Jerome's mother never knew about the rent in his father's best coat,
nor the fight. To do the boy justice, he kept it from her, neither
because of cowardice nor deceit, but because of magnanimity. "It will
just work her all up if she knew 'Lisha Robinson made fun of father's
best coat, and it's tore," Jerome told Elmira, who nodded in entire
assent.
Elmira sat up in her cold chamber until long after midnight, and
darned the rent painfully by the light of a tallow candle. Then it
was a comparatively simple matter, when one had to deal with a woman
confined to a rocking-chair, to never give her a full view of the
mended coat-tail. Jerome cultivated a habit of backing out of the
room, as from an audience with a queen. The sting from his wounded
pride having been salved with victory, he was unduly important in his
own estimation, until an unforeseen result came from the affair.
There are many surprising complications from war, even war between
two school-boys. One night, after school, Jerome went to Cyrus
Robinson's for a lot of shoes which had been promised him two days
before, and was told there were none to spare. Cyrus Robinson leaned
over the counter and glanced around cautiously. It was not a busy
time of day. Two old farmers were standing by the stove, talking to
each other in a drone of extreme dialect, almost as unintelligible,
except to one who understood its subject-matter, as the notes of
their own cattle. The clerk, Samson Loud, was at the other end of the
store, cleaning a molasses-barrel from its accumulated sugar.
"Look-a-here," said Cyrus Robinson, beckoning Jerome with a hard
crook of a seamed forefinger. The boy stood close to the counter, and
uplifted to him his small, undaunted, yet piteously wistful face.
"Look-a-here," said Cyrus Robinson, in a whisper of furtive malice,
leaning nearer, the point of his shelving beard almost touching
Jerome's forehead; "I've got something to say to you. I 'ain't got
any shoes to spare to-night; an', what's more, I ain't going to have
any to spare in future. Boys that fight 'ain't got time enough to
close shoes."
Jerome looked at him a moment, as if scarcely comprehending; then a
sudden quiver as of light came over him, and Cyrus Robinson shrank
back before his eyes as if his counter were a bulwark.
"I s'pose if your big boy had licked me 'cause he made fun of my
father's coat, instead of me lickin' him, you'd have given me some
more shoes!" cried the boy, with the dauntlessness of utter scorn,
and turned and walked out of the store.
"You'd better take care, young man!" called Cyrus Robinson, in open
rage, for the boy's clear note of wrath had been heard over the whole
store. The two old farmers looked up in dull astonishment as the door
slammed after Jerome, stared questioningly at the storekeeper and
each other, then the thick stream of their ideas returned to its
course of their own affairs, and their husky gabble recommenced.
Samson Laud raised his head, covered with close curls of light red
hair, and his rasped red face out of the molasses-barrel, gave one
quick glance full of acutest sarcasm of humor at Cyrus Robinson, then
disappeared again into sugary depths, and resumed his scraping.
Jerome, on his homeward road, did not feel his spirit of defiance
abate. "Wonder how we're going to pay that interest money now? Wonder
how mother 'll take it?" he said; yet he would have fought 'Lisha
Robinson over again, knowing the same result. He had not yet grown
servile to his daily needs.
However, speeding along through the clear night, treading the snow
flashing back the full moonlight in his eyes like a silver mirror, he
dreaded more and more the meeting his mother and telling her the
news. He slackened his pace. Now and then he stood still and looked
up at the sky, where the great white moon rode through the hosts of
the stars. Without analyzing his thoughts, the boy felt the utter
irresponsiveness of all glory and all heights. Mocking shafts of
moonlight and starlight and frostlight seemed glancing off this one
little soul in the freezing solitude of creation, wherein each is
largely to himself alone. What was it to the moon and all those
shining swarms of stars, and that far star-dust in the Milky Way,
whether he, Jerome Edwards, had shoes to close or not? Whether he and
his mother starved or not, they would shine just the same. The
triviality--even ludicrousness--of the sorrow of man, as compared
with eternal things, was over the boy. He was maddened at the sting
and despite of his own littleness in the face of that greatness.
Suddenly a wild impulse of rebellion that was almost blasphemy seized
him. He clinched a puny fist at a great star. "Wish I could make you
stop shinin'," he cried out, in a loud, fierce voice; "wish I could
do somethin'!"
Suddenly Jerome was hemmed in by a cloud of witnesses. Eliphalet
Means, John Jennings, and Colonel Lamson had overtaken him as he
stood star-gazing. They were on their way to punch and cards at
Squire Merritt's. Jerome felt a hand on his shoulder, and looked up
into John Jennings's long, melancholy countenance, instead of the
shining face of the star. He saw the eyes of the others surveying
him, half in astonishment, half in amusement, over the folds of their
camlet cloaks.
"Want to make the star stop shining?" queried John Jennings, in his
sweet drawl.
Jerome made no reply. His shoulder twitched under Mr. Jennings's
hand. He meditated pushing between these interlopers and running for
home. The New England constraint, to which he had been born, was to
him as a shell of defence and decency, and these men had had a
glimpse of him outside it. He was horribly ashamed. "S'pose they
think I'm crazy," he reflected.
"Want to stop the star shining?" repeated John Jennings. "Well, you
can."
Jerome, in astonishment, forgot his shame, and looked up into the
man's beautiful, cavernous eyes.
"I'll tell you how. Don't look at it. I've stopped nearly all the
stars I've ever seen that way." John Jennings's voice seemed to melt
into infinite sadness and sweetness, like a song. The other men
chuckled but feebly, as if scarcely knowing whether it were a jest or
not. John Jennings took his hand from Jerome's shoulder, tossed the
wing of his cloak higher over his face, and went on with his friends.
However, when fairly on his way, he turned and called back, with a
soft laugh, "I would let the star shine, though, if I were you, boy."
"Who was the boy?" Colonel Lamson asked the lawyer, as the three men
proceeded.
"The Edwards boy."
"Well," said John Jennings, "'tis an unlucky devil he is, call him
what you will, for he's born to feel the hammer of Thor on his soul
as well as his flesh, and it is double pain for all such."
Jerome stood staring after John Jennings and his friends a moment; he
had not the least conception what it all meant; then he proceeded at
a good pace, arguing that the sooner he got home and told his mother
and had it over, the better.
But he had not gone far before he saw some one else coming, a
strange, nondescript figure, with outlines paled and blurred in the
moonlight, looking as if it bore its own gigantic and heavy head
before it in outstretched arms. Soon he saw it was his uncle Ozias
Lamb, laden with bundles of shoes about his shoulders, bending
forward under their weight.
Ozias halted when he reached Jerome. "Hullo!" said he; "that you?"
"Yes, sir," Jerome replied, deferentially. He had respect for his
uncle Ozias.
"Where you goin'?"
"Home."
"'Ain't you been to Robinson's for shoes?"
"Yes, sir."
"Where be they, then?"
Jerome told him.
"I ain't surprised. I knew what 'twould be when I heard you'd fit
'Lisha," said Ozias. "You hit my calf, you hit me. It's natur'."
Ozias gave a cynical chuckle; he shifted his load of shoes to ease
his right shoulder. "'Lisha's big as two of you," he said. "How'd ye
work it to fling him? Twist your leg under his, eh?"
Jerome nodded.
"That's a good trick. I larnt that when I was a boy. Well, I ain't
surprised Robinson has shet down on the shoes. What ye goin' to do?"
"Dun'no'," replied Jerome; then he gave a weak, childish gesture, and
caught his breath in a sob. He was scarcely more than a child, after
all, and his uncle Ozias was the only remaining natural tower to his
helplessness.
"O Lord, don't ye go to whimperin', big man like you!" responded
Ozias Lamb, quickly. "Look at here--" Ozias paused a moment,
pondering. Jerome waited, trying to keep the sobs back.
"Tell you what 'tis," said Ozias. "It's one of the cases where the
sarpents and the doves come in. We've got to do a little manoeuvrin'.
Don't you fret, J'rome, an' don't you go to frettin' of your mother.
I'll take an extra lot of shoes from Cy Robinson; he can think
Belinda's goin' to bind--she never has--or he can think what he wants
to; I ain't goin' to regulate his thinkin'; an' you come to me for
shoes in future. Only you keep dark about it. Don't you let on to
nobody, except your mother, an' she needn't know the whys an'
wherefores. I've let out shoes before now. I'll pay a leetle more
than Robinson. Tell her your uncle Ozias has taken all the shoes
Robinson has got, and you're to come to him for 'em, an' to keep dark
about it, an' let her think what she's a mind to. Women folks can't
know everything."
"Yes, sir," said Jerome.
"You can come fer the shoes and bring 'em home after dark, so's
nobody will see you," said Ozias Lamb, further.
So it befell that Jerome went for the work that brought him daily
bread, like a thief, by night, oftentimes slipping his package of
shoes under the wayside bushes at the sound of approaching footsteps.
He was deceitfully reticent also with his mother, whom he let follow
her own conclusion, that Cyrus Robinson had been dissatisfied with
their work. "Guess he won't see as much difference with this work as
he think he does," she would often say, with a bitter laugh. Jerome
was silent, but the inborn straightforwardness of the boy made him
secretly rebellious at such a course.
"It's lyin', anyhow," he said, sulkily, once, when he loaded the
shoes on his shoulder, like a mason's hod, and was starting forth
from his uncle's shop.
Ozias Lamb laughed the laugh of one who perverts humor, and makes a
jest of the bitter instead of the merry things of life.
"It's got so that lies are the only salvation of the righteous," said
Ozias Lamb, with that hard laugh of his. Then, with the pitilessness
of any dissenting spirit of reform, who will pour out truths, whether
of good or evil, to the benefit or injury of mankind, who will force
strong meat as well as milk on babies and sucklings, he kept on,
while the boy stood staring, shrinking a little, yet with young eyes
kindling, from the bitter frenzy of the other.
"It's so," said Ozias Lamb. "You'll find it out for yourself, in
the hard run you've got to hoe, without any help, but it's just
as well for you to know it beforehand. You won't get bit so
hard--forewarned's forearmed. Snakes have their poison-bags, an' bees
have their stings; there ain't an animal that don't have horns or
claws or teeth to use if they get in a hard place. Them that don't
have weapons have wings, like birds. If they can't fight, they can
fly away from the battle. But human beings that are good, and meek,
and poor, and hard pushed, they hain't got any claws or any wings;
though if they had 'twouldn't be right to use 'em to fight or get
away, so the parsons say. They 'ain't got any natural weapons.
Providence 'ain't looked out for them. All they can do, as far as I
can see, is to steal some of the devil's own weapons to fight him
with."
It was well that Jerome could not understand the half of his uncle's
harangue, and got, indeed, only a general impression of the unjust
helplessness of a meek and righteous man in the hands of adverse
fate, compared with horned and clawed animals, and Ozias's system of
defence did not commend itself to his understanding. He did not for a
moment imagine that his uncle advised him to lie and steal to better
his fortunes, and, indeed, nothing was further from the case. Ozias
Lamb's own precepts never went into practice. He was scrupulously
honest, and his word was as good as a bond. However, although Ozias
had never told a lie in his life, he had perpetrated many subtleties
of the truth. He was wily and secretive. "A man ain't a liar because
he don't tell all he knows," he said.
When asking for more shoes from Cyrus Robinson, he had said nothing
about his wife's working upon them, but he knew that was the
inference, and he did not contradict it. He forbade Belinda to
mention the matter in one way or another. "The sarpent has got to
feed the widows an' the orphans," he said, "an' that's a good reason
for bein' a sarpent."
As Ann and Elmira did most of their work on the shoes during the day,
Jerome fell into the habit of doing his part, the closing, in his
uncle's shop at night. Every evening he would load himself with the
sheaf of bound shoes and hasten down the road. He liked to work in
company with a man, rather than with his mother and Elmira; it gave
him a sense of independence and maturity. He did not mind so much
delving away on those hard leather seams while his mates were out
coasting and skating, for he had the sensation of responsibility--of
being the head of a family. Here he felt like a man supporting his
mother and sister; at home he was only a boy, held to his task under
the thumb of a woman.
Then, too, his uncle Ozias's conversation was a kind of pungent
stimulant--not pleasant to the taste, not even recognizable in all
its savors, yet with a growing power of fascination.
Ozias Lamb's shoemaker's shop was simply a little one-room building
in the centre of the field south of his cottage house. He had in it a
tiny box-stove, red-hot from fall to spring. When Jerome, coming on a
cold night, opened the door, a hot breath scented with dried leather
rushed in his face. Within sat his uncle on his shoemaker's bench,
short and squat like an Eastern idol on his throne. His body was
settled into itself with long habit of labor, his mind with
contemplation. His high, bald forehead overshadowed his lower face
like a promontory of thought; his eyes, even when he was alone, were
full of a wise, condemning observation; his mouth was inclined always
in a set smile at the bitter humor of things. The face of this
elderly New England shoemaker looked not unlike some Asiatic
conception of a deity.
Jerome always closed the door immediately when he entered, for Ozias
dreaded a draught, having an inclination to rheumatism, and being
also chilly, like most who sit at their labor. Then he would seat
himself on a stool, and close shoes, and listen when his uncle
talked, as he did constantly when once warmed to it. The little room
was lighted by a whale-oil lamp on the wall. On some nights the full
moonlight streamed in the three windows athwart the lamp-light. The
room got hotter and closer. Ozias now and then, as he talked,
motioned Jerome, who put another stick of wood in the stove. The
whole atmosphere, spiritual and physical, seemed to grow combustible,
and as if at any moment a word or a thought might cause a leap into
flame. A spirit of anarchy and revolution was caged in that little
close room, bound to a shoemaker's bench by the chain of labor for
bread. The spirit was harmless enough, for its cage and its chain
were not to be escaped or forced, strengthened as they were by the
usage of a whole life. Ozias Lamb would deliver himself of riotous
sentiments, but on that bench he would sit and peg shoes till his
dying day. He would have pegged there through a revolution.
Jerome's eyes would gleam with responsive fire when his uncle, his
splendid forehead flushing and swelling with turbid veins, said, in
that dry voice of his, which seemed to gain in force without being
raised into clamor: "What right has one man with the whole purse,
while another has not a penny in his pocket? What right has one with
the whole loaf, while another has a crumb? What right has one man
with half the land in the village, while another can hardly make
shift to earn his grave?"
Ozias would pause a second, then launch out with new ardor, as if
Jerome had advanced an opposite argument. "Born with property, are
they--inherited property? One man comes into the world with the gold
all earned, or stolen--don't matter which--waiting for him. Shoes all
made for him, no peggin' for other folks; carpets to walk on, sofas
to lay on, china dishes to eat off of. Everything is all complete;
don't make no odds if he's a fool, don't make no odds if he 'ain't no
more sense of duty to his fellow-beings than a pig, it's all just as
it should be. Everybody is cringin' an' bowin' an' offerin' a little
more to the one that's got more than anybody else. It's 'Take a seat
here, sir--do; this is more comfortable,' when he's set on feather
cushions all day. There'll be a poor man standin' alongside that
'ain't had a chance to set down since he got out of bed before
daylight, every bone in him achin'--stiff. There ain't no extra
comfortable chairs pointed out to him. Lord, no! If there happens to
be the soft side of a rock or a plank handy, he's welcome to take it;
if there ain't, why let him keep his standin'; he's used to it. I
tell ye, it's them that need to whom it should be given, and not them
that's got it already. I tell ye, the need should always regulate the
supply.
"I tell ye, J'rome, balance-wheels an' seesaws an' pendulums wa'n't
give us for nothin' besides runnin' machinery and clocks. Everything
on this earth means somethin' more'n itself, if we could only see it.
They're symbols, that's what they be, an' we've got to work up from a
symbol that we see to the higher thing that we don't see. Most folks
think it's the other way, but it ain't.
"Now, J'rome, you look at that old clock there; it was one that
b'longed to old Peter Thomas. I bought it when he broke up an' went
to the poorhouse. Doctor Prescott he foreclosed on him 'bout ten
years ago--you don't remember. He had his old house torn down, an'
sowed the land down to grass. I s'pose I paid more'n the clock was
worth, but I guess it kept the old man in snuff an' terbaccer a
while. Now you look at that clock; watch that pendulum swingin'. Now
s'pose we say the left is poverty--the left is the place for the
goats an' the poor folks that poverty has made goats; an' the right
is riches. See it swing, do ye? It don't no more'n touch poverty
before it's rich; it don't get time to starve an' suffer. It don't no
more'n touch riches before it's poor; it don't have time to forget,
an' git proud an' hard. I tell ye, J'rome, it ain't even division
we're aimin' at; we can't keep that if we get it till we're dead;
it's--balance. We want to keep the time of eternity, jest the way
that clock keeps the time of day."
Jerome looked at the clock and the pendulum swinging dimly behind a
painted landscape on the glass door, and never after saw one without
his uncle's imagery recurring to his mind. Always for him the
pendulum swung into the midst of a cowering throng of beggars on the
left, and into a band of purple-clad revellers on the right. Somehow,
too, Doctor Seth Prescott's face always stood out for him plainly
among them in purple.
Always, sooner or later, Ozias Lamb would seize Doctor Prescott and
Simon Basset as living illustrations and pointed examples of the
social wrongs. "Look at them two men," he would say, "to come down to
this town; look at them. You've heard about cuttle-fishes, J'rome,
'ain't ye?"
Jerome shook his head, as he drew his waxed thread through.
"Well, I'll tell ye what they be. They're an awful kind of fish. I
never see one, but Belinda's brother that was a sailor, I've heard
him tell enough to make your blood run cold. They're all head an'
eyes an' arms. Their eyes are big as saucers, an' they're made just
to see things the cuttle-fishes want to kill; an' they've got a
hundred arms, with suckin' claws on the ends, an' they jest search
an' seek, search an' seek, with them dreadful eyes that ain't got no
life but hate an' appetite, an' they stretch out an' feel, stretch
out an' feel, with them hundred arms, till they git what they want,
an' then they lay hold with all the suckers on them hundred arms, an'
clutch an' wind, an' twist an' overlay, till, whether it's a drownin'
sailor or a ship, you can't see nothin' but cuttle-fish, an'--"
Jerome stopped working, staring at him. He was quite pale. His
imagination leaped to a glimpse of that frightful fish. "An'--what
comes--then?" he gasped.
"The cuttle-fish--has got a beak," said Ozias. "By-an'-by there ain't
nothin' but cuttle-fish."
Jerome saw quite plainly the monster writhing and coiling over a
waste of water, and nothing else.
"Look at this town, an' look at Doctor Prescott, an' look at Simon
Basset," Ozias went on, coming abruptly from illustration to object,
with a vigor of personal spite. "Look at 'em. You can't see much of
anything here but them two men. Much as ever you can see the
meetin'-house steeple. There are a few left, so you can see who they
be, like Squire Merritt an' Lawyer Means; but, Lord, they'd better
not get too careless huntin' and fishin' and card-playin', or they'll
git hauled in, partridges, cards, an' all. But I'll tell you what
'tis--about all that anybody can see in this town is the eyes an' the
arms of them two men, a-suckin' and graspin'.
"Doctor Prescott, he's a church member, too, an' he gives tithes of
his widders an' orphans to the Lord. That meetin'-house couldn't be
run nohow without him. If they didn't have him to speak in the
prayer-meetin's, an' give the Lord some information about the
spiritooal state of this town on foreign missions, an' encourage Him
by admittin' He'd done pretty well, as far as He's gone, why, we
couldn't have no prayer-meetin's at all."
Most of us have our personal grievances, as a vantage-point for
eloquence in behalf of the mass. Simon Basset had deprived Ozias
Lamb, by shrewd management, of the old Lamb homestead; Doctor
Prescott had been instrumental in hushing his voice in prayer and
exhortation in prayer-meeting.
The village people were not slow to recognize a certain natural
eloquence in Ozias Lamb's remarks; oftentimes they appealed to their
own secret convictions; yet they always trembled when he arose and
looked about with that strange smile of his. Ozias said once they
were half scared on account of the Lord, and half on account of
Doctor Prescott. Ozias was often clearly unorthodox in his
premises--no one could conscientiously demur when Doctor Prescott, a
church meeting having been called, presented for approval, the
minister being acquiescent, a resolution that Brother Lamb be
requested to remain quiet in the sanctuary, and not lift up his voice
unto the Lord in public unless he could do so in accordance with the
tenets of the faith, and to the spiritual edification of his
fellow-Christians. The resolution was passed, and Ozias Lamb never
entered the door of the meeting-house again, though his name was not
withdrawn from the church books.
Therefore the cuttle-fish was a sort of Circean revenge upon Doctor
Prescott and Simon Basset for his own private wrongs. It takes a god
to champion wrongs which have not touched him in his farthest
imaginings.