The Measure of a Man by Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr (inspirational books txt) 📕

was no better. He was then the prisoner of darkness, fettered with the bonds of a long night and exiled for a space from the eternal Providence.

At length, however, the sun rose and John awoke and brought the terror to an end by the calling on One Name and by casting himself on the care and mercy of that One, who is "a very present help in time of trouble." That was all John needed. He did not expect to escape trouble. All he asked was that God would be to him "a very present help" in it.

Slowly and thoughtfully he dressed, wondering the while from what depths of awful and forgotten experiences such dreams came. He was yet awestruck and his spirit quailed when he thought of the eternity _behind_ him. Meanwhile his trouble with Jane had partly receded to the background of thought and feeling. He did not expect to see her at his breakfast table. That was now a long-time-ago pleasure and he thought that by dinner-time he would be more able to cope with the circumstances.

But when he reached the hall the wide door stood open, the morning sunshine flooded the broad white marble steps which led to the entrance and Jane was slowly ascending them. She had a little basket of fruit in her hand, she was most fittingly gowned, and she looked exquisitely lovely. As soon as John saw her, he ran down the steps to meet her, and she put her hand in his and he kissed it. Then they went to the breakfast-table together.

The truce was too sweet to be broken and John took the comfort offered with gratitude. Jane was in her most charming mood, she waited on him as lord and lover of the home, found him the delicacies he liked, and gave with every one that primordial touch of loving and oneness which is the very heaven of marriage. She answered his words of affection with radiant smiles and anon began to talk of the Club balloting. "Was it really an important meeting, John?" she asked. And to her great surprise John answered, "It would have been hard to make it more important, Jane."

"About old Akers! What nonsense!"

"Akers gave us no hesitation. He was elected without a dissenting vote. Another subject was, however, opened which is of the most vital importance to cotton-spinners."

"Whatever is to do, John?"

"America is likely to go to war with herself--the cotton-spinning States of the North, against the cotton-growing States of the South."

"What folly!"

"In a business point, yes, but there is something grander than business in it--an idea that is universally in the soul of man--the idea of freedom."

"Yes, I have read about that quarrel, but men won't fight if it interferes with their business, with their money-making and spinning."

"You are wrong, Jane. Men of the Anglo-Saxon race and breeding will fight more stubbornly for an idea than for conquest, injury, or even for some favorite leader. Most nations fight for some personality; the English race and its congeners fight for a principle or an idea. My dear, remember that America fought England for eight years only for her right of representation."

"How can a war in America hurt us?"

"By cutting off our cotton supply--unless England helps the Southern States."

"But she will do that."

"No, she will not."

"What then?"

"If the war lasts long, we shall have to shut our factories."

"That is not a pleasant thought, John. Let us put it aside this lovely morning."

Yet she kept reverting to the subject, and as all men love to be inquired of and to give information, John was easily beguiled, and the breakfast hour passed without a word that in any way touched the sorrowful anxiety in his heart. But at length they rose and John said,

"Jane, my dear, come into the garden. We will go to the summer-house. I want to speak to you, dear. You know----"

"John, I cannot stay with you this morning. There will be a committee of the ladies of the Home Mission here at eleven o'clock. I have some preparations for them to make and if I get put out of my way in the meantime I shall be unable to meet them."

"Is not our mutual happiness of more importance than this meeting?"

"Of course it is. But you know, John, many things in life compel us continually to put very inferior subjects before either our personal or our mutual happiness. A conversation such as you wish cannot be hurried. I am not yet sure what decision I shall come to."

"Decision! Why, Jane, there is only one decision possible."

"You are taking advantage of me, John. I will not talk more with you this morning."

"Then good morning."

He spoke curtly and went away with the words. Love and anger strove in his heart, but before he reached his horse, he ran rapidly back. He found Jane still standing in the empty breakfast-room; her hands were listlessly dropped and she was lost in an unhappy reverie.

"Jane," he cried, "forgive me. You gave me a breakfast in Paradise this morning. I shall never forget it. Good-bye, love." He would have kissed her, but she turned her head aside and did not answer him a word. Yet she was longing for his kiss and his words were music in her heart. But that is the way with women; they wound themselves six times out of the half-dozen wrongs of which they complain.

The next moment she was sorry, Oh, so sorry, that she had sent the man she loved to an exhausting day of thought and work with an aching pain in his heart and his mental powers dulled. She had taken all joy and hope out of his life and left him to fight his way through the hard, noisy, cruel hours with anxiety and fear his only companions.

"I am so sorry! I am so sorry!" she whispered. "What was the use of making him happy for fifty-nine minutes, and then undoing it all in the sixtieth? I wish--I wish----" and she had a swift sense of wrong and shame in uttering her wish, and so let it die unspoken on her closed lips.

At the park entrance John stood still a minute; his desire was to put Bendigo to his utmost speed and quickly find out the lonely world he knew of beyond Hatton and Harlow. There he could mingle his prayer with the fresh winds of heaven and the cries of beasts and birds seeking their food from God. His flesh had been well satisfied, but Oh how hungry was his soul! It longed for a renewed sense of God's love and it longed for some word of assurance from Jane. Then there flashed across his memory the rumor of war and the clouds in the far west gathering volume and darkness every day. No, he could not run away; he must find in the fulfilling of his duty whatever consolation duty could give him, and he turned doggedly to the mill and his mail.

Once more as he lifted his mail, he had that fear of a letter from Harry which had haunted him more or less for some months. He shuffled the letters at once, searching for the delicate, disconnected writing so familiar to him and hardly knew whether its absence was not as disquieting as its presence would have been.

The mail being attended to, he sent for Greenwood and spoke to him about the likelihood of war and its consequences. Jonathan proved to be quite well informed on this subject. He said he had been on the point of speaking about buying all the cotton they could lay hands on, but thought Mr. Hatton was perhaps considering the question and not ready to move yet.

"Do you think they will come to fighting, Greenwood?" Mr. Hatton asked.

"Well, sir, if they'll only keep to cotton and such like, they'll never fire a gun, not they. But if they keep up this slavery threep, they'll fight till one side has won and the other side is clean whipped forever. Why not? That's our way, and most of them are chips of the old oak block. A hundred years or more ago we had the same question to settle and we settled it with money. It left us all nearly bankrupt, but it's better to lose guineas than good men, and the blackamoors were well satisfied, no doubt."

"How do our men and women feel, Greenwood?"

"They are all for the black men, sir. They hevn't counted the cost to themselves yet. I'll put it up to them if that is your wish, sir."

"You are nearer to them than I am, Jonathan."

"I am one o' them, sir."

"Then say the word in season when you can."

"The only word now, sir, is that Frenchy bit o' radicalism they call liberty. I told Lucius Yorke what I thought of him shouting it out in England."

"Is Yorke here?"

"He was ranting away on Hatton green last night, and his catchword and watchword was liberty, liberty, and again liberty!' He advised them to get a blue banner for their Club, and dedicate it to liberty. Then I stopped him."

"What did you say?"

"I told him to be quiet or I would make him. I told him we got beyond that word in King John's reign. I asked if he hed niver heard of the grand old English word _freedom_, and I said there was as much difference between freedom and liberty, as there was between right and wrong--and then I proved it to them."

"What I want to know, Greenwood, is this. Will our people be willing to shut Hatton factory for the sake of--_freedom?"_

"Yes, sir--every man o' them, I can't say about the women. No man can. Bad or good, they generally want things to go on as they are. If all's well for them and their children, they doan't care a snap for public rights or wrongs, except mebbe in their own parish."

"Well, Jonathan, I am going to prepare, as far as I can, for the worst. If Yorke goes too far, give him a set down and advise all our workers to try and save a little before the times come when there will be nothing to save."

"Yes, sir. That's sensible, and one here and there may happen listen to me."

Then John began to consider his own affairs, for his married life had been an expensive one and Harry also a considerable drain on his everyday resources. He was in the midst of this uncomfortable reckoning, when there was a strong decisive knock at the door. He said, "Come in," just as decisively and a tall, dark man entered--a man who did not belong to cities and narrow doorways, but whom Nature intended for the hills and her wide unplanted places. He was handsomely dressed and his long, lean, dark face had a singular attraction, so much so, that it made everything else of small importance. It was a face containing the sum of human life and sorrow, its love, and despair, and victory; the face of a man that had been and always would be a match for Fate.

John knew him at once, either by remembrance or some divination of his personality, and he rose to meet him saying, "I think you are Ralph Lugur. I am glad to see you. Sit down, sir."

"I wish that I had come on a more