Mary E. Wilkins Freeman - Jerome, A Poor Man

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"What's that?" she asked.

"I had to buy a coat and vest if I was going to that party," replied
Jerome, with a kind of dogged embarrassment. He had never felt so
confused before his mother's sharp eyes since he was a child. If she
had blamed him for his purchase, he would have been an easy victim,
but she did not.

"What did you get?" she asked.

"I'll show you in the morning--you can see them better."

"Well, you needed them, if you are goin' to the party. You've got to
look a little like folks. Where you goin'?" for Jerome had started
towards the door.

"Into the parlor to get a book." He opened the door, but his mother
beckoned him back mysteriously, and he closed it softly.

"What is it?" he asked, wonderingly. "Who is there? Has Elmira got
company?"

"Belinda Lamb begun quizzin' as soon as she got in here; said she
thought she heard a man talkin', an' asked if it was you; an' when I
said it wa'n't, wanted to know who it was. I told her right to her
face it was none of her business."

"Who is it in there, mother?" asked Jerome.

"It ain't anybody to make any fuss about."

"Who is it in there with Elmira?"

"It's Lawrence Prescott, that's who it is," replied his mother, who
was more wary in defence than attack, yet defiant enough when the
struggle came. She looked at Jerome with unflinching eyes.

"Lawrence Prescott!"

"Yes, what of it?"

"Mother, he isn't going to pay attention to Elmira!"

"Why not, if he wants to? He's as likely a young fellow as there is
in town. She won't be likely to do any better."

Jerome stared at his mother in utter bewilderment. "Mother, are you
out of your senses?" he gasped.

"I don't know why I am," said she.

"Don't you know that Doctor Prescott would turn Lawrence out of house
and home if he thought he was going to marry Elmira?"

"I guess she's good enough for him. You can run down your own sister
all you want to, Jerome Edwards."

"I am not running her down. I don't deny she's good enough for any
man on earth, but not with the kind of goodness that counts. Mother,
don't you know that nothing but trouble can come to Elmira from this?
Lawrence Prescott can't marry her."

"I'd like to know what you mean by trouble comin' to her," demanded
his mother. A hot red of shame and wrath flashed all over her little
face and neck as she spoke, and Jerome, perceiving his mother's
thought, blushed at that, and not at his own.

"I meant that he would have to leave her, and make her miserable in
the end, and that is all I did mean," he said, indignantly. "He can't
marry her, and you know it as well as I. Then there is something
else," he added, as a sudden recollection flashed over his mind: "he
was out riding horseback with Lucina Merritt Monday."

"I don't believe a word of it," his mother said, hotly.

"I saw him."

"Well, what of it if he did? She's the only girl here that rides
horseback, an' I s'pose he wanted company. Mebbe her father asked him
to go with her in case her horse got scared at anything. I shouldn't
be a mite surprised if he had to go and couldn't help himself. He
wouldn't like to refuse if he was asked."

"Mother, you know that Lucina Merritt is the only girl in this town
that Doctor Prescott would think was fit to marry his son, and you
know his family have always had to do just as he said."

"I don't know any such thing," returned his mother; her voice of
dissent had the shrill persistency of a cricket's. "Doctor Prescott
always took a sight of notice of Elmira when she was a little girl
and he used to come here. He never took to you, I know, but he always
did to Elmira."

Jerome said no more. He lighted a candle, took his parcel of new
clothes, and went up-stairs to his chamber.

It was twelve o'clock before Lawrence Prescott went home. Jerome had
not gone to bed; he was waiting to speak to his sister. When he heard
her step on the stairs he opened his door. Elmira, candle in hand,
came slowly up the stair, holding her skirt up lest she trip over it.
When she reached the landing her brother confronted her, and she gave
a little startled cry; then stood, her eyes cast down before him, and
the candle-light shining over the sweet redness and radiance of her
face, which was at that moment nothing but a sign and symbol of
maiden love.

All at once Jerome seemed to grasp the full meaning of it. His own
face deepened and glowed, and looked strangely like his sister's. It
was as if he began to learn involuntarily his own lesson from
another's text-book. Suddenly, instead of his sister's face he seemed
to see Lucina Merritt's. That look of love which levels mankind to
one family was over his memory of her.

"What did you want?" Elmira asked, at length, timidly, but laughing
before him at the same time like a foolish child who cannot conceal
delight.

"Nothing," said her brother; "good-night," and went into his chamber
and shut his door.

Chapter XXIII

The most intimate friends in unwonted gala attire are always
something of a revelation to one another. Butterflies, meeting for
the first time after their release from chrysalis, might well have
the same awe and confusion of old memories.

On the night of the party, when they were dressed and had come
down-stairs, Jerome, who had seen his sister every day of his life,
looked at her as if for the first time, and she looked in the same
way at him. Elmira's Aunt Belinda Lamb had given her, some time
before, a white muslin gown of her girlhood.

"I 'ain't got any daughter to make it over for," said she, "an' you
might as well have it." Belinda Lamb had looked regretfully at its
voluminous folds, as she passed it over to Elmira. Privately she
could not see why she should not wear it still, but she knew that she
would not dare face Paulina Maria when attired in it.

Elmira, after much discussion with her mother, had decided upon
refurbishing this old white muslin, and wearing that instead of her
new green silk to the party.

"It will look more airy for an evenin' company," said Mrs. Edwards,
"an' the skirt is so full you can take out some of the breadths an'
make ruffles."

Elmira and her mother had toiled hard to make those ruffles and
finish their daily stent on shoes, but the dress was in readiness and
Elmira arrayed in it before eight o'clock on Thursday night. Her
dress had a fan waist cut low, with short puffs for sleeves. Her
neck, displaying, as it did, soft hollows rather than curves, and her
arms, delicately angular at wrists and elbows, were still beautiful.
She was thin, but her bones were so small that little flesh was
required to conceal harsh outlines.

She wore a black velvet ribbon tied around her throat, and from it
hung a little gold locket--one of the few treasures of her mother's
girlhood. Elmira had tended a little pot of rose-geranium in a south
window all winter. This spring it was full of pale pink bloom. She
had made a little chaplet of the fragrant leaves and flowers to adorn
her smooth dark hair, and also a pretty knot for her breast. Her
skirt was ruffled to her slender waist with tiniest frills of the
diaphanous muslin. Elmira in her party gown looked like a double
white flower herself.

As for Jerome, he felt awkwardly self-conscious in his new clothes,
but bore himself so proudly as to conceal it. It requires genuine
valor to overcome new clothes, when one seldom has them. They become,
under such circumstances, more than clothes--they are at least
skin-deep. However, Jerome had that valor. He had bought a suit of
fine blue cloth, and a vest of flowered white satin like a
bridegroom's. He wore his best shirt with delicate cambric ruffles on
bosom and wristbands, and his throat was swathed in folds of sheerest
lawn, which he kept his chin clear of, with a splendid and stately
lift. Jerome's hair, which was darker than when he was a boy, was
brushed carefully into a thick crest over his white forehead, which
had, like a child's, a bold and innocent fulness of curve at the
temples. He had not usually much color, but that night his cheeks
were glowing, and his black eyes, commonly somewhat stern from excess
of earnestness, were brilliant with the joy of youth.

Mrs. Edwards looked at one, then the other, with the delighted
surprise of a mother bird who sees her offspring in their first
gayety of full plumage. She picked a thread from Jerome's coat, she
put back a stray lock of Elmira's hair, she bade them turn this way
and that.

When they had started she hitched her chair close to the window,
pressed her forehead against the glass, looked out, and watched the
white flutter of Elmira's skirts until they disappeared in the dark
folds of the night.

There was, that night, a soft commotion of air rather than any
distinct current of wind, like a gentle heaving and subsidence of
veiled breasts of nature. The tree branches spread and gloomed with
deeper shadows; mysterious white things with indeterminate motions
were seen aloof across meadows or in door-yards, and might have been
white-clad women, or flowering bushes, or ghosts.

Jerome and Elmira, when one of these pale visions seemed floating
from some shadowy gateway ahead, wondered to each other if this or
that girl were just starting for the party, but when they drew near
the whiteness stirred at the gate still, and was only a bush of
bridal-wreath. Jerome and Elmira were really the last on the road to
the party; Upham people went early to festivities.

"It is very late," Elmira said, nervously; she held up her white
skirts, ruffling softly to the wind, with both hands, lest they trail
the dewy grass, and flew along like a short-winged bird at her
brother's side. "Please walk faster, Jerome," said she.

"We'll have time enough there," returned Jerome, stepping high and
gingerly, lest he soil his nicely blacked shoes.

"It will be dreadful to go in late and have them all looking at us,
Jerome."

"What if they do look at us," Jerome argued, manfully, but he was in
reality himself full of nervous tremors. Sometimes, to a soul with a
broad outlook and large grasp, the great stresses of life are not as
intimidating as its small and deceitful amenities.

When they reached Squire Merritt's house and saw all the windows,
parallelograms of golden light, shining through the thick growth of
trees, his hands and feet were cold, his heart beat hard. "I'm acting
like a girl," he thought, indignantly, straightened himself, and
marched on to the front door, as if it were the postern of a
fortress.

But Elmira caught her brother by the long, blue coat-tail, and
brought him to a stand.

"Oh, Jerome," she whispered, "there are so many there, and we are so
late, I'm afraid to go in."

"What are you afraid of?" demanded Jerome, with a rustic brusqueness
which was foreign to him. "Come along." He pulled his coat away and
strode on, and Elmira had to follow.

The front door of Squire Merritt's house stood open into the hall the
night was so warm, some girls in white were coming down the wide
spiral of stair within, pressing softly together like scared white
doves, in silence save for the rustle of their starched skirts. From
the great rooms on either side of the hall, however, came the murmur
of conversation, with now and then a silvery break of laughter, like
a sudden cascade in an even current.

Flower-decked heads and silken-gleaming shoulders passed between the
windows and the light, outlining vividly every line and angle and
curve--the keen cut of profiles, the scallops of perked-up lace, the
sharp dove-tails of ribbons. Before one window was upreared the great
back and head of a man, still as a statue, yet with the persistency
of stillness, of life.

That dogged stiffness, which betrays the utter self-abasement of
resticity in fine company, was evident in his pose, even to one
coming up the path. This party at Squire Merritt's was democratic,
including many whose only experiences in social gatherings of their
neighbors had come through daily labor and worship. All the young
people in Upham had been invited; the Squire's three boon companions,
Doctor Prescott and his wife, and the minister and his daughter, were
the only elders bidden, since the party was for Lucina.

"The door's open," Elmira whispered, nervously. "Is it right to knock
when the door's open, or walk right in, O Jerome?"

Jerome, for answer, stepped resolutely in, reached the knocker,
raised it, and let it fall with a great imperious clang of brass,
defying, as it were, his own shyness, like a herald at arms.

The white-clad girls on the stairs turned as with one accord their
innocently abashed faces towards the door, then pushed one another
on, and into the parlor, with soft titters and whispers.

Squire Eben Merritt's old servant, Hannah, gravely ponderous in
purple delaine, with a wide white apron enhancing her great front,
came forward from the room in the rear and motioned Jerome and Elmira
to the stairs. She stared wonderingly after Jerome; she did not
recognize him in his fine attire, though she had known him since he
was a child.

When Jerome and Elmira came down-stairs he led the way at once into
the north parlor, where the most of the guests were assembled. There
were the village young women in their best attire, decked as to heads
and bosoms with sweet drooping flowers, displaying all their humble
stores of lace and ribbons and trinkets, jostling one another with
slurring hisses of silk and crisp rattle of muslins, speaking
affectedly with pursed lips, ending often a sibilant with a fine
whistle, or silent, with mouths set in conscious smiles and cheeks
hot with blushes. There were the village young men, in their Sunday
clothes, standing aloof from the girls, now and then exchanging
remarks with one another in a bravado of low bass. In the rear of the
north parlor were Lucina and her parents, Mrs. Doctor Prescott and
Lawrence, Miss Camilla Merritt, and the Squire's friends, Colonel
Lamson, John Jennings, and Lawyer Means.

Jerome, with Elmira following, made his way slowly through the
outskirts towards this fine nucleus of the party. Lawrence Prescott
was talking gayly with Lucina, but when he saw Jerome and his sister
approaching he stood back, with a slight flush and start, beside his
mother, who with Miss Camilla was seated on the great sofa between
the north windows. Mrs. Prescott fanned herself slowly with a large
feather fan, and beamed abroad with a sweet graciousness. Her
handsome face seemed to fairly shed a mild light of approval upon the
company. She stirred with opulent foldings of velvet, shaking out
vague musky odors; a brooch in the fine lace plaits over her high
maternal bosom gave out a dull white gleam of old brilliants. Mrs.
Prescott was more sumptuously attired than the Squire's wife, in her
crimson and gold shot silk, which became her well, but was many
seasons old, or than Miss Camilla, in her grand purple satin, that
also was old, but so well matched to her own grace of age that it
seemed like the garment of her youth, which had faded like it, in
sweet communion with peaceful thoughts and lavender and rose-leaves.

Squire Eben Merritt stood between his wife and daughter. Lucina had
fastened a pretty posy in his button-hole, and he wore his fine new
broadcloths, to please her, which he had bought for this occasion.

The Squire, though scarcely at home in his north parlor, nor in his
grand apparel, which had never figured in haunts of fish or game, was
yet radiant with jovial and hearty hospitality, and not even
impatient for the cards and punch which awaited him and his friends
in the other room, when his social duties should be fulfilled.

Lucina herself had set out the cards and the tobacco, and made a
garland of myrtle-leaves and violets for the punch-bowl in honor of
the occasion. "I want you to have the best time of anybody at my
party, father," she had said, "and as soon as all the guests have
arrived, you must go and play cards with Colonel Lamson and the
others."

No other in the whole world, not even her mother, did Lucina love as
well as she loved her father, and the comfort and pleasure of no
other had she so deeply at heart.

At the Squire's elbow, standing faithfully by him until he should get
his release, were his three friends: John Jennings and Lawyer
Eliphalet Means in their ancient swallow-tails--John Jennings's being
of renowned London make, though nobody in Upham appreciated that--and
Colonel Jack Lamson in his old dress uniform. Colonel Lamson, having
grown stouter of late years, wore with a mighty discomfort of the
flesh but with an unyielding spirit his old clothes of state.

"I'll be damned if I thought I could get into 'em at first, Eben," he
had told the Squire when he arrived. "Haven't had them on since I was
pall-bearer at poor Jim Pell's funeral. I was bound to do your girl
honor, but I'll be damned if I'll dance in 'em--I tell you it
wouldn't be safe, Eben."

The Colonel looked with intense seriousness at his friend, then
laughed hoarsely. His laugh was always wheezy of late, and he
breathed hard when he took exercise.

Sometime in his dim and shady past Colonel Lamson was reported to
have had a wife. She had never been seen in Upham, and was commonly
believed to have died at some Western post during the first years of
their marriage. Probably the beautiful necklace of carved corals,
which the Colonel had brought that night for a present to Lucina, had
belonged to that long-dead young wife; but not even the Squire knew.

As for John Jennings, he had never had a wife, and the trinkets he
had bestowed upon sweethearts remained still in their keeping; but he
brought a pair of little pearly ear-rings for Lucina, and never wore
his diamond shirt-button again. Lawyer Eliphalet Means brought for
his offering a sandal-wood fan, a veritable lacework of wood,
spreading it himself in his lean brown hand, which matched in hue,
and eying it with a sort of dryly humorous satisfaction before he
gave it into Lucina's keeping.

Squire Eben, despite his gratification for his daughter's sake, burst
into a great laugh. "By the Lord Harry!" cried he; "you didn't go
into a shop yourself and ask for that folderol?"

"Got it through a sea-captain, from India, years ago," replied the
lawyer, laconically.

"Wouldn't she take it?" inquired Colonel Lamson, with sly meaning,
his round, protruding eyes staring hard at his friend and the fan.

"Never gave her the chance," said Means, with a shrewd twinkle. Then
he turned to Lucina, with a stiff but courtly bow, and presented the
sandal-wood fan, and not one of them knew then, nor ever after, its
true history.

Lucina had joyfully heard the clang of the knocker when Jerome
arrived, thinking that they were the last guests, and her father
could have his pleasure. Doctor Prescott had been called to Granby
and would not come until late, if at all; the minister, it was
reported, was ill with influenza--she and her mother had agreed that
the Squire need not wait for them.

When Lucina saw the throng parting for the new-comers, she assumed
involuntarily her pose of sweet and gracious welcome; but when Jerome
and his sister stood before her, she started and lost composure.

Lucina remembered Elmira well enough, and had thought she remembered
Jerome since last Sunday, when her father, calling to mind their
frequent meetings in years back, had chidden her lightly for not
speaking to him.

"He has grown and changed so, father," Lucina had said; "I did not
mean to be discourteous, and I will remember him another time."

Lucina had really considered afterwards, saying nothing to her father
or her mother, that the young man was very handsome. She had sat
quite still that Sunday afternoon in the meeting-house, and, instead
of listening to the sermon, had searched her memory for old pictures
of Jerome. She had recalled distinctly the tea-drinking in her aunt
Camilla's arbor, his refusal of cake, and gift of sassafras-root in
the meadow; also his repulse of her childish generosity when she
would have given him her little savings for the purchase of shoes.
Old stings of the spirit can often be revived with thought, even when
the cause is long passed. Lucina, sitting there in meeting, felt
again the pang of her slighted benevolence. She was sure that she
would remember Jerome at once the next time they met, but for a
minute she did not. She bowed and shook hands prettily with Elmira,
then turned to Jerome and stared at him, all unmindful of her
manners, thinking vaguely that here was some grand young gentleman
who had somehow gotten into her party unbidden. Such a fool do
externals make of the memory, which needs long training to know the
same bird in different feathers.

Lucina stared at Jerome, at first with grave and innocent wonder,
then suddenly her eyes drooped and a soft blush crept over her face
and neck, and even her arms. Lucina, in her short-sleeved India
muslin gown, flowing softly from its gathering around her white
shoulders to her slender waist, where a blue ribbon bound it, and
thence in lines of transparent lights and blue shadows to her little
pointed satin toe, stood before him with a sort of dumb-maiden
appealing that he should not look at her so, but he was helpless, as
with a grasp of vision which he could not loosen.

Jerome looked at her as the first man might have looked at the first
woman; the world was empty but for him and her. The voices of the
company were ages distant, their eyes dim across eternal spaces. The
fragrance of sweet lavender and dried rose-leaves from Lucina's
garments, and, moreover, a strange Oriental one, that seemed to
accent the whole, from her sandal-wood fan, was to him, as by a
transposing into a different key of sense, like some old melody of
life which he had always known, and yet so forgotten that it had
become new.

Jerome never knew how long he stood there, but suddenly he felt the
Squire's kindly hand on his shoulder, and heard his loud, jovial
voice in his ear. "Why, Jerome, my boy, what is the matter? Don't you
remember my daughter? Lucina, where are your manners?"

And then Lucina curtesied low, with her fair curls drooping forward
over her blushing face and neck, as pink as her corals, and Jerome
bowed and strove to say something, but he knew not what, and never
knew what he said, nor anybody else.

"'Twas the new clothes, boy," said the Squire in his ear. "By the
Lord Harry, 'twas much as ever I knew you myself at first! I took you
for an earl over from the old country. Lucina meant no harm. Go you
now and have a talk with her."

Jerome wondered anxiously afterwards if he had spoken properly to the
Squire's wife, to Mrs. Doctor Prescott, to Miss Camilla, and the
others--if he had looked, even, at anybody but Lucina. He remembered
the party as he might have remembered a kaleidoscope, of which only
one combination of form and color abided with him. He realized all
beside, as a broad effect with no detail. The card-playing and
punch-drinking in the other room, the preliminary tuning of fiddles
in the hall, the triumphant strains of a country dance, the weaving
of the figures, the gay voices of the village youths, who lost all
their abashedness as the evening went on, the supper, the table
gleaming with the white lights of silver and the rainbow lustre of
glass, the golden points of candles in the old candelabra, the fruity
and spicy odors of cake and wine, were all as a dimness and vagueness
of brilliance itself.

He did not know, even, that Lawrence Prescott was at Elmira's side
all the evening, and after his father arrived, and that Elmira danced
every time with him, and set people talking and Doctor Prescott
frowning. He knew only that he had followed Lucina about, and that
she seemed to encourage him with soft, leading smiles. That they sat
on a sofa in a corner, behind a door, and talked, that once they
stepped out on the stoop, and even strolled a little down the path,
under the trees, when she complained of the room being hot and close.
Then, without knowing whether he should do so or not, he bent towards
her, with his arm crooked, and she slipped her hand in it, and they
both trembled and were silent for a moment. He knew every word that
Lucina had spoken, and gave a thousand different meanings to each.
For the first time in his life, he tasted the sweets of praise from
girlish lips. Lucina had heard of his good deeds from her father, how
kind he was to the poor and sick, how hard he had worked, how
faithful he had been to his mother and sister. Jerome listened with
bliss, and shame that he should find it bliss. Then Lucina and he
remembered together, with that perfect time of memory which is as
harmonious as any duet, all the episodes of their childhood.

"I remember how you gave me sassafras," said Lucina, "and how you
would not take the nice gingerbread that Hannah made, and how sad I
felt about it."

"I will get some more sassafras for you to-morrow," said Jerome.

"And I will give you some more gingerbread if you will take it," said
she, with a sweet coquettishness.

"I will, if you want me to," said Jerome.

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