The Measure of a Man

John lifted a startled face to the speaker, and the man added with an air of happy triumph, as he walked away,

"A far better world, sir."

For a moment John rested his head on his hand, then he lifted his face and with level brows fronted the grief he must learn to bear.

Jane's sorrow was a far more severe and constant one. Martha had been part of all her employments. She could do nothing and go nowhere, but the act and the place were steeped in memories of the child. All her work, all her way, all her thoughts, began and ended with Martha. She fell into a dangerous condition of self-immolation. She complained that no one cared for her, that her suffering was uniquely great, and that she alone was the only soul who remembered the dead and loved them.

Mrs. Stephen came from her retreat in Hatton Hall one day in order to combat this illusion.

"Three mothers living in Hatton village hev buried children this week, Jane," she said. "Two of them went back to the mill this morning."

"I think it was very wicked of them."

"They hed to go back. They had living children to work for. When the living cling to you, then you must put the dead aside for the living. God cares for the dead and they hev all they want in His care. If you feel that you must fret youself useless to either living or dead, try the living. They'll mostly give you every reason for fretting."

"John has quite forgotten poor little Martha."

"He's done nothing of that sort, but I think thou hes forgotten John, poor fellow! I'm sorry for John, I am that!"

"You have no cause to say such things, mother, and I will not listen to them. John has become wrapped up in that dreadful mill, and when he comes home at night, he will not talk of Martha."

"I am glad he won't and thou ought to be glad too. How can any man work his brains all day in noise and worry and confusion and then come home and fret his heart out all night about a child that is in Heavenly keeping and a wife that doesn't know what is good either for herself or anybody else. Listen to me! I am going to give thee a grain of solid truthful sense. The best man in the world will cease giving sympathy when he sees that it does no good and that he must give it over and over every day. I wonder John gave it as long as he did! I do that. If I was thee, I would try to forget myself a bit. I would let the sunshine into these beautiful rooms. If thou doesn't, the moths will eat up thy fine carpets and cushions, and thou will become one of those chronic, disagreeable invalids that nobody on earth—and I wouldn't wonder if nobody in heaven either—cares a button for."

Jane defended herself with an equal sincerity, and a good many truths were made clear to her that had only hitherto been like a restless movement of her consciousness. In fact the Lady of Hatton Hall left her daughter-in-law penetrated with a new sense of her position. Nor was this sense at all lightened or brightened by her parting remarks.

"I am thy true friend, Jane, that is something better than thy mother-in-law. I want to see thee and John happy, and I assure thee it will be easy now to take one step thou must never take if thou wants another happy hour. John is Yorkshire, flesh and bone, heart and soul, and thou ought to know that Yorkshiremen take no back steps. If John's love wanes, though it be ever so little, it has waned for thee to the end of thy life. Thou can never win it back. Never! So, I advise thee to mind thy ways, and thy words."

"Thank you, mother. I know you speak to me out of a sincere heart."

"To be sure I do. And out of a kind heart also. Why-a! When John said to me, 'Mother, I love Jane Harlow,' I answered, 'Thou art right to love her. She is a fit and proper wife for thee,' and I made up my mind to love thee, too—faults included."

"Then love me now, mother. John minds your lightest word. Tell him to be patient with me."

"I will—but thou must do thy best to even things. Thou must be more interested in John. Martha is with God. If she hed lived, thou would varry soon be sending her off to some unlovelike, polite boarding-school, and a few years later thou would make a grand feast, and deck her in satin and lace and jewels and give her as a sacrifice to some man thou knew little about—just as the old pagans used to dress up the young heifers with flowers and ribbons before they offered them in blood and flame to Jupiter or the like of him. Martha was God's child and He took her, and I must say, thou gave her up to Him in a varry grudging way."

"Mother, I am going to do better. Forgive me."

"Nay, my dear lass, seek thou God's forgiveness and all the rest will come easy. It is against Him, and Him only, thou hast sinned; but He is long-suffering, plenteous in mercy, and ready to forgive." And then these two women, who had scarcely spoken for years, kissed each other and were true friends ever after. So good are the faithful words of those who dare to speak the truth in love and wisdom.

As it generally happens, however, things were all unfavorable to Jane's resolve. John had been impeded all day by inefficient or careless services; even Greenwood had misunderstood an order and made an impossible appointment which had only been canceled with offense and inconvenience. The whole day indeed had worked itself away to cross purpose, and John came home weary with the aching brows that annoyance and worry touch with a peculiar depressing neuralgia. It need not be described; there are very few who are not familiar with its exhausting, melancholy dejection.

John did his best to meet his wife's more cheerful mood, but the strongest men are often very poor bearers of physical pain. Jane would have suffered—and did often suffer—the same distress with far less complaint. Women, too, soon learn to alleviate such a cruel sensation, but John had a strong natural repugnance for drugs and liniments, and it was only when he was weary of Jane's entreaties that he submitted to a merciful medication which ended in a restorative sleep.

This incident did not discourage Jane in her new resolve. She told herself at once that the first steps on a good or wise road were sure to be both difficult and painful; and in the morning John's cheerful, grateful words and his brave sunny face repaid her fully for the oblivion to which she had consigned her own trials and the subjection she had enforced upon her own personality.

This was the new battle-ground on which she now stood, and at first John hardly comprehended the hard, self-denying conflict she was waging. One day he was peculiarly struck with an act of self-denial which also involved for Jane a slight humiliation, that he could not but wonder at her submission. He looked at her in astonishment and he did not know whether he admired her self-control and generosity or not. The circumstance puzzled and troubled him. That afternoon he had to go to Yoden to see his brother, and he came home by way of Hatton Hall.

As he anticipated, he found his mother pleasantly enjoying her cup of afternoon tea, and she rose with a cry of love to welcome him.

"I was thinking of thee, John, and then I heard thy footsteps. I hev the best pot of tea in Yorkshire at my right hand; I'm sure thou wilt hev a cup."

"To be sure I will. It is one of the things I came for, and I want to talk to you half an hour."

"Say all that is in thy heart, and there's nothing helps talk, like a cup of good tea. Whatever does thou want to talk to me about?"

"I want to talk to you about Jane."

"Well then, be careful what thou says. No man's mother is a fair counselor about his wife. They will both say more than they ought to say, especially if she isn't present to explain; and when they don't fully understand, how can they advise?"

"You could not be unjust to anyone, mother?"

"Well, then?"

"She is so much better than she has ever been since the child went away."

"She is doing her best. Thou must help her with all thy heart and soul."

"All her love for me seems to have come back."

"It never left thee for a moment."

"But for weeks and months she has not seemed to care for anything but her memory of Martha."

"That is the way men's big unsuspecting feet go blundering and crushing through a woman's heart. In the first place, she was overwhelmed with grief at Martha's sudden death and at her own apparent instrumentality in it."

"I loved Martha as well, perhaps better, than Jane."

"Not thou! Thou never felt one thrill of a mother's love. Jane would have died twice over to save her child. Thou said with all the bitterness of death in thy soul, 'God's will be done.'"

"We will let that pass. Why has her grief been so long-continued?"

"Thou hed to put thine aside. A thousand voices called on thee for daily bread. Thou did not dare to indulge thy private sorrow at the risk of neglecting the work God had given thee to do. Jane had nothing to interest her. Her house was so well arranged it hardly needed oversight. The charities that had occupied her heart and her hands were ended and closed. In every room in your house, in every avenue of your garden and park Martha had left her image. Many hours every day you were in a total change of scene and saw a constant variety of men and women. Jane told me that she saw Martha in every room. She saw and heard her running up and down stairs. She saw her at her side, she saw her sleeping and dreaming. Poor mother! Poor sorrowful Jane! It would be hard to be kind enough and patient enough with her."

"Do you think she will always be in this sad condition?"

"Whatever can thou mean? God has appointed Time to console all loss and all grief. Martha will go further and further away as the days wear on and Jane will forget—we all do—we all hev to forget."

"Some die of grief."

"Not they. They may induce some disease, to which they are disposed by inordinate and sinful sorrow—and die of that—no one dies of grief, or 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."