Mary E. Wilkins Freeman - Jerome, A Poor Man

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"You won't take any less?"

"Not a dollar."

Squire Eben hesitated a second. "You know, I own that strip of land
on the Dale road, on the other side of the brook," he said.

The doctor nodded, still with his eyes keenly intent.

"There are three good house-lots; that house of the Edwardses is old
and out of repair. You'll have to spend considerable on it to rent
it. My three lots are equal to that one house, and suppose we
exchange. You take that land, and I take the mortgage on the Edwards
place."

"Do you know what you are talking about?" Doctor Prescott said,
sharply; for this plain proposition that he overreach the other
aroused him to a show of fairness.

Squire Merritt laughed. "Oh, I know you'll get the best of the
bargain," he returned.

Then the doctor waxed suspicious. This readiness to take the worst of
a bargain while perfectly cognizant of it puzzled him. He wondered if
perchance this easy-going, card-playing, fishing Squire had, after
all, some axe of policy to grind. "What do you expect to make out of
it?" he asked, bluntly.

"Nothing. I am not even sure that I have any active hope of a higher
rate of interest in the other world for it. I am not as sound in the
doctrines as you, doctor." Squire Eben laughed, but the other turned
on him sternly.

"If you are doing this for the sake of Abel Edwards's widow and her
children, you are acting from a mistaken sense of charity, and
showing poor judgment," said he.

Squire Eben laughed again. "You made no reply to my proposition,
doctor," he said.

"You are in earnest?"

"I am."

"You understand what you are doing?"

"I certainly do. I am giving you between fifteen and sixteen hundred
dollars' worth of land for a thousand."

"There is no merit nor charity in such foolish measures as this,"
said the doctor, half suspicious that there was more behind this, and
not put to shame but aroused to a sense of superiority by such
drivelling idiocy of benevolence.

"Dare say you're right, doctor," returned Squire Eben. "I won't even
cheat you out of the approval of Heaven. Will you meet me at Means's
office to-morrow, with the necessary documents for the transfer? We
had better go around to Mrs. Edwards's afterwards and inform her, I
suppose."

"I will meet you at Means's office at ten o'clock to-morrow morning,"
said the doctor, shortly. "Good-evening," and with that turned on his
heel. However, when he had opened the door he turned again and called
curtly and magisterially after Squire Eben: "I advise you to
cultivate a little more business foresight for the sake of your wife
and child," and Squire Eben answered back:

"Thank you--thank you, doctor; guess you're right," and then began to
whistle like a boy as he went down the avenue of pines.

Through lack of remunerative industry, and easy-going habits, his
share of the old Merritt property had dwindled considerably; he had
none too much money to spend at the best, and now he had bartered
away a goodly slice of his paternal acres for no adequate worldly
return. He knew it all, he felt a half-whimsical dismay as he went
home, and yet the meaning which underlies the letter of a good action
was keeping his heart warm.

When he reached home his wife, who had just finished her game, slid
out gently, and the usual festivities began. Colonel Lamson, warmed
with punch and good-fellowship and tobacco, grew brilliant at cards,
and humorously reminiscent of old jokes between the games; John
Jennings lagged at cards, but flashed out now and then with fine wit,
while his fervently working brain lit up his worn face with the light
of youth. The lawyer, who drank more than the rest, played better and
better, and waxed caustic in speech if crossed. As for the Squire,
his frankness increased even to the risk of self-praise. Before the
evening was over he had told the whole story of little Jerome, of
Doctor Prescott and himself and the Edwards mortgage. The three
friends stared at him with unsorted cards in their hands.

"You are a damned fool!" cried Eliphalet Means, taking his pipe from
his mouth.

"No," cried Jennings, "not a damned fool, but a rare fool," and his
great black eyes, in their mournful hollows, flashed affectionately
at Squire Eben.

"And I say he's a damned fool. Men live in this world," maintained
the lawyer, fiercely.

"Men's hearts ought to be out of the world if their heads are in it,"
affirmed John Jennings, with a beautiful smile. "I say he's a rare
fool, and I would that all the wise men could go to school to such a
fool and learn wisdom of his folly."

Colonel Jack Lamson, who sat at the Squire's left, removed his pipe,
cleared his throat, and strove to speak in vain. Now he began with a
queer stiffness of his lips, while his purplish-red flush spread to
the roots of his thin bristle of gray hair.

"It reminds me of a story I heard. No, that is another. It reminds
me--" And then the colonel broke down with a great sob, and a dash
of his sleeve across his eyes, and recovered himself, and cried out,
chokingly, "No, I'll be damned if it reminds me of anything I've ever
seen or heard of, for I've never seen a man like you, Eben!"

And with that he slapped his cards to the table, and shook the
Squire's hand, with such a fury of affectionate enthusiasm that some
of his cards fluttered about him to the floor, like a shower of
leaves.

As for Eliphalet Means, he declared again, with vicious emphasis,
"He's a damned fool!" then rose up, laid his cards on top of the
colonel's scattered hand, went to the punch-bowl and helped himself
to another glass; then, pipe in mouth, went up to Squire Merritt and
gave him a great slap on his back. "You are a damned fool, my boy!"
he cried out, holding his pipe from his lips and breathing out a
great cloud of smoke with the words; "but the wife and the young one
and you shall never want a bite or a sup, nor a bed nor a board, on
account of it, while old 'Liph Means has a penny in pocket."

And with that Eliphalet Means, who was old enough to be the Squire's
father, and loved him as he would have loved a son, went back to his
seat and dealt the cards over.

Chapter XI

Innocence and ignorance can be as easily hood-winked by kindness as
by contumely.

This little Jerome, who had leaped, under the spur of necessity, to
an independence of understanding beyond his years, allowed himself to
be quite misled by the Squire as to his attitude in the matter of the
mortgage. In spite of the momentary light reflected from the doctor's
shrewder intelligence which had flashed upon his scheme, the Squire
was able to delude him with a renewed belief in it, after he had
informed him of the transfer of the mortgage-deed, which took place
the next morning.

"I decided to buy that wood-lot of your father's, as your mother was
willing," said the Squire; "and as I had not the money in hand to pay
down, I gave my note to your mother for it, as you proposed the
doctor should do, and allowed six per cent. interest."

Jerome looked at him in a bewildered way.

"Well, what is the matter? Aren't you as willing to take my note as
the doctor's?" asked the Squire.

"Is it fair?" asked Jerome, hesitatingly.

"Fair to you?"

"No; to you."

"Of course it is fair enough to me. Why not?"

"The doctor didn't think it was," said the boy, getting more and more
bewildered.

"Why didn't he?"

"I don't--know--" faltered Jerome; and he did not, for the glimmer of
light which he had got from the doctor's worldly wisdom had quite
failed him. He had seen quite clearly that it was not fair, but now
he could not.

"Oh, well, I dare say it is fairer for me than for him," said the
Squire, easily. "Probably he had the ready money; I haven't the ready
money; that makes all the difference. Don't you see it does?"

"Yes--sir," replied Jerome, hesitatingly, and tried to think he saw;
but he did not. A mind so young and immature as his is not unlike the
gaseous age of planets, overlaid with great shifting masses of vapor,
which part to disclose dazzling flame-points and incomparable gleams,
then close again. Only time can accomplish a nearer balance of light
in minds and planets.

Then, too, as the first strain of unwonted demands relaxed a little
through use, Jerome's mental speed, which seemed to have taken him
into manhood at a bound, slackened, and he even fell back somewhat in
his tracks. He was still beyond what he had ever been before, for one
cannot return from growth. He would never be as much of a child
again, but he was more of a child than he had been yesterday.

His mother also had been instrumental towards replacing him in his
old ways. Ann, after her day of crushed apathy, aroused herself
somewhat. When the Squire, the lawyer, and Doctor Prescott came the
next morning, she kept them waiting outside while she put on her best
cap. She had a view of the road from her rocking-chair, and when she
saw the three gentlemen advancing with a slow curve of progress
towards her gate, which betokened an entrance, she called sharply to
Elmira, who was washing dishes, "Go into the bedroom and get my best
cap, quick," at the same time twitching off the one upon her head.

When poor little Elmira turned and stared, her pretty face quite
pale, thinking her mother beside herself, she made a fierce, menacing
gesture with her nervous elbow, and spoke again, in a whisper, lest
the approaching guests hear: "Why don't you start? Take this old cap
and get my best one, quick!" And the little girl scuttled into the
bedroom just as the first knock came on the door. Ann kept the three
dignitaries waiting until she adjusted her cap to her liking, and the
knocks had been several times repeated before she sent the trembling
Elmira to admit them and usher them into the best parlor, whither she
followed, hitching herself through the entry in her chair, and
disdainfully refusing all offers of assistance. She even thrust out
an elbow repellingly at the Squire, who had sprung forward to her
aid.

"No, thank you, sir," said she; "I don't need any help; I always go
around the house so. I ain't helpless."

Ann, when she had brought her chair to a stand, sat facing the three
callers, each of whose salutations she returned with a curtly polite
bow. She had a desperate sense of being at bay, and that the hands of
all these great men, whose supremacy she acknowledged with the futile
uprearing of any angry woman, were against her. She eyed the lawyer,
Eliphalet Means, with particular distrust. She had always held all
legal proceedings as a species of quagmire to entrap the innocent and
unwary. She watched while the lawyer took some documents from his bag
and laid them on the table. "I won't sign a thing, nohow," she avowed
to herself, and shut her mouth tight.

Squire Merritt discovered that besides dealing with his own scruples
he had to overcome his beneficiary's.

It took a long time to convince Ann that she was not being
overreached and cheated. She seemed absolutely incapable of
understanding the transfer of the mortgage note from Doctor Prescott
to Squire Merritt.

"I've signed one mortgage," said she, firmly; "I put my name under my
husband's. I ain't goin' to sign another."

"But nobody wants you to sign anything, Mrs. Edwards. The mortgage
note is simply transferred to Squire Merritt here. We only want you
to understand it," said Lawyer Means. He had a curiously impersonal
manner of dealing with women, being wont to say that only a man who
expected good sense in womenkind was surprised when he did not find
it.

"I ain't goin' to put two mortgages on this place," said Ann,
fronting him with the utter stupidity of obstinacy.

"Let me explain it to you, Mrs. Edwards," said Eliphalet Means, with
no impatience. He regarded a woman as so incontrovertibly a
patience-tryer, from the laws of creation, that he would as soon have
waxed impatient with the structural order of things. He endeavored to
explain matters with imperturbable persistency, but Ann was still
unconvinced.

"I ain't goin' to sign my name to any other mortgage," said she.

Jerome, who had stood listening in the door, slid up to his mother
and touched her arm. "Oh, mother," he whispered, "I know all about
it--it's all right!"

Ann gave him a thrust with a little sharp elbow. "What do you know
about it?" she cried. "I'm here to look out for you and your sister,
and take care of what little we've got, an' I'm goin' to. Go out an'
tend to your work."

"Oh, mother, do let me stay!"

"Go right along, I tell you." And Jerome, who was the originator of
all this, went out helplessly, slighted and indignant. He did think
the Squire might have interceded for him to stay, knowing what he
knew. Even youth has its disadvantages.

But Squire Eben stood somewhat aloof, looking at the small, frail,
pugnacious woman in the rocking-chair with perplexity and growing
impatience. He wanted to go fishing that morning, and the vision of
the darting trout in their still, clear pool was before him, like a
vision of his own earthly paradise. He gave a despairing glance at
Doctor Prescott, who had hitherto said little. "Can't you convince
her it is all right? She knows you better than the rest of us," he
whispered.

Doctor Prescott nodded, arose--he had been sitting apart--went to
Mrs. Edwards, and touched her shoulder. "Mrs. Edwards," said he--Ann
gave a terrified yet wholly unyielding flash of her black eyes at
him--"Mrs. Edwards, will you please attend to what we have come to
tell you. I have transferred the mortgage note given me by your late
husband to Squire Eben Merritt; there is nothing for you to sign. You
will simply pay the interest money to him, instead of to me."

"You can tear me to pieces, if you want to," said Ann, "but I won't
sign away what little my poor husband left to me and my children, for
you or any other man."

"Look at me," said the doctor.

Ann never stirred her head.

"Look at me."

Ann looked.

"Now," said the doctor, "you listen and you understand. I can't waste
any more time here. Squire Merritt has bought that mortgage which
your husband gave me, and paid me for it in land. You have simply
nothing to do with it, except to understand. Nobody wants you to sign
anything."

Ann looked at him with some faint light of comprehension through her
wild impetus of resistance. "I'd ruther it would stay the way it was
before," said she. "My husband gave you the mortgage. He thought you
were trustworthy. I'd jest as soon pay you interest money as Squire
Merritt."

Then Eliphalet Means spoke dryly, still with that utter patience of
preparation and expectation: "If Doctor Prescott retains this
mortgage he intends to foreclose."

Ann looked at him, and then at Doctor Prescott. She gasped,
"Foreclose!"

Doctor Prescott nodded.

"You mean to foreclose? You mean to take this place away from us?"
Ann cried, shrilly. "You with all you've got, and we a widow and
orphans! And you callin' yourself a good man an' a pillar of the
sanctuary!"

Doctor Prescott's face hardened. "Your husband owed me for a
half-year's interest," he began, calmly.

"My husband didn't owe you any interest money. He paid you in work
and wood."

"That was for medical attendance," proceeded the doctor,
imperturbably. "He owed me half a year's interest. I considered it
best for your interests, as well as mine, to foreclose, and should
have done so had not Squire Merritt taken the matter out of my hands.
I should advise him to a like measure, but he is his own best judge."

"Squire Merritt will not foreclose," said Eliphalet Means; "and he
will be easy about the payments."

"Well," said Ann, with a strange, stony look, "I guess I understand.
I'm satisfied."

Doctor Prescott gathered up his medicine-chest, bade the others a
gruff, ceremonious good-morning, and went out. His sulky had been
drawn up before the gate for some time, and Jake Noyes had been
lounging about the yard.

The lawyer and the Squire lingered, as they had yet the business
regarding the sale of the woodland to arrange.

Curiously enough, Ann was docile as one could wish about that.
Whether her previous struggle had exhausted her or whether she began
to feel some confidence in her advisers, they could not tell. She
made no difficulty, but after all was adjusted she looked at the
lawyer with a shrewd, sharp gleam in her eyes.

"Doctor Prescott can't get his claws on it now, anyhow," she said;
"and he always wanted it, 'cause it joined his."

The Squire and the lawyer looked at each other. The Squire with
humorous amazement, the lawyer with a wink and glance of wise
reminder, as much as to say: "You know what I have always said about
women. Here is a woman."

Jerome was digging out in his garden-patch, and Elmira, in her blue
sunbonnet, was standing, full of scared questioning, before him, when
the Squire came lounging up the slope and reported as before said, to
the convincing of the boy in innocent credulity.

When he had finished, he laid hold on Elmira's little cotton sleeve
and pulled her up to her brother, and stood before them with a kindly
hand on a shoulder of each, smiling down at them with infinite
good-humor and protection.

"Don't you worry now, children," he said. "Be good and mind your
mother, and you'll get along all right. We'll manage about the
interest money, and there'll be meal in the barrel and a roof over
your heads as long as you want it, according to the Scriptures, I'll
guarantee."

With that Squire Eben gave each a shake, to conceal, maybe, the
tenderness of pity in him, which he might, in his hearty and merry
manhood, have accounted somewhat of a shame to reveal, as well as
tears in his blue eyes, and was gone down the hill with a great
laugh.

Elmira looked after him. "Ain't he good?" she whispered. But as for
Jerome, he stood trembling and quivering and looking down at a print
the Squire's great boot had made in the soft mould. When Elmira had
gone, he went down on his knees and kissed it passionately.

Chapter XII

Now the warfare of life had fairly begun for little Jerome Edwards.
Up to this time, although in sorry plight enough as far as material
needs went--scantily clad, scantily fed, and worked hard--he had as
yet only followed at an easy pace, or skirted with merry play the
march of the toilers of the world. Now he was in the rank and file,
enlisted thereto by a stern Providence, and must lose his life for
the sake of living, like the rest. No more idle hours in the snug
hollow of the rock, where he seemed to pause like a bee on the sweets
of existence itself that he might taste them fully, were there for
Jerome. Very few chances he had for outspeeding his comrades in any
but the stern and sober race of life, for this little Mercury had to
shear the wings from his heels of youthful sport and take to the gait
of labor. Very seldom he could have one of his old treasure hunts in
swamps and woods, unless, indeed, he could perchance make a labor and
a gain of it. Jerome found that sassafras, and snakeroot, and various
other aromatic roots and herbs of the wilds about his house had their
money value. There was an apothecary in the neighboring village of
Dale who would purchase them of him; at the cheapest of rates, it is
true--a penny or so for a whole peck measure, or a sheaf, of the
largess of summer--but every penny counted. Poor Jerome did not care
so much about his woodland sorties after they were made a matter of
pence and shillings, sorely as he needed, and much as he wished for,
the pence and shillings. The sense was upon him, a shamed and
helpless one, of selling his birthright. Jerome had in the natural
beauty of the earth a budding delight, which was a mystery and a
holiness in itself. It was the first love of his boyish heart; he had
taken the green woods and fields for his sweetheart, and must now put
her to only sordid uses, to her degradation and his.

Sometimes, in a curious rebellion against what he scarcely knew, he
would return home without a salable thing in hand, nothing but a
pretty and useless collection of wild flowers and sedges, little
swamp-apples, and perhaps a cast bird-feather or two, and meet his
mother's stern reproof with righteously undaunted front.

"I don't care," he said once, looking at her with a meaning she could
not grasp; nor, indeed, could he fathom it himself. "I ain't goin' to
sell everything; if I do I'll have to sell myself."

"I'd like to know what you mean," said his mother, sharply.

"I mean I'm goin' to keep some things myself," said Jerome, and
pattered up to his chamber to stow away his treasures, with his
mother's shrill tirade about useless truck following him. Ann was a
good taskmistress; there were, indeed, great powers of administration
in the keen, alert mind in that little frail body. Given a poor house
encumbered by a mortgage, a few acres of stony land, and two
children, the elder only fourteen, she worked miracles almost. Jerome
had shown uncommon, almost improbable, ability in his difficulties
when Abel had disappeared and her strength had failed her, but
afterwards her little nervous feminine clutch on the petty details
went far towards saving the ship.

Had it not been for his mother, Jerome could not have carried out his
own plans. Work as manfully as he might, he could not have paid
Squire Merritt his first instalment of interest money, which was
promptly done.

It was due the 1st of November, and, a day or two before, Squire
Merritt, tramping across lots, over the fields, through the old
plough ridges and corn stubble, with some plump partridges in his bag
and his gun over shoulder, made it in his way to stop at the Edwards
house and tell Ann that she must not concern herself if the interest
money were not ready at the minute it was due.

But Ann laid down her work--she was binding shoes--straightened
herself as if her rocking-chair were a throne and she an empress, and
looked at him with an inscrutable look of pride and suspicion. The
truth was that she immediately conceived the idea that this great
fair-haired Squire, with his loud, sweet voice, and his loud, frank
laugh and pleasant blue eyes, concealed beneath a smooth exterior
depths of guile. She exchanged, as it were, nods of bitter confidence
with herself to the effect that Squire Merritt was trying to make her
put off paying the interest money, and pretending to be very kind and
obliging, in order that he might the sooner get his clutches on the
whole property.

All the horizon of this poor little feminine Ishmael seemed to her
bitter fancy to be darkened with hands against her, and she sat on a
constant watch-tower of suspicion.

"Elmira," said she, "bring me that stockin'."

Elmira, who also was binding shoes, sitting on a stool before the
scanty fire, rose quickly at her mother's command, went into the
bedroom, and emerged with an old white yarn stocking hanging heavily
from her hand.

"Empty it on the table and show Squire Merritt," ordered her mother,
in a tone as if she commanded the resources of the royal treasury to
be displayed.

Elmira obeyed. She inverted the stocking, and from it jingled a
shower of coin into a pitiful little heap on the table.

"There!" said Ann, pointing at it with a little bony finger. The
smallest coins of the realm went to make up the little pile, and the
Lord only knew how she and her children had grubbed them together.
Every penny there represented more than the sweat of the brow: the
sweat of the heart.

Squire Eben Merritt, with some dim perception of the true magnitude
and meaning of that little hoard, gained partly through Ann's manner,
partly through his own quickness of sympathy, fairly started as he
looked at it and her.

"There's twenty-one dollars, all but two shillin's, there," said Ann,
with hard triumph. "The two shillin's Jerome is goin' to have
to-night. He's been splittin' of kindlin'-wood, after school, for
your sister, this week, and she's goin' to pay him the same as she
did for weedin'. You can take this now, if you want to, or wait and
have it all together."

"I'll wait, thank you," replied Eben Merritt. For the moment he felt
actually dismayed and ashamed at the sight of his ready interest
money. It was almost like having a good deed thrust back in his face
and made of no account. He had scarcely expected any payment,
certainly none so full and prompt as this.

"I thought I'd let you see you hadn't any cause to feel afraid you
wouldn't get it," said Ann, with dignity. "Elmira, you can put the
money back in the stockin' now, and put the stockin' back under the
feather-bed."

Squire Merritt felt like a great school-boy before this small,
majestic woman. "I did not feel afraid, Mrs. Edwards," he said,
awkwardly.

"I didn't know but you might," said she, scornfully; "people didn't
seem to think we could do anything."

"All I wonder at is," said the Squire, rallying a little, "how you
managed to get so much money together."

"Do you want to know? Well, I'll tell you. We've bound shoes, Elmira
an' me, for one thing. We've took all they would give us. That wa'n't
many, for the regular customers had to come first, and I didn't do
any in Abel's lifetime--that is, not after I was sick. I used to a
while before that. Abel wouldn't let me when we were first married,
but he had to come to it. Men can't do all they're willin' to. I
shouldn't have done anything but dress in silk, set an' rock, an'
work scallops an' eyelets in cambric pocket-handkerchiefs, if Abel
had had his say. After I was sick I quit workin' on boots, because
the doctor he said it might hurt the muscles of my back to pull the
needle through the leather; but there's somethin' besides muscles in
backs to be thought of when it comes to keepin' body an' soul
together. Two days after the funeral I sent Jerome up to Cyrus
Robinson, and told him to ask him if he'd got some extra shoes to
bind and close, and he come home with some. Elmira and me bound, and
Jerome closed, and we took our pay in groceries. The shoes have fed
us, with what we got out of the garden. Then Elmira and me have
braided mats and pieced quilts and sewed three rag carpets, and
Elmira picked huckleberries and blackberries in season, and sold them
to your wife and Miss Camilla and the doctor's wife; and Lawyer Means
bought lots of her, and the woman that keeps house for John Jennings
bought a lot. Elmira picked bayberries, too, and sold 'em to the
shoemaker for tallow; she sold a lot in Dale. Elmira did a good deal
of the weeding in your sister's garden, so's to leave Jerome's time
clear. Then once when the doctor's wife had company she went over to
help wash dishes, and she give her three an' sixpence for that.
Elmira said she give it dreadful kind of private, and looked round to
be sure the doctor wa'n't within gunshot. She give her a red merino
dress of hers, too, but she kept her till after nightfall, and
smuggled her out of the back door, with it all done up under her arm,
lest the doctor should see. They say she's got dresses she won't
never put on her back again--silks an' satins an' woollens--because
she's outgrown 'em, an' they're all hangin' up in closets gettin'
mothy, an' the doctor won't let her give 'em away. But this dress she
give Elmira wa'n't give away, for I sent her back next day to do some
extra work to pay for it. I ain't beholden to nobody. Elmira swept
and dusted the settin'-room and the spare chamber, and washed the
breakfast an' dinner dishes, and I guess she paid for that old dress
ample. It had been laid up with camphor in a cedar chest, but it had
some moth holes in it. It wa'n't worth such a great sight, after all.

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