"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 yetif 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 nightand 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 crowdliving 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 proposaldownright 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 beunless 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 are you talking about, Harry Hatton? I will not hear of you going on such a journeyno matter where to, so now you know."
"It is John's advice."
"It is very poor advice. For steady living in, there is no place like Yorkshire."
"I was telling John today what I have often told you, how I hated the mill, how sick it made me, and that I must sell my interest in it in order to do something else. Then John made me a proposal, and if you think well of it I will do as John advises. But let us go to the porch, it is so hot here. It feels like the dog days."
"No wonder, with the toggery you have on your back. Whatever in the world led you to make such a guy of yourself? I hope you didn't come through the village."
"No wonder, with the toggery you have on your back. Whatever in the world led you to make such a guy of yourself? I hope you didn't come through the village."
"I did. I had my horse brought to Oxbar Station, for that very purpose."
"Well, I never! Do you think you look handsome in those things?"
"I do."
"You never made a bigger mistake. I can tell you that. But I want to know what John is up tosending you away for a whole yearsuch nonsense!"
Then Harry made John's proposal as attractive as he could, and Mrs. Hatton listened with a face devoid of all expression, until he said: "I want you with me, mother. I shall have no pleasure without you."
"There is something else you want, Harry. What is it?"
"Well, mother, there is a beautiful girl whom I love with all my heart and soul. I want to take her with me, but I can notunless you also go."
Mrs. Hatton's face flushed, and she dropped her eyes, knowing that they were full of anger. "Who is this girl?" she asked coldly.
"Lucy Lugur, the schoolmaster's daughter."
"Could you not take her own mother?"
"Lucy has no mother. Her father has been father and mother both to her since she was two years old. He loves her beyond everything."
"I can believe that. I know a little of Ralph Lugur. He has been to see me twice about the children of the village."
"He has them all at his beck and call. And Lucy, mother, she is so fair and sweet! If you could only see her!"
"I have seen her."
"Oh, mother dear, don't speak unkindly of her!"
"Nay; why should I? She is, as you say, very pretty; and I'll warrant she is as good as she is pretty. I could trust Lugur to bring her up properlybut she is not a mate for you."
"I will have no other mate."
"Miss Lugur may be all your fancy paints her, but why should your mother be asked to leave her home, her duties, and pleasures for a year? To subject herself to bad weather and sickness and loneliness and fatigue of all kinds in order that she may throw the mantle of her social respectability over an equivocal situation. I do not blame the girl, but I feel more keenly and bitterly than I can tell you the humiliation and discomfort you would gladly put upon me in order to give yourself the satisfaction of Miss Lugur's company. Harry, you are the most selfish creature I ever met. John has promised to give up your rightful assistance in the mill, to really do your work for a year, your income is to be paid in full, though you won't earn a farthing of it; you expect the use of the yacht for yourself and a girl out of my knowledge and beneath my social status. Oh, Harry! Harry! It is too much to ask of any mother."
"I never thought of it in this way. Forgive me, mother."
"And who is to take care of John if I go with you? Who is to care for the old home and all the treasures gathered in it? Who will look after the farm and the horses and cattle and poultry, the fruit-trees and lawns and flowers as I do? Do you think that all these cares are pleasures to me? No, my dear lad, but they are my duty. I wouldn't have thy father find out that I neglected even a brooding hen. No, I wouldn't. And the yacht was thy father's great pleasuring. I only went with him to double that pleasure. I don't like the sea, though I never let him know it. Oh, my dear! But there! You haven't learned yet that self-sacrifice is love, and no love without it."
"Mother, I am ashamed of my selfishness. I never realized before how many things you have to care for."
"From cocklight to the dim, Harry, there is always something needing my care. Must house and farm and John and all our dumb fellow creatures go to the mischief for pretty Lucy Lugur? My dear, I'm saying these things to you, because nobody else has a right to say them; but oh, Harry, it breaks my heart to say them!"
"Mother, forgive me. I did not think of anything but the fact that you have always stood by me through thick and thin."
"In all things right, I will stand by you. In whatever is wrong I will be against you. You have fallen into the net of bad company, and you can't mend that troubleyou can only run away from it. Take John's advice, and get out of the reach of that Naylor influence."
"I never saw anything wrong with Frank Naylor. He did not drink, he never touched a card, and he was always respectful to the women we met."
"Harry, you would not dare to repeat to me all that Frank Naylor said to you. Oh, my dear, there it is! When you can shut your ears, as easily as your eyes, you can afford to be less particular about the company you keepnot until."
At this moment John entered, and the conversation became general and impersonal. But the influence of uncertain and unlooked-for anxiety was over all, and Harry was eager to escape it. He said the young men would be expecting him at their association hall, as he had promised to explain to them the mysteries of golf, which he wished them to favor above cricket.
He had, indeed, a promised obligation on this subject, but the exact time was as yet within his own decision. Yet he was ready to fulfill it that evening, rather than listen to the conversation about himself and his future, which he knew would ensue whether he was present or not. And the promise John had given him of a year's holiday was so satisfactory that he longed to be alone and at liberty to follow it out and fit it into his life.
He felt that John had been generous to him, but he also felt that the proposed manner of rest and recreation was in one respect altogether unsatisfactoryhe was to be sent away from Lucy Lugur. He was sure that was John's real and ultimate motive, whatever other motive was virtually put in its place. Mother and brother would agree on that point and he thought of this agreement with a discontent that rapidly became anger. Then he determined to marry Lucy, and so have a right to her company on land or sea, at home or abroad.
For he argued only from his own passionate desire. Lucy had never said she loved him, yet he felt sure she did so. He loved her the moment they met, and he had no doubt Lucy had been affected in the same manner as himself. He knew her for his own, lost out of his soul-life long ago and suddenly found one afternoon as she stood with her father at the gate of their little garden. She had roses in her hands, or rather they were lying across her white arms, and her exquisite face rose above them, thrilling his heart with a strange but powerful sense of a right in her that was wholly satisfying and indisputable.
"I will suffer no one to part me from Lucy," he mused. "She is mine. She belongs to me, and to no other man in this world. I will not leave her. I might lose her; if I go away, she must go with me. She loves me! I know it! I feel it! When she sat at my side as we were driving together she was me. Her personality melted into mine, and Lucy Lugur and Harry Hatton were one. If I felt this, Lucy felt it. I will tell her, and she will believe me, for I am sure she shared that wonderful transfusion of the 'thee into me' which is beyond all explanation, and never felt but with the one soul that is our soul."
Thus as he walked down to the village he thrilled himself with the pictures of his own imaginings; for a passionate bewildering love, that had all the unbearable realism of a dream, held him in its unconquerable grip. There may be men who can force themselves to be reasonable in such a condition, but Henry Hatton was not among them; and when he unexpectedly met Lucy's father in the village, he quite forgot that the man knew nothing at all of his affection for his daughter and his intention to marry her.
"Mr. Lugur," he cried almost joyfully, "I was looking for you, hoping to meet you, and here you are! I am so glad!"