Mary E. Wilkins Freeman - Jerome, A Poor Man

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She heard Jerome and her husband moving about in the next room, she
heard the crackling of fire in the stove, the clinking din of dishes,
the scrape of a broom, not realizing in the least what the sounds
meant. She heard with her mind no sound of earth but the wail of the
sick baby in her lap.

Jerome Edwards could tidy a house as well as a woman, and John Upham
followed his directions with clumsy zeal. When the kitchen was set to
rights Mrs. Upham went in there, as she was bidden, with the baby,
and sat down in a rocking-chair by the open window towards the road,
through which came a soft green light from some opposite trees, and a
breath of apple-blossoms.

"We've got the room all redd up, Laury," John Upham said, pitifully,
stooping over her and looking into her face. She nodded vaguely,
looking at the baby, who had stopped crying.

Jerome dropped some more medicine, and she took the spoon and fed it
to the baby. "I think it will go to sleep now," said Jerome. Mrs.
Upham looked up at him and almost smiled. Hope was waking within her.
"I think it is nothing but a little cold and feverishness, Mrs.
Upham," Jerome added. He had a great pitiful imagination for this
unknown woe of maternity, which possibly gave him as great a power of
sympathy as actual knowledge.

"You are a good fellow, Jerome, an' I hope I shall be able to do
somethin' to pay you some day," John Upham said, huskily, when they
were in the bedroom putting that also in order.

"I don't want any pay for what I give," Jerome returned.

When Jerome started for home, Mrs. Upham and the baby were both
asleep in the clean bedroom. Retracing his steps along the pleasant
road, he was keenly happy, with perhaps the true happiness of his
life, to which he would always turn at last from all others, and
which would survive the death and loss of all others.

He pictured John Upham's house as he found it and as he left it with
purest self-gratulation. He had not gone far before he heard a clamor
of childish voices; there were two, but they sounded like a troop.
John Upham's twin girls broke through the wayside bushes like little
wild things. Their hands were full of withering flowers. He called
them, and bade them be very still when they went home, so as not to
waken their mother and the baby, and they hung their heads with
bashful assent. They were pretty children in spite of their soiled
frocks, with their little, pink, moist faces and curling crops of
yellow hair.

"If you keep still and don't wake them up, I will bring you both some
peppermints when I come to-morrow," said Jerome. He had nearly
reached the village when he met the two eldest Upham children. They
were boys, the elder twelve, the younger eight, sturdy little
fellows, advancing with a swinging trot, one behind the other, both
chewing spruce-gum. They had been in the woods, on their way home,
for a supply. Jerome stopped them, and repeated the charge he had
given to the little girls, then kept on. The bell was ringing for
afternoon meeting--in fact, it was almost done. Jerome walked faster,
for he intended to go. He drew near the little white-steepled
meeting-house standing in its small curve of greensward, with the row
of white posts at the side, to which were tied the farmers' great
plough-horses harnessed to covered wagons and dusty chaises, and then
he caught a glimpse of something bright, like a moving flower-bush,
in the road ahead. Squire Eben Merritt, his wife, his sister Miss
Camilla, and his daughter Lucina, were all on their way to afternoon
meeting.

The Squire was with them that day, leaving heroically his trout-pools
and his fishing-fields; for was it not his pretty Lucina's second
Sunday only at home, and was he not as eager to be with her as any
lover? Squire Eben had gained perhaps twenty pounds of flesh to his
great frame and a slight overcast of gray to his golden beard;
otherwise he had not changed in Jerome's eyes since he was a boy. The
Squire's wife Abigail, like many a small, dark woman who has never
shown in her looks the true heyday of youth, had apparently not aged
nor altered at all. Little and keenly pleasant, like some
insignificant but brightly flavored fruit, set about with crisp silk
flounced to her trim waist, holding her elbows elegantly aslant under
her embroidered silk shawl, her small head gracefully alert in her
bright-ribboned bonnet, she stepped beside her great husband, and
then came Lucina with Miss Camilla.

Miss Camilla glided along drooping slenderly in black lace and lilac
silk, with a great wrought-lace veil flowing like a bride's over her
head, and shading with a black tracery of leaves and flowers her fair
faded face; but Jerome saw her no more than he would have seen a
shadow beside Lucina.

If Lucina's parents had changed little, she had changed much, with
the wonderful change of a human spring, and this time Jerome saw her
as well as her gown. She wore that same silken gown of a pale-blue
color, spangled with roses, and the skirts were so wide and trained
over a hoop and starched petticoats that they swung and tilted like a
great double flower, and hit on this side and that with a quick
musical slur. Over Lucina's shoulders, far below her waist, fell her
wonderful fair hair, in curls, and every curl might well have proved
a twining finger of love. Lucina wore a bonnet of fine straw, trimmed
simply enough with a white ribbon, but over her face hung a white
veil of rich lace, and through it her pink cheeks and lips and great
blue eyes and lines of golden hair shone and bloomed and dazzled like
a rose through a frosted window.

Lucina Merritt was a rare beauty, and she knew it, from her
looking-glass as well as the eyes of others, and dealt with herself
meekly wherewithal, and prayed innocently that she might consider
more the embellishment of her heart and her mind than her person, and
not to be too well pleased at the admiring looks of those whom she
met. Indeed, it was to this end that she wore the white veil over her
face, though not one of the maiden mates would believe that. She
fancied that it somewhat dimmed her beauty, and that folk were less
given to staring at her, not realizing that it added to her graces
that subtlest one of suggestion, and that folk but stared the harder
to make sure whether they saw or imagined such charms.

Jerome Edwards saw this beautiful Lucina coming, and it was suddenly
as if he entered a new atmosphere. He did not know why, but he
started as if he had gotten a shock, and his heart beat hard.

Squire Merritt made as if he would greet him in his usual hearty
fashion, but remembering the day, and hearing, too, the first strains
of the opening hymn from the meeting-house, for the bell had stopped
tolling, he gave him only a friendly nod as he passed on with his
wife. Miss Camilla inclined her head with soft graciousness; but
Jerome looked at none of them except Lucina. She did not remember
him; she glanced slightly at his face, and then her long fair lashes
swept again the soft bloom of her cheeks, and her silken skirts
fairly touched him as she passed. Jerome stood still after they had
all entered the meeting-house; the long drone of the hymn sounded
very loud in his ears.

He made a motion towards the meeting-house, hesitated, made another,
then turned decidedly to the road. It seemed suddenly to him that his
clothes must be soiled and dusty after his work in John Upham's
house, that his hair could not be smooth, that he did not look well
enough to go to meeting. So he went home, yielding for the first
time, without knowing that he did so, to that decorative impulse
which comes to men and birds alike when they would woo their mates.

Chapter XXII

The next morning Jerome went early to his uncle Ozias Lamb for some
finished shoes, which he was to take to Dale. For the first time in
his life, when he entered the shop, he had an impulse to avert his
eyes and not meet his uncle's fully. Ozias had grown old rapidly of
late. He sat, with his usual stiff crouch, on his bench and hammered
away at a shoe-heel on his lapstone. His hair and beard were white
and shaggy, his blue eyes peered sharply, as from a very ambush of
old age, at Jerome loading himself with the finished shoes.

After the usual half-grunt of greeting, which was scarcely more than
a dissyllabic note of salutation between two animals, Ozias was
silent until Jerome was going out.

"Ain't ye well this mornin'?" he asked then.

"Yes," replied Jerome, "I'm well enough."

"When a man's smart," said Ozias Lamb, "and has got money in his
pocket, and don't want folks to know it, he don't keep feelin' of it
to see if it's safe. He acts as if he hadn't got any money, or any
pocket, neither. I s'pose that's what you're tryin' to do."

"Don't know what you mean," returned Jerome, coloring.

"Oh, nothin'. Go along," said his uncle.

But he spoke again before Jerome was out of hearing. "There ain't any
music better than a squeak, in the grind you an' me have got to make
out of life," said he, "an' don't you go to thinkin' there is. If you
ever think you hear it, it's only in your own ears, an' you might as
well make up your mind to it."

"I made up my mind to it as long ago as I can remember," Jerome
answered back, yet scarcely with bitterness, for the very music which
his uncle denied was too loud in his ears for him to disbelieve it.

When Jerome was returning from Dale, an hour later, his back bent
beneath great sheaves of newly cut shoes, like a harvester's with
wheat, he heard a hollow echo of hoofs in the road ahead, then
presently a cloud of dust arose like smoke, and out of it came two
riders: Lawrence Prescott, on a fine black horse--which his father
used seldom for driving, he was so unsuited for standing patiently at
the doors of affliction, yet kept through a latent fondness for good
horse-flesh--and Lucina Merritt, on his pretty bay mare. Lucina
galloped past at Lawrence's side, with an eddying puff of blue
riding-skirt and a toss of yellow curls and blue plumes. Jerome stood
back a little to give them space, and the dust settled slowly over
him after they were by. Then he went on his way, with his heart
beating hard, yet with no feeling of jealousy against Lawrence
Prescott. He even thought that it would be a good match. Still, he
was curiously disturbed, not by the reflection that he was laden with
sheaves of leather--he would have been more ashamed had he been seen
idling on a work-day--but because he feared he looked so untidy with
the dust of the road on his shoes. She might have noticed his
clothes, although she had galloped by so fast.

The first thing Jerome did, when he reached home, was to brush and
blacken his shoes, though there was no chance of Lucina's seeing
them. He felt as if he ought not to think of her when he had on dusty
shoes.

The greater part of the next day Jerome passed, as usual, soling
shoes in Ozias Lamb's shop. When he came home to supper, he noticed
something unusual about his mother and sister. They had the
appearance of being strung tightly with repressed excitement, like
some delicate musical instruments. To look at or to speak to them was
to produce in them sensitive vibrations which seemed out of
proportion to the cause.

Jerome asked no questions. These disturbances in the feminine current
always produced a corresponding stiffness of calm in his masculine
one, as if by an instinct to maintain the equilibrium of dangerous
forces for the safety of the household.

Elmira and her mother kept looking at each other and at him, pulses
starting up in their delicate cheeks, flushes coming and going,
motioning each other with furtive gestures to speak, then
countermanding the order with sharp negatory shakes of the head.

At last Mrs. Edwards called back Jerome as he was going to his
chamber, books under arm and lighted candle in hand.

"Look here," said she; "I want to show you something."

Jerome turned. Elmira was extending towards him a nicely folded
letter, with a little green seal on it.

"What is it?" asked Jerome.

"Read it," said his mother. Jerome took it, unfolded it, and read,
Elmira and his mother watching him. Elmira was quite pale. Mrs.
Edwards's mouth was set as if against anticipated opposition, her
nervously gleaming eyes were fierce with ready argument. Jerome knit
his brows over the letter, then he folded it nicely and gave it back
to Elmira.

"You see what it is?" said his mother.

"Yes, I see," replied Jerome, hesitatingly. He looked confused before
her, for one of the few times of his life.

"An invitation for you an' Elmira to Squire Merritt's--to a party;
it's Lucina's birthday," said his mother, and she fairly smacked her
lips, as if the words were sweet.

Elmira looked at her brother breathlessly. Nobody knew how eager she
was to go; it was the first party worthy of a name to which she had
been bidden in her whole life. She and her mother had been
speculating, ever since the invitation had arrived, upon the
possibility of Jerome's refusing to accept it.

"Nobody can tell what he'll do," Mrs. Edwards had said. "He's just as
likely to take a notion not to go as to go."

"I can't go if he doesn't," said Elmira.

"Why can't you, I'd like to know?"

Elmira shrank timidly. "I never went into Squire Merritt's house in
my life," said she.

"I guess there ain't anything there to bite you," said her mother.
"I'm goin' to say all I can to have your brother go; but if he won't,
you can put on your new dress an' go without him." However, Mrs.
Edwards privately resolved to use as an argument to Jerome, in case
he refused to attend the party, the fact that his sister would not go
without him.

She used it now. Mrs. Edwards's military tactics were those of direct
onslaught, and no saving of powder. "Elmira's afraid to go unless you
do," said she. "You'll be keepin' her home, an' she ain't had a
chance to go to many parties, poor child!"

Jerome met Elmira's beseeching eyes and frowned aside, blushing like
a girl. "Well, I don't know," said he; "I'll see."

That was the provincial form of masculine concession to feminine
importunity. Mrs. Edwards nodded to Elmira when Jerome had shut the
door. "He'll go," said she.

Elmira smiled and quivered with half-fearful delight. Lawrence
Prescott was coming to see her the next day, and the day after that
she would be sure to meet him again at Squire Merritt's. She trembled
before her own happiness, as before an angel whose wings cast shadows
of the dread of delight.

"You'd better go to bed now," said her mother, with a meaning look;
"you want to look bright to-morrow, and you've got a good deal before
you."

The next day not a word was said to Jerome about Lawrence Prescott's
expected call. He noticed vaguely that something unusual seemed to be
going on in the parlor; then divined, with a careless dismissal of
the subject, that it was house-cleaning. He had a secret of his own
that day which might have rendered him less curious about the secrets
of others. There were scarcely enough shoes finished to take to Dale,
only a half-lot, but Jerome announced his intention of going, to
Ozias Lamb, with assumed carelessness.

"Why don't ye wait till the lot is finished?" asked Ozias.

"Guess I'll take a half-lot this time," replied Jerome.

Ozias eyed him sharply, but said nothing.

Jerome had in his room a little iron-bound strong-box which had
belonged to his father, though few treasures had poor Abel Edwards
ever had occasion to store in it. After dinner that noon Jerome went
up-stairs, unlocked the strong-box, took out some coins, handling
them carefully lest they jingle, and put them in his leather wallet.
Then he went down-stairs and out the front door as stealthily as if
he had been thieving. Elmira and her mother were at work in the
parlor, and saw him go down the walk and disappear up the road.

"I'll tell you what 'tis," said Mrs. Edwards, with one of her sharp,
confirmatory nods, "J'rome's been takin' out some of that money, an'
he's goin' to Dale to get him some new clothes."

"What makes you think so?"

"Oh, you see if he 'ain't. He 'ain't got a coat nor a vest fit to
wear to that party, an' he knows it. If he's taken some of that money
he's savin' up towards the mortgage I'm glad of it. Folks ought to
have a little somethin' as they go along; if they don't, first thing
they know they'll get past it."

Jerome did not start for Dale until it was quite late in the
afternoon, working hard meanwhile in the shop. The day was another of
those typical ones of early spring, which had come lately, drooping
as to every leaf and bud with that hot languor which forces bloom.
The door and windows of the little shop were set wide open. The honey
and spice-breaths of flowers mingled with the rank effluvia of
leather like a delicate melody with a harsh bass. Jerome pegged along
in silence with knitted brow, yet with a restraint of smiles on his
lips.

Ozias Lamb also was silent; his old face bending over his work was a
concentration of moody gloom. Ozias was not as outspoken as formerly
concerning his bitter taste of life, possibly because it had reached
his soul. Jerome sometimes wondered if his uncle had troubles that he
did not know of. He started for Dale so late that it was after sunset
when he returned with a great parcel under his arm. He felt strangely
tired, and just before he reached Upham village he sat down on a
stone wall, laid his parcel carefully at his side, and looked about
him.

The spring dusk was gathering slowly, though at first through an
enhanced clearness of upper lights. All the gloom seemed to proceed
from the earth in silvery breathings of meadows and gradual stealings
forth of violet shadows from behind forest trees. The sky was so full
of pure yellow light that even the feathery spring foliage was darkly
outlined against it, and one could see far within it the fanning of
the wings of the twilight birds. The air was cooler. The breaths of
new-turned earth, and rank young plants in marshy places and woodland
ponds were in it, overcoming somewhat those of sun-steeped blossoms,
which had prevailed all day.

The road from Dale to Upham lay through low land, and however dry the
night elsewhere, there was always a damp freshness. The circling
clamor of birds overhead seemed wonderfully near. In the village the
bell had begun to ring for an evening prayer-meeting, and one could
have fancied that the bell hung in one of the neighboring trees. The
clearness of sight seemed to enhance hearing, and possibly also that
imagination which is beyond both senses. Jerome had a vague
impression which he did not express to himself, that he had come to a
door wide open into spaces beyond all needs and desires of the flesh
and the earthly soul, and had a sense of breathing new air. Suddenly,
now that he had gained this clear outlook of spirit, the world, and
all the things thereof, seemed to be at his back, and grown dim, even
to his retrospective thought. The image even of beautiful Lucina,
which had dwelt with him since Sunday, faded, for she was not yet
become of his spirit, and pertained scarcely to his flesh, except
through the simplest and most rudimentary of human instincts. Jerome
glanced at the parcel containing the fine new vest and coat which he
had purchased, and frowned scornfully at this childish vanity, which
would lead him to perk and plume and glitter to the sun, like any
foolish bird which would awake the desire of the eyes in another.

"What a fool I am!" he muttered, and looked at the great open of sky
again, and was half minded to take his purchases back to Dale.

However, when the clear gold of the sky began to pale and a great
star shone out over the west, he rose, took up his parcel, and went
home.

There was a light in the parlor. He thought indifferently that
Paulina Maria Judd or his aunt Belinda might be in there calling on
his mother; but when he went into the kitchen his mother sat there,
and both the other women were with her.

The supper-table was still standing. "Where have you been, Jerome
Edwards?" cried his mother. She cast a sharp look at his parcel, but
said nothing about it. Jerome laid it on top of the old desk which
had belonged to his father. "I have been over to Dale," he replied;
"I didn't start very early."

His aunt Belinda looked at him amiably. She had not changed much. Her
face, shaded by her long curls, had that same soft droop as of a
faded flower. Once past her bloom of the flesh, there was, in a woman
so little beset by storms of the spirit as Belinda Lamb, little
further change possible until she dropped entirely from her tree of
life. She looked at Jerome with the amiable light of a smile rather
than a smile itself, and said, with her old, weak, but clinging
pounce upon disturbing trifles, "Why, Jerome, you 'ain't been all
this time gettin' to Dale an' back?"

"I didn't hurry," replied Jerome, coldly, drawing a chair up to the
supper-table. He had always a sensation of nervous impatience with
this mild, negatively sweet woman which he could not overcome, though
he felt shamed by it. He preferred to see Paulina Maria, though
between her and himself a covert antagonism survived the open one of
his boyhood--at least, he could dislike her without disliking
himself.

The candle-light fell full upon Paulina Maria's face, which was even
more transparent than formerly; so transfused was her clear profile
by the candle-light that the outlines seemed almost to waver and be
lost. She was knitting a fine white cotton stocking in an intricate
pattern, and did not look at Jerome, or speak to him, beyond her
first nod of recognition when he entered.

Presently, however, Jerome turned to her. "How is Henry?" he
inquired.

"About the same," she replied, in her clear voice, which was
unexpectedly loud, and seemed to have a curious after-tone.

"His eyes are no worse, then?"

"No worse, and no better."

"Can't he do any more than he did last year?" asked Mrs. Edwards.

"No, he can't. He hasn't been able to do a stitch on shoes since last
Thanksgiving. He can't do anything but sit at the window and knit
plain knittin'. I don't know how he would get along, if I hadn't
showed him how to do that. I believe he'd go crazy."

"Don't you think that last stuff Doctor Prescott put in his eyes did
him any good?" asked Mrs. Edwards.

"No, I don't. He didn't think it would, himself. He said all there
was to do was to go to Boston and see that great doctor there and
have an operation, an' it's goin' to cost three hundred dollars.
Three hundred dollars!--it's easy enough to talk--three hundred
dollars! Adoniram has been laid up with jaundice half the winter.
I've bound shoes, and I've knit these fine stockin's for Mis' Doctor
Prescott. They go towards the doctor's bill, but they're a drop in
the bucket. She'd allow considerable on them, but it ain't _her_ say.
Three hundred dollars!"

"It's a sight of money," said Belinda Lamb. "I s'pose you could
mortgage the house, Paulina Maria, and then when Henry got his
eyesight back he could work to pay it off."

A deep red transfused Paulina Maria's transparent pallor, but before
she could speak Ann Edwards interposed. "Mortgage!" said she, with a
sniff of her nostrils, as if she scented battle. "Mortgage! Load a
poor horse down to the ground till his legs break under him, set a
baby to layin' a stone wall till he drops, but don't talk to me of
mortgages; I guess I know enough about them. My poor husband would
have been alive and well to-day if it hadn't been for a mortgage. It
sounds easy enough--jest a little interest money to pay every year,
an' all this money down; but I tell you 'tis like a leech that sucks
at body and soul. You get so the mortgage looks worse than your sins,
an' you pray to be forgiven that instead of them. I know. Don't you
have a mortgage put on your house, Paulina Maria Judd, or you'll rue
the day. I'd--steal before I'd do it!"

Paulina Maria made no response; she was quite pale again.

"I should think you'd be afraid Henry would go entirely blind if you
didn't have something done for him," said Belinda Lamb.

"I be," replied Paulina Maria, sternly. She rose to go, and Belinda
also, with languid response of motion, as if Paulina Maria were an
upstirring wind.

When Paulina Maria opened the outer door there was a rush of dank
night air.

"Don't you want me to walk home with you and Aunt Belinda?" asked
Jerome. "It's pretty dark."

"No, thank you," replied Paulina Maria, grimly, looking back, a pale,
wavering shape against the parallelogram of night; "the things I'm
afraid of walk in the light as much as the dark, an' you can't keep
'em off."

"You make me creep, talkin' so," Belinda Lamb said, as she and
Paulina Maria, two women of one race, with their souls at the
antipodes of things, went down the path together.

"I hope Paulina Maria won't put a mortgage on her house; Henry 'd
better be blind," said Ann Edwards, when they had gone.

Jerome, finishing his supper, said nothing, but he knew, and Paulina
Maria knew that he knew, there was already a mortgage on her house.
When Jerome rose from the table his mother pointed at the parcel on
the desk.

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