Jerome, A Poor Man Part 65

"But I didn't see it, so I went back to the door and knocked. I knocked three times, and n.o.body came. Then I opened the door a crack, and hollered--'Mr. Ba.s.set!' says I, 'Mr. Ba.s.set!'

"I called a number of times, then I got out of patience. I thought he'd gone away somewhere, and I might as well go in and see if I couldn't find my rope. So I opened the door wide and stepped in.

"It was awful still in there--somehow the stillness seemed to hit my ears. It was just like a tomb. That dreadful horror came over me again. I felt the cold stealing down my back. I made up my mind I'd just peek into the kitchen, and if I didn't see my rope, I wouldn't look any farther; I'd go home.

"So--the kitchen door was ajar, and I pushed it, and it swung open, and--I looked, and there--there!"

Suddenly the woman's shrill monologue was intensified by hysteria.

She pointed wildly, as if she saw again the awful sight which she had seen through that open door.

"There, there!" she shrieked--"there! He was--there--oh--w.i.l.l.y--the doctor--Jerome Edwards--w.i.l.l.y--oh, there, there!" She caught her breath with choking sobs, she laughed, and the laugh ended in a wailing scream; she clutched her throat, she struggled, she was beside herself for the time, run off her track of reason by her panic-stricken nerves.

Two pale, chattering women, nearly as hysterical as she, led her, weeping shrilly all the way, into the house, and the crowd dispersed; some, whose curiosity was not yet satisfied, to seek the scene of the tragedy, some to return home with the news. Two men of the latter, walking along the village street, discussed the amount of the property left by the dead man. "It's as much as fifty thousand dollars," said one.

"Every dollar of it," a.s.sented the other.

"It ain't likely he's made a will. Who's goin' to heir it? He 'ain't got a relation that I know of. All the folks I ever heard of his havin', since I can remember, was his step-father an' his brother Sam, an' they died twenty odd years ago."

"Adoniram Judd's father was Simon Ba.s.set's mother's cousin."

"He wa'n't."

"Yes, he was. They both come from Westbrook, where I was born."

"Now they can pay off the mortgage, and get Henry's eyes fixed."

"Adoniram Judd ain't goin' to get all that money!"

"I wouldn't sell ye his chance on 't for forty thousand dollars."

Chapter XLI

During Jerome's absence at Simon Ba.s.set's, Squire Eben Merritt's wife came across lots to the Edwardses' house. A little red shawl over her shoulders stood out triangularly to the gusts of spring wind; a forked end of red ribbon on her bonnet fluttered sharply. Abigail Merritt moved with nervous impetus across the fields, like an erratic thread of separate purpose through an even web. All the red of the spring landscape was in the swift pa.s.sing of her garments. All that was not in straight parallels of accord with the universal yielding of nature to the simplest law of growth was in her soul. She pa.s.sed on her own errand, cutting, as it were, a swath of spirit through the soft influence of the spring. Abigail Merritt's mouth was tightly shut, her eyes were narrow gleams of resolution, there were red spots on her cheeks. She had left Lucina weeping on the bed in her little chamber; she had said nothing to her, nor her husband, but she had resolved upon her own course of action.

"It is time something was done," said Abigail Merritt, nodding to herself in the gla.s.s as she tied on her bonnet, "and I am going to do it."

When she reached the Edwardses' house, she stepped briskly up the path, bowing to Mrs. Edwards in the window, and Elmira opened the door before she knocked.

"Good-afternoon; I would like to see your brother a moment," Abigail announced, abruptly.

"He isn't at home," said Elmira; "something has happened at Simon Ba.s.set's--I don't know what. A boy came after Jerome, and he hurried off. Father's gone too." Elmira blushed all over her face and neck as she spoke. "Jerome will be sorry he wasn't at home," she added.

She had a curious sense of innocent confusion over the situation.

Mrs. Edwards blushed too, like an echo, though she gave her little dark head an impatient toss.

"Then please ask your brother if he will be so kind as to come to the Squire's after supper to-night," she returned, in her smart, prettily dictatorial way, and took leave at once, though Elmira urged her politely to come in and rest and wait for her brother's return.

She gave the message to Jerome when he came home. "What do you suppose she wants of you?" she asked, wonderingly. Jerome shook his head.

"Why, you look as white as a sheet!" said Elmira, staring at him.

"I've seen enough this afternoon to make any man look white," Jerome replied, evasively.

"Well, I suppose you have; it is awful about Simon Ba.s.set," Elmira a.s.sented, shudderingly.

Jerome had to force himself to his work after he had received Mrs.

Merritt's message. The tragedy of Simon Ba.s.set had given him a terrible shock, and now this last set his nerves in a tumult in spite of himself.

"What can she want?" he questioned, over and over. "Shall I see Lucina? What can her mother have to say to me?"

One minute, thinking of Simon Ba.s.set, he stood convicted, to his shame, of the utter despicableness of all his desires pertaining to the earth and the flesh, by that clear apprehension of eternity which often comes to one at the sight of sudden death. He settled with himself that wealth and success and learning, and love itself even, where as nothing beside that one surety of eternity, which holds the sequence of good and evil, and is of the spirit.

Then, in a wild rebellion of honesty, he would own to himself that, whether he would have it so or not, to his understanding, still hampered by the conditions of the flesh, perhaps made morbid by resistance to them, but that he could not tell, love was the one truth and reality and source of all things; that life was because of love, not love because of life.

Jerome set his mouth hard as he ploughed. The newly turned sods clung to his feet and made them heavy, as the fond longings of the earth clung to his soul. It seemed to Jerome that he had never loved Lucina as he loved her then, that he had never wanted her so much. Also that he had never been so firmly resolved to give her up. If Lucina had seemed beyond his reach before, she seemed doubly so then, and her new wealth loomed between them like an awful golden flood of separation. "I have given away all my money," he said. "Shall I marry a wife with money, to make good my loss?" He laughed at himself with bitter scorn for the fancy.

After supper, he dressed himself in his best clothes, and set out for Squire Merritt's, evading as much as he could his mother's questions and surmises. Ann's bitterness at his disposal of his money was softened to loquacity by her curiosity.

"I s'pose," said she, "that if that poor girl goes down on her knees to you, an' tells you her heart is breakin', that you'll jest hand her over to the town poor, the way you did your money."

"Don't, mother," whispered Elmira, as Jerome went out, making no response.

"I'm goin' to say what I think 's best. I'm his mother," returned Ann. But when Jerome was gone, she broke down and cried, and complained that the poor boy hadn't eat any supper, and she was afraid he'd be sick. Abel, sitting near her, snivelled softly for sympathy, not fairly comprehending her cause for tears. When she stopped weeping, and took up her knitting-work again, he drew a sigh of relief and fell to eating an apple.

As for Elmira, she tried to comfort her mother, and she had an anxious curiosity about Jerome and his call at the Merritts'; but Lawrence Prescott was coming that evening.

Presently Ann heard her singing up-stairs in her chamber, whither she had gone to curl her hair and change her gown.

"I'm glad somebody can sing," muttered Ann; but in the depths of her heart was a wish that her son, instead of her daughter, could have had the reason for song, if it were appointed to one only. "Women don't take things so hard as men," reasoned Ann Edwards.

When Jerome knocked at Squire Merritt's door that evening, Mrs.

Merritt opened it. For a minute everything was dark before him; he had thought that he might see Lucina. His voice sounded strange in his own ears when he replied to Mrs. Merritt's greeting; he almost reeled when he followed her into the parlor. It was a cool, spring night, and there was a fire on the hearth. A silver branch of candles on the mantel-shelf lit the room.

Mrs. Merritt looked anxiously at Jerome as she placed a chair. "I hope you are well," she said, in her quick way, but her voice was kind. Jerome thought it sounded like Lucina's. He stammered that he was quite well.

"You look pale."

When he made no response to that, she added, with a motherly cadence, that he had been through a great deal lately; that she had felt very sorry about the loss of his mill.

Jerome thanked her. He sat opposite, in a great mahogany arm-chair, holding himself very erect; but his pulses sang in his ears, and his downcast eyes scanned the roses in the carpet. He did not understand it, but he was for the moment like a school-boy before the aroused might of feminity of this little woman.

"It is partly about your mill that I want to see you," said Abigail Merritt. "The Squire has something which he wishes to propose, but he has begged me to do so for him. He thinks my chances of success are better. I don't know about that," she finished, smiling.

Jerome looked up then, with quick attention, and she came at once to the point. Abigail Merritt, her mind once made up, was not a woman to beat long about a bush. "The Squire has, as you know," she said, "a legacy of five thousand dollars from poor Colonel Lamson. He wishes to invest part of it. He would like to rebuild your mill."