Jerome, A Poor Man Part 59

"When I get money enough," Jerome replied, with a st.u.r.dy fling of a log.

"'Ain't ye got most enough?"

"No."

"Ye ought to have. What ye done with it?"

"Put it to a good use," Jerome said, with no resentment of the other's curiosity.

"Why don't ye hire money, if ye 'ain't got enough?"

"I don't hire money," answered Jerome, and heaved another log with a splendid swing from his shoulders.

Cheeseman looked at him doubtfully. "Well," he said, "I 'ain't got none to hire. I've got my money out of mills on the banks of roarin'

streams, an' I'm goin' to keep it out. I believe in Providence, but I don't believe in temptin' of it. I 'ain't got no money to hire."

"And I don't want to hire, so we sha'n't quarrel about that," Jerome replied, shortly.

"I don't say that I wouldn't let ye have a little money, if you needed it, an' it was for somethin' safe for both of us," said Cheeseman, uneasily, "but, as I said before, I don't believe in temptin' of Providence, especially when it seems set agin you."

"I am not going to s.h.i.+rk any blame off on to Providence," Jerome responded, scornfully. "It was Stimson's weak dam up above."

"Mebbe the dam was weak, but Providence took advantage of it,"

insisted Cheeseman, who, in spite of his cheerful temperament, had a gloomy theology. "I'd like to know why ye think your mill went down; do ye think ye done anything to deserve it?" he said, further, in an argumentative tone.

"If I thought I had, I'd do it again," Jerome returned, and went off to a distant pile of lumber out of sound of Cheeseman's voice.

He felt a proud sensitiveness, almost a shame, over his calamity, which he would have been at a loss to explain. All day long, when men came to view the scene of disaster, he tried to avoid them. He shrank in spirit even from their sympathy.

"No worse for me than for anybody else," he would reply, when told repeatedly, with gruff condolence, that it was hard luck. His sensitiveness might have arisen from some hereditary taint from his orthodox ancestors of their belief that misfortune is the whip-lash for sin, or from his native resentment of pity. At home he could not talk of it either with his mother or Elmira; as for his father, he sat in the sun and dozed. It was doubtful if he fully realized what had happened.

Jerome worked in the woods that day until after dark; when he went home he found that the Squire had been there with a request for him to be one of the bearers at the Colonel's funeral. That was considered a post of melancholy honor, and his mother looked sadly important over it.

"I s'pose as long as the poor Colonel is gone himself, an' there's only three left that he used to be so intimate with, that they thought you would be a good one," said she.

"It is strange they did not ask some one nearer his age," Jerome said, wonderingly.

The funeral was appointed for the next afternoon. Jerome sat in the parlor of the Means house with the mourners, who were few, as the dead man had no kin in Upham. Indeed, there was n.o.body except his three old friends, his house-keeper, and Abigail Merritt and Lucina.

Jerome did not look at Lucina, nor she at him; as the service went on, he heard her weeping softly. The minister, Solomon Wells, standing near the black length of the coffin, lifted his voice in eulogy of the dead. The parlor door-way and that of the room beyond, were set with faces straining with attention.

The minister's voice was weak; every now and then people looked inquiringly at one another, and there were fine hisses of interrogation. This parlor of the Means house had never been used since the time of the lawyer's mother. Women had been hard at work there all day, but still there was over everything a dim, filmy effect, as of petrified dust and damp. A great pier-gla.s.s loomed out of the gloom of a wall like a sheet of fog, with scarcely a gleam of gold left in its tarnished frame. The steel engravings over the mantel-shelf and between the windows showed blue hazes of mildew. The mahogany and rosewood of the furniture was white in places; there had been a good fire all day, but all the covers and the carpet steamed in one's face with cold damp. However, scarcely a woman in Upham but would have been willing to be a legitimate mourner for the sake of investigating the mysterious best-room, which had had a certain glory in the time of the lawyer's mother.

A great wreath of white flowers lay on the coffin. Its breathless sweetness clung to the nostrils and seemed to fill the whole house.

Now and then a curl of pungent smoke floated from the door-cracks of the air-tight stove. All the high lights in the room were the silver of the coffin tr.i.m.m.i.n.gs and the white wreath.

Solomon Wells had a difficult task. The popular opinion of Colonel Jack Lamson in Upham was that he had led a hard life, and had hastened his end by strong drink. He could neither tell the commonly accepted truth out of respect to the deceased, nor lies out of regard to morality. However, one favorable point in the character of the deceased, upon which people were agreed, was his geniality and bluff heartiness of good-humor. That the minister so enlarged and displayed to the light of admiration that he almost made of it the aureole of a saint. He was obliged then to take refuge in the broad field of generalities, and discourse upon his text of "All flesh is as gra.s.s,"

until his hearers might well lose sight of the importance of any individual flicker of a gra.s.s blade to this wind or that, before the ultimate end of universal hay.

Solomon Wells was not a brilliant man, but he had a fine instinct for other people's corns and prejudices. Everybody agreed that his remarks were able; there were no dissenting voices. He concluded with an apt and solemnly impressive reference to the wheat and the chaff, the garnering and the casting into furnace, leaving the application concerning the deceased wholly to his audience. That completed his success. When he sat down there was a heaving sigh of applause.

All through the discourse, the hymns, and the concluding prayer, Lucina sobbed softly at intervals, her face hidden in her cambric handkerchief. Somehow it went to her tender soul that the poor Colonel should be lying there with no wife or child to mourn him; then she had loved him, as she had loved everybody and everything that had come kindly into her life. Every time she thought of the corals and the beautiful ear-rings which the Colonel had given her she wept afresh. Moreover, the motive for tears is always complex; hers may have been intensified somewhat by her anxiety about her lover and his misfortune. Now and then her mother touched her arm remonstratingly. "Hush; you'll make yourself sick, child," she whispered, softly; but poor Lucina was helpless before her grief.

The Squire, John Jennings, and Lawyer Means all sat by the dead body of their friend, with pale and sternly downcast faces. Jerome looked scarcely less sad. He remembered as he sat there every kind word which the Colonel had ever spoken to him, and every one seemed magnified a thousand-fold. This call to lend his living strength towards the bearing of the dead man to his last home seemed like a call to a labor of love and grat.i.tude, though he was still much perplexed that he should have been selected.

"There's Doctor Prescott and Cyrus Robinson and Uncle Ozias--any one of them nearer his own age," he thought. It was not until the next day but one that the mystery was solved. That night Lawyer Eliphalet Means came to see Jerome, and informed him that the Colonel had left a will, whereby he was ent.i.tled to a legacy of twenty-five thousand dollars.

Chapter x.x.xVII

Colonel Lamson's will divided sixty-five thousand dollars among five legatees--ten thousand was given to John Jennings, five thousand to Eliphalet Means, five thousand to Eben Merritt, twenty thousand to Lucina Merritt, and twenty-five thousand to Jerome Edwards.

Upham was not astonished by the first four bequests; the last almost struck it dumb. "What in creation did he leave twenty-five thousand dollars to that feller for? He wa'n't nothin' to him," Simon Ba.s.set stammered, when he first heard the news on Tuesday night in Robinson's store. His face was pale and gaping, and folk stared at him.

Suddenly a man cried out, "By gosh, J'rome promised to give the hull on't away! Don't ye remember?"

"That's so," cried another; "an' Doctor Prescott an' Ba.s.set have got to hand out ten thousand apiece if he does. Fork over, Simon."

"Guess ye'll wait till doomsday afore J'rome sticks to his part on't," said Ba.s.set, with a sneer; but his lips were white.

"No, I won't; no, I won't," responded the man, hilariously. "J'rome's goin' to do it; Jake here says he heard so; it come real straight."

He winked at the others, who closed around, grinning maliciously.

Ba.s.set broke through them with an oath and made for the door. "It's a d.a.m.ned lie, I tell ye!" he shouted, hoa.r.s.ely; "an' if J'rome's sech a G-- d-- fool, I'll see ye all to h--, and him too, afore I pay a dollar on't."

When the door had slammed behind him, the men looked at one another curiously. "You don't s'pose J'rome will do it," one said, meditatively.

"He'll do it when the river runs uphill an' crows are white,"

answered another, with a hard laugh.

"I dun'no'," said another, doubtfully. "J'rome Edwards 's always been next-door neighbor to a fool, an' there's no countin' on what a fool 'll do!"

"S'pose you'd calculate on comin' in for some of the fool's money, if he should give it up," remarked a dry and unexpected voice at his elbow.

The man looked around and saw Ozias Lamb. "Ye don't think he'll do it, do ye?" he cried, eagerly.

"'Ain't got nothin' to say," replied Ozias. "I s'pose when a fool does part with his money, there's always wise men 'nough to take it."

John Upham, who, with some meagre little purchases in hand, had been listening to the discussion, started for the door. When he had opened it, he turned and faced them. "I'll tell ye one thing, all of ye," he said, "an' that is, _he'll_ do it."

There was a clamor of astonishment. "How d'ye know it? Did he tell ye so?" they shouted.

"Wait an' see," returned John Upham, and went out.

Plodding along his homeward road, a man pa.s.sed him at a rapid stride.

John Upham started. "Hullo, J'rome," he called, but getting no response, thought he had been mistaken.