Jerome, A Poor Man Part 48

Jerome shook his head.

"Suppose I let you have some money at six per cent.; suppose you build the mill, and I take a mortgage on that and the land."

"No, sir."

"Why not? If I am willing to trust a young fellow like you with money, what is your objection to taking it?"

"I would rather wait until I can pay cash down, sir," replied Jerome, st.u.r.dily.

"You'll be gray as a badger before you get the money."

"Then I'll be gray," said Jerome. His handsome young face, full of that stern ardor which was a principle of his nature, confronted the lawyer's, lean and dry, deepening its shrewdly quizzical lines about mouth and eyes.

Means looked sharply at Jerome. "What has started you in this? What makes you think it will be a good thing?" he asked.

"No saw-mill nearer than Westbrook, good water-power, straight course of brook, below the falls can float logs down to the mill from above, then down to Dale. People in Dale are paying heavy prices for lumber on account of freight; then the railroad will go through Dale within five years, and they will want sleepers, and--"

"Perhaps they won't take them from you, young man."

"I have been to Squire Lennox, in Dale; he is the prime mover in the railroad, and will be a director, if not the president; he has given me the refusal of the job."

"Where will you get your logs?"

"I have bargained with two parties."

"Five years is a long time ahead."

"It won't be, if I wait long enough."

"You are a d.a.m.ned fool not to borrow the money. The railroad may go through in another year, and all the standing wood in the county may burn down," said Means, quietly.

"Let it then," said Jerome, looking at him.

The lawyer laughed, silently.

When Jerome went home he had in his pocket a deed of the land, but on the right bank of the brook only, the lawyer having covenanted not to sell or build upon the left bank. Thus he had enough land upon which to build his mill when he should have saved the money. He felt nearer Lucina than he had ever done before. The sanguineness of youth, which is its best stimulant for advance, thrilled through all his veins. He had mentioned five years as the possible length of time before acquisition; secretly he laughed at the idea. Five years! Why, he could save enough money in three years--in less than three years--in two years! It had been only a short time since he had made the last payment on the mortgage, and he had saved his two hundred and sixty-five dollars. A saw-mill would not cost much. He could build a great part of it himself.

That night Jerome truly counted his eggs before they were hatched.

All the future seemed but a nest for his golden hopes. He would work and save--he was working and saving. He would build his mill; as he thought further, the foundation-stones were laid, the wheel turned, and the saw hissed through the live wood. He would marry Lucina; he saw her in her bridal white--

All this time, with that sublime cruelty which man can show towards one beloved when working for love's final good, and which is a feeble prototype of the Higher method, Jerome gave not one thought to the fact that Lucina knew nothing of his plans, and, if she loved him, as she had said, must suffer. When, moreover, one has absolute faith in, and knowledge of, his own intentions for the welfare of another, it is difficult to conceive that the other may not be able to spell out his actions towards the same meaning.

Jerome really felt as if Lucina knew. The next Sunday he watched her come into meeting with an exquisite sense of possession, which he imagined her to understand.

When he did not go to see her that night, but, instead, sat happily brooding over the future, it never once occurred to him that it might be otherwise with her.

All poor Lucina's ebullition of spirits from her pleasant visit, her pretty gowns, and her fond belief that Jerome could not have meant what he said, and would come to see her after her return, was fast settling into the dregs of disappointment.

Night after night she put on one of her prettiest gowns, and waited with that wild torture of waiting which involves uncertainty and concealment, and Jerome did not come. Lucina began to believe that Jerome did not love her; she tried to call her maidenly pride to her aid, and succeeded in a measure. She stopped putting on a special gown to please Jerome should he come; she stopped watching out for him; she stopped healing her mind with hope in order that it might be torn open afresh with disappointment, but the wound remained and gaped to her consciousness, and Lucina was a tender thing. She held her beautiful head high and forced her face to gentle smiles, but she went thin and pale, and could not sleep of a night, and her mother began to fret about her, and her father to lay down his knife and fork and stare at her across the table when she could not eat.

Squire Eben at that time ransacked the woods for choice game, and himself stood over old Hannah or his wife, broiling the delicate birds that they be done to a turn, and was fit to weep when his pretty Lucina could scarcely taste them. Often, too, he sent surrept.i.tously to Boston for dainties not obtainable at home--East India fruits and jellies and such--to tempt his daughter's appet.i.te, and watched her with great frowns of anxious love when they were set before her.

One afternoon, when Lucina had gone up to her chamber to lie down, having left her dinner almost untasted, though there was a little fat wild bird and guava jelly served on a china plate, and an orange and figs to come after, the Squire beckoned his wife into the sitting-room and shut the door.

"D'ye think she's going into a decline?" he whispered. His great frame trembled all over when he asked the question, and his face was yellow-white. Years ago a pretty young sister of his, whose namesake Lucina was, had died of a decline, as they had termed it, and, ever since, death of the young and fair had worn that guise to the fancy of the Squire. He remembered just how his young sister had looked when she was fading to her early tomb, and to-day he had seemed to see her expression in his daughter's face.

Abigail laid her little hand on his arm. "Don't look so, Eben," she said. "I don't think she is in a decline; she doesn't cough."

"What ails her, Abigail?"

Mrs. Merritt hesitated. "I don't know that much ails her, Eben," she said, evasively. "Girls often get run down, then spring up again."

"Abigail, you don't think the child is fretting about--that boy again?"

"She hasn't mentioned his name to me for weeks, Eben," replied Abigail, and her statement carried rea.s.surance, since the Squire argued, with innocent masculine prejudice, that what came not to a woman's tongue had no abiding in her mind.

His wife, if she were more subtle, gave no evidence of it. "I think the best plan would be for her to go away again," she added.

The Squire looked at her wistfully. "Do you think it would, Abigail?"

"I think she would brighten right up, the way she did before."

"She did brighten up, didn't she?" said the Squire, with a sigh.

"Well, maybe you're right, Abigail, but you've got to go with her this time. The child isn't going away, looking as she does now, without her mother."

So it happened that, a week or two later, Jerome, going to his work, met the coach again, and this time had a glimpse of Abigail Merritt's little, sharply alert face beside her daughter's pale, flower-like droop of profile. He had not been in the shop long before his uncle's wife came with the news. She stood in the doorway, quite filling it with her voluminosity of skirts and softly palpitating bulk, holding a little fluttering shawl together under her chin.

"They've gone out West, to Ohio, to Mis' Merritt's cousin, Mary Jane Anstey, that was; she married rich, years ago, and went out there to live, and Abigail 'ain't seen her since. She's been teasin' her to come for years; her own folks are all dead an' gone, an' her husband is poorly, an' she can't leave him to come here. Camilla, she paid the expenses of one of 'em out there. Lucina's been real miserable lately, an' they're worried about her. The Squire's sister, that she was named for, went down in a decline in six months; so her mother has taken her out there for a change, an' they're goin' to make a long visit. Lucina is real poorly. I had it from 'Lizy Wells. Camilla told her."

Jerome s.h.i.+fted his back towards his aunt as he sat on his bench. His face, bent over his work, was white and rigid.

"You're coldin' of the shop off, Belindy," said Ozias.

"Well, I s'pose I be," said she, with a pleasant t.i.tter of apology, and backed off the threshold and shut the door.

"That's a woman," said Ozias, "who 'ain't got any affairs of her own, but she's perfectly contented an' happy with her neighbors', taken weak. That's the kind of woman to marry if you ain't got anythin' to give her--no money, no interests in life, no anythin'."

Jerome made no reply. His uncle gave a shrewd glance at him. "When ye can't eat lollypops, it's jest as well not to have them under your nose," he remarked, with seemingly no connection, but Jerome said nothing to that either.

He worked silently, with fierce energy, the rest of the morning. He had not heard before of Lucina's ill health; she had not been to church the Sunday previous, but he had thought of nothing serious from that. Now the dreadful possibility came to him--suppose she should die and leave his world entirely, of what avail would all his toil be then? When he went home that noon he ate his dinner hastily, then, on his way back to the shop, left the road, crossed into a field, and sat down in the wide solitude, on a rock humping out of the dun roll of sere gra.s.s-land. Always, in his stresses of spirit, Jerome sought instinctively some closet which he had made of the free fastnesses of nature.

The day was very dull and cold; snow threatened, should the weather moderate. Overhead was a suspended drift of gray clouds. The earth was stark as a corpse in utter silence. The stillness of the frozen air was like the stillness of death and despair. A fierce blast would have given at least the sense of life and fighting power. "Suppose she dies," thought Jerome--"suppose she dies."

He tried to imagine the world without Lucina, but he could not, for with all his outgoing spirit his world was too largely within him.

For the first time in his life, the conception of the death of that which he loved better than his life was upon him, and it was a conception of annihilation. "If Lucina is not, then I am not, and that upon which I look is not," was in his mind.

When he rose, he staggered, and could scarcely see his way across the field. When he entered his uncle's shop, Ozias looked at him sharply.

"If you're sick you'd better go home and go to bed," he said, in a voice of harsh concern.