The Measure of a Man Part 15

"Take my victoria. James is in the stable and he will drive it. Go for your wife at once. She must come to your home."

"And you will try and love her for my sake, mother?"

"Nay, nay! If I can't love the la.s.s for her own sake, I'll never love her for thy sake. But if she is thy wife, she will get all the respect due thy wife. If she can win more, she'll get more, and that is all there is to it."

With this concession Harry had to be satisfied. He brought his wife to the Hall and Mrs. Hatton met her with punctilious courtesy. She gave her the best guest room and sent her own maid to help her dress. The little woman was almost frightened by the ceremonious nature of her reception.

But when John came home he called her "Lucy," and tempered by many little acts of brotherly kindness, that extreme politeness which is harder to bear than hard words.

And as John and his mother sat alone and unhappy after Harry and his wife had bid them good night, John attempted to comfort his mother. "You carried yourself bravely and kindly, mother," he said, "but I see that you suffer. What do you think of her?"

"She is pretty and docile, but she isn't like a mother of Hatton men.

Look at the pictured women in the corridor upstairs. They were born to breed and to suckle men of brain and muscles like yourself, John. The children of little women are apt to be little in some way or other. Lucy does not look motherly, but Harry is taken up with her. We must make the best of the match, John, and don't let the trial of their stay here be too long. Get them away as soon as possible."

"Harry says that he has decided to make his home in or near London."

"Then he is going to leave the mill?"

"Yes."

"What is he thinking of?"

"Music or art. He has no settled plans. He says he must settle his home first."

"Well, when Harry can give up thee and me for that girl, we need not think much of ourselves. I feel a bit humiliated by being put below her."

"Don't look at it in that way, mother."

"Nay, but I can't help it. I wonder wherever Harry got his fool notions.

He was brought up in the mill and for the mill, and I've always heard say that as the twig is bent the tree is inclined."

"That is only a half-truth, mother. You have the nature of the tree to reckon with. You may train a willow-tree all you like but you will never make it an oak or an ash. Here is Harry who has been trained for a cotton-spinner turns back on us and says he will be an artist or a singer, and what can we do about it? It is past curing or altering now."

But though the late owner of Hatton Mill had left the clearest instructions concerning its relation to his two sons, the matter was not easily settled. He had tied both of them so clearly down to his will in the matter that it was found impossible to alter a t.i.ttle of his directions. Practically it amounted to a just division of whatever the mill had made after the t.i.the for charities had been first deducted. It gave John a positive right to govern the mill, to decide all disputes, and to stand in his place as master. It gave to Henry the same financial standing as his brother, but strictly denied to either son who deserted the mill any sum of larger amount than five thousand pounds; "to be made in one payment, and not a shilling more." A codicil, however, three years later, permitted one brother to buy the other out at a price to be settled by three large cotton-spinners who had long been friends of the Hatton family. These directions appeared to be plain enough but there was delay after delay in bringing the matter to a finish. It was nearly a month before Harry had his five thousand pounds in his pocketbook, and during this time he made no progress with his mother. She thought him selfish and indifferent about the mill and his family. In fact, Harry was at that time a very much married man, and though John was capable of considering the value of this affection, John's mother was not. John looked on it as a safeguard for the future. John's mother saw it only as a marked and offensive detail of the present. Lucy did nothing to help the situation. In spite of the attention paid her, she knew that she was unwelcome. "Your people do not like me, Harry," she complained; and Harry said some unkind things concerning his people in reply.

So the parting was cool and constrained, and Harry went off with his bride and his five thousand pounds, caring little at that time for any other consideration.

"He will come to himself soon, mother," said John. "It isn't worth while to fret about him."

"I never waste anything, John, least of all love and tears. I can learn to do without, as well as other mothers."

But it was a hard trial, and her tired eyes and weary manner showed it.

John was not able to make any excuse she would listen to about Harry's marriage. Its hurried and almost clandestine character deeply offended her; and the young wife during her visit had foolishly made a point of exhibiting her power over her husband, while both of them seemed possessed by that egotistical spirit which insists on their whole world seeing how vastly superior their love is to any other love that ever had been. Undoubtedly the young couple were offensive to everyone, and Mrs.

Hatton said they had proved to her perfect satisfaction the propriety and even the necessity for the retirement of newly married people to some secluded spot for their honeymoon.

Soon after their departure Jane Harlow returned. She came home attended by the rumor of her triumphs and enriched by a splendid wardrobe and many fine pieces of jewelry. She told modestly enough the story of the life she had been leading, and Mrs. Hatton was intensely interested in it.

"Jane Harlow is a woman of a thousand parts, and you have chosen a wife to bring you friendship and honor," she said to John. "Dear knows one cannot weary in her company. She has an opinion on every subject."

"She has been in highly cultivated society and it has improved her a great deal, mother. Perhaps if Lucy had had the same opportunity she would have been equally benefited."

"I beg to remind you, John, of what you said about training trees--'the nature of the tree has to be taken into account'; no amount of training could make an oak out of a willow."

"True, mother. Yet there are people who would prefer the willow to the oak."

"And you couldn't help such people, now could you? You might be sorry for them. But there--what could you do?"

And John said softly,

"What can we do o'er whom the unbeholden Hangs in a night, wherewith we dare not cope; What but look sunward, and with faces golden, Speak to each other softly of our Hope?"

CHAPTER VII

SHOCK AND SORROW

There's not a bonnie flower that springs By fountain, shaw, or green, There's not a bonnie bird that sings, But minds me of my Jean.

Only a child of Nature's rarest making, Wistful and sweet--and with a heart for breaking.

Life is a great school and its lessons go on continually. Now and then perhaps we have a vacation--a period in which all appears to be at rest--but in this very placidity there are often bred the storms that are to trouble and perhaps renew us. For some time after the departure of Harry and his bride, John's life appeared to flow in a smooth but busy routine. Between the mill and Harlow House, he found the days all too short for the love and business with which they were filled. And Mrs. Hatton missed greatly the happy and confidential conversations that had hitherto made her life with her son so intimate and so affectionate.

Early in the spring John began the building of his own home, and this necessarily required some daily attention, especially as he had designs in his mind which were unusual to the local builders, and which seemed to them well worthy of being quietly pa.s.sed over. For the house was characteristic of the man and the man was not of a common type.

There was nothing small or mean about John's house. The hill on which it stood was the highest ground on the Hatton Manor. It commanded a wide vista of meadows, interspersed with peacefully flowing waters, until the horizon on every hand was closed by ranges of lofty mountains. On this hill the house stood broadly facing the east. It was a large, square Georgian mansion, built of some white stone found in Yorkshire. Its rooms were of extraordinary size and very lofty, their windows being wide and high and numerous. Its corridors were like streets, its stairways broad enough for four people to ascend them abreast. Light, air, s.p.a.ce were throughout its distinguishing qualities, and its furnishings were not only very handsome, they had in a special manner that honest size, solidity, and breadth which make English household belongings so comfortable and satisfactory. The grounds were full of handsome forest trees and wonderful gra.s.sy glades and just around the house the soil had been enriched and planted with shrubbery and flowers.

Its great proportions in every respect suited both John Hatton and the woman for whom it was built. Both of them appeared to gain a positive majesty of appearance in the splendid reaches of its immense rooms.

Certainly they would have dwarfed small people, but John and Jane Hatton were large enough to appropriate and become a part of their surroundings. John felt that he had realized his long, long dream of a modern home, and Jane knew that its s.p.a.cious, handsome rooms would give to her queenly figure and walk the s.p.a.ce and background that was most charming and effective.

In about a year after Harry's marriage it was completely finished and furnished; then John Hatton and Jane Harlow were married in London at Lord Harlow's residence. Harry's invitation did not include his wife, and John explained that it was impossible for him to interfere about the people Lord and Lady Harlow invited to their house or did not invite. "I wish the affair was over," he exclaimed, "for no matter who is there I shall miss you, Harry."

"And Lucy?"

"Yes; but I will tell you what will be far better. Suppose you and Lucy run over to Paris and see the new paintings in the Salon--and all the other sights?"

"I cannot afford it, John."

"The affording is my business. I will find the guineas, Harry. You know that. And Lucy will not have to spend them in useless extravagant dress."

"All right, John! You are a good brother, and you know how to heal a slight."

So John's marriage took place without his brother's presence, and John missed him and had a heartache about it. Subsequently he told his mother so, upon which the Lady of Hatton Manor answered,

"Harry managed very well to do without either mother or brother at his own wedding. You know that, John; and I was none sorry to miss him at yours. When you have to take a person you love with a person you don't love, it is like taking a spoonful of bitterness with a spoonful of jelly after it. I never could tell which spoonful I hated the worst."

After the marriage John and his wife came directly to their own home.