Jerome, A Poor Man Part 52

"Two hundred an' seventy dollars--it's twelve per cent."

"And you can't raise it?"

"Might as well try to raise the dead."

"Well, I can let you have it," said Jerome.

"You?"

"Yes."

His uncle looked at him with his sharp, strained eyes; then he made a hoa.r.s.e noise, between a sob and a cough. "Rob you of that money you've been savin' to build your mill! We'll take to the woods first!" he cried.

"I've saved a good deal more than two hundred and seventy dollars."

"You want every dollar of it for your mill. Don't talk to me."

"I'd want every dollar if I was going to build it, but I am not,"

said Jerome.

"What d'ye mean? Ain't ye goin' to start it to-morrow?"

"No, I've decided not to."

"Why not, I'd like to know?"

"I'm going to wait until the Dale railroad seems a little nearer. I shouldn't have much business for the mill now if I built it, and there's no use in its standing rotting. I'm going to wait a little."

Poor Ozias Lamb looked at him with his keen old eyes, which were, perhaps, dulled a little by the selfishness of his sore distress.

"D'ye mean what ye say, J'rome?" he asked, wistfully, in a tone that was new to him.

"Yes, I do; you can have the money as well as not."

"I'll give ye my note, an' ye can have this piece of land an' the shop--this ain't mortgaged--as security, an' I'll pay ye--fair per cent.," Ozias said, hesitatingly.

"All right," returned Jerome.

"An'," Ozias faltered, "I'll work my fingers to the bone; I'll steal--but you shall have your money back before you are ready to begin the mill."

"That may be quite a while," Jerome said, laughing as openly as a child. His uncle suspected nothing, though once he could scarcely have been deceived.

"I've been round to Uncle Adoniram's to-night," Jerome added, "to get him to come here to-morrow and help with that lot of shoes. I'm going to take up with an offer I've had to cut some wood on shares. I think I can make some money out of it, and it'll be a change from so much shoemaking, for a while."

"You never was the build for a shoemaker," said his uncle.

Chapter x.x.xIII

Jerome gave his mother the same reason which he had given Ozias for the postponement of the mill.

"It seems to me it's dreadful queer you didn't find out it wa'n't best till the day before you were goin' to start work on it," said she, but she suspected nothing.

As for Elmira, she manifested little interest in that or anything else. She was not well that autumn. Elmira's morbidly sensitive temperament was working her harm under the trial of circ.u.mstances.

Extreme love, sensitiveness, and self-depreciation in some natures produce jealousy as unfailingly as a chemical combination its given result. Elmira, though constantly spurring herself into trust in her lover, was again jealous of him and Lucina Merritt.

Lawrence had been seen riding and walking with Lucina. He had called at the Squire's on several evenings, when Elmira had hoped that he might visit her. She was too proud to mention the matter to Lawrence, but she began to be galled into active resentment by her clandestine betrothal. Why should not everybody know that she had a beau like other girls; that Lawrence was hers, not Lucina Merritt's? Elmira wished, recklessly and defiantly, that people could find out every time that Lawrence came to see her. Whenever she heard a hint to the effect that he was attentive to her, she gave it significance by her bearing. Possibly in that way she herself precipitated matters.

She had not been feeling well for some time, having every afternoon a fever-ache in her limbs and back, and a sensation of weariness which almost prostrated her, when, one evening, Lawrence came, and, an hour afterwards, his father.

Elmira never forgot, as long as she lived, Doctor Prescott's handsome, coldly wrathful old face, as he stood in the parlor door looking at her and Lawrence. He had come straight in, without knocking. Mrs. Edwards had gone to bed, Jerome was not at home.

Lawrence had been sitting on the sofa with Elmira, his arm around her waist. He arose with her, still clasping her, and confronted his father. "Well, father," he said, with an essay at his gay laugh, though he blushed hotly, and then was pale. As for Elmira, she would have slipped to the floor had it not been for her lover's arm.

Doctor Prescott stood looking at them.

"Father, this is the girl I am going to marry," Lawrence said, finally, with a proudly defiant air.

"Very well," replied the doctor; "but when you marry her, it will be without one penny from me, in realization or antic.i.p.ation. You will have only what your wife brings you."

"I can support my wife myself," returned Lawrence, with a look which was the echo of his father's own.

"So you can, before long, at the expense of your father's practice, which he himself has given you the ability to undermine," said the doctor, in his cold voice. "I bid you both good-evening. You, my son, can come home within a half-hour, or you will find the doors locked."

With that the doctor went out; there was a creak of cramping wheels, and a lantern-flash in the window, then a roll, and clatter of hoofs.

Elmira showed more decision of spirit than her lover had dreamed was in her. She drove him away, in spite of his protestations. "All is over between us, if you don't go at once--at once," said she, with a strange, hysterical force which intimidated him.

"Elmira, you know I will be true to you, dear. You know I will marry you, in spite of father and the whole world," vowed Lawrence; but he went at her insistence, not knowing, indeed, what else to do.

The next day Elmira wrote him a letter setting him free. When she had sent the letter she sat working some hours longer, then she went up-stairs and to bed. That night she was in a high fever.

Lawrence came, but she did not know it. He had a long talk with Jerome, and almost a quarrel. The poor young fellow, in his wrath and shame of thwarted manliness, would fain have gone to that excess of honor which defeats its own ends. He insisted upon marrying Elmira out of hand. "I'll never give her up--never, I'll tell you that. I've told father so to his face!" cried Lawrence. When he went up-stairs with Jerome and found Elmira in the uneasy stupor of fever, he seemed half beside himself.

"I'm to blame, father's to blame. Oh, poor girl--poor girl," he groaned out, when he and Jerome were down-stairs again.

That night Lawrence had a stormy scene with his father. He burst upon him in his study and upbraided him to his face. "You've almost killed her; she's got a fever. If she lives through it I am going to marry her!" he shouted.

The doctor was pounding some drugs in his mortar. He brought the pestle down with a dull thud, as he replied, without looking at his son. "You will marry her or not, as you choose, my son. I have not forbidden you; I have simply stated the conditions, so far as I am concerned."

The next morning, before light, Lawrence was over to see Elmira.

After breakfast his mother came and remained the greater part of the day. Elmira grew worse rapidly. Since Doctor Prescott was out of the question, under the circ.u.mstances, a physician from Westbrook was summoned. Elmira was ill several weeks; Lawrence haunted the house; his mother and Paulina Maria did much of the nursing, as Mrs. Edwards was unable. Neither Lawrence nor Mrs. Prescott ever fairly knew if Doctor Prescott was aware that she nursed the sick girl. If he was, he made no sign. He also said nothing more to Lawrence about his visits.

It was nearly spring before Elmira was quite recovered. Her illness had cost so much that Jerome had not been able to make good the deficit occasioned by his loan to Ozias Lamb, as he would otherwise have been. He postponed his mill again until autumn, and worked harder than ever. That summer he tried the experiment of raising some of the fine herbs, such as summer savory, sweet-marjoram, and thyme, for the market. Elmira helped in that. There is always a relief to the soul in bringing it into intimate a.s.sociation with the uniformity of nature. Elmira, bending over the bed of herbs, with the sweet breath of them in her nostrils, gained a certain quiet in her unrest of youth and pa.s.sion. It was as if she kept step with a mightier movement which tended towards eternity. She had persisted, in spite of Lawrence's entreaties, in her determination that he should cease all attention to her. He had gone away, scarcely understanding, almost angry, with her, but she was firm, with a firmness which she herself had not known to be within her capacity.

She looked older that summer, and there was a staidness in her manner. She always worked over the herb-beds with her back to the road, lest by any chance she should see Lawrence riding by with Lucina.