Mary E. Wilkins Freeman - Jerome, A Poor Man

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"Lucina," he said, "I promise you before God, that I will never, so
long as I live, love or marry any other woman but you. I promise you
that I will work as I never did before--my fingers to the bone, my
heart to its last drop of blood--to earn enough to marry you. And
then, if you are free, I will come to you again. I will fight to win
you, with all the strength that is in me, against the whole world,
and I will love you forever, forever, but I promise you that I will
never say this in your hearing to bind you and make you wait, when I
may die and never come."

Chapter XXX

Lucina did not go into her aunt Camilla's house again that afternoon.
She crossed the fields--her aunt's garden--skirted the house to the
road--thence home.

When she entered the south door her mother met her. "Why didn't you
wait until it was cooler?" she asked; then, before the girl could
answer, "What is the matter? Why, Lucina, you have been crying!"

"Nothing," replied Lucina, piteously, pushing past her mother.

"Where are you going?"

"Up-stairs to my chamber." With that Lucina was on the stairs, and
her mother followed.

The two were a long time in Lucina's chamber; then Abigail came down
alone to her husband in the sitting-room.

The Squire, who was as alert as any fox where his beloved daughter
was concerned, had scented something wrong, and looked up anxiously
when his wife entered.

"She isn't sick, is she?" he asked.

"She will be, if we don't take care," Abigail replied, shortly.

"You don't mean it!" cried the Squire, jumping up. "I'll go for the
doctor this minute. It was the heat. Why didn't you keep her at home,
Abigail?"

"Sit down, for mercy's sake, Eben!" said Abigail. She sat down
herself as she spoke, and crossed her little slender feet and hands
with a quick, involuntary motion, which was usual to her. "It is as I
told you," said she. Abigail Merritt, good comrade of a wife though
she was, yet turned aggressively feminine at times.

The Squire sat down. "What do you mean, Abigail?"

"I mean--that I wish that Edwards boy had never entered this house."

"Abigail, you don't mean that Lucina-- What _do_ you mean, Abigail?"
finished the Squire, feebly.

"I mean that I was right in thinking some harm would come from that
boy being here so much," replied his wife. Then she went on and
repeated in substance the innocent little confession which Lucina had
made to her in her chamber.

The Squire listened, his bearded chin sunken on his chest, his
forehead, under the crest of yellow locks, bent gloomily.

"It seems as if you and I had done everything that we could for the
child ever since she was born," he said, huskily, when his wife had
finished. His first emotion was one of cruel jealousy of his
daughter's love for another man.

Abigail looked at him with quick pity, but scarcely with full
understanding. She could never lose, as completely as he, their
daughter, through a lover. She had not to yield her to another of the
same sex, and in that always the truest sting of jealousy lies.

"So far as that goes, it is no more than we had to expect, Eben," she
said. "You know that. I turned away from my parents for you."

"I know it, Abigail, but--I thought, maybe, it wouldn't come yet a
while. I've done all I could. I bought her the little horse--she
seemed real pleased with that, Abigail, you know. I thought, maybe,
she would be contented a while here with us."

"Eben Merritt, you don't for a minute think that she can be anywhere
but with us, for all this!"

"It's the knowledge that she's willing to be that comes hard," said
the Squire, piteously--"it's that, Abigail."

"I don't know that she's any too willing to," returned Abigail, half
laughing. "The principal thing that seems to trouble the child is
that Jerome won't come to see her. I rather think that if he would
come to see her she would be perfectly contented."

"And why can't he come to see her, if she wants him to--will you tell
me that?" cried the Squire, with sudden fervor.

"Eben Merritt, would you have the poor child getting to thinking more
of him than she does, when he isn't going to marry her?"

"And why isn't he going to marry her, if she wants him? By the Lord
Harry, Lucina shall have whoever she wants, if it's a prince or a
beggar! If that fellow has been coming here, and now--"

"Eben, listen to me and keep quiet!" cried Abigail, running at her
great husband's side, with a little, wiry, constraining hand on his
arm, for the Squire had sprung from his seat and was tramping up and
down in his rage that Lucina should be denied what she wanted, even
though it were his own heart's blood. "You know what I told you,"
Abigail said. "Jerome is behaving well. You know he can't marry
Lucina--he hasn't a penny."

"Then I'll give 'em pennies enough to marry on. The girl shall have
whom she wants; I tell you that, Abigail."

"How much have you got to give them until we are gone, even if Jerome
would marry under such conditions; and I told you what he said to
Lucina about it," returned his wife, quietly.

"I'll go to work myself, then," shouted the Squire; "and as for the
boy, he shall swallow his damned pride before he gives my girl an
anxious hour. What is he, to say he will or will not, if she lifts
her little finger? By the Lord Harry, he ought to go down on his face
like a heathen when she looks at him!"

"Eben," said Abigail, "will you listen to me? I tell you, Jerome is
behaving as well as any young man can. I know he is, from what Lucina
has told me. He loves her, and he is proving it by giving her up. You
know that he cannot marry her unless he drags her into poverty, and
you know how much you have to help them with. You know, too, good as
Jerome is, and worthy of praise for what he has done, that Lucina
ought to do better than marry him."

"He is a good boy, Abigail, and if she's got her heart set on him she
shall have him."

"You don't know that her heart is set on him, Eben. I think the best
thing we can do is to send her down to Boston for a little visit--she
may feel differently when she comes home."

"I won't have her crossed, Abigail. Was she crying when you left
her?"

"She will soon be quiet and go to sleep. I am going to make some
toast for her supper. Eben, where are you going?" The Squire had set
forth for the door in a determined rush.

"I am going to see that boy, and know what this work means," he
cried, in a loud voice of wrath and pity.

However, Abigail's vivacious persistency of common-sense usually
overcame her husband's clumsy headlongs of affection. She carried the
day at last, and the Squire subsided, though with growls of
remonstrance, like a partially tamed animal.

"Have your way, and send her down to Boston, if you want to,
Abigail," said he; "but when she comes back she shall have whatever
she wants, if I move heaven and earth to get it for her."

So that day week Jerome, going one morning to his work, stood aside
to let the stage-coach pass him, and had a glimpse of Lucina's fair
face in the wave of a blue veil at the window. She bowed, but the
stage dashed by in such a fury of dust that Jerome could scarcely
discern the tenor of the salutation. He thought that she smiled, and
not unhappily. "She is going away," he told himself; "she will go to
parties, and see other people, and forget me." He tried to dash the
bitterness of his heart at the thought, with the sweetness of
unselfish love, but it was hard. He plodded on to his work, the young
springiness gone from his back and limbs, his face sternly downcast.

As for Lucina, she was in reality leaving Upham not unhappily. She
was young, and the sniff of change is to the young as the smell of
powder to a war-horse. New fields present always wide ranges of
triumphant pleasure to youth.

Lucina, moreover, loved with girlish fervor the friend, Miss Rose
Soley, whom she was going to visit in Boston. She had not seen her
for some months, and she tasted in advance the sweets of mutual
confidences. That morning Jerome's face was a little confused in
Lucina's mind with that of a rosy-cheeked and dark-ringleted girl,
and young passion somewhat dimmed by gentle affection for one of her
own sex.

Then, too, Lucina had come, during the last few days, to a more
cheerful and hopeful view of the situation. After all, Jerome loved
her, and was not that the principal thing? Perhaps, in time, it would
all come right. Jerome might get rich; in the meantime, she was in no
hurry to be married and leave her parents, and if Jerome would only
come to see her, that would be enough to make her very happy. She
thought that after her return he would very probably come. She
reasoned, as she thought, astutely, that he would not be able to help
it, when he saw her after a long absence. Then she had much faith in
her father's being able to arrange this satisfactorily for her, as he
had arranged all other matters during her life.

"Now don't you fret, Pretty," he had said, when she bade him
good-bye, "father will see to it that you have everything you want."
And Lucina, all blushing with innocent confusion, had believed him.

In addition to all this she had in her trunks, strapped at the back
of the stage-coach, two fine, new silk gowns, and one muslin, and a
silk mantilla. Also she carried a large blue bandbox containing a new
plumed hat and veil, which cheered her not a little, being one of
those minor sweets which providentially solace the weak feminine soul
in its unequal combat with life's great bitternesses.

Lucina was away some three months, not returning until a few days
before Thanksgiving; then she brought her friend, Miss Rose Soley,
with her, and also a fine young gentleman, with long, curling, fair
locks, and a face as fair as her own.

While Lucina was gone, Jerome led a life easier in some respects,
harder in others. He had no longer the foe of daily temptation to
overcome, but instead was the steady grind of hunger. Jerome, in
those days, felt the pangs of that worst hunger in the world--the
hunger for the sight of one beloved. Some mornings when he awoke it
seemed to him that he should die of mere exhaustion and starvation of
spirit if he saw not Lucina before night. In those days he would
rather have walked over fiery plough-shares than visited any place
where he had seen Lucina, and where she now was not. He never went
near the wood, where they had sat together; he would not pass even,
if he could help it, the Squire's house or Miss Camilla's. His was
one of those minds for whom, when love has once come, place is only
that which holds, or is vacant of, the beloved. He was glad when the
white frost came and burned out the gardens and the woodlands with
arctic fires of death, for then the associations with old scenes were
in a measure lost.

One Sunday after the frost, when the ground was shining stiff with
it, as with silver mail, and all the trees thickened the distance as
with glittering furze, he went to his woodland, and found that he
could bear the sight of the place where he and Lucina had been
together; its strangeness of aspect seemed to place it so far in the
past.

Jerome threw up his head in the thin, sparkling air. "I will have her
yet," he said, quite aloud; and "if I do not, I can bear that."

He felt like one who would crush the stings of fate, even if against
his own heart. He had grown old and thin during the last weeks; he
had worked so hard and resolutely, yet with so little hope; and he
who toils without hope is no better than a slave to his own will.
That day, when he went home, his eyes were bright and his cheeks
glowing. His mother and sister noticed the difference.

"I was afraid he was gettin' all run down," Ann Edwards told Elmira;
"but he looks better to-day."

Elmira herself was losing her girlish bloom. She was one who needed
absolute certainties to quiet distrustful imaginations, and matters
betwixt herself and Lawrence Prescott were less and less on a stable
footing. Lawrence was working hard; she should not have suspected
that his truth towards her flagged, but she sometimes did. He did not
come to see her regularly. Sometimes two weeks went past, sometimes
three, and he had not come. In fact, Lawrence endeavored to come only
when he could do so openly.

"I hate to deceive father more than I can help," he told Elmira, but
she did not understand him fully.

She was a woman for whom the voluntary absence of a lover who yet
loves was almost an insoluble problem, and in that Lucina was not
unlike her. She was not naturally deceptive, but, when it came to
love, she was a Jesuit in conceiving it to sanctify its own ends.

The suspense, the uncertainty, as to her lover coming or not, was
beginning to tell upon her. Every nerve in her slight body was in an
almost constant state of tension.

It was just a week from that day that Jerome and Elmira, being seated
in meeting, saw Lucina enter with her parents and her visiting
friends. Jerome's heart leaped up at the sight of Lucina, then sank
before that of the young man following her up the aisle. "He is going
to marry her; she has forgotten me," he thought, directly.

As for Elmira, she eyed Miss Rose Soley's dark ringlets under the
wide velvet brim of her hat, the crimson curve of her cheek, and the
occasional backward glance of a black eye at Lawrence Prescott seated
directly behind her. When meeting was over, she caught Jerome by the
arm. "Come out quick," she said, in a sharp whisper, and Jerome was
glad enough to go.

Lucina's guests spent Thanksgiving with her. Jerome saw them twice,
riding horseback with Lawrence Prescott--Lucina on her little white
horse, Miss Soley on Lawrence's black, the strange young man on the
Squire's sorrel, and Lawrence on a gray.

Lucina colored when she saw Jerome, and reined her horse, lingering
behind the others, but he did not seem to notice it, and never looked
at her after his first grave bow; then she touched her horse, and
galloped after her friends with a windy swirl of blue veil and
skirts.

Jerome wondered if his sister would hear that Lawrence Prescott had
been out riding with Lucina and her friends. When he got home that
night, he met Belinda Lamb coming out of the gate; when he entered,
he saw by Elmira's face that she had heard. She was binding shoes
very fast; her little face was white, except for red spots on the
cheeks, her mouth shut hard. Her mother kept looking at her
anxiously.

"You'd better not worry till you know you've got something to worry
about; likely as not, they asked him to go with them 'cause Lucina's
beau don't know how to ride very well, and he couldn't help it," she
said, with a curious aside of speech, as if Jerome, though on the
stage, was not to hear.

He took no notice, but that night he had a word with his sister after
their mother had gone to bed. "If he has asked you to marry him, you
ought to trust him," said he. "I don't believe his going to ride with
that girl means anything. You ought to believe in him until you know
he isn't worthy of it."

Elmira turned upon him with a flash of eyes like his own. "Worthy!"
she cried--"don't I think he would be worthy if he did leave me for
her! Do you think I would blame him if he did leave anybody as poor
as I am, worked 'most to skin and bone, of body and soul too, for
anybody like that girl? I guess I wouldn't blame him, and you
needn't. I don't blame him; it's true, I know, he'll never come to
see me again, but I don't blame him."

"If he doesn't come to see you again he'll have me to hear from,"
Jerome said, fiercely.

"No, he won't. Don't you ever dare speak to him, or blame him, Jerome
Edwards; I won't have it." Elmira ran into her chamber, leaving an
echo of wild sobs in her brother's ears.

The day after Thanksgiving, Lucina's friends went away; when Jerome
came home that night Elmira's face wore a different expression, which
Mrs. Edwards explained with no delay.

"Belinda Lamb has been here," she said, "and that young man is that
Boston girl's beau; he ain't Lucina's, and Lawrence Prescott ain't
nothing to do with it. He was up there last night, but it wa'n't
anything. Why, Jerome Edwards, you look as pale as death!"

Jerome muttered some unintelligible response, and went out of the
room, with his mother staring after him. He went straight to his own
little chamber, and, standing there in the still, icy gloom of the
winter twilight, repeated the promise which he had made in summer.

"If you are true to me, Lucina," he said, in a straining whisper--"if
you are true to me--but I'll leave it all to you whether you are or
not, I'll work till I win you."

Chapter XXXI

On the evening of the next day Jerome went to call on Lawyer
Eliphalet Means. Lawyer Means lived near the northern limit of the
village, on the other side of the brook.

Jerome, going through the covered bridge which crossed the brook,
paused and looked through a space between the side timbers. This
brook was a sturdy little torrent at all times; in spring it was a
river. Now, under the white concave of wintry moonlight, it broke
over its stony bed with a fierce persistency of advance. Jerome
looked down at the rapid, shifting water-hillocks and listened to
their lapsing murmur, incessantly overborne by the gathering rush of
onset, then nodded his head conclusively, as if in response to some
mental question, and moved on.

Lawyer Eliphalet Means lived in the old Means house. It upreared
itself on a bare moon-silvered hill at the right of the road, with a
solid state of simplest New England architecture. It dated back to
the same epoch as Doctor Prescott's and Squire Merritt's houses, but
lacked even the severe ornaments of their time.

Jerome climbed the shining slope of the hill to the house door, which
was opened by Lawyer Means himself; then he followed him into the
sitting-room. A great cloud of tobacco smoke came in his face when
the sitting-room door was thrown open. Through it Jerome could
scarcely see Colonel Jack Lamson, in a shabby old coat, seated before
the blazing hearth-fire, with a tumbler of rum-and-water on a little
table at his right hand.

"Sit down," said Means to Jerome, and pulled another chair forward.
"Quite a sharp night out," he added.

"Yes, sir," replied Jerome, seating himself.

Lawyer Means resumed his own chair and his pipe, at which he puffed
with that jealous comfort which comes after interruption. Colonel
Lamson, when he had given a friendly nod of greeting to the young
man, without removing his pipe from his mouth, leaned back his head
again, stretched his legs more luxuriously, and blew the smoke in
great wreaths around his face. This sitting-room of Lawyer Means's
was a scandal to the few matrons of Upham who had ever penetrated it.
"Don't look as if a woman had ever set foot in it," they said. The
ancient female relative of Lawyer Means who kept his house had not
been a notable house-keeper in her day, and her day was nearly past.
Moreover, she had small control over this particular room.

The great apartment, with the purple clouds of tobacco smoke, which
were settling against its low ceiling and in its far corners,
transfused with golden gleams of candles and rosy flashes of
fire-light, dingy as to wall-paper and carpet, with the dust of
months upon all shiny surfaces, seemed a very fortress of
bachelorhood wherein no woman might enter.

The lawyer's books in the tall cases were arranged in close ranks of
strictest order, as were also the neatly ticketed files of letters
and documents in the pigeon-holes of the great desk; otherwise the
whole room seemed fluttering and protruding out of its shadows with
loose ends of paper and corners of books. All the free lines in the
room were the tangents of irrelevancy and disorder.

The lawyer, puffing at his pipe, with eyes half closed, did not look
at Jerome, but his attitude was expectant.

Jerome stared at the blazing fire with a hesitating frown, then he
turned with sudden resolution to Means. "Can I see you alone a
minute?" he asked.

The Colonel rose, without a word, and lounged out of the room; when
the door had shut behind him, Jerome turned again to the lawyer. "I
want to know if you are willing to sell me two hundred and sixty-five
dollars' worth of your land," said he.

"Which land?"

"Your land on Graystone brook. I want one hundred and thirty-two
dollars and fifty cents' worth on each side."

"Why don't you make it even dollars, and what in thunder do you want
the land on two sides for?" asked the lawyer, in his dry voice,
threaded between his lips and pipe.

Jerome took an old wallet from his pocket. "Because two hundred and
sixty-five dollars is all the money I've got saved," he replied,
"and--"

"You haven't brought it here to close the bargain on the spot?"
interrupted the lawyer.

"Yes; I knew you could make out the deed."

Means puffed hard at his pipe, but his face twitched as if with
laughter.

"I want it on both sides of the brook," Jerome said, "because I don't
want anybody else to get it. I want to build a saw-mill, and I want
to control all the water-power."

"I thought you said that was all the money you had."

"It is."

"How are you going to build a saw-mill, then? That money won't pay
for enough land, let alone the mill."

"I am going to wait until I save more money; then I shall buy more
land and build the mill," replied Jerome.

"Why not borrow the money?"

Jerome shook his head.

"Suppose I let you have some money at six per cent.; suppose you
build the mill, and I take a mortgage on that and the land."

"No, sir."

"Why not? If I am willing to trust a young fellow like you with
money, what is your objection to taking it?"

"I would rather wait until I can pay cash down, sir," replied Jerome,
sturdily.

"You'll be gray as a badger before you get the money."

"Then I'll be gray," said Jerome. His handsome young face, full of
that stern ardor which was a principle of his nature, confronted the
lawyer's, lean and dry, deepening its shrewdly quizzical lines about
mouth and eyes.

Means looked sharply at Jerome. "What has started you in this? What
makes you think it will be a good thing?" he asked.

"No saw-mill nearer than Westbrook, good water-power, straight course
of brook, below the falls can float logs down to the mill from above,
then down to Dale. People in Dale are paying heavy prices for lumber
on account of freight; then the railroad will go through Dale within
five years, and they will want sleepers, and--"

"Perhaps they won't take them from you, young man."

"I have been to Squire Lennox, in Dale; he is the prime mover in the
railroad, and will be a director, if not the president; he has given
me the refusal of the job."

"Where will you get your logs?"

"I have bargained with two parties."

"Five years is a long time ahead."

"It won't be, if I wait long enough."

"You are a damned fool not to borrow the money. The railroad may go
through in another year, and all the standing wood in the county may
burn down," said Means, quietly.

"Let it then," said Jerome, looking at him.

The lawyer laughed, silently.

When Jerome went home he had in his pocket a deed of the land, but on
the right bank of the brook only, the lawyer having covenanted not to
sell or build upon the left bank. Thus he had enough land upon which
to build his mill when he should have saved the money. He felt nearer
Lucina than he had ever done before. The sanguineness of youth, which
is its best stimulant for advance, thrilled through all his veins. He
had mentioned five years as the possible length of time before
acquisition; secretly he laughed at the idea. Five years! Why, he
could save enough money in three years--in less than three years--in
two years! It had been only a short time since he had made the last
payment on the mortgage, and he had saved his two hundred and
sixty-five dollars. A saw-mill would not cost much. He could build a
great part of it himself.

That night Jerome truly counted his eggs before they were hatched.
All the future seemed but a nest for his golden hopes. He would work
and save--he was working and saving. He would build his mill; as he
thought further, the foundation-stones were laid, the wheel turned,
and the saw hissed through the live wood. He would marry Lucina; he
saw her in her bridal white--

All this time, with that sublime cruelty which man can show towards
one beloved when working for love's final good, and which is a feeble
prototype of the Higher method, Jerome gave not one thought to the
fact that Lucina knew nothing of his plans, and, if she loved him, as
she had said, must suffer. When, moreover, one has absolute faith in,
and knowledge of, his own intentions for the welfare of another, it
is difficult to conceive that the other may not be able to spell out
his actions towards the same meaning.

Jerome really felt as if Lucina knew. The next Sunday he watched her
come into meeting with an exquisite sense of possession, which he
imagined her to understand.

When he did not go to see her that night, but, instead, sat happily
brooding over the future, it never once occurred to him that it might
be otherwise with her.

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