The Measure of a Man Part 21

"That is quite contrary to your usual advice, Greenwood."

"_Privately_, sir, I am a very trusting man. That is my nature--but in business it is different--trusting doesn't work in business, sir. You know that, sir."

John nodded an a.s.sent, and said, "Look after loom forty, Greenwood. It was idle. Find out the reason. As to Akers, I shall do the kind and just thing, you may rest on that. Is he a pleasant man personally?"

"I dare say he is pleasant enough at a dinner-table, and I'll allow that he is varry unpleasant at a piece table in the Town Hall. But webs of stuff and pieces of cloth naturally lock up a man's best self. He wouldn't hev got back to be Akers of Akerside if things wern't that way ordered."

This Club news troubled John. He did not believe that Akers cared a penny piece for a membership, and pooh-pooh it as he would, this trifling affair would not let him alone. It gnawed under the great sorrow of Jane's absence, like a rat gnawing under his bed or chair.

But come what will, time and the hour run through the hardest day; the looms suddenly stopped, the mill was locked, the crowd of workers scattered silently and wearily, and John rode home with a sick sense of sorrow at his heart. He had no hope that Jane would be there. He knew the dear, proud woman too well to expect from her such an impossible submission. Tears sprang to his eyes as he thought of her, and yet there was set before him an inexorable duty which he dared not ignore, for the things of Eternity rested on it.

He left his horse at the stable and walked slowly round to the front of the house. As he reached the door it was swiftly opened, and in smiles and radiant raiment Jane stood waiting to receive him.

"John! John, dear!" she said softly, and he took her in his arms and whispered her name over and over on her lips.

"Dinner will be ready in half an hour," she said, "and it is the dinner you like best of all. Do not loiter, John."

He shook his head happily and took the broad low steps as a boy might--two or three at a time. Everything now seemed possible to him.

"She is in an angel's temper," he thought. "She has divined between the wrong and the right. She will throw the wrong over forever."

And Jane watched him up the stairs with womanly pleasure. She said to herself, "How handsome he is! How good he is! There are none like him."

Then her face clouded, and she went into the parlor and sat down. She knew there was a trying conversation before her, but, "John cannot resist the argument of my beauty," she thought, "It is sure to prevail."

In a few moments she continued her reflections. "I may be weak enough to give a promise for the future, but I will never, never, admit I was wrong in the past. Make your stand there, Jane Hatton, for if he ever thinks you did wrong knowingly, you will lose all your influence over him."

During dinner and while the butler was in the room the conversation was kept upon general subjects, and John in this interval spoke of Akers'

wish to join the Gentlemen's Club.

"I am not astonished," answered Jane. "Mrs. Will Clough and her daughter arrived in my Club a year ago. They are very pushing and what they call 'advanced.' They do not believe that the earth is the Lord's nor yet that it belongs to man. They think it is woman's own heritage. And they want the name of the Club changed. It has always been the Society Club.

Mrs. William Clough thinks a society club is shockingly behind the times; and she proposed changing it to the Progressive Club. She said we were all, she hoped, progressive women."

"Well, Jane, my dear, this is interesting. What next?"

"Mrs. Israel Akers said she had been told that 'very few of the old-fashioned women were left in Hatton, that even the women in the mills were progressing and getting nearer and nearer to the modern ideal'; and she added in a plaintive voice, 'I'm a good bit past seventy, and I hope some old-fashioned women will live as long as I do, that we may be company for each other.' Mrs. Clough told her, 'she would soon learn to love the new woman,' and she said plain out, 'Nay not I! I can't understand her, and I doan't know what she means.' Then Mrs.

Brierly spoke of the 'old woman' as a downtrodden 'creature' not to be put in comparison with the splendid 'new woman' who was beginning to arrive. I'm sure, John, it puzzles me."

"I can only say, Jane, that the 'old woman' has filled her position for millenniums with honor and affection, almost with adoration. I would not like to say what will be the result of her taking to men's ways and men's work."

"You know, John, you cannot judge one kind of woman from the other kind.

They are so entirely different. Women have been kept so ignorant. Now they place culture and knowledge before everything."

"Surely not before love, Jane?"

"Yes, indeed! Some put knowledge and progress--always progress--before everything else."

"My dear Jane, think of this--all we call 'progress' ends with death.

What is that progress worth which is bounded by the grave? If progress in men and women is not united with faith in G.o.d, and hope in His eternal life and love, I would not lift my hand or speak one word to help either man or woman to such blank misery."

"Do not put yourself out of the way, John. There will be no change in the women of today that will affect you. But no doubt they will eventually halve--and better halve--the world's work and honors with men. Do you not think so, John?"

"My dear, I know not; women perhaps may cease to be women; but I am positive that men will continue to be men."

"I mean that women will do men's work as well as men do it."

"Nature is an obstinate dame. She offers serious opposition to that result."

"Well, I was only telling you how far progressive ideas had grown in Hatton town. Women propose to share with men the honors of statecraft and the wealth of trading and manufacturing."

"Jane, dear, I don't like to hear you talking such nonsense. The mere fact that women _can not fight_ affects all the unhappy equality they aim at; and if it were possible to alter that fact, we should be equalizing _down_ and not up." Then he looked at his watch and said he must be at the Club very soon.

"Will you remain in the parlor until I return, Jane?" he asked. "I will come home as quickly as possible."

"No, John, I find it is better for me to go to sleep early. Indeed, as you are leaving me, I will go to my room now. Good night, dear!"

He said good night but his voice was cold, and his heart anxious and dissatisfied. And after Jane had left the room he sat down again, irresolute and miserable. "Why should I go to the Club?" he asked himself. "Why should I care about its small ways and regulations? I have something far more important to think of. I will not go out tonight."

He sat still thinking for half an hour, then he looked again at his watch and found that it was yet possible to be at the Club in time. So with a great sigh he obeyed that urging of duty, which even in society matters he could not neglect and be at rest.

There was no light in Jane's room when he returned home and he spent the night miserably. Waking he felt as if walking through the valley of the shadows of loss and intolerable wrong. Phantoms created by his own sorrow and fear pressed him hard and dreams from incalculable depths troubled and terrified his soul. In sleep it was no better. He was then the prisoner of darkness, fettered with the bonds of a long night and exiled for a s.p.a.ce 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 G.o.d 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 circ.u.mstances.

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 grat.i.tude. 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?"

[Ill.u.s.tration: "He ran down the steps to meet her, and she put her hand in his."]