Lucina and her mother were away some three months; it was late spring
when they returned. It had been told in Upham that Lucina was quite
well, but when people saw her they differed as to her appearance.
"She looks dreadful delicate now, accordin' to my way of thinkin',"
some of the women, spying sharply upon her from their sitting-room
windows and their meeting-house pews, reported.
Jerome saw her for the first time after her return when she followed
her father and mother up the aisle one Sunday in May when all the
orchards were white. He thought, with a great throb of joy, that she
looked quite well, that she must be well. If the red and white of her
cheeks was a little too clear, he did not appreciate it. She was all
in white, like the trees, with some white blossoms and plumes on her
hat.
After meeting, he lingered a little on the porch, though Elmira was
walking on, with frequent pauses turning her head and looking for
him. However, when Lucina appeared, he did not get the kindly glance
for which he had hoped. She was talking so busily with Mrs. Doctor
Prescott that she did not seem to see him, but the color on her
cheeks was deeper. Jerome joined his sister hastily and went home
quite contented, thinking Lucina was very well.
However, in a few weeks' time he began to hear whispers to the
contrary. Sometimes Lucina did not go to meeting; still, she was seen
out frequently riding and walking. When Jerome caught a glimpse of
her he strove to shut away the knowledge that she did not look well
from his own consciousness. But when Lucina had been at home six
weeks she took a sudden turn for the better, which could have been
dated accurately from a certain morning when she met Colonel Jack
Lamson, she being out riding and he walking. He kept pace with the
slow amble of her little white horse for some distance, sometimes
grasping the bridle and stopping in a shady place to talk more at
ease.
When Lucina got home that noon her mother noticed a change in her.
"You look better than you have done for weeks," said she.
"I enjoyed my ride," Lucina said, with a smile and a blush which her
mother could not fathom. The girl ate a dinner which gladdened her
father's heart; afterwards she went up to her chamber, and presently
came down with her hat on and her silk work-bag on her arm.
"I am going to take one of my chair-covers over to Aunt Camilla's,"
said she.
"Well, walk slowly," said her mother, trying to conceal her delight
lest it betray her past anxiety. Lucina had not touched her
embroidery for weeks, nor stepped out-of-doors of her own accord.
When she was gone her father and mother looked at each other. "She's
better," Eben said, with a catch in his voice.
"I haven't seen her so bright for weeks," replied Abigail. She had a
puzzled look in spite of her satisfaction. That night she ascertained
through wariest soundings that Lucina had not met Jerome when riding
in the morning. She had suspected something, though she scarcely knew
what. Lucina's secrecy lately had deceived even her mother. She had
begun to think that the girl had not been as much in earnest in her
love affair as she had thought, and was drooping from some other
cause.
When Lucina revealed with innocent readiness that she had met Colonel
Lamson that morning and talked with him, and with no one else,
Abigail could make nothing of it.
However, Lucina from that day on improved. She took up her little
tasks; she seemed quite as formerly, only, possibly, somewhat older
and more staid.
The Squire thought that her recovery was due to a certain bitter
medicine which Doctor Prescott had given her, and often extolled it
to his wife. "It is singular that medicine should work like a flash
of lightning after she had been taking it for weeks with no effect,"
thought Abigail, but she said nothing.
One afternoon, not long after her talk with Colonel Lamson, Lucina
met Jerome face to face in the road, and stopped and held out her
hand to him. "How do you do?" she said, paling and blushing, and yet
with a sweet confidence which was new in her manner.
Jerome bowed low, but did not offer his hand. She held out hers
persistently.
"I can't shake hands," he said, "mine is stained with leather; it
smells of it, too."
"I am not afraid of leather," Lucina returned, gently.
"I am," Jerome said, with a defiance in which there was no
bitterness. Then, as Lucina still looked at him and held out her
hand, with an indescribable air of pretty, childish insistence and
womanly pleading, her blue eyes being sober almost to tears, he
motioned her to wait a moment, and swung over the fence and down the
road-side, which was just there precipitous, to the brook-bed. He got
down on his knees, plunged his hands into the water, like a golden
net-work in the afternoon light, washed his hands well, and returned
to Lucina. She laid her little hand in his, but she shook her head,
smiling. "I liked it better the other way," said she.
"I couldn't touch your hand with mine like that."
"You would give me more if you let me give you something sometimes,"
said Lucina, with a pretty, sphinx-like look at him as she drew her
hand away.
Jerome wondered what she had meant after they had separated. Acute as
he was, and of more masterly mind than she, he was at a loss, for she
had touched that fixed idea which sways us all to greater or less
degree and some to delusion. Jerome, with his one principle of
giving, could not even grasp a problem which involved taking.
He puzzled much over it, then decided, not with that lenient
slighting, as in other cases when womankind had vexed him with blind
words, but with a fond reverence, as for some angelic mystery, that
it was because Lucina was a girl. "Maybe girls are given to talking
in that riddlesome kind of way," thought Jerome.
He was blissfully certain upon one point, at all events. Lucina's
whole manner had given evidence to a confidence and understanding
upon her part.
"She knows what I am doing," he told himself. "She knows how I am
working, and she is contented and willing to wait. She knows, but she
isn't bound." Jerome had not dreamed that Lucina's indisposition had
had aught to do with distress of mind upon his account.
Now he fell upon work as if it had been a veritable dragon of old,
which he must slay to rescue his princess. He toiled from earliest
dawn until far dark, and not with hands only. Still he did not
neglect his gratuitous nursing and doctoring. He saved like a miser,
though not at his mother's and sister's expense. He himself would
taste, in those days, no butter, no sugar, no fresh meat, no bread of
fine flour, but he saw to it that is mother and Elmira were well
provided.
When winter came again, he used to hasten secretly along the road,
not wishing to meet Lucina for a new reason--lest she discover how
thin his coat was against the wintry blast, how thin his shoes
against the snow.
"I never thought Jerome was so close," Elmira sometimes said to her
mother.
"He ain't close, he's got an object," returned Ann, with a shrewd,
mysterious look.
"What do you mean, mother?"
"Nothin'."
Elmira's and Lawrence's courtship progressed after the same fashion.
If Doctor Prescott suspected anything he made no sign. Lawrence was
attending patients regularly with his father and reading hard.
Sometimes, during his occasional calls upon Elmira, he saw Jerome.
The two young men, when they met on the road, exchanged covertly
cordial courtesies; a sort of non-committal friendship was struck up
between them. Lawrence was the means of introducing Jerome to a new
industry, of which he might otherwise never have heard.
"Father and I were on the old Dale road this morning," he said, "and
there is a fine cranberry-meadow there on the left, if anybody wants
to improve it. There's plenty of chance for drainage from that little
stream that runs into Graystone, and it's sheltered from the frost.
Old Jonathan Hawkins owns it; we went there--his wife is sick--and he
said he used to sell berries off it, but it had run down. He said
he'd be glad to let somebody work it on shares, just allowing him for
the use of the land. He's too old to bother with it himself, and he
is pretty well straitened for money. There's money in it, I guess."
Jerome listened, and the next day went over to Jonathan Hawkins's
place, on the old Dale road, and made his bargain. Some of his work
on the cranberry-meadow was done before light, his lantern moving
about the misty expanse like a marsh candle. When the berries were
ripe he employed children to pick them, John Upham's among the rest.
He cleared quite a sum by this venture, and added it to his store. In
two years' time he had saved enough money for his mill, and early in
the fall had the lumber all ready. He had engaged one carpenter from
Dale; he thought that he could build the mill himself with his help,
and that of some extra hands for raising.
On the evening before the day on which he expected to begin work he
went to see Adoniram Judd. The Judds lived off the main road, in a
field connected with it by a cart-path. Their house, after the
commonest village pattern--a long cottage with two windows on either
side of the front door--stood closely backed up against a wood of
pines and larches. The wind was cold, and the sound of it in the
evergreens was like a far-off halloo of winter. The house had a
shadowy effect in waning moonlight, the walls were mostly gray, being
only streaked high on the sheltered sides with old white paint.
Since Paulina Maria could not afford to have a coat of new paint on
her house, she had a bitter ambition, from motives of tidiness and
pride, to at least remove all traces of the old. She felt that the
chief sting of present deprivation lay in the evidence of its
contrast with former plenty. She hated the image in her memory of her
cottage glistening with the white gloss of paint, and would have
weakened it if she could. Paulina Maria accordingly, standing on a
kitchen-chair, had scrubbed with soap and sand the old paint-streaks
as high as her long arms would reach, and had, at times, when his
rheumatism would permit, set her tall husband to the task. The paint,
which was difficult to remove by any but its natural effacers--the
long courses of nature--was one of those minor material antagonisms
of life which keep the spirit whetted for harder ones.
Paulina Maria Judd had many such; when the pricks of fate were too
firm set against her struggling feet she saved herself from the
despair of utter futility by taking soap and water and sand, and
going forth to attack the paint on her house walls, and also the
front door-stone worn in frequent hollows for the collection of dirt
and dust.
This evening, when Jerome drew near, he saw a long rise of back over
the door-step, and a swiftly plying shoulder and arm. Paulina Maria
looked up without ceasing when Jerome stood beside her.
"You're working late," he said, with an attempt at pleasantry.
"I have to do my cleanin' late or not at all," replied Paulina Maria,
in her cold, calm voice. She rubbed more soap on her cloth.
"Uncle Adoniram at home?" Jerome had always called Adoniram "Uncle,"
though he was his father's cousin.
"Yes."
"I want to see him a minute about something."
"You'll have to go round to the back door. I can't have more dirt
tracked into this while it's wet."
Jerome went around the house to the back door. As he passed the
lighted sitting-room windows he saw a monstrous shadow with steadily
moving hands on the curtain. He fumbled his way through the lighted
room, in which sat Adoniram Judd closing shoes and his son Henry
knitting. When the door opened Henry, whose shadow Jerome had seen on
the window-pane, looked up with the vacant peering of the blind, but
his fingers never ceased twirling the knitting-needles.
"How are you?" said Jerome.
Adoniram returned his salutation without rising, and bade him take a
chair. Henry spoke not at all, and bent his dim eyes again over his
knitting without a smile. Henry Judd had the lank height of his
father, and his blunt elongation of face and features, informed by
his mother's spirit. The result in his expression was an absolute
ferocity instead of severity of gloom, a fury of resentment against
his fate, instead of that bitter leaning towards it which is the acme
of defiance.
Henry Judd bent his heavy, pale brows over the miserable feminine
work to which he was forced. His long hands were white as a girl's,
and revealed their articulation as they moved; his face,
transparently pale, showed a soft furze of young beard on cheek and
chin.
"How are you, Henry?" asked Jerome.
Henry made no reply, only scowled more gloomily. Paulina Maria's
ardent severity of Christianity had produced in her son, under his
first stress of life, a fierce rebound. To no word of Scripture would
Henry Judd resort for comfort; he never bent knee in prayer, and
would not be led, even by his mother's authority, to meeting on
Sunday. The voice of his former mates, who had with him no sympathy
of like affliction, filled him with a sullen rage of injury. He was
somewhat younger than Jerome, but had seemed formerly much attracted
to him. Now he had not spoken to him for a year.
Jerome, when he entered, had looked happy and eager, as if he was
burdened with some pleasant news. Now his expression changed; he
looked at Adoniram, then at Henry, then at Adoniram again, and
motioned an inquiry with his lips. Adoniram shook his head sadly.
Paulina Maria came in through the kitchen, where she had left her
scrubbing utensils, got an unfinished shoe, and sat down to her
binding. She did not notice Jerome again, and he sat frowning moodily
at the floor.
"It is a cold night for the season," remarked Adoniram, at length,
with an uneasy attempt at entertainment, to which Jerome did not
respond with much alacrity. He acted at first as if he did not hear,
then collected himself, said that it was cold, and there might be a
frost if the wind went down, and rose.
"You ain't goin' so soon?" asked Adoniram, with slow surprise.
"I only ran over for a minute; I've got some work to do," muttered
Jerome, and went out.
He went along the ridgy cart-path across the field to the road, but
when he reached it he stopped short. He stood for ten minutes or
more, motionless, thinking so intently that it was as if his body
stood aside from his swift thought, then he returned to the Judd
house.
He went around to the back door, but when he reached it he stopped
again. After a little he crept noiselessly back to the cart-path, and
so to the road again.
But it was as if, when he reached the road, he met some unseen and
mighty arm of denial which barred it. He stopped there for the second
time. Then he went back again to the Judd house, and this time when
he reached the door he opened it and went in.
When he entered the sitting-room, where Adoniram and Paulina Maria
and Henry were, they all looked up in astonishment.
"Forgot anything?" inquired Adoniram.
"Yes," replied Jerome. Then he went on, speaking fast, in a strained
voice, which he tried hard to make casual. "There was something I
wanted to say. I've been thinking about Henry's eyes. If--you want to
take him to Boston, to that doctor, I've got the money. I've got five
hundred dollars you're welcome to. I believe you said it would take
that." He looked straight at Paulina Maria as he spoke, and she
dropped her work and looked at him.
Adoniram made a faint, gasping noise, then sat staring at them both.
Henry started, but knitted on as remorselessly as his own fate.
"How did you come by so much money?" asked Paulina Maria, in her
pure, severe voice.
"I saved if from my earnings."
"What for?"
"You'll be welcome to take it, and use it for Henry."
"That ain't answering my question."
Jerome was silent.
"You needn't answer if you don't want to," said Paulina Maria, "for I
know. You've kept it dark from everybody but Lawyer Means and your
mother and Elmira, but your mother told me a year ago. I haven't told
a soul. You've been saving up this money to build a mill with
and--I've been over to your mother's this afternoon--you are going to
start it to-morrow."
"I am not obliged to start it to-morrow," said Jerome.
"You're obliged to for all me. Do you think I'll take that money?"
Jerome turned to Henry. "Henry, it's for you, and not your mother,"
said he. "Will you take it?"
Henry, still knitting, shook his head.
"I tell you there is no hurry about the mill. I can wait and earn
more. I give it to you freely."
"We shouldn't take it unless I give you a note of hand, Jerome,"
Adoniram interposed, in a quavering voice.
Paulina Maria looked at her husband. "What is your note of hand
worth?" she asked, sternly.
"Won't you take it, Henry? I've always thought a good deal of you,
and I don't want you to be blind," Jerome said.
Henry shook his head; there was an awful inexorableness with himself
displayed in his steady knitting.
"There are things worse than blindness," said Paulina Maria. "Nobody
shall sacrifice himself for my son. If our own prayers and sacrifices
are not sufficient, it is the will of the Lord that he should suffer,
and he will suffer."
"Take it, Henry," pleaded Jerome, utterly disregarding her.
"Would you take it in my son's place?" demanded Paulina Maria,
suddenly. She looked fixedly at Jerome. "Answer me," said she.
"That has nothing to do with it!" Jerome cried, angrily. "He is going
blind, and this money will cure him. If you are his mother--"
"Don't ask anybody to take even a kindness that you wouldn't take
yourself," said Paulina Maria.
Jerome flung out of the room without another word. When he got
out-of-doors, he found Adoniram at his elbow.
"I want ye to know that I'm much obliged to ye, J'rome," he
whispered. He felt for Jerome's hand and shook it. "Thank ye, thank
ye, J'rome," he repeated, brokenly.
"I don't want any thanks," replied Jerome. "Can't you take the money
and make Henry go with you to Boston and see the doctor, if she
won't?"
"It's no use goin' agin her, J'rome."
"I believe she's crazy."
"No, she ain't, J'rome--no, she ain't. She knows how you saved up
that money, an' she won't take it. She's made so she can't take
anybody else's sufferin' to ease hers, an' so's Henry--he's like his
mother."
"Can't you make her take it, Uncle Adoniram?"
"She can't make herself take it; but I'm jest as much obliged to ye,
J'rome."
Adoniram was about to re-enter the house. "She'll wonder where I be,"
he muttered, but Jerome stopped him. "If I do begin work on the mill
to-morrow," said he, "I sha'n't be able to fetch and carry to Dale,
nor to do as much work in Uncle Ozias's shop. Do you suppose you can
help out some?"
"I can, if I'm as well as I be now, J'rome."
"Of course, you can earn more than you do now," said Jerome. That was
really the errand upon which he had come to the Judds that evening.
He had been quite elated with the thought of the pleasure it would
give them, when the possibility of larger service--Henry's cure by
means of his cherished hoard--had suddenly come to him.
He arranged with Adoniram Judd that he should go to the shop the next
morning, then bade him good-night, and turned his own steps thither.
When he came in sight of Ozias Lamb's shop, its window was throwing a
long beam of light across the field creeping with dry grass before
the frosty wind. When Jerome opened the door, he started to see Ozias
seated upon his bench, his head bowed over and hidden upon his idle
hands. Jerome closed the door, then stood a moment irresolute,
staring at his uncle's dejected figure. "What's the matter, Uncle
Ozias?" he asked.
Ozias did not speak, but made a curious, repellent motion with his
bowed shoulders.
"Are you sick?"
Again Ozias seemed to shunt him out of the place with that speaking
motion of his shoulder.
Jerome went close to him. "Uncle Ozias, I want to know what is the
matter?" he said, then started, for suddenly Ozias raised his face
and looked at him, his eyes wild under his shaggy grizzle of hair,
his mouth twisted in a fierce laugh. "Want to know, do ye?" he
cried--"want to know? Well, I'll tell ye. Look at me hard; I'm a
sight. Look at me. Here's a man, 'most threescore years and ten,
who's been willin' to work, an' has worked, an' 'ain't been
considered underwitted, who's been strugglin' to keep a roof over his
head an' his wife's, an' bread in their two mouths; jest that, no
more. He 'ain't had any children; nobody but himself an' his wife,
an' she contented with next to nothin'. Jest a roof an' bread for
them--jest that; an' he an able-bodied man, that's worked like a
dog--jest that; an' he's got to give it up. Look at him, he's a sight
for wise men an' fools." Ozias laughed.
"What on earth do you mean, Uncle Ozias?"
"Simon Basset is goin' to foreclose to-morrow."
Jerome stared at his uncle incredulously. "Why, I thought you had
earned plenty to keep the interest up of late years!" he said.
"There was more than present interest to pay; there was back
interest, and I've been behind on taxes, and there was an old doctor
bill, when I had the fever; an' that wa'n't all--I never told ye, nor
anybody. I was fool enough to sign a note for George Henry Green, in
Westbrook, some years ago. He come to me with tears in his eyes, said
he wouldn't care so much if it wa'n't for his wife an' children; he'd
got to raise the money, an' couldn't get nobody to sign his note. I
lost every dollar of it. It's been all I could do to pay up, an' I
couldn't keep even with the interest. I knew it was comin'."
"How much interest do you owe?" asked Jerome, in an odd voice. He was
very pale.
"Two hundred an' seventy dollars--it's twelve per cent."
"And you can't raise it?"
"Might as well try to raise the dead."
"Well, I can let you have it," said Jerome.
"You?"
"Yes."
His uncle looked at him with his sharp, strained eyes; then he made a
hoarse noise, between a sob and a cough. "Rob you of that money
you've been savin' to build your mill! We'll take to the woods
first!" he cried.
"I've saved a good deal more than two hundred and seventy dollars."
"You want every dollar of it for your mill. Don't talk to me."
"I'd want every dollar if I was going to build it, but I am not,"
said Jerome.
"What d'ye mean? Ain't ye goin' to start it to-morrow?"
"No, I've decided not to."
"Why not, I'd like to know?"
"I'm going to wait until the Dale railroad seems a little nearer. I
shouldn't have much business for the mill now if I built it, and
there's no use in its standing rotting. I'm going to wait a little."
Poor Ozias Lamb looked at him with his keen old eyes, which were,
perhaps, dulled a little by the selfishness of his sore distress.
"D'ye mean what ye say, J'rome?" he asked, wistfully, in a tone that
was new to him.
"Yes, I do; you can have the money as well as not."
"I'll give ye my note, an' ye can have this piece of land an' the
shop--this ain't mortgaged--as security, an' I'll pay ye--fair per
cent.," Ozias said, hesitatingly.
"All right," returned Jerome.
"An'," Ozias faltered, "I'll work my fingers to the bone; I'll
steal--but you shall have your money back before you are ready to
begin the mill."
"That may be quite a while," Jerome said, laughing as openly as a
child. His uncle suspected nothing, though once he could scarcely
have been deceived.
"I've been round to Uncle Adoniram's to-night," Jerome added, "to get
him to come here to-morrow and help with that lot of shoes. I'm going
to take up with an offer I've had to cut some wood on shares. I think
I can make some money out of it, and it'll be a change from so much
shoemaking, for a while."
"You never was the build for a shoemaker," said his uncle.