He went on straight round the house to the south-side door, whither
everybody went to consult the doctor. He knocked, and in a moment the
door opened, and a young girl with weak blue eyes, with a helpless
droop of the chin, and mouth half opened in a silly smile, looked out
at him. She was a girl whom Doctor Prescott had taken from the
almshouse to assist in the lighter household duties. She was
considered rather weak in her intellect, though she did her work well
enough when she had once learned how.
Jerome bent his head with a sudden stiff duck to this girl. "Is
Doctor Prescott at home?" he inquired.
"Yes, sir," replied the girl, with the same respectful courtesy and
ceremony with which she might have greeted the Squire or any town
magnate, instead of this poor little boy. Her mind was utterly
incapable of the faculties of selection and discrimination. She
applied one formula, unmodified, to all mankind.
"Can I see him a minute?" asked Jerome, gruffly.
"Yes, sir. Will you walk in?"
The girl, moving with a weak, shuffling toddle, like a child, led
Jerome through the length of the entry to a great room on the north
side of the house, which was the doctor's study and office. Two large
cupboards, whose doors were set with glass in diamond panes in the
upper panels, held his drugs and nostrums. Books, mostly ponderous
volumes in rusty leather, lined the rest of the wall space. When
Jerome entered the room the combined odor of those leather-bound
folios and the doctor's drugs smote his nostrils, as from a curious
brewing of theoretical and applied wisdom in one pot.
"Take a seat," said the girl, "and I will speak to the doctor." Then
she went out, with the vain, pleased simper of a child who has said
her lesson well.
Jerome sat down and looked about him. He had been in the room several
times before, but his awe of it preserved its first strangeness for
him. He eyed the books on the walls, then the great bottles visible
through the glass doors on the cupboard shelves. Those bottles were
mostly of a cloudy green or brown, but one among them caught the
light and shone as if filled with liquid rubies. That was valerian,
but Jerome did not know it; he only thought it must be a very strong
medicine to have such a bright color. He also thought that the doctor
must have mixed all those medicines from rules in those great books,
and a sudden feverish desire to look into them seized him. However,
neither his pride nor his timidity would have allowed him to touch
one of those books, even if he had not expected the doctor to enter
every moment.
He waited quite a little time, however. He could hear the far-off
tinkle of silver and clink of china, and knew the family were at
dinner. "Won't leave his dinner for me," thought Jerome, with an
unrighteous bitterness of humility, recognizing the fact that he
could not expect him to. "Might have planted an hour longer."
Then came a clang of the knocker, and this time the girl ushered into
the study a clamping, red-faced man in a shabby coat. Jerome
recognized him as a young farmer who lived three miles or so out of
the village. He blushed and stumbled, with a kind of grim
awkwardness, even before the simple girl delivering herself of her
formula of welcome. He would not sit down; he stood by the corner of
a medicine-cupboard, settling heavily into his boots, waiting.
When the girl had gone he looked at Jerome, and gave a vague and
furtive "Hullo!" in simple recognition of his presence, as it were.
He did not know who the boy was, never being easily certain as to
identities of any but old acquaintances--not from high indifference
and dislike, like the doctor, but from dulness of observation.
Jerome nodded in response to the man's salutation. "I can't ask the
doctor before him," he thought, anxiously.
The man rested heavily, first on one leg, then on the other. "Been
waitin' long?" he grunted, finally.
"Quite a while."
"Hope my horse 'll stan'," said the man; "headed towards home, an'
load off."
"The doctor can tend to you first," Jerome said, eagerly.
The man gave a nod of assent. Thanks, as elegancies of social
intercourse, were alarming, and savored of affectation, to him. He
had thanked the Lord, from his heart, for all his known and unknown
gifts, but his gratitude towards his fellow-men had never overcome
his bashful self-consciousness and found voice.
Often in prayer-meeting Jerome had heard this man's fervent
outpouring of the religious faith which seemed the only intelligence
of his soul, and, like all single and concentrated powers, had a
certain force of persuasion. Jerome eyed him now with a kind of pious
admiration and respect, and yet with recollections.
"If I were a man, I'd stop colorin' up and actin' scared," thought
the boy; and then they both heard a door open and shut, and knew the
doctor was coming.
Jerome's heart beat hard, yet he looked quite boldly at the door.
Somehow the young farmer's clumsy embarrassment had roused his own
pride and courage. When the doctor entered, he stood up with alacrity
and made his manners, and the young farmer settled to another foot,
with a hoarse note of greeting.
The doctor said good-day, with formal courtesy, with his fine, keen
face turned seemingly upon both of them impartially; then he
addressed the young man.
"How is your wife to-day?" he inquired.
The young man turned purple, where he had been red, at this direct
address. "She's pretty--comfortable," he stammered.
"Is she out of medicine?"
"Yes, sir. That's what I come for." With that the young man pulled,
with distressed fumblings and jerks, a bottle from his pocket, which
he handed to the doctor, who had in the meantime opened the door of
one of the cupboards.
The doctor took a large bottle from the cupboard, and filled from
that the one which the young man had brought. Jerome stood trembling,
watching the careful gurgling of a speckled green liquid from one
bottle to another. A strange new odor filled the room, overpowering
all the others.
When the doctor gave the bottle to the young man, he shoved it
carefully away in his pocket again, and then stood coloring more
deeply and hesitating.
"Can ye take your pay in wood for this and the last two lots?" he
murmured at length, so low that Jerome scarcely heard him.
But the doctor never lowered nor raised his incisive, high-bred voice
for any man. His reply left no doubt of the question. "No, Mr.
Upham," said Doctor Prescott. "You must pay me in money for medicine.
I have enough wood of my own."
"I know ye have--consider'ble," responded the young man, in an agony,
"but--"
"I would like the money as soon as convenient," said the doctor.
"I'm--havin'--dreadful--hard work to get--any money myself--lately,"
persisted the young man. "Folks--they promise, but--they don't pay,
an'--"
"Never give or take promises long enough to calculate interest,"
interposed Doctor Prescott, with stern pleasantry; "that's my rule,
young man, and it's the one I expect others to follow in their
business dealings with me. Don't give and don't take; then you'll
make your way in life."
Ozias Lamb had said once, in Jerome's hearing, that all the medicine
that Doctor Prescott ever gave to folks for nothing was good advice,
and he didn't know but then he sent the bill in to the Almighty.
Jerome, who had taken this in, with a sharp wink of appreciation, in
spite of his mother's promptly sending him out of the room, thinking
that such talk savored of irreverence, and was not fit for youthful
ears, remembered it now, as he heard Doctor Prescott admonishing poor
John Upham.
"Know ye've got consider'ble," mumbled John Upham, who had rough
lands enough for a village, but scarce two shillings in pocket, and a
delicate young wife and three babies; "but--thought ye hadn't--no old
apple-tree wood--old apple-tree wood--well seasoned--jest the thing
for the parlor hearth--didn't know but--"
"I should like the money next week," said the doctor, as if he had
not heard a word of poor John's entreaty.
The young man shook his head miserably. "Dun'no' as I can--nohow."
"Well," said the doctor, looking at him calmly, "I'm willing to take
a little land for the medicine and that last winter's bill, when
Johnny had the measles."
Then this poor John Upham, uncouth, and scarcely quicker-witted than
one of his own oxen, but as faithful, and living up wholly to his
humble lights, turned pale through his blushes, and stared at the
doctor as if he could not have heard aright. "Take--my land?" he
faltered.
Doctor Prescott never smiled with his eyes, but only with a
symmetrical curving and lengthening of his finely cut, thin lips. He
smiled so then. "Yes, I am willing to take some land for the debt,
since you have not the money," said he.
"But--that was--father's land."
"Yes, and your father was a good, thrifty man. He did not waste his
substance."
"It was grandfather's, too."
"Yes, it was, I believe."
"It has always been in our--family. It's the Upham--land. I can't
part with it nohow."
"I will take the money, then," said Doctor Prescott.
"I'll raise it just as soon as I can, doctor," cried John Upham,
eagerly. "I've got a man's note for twenty dollars comin' due in
three months; he's sure to pay. An'--there's some cedar ordered,
an'--"
"I must have it next week," said the doctor, "or--" He paused. "I
shall dislike to proceed to extreme measures," he added.
Then John Upham, aroused to boldness by desperation, as the very oxen
will sometimes run in madness if the goad be sharp enough, told
Doctor Prescott to his face, with scarce a stumble in his speech,
that he owned half the town now; that his land was much more valuable
than his, which was mostly swampy woodland and pasture-lands,
bringing in scarcely enough income to feed and clothe his family.
"Sha'n't have 'nough to live on if I let any on't go," said John
Upham, "an' you've got more land as 'tis than any other man in town."
Doctor Prescott did not raise or quicken his clear voice; his eyes
did not flash, but they gave out a hard light. John Upham was like a
giant before this little, neat, wiry figure, which had such a majesty
of port that it seemed to throw its own shadow over him.
"We are not discussing the extent of my possessions," said Doctor
Prescott, "but the extent of your debts." He moved aside, as if to
clear the passage to the door, turning slightly at the same time
towards his other caller, who was cold with indignation upon John
Upham's account and terror upon his own.
Half minded he was, when John Upham went out, with his clamping,
clumsy tread, with his honest head cast down, and no more words in
his mouth for the doctor's last smoothly scathing remark, to follow
him at a bound and ask nothing for himself; but he stood still and
watched him go.
When John Upham had opened the door and was passing through, the
doctor pursued him with yet one more bit of late advice. "It is poor
judgment," said Doctor Prescott, "for a young man to marry and bring
children into the world until he has property enough to support them
without running into debt. You would have done better had you waited,
Mr. Upham. It is what I always tell young men."
Then John Upham turned with the last turn of the trodden worm. "My
wife and my children are my own!" he cried out, with a great roar.
"It's between me and my Maker, my having 'em, and I'll answer to no
man for it!" With that he was gone, and the door shut hard after
him.
Then Doctor Prescott, no whit disturbed, turned to Jerome and looked
at him. Jerome made his manners again. "You are the Edwards boy,
aren't you?" said the doctor.
Jerome humbly acknowledged his identity.
"What do you want? Has your mother sent you on an errand?"
"No, sir."
"Well, what is it, then?"
"Please, sir, may I speak to you a minute?"
"Speak to me?"
"Yes, sir."
Doctor Prescott wore a massive gold watch-chain festooned across his
fine black satin vest. He pulled out before the boy's wondering and
perplexed eyes the great gold timepiece attached to it and looked at
it. "You must be quick," said he. "I have to go in five minutes. I
will give you five minutes by my watch. Begin."
But poor little Jerome, thus driven with such a hard check-rein of
time, paled and reddened and trembled, and could find no words.
"One minute is gone," said the doctor, looking over the open face of
his watch at Jerome. Something in his glance spurred on the
frightened boy by arousing a flash of resentment.
Jerome, standing straight before the doctor, with a little twitching
hand hanging at each side, with his color coming and going, and
pulses which could be seen beating hard in his temples and throat,
spoke and delivered himself of that innocently overreaching scheme
which he had propounded to Squire Eben Merritt.
It seems probable that mental states have their own reflective
powers, which sometimes enable one to suddenly see himself in the
conception of another, to the complete modification of all his own
ideas and opinions. So little Jerome Edwards, even while speaking,
began to see his plan as it looked to Doctor Prescott, and not as it
had hitherto looked to himself. He began to understand and to realize
the flaws in it--that he had asked more of Doctor Prescott than he
would grant. Still, he went on, and the doctor heard him through
without a word.
"Who put you up to this?" the doctor asked, when he had finished.
"Nobody, sir."
"Your mother?"
"No, sir."
"Did you ever hear your father propose anything like this?"
"No, sir."
"Who did? Speak the truth."
"I did."
"You thought out this plan yourself?"
"Yes, sir."
"Look at me."
Jerome, flushing with angry shame at his own simplicity as revealed
to him by this other, older, superior intellect, yet defiant still at
this attack upon his truth, looked the doctor straight in his keen
eyes.
"Are you speaking the truth?"
"Yes, sir."
Still the doctor looked at him, and Jerome would not cast his eyes
down, nor, indeed, could. He felt as if his very soul were being
stretched up on tiptoe to the doctor's inspection.
"Children had better follow the wisdom of their elders," said the
doctor. He would not even deign to explain to this boy the absurdity
of his scheme.
He replaced the great gold watch in his pocket. "I will be in soon,
and talk over matters with your mother," he said, turning away.
Jerome gave a gasp. He stumbled forward, as if to fall on his knees
at the doctor's feet.
"Oh, sir, don't, don't!" he cried out.
"Don't what?"
"Don't foreclose the mortgage. It will kill mother."
"You don't know what you are talking about," said the doctor, calmly.
"Children should not meddle in matters beyond them. I will settle it
with your mother."
"Mother's sick!" gasped Jerome. The doctor was moving with his
stately strut to the door. Suddenly the boy, in a great outburst of
boldness, flung himself before this great man of his childhood and
arrested his progress. "Oh, sir, tell me," he begged--"tell me what
you're going to do!"
The doctor never knew why he stopped to explain and parley. He was
conscious of no softening towards this boy, who had so repelled him
with his covert rebellion, and had now been guilty of a much greater
offence. An appeal to a goodness which is not in him is to a
sensitive and vain soul a stinging insult. Doctor Prescott could have
administered corporal punishment to this boy, who seemed to him to be
actually poking fun at his dignity, and yet he stopped and answered:
"I am going to take your house into my hands," said Doctor Prescott,
"and your mother can live in it and pay me rent."
"We can't pay rent any better than interest money."
"If you can't pay the rent, I shall be willing to take that wood-lot
of your father's," said Doctor Prescott. "I will talk that over with
your mother."
Jerome looked at him. There was a dreadful expression on his little
boyish face. His very lips were white. "You are goin' to take our
woodland for rents?"
"If you can't pay them, of course. Your mother ought to be glad she
has it to pay with."
"Then we sha'n't have anything."
Doctor Prescott endeavored to move on, but Jerome fairly crowded
himself between him and the door, and stood there, his pale face
almost touching his breast, and his black eyes glaring up at him with
a startling nearness as of fire.
"You are a wicked man," said the boy, "and some day God will punish
you for it."
Then there came a grasp of nervous hands upon his shoulders, like the
clamp of steel, the door was opened before him, and he was pushed
out, and along the entry at arm's-length, and finally made to descend
the south door-steps at a dizzy run. "Go home to your mother,"
ordered Doctor Prescott. Still, he did not raise his voice, his color
had not changed, and he breathed no quicker. Births and deaths, all
natural stresses of life, its occasional tragedies, and even his own
bitter wrath could this small, equally poised man meet with calm
superiority over them and command over himself. Doctor Seth Prescott
never lost his personal dignity--he could not, since it was so
inseparable from his personality. If he chastised his son, it was
with the judicial majesty of a king, and never with a self-demeaning
show of anger. He ate and drank in his own house like a guest of
state at a feast; he drove his fine sorrel in his sulky like a
war-horse in a chariot. Once, when walking to meeting on an icy day,
his feet went from under him, and he sat down suddenly; but even his
fall seemed to have something majestic and solemn and Scriptural
about it. Nobody laughed.
Doctor Prescott expelling this little boy from his south door had the
impressiveness of a priest of Bible times expelling an interloper
from the door of the Temple. Jerome almost fell when he reached the
ground, but collected himself after a staggering step or two as the
door shut behind him.
The doctor's sulky was drawn up before the door, and Jake Noyes stood
by the horse's head. The horse sprang aside--he was a nervous
sorrel--when Jerome flew down the steps, and Jake Noyes reined him up
quickly with a sharp "Whoa!"
As soon as he recovered his firm footing, Jerome started to run out
of the yard; but Jake, holding the sorrel's bridle with one hand,
reached out the other to his collar and brought him to a stand.
"Hullo!" said he, hushing his voice somewhat and glancing at the
door. "What's to pay?"
"I told him he was a wicked man, and he didn't like it because it's
true," replied Jerome, in a loud voice, trying to pull away.
"Hush up," whispered Jake, with a half-whimsical, half-uneasy nod of
his head towards the door; "look out how you talk. He'll be out and
crammin' blue-pills and assafoetidy into your mouth first thing you
know. Don't you go to sassin' of your betters."
"He is a wicked man! I don't care, he is a wicked man!" cried Jerome,
loudly. He glanced defiantly at the house, then into Jake's face,
with a white flash of fury.
"Hush up, I tell ye," said Jake. "He'll be a-pourin' of castor-ile
down your throat out of a quart measure, arter the blue-pills and the
assafoetidy."
"I'd like to see him! He is a wicked man. Let me go!"
"Don't you go to callin' names that nobody but the Almighty has any
right to fasten on to folks."
"Let me go!" Jerome wriggled under the man's detaining grasp, as
wirily instinct with nerves as a cat; he kicked out viciously at his
shins.
"Lord! I'd as lief try to hold a catamount," cried Jake Noyes,
laughing, and released him, and Jerome raced out of the yard.
It was then about two o'clock. He should have gone home to his
planting, but his childish patience was all gone. Poor little Jack
had been worsted by the giant, and his bean-garden might as well be
neglected. Human strength may endure heavy disappointments and
calamities with heroism, but it requires superhuman power to hold
one's hand to the grindstone of petty duties and details of life in
the midst of them. Jerome had faced his rebuff without a whimper, and
with a great stand of spirit, but now he could not go home and work
in the garden, and tie his fiery revolt to the earth with spade and
hoe. He ran on up the road, until he passed the village and came to
his woodland. He followed the cart path through it, until he was near
the boundary wall; then he threw himself down in the midst of some
young brakes and little wild green things, and presently fell to
weeping, with loud sobs, like a baby.
All day he had been strained up to an artificial height of manhood;
now he had come down again to his helpless estate of boyhood. In the
solitude of the woods there is no mocking, and no despite for
helplessness and grief. The trees raising their heads in a great host
athwart the sky, the tender plants beneath gathering into their old
places with tumultuous silence, put to shame no outcry of any
suffering heart of bird or beast or man. To these unpruned and
mother-fastnesses of the earth belonged at first the wailing infancy
of all life, and even now a vague memory of it is left, like the
organ of a lost sense, in the heart oppressed by the grief of the
grown world.
The boy unknowingly had fled to his first mother, who had soothed his
old sorrow in his heart before he had come into the consciousness of
it. Had Doctor Prescott at any minute surprised him, he would have
faced him again, with no sign of weakening; but he lay there, curled
up among the brakes as in a green nest, with his face against the
earth, and her breath of aromatic moisture in his nostrils, and
sobbed and wept until he fell asleep.
He had slept an hour and a half, when he wakened suddenly, with a
clear "Hello!" in his ears. He opened his eyes and looked up, dazed,
into Squire Eben Merritt's great blond face.
"Hullo!" said Squire Eben again. "I thought it was a woodchuck, and
instead of that it's a boy. What are you doing here, sir?"
Jerome raised himself falteringly. He felt weak, and the confused
misery of readjusting the load of grief under which one has fallen
asleep was upon him. "Guess I fell asleep," he stammered.
"Guess you'd better not fall asleep in such a damp hole as this,"
said the Squire, "or the rheumatism will catch your young bones. Why
aren't you home planting, sir? I thought you were a smart boy."
"He'll get it all; there ain't any use!" said Jerome, with pitiful
doggedness, standing ankle-deep in brakes before the Squire. He
rubbed his eyes, heavy with sleep and tears, and raised them, dull
still, into the Squire's face.
"Who do you mean by he? Dr. Prescott?"
"Yes, sir."
"Then he didn't approve of your plan?"
"He's going to take our house, and let us live in it and pay rent,
and if we can't pay he's going to take our wood-lot here--" Suddenly
Jerome gave a great sob; he flung himself down wildly. "He sha'n't
have it; he sha'n't--he never shall!" he sobbed, and clutched at the
brakes and held them to his bosom, as if he were indeed holding some
dear thing against an enemy who would wrest it from him.
Squire Eben Merritt, towering over him, with a long string of trout
at his side, looked at him with a puzzled frown; then he reached down
and pulled him to his feet with a mighty and gentle jerk. "How old
are you, sir?" he demanded. "Thought you were a man; thought you were
going to learn to fire my gun. Guess you haven't been out of
petticoats long enough, after all!"
Jerome drew his sleeve fiercely across his eyes, and then looked up
at the Squire proudly. "Didn't cry before him," said he.
Squire Eben laughed, and gave his back a hard pat. "I guess you'll
do, after all," said he. "So you didn't have much luck with the
doctor?"
"No, sir."
"Well, don't you fret. I'll see what can be done. I'll see him
to-night myself."
Jerome looked up in his face, like one who scarcely dares to believe
in offered comfort.
The Squire nodded kindly at him. "You leave it all to me," said he;
"don't you worry."
Jerome belonged to a family in which there had been little
demonstration of devotion and affection. His parents never caressed
their children; he and his sister had scarcely kissed each other
since their infancy. No matter how fervid their hearts might be, they
had also a rigidity, as of paralyzed muscles, which forbade much
expression as a shame and an affectation. Jerome had this tendency of
the New England character from inheritance and training; but now, in
spite of it, he fell down before Squire Eben Merritt, embraced his
knees, and kissed his very feet in their great boots, and then his
hand.
Squire Eben laughed, pulled the boy to his feet again, and bade him
again to cheer up and not to fret. The same impulse of kindly
protection which led him to spare the lives and limbs of old trees
was over him now towards this weak human plant.
"Come along with me," said Squire Eben, and forthwith Jerome had
followed him out of the woods into the road, and down it until they
reached his sister's, Miss Camilla Merritt's, house, not far from
Doctor Prescott's. There Squire Eben was about to part with Jerome,
with more words of reassurance, when suddenly he remembered that his
sister needed such a boy to weed her flower-beds, and had spoken to
him about procuring one for her. So he had bidden Jerome follow him;
and the boy, who would at that moment have gone over a precipice
after him, went to Miss Camilla's tea-drinking in her arbor.
When he went home, in an hour's time, he was engaged to weed Miss
Camilla's flower-garden all summer, at two shillings per week, and it
was understood that his sister could weed as well as he when his
home-work prevented his coming.
In early youth exaltation of spirit requires but slight causes; only
a soft puff of a favoring wind will send up one like a kite into the
ether. Jerome, with the prospect of two shillings per week, and that
great, kindly strength of the Squire's underlying his weakness, went
home as if he had wings on his feet.
"See that boy of poor Abel Edwards's dancin' along, when his father
ain't been dead a week!" one woman at her window said to another.