Jerome, A Poor Man Part 11

Then Jerome, stung to the resolution to show this great Squire, Eben Merritt, that he was not to be cla.s.sed among the children, but was a man indeed, and equivalent to those duties of one which had suddenly been thrust upon him, looked his questioner boldly in the face and answered. "I'm Jerome Edwards," said he; "and Abel Edwards was my father."

Eben Merritt's face changed in a minute. He looked gravely at the boy, and nodded with understanding. "Yes, I know now," said he; "I remember. You look like your father." Then he added, kindly, but with a scowl of perplexity as to what the boy was standing there for, and what he wanted: "Well, my boy, what is it? Did your mother send you on some errand to Mrs. Merritt?"

Jerome sc.r.a.ped his foot, his manners at his command by this time, and his old hat was in his hand. "No, sir," said he; "I came to see you, sir, if you please, sir, and mother didn't send me. I came myself."

"You came to see me?"

"Yes, sir," Jerome sc.r.a.ped again, but his black eyes on the Squire's face were quite fearless and steady.

Squire Eben Merritt stared at him wonderingly; then he cast an uneasy glance at his fis.h.i.+ng-pole, for he had come to the door with his tackle in his hands, and he gave a wistful thought to the brooks running through the young shadows of the spring woods, and the greening fields, and the still trout-pools he had meant to invade with no delay, and from which this childish visitor, bound probably upon some foolish errand, would keep him. Then he found his own manners, which were those of his good old family, courteous alike to young and old, and rich and poor.

"Well, if you've come to see me, walk in, sir," cried Squire Merritt, with a great access of heartiness, and he laid his fis.h.i.+ng-tackle carefully on the long mahogany table in the entry, and motioned Jerome to follow him into the room on the left.

Jerome had never been inside the house before, but this room had a strangeness of its own which made him feel, when he entered, as if he had crossed the border of a foreign land. It was typically unlike any other room in the village. Jerome, whose tastes were as yet only imitative and departed not from the lines to which they had been born and trained, surveyed it with astonishment and some contempt. "No carpet," he thought, "and no haircloth sofa, and no rocking-chair!"

He stared at the skins of bear and deer which covered the floor, at the black settle with a high carven back, at a carved chest of black oak, at the smaller pelts of wolf and fox which decorated walls and chairs, at a great pair of antlers, and even a n.o.ble eagle sitting in state upon the top of a secretary. Squire Merritt had filled this room and others with his trophies of the chase, for he had been a mighty hunter from his youth.

"Sit down, sir," he told Jerome, a little impatiently, for he longed to be away for his fis.h.i.+ng, and the stupid abstraction from purpose which unwonted spectacles always cause in childhood are perplexing and annoying to their elders, who cannot leave their concentration for any sight of the eyes, if they wish.

He indicated a chair, at which Jerome, suddenly brought to himself, looked dubiously, for it had a fine fox-skin over the back, and he wondered if he might sit on it or should remove it.

The Squire laughed. "Sit down," he ordered; "you won't hurt the pelt." And then he asked, to put him at his ease, "Did you ever shoot a fox, sir?"

"No, sir."

"Ever fire a gun?"

"No, sir."

"Want to?"

"Yes, sir."

Jerome did not respond with the ready eagerness which the Squire had expected. He had suddenly resolved, in his kindness and pity towards his fatherless state, knowing well the longings of a boy, to take him out in the field and let him fire his gun, and change, if he could, that sad old look he wore, even if he fished none that day; but Jerome disappointed him in his purpose. "He hasn't much spirit," he thought, and stood upon the hearth, before the open fireplace, and said no more, but waited to hear what Jerome had come for.

The Squire was far from an old man, though he seemed so to the boy.

He was scarcely middle-aged, and indeed many still called him the "young Squire," as they had done when his father died, some fifteen years before. He was a ma.s.sively built man, standing a good six feet tall in his boots; and in his boots, thick-soled, and rusty with old mud splashes, reaching high above his knees over his buckskin breeches, Squire Eben Merritt almost always stood. He was scarcely ever seen without them, except in the meeting-house on a Sunday--when he went, which was not often. There was a tradition that he in his boots, just home from a quail sortie in the swamp, had once invaded the best parlor, where his wife had her lady friends to tea, and which boasted a real Turkey carpet--the only one in town.

Eben Merritt in these great hunting-boots, clad as to the rest of him in stout old buckskin and rough coat and leather waistcoat, with his fair and ruddy face well covered by his golden furze of beard, which hung over his breast, lounged heavily on the hearth, and waited with a n.o.ble patience, eschewing all desire of fis.h.i.+ng, until this pale, grave little lad should declare his errand.

But Jerome, with the great Squire standing waiting before him, felt suddenly tongue-tied. He was not scared, though his heart beat fast; it was only that the words would not come.

The Squire watched him kindly with his bright, twinkling blue eyes under his brush of yellow hair. "Take your time," said he, and threw one arm up over the mantel-shelf, and stood as if it were easier for him than to sit, and indeed it might have been so, for from his stalking of woods and long motionless watches at the lair of game, he had had good opportunities to accustom himself to rest at ease upon his feet.

Jerome might have spoken sooner had the Squire moved away from before him and taken his eyes from his face, for sometimes too ardent attention becomes a citadel for storming to a young and modest soul.

However, at last he turned his own head aside, and his black eyes from the Squire's keen blue eyes, and would then have spoken had not the door opened suddenly and little Lucina come in on a run and stopped short a minute with timid finger to her mouth, and eyes as innocently surprised as a little rabbit's.

Lucina, being unhooded to-day, showed all her shower of s.h.i.+ning yellow curls, which covered her little shoulders and fell to her childish waist. Her fat white neck and dimpled arms were bare and gleaming through the curls, and she wore a lace-trimmed pinafore, and a frock of soft blue wool scalloped with silk around the hem, revealing below the finest starched pantalets, and little morocco shoes.

Squire Eben laughed fondly, to see her start and hesitate, as a man will laugh at the pretty tricks of one he loves. "Come here, Pretty,"

he cried. "There's nothing for you to be afraid of. This is only poor little Jerome Edwards. Come and shake hands with him," and bade her thus, thinking another child might encourage the boy.

With that Lucina hesitated no longer, but advanced, smiling softly, with the little lady-ways her mother had taught her, and held out her white morsel of a hand to the boy. "How do you do?" she said, prettily, though still a little shyly, for she was mindful how her gingerbread had been refused, and might not this strange poor boy also thrust the hand away with scorn? She said that, and looking down, lest that black angry flash of his eyes startle her again, she saw his poor broken shoes, and gave a soft little cry, then made a pitiful lip, and stared hard at them with wide eyes full of astonished compa.s.sion, for the shoes seemed to her much more forlorn than bare feet.

Jerome's eyes followed hers, and he sprang up suddenly, his face blazing, and made out that he did not see the proffered little hand.

"Pretty well," he returned, gruffly. Then he said to the Squire, with no lack of daring now, "Can I see you alone, sir?"

The Squire stared at him a second, then his great chest heaved with silent laughter and his yellow beard stirred as with a breeze of mirth.

"You don't object to my daughter's presence?" he queried, his eyes twinkling still, but with the formality with which he might have addressed the minister.

Jerome scowled with important indignation. Nothing escaped him; he saw that Squire Merritt was laughing at him. Again the pitiful rebellion at his state of boyhood seized him. He would have torn out of the room had it not been for his dire need. He looked straight at the Squire, and nodded stubbornly.

Squire Merritt turned to his little daughter and laid a tenderly heavy hand on her smooth curled head. "You'd better run away now and see mother, Pretty," he said. "Father has some business to talk over with this gentleman."

Little Lucina gave a bewildered look up in her father's face, then another at Jerome, as if she fancied she had not heard aright, then she went out obediently, like the good and gentle little girl that she was.

When the door closed behind her, Jerome began at once. Somehow, that other child's compa.s.sion in the midst of her comfort and security had brought his courage up to the point of attack on fate.

"I want to ask you about the mortgage," said Jerome.

The Squire looked at him with quick interest. "The mortgage on your father's place?"

"Yes, sir."

"Doctor Prescott holds it?"

"Yes, sir."

"How much is it?"

"A thousand dollars." Jerome said that with a gasp of horror and admiration at the vastness of it. Sometimes to him that thousand dollars almost represented infinity, and seemed more than the stars of heaven. His childish brain, which had scarcely contemplated in verity more than a s.h.i.+lling at a time of the coin of the realm, reeled at a thousand dollars.

"Well?" observed Squire Merritt, kindly but perplexedly. He wondered vaguely if the boy had come to ask him to pay the mortgage, and reflected how little ready money he had in pocket, for Eben Merritt was not thrifty with his income, which was indeed none too large, and was always in debt himself, though always sure to pay in time.

Chances were, if Squire Merritt had had the thousand dollars to hand that morning, he might have thrust it upon the boy, with no further parley, taken his rod and line, and gone forth to his fis.h.i.+ng. As it was, he waited for Jerome to proceed, merely adding that he was sorry that his mother did not own the place clear.

The plan that the boy unfolded, clumsily but st.u.r.dily to the end, he had thought out for himself in the darkness of the night before. The Squire listened. "Who planned this out?" he asked, when Jerome had finished.

"I did."

"Who helped you?"

"n.o.body did."

"n.o.body?"

"No, sir."

Suddenly Squire Eben Merritt seated himself in the chair which Jerome had vacated, seized the boy, and set him upon his knee. Jerome struggled half in wrath, half in fear, but he could not free himself from that strong grasp. "Sit still," ordered Squire Eben. "How old are you, my boy?"