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.”
Somewhat to Jerome's surprise, the lawyer extended a lean, brown hand for his, which he shook warmly, with a hearty “Good-night, sir.”
“I don't believe he was trying to hinder me from giving it, after all,” Jerome thought, as he went down the hill.
Eliphalet Means, shuffling in loose slippers, returned to his sitting-room, where were John Jennings and Eben Merritt. There were no cards, and no punch, and no conviviality for the three bereaved friends that night. The three sat before the fire, and each smoked a melancholy pipe, and each, when he looked at or spoke to the others, looked and spoke, whatever his words might be, to the memory of their dead comrade.
The chair in which the Colonel had been used to sit stood a little aloof, at a corner of the fireplace. Often one of the trio would eye it with furtive mournfulness, looking away again directly without a glance at the others.
When Means entered, he was smiling, for the first time that evening. “Well,” he said, “I have seen something to-night that I have never seen before, that I shall never see again, and that no man in this town has ever seen before, or will see again, unless he lives till the millennium.”
The others stared at him. “What d'ye mean?” asked the Squire.
“I have seen something rarer than a white black-bird, and harder to discover than the north pole. I have seen a poor man, clothed and in his right mind, give away every dollar of a fortune within three days after he got it.”
The two men looked at him, speechless. “He hasn't!” gasped the Squire, finally.
“He has.”
“By the Lord Harry!”
“Well,” said John Jennings, slowly, “if I had started out on a search for such a man I should have wanted more than Diogenes's lantern.”
“And I should have called for blue-lights and rockets, the aurora borealis, chain lightning, the solar system, and the eternal light of nature, but I discovered him with a penny dip,” said Eliphalet Means, chuckling. He stood on the hearth before his two friends, his back to the fire; it was a cool night, and he had got chilled at the open door.
“He is going to give away the whole of it?” John Jennings said, with wondering rumination.
“Every dollar.”
Means looked at them, all the shrewd humor faded out of his face. “I've got something to tell both of you,” he said, gravely; “and, Eben, while I think of it, I have a letter that he wanted given to your daughter. Remind me to hand it over to you to take to her when you go home to-night. I've got something to tell you; the time has come; he said it would. I didn't half believe it, God forgive me. I tell you, I've got a keen scent for the bad in human nature, but he had a keen one for the good. He'd have made a sharp counsel on the right side. After he got his money, he used to talk day and night about the poverty of this town. He had a great heart. He—wanted and intended that twenty-five thousand dollars to go just the way it is going.” The lawyer, with every word, shook his skinny right hand before the others' faces; he paused a second and looked at them with solemn impressiveness; then he continued: “He wanted to give that twenty-five thousand dollars, in equal parts, to the poor of this town, as indicated in that instrument which I drew up at Robinson's for Prescott and Basset, but instead of giving it himself he left it to Jerome Edwards to give. He said that it would amount to the same thing, and I tried to argue him out of it. I did not believe any man could stand the temptation of a fortune between his fingers, but he said Jerome Edwards could and would, and the money was as sure to go as he intended it to as if he doled it out himself in dollars and cents, and he was right. God bless him! And—that twenty-five thousand dollars is going just the way he meant it to go.”
Chapter XXXIX
The next day Jerome went again to Lawyer Means's. It was near noon when he returned; he met many people on the road, and they all looked at him strangely. Men stood in knots, and the hum of their conversation died low when he drew near. They nodded to him with curious respect and formality; after he had passed, the rumble of voices began anew. One woman, whom he met just before he turned the corner of his own road, stopped and held out a slender, trembling hand.
“I want to shake hands with you, J'rome,” she said, in a sweet, hysterical voice. Then she raised to his a worn face, with the piteous downward lines of old tears at mouth and eyes, and a rasped red, as of tears and frost, on thin cheeks. “That money is goin' to save my little home for me; I didn't know but I'd got to go on the town. God bless you, J'rome,” she whispered, quaveringly.
“The Colonel's the one to be thanked,” Jerome said.
“I come under that agreement, don't I?” she asked, anxiously. “They told me that lone women without anybody to support 'em came under it.”
“Yes, you do, Miss Patch.”
“Oh, God bless you, God bless you, J'rome Edwards!” she cried, with a fervor strange upon a New England tongue.
“Colonel Lamson is the one to have the thanks and the credit,” Jerome repeated, pushing gently past her. His face was hot. He wondered, as he approached his house, if his own family had heard the news. As soon as he opened the door he saw that they had. Elmira did not lift a white, dumbly accusing face from her work; his father looked at him with curious, open-mouthed wonder; his mother spoke.
“I want to know if it's true,” she said.
“Yes, mother, it is.”
“You've given it all away?”
“Yes, mother.”
“Your own folks won't get none of it?”
Jerome shook his head. He had a feeling as if he were denying his own flesh and blood; for the moment even his own conscience turned upon him, and accused him of injustice and lack of filial love and gratitude.
Ann Edwards looked at her son, with a face of pale recrimination and awe. She opened her mouth to speak, then closed it without a word. “I never had a black silk dress in my life,” said she, finally, in a shaking voice, and that was all the reproach which she ever offered.
“You shall have a black silk dress anyhow, mother,” Jerome replied, piteously. He went out of the room, and his father got up and followed him, closing the door mysteriously.
“That was a good deal to give away, J'rome,” he whispered.
“I know it, father, and I'll work my fingers to the bone to make it good to you and mother. That's all I've got to live for now.”
“J'rome,” whispered the father, thrusting his old face into his son's, with an angelic expression.
“What is it, father?”
“You shall have my fifteen hundred, an' build a new mill.”
“Father, I'd die before I'd touch a dollar of your money!” cried Jerome, passionately, and, tears in his eyes, flung away out to the barn, whither he was bound, to feed the horse.
He watched all day for a chance to speak alone to Elmira, but she gave him none, until after supper that night. Then, when he beckoned her into the parlor, she followed him.
“Elmira,” he said, “don't feel any worse about this than you can help. I had to do it.”
“If you care more about strangers than you do about your own, that is all there is to it,” she said, in a quiet voice, looking coldly in his face.
“Elmira, it isn't that. You don't understand.”
“I have said all I have to say.”
“Let me tell you—”
“I have heard all I want to.”
“Elmira, don't give up so. Maybe things will be brighter somehow. I had to do my duty.”
“It is a noble thing to do your duty,” she said, with a bitter smile on her little face. Elmira, that night, seemed like a stranger to Jerome, and maybe to herself. Despair had upstirred from the depths of her nature strange, tigerish instincts, which otherwise might have slept there unmanifest forever. She also had not failed to appreciate Jerome's action in all its bearings upon herself and Lawrence Prescott, and, when she heard of it, had given up all her longing hope of happiness.
“You have to do it, whether it is noble or not,” returned Jerome.
“Of course,” said she, “and if your sister is in the way of it, trample her down; don't stop for that.” She went out, but turned back, and added, harshly, “I saw Jake Noyes this afternoon on my way home. He was coming here to ask you to go up to Doctor Prescott's this evening; he wants to see you. If he says anything about me, you can tell him that as long as he and you do your duty, I am satisfied. I ask nothing more, not even his precious son.” Elmira rushed across the entry, with a dry sob. Jerome stood still a moment; it seemed to him that he had undertaken more than he could bear. A dreadful thought came to him; suppose Lucina were to look upon him as his sister did. Suppose she were to take it all in the same way. It did not seem as if she could, but she was a woman, like his sister, and how could he tell?
Jerome got his hat and went to Doctor Prescott's. He wondered why he had been summoned there, and braced himself for almost anything in the way of contumely, but with no dread of it. The prospect of legitimate combat, where he could hit back, acted like a stimulant after his experience with his sister.
Lawrence Prescott answered his knock, and Jerome wondered, vaguely, at his radiant welcome. He shook his hand with warm emphasis. “Father is in the study,” he said; “walk right in—walk right in, Jerome.” Then he added, speaking close to Jerome's ear, “God bless you, old fellow!”
Jerome gave an astonished glance at him as he went into the study, whose door stood open. Doctor Prescott was seated at his desk, his back towards the entrance.
“Good-evening. Sit down,” he said, curtly, without turning his head.
“Good-evening, sir,” replied Jerome, but remained standing. He stood still, and stared, with that curious retrospection into which the mind can often be diverted from even its intensest channels, at the cases of leather-bound books and the grimy medicine-bottles, green and brown with the sediments of old doses, which had so impressed him in his childhood. He saw, with an acute throb of memory, the old valerian bottle, catching the light like liquid ruby. He had stepped back so completely into his past, of a little, pitiful suppliant, yet never wholly intimidated, boy, in this gloomy, pungent interior, that he started, as across a chasm of time, when the doctor arose, came forward, and spoke again. “Be seated,” he said, with an imperious wave towards a chair, and took one for himself.
Jerome sat down; in spite of himself, as he looked at the doctor opposite, the same old indignant, yet none the less vital, sense of subjection in the presence of superiority was over him as in his childhood. He saw again Doctor Seth Prescott as the incarnation of force and power. There was, in truth, something majestic about the man—he was an autocrat in a narrow sphere; but his autocracy was genuine. The czar of a little New England village may be as real in quality as the Czar of all the Russias.
The doctor began to speak, moving his finely cut lips with clear precision.
“I understand,” said he, “that you have fulfilled the promise which you made in my presence several years ago, to give away twenty-five thousand dollars, should such a sum be given to you. Am I right in so understanding?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Do you know that the instrument, drawn up by Lawyer Means at that time is illegal, that no obligation stated therein could be enforced?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Who told you—Mr. Means?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Before you gave the money or after?”
“Before.”
“You know that I am not under the slightest legal restriction to give the sum for which I stand pledged in that instrument, even though you have fulfilled your part of the agreement.”
“It depends upon what you consider a legal restriction.”
“What do you mean by that?”
“I mean that I make no promise which is not a legal restriction upon myself,” replied Jerome, with a proud look at the other man.
“Neither do I,” returned the doctor, with a look as proud; “but your remark is simply a quibble, which we will pass over. I say again, that I am under no legal restriction, in the common acceptance of that term, to give a fourth part of my property to the poor of this town. That you admit?”
Jerome nodded.
“Well, sir,” said the doctor, “knowing that fact myself, having it admitted by you and all others, I have yet determined to abide by my part of that instrument, and relinquish one fourth part of the property of which I stand possessed.”
Jerome started; he could scarcely believe his ears.
“But,” the doctor continued, “since I am in no wise bound by the terms of the instrument, as drawn up by Lawyer Means, I propose to alter some of them, as I deem judicious for the public welfare. One-fourth of my property, which consists largely of real estate, cannot manifestly be given in ready money without great delay and loss. Therefore I propose giving to a large extent in land, and in a few cases liquidations of mortgage deeds; and—I also propose giving in such proportions and to such individuals as I shall approve and select; a strictly indiscriminate division is directly opposed to my views. I trust that you do not consider that this method is to be objected to on the grounds of any infringement upon my legal restrictions.”
“No, sir, I don't,” replied Jerome.
“There is one other point, then I have done,” said Doctor Prescott. “I have withdrawn my objection to my son's marriage with your sister. That is all. I have said and heard all I wish, and I will not detain you any longer.” Doctor Prescott looked at him with a pale and forbidding majesty in his clear-cut face. Jerome arose, and was passing out without a word, as he was bidden, when the old man held out his hand. He had the air of extending a sceptre, and a haughty downward look, as if the whole world, and his own self, were under his feet. Jerome shook the proffered hand, and went. His hand was on the latch of the outer door, when the sitting-room door on the left opened, and he felt himself enveloped, as it were, in a softly gracious feminine presence, made evident by wide rustlings of silken skirts, pointed foldings of lavender-scented white wool over out-stretched arms, and heaving waves of white lace over a high, curving bosom. Doctor Prescott's wife drew Jerome to her as if he were still a child, and kissed him on his cheek. “Give your sister my fondest love, and may God give you your own reward, dear boy,” she said, in her beautiful voice, which was like no other woman's for sweetness and softness, though she was as large as a queen.
Then she was gone, and Jerome went home, with the scent of lavender from her laces and silks and white wools still in his nostrils, and a subtler sweetness of womanhood and fine motherhood dimly perceived in his soul.
When he got home, he knew, by the light in the parlor windows, that Lawrence was with his sister. He had been in bed some time before he heard the front door shut.
Elmira, when she came up-stairs, opened his door a crack, and whispered, in a voice tremulous with happiness, “Jerome, you asleep?”
“No.”
“Do—you know—about Lawrence and me?”
“Yes; I'm real glad, Elmira.”
“I hope you'll forgive me for speaking to you the way I did, Jerome.”
“That's all right, Elmira.”
Chapter XL
The next morning Jerome was just going out of the yard when he met Paulina Maria Judd and Henry coming in. Paulina Maria held her blind son by the hand, but he walked with an air of resisting her guidance.
“J'rome, I've come to see you about that money,” said Paulina Maria. “I hear you're goin' to give us two hundred and fifty dollars. I told you once we wouldn't take your money.”
“This is different. This is the money Colonel Lamson left me, that I'd agreed to give away.”
“It ain't any different to us. You can keep it.”
“I sha'n't keep it, anyway. For God's sake, aunt, take it! Henry, take it, and get your eyes cured!”
“I sha'n't take money that's given in any such way, and neither will my son. I haven't changed my mind about what I said the other night, and neither has he. You need this money yourself. If the money had been left to us, it would have been different; we sha'n't take it, and you needn't offer it to us; you can count us out in your division. We sha'n't take what Doctor Prescott has offered neither—to give us the mortgage on our house. It's an honest debt, and we don't want to shirk it. If we're paupers, we'll be paupers of God, but of no man!”
“Henry,” pleaded Jerome, “just listen to me.” But it was of no avail. His cousin turned his blind face sternly away from his pleading voice, and went out of the yard, still seeming to strive against his mother's leading hand.
Jerome followed them, still arguing with them; he even walked with them a little, after the turn of the road. Then he gave it up, and went on to the store, where he had an errand. He resolved to see Adoniram, and try to influence him to take the money for his blind son. He could not believe that he would not do so. Long before he reached the store he could hear the gabble of excited voices, and loud peals of rough laughter. “What's going on?” he thought. When he entered, he saw Simon Basset backed up against a counter, at bay, as it were, before a great throng of village men and boys. Basset was deathly white through his grime and beard-stubble, his gaunt jaws snapping like a wolf's, his eyes fierce with terror.
“Shell out, Simon,” shouted a young man, with a butting motion of a shock head towards the old man. “Shell out, I tell ye, or ye'll have a writ served on ye.”
“I tell ye I won't; ye don't know nothin' about it; I 'ain't got no property!” shrieked Simon Basset, amidst a wild burst of laughter.
“He 'ain't got no property, he 'ain't, hi!” shouted the boys on the outskirts, with peals of goblin merriment.
“I tell ye I 'ain't got more'n five thousand dollars to my name!”
“You 'ain't, eh? Where's all your land, you old liar?” asked the young man, who seemed spokesman for the crowd.
“It ain't wuth nothin'. I couldn't sell it to-day if I wanted to.”
“Gimme the land, then, an' we'll take the risk,” was the cry. “J'rome and the doctor have shelled out; now it's your turn, or you'll hev the officers after ye.”
Jerome pushed his way through the crowd. “What are you scaring him for?” he demanded. “He's an old man, and you ought to be ashamed of yourselves.”
“He ain't more'n seventy,” replied the young man, “an' he's smart as a cricket—he's smart enough to gouge the whole town, old 's he is.”
“That's so, Eph!” chorused his supporters.
Jerome grasped Basset by the shoulder. “Don't you know you are not obliged to give a dollar, if you don't want to?” he asked. “That paper wasn't legal.”
The old man shrank before him with craven terror, and yet with the look of a dog which will snap when he sees an unwary hand. “Ye don't git me into none of yer traps,” he snarled. “What made Doctor Prescott give anythin'?”
“He gave because he wanted to keep his promise, not because he was forced to by that paper.”
“Likely story,” said Simon Basset.
“I tell you it's so.”
“Likely story, Seth Prescott ever give it if he wa'n't obliged to. Ye can't trap me.”
“Go and ask him, if you don't believe me,” said Jerome.
“Ye don't trap me, I'm too old.”
“Go and ask Lawyer Means, then.”
“I guess, when ye git me into that pesky lawyer's clutches, ye'll know it! Ye can't trap me. I guess I know more about law than ye do, ye damned little upstart ye! Why couldn't ye have kept your dead man's shoes to home, darn ye? Ye'll come on the town yerself, yet; ye won't have money enough to pay fer your buryin', an' I hope to God ye won't! Curse ye! I'll live to see ye in your pauper's grave yet, old 's I be. Ye thief! I tell ye, I 'ain't got no money. I 'ain't got more'n five thousand dollars, countin' everythin' in the world, an' I'll see ye all damned to hell afore I'll give ye a dollar. Let me out, will ye?” Simon Basset made a clawing, cat-like rush through the crowd to the door.
“I tell you, Simon Basset, you haven't got to give a dollar,” shouted Jerome; but he might as well have shouted to the wind.
“No use, J'rome,” chuckled the shock-headed young man, “he's gone plumb crazy over it. You can't make him listen to nothin'.”
“What do you mean, badgering him so?” cried Jerome, angrily.
“He's a mean old cuss, anyhow,” said the young man, with a defiant laugh.
“That's so! Serves him right,” grunted the others. They were all much younger than Jerome, and many of them were mere boys. It seemed strange that a man as sharp as Basset had taken them seriously.
Jerome, the more he thought it over, was convinced that Simon Basset was half crazed with the fear of parting with his money. When he came out of the store, he hesitated; he was half inclined to follow Basset home, and try to reason him into some understanding of the truth. Then, remembering his violent attitude towards himself, he decided that it would be useless, and went home. He planned to plough his garden that day.
“I've got to work at something,” Jerome told himself; “if it isn't one thing, it's got to be another.” He dwelt always upon Lucina: what she was thinking of him; if she thought that he did not love her, because he had given her up; if she would look at him, if she were to see him, as his sister had done the night before. Jerome had not yet answered Lucina's letter. He did not know how to answer it; but he carried it with him night and day.
He went home, got his horse and plough, and fell to work in his hilly garden ground. His father came out and sat on a stone and watched him happily. Jerome was scarcely accustomed to his father yet, but he treated him as tenderly as if he were a child, and the old man followed him like one. Indeed, he seemed to prefer his son to his wife, though Ann watched him with jealous affection. Ann Edwards had never walked since the night of her husband's return. She never alluded to it; sometimes her children thought that she had not known it herself.
Jerome was still ploughing in the afternoon when his uncle Ozias Lamb came.
Ozias stumped softly through the new-turned mould. He had a folded paper in his hand, and he extended it towards Jerome. “D'ye know anythin' about this?” he asked. His face was ashy.
Jerome brought his horse to a stand. “What is it?”
“Don't ye know?”
“No, I don't.”
“Well, it's that mortgage deed that Basset held on my place, with—the signature torn off, cancelled—” Ozias said, in a hoarse voice. “D'ye know anythin' about it now?”
“No, I don't,” replied Jerome, with emphasis.
“Well,” said Ozias, “I found it under the front door-sill. Belindy said she heard a knock on the front door, but when she went there wa'n't nobody there, an' there was this paper. She come runnin' out to the shop with it. It was jest before noon. What d'ye s'pose it means?”
Jerome took the deed and examined it closely. “Have you read what's written above the heading of it?” he asked.
“No; what is it, J'rome?”
Ozias put on his spectacles; Jerome pointed to a crabbed line above the heading of the mortgage deed.
“I giv as present the forth part of my proputty, this
morgidge to Ozier Lamm.
“Simon
Basset.”
“He's took crazy!” cried Ozias, staring wildly at it.
“Guess he's been crazy over dollars and cents all his life, and this is just an acute phase of it,” replied Jerome, calmly, taking up his plough handles again.
“I b'lieve the hull town's crazy. I've heard that Doctor Prescott has give his place back to John Upham, an' Peter Thomas is comin' out of the poor-farm an' goin' back to his old house. J'rome, I declar' to reason, I b'lieve you're crazy, an' the hull town has caught it. What's that? Who's comin'?”
A wild-eyed little boy, with fair hair stiff to the breeze, came racing across the plough ridges. “Come quick! Come quick!” he gasped. “They've sent me—Doctor Prescott's ain't to home—he's most dead! Come quick!”
“Where to?” shouted Jerome, pulling the tackle off the horse.
“Come quick, J'rome!”
“Where to?”
“Speak up, can't ye?” cried Ozias, shaking the boy by his small shoulder.
“To Basset's!” screamed the boy, shrilly, jerked away from Ozias, and was off, clearing the ground like a hound, with long leaps.
“Lord,” said Ozias, looking at the deed, “it's killed him!”
Jerome had freed the horse from the plough, and now sprang upon his back.
“Ye ain't goin' to ride him bare-back?” asked Ozias.
“I'm not going to stop for a saddle. G'long!” Jerome bent forward, slapped the horse on the neck, dug his heels into his sides, and was off at a gallop.
Ozias followed, still clutching the deed. Abel Edwards came out as he reached the house. “Where's J'rome goin' to?” he asked.
“Down to Basset's; somethin's happened. He's fell dead or somethin'. I'm goin' to see what the matter is.”
“Wait till I git my hat, an' I'll go with ye.”
The two old men went at a fast trot down the road, and many joined them, all hurrying to Simon Basset's.
They had reached Lawyer Means's house, which stood in sight of Basset's, before they met a returning company. “It's no use your goin',” shouted a man in advance. “He's gone. J'rome Edwards said so the minute he see him, an' now Doctor Prescott he's come, an' he says so. He was dead before they cut him down.”
With the throng of excited men and boys came one pale-faced, elderly woman, with her cap awry and her apron over her shoulders. She was Miss Rachel Blodgett, Eliphalet Means's house-keeper.
She took up her position by the Means's gate, and the crowd gathered about her as a nucleus. Other women came running out of neighboring houses, and pressed close to her skirts. Cyrus Robinson's son pushed before her, and, when she began to speak in a strained treble, overpowered it with a coarse volume of bass. “Let me tell what I've got to first,” he ordered, importantly. “My part comes first, then it's your turn. I've got to go back to the store. It was just about noon that Simon Basset come in ag'in and asked for a piece of rope. Said he wanted it to tie his cow with. I got out some rope, and he tried to beat me down on it; asked me if I hadn't got some second-hand rope I'd let him have a piece of. Finally I got mad, and asked him why, if he wasn't willing to pay for rope what it was worth, he didn't use a halter or his clothes-line.
“He whined out that his halter was broke, and he hadn't had a clothes-line for years. That last I believed, quick enough, for I knew he didn't ever have any washing done.
“Then I asked him why he didn't steal a rope if he was too poor to pay for it, and he said he was too poor. He wasn't worth more than five thousand dollars in the world, and he'd given away all he was going to of that. When he got started on that, he ripped and raved the way he did this morning; hang it, if I didn't begin to think he was out of his mind. Then he went off, about ten minutes past twelve, without his rope. I suppose there were pieces of rope enough around, but I got mad, he acted so darned mean about it, and wouldn't hunt it up for him, and I'm glad now I didn't.”
Rachel Blodgett, who had been teetering with eagerness on her thin old ankles, interposing now and then sharp quavers of abortive speech, cut short Robinson's last words with the impetuosity of her delivered torrent. “I washed to-day,” said she. “I didn't wash yesterday because it wasn't a good drying-day, and last week I had my clothes around three days in the tub, and I made up my mind I wouldn't do it again. So I washed to-day.
“I got my clothes all hung out before dinner. I had an uncommon heavy wash to-day, an extra table-cloth—Mr. Means tipped his coffee over yesterday morning—and the sheets of the spare chamber bed were in, so I put up a little piece of line I had, between those two trees, beside my regular clothes-line.
“About an hour ago I thought to myself the clothes ought to be dry, and I'd just step out and look. So I run out, and there were the clothes I'd hung on the little line—some dish-towels, and two of my aprons, and one of Mr. Means's shirts—down on the ground in the dirt, and the line was gone. Thinks I, ‘Where's that line gone to?’
“I stood there gaping, I couldn't make head or tail of it. Then I see the little Crossman boy out in the yard, and I hollered to him—‘Willy,’ says I, ‘come here a minute.’
“He come running over, and I asked him if he'd seen anybody in our yard since noon. He said he hadn't seen anybody but Mr. Basset. He saw him coming out of our yard tucking something under his coat.
“That put me on the track. If I do say it of the dead, and one that's gone to his account in an awful way, Mr. Basset had been over here time and time again, and helped himself. I ain't going to say he stole; he helped himself. He helped himself to our kindling wood, and our hammer, and our spade, and our rake. After the spade went, I made a notch on the rake-handle so I could tell it, and when that went, I slipped over to Mr. Basset's one day when I knew he wasn't there, and there was our rake in his shed. I said nothing to nobody, but I just brought our rake home again, and I hid it where he didn't find it again. Mr. Means, though he's a lawyer, looks out sharper for other folks' belongings than he does for his own. He'd never say anything; he went and bought another spade and hammer, and he'd bought another rake if I hadn't got that.
“When that little Crossman boy said he'd seen Mr. Basset coming out of our yard tucking something under his coat, it put me right on the track, though I couldn't think what he wanted with that little piece of rope. I should have thought he wanted it to mend a harness with, but his old horse died last winter; folks said he didn't have enough to eat, but I ain't going to pass any judgment on that, and I knew he sold his old harness, because the man he sold it to had been to Mr. Means to get damages for being taken in. The harness had broke, and his horse had run away, and the man declared that that harness had been glued together in places.
“But I don't know anything about that. The poor man is dead, and if he glued his harness, it's for him to give account of, not me. I couldn't think what he wanted that rope for, but I felt mad. The rope wasn't worth much, but it was his helping himself to it, without leave or license, that riled me, and there were my clean clothes all down in the dirt—there they are now, you can see 'em there—and I knew I'd got to wash 'em over.
“So I made up my mind I'd got spunk enough, and I'd go right over there and tell Simon Basset I wanted my rope. So I took off my apron and clapped it over my shoulders—I've had a little rheumatism lately, and the wind's kind of cold to-day—and I run over there.
“I—don't know what came over me. When I got to the house, a chill struck all through my bones. I trembled like a leaf. I felt as if something had happened. I thought, at first, I'd turn around and go home, and then I thought I wouldn't be so silly, that it was just nerves, and nothing had happened. I went round to the side door, and I didn't see him puttering around anywhere, so I peeked into the wood-shed. I thought if I saw my rope there I'd just take it, and run home and say nothing to nobody.
“But I didn't see it, so I went back to the door and knocked. I knocked three times, and nobody came. Then I opened the door a crack, and hollered—‘Mr. Basset!’ says I, ‘Mr. Basset!’
“I called a number of times, then I got out of patience. I thought he'd gone away somewhere, and I might as well go in and see if I couldn't find my rope. So I opened the door wide and stepped in.
“It was awful still in there—somehow the stillness seemed to hit my ears. It was just like a tomb. That dreadful horror came over me again. I felt the cold stealing down my back. I made up my mind I'd just peek into the kitchen, and if I didn't see my rope, I wouldn't look any farther; I'd go home.
“So—the kitchen door was ajar, and I pushed it, and it swung open, and—I looked, and there—there!”
Suddenly the woman's shrill monologue was intensified by hysteria. She pointed wildly, as if she saw again the awful sight which she had seen through that open door.
“There, there!” she shrieked—“there! He was—there—oh—Willy—the doctor—Jerome Edwards—Willy—oh, there, there!” She caught her breath with choking sobs, she laughed, and the laugh ended in a wailing scream; she clutched her throat, she struggled, she was beside herself for the time, run off her track of reason by her panic-stricken nerves.
Two pale, chattering women, nearly as hysterical as she, led her, weeping shrilly all the way, into the house, and the crowd dispersed; some, whose curiosity was not yet satisfied, to seek the scene of the tragedy, some to return home with the news. Two men of the latter, walking along the village street, discussed the amount of the property left by the dead man. “It's as much as fifty thousand dollars,” said one.
“Every dollar of it,” assented the other.
“It ain't likely he's made a will. Who's goin' to heir it? He 'ain't got a relation that I know of. All the folks I ever heard of his havin', since I can remember, was his step-father an' his brother Sam, an' they died twenty odd years ago.”
“Adoniram Judd's father was Simon Basset's mother's cousin.”
“He wa'n't.”
“Yes, he was. They both come from Westbrook, where I was born.”
“Now they can pay off the mortgage, and get Henry's eyes fixed.”
“Adoniram Judd ain't goin' to get all that money!”
“I wouldn't sell ye his chance on 't for forty thousand dollars.”
Chapter XLI
During Jerome's absence at Simon Basset's, Squire Eben Merritt's wife came across lots to the Edwardses' house. A little red shawl over her shoulders stood out triangularly to the gusts of spring wind; a forked end of red ribbon on her bonnet fluttered sharply. Abigail Merritt moved with nervous impetus across the fields, like an erratic thread of separate purpose through an even web. All the red of the spring landscape was in the swift passing of her garments. All that was not in straight parallels of accord with the universal yielding of nature to the simplest law of growth was in her soul. She passed on her own errand, cutting, as it were, a swath of spirit through the soft influence of the spring. Abigail Merritt's mouth was tightly shut, her eyes were narrow gleams of resolution, there were red spots on her cheeks. She had left Lucina weeping on the bed in her little chamber; she had said nothing to her, nor her husband, but she had resolved upon her own course of action.
“It is time something was done,” said Abigail Merritt, nodding to herself in the glass as she tied on her bonnet, “and I am going to do it.”
When she reached the Edwardses' house, she stepped briskly up the path, bowing to Mrs. Edwards in the window, and Elmira opened the door before she knocked.
“Good-afternoon; I would like to see your brother a moment,” Abigail announced, abruptly.
“He isn't at home,” said Elmira; “something has happened at Simon Basset's—I don't know what. A boy came after Jerome, and he hurried off. Father's gone too.” Elmira blushed all over her face and neck as she spoke. “Jerome will be sorry he wasn't at home,” she added. She had a curious sense of innocent confusion over the situation.
Mrs. Edwards blushed too, like an echo, though she gave her little dark head an impatient toss.
“Then please ask your brother if he will be so kind as to come to the Squire's after supper to-night,” she returned, in her smart, prettily dictatorial way, and took leave at once, though Elmira urged her politely to come in and rest and wait for her brother's return.
She gave the message to Jerome when he came home. “What do you suppose she wants of you?” she asked, wonderingly. Jerome shook his head.
“Why, you look as white as a sheet!” said Elmira, staring at him.
“I've seen enough this afternoon to make any man look white,” Jerome replied, evasively.
“Well, I suppose you have; it is awful about Simon Basset,” Elmira assented, shudderingly.
Jerome had to force himself to his work after he had received Mrs. Merritt's message. The tragedy of Simon Basset had given him a terrible shock, and now this last set his nerves in a tumult in spite of himself.
“What can she want?” he questioned, over and over. “Shall I see Lucina? What can her mother have to say to me?”
One minute, thinking of Simon Basset, he stood convicted, to his shame, of the utter despicableness of all his desires pertaining to the earth and the flesh, by that clear apprehension of eternity which often comes to one at the sight of sudden death. He settled with himself that wealth and success and learning, and love itself even, where as nothing beside that one surety of eternity, which holds the sequence of good and evil, and is of the spirit.
Then, in a wild rebellion of honesty, he would own to himself that, whether he would have it so or not, to his understanding, still hampered by the conditions of the flesh, perhaps made morbid by resistance to them, but that he could not tell, love was the one truth and reality and source of all things; that life was because of love, not love because of life.
Jerome set his mouth hard as he ploughed. The newly turned sods clung to his feet and made them heavy, as the fond longings of the earth clung to his soul. It seemed to Jerome that he had never loved Lucina as he loved her then, that he had never wanted her so much. Also that he had never been so firmly resolved to give her up. If Lucina had seemed beyond his reach before, she seemed doubly so then, and her new wealth loomed between them like an awful golden flood of separation. “I have given away all my money,” he said. “Shall I marry a wife with money, to make good my loss?” He laughed at himself with bitter scorn for the fancy.
After supper, he dressed himself in his best clothes, and set out for Squire Merritt's, evading as much as he could his mother's questions and surmises. Ann's bitterness at his disposal of his money was softened to loquacity by her curiosity.
“I s'pose,” said she, “that if that poor girl goes down on her knees to you, an' tells you her heart is breakin', that you'll jest hand her over to the town poor, the way you did your money.”
“Don't, mother,” whispered Elmira, as Jerome went out, making no response.
“I'm goin' to say what I think 's best. I'm his mother,” returned Ann. But when Jerome was gone, she broke down and cried, and complained that the poor boy hadn't eat any supper, and she was afraid he'd be sick. Abel, sitting near her, snivelled softly for sympathy, not fairly comprehending her cause for tears. When she stopped weeping, and took up her knitting-work again, he drew a sigh of relief and fell to eating an apple.
As for Elmira, she tried to comfort her mother, and she had an anxious curiosity about Jerome and his call at the Merritts'; but Lawrence Prescott was coming that evening.
Presently Ann heard her singing up-stairs in her chamber, whither she had gone to curl her hair and change her gown.
“I'm glad somebody can sing,” muttered Ann; but in the depths of her heart was a wish that her son, instead of her daughter, could have had the reason for song, if it were appointed to one only. “Women don't take things so hard as men,” reasoned Ann Edwards.
When Jerome knocked at Squire Merritt's door that evening, Mrs. Merritt opened it. For a minute everything was dark before him; he had thought that he might see Lucina. His voice sounded strange in his own ears when he replied to Mrs. Merritt's greeting; he almost reeled when he followed her into the parlor. It was a cool, spring night, and there was a fire on the hearth. A silver branch of candles on the mantel-shelf lit the room.
Mrs. Merritt looked anxiously at Jerome as she placed a chair. “I hope you are well,” she said, in her quick way, but her voice was kind. Jerome thought it sounded like Lucina's. He stammered that he was quite well.
“You look pale.”
When he made no response to that, she added, with a motherly cadence, that he had been through a great deal lately; that she had felt very sorry about the loss of his mill.
Jerome thanked her. He sat opposite, in a great mahogany arm-chair, holding himself very erect; but his pulses sang in his ears, and his downcast eyes scanned the roses in the carpet. He did not understand it, but he was for the moment like a school-boy before the aroused might of feminity of this little woman.
“It is partly about your mill that I want to see you,” said Abigail Merritt. “The Squire has something which he wishes to propose, but he has begged me to do so for him. He thinks my chances of success are better. I don't know about that,” she finished, smiling.
Jerome looked up then, with quick attention, and she came at once to the point. Abigail Merritt, her mind once made up, was not a woman to beat long about a bush. “The Squire has, as you know,” she said, “a legacy of five thousand dollars from poor Colonel Lamson. He wishes to invest part of it. He would like to rebuild your mill.”
Jerome colored high. “Thank him, and thank you,” he said; “but—”
“He does not propose to give it to you,” she interposed, quickly. “He would not venture to propose that, however much he might like to do so. His plan is to rebuild the mill, and for you to work it on shares—you to have your share of the profits for your labor. You could have the chance to buy him out later, when you were able.”
Jerome was about to speak, but Abigail interrupted again. “I beg you not to make your final decision now,” she said. “There is no necessity for it. I would rather, too, that you gave your answer to the Squire instead of me. I have nothing to do with it. It is simply a proposition of the Squire's for you to consider at your leisure. You know how much my husband has always thought of you since you were a child. He would be glad to help you, and help himself at the same time, if you will allow him to do so; but that can pass over. I have something else of more importance to me to say. Jerome Edwards,” said she, suddenly, and there was a new tone in her voice, “I want you to tell me just how matters stand between you and my daughter, Lucina. I am her mother, and I have a right to know.”
Jerome looked at her. His handsome young face was very white. “I—have been working hard to earn enough money to marry,” he said, speaking quick, as if his breath failed him. “I lost my mill. I will not ask her to wait.”
“You had a fortune, but you gave it away,” returned Mrs. Merritt. “Well, we will not discuss that; that is not between you and me, or any human being, if you did what you thought right. Lucina has twenty thousand dollars, you know that?”
Jerome nodded. “Yes,” he replied, hoarsely.
“What difference will it make whether you have the money or your wife?”
“It makes a difference to me,” Jerome cried then, with that old flash of black eyes which had intimidated the little girl Lucina in years past.
“And yet you say you love my daughter,” said Mrs. Merritt, looking at him steadily.
“I love her so much that I would lay down my life for her!” Jerome cried, fiercely, and there was a flare of red over his pale face.
“But not so much that you would sacrifice one jot or one tittle of your pride for her,” responded Abigail Merritt, with sharp scorn. Suddenly she sprang up from her chair and stood before the young man, every nerve in her slight body quivering with the fire of eloquence. “Now listen, Jerome Edwards,” said she. “I know who and what you are, and I know who and what my daughter is. I give you your full due. You have traits which are above the common, and out of the common; some which are noble, and some which render you dangerous to the peace of any one who loves you. I give you your full due, and I give my daughter hers. I can say it without vanity—it is the simple truth—Lucina has had her pick and choice among many. She could have wedded, had she chosen, in high stations. She has a face and character which win love for her wherever she goes. I am not here to offer or force my daughter upon any unwilling lover. If I had not been sure, from what she has told me, and from what I have observed, that you were perfectly honest in your affection for her, I should not have sent for you to-night. I—”
She stopped, for Jerome burst out with a passion which startled her. “Honest! Oh, my God! I love her so that I am nothing without her. I love her more than the whole world, more than my own life!”
“Then give up your pride for her, if you love her,” said Abigail, sharply.
“My pride!”
“Yes, your pride. You have given away everything else, but how dare you think yourself generous when you have kept the thing that is dearest of all? You generous—you! Talk of Simon Basset! You are a miser of a false trait in your own character. You are a worse miser than he, unless you give it up. What are you, that you should say, ‘I will go through life, and I will give, and not take?’ What are you, that you should think yourself better than all around you—that you should be towards your fellow-creatures as a god, conferring everything, receiving nothing? If you love my daughter, prove it. Take what she has to give you, and give her, what is worth more than money, if you had the riches of Crœsus, the pride of your heart.”
Jerome stood before her, looking at her. Then, without a word, he went across the room to a window, and stood there, his back towards her, his face towards the moonlight night outside.
“Is it pride or principle?” he said, hoarsely, without turning his head.