The Measure of a Man

by Amelia E. Barr

When John reached London it was in the gray misty dawning. The streets were nearly deserted, and an air of melancholy hung over the long rows of low dwellings. At Harlow House he saw at once that every window was shrouded, and he turned heartsick with the fear that he was too late. A porter, whose eyes were red with weeping, admitted him, and there was an intolerable smell of drugs, the odor of which he recollected all the days of his future life.

"She is still alive, sir—but very ill."

John could not answer, but his look was so urgent and so miserable the man divined the hurry of heart and spirit that he was possessed by and without another word led him to the room where the child lay dying. The struggle was nearly over and

John was spared the awful hours of slow strangulation which had already done their work. She was not insensible. She held tight the hand of her mother, kneeling by her side, and gazed at John with eyes wearing a new, deep look as if a veil had been rent and she with open face saw things sweet and wonderful. Her pale, mute mouth smiled faintly and she tried to stretch out her arms to him. There she lay, a smitten child, fallen after a bewildering struggle with a merciless foe. John with a breaking heart lifted her in his arms and carried her gently to-and-fro. The change and motion relieved her a little and what words of comfort and love he said in that last communion only God knows. But though he held her close in his strong arms, she found a way to pass from him to God. Quivering all over like a wounded bird, she gave John her last smile, and was not, for God took her. The bud had opened to set free the rose—the breathing miracle into silence passed. Weeping passionately, his tears washed her face. He was in an agony of piteous feeling in which there was quite unconsciously a strain of resentment.

"She is gone!" he cried, and the two physicians present bowed their heads. Then Jane rose and took the body from the distracted father's arms. She was white and worn out with suffering and watching, but she would allow no one to make the child's last toilet but herself. For this ceremony she needed no lace or satin, no gilt or mock jewelry.

She washed the little form free of all earth's stain, combed loose the bright brown hair, matted with the sweat of suffering, and dressed her for the last—the last time, in one of the pretty white linen nightgowns she had made for her darling but a few weeks previously.

Oh, who dare inquire what passed in Jane's soul during that hour? The God who wrote the child's name in His book before she was born, He only knew. Of all that suffered in Martha's loss, Jane suffered incredibly more than any other. She fell prostrate on the floor at the feet of the Merciful Father when this duty was done—prostrate and speechless. Prayer was beyond her power. She was dumb. God had done it and she deserved it. She heard nothing John said to her. All that long, long day she sat by her dead child, until in the darkening twilight some men came into the room on tiptoe. They had a small white coffin in their care, and placed it on a table near the bed. Then Jane stood up and if an unhappy soul had risen from the grave, it could not have shocked them more. She stood erect and looked at them. Her tall form, in its crushed white gown, her deathly white face, her black eyes gleaming with the lurid light of despair, her pale quivering lips, her air of hopeless grief, shocked even these men, used to the daily sight of real or pretended mourners. With a motion of her hand she prevented them coming closer to the dead child, and then by an imperative utterance of the

word, "Go," sent them from the room. With her own hand she laid Martha in her last bed and disposed its one garment about the rigid little limbs. She neither spoke nor wept for Ah! in her sad soul she knew that never day or night or man or God could bring her child back to her. And she remembered that once she had said in an evil moment that this dear, dead child was "one too many." Would God ever forgive her?

By a late train that night they left for Hatton Hall, reaching the village about the time for the mill to open. No bell summoned its hands to cheerful work. They were standing at various points, and when the small white coffin went up the hill, they silently followed, softly singing. At the great gates the weeping grandmother received them.

For one day the living and the dead dwelt together in hushed and sorrowful mourning, nor did a word of comfort come to any soul. The weight of that grief which hung like lead upon the rooms, the stairs, the galleries where her step had lately been so light, was also on every heart; and although we ought to be diviner for our dead, the strength of this condition was not as yet realized. John had shut himself in his room, and the grandmother went about her household duties silently weeping and trying to put down the angry thoughts which would arise whenever she remembered how stubbornly her daughter-in-law had refused to leave Martha with her, and make her trip to London alone. She knew