Mary E. Wilkins Freeman - Jerome, A Poor Man

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The Squire's forehead wrinkled with laughter, but he was finishing
his pipe before going to bed, and would not remove it. He rolled
humorously inquiring eyes through the cloud of smoke, and his wife
answered as if to a spoken question. "I know Jerome Edwards doesn't
seem like other young men, but he is a young man, after all, and, if
we shouldn't say it, I am afraid somebody will get hurt. We both know
what Lucina is--"

"You don't mean to say you're afraid Lucina will get hurt,"
spluttered the Squire, quickly.

"It isn't likely that a girl like Lucina could get hurt herself,"
cried Abigail, with a fine blush of pride.

"I suppose you're right," assented the Squire, with a chuckle. "I
suppose there's not a young fool in the country but would think
himself lucky for a chance to tie the jade's shoestring. I guess
there'll be no hanging back of dancers whenever she takes a notion to
pipe, eh?"

"She has not taken a notion to pipe, and I doubt if she will at
present," said Abigail, with a little bridle of feminine delicacy,
"and--he is a good young man, though, of course, it would scarcely be
advisable if she did fancy him, but she does not. Lucina has never
concealed anything from me since she was born, and I know--"

"Then it's the boy you're worrying about?"

Abigail nodded. "He's a good young man, and he has had a hard
struggle. I don't want his peace of mind disturbed through any means
of ours," said she.

The Squire got up, shook the ashes out of his pipe, and laid it with
tender care on the shelf. Then he put his great hands one upon each
of his wife's little shoulders, and looked down at her. Abigail
Merritt had a habit of mind which corresponded to that of her body.
She could twist and turn, with the fine adroitness of a fox, round
sudden, sharp corners of difficulty, when her husband might go far on
the wrong road through drowsy inertia of motion; but, after all, he
had sometimes a clearer view than she of ultimate ends, past the
petty wayside advantages of these skilful doublings and turnings.

She could deal with details with little taper-finger touches of
nicety, but she could not judge as well as he of generalities and the
final scope of combinations. It was doubtful if Abigail ever fairly
appreciated her own punch.

"Abigail," said the Squire, looking down at her, his great bearded
face all slyly quirked with humor--"Abigail, look here. There are a
good many things that you and I can do, and a few that we can't do. I
can fish and shoot and ride with any man in the county, and bluster
folks into doing what I want them to mostly, if I keep my temper; and
as for you--you know what you can do in the way of fine stitching,
and punch-making, and house-keeping, and you and I together have got
the best, and the handsomest, and the most blessed"--the Squire's
voice broke--"daughter in the county, by the Lord Harry we have. I
can shoot any man who looks askance at her, I can lie down in the mud
for her to walk over to keep her little shoes dry, and you can fix
her pretty gowns and keep her curls smooth, and watch her lest she
breathe too fast or too slow of a night, but there we've got to stop.
You can't make the posies in your garden any color you have a mind,
my girl, and I can't change the spots on the trout I land. We can't,
either of us, make a sunset, or a rainbow, or stop a thunder-storm,
or raise an east wind. There are things we run up blind against, and
I reckon this is one of 'em. It's got to come out the way it will,
and you and I can't hinder it, Abigail."

"We can hinder that poor boy from having his heart broken."

The Squire whistled. "Lock the stable-door after the colt is stolen,
eh?"

"Eben Merritt, what do you mean?"

"I mean that the boy comes here now an then, not courting the girl,
as I take it, at all, and shows so far no signs of anything amiss,
and had, in my opinion, best be let alone. Lord, when I was his age,
if a girl like Lucina had been in the question, and anybody had tried
to rein me up short, I'd have kicked over the breeches entirely. I'd
have either got her or blown my brains out. That boy can take care of
himself, anyhow. He'll stop coming here of his own accord, if he
thinks he'd better."

Abigail sniffed scornfully with her thin nostrils.

"Wait and see," said the Squire.

"I shall wait a long time before I see," she said, but she was
mistaken. The very next week Jerome did not come, then a month went
by and he had not appeared once at the Squire's house.

Chapter XXIX

One Sunday afternoon, during the latter part of July, Lucina Merritt
strolled down the road to her aunt Camilla's. The day was very
warm--droning huskily with insects, and stirring lazily with limp
leaves.

There had been no rain for a long time, and the road smoked high with
white dust at every foot-fall. Lucina raised her green and white
muslin skirts above her embroidered petticoat, and set her little
feet as lightly as a bird's. She carried a ruffled green silk parasol
to shield herself from the sun, though her hat had a wide brim and
flapped low over her eyes.

Her mother had remonstrated with her for going out in the heat, since
she had not looked quite well of late. "You will make your head
ache," said she.

"It is so cool in Aunt Camilla's north room," pleaded Lucina, and had
her way.

She walked slowly, as her mother had enjoined, but it was like
walking between a double fire of arrows from the blazing white sky
and earth; when she came in sight of her aunt Camilla's house her
head was dizzy and her veins were throbbing.

Lucina had not been happy during the last few weeks, and sometimes,
in such cases, physical discomfort acts like a tonic poison. For the
latter part of the way she thought of nothing but reaching the
shelter of Camilla's north room; her mind regarding all else was at
rest.

Miss Camilla's house was closed as tightly as a convent; not a breath
of out-door air would she have admitted after the early mornings of
those hot days. Lucina entered into night and coolness in comparison
with the glare of day outside. When she had her hat removed, and sat
in the green gloom of the north parlor, sipping a glass of water
which Liza had drawn from the lowest depths of the well, then
flavored with currant-jelly and loaf-sugar, she felt almost at peace
with her own worries.

Her aunt Camilla, clad in dimly flowing old muslin, sat near the
chimney-place, swaying a feather fan. She had her Bible on her knees,
but she had not been reading; the light was too dim for her eyes. The
fireplace was filled with the feathery green of asparagus, which also
waved lightly over the gilded looking-glass, and was reflected airily
therein. Asparagus plumes waved over all the old pictures also. The
whole room from this delicate garnishing, the faded green tone of the
furniture covers and carpet, from the wall-paper in obscure
arabesques of green and satiny white, appeared full of woodland
shadows. Miss Camilla, swaying her feather fan, served to set these
shadows slowly eddying with a motion of repose. She had dozed in her
chair, and her mind had lapsed into peaceful dreams before her niece
arrived. Now she sat beaming gently at her. "Do you feel refreshed,
dear?" she asked, when Lucina had finished her tumbler of
currant-jelly water.

"Yes, thank you, Aunt Camilla."

"I fear you were not strong enough to venture out in such heat, glad
as I am to see you, dear. Had you not better let 'Liza bring you a
pillow, and then you can lie down on the sofa and perhaps have a
little nap?"

"No, thank you, Aunt Camilla, I am not sleepy. I am quite well. I am
going to sit by the window and read."

With that Lucina rose, got a book bound in red and gold from the
stately mahogany table, and seated herself by the one window whose
shutters were not tightly closed. It was a north window, and only one
leaf of the upper half of the shutter was open. The aperture
disclosed, instead of burning sky, a thick screen of horse-chestnut
boughs. The great fan-like leaves almost touched the window-glass,
and tinted all the dim parallelogram of light.

Even Lucina's golden head and fair face acquired somewhat of this
prevailing tone of green, being transposed into another key of color.
All her golden lights, and her roses, were lost in a delicate green
pallor, which might have beseemed a sea-nymph. Her aunt, sitting
aloof in that same green shaft of day filtered through horse-chestnut
leaves, and also changed thereby, kept glancing at her uneasily. She
knew that her brother and his wife had been anxious lately about
Lucina. She ventured a few more gently solicitous remarks, which
Lucina met sweetly, still with a little impatience of weariness,
scarcely lifting her face from her book; then she ventured no more.

"The child does not like to have us so anxious over her," she
thought, with that unfailing courtesy and consideration which would
spare others though she torment herself thereby. She longed
exceedingly to offer Lucina a wineglass of a home-brewed cordial,
compounded from the rich juice of the blackberry, the finest of
French brandy, and sundry spices, which was her panacea, but she
abstained, lest it disturb her. Miss Camilla set a greater value upon
peace of mind than upon aught else.

Lucina bent her face over her book, and turned the leaves quickly, as
if she were reading with absorption. Presently Miss Camilla thought
she looked better. The soft lapping as of waves, of the Sabbath calm,
began again to oversteal her body and spirit. Visions of her peaceful
past seemed to confuse themselves with the present. "You--must stay
to tea, and--not--go home until--after sunset, when it is cooler,"
she murmured, drowsily, and with a dim conviction that this was a
Sabbath of long ago, that Lucina was a little girl in a short frock
and pantalettes; then in a few minutes her head drooped limply
towards her shoulder, and all her thoughts relaxed into soft
slumberous breaths.

When her aunt fell asleep, Lucina looked up, with that quick,
startled sense of loneliness which sometimes, in such case, comes to
a sensitive consciousness. "Aunt Camilla is asleep," she thought; she
turned to her book again. It was a copy of Mrs. Hemans's poems.
Somehow the vivid sentiment of the lines failed to please her, though
she, like her young lady friends, had heretofore loved them well.
Lucina read the first stanza of "The warrior bowed his crested head"
with no thrill of her maiden breast; then she turned to "The Bride of
the Greek Isles," and that was no better.

She arose, tiptoed softly over to the table, and examined the other
books thereon. There were volumes of the early English poets, an
album, and _A Souvenir of Friendship_, in red and gold, like the
Hemans. She opened the souvenir, and looked idly at the small,
exquisitely fine steel engravings, the alliterative verses, the tales
of sentiment beginning with long preambles couched in choicest
English. She shut the book with a little weary sigh, and looked
irresolutely at her sleeping aunt, then at the chair by the north
window.

Lucina felt none of the languor which is sometimes caused by extreme
heat. Instead, there was a fierce electric tension through all her
nerves. She was weary almost to death, the cool of this dark room was
unutterably grateful to her, yet she could not remain quiet. She had
left her parasol and hat on the hall-table. She stole out softly,
with scarcely the faintest rustle of skirts, tied on her hat, took
her parasol, and went through the house to the back-garden door.

Looking back, she saw the old servant-woman's broadly interrogatory
face in a vine-wreathed kitchen-window. "I am going out in the garden
a little while, 'Liza," said Lucina.

The garden was down-crushed, its extreme of sweetness pressed out
beneath the torrid sunbeams as under flaming hoofs. Lucina passed
between the wilting ranks and flattened beds of flowers, and the
breath of them in her face was like the rankest sweetness of love,
when its delicacy, even for itself, is all gone. The pungent odor of
box was like a shameless call from the street. Lucina went into the
summer-house and sat down. It was stifling, and the desperate
sweetnesses of the garden seemed to have collected there, as in a
nest.

Lucina, after a minute, sprang up, her face was a deep pink, she had
a gentle distracted frown on her sweet forehead, her lips were
pouting; she did not look in the least like the Lucina of the early
spring.

She went out of the summer-house, and down the garden paths, and then
over a stone wall, into the rear field, which bounded it. This field
had been mowed not long before, and the stubble was pink and gold in
the afternoon light.

The field was broad, and skirted on the west by a thick wood. Lucina,
holding her green parasol, crossed the field to the wood. The stubble
was hot to her feet, white butterflies flew in her face, rusty-winged
things hurled themselves in her path, like shrill completions from
some mill of insect life.

All along the wood there was a border of shadow. Lucina kept close to
the trees, and so down the field. A faint, cool dampness stole out
from the depths of the wood and tempered the heat for the width of
its shade. Lucina put down her parasol; she was walking quite
steadily, as if with a purpose.

The wood extended the length of many fields, running parallel with
the main village street, behind the houses. Lucina, passing the
Prescott house from the rear, instead of the front, seeing the
unpainted walls and roof-slopes of barn and wood-sheds, and the
garden, had a curious sense of retroversion in material things which
suited well her mind. She felt that day as if she were turned
backward to her own self.

The fields were divided from one another by stone walls. Lucina
crossed these, and kept on until she reached a field some distance
beyond Doctor Prescott's house. Then she left the shadow of the wood,
and crossed the field to the main road. In crossing this she kept
close to the wall, slinking along rapidly, for she felt guilty; this
field was all waving with brown heads of millet which should not have
been trampled.

She got to the road and nobody had seen her. She crossed it, entered
a rutty cart-path, and was in the Edwards' woodland.

For the first time in her life, Lucina Merritt was doing something
which she acknowledged to herself to be distinctly unmaidenly. She
had come to this wood because she had heard Jerome say that he often
strolled here of a Sunday afternoon. Her previous little schemes for
meeting him had been innocent to her own understanding, but now she
had tasted the fruit of knowledge of her own heart.

She felt fairly sick with shame at what she was doing, she blushed to
her own thoughts, but she had a helpless impulse as before, some
goading spur in her own nature which she could not withstand.

She hurried softly down the cart-path between the trees, then
suddenly stood still, for under a great pine-tree on the right lay
Jerome. His hat was off, one arm was thrown over his head, his face
was flushed with heat and slumber. Lucina, her body bent aloof with
an indescribable poise of delicacy and the impulse of flight, yet
looked at her sleeping lover until her whole heart seemed to feed
itself through her eyes.

Lucina had not seen him for more than six weeks, except by sly
glimpses at meeting and on the road. She thought, pitifully, that he
had grown thin; she noticed what a sad droop his mouth had at the
corners. She pitied, loved, and feared him, with all the trifold
power of her feminine heart.

As she looked at him, her remembrance of old days so deepened and
intensified that they seemed to close upon the present and the
future. Love, even when it has apparently no past, is at once a
memory and a revelation. Lucina saw the little lover of her innocent
childish dreams asleep there, she saw the poor boy who had gone
hungry and barefoot, she saw the young man familiar in the
strangeness of the future. And, more than that, Lucina, who had
hitherto shown fully to her awakening heart only her thought of
Jerome, having never dared to look at him and love him at the same
time, now gazed boldly at him asleep, and a sense of a great mystery
came over her. In Jerome she seemed to see herself also, the unity of
the man and woman in love dawned upon her maiden imagination. She
felt as if Jerome's hands were her hands, his breath hers. "I never
knew he looked like me before," she thought with awe.

Then suddenly Jerome, with no stir of awaking, opened his eyes and
looked at her. Often, on arousing from a deep sleep, one has a sense
of calm and wonderless observation as of a new birth. Jerome looked
for a moment at Lucina with no surprise. In a new world all things
may be, and impossibilities become commonplaces.

Then he sprang up, and went close to her. "Is it you?" he said, in a
sobbing voice.

Lucina looked at him piteously. She wanted to run away, but her limbs
trembled, her little hands twitched in the folds of her muslin skirt.
Jerome saw her trembling, and a soft pink suffusing her fair face,
even her sweet throat and her arms, under her thin sleeves. He knew,
with a sudden leap of tenderness, which would have its way in spite
of himself, why she was there. She had wanted to see him so, the dear
child, the fair, wonderful lady, that she had come through the heat
of this burning afternoon, stealing away alone from all her friends,
and even from her own decorous self, for his sake. He pointed to the
clear space under the pine where he had been lying. "Shall we sit
down there--a minute?" he stammered.

"I--think I--had better go," said Lucina, faintly, with the quick
impulse of maidenhood to flee from that which it has sought.

"Only a few minutes--I have something to tell you."

They sat down, Lucina with her back against the pine-tree, Jerome at
her side. He opened his mouth as if to speak, but instead it widened
into a vacuous smile. He looked at Lucina and she at him, then he
came closer to her and took her in his arms.

Neither of them spoke. Lucina hid her face on his breast, and he held
her so, looking out over her fair head at the wood. His mouth was
shut hard, his eyes were full of fierce intent of combat, as if he
expected some enemy forth from the trees to tear his love from him.
For the first time in his life he realized the full might of his own
natural self. He felt as if he could trample upon the needs of the
whole world, and the light of his own soul; to gain this first sweet
of existence, whose fragrance was in his face.

The strongest realization of his nature hitherto, that of the
outreaching wants of others, weakened. He was filled with the
insensate greed of creation for himself. He held Lucina closer, and
bent his head down over hers. Then she turned her face a little, and
their lips met.

Lucina had never since her childhood kissed any man but her father,
and as for Jerome, he had held such things with a shame of scorn.
This meant much to both of them, and the shock of such deep meaning
caused them to start apart, as if with fear of each other. Lucina
raised her head, and even pushed Jerome away, gently, and he loosened
his hold and stood up before her, all pale and trembling.

"You must forgive me--I--forgot myself," he said, with quick gasps
for breath, "I won't--sit--down there again." Then he went on,
speaking fast: "I have been--wanting to tell you, but there was no
chance. I could not come to see you any longer. I could not. I
thought a man could go to see a woman when he was in love with her,
and could bear it when the love was all on his side, and there was
no--chance of marriage. I thought I could bear it if it pleased you,
but--I didn't know it would be like this. I was never in love, and I
did not know. I could think of nothing but wanting you. It was
spoiling me for everything else, and there are other things in the
world besides this. If I came much longer I should not be fit to
come. I _could_ not come any longer." Jerome looked down at Lucina,
with an air of stern, yet wistful, argument. She sat before him with
downcast, pale, and sober face, then she rose, and all her girlish
irresolution and shame dropped from her, and left for a moment the
woman in her unveiled.

"I love you as much as you love me," she said, simply.

Jerome looked at her. "You--don't mean--that?"

"Yes, I suppose I did when you told me first, but I did not know it
then. Now I know it. I have been very unhappy because I feared you
might be staying away because you thought I did not love you, but I
dared not try to see you as I did before, because I had found myself
out. To-day I could not help it, whatever you might think of me, or
whatever I might think of myself. I could not bear to worry any
longer, lest you might be unhappy because you thought I did not love
you. I do, and you need not stay away any more for that."

"Lucina--you don't mean--"

"Do you think I would have let you--do as you did a minute ago, if I
had not?" said she, and a blush spread over her face and neck.

"I--thought--it was all--me--that--_you_--did not--"

"No, I let you," whispered Lucina.

"Oh, you don't mean that you--like me this same way that I do
you--enough to marry me! You don't mean that?"

"Yes, I do," replied Lucina; she looked up at him with a curious
solemn steadfastness. She was not blushing any more.

"I--never thought of this," Jerome said, drawing a long, sobbing
breath. He stood looking at her, his face all white and working.
"Lucina," he began, then paused, for he could not speak. He walked a
little way down the path, then came back. "Lucina," he said,
brokenly, "as God is my witness--I never thought of this--I
never--thought that you--could-- Oh, look at yourself, and look at
me! You know that I could not have thought--oh, look at yourself,
there was never anybody like you! I did not think that you
could--care for or--be hurt by--_me_."

"I have never seen anybody like you, not even father," Lucina said.
She looked at him with the shrinking yet loving faithfulness of a
child before emotion which it cannot comprehend. She could not
understand why, if Jerome loved her and she him, there was anything
to be distressed about. She could not imagine why he was so pale and
agitated, why he did not take her in his arms and kiss her again, why
they could not both be happy at once.

"Oh, my God!" cried Jerome, and looked at her in a way which
frightened her.

"Don't," she said, softly, shrinking a little.

"Lucina, you know how poor I am," he said, hoarsely. "You know
I--can't--marry."

"I don't need much," said she.

"I couldn't--give you what you need."

"Father would, then."

"No, he would not. I give my wife all or nothing."

Lucina trembled. The same look which she remembered when Jerome would
not take her little savings was in his eyes.

"Then--I would not take anything from father," she said, tremulously.
"I wouldn't mind--being--poor."

"I have seen the wives of poor men, and you shall not be made one by
me. If I thought I had not strength enough to keep you from that, as
far as I was concerned, I would leave you this minute, and throw
myself in the pond over there."

"I am not afraid to be the wife of--a poor man--if I love him.
I--could save, and--work," Lucina said, speaking with the necessity
of faithfulness upon her, yet timidly, and turning her face aside,
for her heart had begun to fear lest Jerome did not really love her
nor want her, after all. A woman who would sacrifice herself for
love's sake cannot understand the sacrifice, nor the love, which
refuses it.

"You shall not be, whether you are afraid or not!" Jerome cried out,
fiercely. "Haven't I seen John Upham's wife? Oh, God!"

Lucina began moving slowly down the path towards the road; Jerome
followed her. "I must go," she said, with a gentle dignity, though
she trembled in all her limbs. "I came across the fields from Aunt
Camilla's. I left her asleep, and she will wake and miss me."

"Oh," cried Jerome, "I wish--" then he stopped himself. "Yes, she
will, I suppose," he added, lamely.

"He does not want me to stay," thought Lucina, with a sinking of
heart and a rising of maiden pride. She walked a little faster.

Jerome quickened his pace, and touched her shoulder. "You must not
think about me--about this," he murmured, hoarsely. "_You_ must not
be unhappy about it!"

Lucina turned and looked in his face sadly, yet with a soft
stateliness. "No," said she, "I will not. I do not see, after all,
why I should be unhappy, or you either. Many people do not marry. I
dare say they are happier. Aunt Camilla seems happy. I shall be like
her. There is nothing to hinder our friendship. We can always be
friends, like brothers and sisters even, and you can come to see
me--"

"No, I can't," said Jerome, "I can't do that even. I told you I could
not."

Lucina said no more. She turned her face and went on. She said
good-bye quickly when she reached the road, and was across it and
under the bars into the millet.

Jerome did not attempt to follow her; he stood for a moment watching
her moving through the millet, as through the brown waves of a
shallow sea; then he went back into the woods. When he reached the
place where he had sat with Lucina he stopped and spoke, as if she
were still there.

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