The Prophet's Mantle. Hubert Bland
was more a havin' nor a givin' one,' said old Bill Murdoch. 'Givin' don't build mills, my lad, nor yet muck up two acres o' good pasture wi' bits o' flowers wi' glass windows all over 'em. I never seen sic foolin'.'
'Surely a man's a right to do what he will with his own,' ventured a meek-looking man, who had himself a few pounds laid by, and felt acutely the importance of leaving unchallenged the rights of property.
'I'm none so sure o' that,' remarked Bill, who had a conviction which is shared by a few more of us, that one's superiority shows itself naturally and unmistakably in one's never agreeing with any statement whatever which is advanced by anyone else.
'There'll be more flowers than ever now, if Mr. Roland has his way,' said Sigley the meek.
'D'ye think, now, Sigley, he'll be like to get that where Mr. Richard is?' asked Bill. 'Mr. Roland thinks too much o' flowers and singin', and book learnin', to give much time to getten o' his own way.'
'Mr. Roland may be this, or he may be that,' Potters, the village grocer, observed, with the air of one clearly stating a case, 'but he can get his way where he cares to.'
'Tha's fond o' saying words as might mean owt—or nowt, for that matter. Can't tha say what tha does mean?'
'Tha'd know what I mean if tha weren't too blind to see owt. How about Alice Hatfield?'
'Gently, gently,' said Bolt. 'Tha was i' the right, Potters, not to name names, but when it comes to namin' o' names I asks tha where's tha proof?'
Here there was a general 'movement of adhesion,' and an assenting murmur ran round, while the mild man repeated like an echo, 'Where's your proof?'
'Her father don't think ther's proof,' said Sigley.
'A man doesn't want to prove the bread out of his mouth, and the roof off his children.'
'John Hatfield wouldn't work for a man as had ruined his girl.'
'Hungry dogs eat dirty pudding,' remarked Potters.
'Hatfield does na' deal o' thee, Potters,' observed Murdoch, drily.
'And it would be just one if he did,' answered Potters, his large face growing crimson, 'and Alice was a good lass and a sweet lass till she took up wi' fine notions and told a' the lads as none on 'em was good enough to tie her shoon, and as she'd be a lady, and I don't know what all, and Mr. Roland was the only gentleman as ever took any notice of her, except Mr. Richard; and Mr. Roland, he went away when she went away, and it's all as plain as the nose on your face.'
'Tha says too much,' said Murdoch slowly, 'for't a' to be true.'
'Now, now!' interposed Bolt. 'Enow said on all sides, I'm sure. The poor old master's gone, and the mill's got a holiday, and I think you'll all be better employed i' turning your thoughts on him as is gone than i' picking holes i' them as is to be your masters, and raking up yesterday's fires i' this fashion. And so I say, as I said before, I for one am sorry he's gone.'
'Yes; and so am I,' said Bill; 'for as long as he lived I always expected him to do summat for me, as worked alongside o' him when he were a lad i' Carrington's Mills, and now I know that chance is ower.'
'Well, he gave thee work here, and he'd always a kind word for thee.'
'Kind words spread no butties, and when he was rolling in brass, work at the usual wages was a' he ever give me.'
'Did'st thee ever gie him owt, lad?'
'I never had owt to give him, or anyone else for that matter.'
A general laugh arose, and Bill buried his face in his mug of beer.
'The next work-day the mill's closed'll be a wedden-day, I s'pose,' said Sigley, after a pause.
'Ay, and not long fust.'
'Mr. Roland's always up at Aspinshaw.'
'So's Mr. Richard if you come to that.'
'They can't both marry the girl.'
'No, nor I shouldn't think either of them would yet a bit. Miss Clare's only just come home fro' endin' her schoolin'.'
'And a gradely lass she is.'
'Ay, that's so,' cut in old Murdoch. 'She thinks a sight more o' workin'-folk nor either o' they boys do.'
'Where's your proof o' that, Bill?' asked Bolt, the village logician.
'Proof,' snarled Murdoch; 'don't 'ee call to mind two years agone when we had a kind o' strike like, and didn't she go about speakin' up for us like a good un?'
A murmur of assent mingled with the gurgling of liquor down half-a-dozen throats.
'There's one I hope she'll never take to,' Potters was beginning, but Bolt interrupted him with—
'Whichever has her will have a fine wife. Let's drink good luck to the new masters, lads.'
'Or, so to say, to oursel', for their's'll be ours,' said Sigley.
'Their bad luck'll be ours; but their good luck's their own,' said Bill Murdoch sententiously.
This startling economic theory meeting with no support, the original toast was drunk with a feeble attempt at honours.
The 'new masters' whose health had thus been unenthusiastically drunk found it hard to realise the peculiar position in which they found themselves.
The will was a great surprise to them both. Neither had thought that the slight breach which had come between them was sufficiently wide to be noticed, and the very fact of its having been noticed made it appear deeper and more serious than they had before considered it to be.
It was a bitter thought to Richard Ferrier that the old man's last moments should have been made unquiet through any conduct of his, and he reproached himself for not having concealed his own feelings better, and for not having watched more keenly over those of his father. The most crushing part of bereavement is always the consciousness that so little more thought, so little more tact and tenderness, would have sufficed to spare that ended life many an hour of sorrow, that quiet heart many a pang of pain. It is then that we would give our heart's blood for one hour with the beloved in which to tell them all that we might have said so easily while they were here. This universal longing is responsible for that deeply rooted belief in the life beyond the grave which causes two-thirds of human-kind to dispense with evidence and to set reason at nought. So long as the sons and daughters of men
Weep by silent graves alone,
so long will the priest find his penitent, the professor of modern spiritualism his open-mouthed dupe, and the shrine its devotee. The ages roll on, each year the old earth opens her bosom for our dearest, and still man—slow learner that he is—will not realise that (whatever may be the chances of another life in which to set right what has been here done amiss) in this life, which is the only one he can be sure of having, it rests with him to decide whether there shall be any acts of unkindness that will seem to need atonement.
The consolation which so many find in the idea of a future life was a closed door to Dick. He had belonged to the 'advanced' school of thought at college, and to him the gulf which separated him from his father was one that could never be bridged over.
Roland's grief was more absorbing than his brother's, though it was not so acute; and by its very nature could not be so lasting. Yet through it all he felt rather—not vexed—but grieved that his father should have not only divined his inmost feelings, but should have published them to the world by means of this will. He had an uneasy consciousness that he was made to appear ridiculous, and for Roland to be possibly absurd was to be certainly wretched. It was very irritating that two brothers could not have an occasional difference without having their 'sparring' made the subject of a solemn legal document; and without being themselves placed in such a situation that the eyes of all their acquaintances must be turned expectantly on them to see what they would do next.
The differences arose from an only too complete agreement on one particular point. When they