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Mary E. Wilkins Freeman - Jerome, A Poor Man

M >> Mary E. Wilkins Freeman >> Jerome, A Poor Man




"One minute is gone," said the doctor, looking over the open face of
his watch at Jerome. Something in his glance spurred on the
frightened boy by arousing a flash of resentment.

Jerome, standing straight before the doctor, with a little twitching
hand hanging at each side, with his color coming and going, and
pulses which could be seen beating hard in his temples and throat,
spoke and delivered himself of that innocently overreaching scheme
which he had propounded to Squire Eben Merritt.

It seems probable that mental states have their own reflective
powers, which sometimes enable one to suddenly see himself in the
conception of another, to the complete modification of all his own
ideas and opinions. So little Jerome Edwards, even while speaking,
began to see his plan as it looked to Doctor Prescott, and not as it
had hitherto looked to himself. He began to understand and to realize
the flaws in it--that he had asked more of Doctor Prescott than he
would grant. Still, he went on, and the doctor heard him through
without a word.

"Who put you up to this?" the doctor asked, when he had finished.

"Nobody, sir."

"Your mother?"

"No, sir."

"Did you ever hear your father propose anything like this?"

"No, sir."

"Who did? Speak the truth."

"I did."

"You thought out this plan yourself?"

"Yes, sir."

"Look at me."

Jerome, flushing with angry shame at his own simplicity as revealed
to him by this other, older, superior intellect, yet defiant still at
this attack upon his truth, looked the doctor straight in his keen
eyes.

"Are you speaking the truth?"

"Yes, sir."

Still the doctor looked at him, and Jerome would not cast his eyes
down, nor, indeed, could. He felt as if his very soul were being
stretched up on tiptoe to the doctor's inspection.

"Children had better follow the wisdom of their elders," said the
doctor. He would not even deign to explain to this boy the absurdity
of his scheme.

He replaced the great gold watch in his pocket. "I will be in soon,
and talk over matters with your mother," he said, turning away.

Jerome gave a gasp. He stumbled forward, as if to fall on his knees
at the doctor's feet.

"Oh, sir, don't, don't!" he cried out.

"Don't what?"

"Don't foreclose the mortgage. It will kill mother."

"You don't know what you are talking about," said the doctor, calmly.
"Children should not meddle in matters beyond them. I will settle it
with your mother."

"Mother's sick!" gasped Jerome. The doctor was moving with his
stately strut to the door. Suddenly the boy, in a great outburst of
boldness, flung himself before this great man of his childhood and
arrested his progress. "Oh, sir, tell me," he begged--"tell me what
you're going to do!"

The doctor never knew why he stopped to explain and parley. He was
conscious of no softening towards this boy, who had so repelled him
with his covert rebellion, and had now been guilty of a much greater
offence. An appeal to a goodness which is not in him is to a
sensitive and vain soul a stinging insult. Doctor Prescott could have
administered corporal punishment to this boy, who seemed to him to be
actually poking fun at his dignity, and yet he stopped and answered:

"I am going to take your house into my hands," said Doctor Prescott,
"and your mother can live in it and pay me rent."

"We can't pay rent any better than interest money."

"If you can't pay the rent, I shall be willing to take that wood-lot
of your father's," said Doctor Prescott. "I will talk that over with
your mother."

Jerome looked at him. There was a dreadful expression on his little
boyish face. His very lips were white. "You are goin' to take our
woodland for rents?"

"If you can't pay them, of course. Your mother ought to be glad she
has it to pay with."

"Then we sha'n't have anything."

Doctor Prescott endeavored to move on, but Jerome fairly crowded
himself between him and the door, and stood there, his pale face
almost touching his breast, and his black eyes glaring up at him with
a startling nearness as of fire.

"You are a wicked man," said the boy, "and some day God will punish
you for it."

Then there came a grasp of nervous hands upon his shoulders, like the
clamp of steel, the door was opened before him, and he was pushed
out, and along the entry at arm's-length, and finally made to descend
the south door-steps at a dizzy run. "Go home to your mother,"
ordered Doctor Prescott. Still, he did not raise his voice, his color
had not changed, and he breathed no quicker. Births and deaths, all
natural stresses of life, its occasional tragedies, and even his own
bitter wrath could this small, equally poised man meet with calm
superiority over them and command over himself. Doctor Seth Prescott
never lost his personal dignity--he could not, since it was so
inseparable from his personality. If he chastised his son, it was
with the judicial majesty of a king, and never with a self-demeaning
show of anger. He ate and drank in his own house like a guest of
state at a feast; he drove his fine sorrel in his sulky like a
war-horse in a chariot. Once, when walking to meeting on an icy day,
his feet went from under him, and he sat down suddenly; but even his
fall seemed to have something majestic and solemn and Scriptural
about it. Nobody laughed.

Doctor Prescott expelling this little boy from his south door had the
impressiveness of a priest of Bible times expelling an interloper
from the door of the Temple. Jerome almost fell when he reached the
ground, but collected himself after a staggering step or two as the
door shut behind him.

The doctor's sulky was drawn up before the door, and Jake Noyes stood
by the horse's head. The horse sprang aside--he was a nervous
sorrel--when Jerome flew down the steps, and Jake Noyes reined him up
quickly with a sharp "Whoa!"

As soon as he recovered his firm footing, Jerome started to run out
of the yard; but Jake, holding the sorrel's bridle with one hand,
reached out the other to his collar and brought him to a stand.

"Hullo!" said he, hushing his voice somewhat and glancing at the
door. "What's to pay?"

"I told him he was a wicked man, and he didn't like it because it's
true," replied Jerome, in a loud voice, trying to pull away.

"Hush up," whispered Jake, with a half-whimsical, half-uneasy nod of
his head towards the door; "look out how you talk. He'll be out and
crammin' blue-pills and assafoetidy into your mouth first thing you
know. Don't you go to sassin' of your betters."

"He is a wicked man! I don't care, he is a wicked man!" cried Jerome,
loudly. He glanced defiantly at the house, then into Jake's face,
with a white flash of fury.

"Hush up, I tell ye," said Jake. "He'll be a-pourin' of castor-ile
down your throat out of a quart measure, arter the blue-pills and the
assafoetidy."

"I'd like to see him! He is a wicked man. Let me go!"

"Don't you go to callin' names that nobody but the Almighty has any
right to fasten on to folks."

"Let me go!" Jerome wriggled under the man's detaining grasp, as
wirily instinct with nerves as a cat; he kicked out viciously at his
shins.

"Lord! I'd as lief try to hold a catamount," cried Jake Noyes,
laughing, and released him, and Jerome raced out of the yard.

It was then about two o'clock. He should have gone home to his
planting, but his childish patience was all gone. Poor little Jack
had been worsted by the giant, and his bean-garden might as well be
neglected. Human strength may endure heavy disappointments and
calamities with heroism, but it requires superhuman power to hold
one's hand to the grindstone of petty duties and details of life in
the midst of them. Jerome had faced his rebuff without a whimper, and
with a great stand of spirit, but now he could not go home and work
in the garden, and tie his fiery revolt to the earth with spade and
hoe. He ran on up the road, until he passed the village and came to
his woodland. He followed the cart path through it, until he was near
the boundary wall; then he threw himself down in the midst of some
young brakes and little wild green things, and presently fell to
weeping, with loud sobs, like a baby.

All day he had been strained up to an artificial height of manhood;
now he had come down again to his helpless estate of boyhood. In the
solitude of the woods there is no mocking, and no despite for
helplessness and grief. The trees raising their heads in a great host
athwart the sky, the tender plants beneath gathering into their old
places with tumultuous silence, put to shame no outcry of any
suffering heart of bird or beast or man. To these unpruned and
mother-fastnesses of the earth belonged at first the wailing infancy
of all life, and even now a vague memory of it is left, like the
organ of a lost sense, in the heart oppressed by the grief of the
grown world.

The boy unknowingly had fled to his first mother, who had soothed his
old sorrow in his heart before he had come into the consciousness of
it. Had Doctor Prescott at any minute surprised him, he would have
faced him again, with no sign of weakening; but he lay there, curled
up among the brakes as in a green nest, with his face against the
earth, and her breath of aromatic moisture in his nostrils, and
sobbed and wept until he fell asleep.

He had slept an hour and a half, when he wakened suddenly, with a
clear "Hello!" in his ears. He opened his eyes and looked up, dazed,
into Squire Eben Merritt's great blond face.

"Hullo!" said Squire Eben again. "I thought it was a woodchuck, and
instead of that it's a boy. What are you doing here, sir?"

Jerome raised himself falteringly. He felt weak, and the confused
misery of readjusting the load of grief under which one has fallen
asleep was upon him. "Guess I fell asleep," he stammered.

"Guess you'd better not fall asleep in such a damp hole as this,"
said the Squire, "or the rheumatism will catch your young bones. Why
aren't you home planting, sir? I thought you were a smart boy."

"He'll get it all; there ain't any use!" said Jerome, with pitiful
doggedness, standing ankle-deep in brakes before the Squire. He
rubbed his eyes, heavy with sleep and tears, and raised them, dull
still, into the Squire's face.

"Who do you mean by he? Dr. Prescott?"

"Yes, sir."

"Then he didn't approve of your plan?"

"He's going to take our house, and let us live in it and pay rent,
and if we can't pay he's going to take our wood-lot here--" Suddenly
Jerome gave a great sob; he flung himself down wildly. "He sha'n't
have it; he sha'n't--he never shall!" he sobbed, and clutched at the
brakes and held them to his bosom, as if he were indeed holding some
dear thing against an enemy who would wrest it from him.

Squire Eben Merritt, towering over him, with a long string of trout
at his side, looked at him with a puzzled frown; then he reached down
and pulled him to his feet with a mighty and gentle jerk. "How old
are you, sir?" he demanded. "Thought you were a man; thought you were
going to learn to fire my gun. Guess you haven't been out of
petticoats long enough, after all!"

Jerome drew his sleeve fiercely across his eyes, and then looked up
at the Squire proudly. "Didn't cry before him," said he.

Squire Eben laughed, and gave his back a hard pat. "I guess you'll
do, after all," said he. "So you didn't have much luck with the
doctor?"

"No, sir."

"Well, don't you fret. I'll see what can be done. I'll see him
to-night myself."

Jerome looked up in his face, like one who scarcely dares to believe
in offered comfort.

The Squire nodded kindly at him. "You leave it all to me," said he;
"don't you worry."

Jerome belonged to a family in which there had been little
demonstration of devotion and affection. His parents never caressed
their children; he and his sister had scarcely kissed each other
since their infancy. No matter how fervid their hearts might be, they
had also a rigidity, as of paralyzed muscles, which forbade much
expression as a shame and an affectation. Jerome had this tendency of
the New England character from inheritance and training; but now, in
spite of it, he fell down before Squire Eben Merritt, embraced his
knees, and kissed his very feet in their great boots, and then his
hand.

Squire Eben laughed, pulled the boy to his feet again, and bade him
again to cheer up and not to fret. The same impulse of kindly
protection which led him to spare the lives and limbs of old trees
was over him now towards this weak human plant.

"Come along with me," said Squire Eben, and forthwith Jerome had
followed him out of the woods into the road, and down it until they
reached his sister's, Miss Camilla Merritt's, house, not far from
Doctor Prescott's. There Squire Eben was about to part with Jerome,
with more words of reassurance, when suddenly he remembered that his
sister needed such a boy to weed her flower-beds, and had spoken to
him about procuring one for her. So he had bidden Jerome follow him;
and the boy, who would at that moment have gone over a precipice
after him, went to Miss Camilla's tea-drinking in her arbor.

When he went home, in an hour's time, he was engaged to weed Miss
Camilla's flower-garden all summer, at two shillings per week, and it
was understood that his sister could weed as well as he when his
home-work prevented his coming.

In early youth exaltation of spirit requires but slight causes; only
a soft puff of a favoring wind will send up one like a kite into the
ether. Jerome, with the prospect of two shillings per week, and that
great, kindly strength of the Squire's underlying his weakness, went
home as if he had wings on his feet.

"See that boy of poor Abel Edwards's dancin' along, when his father
ain't been dead a week!" one woman at her window said to another.




Chapter X


Squire Eben Merritt had three boon companions--the village lawyer,
Eliphalet Means; a certain John Jennings, the last of one of the
village old families, a bachelor of some fifty odd, who had wasted
his health and patrimony in riotous living, and had now settled down
to prudence and moderation, if not repentance, in the home of his
ancestors; and one Colonel Jack Lamson, also considered somewhat of a
rake, who had possibly tendered his resignation rather than his
reformation, and that perforce. Colonel Lamson also hailed originally
from a good old stock of this village and county. He had gone to the
wars for his country, and retired at fifty-eight with a limp in his
right leg and a cane. Colonel Lamson, being a much-removed cousin of
the lawyer's, kept bachelors' hall with him in a comfortable and
untidy old mansion at the other end of the town, across the brook.

Many nights of a week these four met for an evening of whist or
bezique, to the scandal of the steady-going folk of the town, who
approved not of cards, and opined that the Squire's poor wife must
feel bad enough to have such carousings at her house. But the
Squire's wife, who had in herself a rare understanding among women of
masculine good-fellowship, had sometimes, if the truth had been told,
taken an ailing member's hand at cards when their orgies convened at
the Squire's. John Jennings, being somewhat afflicted with rheumatic
gout, was occasionally missing. Then did Abigail Merritt take his
place, and play with the sober concentration of a man and the quick
wit of a woman. Colonel Jack Lamson, whose partner she was, privately
preferred her to John Jennings, whose overtaxed mental powers
sometimes failed him in the memory of the cards; but being as
intensely loyal to his friends as to his country, he never spoke to
that effect. He only, when the little, trim, black-haired woman made
a brilliant stroke of _finesse_, with a quick flash of her bright
eyes and wise compression of lips, smiled privately, as if to
himself, with face bent upon his hand.

Whether Abigail Merritt played cards or not, she always brewed a
great bowl of punch, as no one but she knew how to do, and set it out
for the delectation of her husband and his friends. The receipt for
this punch--one which had been long stored in the culinary archives
of the Merritt family, with the poundcake and other rich and
toothsome compounds--had often, upon entreaty, been confided to other
ambitious matrons, but to no purpose. Let them spice and flavor and
add measures of fine strong liquors as they would, their punch had
not that perfect harmony of results, which effaces detail, of Abigail
Merritt's.

"By George!" Colonel Jack Lamson was wont to say, when his first
jorum had trickled down his experienced throat--"By George! I thought
I had drunk punch. There was a time when I thought I could mix a bowl
of punch myself, but this is _punch_."

Then John Jennings, holding his empty glass, would speak: "All we
could taste in that last punch that Belinda Armstrong made at my
house was lemon; and the time before that, allspice; and the time
before that, raw rum." John Jennings's voice, somewhat hoarse, was
yet full of sweet melancholy cadences; there was sentiment and pathos
in his "lemon" and "allspice," which waxed almost tearful in his "raw
rum." His worn, high-bred face was as instinct with gentle
melancholy as his voice, yet his sunken black eyes sparkled with the
light of youth as the fine aromatic fire of the punch penetrated his
veins.

As for the lawyer, who was the eldest of the four, long, brown,
toughly and dryly pliant as an old blade of marsh-grass, he showed in
speech, look, nor manner no sign of enthusiasm, but he drank the
punch.

That evening, after Jerome Edwards had run home with his prospects of
two shillings a week and Squire Eben Merritt's assistance, the
friends met at the Squire's house. At eight o'clock they came
marching down the road, the three of them--John Jennings in fine old
broadcloth and a silk hat, with a weak stoop in his shoulders, and a
languid shakiness in his long limbs; the lawyer striding nimbly as a
grasshopper, with the utter unconsciousness of one who pursues only
the ultimate ends of life; and the colonel, halting on his right
knee, and recovering himself stiffly with his cane, holding his
shoulders back, breathing a little heavily, his neck puffing over his
high stock, his face a purplish-red about his white mustache and
close-cropped beard.

The Squire's wife had the punch-bowl all ready in the south room,
where the parties were held. Some pipes were laid out there too, and
a great jar of fine tobacco, and the cards were on the mahogany
card-table--four packs for bezique. Abigail herself opened the door,
admitted the guests, and ushered them into the south room. Colonel
Lamson said something about the aroma of the punch; and John
Jennings, in his sweet, melancholy voice, something gallant about the
fair hands that mixed it; but Eliphalet Means moved unobtrusively
across the room and dipped out for himself a glass of the beverage,
and wasted not his approval in empty words.

The Squire came in shortly and greeted his guests, but he had his hat
in his hand.

"I have to go out on business," he announced. "I shall not be long.
Mrs. Merritt will have to take my place."

Abigail looked at him in surprise. But she was a most discreet wife.
She never asked a question, though she wondered why her husband had
not spoken of this before. The truth was he had forgotten his
card-party when he had made his promise to Jerome, and then he had
forgotten his promise to Jerome in thinking of his card-party, and
little Lucina on her way to bed had just brought it to mind by asking
when he was going. She had heard the promise, and had not forgotten.

"By the Lord Harry!" said the Squire, for he heard his friends
down-stairs. Then, when Lucina looked at him with innocent wonder, he
said, hurriedly, "Now, Pretty--I am going now," and went down to
excuse himself to his guests.

Eliphalet Means, whose partner Abigail had become by this deflection,
nodded, and seated himself at once in his place at table, the
pleasant titillation of the punch in his veins and approval in his
heart. He considered Abigail a better player than her husband, and
began to meditate proposing a small stake that evening.

The Squire, setting forth on his errand to Doctor Prescott, striding
heavily through the sweet dampness of the spring night, experienced a
curious combination of amusement, satisfaction, and indignation with
himself. "I'm a fool!" he declared, with more vehemence than he would
have declared four aces in bezique; and then he cursed his folly, and
told himself that if he kept on he would leave Abigail and the child
without a penny. But then, after all, he realized that singularly
warm glow of self-approval for a good deed which at once comforts and
irradiates the heart in spite of all worldly prudence and wisdom.

That night the air was very heavy with moisture, which seemed to hold
all the spring odors of newly turned earth, young grass, and blossoms
in solution. Squire Eben moved through it as through a scented flood
in which respiration was possible. Over all the fields was a pale
mist, waving and eddying in such impalpable air currents that it
seemed to have a sentient life of its own. These soft rises and
lapses of the mist on the fields might seemingly have been due to the
efforts of prostrate shadows to gather themselves into form. Beyond
the fields, against the hills and woods and clear horizon, pale fogs
arose with motions as of arms and garments and streaming locks. The
blossoming trees stood out suddenly beside one with a white surprise
rather felt than seen. The young moon and the stars shone dimly with
scattering rays, and the lights in the house windows were veiled. The
earth and sky and all the familiar features of the village had that
effect of mystery and unreality which some conditions of the
atmosphere bring to pass.

A strangely keen sense of the unstability of all earthly things, of
the shadows of the tomb, of the dreamy half-light of the world, came
over Eben Merritt, and his generous impulse seemed suddenly the only
lantern to light his wavering feet. "I'll do what I can for the poor
little chap, come what will," he muttered, and strode on to Doctor
Prescott's house.

Just before he reached it a horse and sulky turned into the yard,
driven rapidly from the other direction. Squire Eben hastened his
steps, and reached the south house door before the doctor entered. He
was just ascending the steps, his medicine-case in hand, when he
heard his name called, and turned around.

"I want a word with you before you go in, doctor," called the Squire,
as he came up.

"Good-evening, Squire Merritt," returned the doctor, bowing formally
on his vantage-ground of steps, but his voice bespoke a spiritual as
well as material elevation.

"I would like a word with you," the Squire said again.

"Walk into the house."

"No, I won't come in, as long as I've met you. I have company at
home. I haven't much to say--" The Squire stopped. Jake Noyes was
coming from the barn, swinging a lantern; he waited until he had led
the horse away, then continued. "It is just as well to have no
witnesses," he said, laughing. "It is about that affair of the
Edwards mortgage."

"Ah!" said the doctor, with a fencing wariness of intonation.

"I would like to inquire what you're going to do about it, if you
have no objection. I have reasons."

The doctor gave a keen look at him. His face, as he stood on the
steps, was on a level with the Squire's. "I am going to take the
house, of course," he said, calmly.

"It will be a blow to Mrs. Edwards and the boy."

"It will be the best thing that could happen to him," said the
doctor, with the same clear evenness. "That sick woman and boy are
not fit to have the care of a place. I shall own it, and rent it to
them."

Heat in controversy is sometimes needful to convince one's self as
well as one's adversary. Doctor Prescott needed no increase of warmth
to further his own arguments, so conclusive they were to his own
mind.

"For how much, if I may ask? I am interested for certain reasons."

"Seventy dollars. That will amount to the interest money they pay now
and ten dollars over. The extra ten will be much less than repairs
and taxes. They will be gainers."

"What will you take for that mortgage?"

"Take for the mortgage?"

The Squire nodded.

The doctor gave another of his keen glances at him. "I don't know
that I want to take anything for it," he said.

"Suppose it were made worth your while?"

"Nobody would be willing to make it enough worth my while to
influence me," said the doctor. "My price for the transfer of a good
investment is what it is worth to me."

"Well, doctor, what is it worth to you?" Squire Eben said, smiling.

"Fifteen hundred dollars," said the doctor.

The Squire whistled.

"I am quite aware that the mortgage is for a thousand only," the
doctor said, and yet without the slightest meaning of apology, "but I
consider when it comes to relinquishing it that it is worth the
additional five hundred. I must be just to myself. Then, too, Mr.
Edwards owed me a half-year's interest. The fifteen hundred would
cover that, of course."

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