Chapter 4

BROTHERS

The pleasant habit of existence, the sweet fable of Life and Love.

* * * * *
They sin who tell us Love can die,
With Life all other passions fly,
Love is indestructible.

* * * * *

A mother is a mother still, the holiest thing alive.

This afternoon the brothers looked at each other with great love, but
there was in it a sense of wariness; and Harry was inclined to bluff
what he knew his brother would regard with inconvenient seriousness.

"Will you sit, Harry? Or are you going at once to mother? She is a bit
anxious about you."

"I will sit with you half an hour, John. I want to talk with you. I am
very unhappy."

"Nay, nay! You don't look unhappy, I'm sure; and you have no need to
feel so."

"Indeed, I have. If a man hates his lifework, he is very likely to hate
his life. You know, John, that I have always hated mills. The sight of
their long chimneys and of the human beings groveling at the bottom of
them for their daily bread gives me a heartache. And the smell of them!
O John, the smell of a mill sickens me!"

"What do you mean, Harry Hatton?"

"I mean the smell of the vaporous rooms, and the boiling soapsuds, and
the oil and cotton and the moisture from the hot flesh of a thousand men
and women makes the best mill in England a sweating-house of this age of
corruption."

"Harry, who did you hear speak of cotton mills in that foolish way? Some
ranter at a street corner, I suppose. Hatton mill brings you in good,
honest money. I think little of feelings that slander honest work and
honest earnings."

"John, my dear brother, you must listen to me. I want to get out of this
business, and Eli Naylor and Thomas Henry Naylor will rent my share of
the mill."

"Will they? No! Not for all the gold in England! What are you asking me,
Harry Hatton? Do you think I will shame the good name of Hatton by
associating it with scoundrels and blacklegs? Your father kicked
Hezekiah Naylor out of this mill twenty years ago. Do you think I will
take in his sons, and let them share our father's good name, and the
profits of the wonderful business he built up? I say _no_! A downright,
upright _no_! Why, Harry, you must be off your head to think of such a
thing as possible. It is enough to make father come back from the
grave."

"You are talking nonsense, John. If father is in heaven, he wouldn't
come back here about an old mill full of weariness and hatred and
wretched lives; and if he isn't in heaven, he wouldn't be let come back.
I am not afraid of father now."

"If you must sell or rent your share, I will