The next morning Jerome went early to his uncle Ozias Lamb for some
finished shoes, which he was to take to Dale. For the first time in
his life, when he entered the shop, he had an impulse to avert his
eyes and not meet his uncle's fully. Ozias had grown old rapidly of
late. He sat, with his usual stiff crouch, on his bench and hammered
away at a shoe-heel on his lapstone. His hair and beard were white
and shaggy, his blue eyes peered sharply, as from a very ambush of
old age, at Jerome loading himself with the finished shoes.
After the usual half-grunt of greeting, which was scarcely more than
a dissyllabic note of salutation between two animals, Ozias was
silent until Jerome was going out.
"Ain't ye well this mornin'?" he asked then.
"Yes," replied Jerome, "I'm well enough."
"When a man's smart," said Ozias Lamb, "and has got money in his
pocket, and don't want folks to know it, he don't keep feelin' of it
to see if it's safe. He acts as if he hadn't got any money, or any
pocket, neither. I s'pose that's what you're tryin' to do."
"Don't know what you mean," returned Jerome, coloring.
"Oh, nothin'. Go along," said his uncle.
But he spoke again before Jerome was out of hearing. "There ain't any
music better than a squeak, in the grind you an' me have got to make
out of life," said he, "an' don't you go to thinkin' there is. If you
ever think you hear it, it's only in your own ears, an' you might as
well make up your mind to it."
"I made up my mind to it as long ago as I can remember," Jerome
answered back, yet scarcely with bitterness, for the very music which
his uncle denied was too loud in his ears for him to disbelieve it.
When Jerome was returning from Dale, an hour later, his back bent
beneath great sheaves of newly cut shoes, like a harvester's with
wheat, he heard a hollow echo of hoofs in the road ahead, then
presently a cloud of dust arose like smoke, and out of it came two
riders: Lawrence Prescott, on a fine black horse--which his father
used seldom for driving, he was so unsuited for standing patiently at
the doors of affliction, yet kept through a latent fondness for good
horse-flesh--and Lucina Merritt, on his pretty bay mare. Lucina
galloped past at Lawrence's side, with an eddying puff of blue
riding-skirt and a toss of yellow curls and blue plumes. Jerome stood
back a little to give them space, and the dust settled slowly over
him after they were by. Then he went on his way, with his heart
beating hard, yet with no feeling of jealousy against Lawrence
Prescott. He even thought that it would be a good match. Still, he
was curiously disturbed, not by the reflection that he was laden with
sheaves of leather--he would have been more ashamed had he been seen
idling on a work-day--but because he feared he looked so untidy with
the dust of the road on his shoes. She might have noticed his
clothes, although she had galloped by so fast.
The first thing Jerome did, when he reached home, was to brush and
blacken his shoes, though there was no chance of Lucina's seeing
them. He felt as if he ought not to think of her when he had on dusty
shoes.
The greater part of the next day Jerome passed, as usual, soling
shoes in Ozias Lamb's shop. When he came home to supper, he noticed
something unusual about his mother and sister. They had the
appearance of being strung tightly with repressed excitement, like
some delicate musical instruments. To look at or to speak to them was
to produce in them sensitive vibrations which seemed out of
proportion to the cause.
Jerome asked no questions. These disturbances in the feminine current
always produced a corresponding stiffness of calm in his masculine
one, as if by an instinct to maintain the equilibrium of dangerous
forces for the safety of the household.
Elmira and her mother kept looking at each other and at him, pulses
starting up in their delicate cheeks, flushes coming and going,
motioning each other with furtive gestures to speak, then
countermanding the order with sharp negatory shakes of the head.
At last Mrs. Edwards called back Jerome as he was going to his
chamber, books under arm and lighted candle in hand.
"Look here," said she; "I want to show you something."
Jerome turned. Elmira was extending towards him a nicely folded
letter, with a little green seal on it.
"What is it?" asked Jerome.
"Read it," said his mother. Jerome took it, unfolded it, and read,
Elmira and his mother watching him. Elmira was quite pale. Mrs.
Edwards's mouth was set as if against anticipated opposition, her
nervously gleaming eyes were fierce with ready argument. Jerome knit
his brows over the letter, then he folded it nicely and gave it back
to Elmira.
"You see what it is?" said his mother.
"Yes, I see," replied Jerome, hesitatingly. He looked confused before
her, for one of the few times of his life.
"An invitation for you an' Elmira to Squire Merritt's--to a party;
it's Lucina's birthday," said his mother, and she fairly smacked her
lips, as if the words were sweet.
Elmira looked at her brother breathlessly. Nobody knew how eager she
was to go; it was the first party worthy of a name to which she had
been bidden in her whole life. She and her mother had been
speculating, ever since the invitation had arrived, upon the
possibility of Jerome's refusing to accept it.
"Nobody can tell what he'll do," Mrs. Edwards had said. "He's just as
likely to take a notion not to go as to go."
"I can't go if he doesn't," said Elmira.
"Why can't you, I'd like to know?"
Elmira shrank timidly. "I never went into Squire Merritt's house in
my life," said she.
"I guess there ain't anything there to bite you," said her mother.
"I'm goin' to say all I can to have your brother go; but if he won't,
you can put on your new dress an' go without him." However, Mrs.
Edwards privately resolved to use as an argument to Jerome, in case
he refused to attend the party, the fact that his sister would not go
without him.
She used it now. Mrs. Edwards's military tactics were those of direct
onslaught, and no saving of powder. "Elmira's afraid to go unless you
do," said she. "You'll be keepin' her home, an' she ain't had a
chance to go to many parties, poor child!"
Jerome met Elmira's beseeching eyes and frowned aside, blushing like
a girl. "Well, I don't know," said he; "I'll see."
That was the provincial form of masculine concession to feminine
importunity. Mrs. Edwards nodded to Elmira when Jerome had shut the
door. "He'll go," said she.
Elmira smiled and quivered with half-fearful delight. Lawrence
Prescott was coming to see her the next day, and the day after that
she would be sure to meet him again at Squire Merritt's. She trembled
before her own happiness, as before an angel whose wings cast shadows
of the dread of delight.
"You'd better go to bed now," said her mother, with a meaning look;
"you want to look bright to-morrow, and you've got a good deal before
you."
The next day not a word was said to Jerome about Lawrence Prescott's
expected call. He noticed vaguely that something unusual seemed to be
going on in the parlor; then divined, with a careless dismissal of
the subject, that it was house-cleaning. He had a secret of his own
that day which might have rendered him less curious about the secrets
of others. There were scarcely enough shoes finished to take to Dale,
only a half-lot, but Jerome announced his intention of going, to
Ozias Lamb, with assumed carelessness.
"Why don't ye wait till the lot is finished?" asked Ozias.
"Guess I'll take a half-lot this time," replied Jerome.
Ozias eyed him sharply, but said nothing.
Jerome had in his room a little iron-bound strong-box which had
belonged to his father, though few treasures had poor Abel Edwards
ever had occasion to store in it. After dinner that noon Jerome went
up-stairs, unlocked the strong-box, took out some coins, handling
them carefully lest they jingle, and put them in his leather wallet.
Then he went down-stairs and out the front door as stealthily as if
he had been thieving. Elmira and her mother were at work in the
parlor, and saw him go down the walk and disappear up the road.
"I'll tell you what 'tis," said Mrs. Edwards, with one of her sharp,
confirmatory nods, "J'rome's been takin' out some of that money, an'
he's goin' to Dale to get him some new clothes."
"What makes you think so?"
"Oh, you see if he 'ain't. He 'ain't got a coat nor a vest fit to
wear to that party, an' he knows it. If he's taken some of that money
he's savin' up towards the mortgage I'm glad of it. Folks ought to
have a little somethin' as they go along; if they don't, first thing
they know they'll get past it."
Jerome did not start for Dale until it was quite late in the
afternoon, working hard meanwhile in the shop. The day was another of
those typical ones of early spring, which had come lately, drooping
as to every leaf and bud with that hot languor which forces bloom.
The door and windows of the little shop were set wide open. The honey
and spice-breaths of flowers mingled with the rank effluvia of
leather like a delicate melody with a harsh bass. Jerome pegged along
in silence with knitted brow, yet with a restraint of smiles on his
lips.
Ozias Lamb also was silent; his old face bending over his work was a
concentration of moody gloom. Ozias was not as outspoken as formerly
concerning his bitter taste of life, possibly because it had reached
his soul. Jerome sometimes wondered if his uncle had troubles that he
did not know of. He started for Dale so late that it was after sunset
when he returned with a great parcel under his arm. He felt strangely
tired, and just before he reached Upham village he sat down on a
stone wall, laid his parcel carefully at his side, and looked about
him.
The spring dusk was gathering slowly, though at first through an
enhanced clearness of upper lights. All the gloom seemed to proceed
from the earth in silvery breathings of meadows and gradual stealings
forth of violet shadows from behind forest trees. The sky was so full
of pure yellow light that even the feathery spring foliage was darkly
outlined against it, and one could see far within it the fanning of
the wings of the twilight birds. The air was cooler. The breaths of
new-turned earth, and rank young plants in marshy places and woodland
ponds were in it, overcoming somewhat those of sun-steeped blossoms,
which had prevailed all day.
The road from Dale to Upham lay through low land, and however dry the
night elsewhere, there was always a damp freshness. The circling
clamor of birds overhead seemed wonderfully near. In the village the
bell had begun to ring for an evening prayer-meeting, and one could
have fancied that the bell hung in one of the neighboring trees. The
clearness of sight seemed to enhance hearing, and possibly also that
imagination which is beyond both senses. Jerome had a vague
impression which he did not express to himself, that he had come to a
door wide open into spaces beyond all needs and desires of the flesh
and the earthly soul, and had a sense of breathing new air. Suddenly,
now that he had gained this clear outlook of spirit, the world, and
all the things thereof, seemed to be at his back, and grown dim, even
to his retrospective thought. The image even of beautiful Lucina,
which had dwelt with him since Sunday, faded, for she was not yet
become of his spirit, and pertained scarcely to his flesh, except
through the simplest and most rudimentary of human instincts. Jerome
glanced at the parcel containing the fine new vest and coat which he
had purchased, and frowned scornfully at this childish vanity, which
would lead him to perk and plume and glitter to the sun, like any
foolish bird which would awake the desire of the eyes in another.
"What a fool I am!" he muttered, and looked at the great open of sky
again, and was half minded to take his purchases back to Dale.
However, when the clear gold of the sky began to pale and a great
star shone out over the west, he rose, took up his parcel, and went
home.
There was a light in the parlor. He thought indifferently that
Paulina Maria Judd or his aunt Belinda might be in there calling on
his mother; but when he went into the kitchen his mother sat there,
and both the other women were with her.
The supper-table was still standing. "Where have you been, Jerome
Edwards?" cried his mother. She cast a sharp look at his parcel, but
said nothing about it. Jerome laid it on top of the old desk which
had belonged to his father. "I have been over to Dale," he replied;
"I didn't start very early."
His aunt Belinda looked at him amiably. She had not changed much. Her
face, shaded by her long curls, had that same soft droop as of a
faded flower. Once past her bloom of the flesh, there was, in a woman
so little beset by storms of the spirit as Belinda Lamb, little
further change possible until she dropped entirely from her tree of
life. She looked at Jerome with the amiable light of a smile rather
than a smile itself, and said, with her old, weak, but clinging
pounce upon disturbing trifles, "Why, Jerome, you 'ain't been all
this time gettin' to Dale an' back?"
"I didn't hurry," replied Jerome, coldly, drawing a chair up to the
supper-table. He had always a sensation of nervous impatience with
this mild, negatively sweet woman which he could not overcome, though
he felt shamed by it. He preferred to see Paulina Maria, though
between her and himself a covert antagonism survived the open one of
his boyhood--at least, he could dislike her without disliking
himself.
The candle-light fell full upon Paulina Maria's face, which was even
more transparent than formerly; so transfused was her clear profile
by the candle-light that the outlines seemed almost to waver and be
lost. She was knitting a fine white cotton stocking in an intricate
pattern, and did not look at Jerome, or speak to him, beyond her
first nod of recognition when he entered.
Presently, however, Jerome turned to her. "How is Henry?" he
inquired.
"About the same," she replied, in her clear voice, which was
unexpectedly loud, and seemed to have a curious after-tone.
"His eyes are no worse, then?"
"No worse, and no better."
"Can't he do any more than he did last year?" asked Mrs. Edwards.
"No, he can't. He hasn't been able to do a stitch on shoes since last
Thanksgiving. He can't do anything but sit at the window and knit
plain knittin'. I don't know how he would get along, if I hadn't
showed him how to do that. I believe he'd go crazy."
"Don't you think that last stuff Doctor Prescott put in his eyes did
him any good?" asked Mrs. Edwards.
"No, I don't. He didn't think it would, himself. He said all there
was to do was to go to Boston and see that great doctor there and
have an operation, an' it's goin' to cost three hundred dollars.
Three hundred dollars!--it's easy enough to talk--three hundred
dollars! Adoniram has been laid up with jaundice half the winter.
I've bound shoes, and I've knit these fine stockin's for Mis' Doctor
Prescott. They go towards the doctor's bill, but they're a drop in
the bucket. She'd allow considerable on them, but it ain't _her_ say.
Three hundred dollars!"
"It's a sight of money," said Belinda Lamb. "I s'pose you could
mortgage the house, Paulina Maria, and then when Henry got his
eyesight back he could work to pay it off."
A deep red transfused Paulina Maria's transparent pallor, but before
she could speak Ann Edwards interposed. "Mortgage!" said she, with a
sniff of her nostrils, as if she scented battle. "Mortgage! Load a
poor horse down to the ground till his legs break under him, set a
baby to layin' a stone wall till he drops, but don't talk to me of
mortgages; I guess I know enough about them. My poor husband would
have been alive and well to-day if it hadn't been for a mortgage. It
sounds easy enough--jest a little interest money to pay every year,
an' all this money down; but I tell you 'tis like a leech that sucks
at body and soul. You get so the mortgage looks worse than your sins,
an' you pray to be forgiven that instead of them. I know. Don't you
have a mortgage put on your house, Paulina Maria Judd, or you'll rue
the day. I'd--steal before I'd do it!"
Paulina Maria made no response; she was quite pale again.
"I should think you'd be afraid Henry would go entirely blind if you
didn't have something done for him," said Belinda Lamb.
"I be," replied Paulina Maria, sternly. She rose to go, and Belinda
also, with languid response of motion, as if Paulina Maria were an
upstirring wind.
When Paulina Maria opened the outer door there was a rush of dank
night air.
"Don't you want me to walk home with you and Aunt Belinda?" asked
Jerome. "It's pretty dark."
"No, thank you," replied Paulina Maria, grimly, looking back, a pale,
wavering shape against the parallelogram of night; "the things I'm
afraid of walk in the light as much as the dark, an' you can't keep
'em off."
"You make me creep, talkin' so," Belinda Lamb said, as she and
Paulina Maria, two women of one race, with their souls at the
antipodes of things, went down the path together.
"I hope Paulina Maria won't put a mortgage on her house; Henry 'd
better be blind," said Ann Edwards, when they had gone.
Jerome, finishing his supper, said nothing, but he knew, and Paulina
Maria knew that he knew, there was already a mortgage on her house.
When Jerome rose from the table his mother pointed at the parcel on
the desk.
"What's that?" she asked.
"I had to buy a coat and vest if I was going to that party," replied
Jerome, with a kind of dogged embarrassment. He had never felt so
confused before his mother's sharp eyes since he was a child. If she
had blamed him for his purchase, he would have been an easy victim,
but she did not.
"What did you get?" she asked.
"I'll show you in the morning--you can see them better."
"Well, you needed them, if you are goin' to the party. You've got to
look a little like folks. Where you goin'?" for Jerome had started
towards the door.
"Into the parlor to get a book." He opened the door, but his mother
beckoned him back mysteriously, and he closed it softly.
"What is it?" he asked, wonderingly. "Who is there? Has Elmira got
company?"
"Belinda Lamb begun quizzin' as soon as she got in here; said she
thought she heard a man talkin', an' asked if it was you; an' when I
said it wa'n't, wanted to know who it was. I told her right to her
face it was none of her business."
"Who is it in there, mother?" asked Jerome.
"It ain't anybody to make any fuss about."
"Who is it in there with Elmira?"
"It's Lawrence Prescott, that's who it is," replied his mother, who
was more wary in defence than attack, yet defiant enough when the
struggle came. She looked at Jerome with unflinching eyes.
"Lawrence Prescott!"
"Yes, what of it?"
"Mother, he isn't going to pay attention to Elmira!"
"Why not, if he wants to? He's as likely a young fellow as there is
in town. She won't be likely to do any better."
Jerome stared at his mother in utter bewilderment. "Mother, are you
out of your senses?" he gasped.
"I don't know why I am," said she.
"Don't you know that Doctor Prescott would turn Lawrence out of house
and home if he thought he was going to marry Elmira?"
"I guess she's good enough for him. You can run down your own sister
all you want to, Jerome Edwards."
"I am not running her down. I don't deny she's good enough for any
man on earth, but not with the kind of goodness that counts. Mother,
don't you know that nothing but trouble can come to Elmira from this?
Lawrence Prescott can't marry her."
"I'd like to know what you mean by trouble comin' to her," demanded
his mother. A hot red of shame and wrath flashed all over her little
face and neck as she spoke, and Jerome, perceiving his mother's
thought, blushed at that, and not at his own.
"I meant that he would have to leave her, and make her miserable in
the end, and that is all I did mean," he said, indignantly. "He can't
marry her, and you know it as well as I. Then there is something
else," he added, as a sudden recollection flashed over his mind: "he
was out riding horseback with Lucina Merritt Monday."
"I don't believe a word of it," his mother said, hotly.
"I saw him."
"Well, what of it if he did? She's the only girl here that rides
horseback, an' I s'pose he wanted company. Mebbe her father asked him
to go with her in case her horse got scared at anything. I shouldn't
be a mite surprised if he had to go and couldn't help himself. He
wouldn't like to refuse if he was asked."
"Mother, you know that Lucina Merritt is the only girl in this town
that Doctor Prescott would think was fit to marry his son, and you
know his family have always had to do just as he said."
"I don't know any such thing," returned his mother; her voice of
dissent had the shrill persistency of a cricket's. "Doctor Prescott
always took a sight of notice of Elmira when she was a little girl
and he used to come here. He never took to you, I know, but he always
did to Elmira."
Jerome said no more. He lighted a candle, took his parcel of new
clothes, and went up-stairs to his chamber.
It was twelve o'clock before Lawrence Prescott went home. Jerome had
not gone to bed; he was waiting to speak to his sister. When he heard
her step on the stairs he opened his door. Elmira, candle in hand,
came slowly up the stair, holding her skirt up lest she trip over it.
When she reached the landing her brother confronted her, and she gave
a little startled cry; then stood, her eyes cast down before him, and
the candle-light shining over the sweet redness and radiance of her
face, which was at that moment nothing but a sign and symbol of
maiden love.
All at once Jerome seemed to grasp the full meaning of it. His own
face deepened and glowed, and looked strangely like his sister's. It
was as if he began to learn involuntarily his own lesson from
another's text-book. Suddenly, instead of his sister's face he seemed
to see Lucina Merritt's. That look of love which levels mankind to
one family was over his memory of her.
"What did you want?" Elmira asked, at length, timidly, but laughing
before him at the same time like a foolish child who cannot conceal
delight.
"Nothing," said her brother; "good-night," and went into his chamber
and shut his door.