Mary E. Wilkins Freeman - Jerome, A Poor Man

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"Mebbe the dam was weak, but Providence took advantage of it,"
insisted Cheeseman, who, in spite of his cheerful temperament, had a
gloomy theology. "I'd like to know why ye think your mill went down;
do ye think ye done anything to deserve it?" he said, further, in an
argumentative tone.

"If I thought I had, I'd do it again," Jerome returned, and went off
to a distant pile of lumber out of sound of Cheeseman's voice.

He felt a proud sensitiveness, almost a shame, over his calamity,
which he would have been at a loss to explain. All day long, when men
came to view the scene of disaster, he tried to avoid them. He shrank
in spirit even from their sympathy.

"No worse for me than for anybody else," he would reply, when told
repeatedly, with gruff condolence, that it was hard luck. His
sensitiveness might have arisen from some hereditary taint from his
orthodox ancestors of their belief that misfortune is the whip-lash
for sin, or from his native resentment of pity. At home he could not
talk of it either with his mother or Elmira; as for his father, he
sat in the sun and dozed. It was doubtful if he fully realized what
had happened.

Jerome worked in the woods that day until after dark; when he went
home he found that the Squire had been there with a request for him
to be one of the bearers at the Colonel's funeral. That was
considered a post of melancholy honor, and his mother looked sadly
important over it.

"I s'pose as long as the poor Colonel is gone himself, an' there's
only three left that he used to be so intimate with, that they
thought you would be a good one," said she.

"It is strange they did not ask some one nearer his age," Jerome
said, wonderingly.

The funeral was appointed for the next afternoon. Jerome sat in the
parlor of the Means house with the mourners, who were few, as the
dead man had no kin in Upham. Indeed, there was nobody except his
three old friends, his house-keeper, and Abigail Merritt and Lucina.

Jerome did not look at Lucina, nor she at him; as the service went
on, he heard her weeping softly. The minister, Solomon Wells,
standing near the black length of the coffin, lifted his voice in
eulogy of the dead. The parlor door-way and that of the room beyond,
were set with faces straining with attention.

The minister's voice was weak; every now and then people looked
inquiringly at one another, and there were fine hisses of
interrogation. This parlor of the Means house had never been used
since the time of the lawyer's mother. Women had been hard at work
there all day, but still there was over everything a dim, filmy
effect, as of petrified dust and damp. A great pier-glass loomed out
of the gloom of a wall like a sheet of fog, with scarcely a gleam of
gold left in its tarnished frame. The steel engravings over the
mantel-shelf and between the windows showed blue hazes of mildew. The
mahogany and rosewood of the furniture was white in places; there had
been a good fire all day, but all the covers and the carpet steamed
in one's face with cold damp. However, scarcely a woman in Upham but
would have been willing to be a legitimate mourner for the sake of
investigating the mysterious best-room, which had had a certain glory
in the time of the lawyer's mother.

A great wreath of white flowers lay on the coffin. Its breathless
sweetness clung to the nostrils and seemed to fill the whole house.
Now and then a curl of pungent smoke floated from the door-cracks of
the air-tight stove. All the high lights in the room were the silver
of the coffin trimmings and the white wreath.

Solomon Wells had a difficult task. The popular opinion of Colonel
Jack Lamson in Upham was that he had led a hard life, and had
hastened his end by strong drink. He could neither tell the commonly
accepted truth out of respect to the deceased, nor lies out of regard
to morality. However, one favorable point in the character of the
deceased, upon which people were agreed, was his geniality and bluff
heartiness of good-humor. That the minister so enlarged and displayed
to the light of admiration that he almost made of it the aureole of a
saint. He was obliged then to take refuge in the broad field of
generalities, and discourse upon his text of "All flesh is as grass,"
until his hearers might well lose sight of the importance of any
individual flicker of a grass blade to this wind or that, before the
ultimate end of universal hay.

Solomon Wells was not a brilliant man, but he had a fine instinct for
other people's corns and prejudices. Everybody agreed that his
remarks were able; there were no dissenting voices. He concluded with
an apt and solemnly impressive reference to the wheat and the chaff,
the garnering and the casting into furnace, leaving the application
concerning the deceased wholly to his audience. That completed his
success. When he sat down there was a heaving sigh of applause.

All through the discourse, the hymns, and the concluding prayer,
Lucina sobbed softly at intervals, her face hidden in her cambric
handkerchief. Somehow it went to her tender soul that the poor
Colonel should be lying there with no wife or child to mourn him;
then she had loved him, as she had loved everybody and everything
that had come kindly into her life. Every time she thought of the
corals and the beautiful ear-rings which the Colonel had given her
she wept afresh. Moreover, the motive for tears is always complex;
hers may have been intensified somewhat by her anxiety about her
lover and his misfortune. Now and then her mother touched her arm
remonstratingly. "Hush; you'll make yourself sick, child," she
whispered, softly; but poor Lucina was helpless before her grief.

The Squire, John Jennings, and Lawyer Means all sat by the dead body
of their friend, with pale and sternly downcast faces. Jerome looked
scarcely less sad. He remembered as he sat there every kind word
which the Colonel had ever spoken to him, and every one seemed
magnified a thousand-fold. This call to lend his living strength
towards the bearing of the dead man to his last home seemed like a
call to a labor of love and gratitude, though he was still much
perplexed that he should have been selected.

"There's Doctor Prescott and Cyrus Robinson and Uncle Ozias--any one
of them nearer his own age," he thought. It was not until the next
day but one that the mystery was solved. That night Lawyer Eliphalet
Means came to see Jerome, and informed him that the Colonel had left
a will, whereby he was entitled to a legacy of twenty-five thousand
dollars.

Chapter XXXVII

Colonel Lamson's will divided sixty-five thousand dollars among five
legatees--ten thousand was given to John Jennings, five thousand to
Eliphalet Means, five thousand to Eben Merritt, twenty thousand to
Lucina Merritt, and twenty-five thousand to Jerome Edwards.

Upham was not astonished by the first four bequests; the last almost
struck it dumb. "What in creation did he leave twenty-five thousand
dollars to that feller for? He wa'n't nothin' to him," Simon Basset
stammered, when he first heard the news on Tuesday night in
Robinson's store. His face was pale and gaping, and folk stared at
him.

Suddenly a man cried out, "By gosh, J'rome promised to give the hull
on't away! Don't ye remember?"

"That's so," cried another; "an' Doctor Prescott an' Basset have got
to hand out ten thousand apiece if he does. Fork over, Simon."

"Guess ye'll wait till doomsday afore J'rome sticks to his part
on't," said Basset, with a sneer; but his lips were white.

"No, I won't; no, I won't," responded the man, hilariously. "J'rome's
goin' to do it; Jake here says he heard so; it come real straight."
He winked at the others, who closed around, grinning maliciously.

Basset broke through them with an oath and made for the door. "It's a
damned lie, I tell ye!" he shouted, hoarsely; "an' if J'rome's sech a
G-- d-- fool, I'll see ye all to h--, and him too, afore I pay a
dollar on't."

When the door had slammed behind him, the men looked at one another
curiously. "You don't s'pose J'rome will do it," one said,
meditatively.

"He'll do it when the river runs uphill an' crows are white,"
answered another, with a hard laugh.

"I dun'no'," said another, doubtfully. "J'rome Edwards 's always been
next-door neighbor to a fool, an' there's no countin' on what a fool
'll do!"

"S'pose you'd calculate on comin' in for some of the fool's money, if
he should give it up," remarked a dry and unexpected voice at his
elbow.

The man looked around and saw Ozias Lamb. "Ye don't think he'll do
it, do ye?" he cried, eagerly.

"'Ain't got nothin' to say," replied Ozias. "I s'pose when a fool
does part with his money, there's always wise men 'nough to take it."

John Upham, who, with some meagre little purchases in hand, had been
listening to the discussion, started for the door. When he had opened
it, he turned and faced them. "I'll tell ye one thing, all of ye," he
said, "an' that is, _he'll_ do it."

There was a clamor of astonishment. "How d'ye know it? Did he tell ye
so?" they shouted.

"Wait an' see," returned John Upham, and went out.

Plodding along his homeward road, a man passed him at a rapid stride.
John Upham started. "Hullo, J'rome," he called, but getting no
response, thought he had been mistaken.

However, the man was Jerome, but the tumult of his soul almost
deafened him to voices of the flesh. He was, for the time, out of the
plane of purely physical sounds on one of the spirit, full of
unutterable groanings and strivings.

When Jerome had received the news of his legacy, he had felt, for the
first time in his whole life, the joy of sudden acquisition and
possession. His head reeled with it; he was, in a sense, intoxicated.
"Am I rich? _I--I?_" he asked himself. Pleasures hitherto out of his
imagination of possession seemed to float within his reach on this
golden tide of wealth.

He would have been more than man had not this first grasp of the
divining-rod of the pleasures of earth filled him with the lust of
them. Even his love for Lucina, and his parents and sister, seemed
for a while subverted by that love for himself, to which the chance
of its gratification gave rise. Vanities which he had never known
within his nature, and petty emulations, rose thick, like a crop of
weeds on a rich soil. He saw himself in broadcloth and fine linen,
with a great festoon of gold chain on his breast and a gold watch in
pocket, walking with haughty flourishes of a cane, or riding in his
own carriage. He saw himself in a new house, grander than Doctor
Prescott's; he saw his parlor more richly furnished, _his_ wife,
_his_ mother and sister more finely attired than any women in the
village, _his_ father throned like a king in the late sunshine of
life. Jerome had usually sound financial judgment and conservative
estimate of the value of money, but now he thought of twenty-five
thousand dollars as almost unlimited wealth.

That night, after he had the news from Lawyer Means, he could not
sleep until nearly morning. He lay awake, spending, mentally,
principal and interest of his little fortune over and over, and
spending, besides that, much of the singleness and unselfishness of
his own heart.

However, after an hour or two of sleep, which seemed to turn, as
sleep sometimes will, the erratic currents of his mind back into the
old channels, from which it had been forced by this earthquake stress
of life, he experienced a complete revulsion.

He remembered--what he had either forgotten or ignored--the scene in
the store, his vow, the drawing up of the document which registered
it. He awoke into this memory as into a chilling atmosphere, and went
down-stairs with a grave face. He met his mother's and sister's
almost hysterical delight, which had not abated overnight, his
father's child-like wonder and admiration, soberly; as soon as he
could, he got away to his work, which was still in the wood where his
mill had stood. Cheeseman had gone home, still Jerome was not alone
much of the day. People came to congratulate him, also out of
curiosity. The little village was wild over the legacy, and the
document concerning its division among the poor.

There were two distinct factions, one upholding the belief that
Jerome would remain true to his promise, the other full of scoffing
and scorn at the insanity of it. Both factions invaded Jerome, and
while neither broached the matter directly, strove by indirect and
sly methods to ascertain his mind.

"S'pose ye'll quit work now, J'rome; s'prised to see ye here this
mornin'," said one.

"When ye goin' to run for Congress, J'rome?" asked another.

Still another inquired, meaningly, with a sly wink at his comrades,
how much money he was going to allow for home missions? and another,
when he was going to Boston to buy his gold watch and chain? Until he
went home at night he was haunted by the doubtful attention of the
idle portion, just now large, of the village population.

It was too early for planting, and quite recently the supply of work
from the Dale shoe-dealer had been scanty. People were at a loss to
account for it, as the business had increased during the last two
years, and many Upham men had been employed. Lately there had been a
rumor as to the cause, but few had given it credence.

This afternoon, however, it was confirmed. Just before dark, a man,
breathless, as if he had been running, joined the knot of loafers.
"Well," he said, panting, "I've found out why the shoes have been so
scarce."

The others stared at him, inquiringly.

"That--durned varmint, over to Dale, he's bought the old
meetin'-house, an'--sent down to Boston fer--some machines, an'--he's
goin' to have a factory. There's no more handwork to be done; that's
the reason he's been holdin' it back."

"How'd ye find it out? Who told ye?" asked one and another, scowling.

"Saw 'em, with my own eyes, unloadin' of the new machines at the
railroad, an' saw the gang of men he's got to work 'em hangin' round
his store. It's the railroad that's done it. It's made freight to
Boston cheap enough so's he can make it pay. Robinson's goin' to give
up shoes here. I had it straight. He don't want to compete with
machine-work, and he don't want to put in machines himself. It was an
unlucky day for Upham when that railroad went through Dale."

"Curse the railroad, an' curse all the new ideas that take the bread
out of poor men's mouths to give it to the rich," said a bitter
voice, and there was a hoarse amen from the crowd.

"I'd give ten years of my life if I could raise enough money, or, if
a few of us together could raise enough money, to start a factory in
Upham," cried a man, fiercely, "then we'd see whether it was brains
as good as other men's that were lacking!"

The man, who had not been there long, was quite young, not much older
than Jerome, and had a keen, thin face, with nervous red spots coming
and going in his cheeks, and fiery, deep-set eyes. He had the
reputation of being very smart and energetic, and having considerable
self-taught book-knowledge. He had a wife and two babies, and was, if
the truth were told, staying away from home that day that his wife,
who was a delicate, anxious young thing, might think he was at work.
He had eaten nothing since morning.

"We shouldn't be no better off, if you put machines in your factory,"
said a squat, elderly man, with a surly overhanging brow and a dull
weight of jaw.

"I guess we who are not too old to learn could run machines as well
as anybody, if we tried," returned the young man, scornfully; "and as
for the rest, handwork is always going to have a market value, and
there'll always be some sort of a demand for it. It would go hard if
we couldn't give those that couldn't run machines something to do, if
we had the factory; but we haven't, and, what's more, we sha'n't
have." As he spoke, he went over to Jerome, who was prying up a
heavy log, and lifted with him.

"Do you think you could form a company, if you had enough money
between you?" Jerome asked him.

"Yes, of course; we'd be fools if we didn't," he said.

"I say, curse the railroads and the machines! I wish every railroad
track in the country was tore up! I wish every train of cars was
kindlin'-wood, an' all the engine wheels an' the machine wheels would
lock, till the crack of doom!" shouted the bitter voice again.

"There's no use in damning progress because we happen to be in the
way of it. I'd rather be run over than lock the wheels myself,"
Jerome said, suddenly.

"It remains to be seen whether ye would or not," the voice returned,
with sarcastic meaning. There was a smothered chuckle from the crowd,
which began to disperse; the shadows were getting thick in the wood.

After supper that night, Jerome went up to his room, and sat down at
his window. His curtain was pulled high. He looked out into the
darkness and tried to think, but directly a door slammed, and a
shrill babble of feminine tongues began in the room below. Belinda
Lamb had arrived.

Jerome got his hat, stole softly down-stairs, and out of the front
door. "I've got to be alone somewhere, where I can think," he said to
himself, and forthwith made for the site of his mill; he could be
sure of solitude there at that hour.

When he arrived, he sat down on a pile of logs and gazed unseeingly
at the broad current of the brook, silvering out of the shadows to
the light of a young moon. The roar of it was loud in his ears, but
he did not seem to hear it. There are times when the spirit of the
living so intensifies that it comes into a silence and darkness of
nature like death.

Jerome, in the solitude of the woods, without another human soul
near, could concentrate his own into full action. As he sat there, he
began to defend his own case like a lawyer against a mighty opponent,
whom he recognized from the dogmas of orthodoxy, and also from an
insight inherited from generations of Calvinistic ancestors, as his
own conscience.

Jerome presented his case tersely, the arguments were all clearly
determined beforehand. "This twenty-five thousand dollars," he said,
"will lift me and mine out of grinding poverty. If I give it up, my
father and mother and sister will have none of it. Father has come
home unfit for any further struggles; mother has aged during the last
few days. She was nerved up to bear trouble, the shock of joy has
taken her last strength. She can do little now. This money will make
them happy and comfortable through their last days. If I give up this
money, they may come to want. I have lost my work in Dale, like the
rest; I may not be able to get a living, even; we may all suffer.
This money will give my sister a marriage-portion, and possibly
influence Doctor Prescott to favor his son's choice. If that does
not, my failure to carry out my part of the agreement, and the
doctor's consequent release from his, may influence him to make no
further opposition. If I give the money, and so force the doctor to
give his, or put him to shame for refusing, Elmira can never marry
Lawrence. I can give more to Uncle Ozias than he would receive as his
share of a common division. I can send Henry Judd to Boston to have
his eyes cured. And--I can marry Lucina Merritt. She loves me, she is
waiting for me. I have not answered her letter. She is wondering now
why I do not come. If I give up the money, I can never marry her--I
can never come."

Then the great still voice, which was, to his conception, within him,
yet without, through all nature, had its turn, and Jerome listened.

Then he answered, fiercely, as to spoken arguments. "I know the whole
is greater than the parts; I know that to make a whole village
prosperous and happy is more than the welfare of three or four, but
the three and the four come first, and that which I would have for
myself is divine, and of God, and I cannot be what I would be without
it, for no man who hungers gets his full strength. If I give this, it
is all. I can make no more of my life."

He looked as if he listened again for a moment, and then stood up.
"Well," he said, "it is true, if a man gives his all he can do no
more, and no more can be asked of him. What I have said I will do, I
will do, and I will save neither myself nor mine by a lie which I
must lie to--my own soul!"

Jerome went down the path to the road, but stopped suddenly, as if he
had got a blow. "Oh, my God!" he cried, "Lucina!" All at once a
consideration had struck him which had never fully done so before.
All at once he grasped the possibility that Lucina might suffer from
his sacrifice as much as he. "I can bear it--myself," he groaned,
"but Lucina, Lucina; suppose--it should kill her--suppose it
should--break her heart. I am stronger to suffer than she. If I could
bear hers and mine, if I could bear it all. Oh, Lucina, I cannot hurt
_you_--I cannot, I cannot! It is too much to ask. God, I _cannot!_"

Jerome stood still, in an involuntary attitude of defiance. His arm
was raised, his fist clinched, as if for a blow; his face uplifted
with stern reprisal; then his arm dropped, his tense muscles relaxed.
"I could not marry her if I did not give it up," he said. "I should
not be worthy of her; there is no other way."

Chapter XXXVIII

Jerome went to Lawyer Means's that night. Means, himself, answered
his knock, and Jerome opened abruptly upon the subject in his mind.
"I want to give away that money, as I said I would," he declared.

The lawyer peered above a flaring candle into the darkness. "Oh, it
is you, is it! Come in."

"No, I can't come in. It isn't necessary. I have nothing to say but
that. I want to give away the money, according to that paper you drew
up, and I want you to arrange it."

"You've made up your mind to keep that fool's promise, have you?"

"Yes, sir."

"Look here, young man, have you thought this over?"

"Yes, sir."

"You know what you're going to lose. You remember that your own
family--your father and mother and sister--can't profit by the gift?"

"Yes, sir; I have thought it all over."

"Do you realize that if you stick to your part of the bargain, it
does not follow that the doctor and Basset will stick to theirs?"

Jerome stared at him. "Didn't they sign that document before
witnesses?"

The lawyer laughed. "That document isn't worth the paper it's written
on. It was all horse-play. Didn't you know that, Jerome?"

"Did the doctor and Basset know it?"

"The doctor did. He wouldn't have signed, otherwise. As for
Basset--well, I don't know, but if he comes and asks me, as he will
before he unties his purse strings, I shall tell him the truth about
it, as I'm bound to, and not a dollar will he part with after he
finds out that he hasn't got to. You can judge for yourself whether
Doctor Seth Prescott is likely to fling away a fourth of his property
in any such fool fashion as this."

"Well, I don't know that it makes any difference to me whether they
give or not," said Jerome, proudly.

"Do you mean that you will abide by your part of the agreement if the
others do not abide by theirs?"

"I mean, that I keep my promise when I can; and if every other man
under God's footstool breaks his, it is no reason why I should break
mine."

"That sounds very fine," said the lawyer, dryly; "but do you realize,
my young friend, how far your large fortune alone would go when
divided among the poor of this village?"

"Yes, sir; I have reckoned it up. There are about one hundred who
would come under the terms of the agreement. My money alone, divided
among them, would give about two hundred and fifty dollars apiece."

"That is a large sum."

"It is large to a man who has never seen fifty dollars at once in his
hand, and it is large when several unite and form a company for a new
factory, with machines."

"Do you think they will do that?"

"Yes, sir. Henry Eames will set it going; give him a chance."

"Why don't you, instead of parting with your money, set up the
factory yourself, and employ the whole village?"

"That is not what I said I would do, and it is better for the village
to employ itself. I might fail, or my factory might go, as my mill
has."

"How long do you suppose it will be that every man will have his two
hundred and fifty dollars after you have given it to him? Tell me
that, if you can."

"That isn't my lookout."

"Why isn't it your lookout? A careless giver is as bad as a thief,
sir."

"I am not a careless giver," replied Jerome, stoutly. "I can't tell,
and no man can tell, how long they will keep what I give them, or how
long it will be before the stingiest and wisest get their shares away
from the weak; but that is no more reason why I should not give this
money than it is a reason why the Lord Almighty should not furnish us
all with fingers and toes, and our five senses, and our stomachs."

"You might add, our immortal souls, which the parsons say we'll get
snatched away from us if we don't watch out," said Means, with a
short laugh. "Well, Jerome, it is too late for me to attend to this
business to-night. I am worn out, too, by what I have been through
lately. Come to-morrow, and, if you are of the same mind, we'll fix
it up."

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