Jerome, A Poor Man Part 39

He had no longer any jealousy of Lawrence Prescott. One day Lawrence had come to the shop when he was at work, and asked to speak to him a moment outside. He told him how matters stood between himself and Elmira. "I like your sister," Lawrence had said, soberly and manfully. "I don't see my way clear to marrying her yet, and I told her so. I want you to understand it and know just what I mean. I've got my way to make first. I don't suppose--I can count on much encouragement from father in this. You know it's no disparagement to Elmira, Jerome. You know father."

"Does your father know about it?" asked Jerome.

"I told mother," Lawrence answered, "and she advised me to say nothing about it to father yet. Mother thought I had better go on and study medicine, and get ready to practice, and perhaps then father might think better of it. She says we are both young enough to wait two or three years."

Jerome, in his leather ap.r.o.n, with his grimy hands, and face even, darkened with the tan of the leather, looked half suspiciously and bitterly at this other young man in his fine cloth and linen, with his white hands that had never done a day's labor. "You know what you are about?" he said, almost roughly. "You know what you are, you know what she is, and what we all are. You know you can't separate her from anything."

"I don't want to," cried Lawrence, with a great blush of fervor.

"I'll be honest with you, Jerome. I didn't know what to do at first.

I knew how much I thought of your sister, and I hoped she thought something of me, but I knew how father would feel, and I was dependent on him. I knew there was no sense in my marrying Elmira, or any other girl, against his wishes, and starving her."

"There are others he would have you marry," said Jerome, a pallor creeping through the leather grime on his face.

Lawrence colored. "Yes, I suppose so," he said, simply; "but it's no use. I could never marry any other girl than Elmira, no matter how rich and handsome she was, nor how much she pleased father, even if she cared about me, and she wouldn't."

"You have been--going a little with some one else, haven't you?"

Jerome asked, hoa.r.s.ely.

Lawrence stared. "What do you mean?"

"I--saw you riding--"

"Oh," said Lawrence, laughing, "you mean I've been horseback-riding with Lucina Merritt. That was nothing."

"It wasn't nothing if she thought it was something," Jerome said, with a flash of white face and black eyes at the other.

Lawrence looked wonderingly at him, laughed first, then responded with some indignation, "Good Lord, Jerome, what are you talking about?"

"What I mean. My sister doesn't marry any man over another woman's heart if I know it."

"Good Lord!" said Lawrence. "Why, Jerome, do you suppose I'd hurt little Lucina? She doesn't care for me in that way, she never would.

And as for me--why, look here, Jerome, I never so much as held her hand. I never looked at her even, in any way--" Lawrence shook his head in emphatic reiteration of denial.

"I might as well tell you that Lucina was the one I meant when I said father would like others better," continued Lawrence, "but Lucina Merritt would never care anything about me, even if I did about her, and I never could. Handsome as she is, and I do believe she's the greatest beauty in the whole county, she hasn't the taking way with her that Elmira has--you must see that yourself, Jerome."

Jerome laughed awkwardly. n.o.body knew how much joy those words of Lawrence Prescott's gave him, and how hard he tried to check the joy, because it should not matter to him except for Elmira's sake.

"Did you ever see a girl with such sweet ways as your sister?"

persisted Lawrence.

"Elmira is a good girl," Jerome admitted, confusedly. He loved his sister, and would have defended her against depreciation with his life, but he compared inwardly, with scorn, her sweet ways with Lucina's.

"There isn't a girl her equal in this world," cried her lover, enthusiastically. "Don't you say so, Jerome? You're her brother, you know what she is. Did you ever see anything like that cunning little face she makes, when she looks up at you?"

"Elmira's a good girl," Jerome repeated.

Lawrence had to be contented with that. He went on, to tell Jerome his plans with regard to the engagement between himself and Elmira.

He was clearly much under the wise influence of his mother. "Mother says, on Elmira's account as well as my own, I had better not pay regular attention to her," he said, ruefully, yet with submission.

"She says to go to see her occasionally, in a way that won't make talk, and wait. She's coming to see Elmira herself. I've talked it over with her, and she's agreed to it all, as, of course, she would.

Some girls wouldn't, but she--Jerome, I don't believe when we've been married fifty years that your sister will ever have refused to do one single thing I thought best for her."

Jerome nodded with a puzzled and wistful expression, puzzled because of any man's so exalting his sister when Lucina Merritt was in the world, wistful at the sight of a joy which he must deny himself.

When he went home that night he saw by the way his mother and sister looked up when he entered the room that they were wondering if Lawrence had told him the news, and what he thought of it. Elmira's face was so eager that he did not wait. "Yes, I've seen him," he said.

Elmira blushed, and quivered, and bent closer over her work.

"What did I tell you?" said his mother, with a kind of tentative triumph.

"You don't know now what Doctor Prescott will say," said Jerome.

"Lawrence says his mother thinks his father will come round by-and-by, when he gets started in his profession; he always liked Elmira."

"Well, there's one thing," said Jerome, "and that is--of course you and Elmira are not under my control, but no sister of mine will ever enter any family where she is not welcome, with my consent."

"Lawrence says he knows his father will be willing by-and-by," said Elmira, tremulously.

"You know Doctor Prescott always liked your sister," said Ann Edwards.

"Well, if he likes her well enough to have her marry his son, it's all right," said Jerome, and went out to wash his hands and face before supper.

That night Lawrence stole in for a short call. When Elmira came up-stairs after he had gone, Jerome, who had been reading in his room, opened his door and called her in.

"Look here, Elmira," said he, "I don't want you to think I don't want you to be happy. I do."

Elmira held out her arms towards him with an involuntary motion. "Oh, Jerome!" she whispered.

The brother and sister had always been chary of caresses, but now Jerome drew Elmira close, pressed her little head against his shoulder, and let her cry there.

"Don't, Elmira," he said, at length, brokenly, smoothing her hair.

"You know brother wants you to be happy. You are the only little sister he's got."

"Oh, Jerome, I couldn't help it!" sobbed Elmira.

"Of course you couldn't," said Jerome. "Don't cry--I'll work hard and save, and maybe I can get enough money to give you a house and furniture when you're married, then you won't be quite so beholden."

"But you'll--get married yourself, Jerome," whispered Elmira, who had built a romance about her brother and Lucina after the night of the party.

"No, I shall never get married myself," said Jerome, "all my money is for my sister." He laughed, but that night after Elmira was fast asleep in her chamber across the way, he lay awake tasting to the fullest his own cup of bitterness from its contrast with another's sweet.

The longing to see Lucina, to have only the sight of her dear beautiful face to comfort him, grew as the weeks went on, but he would not yield to it. He had, however, to reckon against odds which he had not antic.i.p.ated, and they were the innocent schemes of Lucina herself. She had hoped at first that his call was only deferred, that he would come to see her of his own accord, but she soon decided that he would not, and that all the advances must be from herself, since she was undoubtedly at fault. She had fully resolved to make amends for any rudeness and lack of cordiality of which she might have been guilty, at the first opportunity she should have. She planned to speak to him going home from meeting, or on some week day on the village street--she had her little speech all ready, but the chance to deliver it did not come.

But when she went to meeting Sunday after Sunday, dressed in her prettiest, looking like something between a rose and an angel, and no Jerome was there for her soft backward glances, and when she never met him when she was alone on the village street, she grew impatient.

About this time Lucina's father bought her a beautiful little white horse, like the milk-white palfrey of a princess in a fairy tale, and she rode every day over the county. Usually Squire Eben accompanied her on a tall sorrel which had been in his possession for years, but still retained much youthful fire. The sorrel advanced with long lopes and fretted at being reined to suit the pace of the little white horse, and Squire Eben had disliked riding from his youth, unless at a hard gallop with gun on saddle, towards a distant lair of game. Both he and the tall sorrel rebelled as to their nerves and muscles at this ladylike canter over smooth roads, but the Squire would neither permit his tender Lucina to ride fast, lest she get thrown and hurt, or to ride alone.

Lawrence Prescott never asked her to ride with him in those days.

Lucina in her blue habit, with a long blue plume wound round her hat and floating behind in the golden blowing of her curls, on her pretty white horse, and the great booted Squire on his sorrel, to her side, reined back with an ugly strain on the bits, were a frequent spectacle for admiration on the county roads. No other girl in Upham rode.