horse met me at Oxbar Station, and as I was riding, I called at the mill to look at my mail, and so finding John there, I stopped and had a chat with him."
"I am glad of that. What did he say to thee? He was feeling very bad, I know, about the Naylor boys. I wonder what makes thee even thyself with that low set. Thy father will be angry, if he knows, and Greenwood thinks he is sure to know if Naylors are meddling in his family or his affairs. Greenwood speaks very badly of the whole crowd—living and dead."
"Well, mother, you know none of the Naylors are Methodists; that sets them down with Greenwood. The Naylors are all right. Fred Naylor has been very kind to me."
"Did you speak to John about them?"
"Greenwood had already spoken and John was angry and got into a passion at a simple business proposal they made."
"John was right, he was that. I was in a passion myself, when I heard of their proposal—downright impudence, I call it."
"Nay, mother. They offered good money for what they asked. There was no impudence in that. It was just business."
"Naylors have no good money, not they. The kind they do have would blacken and burn Hatton's hands to touch. Thy father ran the whole kith and kit of the Naylors out of Hatton village the very year of thy birth. He wouldn't have them in his village if he was alive and while I am lady of Hatton Manor they are not coming back here. I will see to that."
"There is a new generation of Naylors now, and——"
"They are as bad and very likely worse than all before them. Families that don't grow better grow worse. Greenwood says they are worse; but I'm not standing on what he says. Thy father despised them, that is a fact I can rely on and work from."
"Father is dead, and he——"
"Not he! He is living, and more alive than he ever was. He comes to me often."
"When you are asleep, I suppose."
"You suppose right. But, Harry, can you tell me what passes in that state of sleep when I or you or any other sleeper is shut up from every human eye; when all the doors of the body are closed, and all the windows darkened? Speak, my lad, of what you know something about, but dreaming is a mystery to far wiser men than you are, or are likely to be—unless Wisdom should visit you while you are dreaming."
"Well, mother, I am going away for a year, and during that time I shall forget the Naylors and they will forget me."
"Whatever