Jerome, A Poor Man Part 22

"All I wonder at is," said the Squire, rallying a little, "how you managed to get so much money together."

"Do you want to know? Well, I'll tell you. We've bound shoes, Elmira an' me, for one thing. We've took all they would give us. That wa'n't many, for the regular customers had to come first, and I didn't do any in Abel's lifetime--that is, not after I was sick. I used to a while before that. Abel wouldn't let me when we were first married, but he had to come to it. Men can't do all they're willin' to. I shouldn't have done anything but dress in silk, set an' rock, an'

work scallops an' eyelets in cambric pocket-handkerchiefs, if Abel had had his say. After I was sick I quit workin' on boots, because the doctor he said it might hurt the muscles of my back to pull the needle through the leather; but there's somethin' besides muscles in backs to be thought of when it comes to keepin' body an' soul together. Two days after the funeral I sent Jerome up to Cyrus Robinson, and told him to ask him if he'd got some extra shoes to bind and close, and he come home with some. Elmira and me bound, and Jerome closed, and we took our pay in groceries. The shoes have fed us, with what we got out of the garden. Then Elmira and me have braided mats and pieced quilts and sewed three rag carpets, and Elmira picked huckleberries and blackberries in season, and sold them to your wife and Miss Camilla and the doctor's wife; and Lawyer Means bought lots of her, and the woman that keeps house for John Jennings bought a lot. Elmira picked bayberries, too, and sold 'em to the shoemaker for tallow; she sold a lot in Dale. Elmira did a good deal of the weeding in your sister's garden, so's to leave Jerome's time clear. Then once when the doctor's wife had company she went over to help wash dishes, and she give her three an' sixpence for that.

Elmira said she give it dreadful kind of private, and looked round to be sure the doctor wa'n't within gunshot. She give her a red merino dress of hers, too, but she kept her till after nightfall, and smuggled her out of the back door, with it all done up under her arm, lest the doctor should see. They say she's got dresses she won't never put on her back again--silks an' satins an' woollens--because she's outgrown 'em, an' they're all hangin' up in closets gettin'

mothy, an' the doctor won't let her give 'em away. But this dress she give Elmira wa'n't give away, for I sent her back next day to do some extra work to pay for it. I ain't beholden to n.o.body. Elmira swept and dusted the settin'-room and the spare chamber, and washed the breakfast an' dinner dishes, and I guess she paid for that old dress ample. It had been laid up with camphor in a cedar chest, but it had some moth holes in it. It wa'n't worth such a great sight, after all.

"Jerome he's worked smart, if I have had to drive him to it sometimes. He's wed and dug potatoes everywhere he could git a chance; he's helped 'bout hayin', an' he's split wood. He's sold some herbs and roots, too, over to Dale. Jake Noyes he put him up to that.

He come in here one night an' talked to him real sensible. 'There's money 'nough layin' round loose right under your face an' eyes,' says he; 'all the trouble is you're apt to walk right past, with your nose up in the air. The scent for work an' wages ain't up in the air,'

says he; 'it's on the ground.' Jerome he listened real sharp, an'

the next day he went off an' got a good pa.s.sel of boneset an'

thoroughwort an' hardback, an' carried it over to Dale, an' sold it for a s.h.i.+lling.

"Elmira has done some spinnin', too; I can't spin much, but she's done well enough. Your wife wants some linen pillow-s.h.i.+fts. Elmira can do the weavin', I guess, an' we can make 'em up together. I've got a job to make some fine s.h.i.+rts for you, too. Your wife come over to see about it this week. I dun'no' but she was gettin' kind of afraid you wouldn't git your interest money no other way; but she needn't have been exercised about it, if she was. We got this interest together without your s.h.i.+rts, an' I guess we can the next.

It's been harder work than many folks in this town know anything about, but we've done it." Ann tossed her head with indescribable pride and bitterness. There was scorn of fate itself in the toss of that little head, with its black lace cap and false front, and her speech also was an harangue, reproachful and defiant, against fate, not against her earthly creditor; that she would have disdained.

Squire Eben, however, fully appreciating that, and taking the pictures of pitiful feminine and childish toil which she brought before his fancy as a shame to his great stalwart manhood, spending its strength in hunting and fis.h.i.+ng and card-playing, looked at the woman binding shoes with painful jerks of little knotted hands--for she ceased not her work one minute for her words--and took the bitter reproach and triumphant scorn in her tone and gesture for himself alone.

He felt ashamed of himself, in his great hunting-boots splashed with swamp mud, his buckskins marred with woodland thorn and thicket, but not a mark of honest toil about him. Had he been in fine broadcloth he would not have felt so humiliated; for the useless labor of play cuts a sorrier figure in the face of genuine work for the great ends of life than idleness itself. He would not have been half so disgraced by nothing at all in hand as by that bag of game; and as for the money in that old stocking under the feather-bed, it seemed to him like the fruits of his own dishonesty.

The impulse was strong upon him, then and there, to declare that he would take none of that h.o.a.rd.

"Now look here, Mrs. Edwards," said he, fairly coloring like a girl as he spoke, and smiling uneasily, "I don't want that money."

Ann looked at him with the look of one who is stung, and yet incredulous. Elmira gave a little gasp of delight. "Oh, mother!" she cried.

"Keep still!" ordered her mother. "I dun'no' what you mean," she said to Squire Merritt.

The Squire's smile deepened, but he looked frightened; his eyes fell before hers. "Why, what I say--I don't want this money, this time. I have all I need. Keep it over till the next half."

Squire Eben Merritt had a feeling as if something actually tangible, winged and clawed and beaked, and flaming with eyes, pounced upon him. He fairly shrank back, so fierce was Ann's burst of indignation; it produced a sense of actual contact.

"Keep it till next half?" repeated Ann. "Keep it till next half? What should we keep it till next half for, I'd like to know? It's your money, ain't it? We don't want it; we ain't beggars; we don't need it. I see through you, Squire Eben Merritt; you think I don't, but I do."

"I fear I don't know what you mean," the Squire said, helplessly.

"I see through you," repeated Ann. She had reverted to her first suspicion that his design was to gain possession of the whole property by letting the unpaid interest acc.u.mulate, but that poor Squire Eben did not know. He gave up all attempts to understand this woman's mysterious innuendoes, and took the true masculine method of departure from an uncomfortable subject at right angles, with no further ado.

He opened his game-bag and held up a brace of fat partridges. "Well,"

he said, laughing, "I want you to see what luck I've had shooting, Mrs. Edwards. I've bagged eight of these fellows to-day."

But Ann could not make a mental revolution so easily. She gave a half-indifferent, half-scornful squint at the partridges. "I dun'no'

much about shootin'," said she, shortly. Ann had always been, in her own family, a pa.s.sionate woman, but among outsiders she had borne herself with dignified politeness and formal gentility, clothing, as it were, her intensity of spirit with a company garb. Now, since her terrible trouble had come upon her, this garb had often slipped aside, and revealed, with the indecency of affliction, the struggling naked spirit of the woman to those from whom she had so carefully hidden it.

Once Ann would not have believed that she would have so borne herself towards Squire Merritt. The Squire laid the partridges on the table.

"I am going to leave these for your supper, Mrs. Edwards," he said, easily; but he quaked a little, for this woman seemed to repel gifts like blows.

"Thank ye," said Ann, dryly, "but I guess you'd better take 'em home to your wife. I've got a good deal cooked up."

Elmira made a little expressive sound; she could not help it. She gave one horrified, wondering look at her mother. Not a morsel of cooked food was there on the bare pantry shelves. By-and-by a little Indian meal and water would be boiled for supper. There were some vegetables in the cellar, otherwise no food in the house. Ann lied.

Squire Eben Merritt then displayed what would have been tact in a keenly calculating and a.n.a.lytic nature. "Oh, throw them out for the dogs, if you don't want them, Mrs. Edwards," he returned, gayly.

"I've got more than my wife can use here. We are getting rather tired of partridges, we have had so many. I stopped at Lawyer Means's on my way here and left a pair for him."

A sudden change came over Ann's face. She beamed with a return of her fine company manners. She even smiled. "Thank ye," said she; "then I will take them, if you are sure you ain't robbing yourself."

"Not at all," said the Squire--"not at all, Mrs. Edwards. You'd better baste them well when you cook them." Then he took his leave, with many exchanges of courtesies, and went his way, wondering what had worked this change; for a simple, benevolent soul can seldom gauge its own wisdom of diplomacy.

Squire Eben did not dream that his gift to one who was not needy had enabled him to give to one who was, by establis.h.i.+ng a sort of equality among the recipients, which had overcome her proud scruples.

On the way home he met Jerome, scudding along in the early dusk, having finished his task early. "Hurry home, boy," he called out, in that great kind voice which Jerome so loved--"hurry home; you've got something good for supper!" and he gave the boy, ducking low before him with the love and grat.i.tude which had overcome largely the fierce and callous pride in his young heart, a hearty slap on the shoulder as he went past.

Chapter XIII

There was a good district school in the village, and Jerome, before his father's disappearance, had attended it all the year round; now he went only in winter. Jerome rose at four o'clock in the dark winter mornings, and went to bed at ten, getting six hours' sleep. It was fortunate that he was a hardy boy, with a wirily pliant frame, adapting itself, with no lesions, to extremes of temperature and toil, even to extremes of mental states. In spite of all his hards.h.i.+ps, in spite of scanty food, Jerome thrived; he grew; he began to fill out better his father's clothes, to which he had succeeded.

The first time Jerome wore his poor father's best coat to school--Ann had set in the b.u.t.tons so it folded about him in ludicrous fas.h.i.+on, bringing the sleeves forward and his arms apparently into the middle of his chest--one of the big boys and two big girls at his side laughed at him, the boy with open jeers, the girls with covert giggles behind their hands. They were standing in front of the school-house at the top of the long hill when Jerome was ascending it with Elmira. It was late and cold, and only these three scholars were outside. The girls, who were pretty and coquettish, had detained this great boy, who was a man grown.

Jerome went up the long hill under this fire of covert ridicule.

Elmira, behind him, began to cry, holding up one little shawled arm like a wing before her face. Jerome never lowered his proud head; his unwinking black eyes stared straight ahead at the three; his face was deadly white; his hands twitched at his sides.

The great boy was 'Lisha Robinson; the girls were the pretty twin daughters of a farmer living three miles away, who had just brought them to school on his ox-sled. Their two sweet, rosy faces, full of pitiless childish merriment for him, and half-unconscious maiden wiles towards the young man at their side, towards whom they leaned involuntarily as they t.i.ttered, aroused Jerome to a worse frenzy than 'Lisha's face with its coa.r.s.e leer.

All three started back a little as he drew near; there was something in his unwinking eyes which was intimidating. However, 'Lisha had his courage to manifest before these girls. "Say, Jerome," he shouted--"say, Jerome, got any room to spare in that coat? 'cause Abigail Mack is freezin'."

"Go 'long, 'Lisha," cried Abigail, sputtering with giggles, and giving the young man a caressing push with her elbow.

'Lisha, thus encouraged, essayed further wit. "Say, Jerome, s'pose you can fill out that coat of yours any quicker if I give ye half my dinner? Here's a half a pie I can spare. Reckon you don't have much to eat down to your house, 'cept chicken-fodder, and that ain't very fat'nin'."

Jerome came up. All at once through the glow of his black eyes flashed that spiritual lightning, evident when purpose is changed to action. The girls screamed and fled. 'Lisha swung about in a panic, but Jerome launched himself upon his averted shoulder. The girls, glancing back with terrified eyes from the school-house door, seemed to see the boy lift the grown man from the ground, and the two whirl a second in the air before they crashed down, and so declared afterwards. Jerome clung to his opponent like a wild-cat, a small but terrific body all made up of nerves and muscles and electric fire. He wound his arms with a violent jerk as of steel around 'Lisha's neck; he bunted him with a head like a cannon-ball; he twisted little wiry legs under the hollows of 'Lisha's knees. The two came down together with a great thud. The teacher and the scholars came rus.h.i.+ng to the door. Elmira wailed and sobbed in the background. The slight boy was holding great 'Lisha on the ground with a strength that seemed uncanny.

'Lisha's nose was bleeding; he breathed hard; his eyes, upturned to Jerome, had a ghastly roll. "Let me--up, will ye?" he choked, faintly.

"Will you ever say anything like that again?"

"Let me up, will ye?" 'Lisha gave a convulsive gasp that was almost a sob.

"Jerome!" called the teacher. She was a young woman from another village, mildly and a.s.sentingly good, virtue having, like the moon, only its simply illuminated side turned towards her vision. Weakly blue-eyed and spectacled, hooked up primly in chaste drab woollen and capped with white muslin, though scarcely thirty, she stood among her flock and eyed the fierce combatants with an utter lack of command of the situation. She was a country minister's daughter, and had never taught until her father's death. This was her first school, and to its turbulent elements she brought only the precisely limited lore of a young woman's seminary of that day, and the experiences of early piety.

Looking at the struggling boys, she thought vaguely of that hymn of Isaac Watts's which treats of barking and biting dogs and the desirability of amity and concord between children, as if it could in some way be applied to heal the breach. She called again fruitlessly in her thin treble, which had been raised in public only in neighborhood prayer-meetings: "Jerome! Jerome Edwards!"

"Will you say it again?" demanded Jerome of his prostrate adversary, with a sharp prod of a knee.

After a moment of astonished staring there was a burst of mirth among the pupils, especially the older boys. 'Lisha was not a special favorite among them--he was too good-looking, had too much money to spend, and was too much favored by the girls. In spite of the teacher's half-pleading commands, they made a rush and formed a ring around the fighters.

"Go it, J'rome!" they shouted. "Give it to him! You're a fighter, you be. Look at J'rome Edwards lickin' a feller twice his size. Hi! Go it, J'rome!"

"Boys!" called the teacher. "Boys!"