The next morning Jerome was just going out of the yard when he met
Paulina Maria Judd and Henry coming in. Paulina Maria held her blind
son by the hand, but he walked with an air of resisting her guidance.
"J'rome, I've come to see you about that money," said Paulina Maria.
"I hear you're goin' to give us two hundred and fifty dollars. I told
you once we wouldn't take your money."
"This is different. This is the money Colonel Lamson left me, that
I'd agreed to give away."
"It ain't any different to us. You can keep it."
"I sha'n't keep it, anyway. For God's sake, aunt, take it! Henry,
take it, and get your eyes cured!"
"I sha'n't take money that's given in any such way, and neither will
my son. I haven't changed my mind about what I said the other night,
and neither has he. You need this money yourself. If the money had
been left to us, it would have been different; we sha'n't take it,
and you needn't offer it to us; you can count us out in your
division. We sha'n't take what Doctor Prescott has offered
neither--to give us the mortgage on our house. It's an honest debt,
and we don't want to shirk it. If we're paupers, we'll be paupers of
God, but of no man!"
"Henry," pleaded Jerome, "just listen to me." But it was of no
avail. His cousin turned his blind face sternly away from his
pleading voice, and went out of the yard, still seeming to strive
against his mother's leading hand.
Jerome followed them, still arguing with them; he even walked with
them a little, after the turn of the road. Then he gave it up, and
went on to the store, where he had an errand. He resolved to see
Adoniram, and try to influence him to take the money for his blind
son. He could not believe that he would not do so. Long before he
reached the store he could hear the gabble of excited voices, and
loud peals of rough laughter. "What's going on?" he thought. When he
entered, he saw Simon Basset backed up against a counter, at bay, as
it were, before a great throng of village men and boys. Basset was
deathly white through his grime and beard-stubble, his gaunt jaws
snapping like a wolf's, his eyes fierce with terror.
"Shell out, Simon," shouted a young man, with a butting motion of a
shock head towards the old man. "Shell out, I tell ye, or ye'll have
a writ served on ye."
"I tell ye I won't; ye don't know nothin' about it; I 'ain't got no
property!" shrieked Simon Basset, amidst a wild burst of laughter.
"He 'ain't got no property, he 'ain't, hi!" shouted the boys on the
outskirts, with peals of goblin merriment.
"I tell ye I 'ain't got more'n five thousand dollars to my name!"
"You 'ain't, eh? Where's all your land, you old liar?" asked the
young man, who seemed spokesman for the crowd.
"It ain't wuth nothin'. I couldn't sell it to-day if I wanted to."
"Gimme the land, then, an' we'll take the risk," was the cry. "J'rome
and the doctor have shelled out; now it's your turn, or you'll hev
the officers after ye."
Jerome pushed his way through the crowd. "What are you scaring him
for?" he demanded. "He's an old man, and you ought to be ashamed of
yourselves."
"He ain't more'n seventy," replied the young man, "an' he's smart as
a cricket--he's smart enough to gouge the whole town, old 's he is."
"That's so, Eph!" chorused his supporters.
Jerome grasped Basset by the shoulder. "Don't you know you are not
obliged to give a dollar, if you don't want to?" he asked. "That
paper wasn't legal."
The old man shrank before him with craven terror, and yet with the
look of a dog which will snap when he sees an unwary hand. "Ye don't
git me into none of yer traps," he snarled. "What made Doctor
Prescott give anythin'?"
"He gave because he wanted to keep his promise, not because he was
forced to by that paper."
"Likely story," said Simon Basset.
"I tell you it's so."
"Likely story, Seth Prescott ever give it if he wa'n't obliged to. Ye
can't trap me."
"Go and ask him, if you don't believe me," said Jerome.
"Ye don't trap me, I'm too old."
"Go and ask Lawyer Means, then."
"I guess, when ye git me into that pesky lawyer's clutches, ye'll
know it! Ye can't trap me. I guess I know more about law than ye do,
ye damned little upstart ye! Why couldn't ye have kept your dead
man's shoes to home, darn ye? Ye'll come on the town yerself, yet; ye
won't have money enough to pay fer your buryin', an' I hope to God ye
won't! Curse ye! I'll live to see ye in your pauper's grave yet, old
's I be. Ye _thief!_ I tell ye, I 'ain't got no money. I 'ain't got
more'n five thousand dollars, countin' everythin' in the world, an'
I'll see ye all damned to hell afore I'll give ye a dollar. Let me
out, will ye?" Simon Basset made a clawing, cat-like rush through
the crowd to the door.
"I tell you, Simon Basset, you haven't got to give a dollar," shouted
Jerome; but he might as well have shouted to the wind.
"No use, J'rome," chuckled the shock-headed young man, "he's gone
plumb crazy over it. You can't make him listen to nothin'."
"What do you mean, badgering him so?" cried Jerome, angrily.
"He's a mean old cuss, anyhow," said the young man, with a defiant
laugh.
"That's so! Serves him right," grunted the others. They were all much
younger than Jerome, and many of them were mere boys. It seemed
strange that a man as sharp as Basset had taken them seriously.
Jerome, the more he thought it over, was convinced that Simon Basset
was half crazed with the fear of parting with his money. When he came
out of the store, he hesitated; he was half inclined to follow Basset
home, and try to reason him into some understanding of the truth.
Then, remembering his violent attitude towards himself, he decided
that it would be useless, and went home. He planned to plough his
garden that day.
"I've got to work at something," Jerome told himself; "if it isn't
one thing, it's got to be another." He dwelt always upon Lucina:
what she was thinking of him; if she thought that he did not love
her, because he had given her up; if she would look at him, if she
were to see him, as his sister had done the night before. Jerome had
not yet answered Lucina's letter. He did not know how to answer it;
but he carried it with him night and day.
He went home, got his horse and plough, and fell to work in his hilly
garden ground. His father came out and sat on a stone and watched him
happily. Jerome was scarcely accustomed to his father yet, but he
treated him as tenderly as if he were a child, and the old man
followed him like one. Indeed, he seemed to prefer his son to his
wife, though Ann watched him with jealous affection. Ann Edwards had
never walked since the night of her husband's return. She never
alluded to it; sometimes her children thought that she had not known
it herself.
Jerome was still ploughing in the afternoon when his uncle Ozias Lamb
came.
Ozias stumped softly through the new-turned mould. He had a folded
paper in his hand, and he extended it towards Jerome. "D'ye know
anythin' about this?" he asked. His face was ashy.
Jerome brought his horse to a stand. "What is it?"
"Don't ye know?"
"No, I don't."
"Well, it's that mortgage deed that Basset held on my place,
with--the signature torn off, cancelled--" Ozias said, in a hoarse
voice. "D'ye know anythin' about it now?"
"No, I don't," replied Jerome, with emphasis.
"Well," said Ozias, "I found it under the front door-sill. Belindy
said she heard a knock on the front door, but when she went there
wa'n't nobody there, an' there was this paper. She come runnin' out
to the shop with it. It was jest before noon. What d'ye s'pose it
means?"
Jerome took the deed and examined it closely. "Have you read what's
written above the heading of it?" he asked.
"No; what is it, J'rome?"
Ozias put on his spectacles; Jerome pointed to a crabbed line above
the heading of the mortgage deed.
"I giv as present the forth part of my proputty, this morgidge to
Ozier Lamm.
"Simon Basset."
"He's took crazy!" cried Ozias, staring wildly at it.
"Guess he's been crazy over dollars and cents all his life, and this
is just an acute phase of it," replied Jerome, calmly, taking up his
plough handles again.
"I b'lieve the hull town's crazy. I've heard that Doctor Prescott has
give his place back to John Upham, an' Peter Thomas is comin' out of
the poor-farm an' goin' back to his old house. J'rome, I declar' to
reason, I b'lieve you're crazy, an' the hull town has caught it.
What's that? Who's comin'?"
A wild-eyed little boy, with fair hair stiff to the breeze, came
racing across the plough ridges. "Come quick! Come quick!" he gasped.
"They've sent me--Doctor Prescott's ain't to home--he's most dead!
Come quick!"
"Where to?" shouted Jerome, pulling the tackle off the horse.
"Come quick, J'rome!"
"Where _to?_"
"Speak up, can't ye?" cried Ozias, shaking the boy by his small
shoulder.
"To Basset's!" screamed the boy, shrilly, jerked away from Ozias, and
was off, clearing the ground like a hound, with long leaps.
"Lord," said Ozias, looking at the deed, "it's killed him!"
Jerome had freed the horse from the plough, and now sprang upon his
back.
"Ye ain't goin' to ride him bare-back?" asked Ozias.
"I'm not going to stop for a saddle. G'long!" Jerome bent forward,
slapped the horse on the neck, dug his heels into his sides, and was
off at a gallop.
Ozias followed, still clutching the deed. Abel Edwards came out as he
reached the house. "Where's J'rome goin' to?" he asked.
"Down to Basset's; somethin's happened. He's fell dead or somethin'.
I'm goin' to see what the matter is."
"Wait till I git my hat, an' I'll go with ye."
The two old men went at a fast trot down the road, and many joined
them, all hurrying to Simon Basset's.
They had reached Lawyer Means's house, which stood in sight of
Basset's, before they met a returning company. "It's no use your
goin'," shouted a man in advance. "He's gone. J'rome Edwards said so
the minute he see him, an' now Doctor Prescott he's come, an' he says
so. He was dead before they cut him down."
With the throng of excited men and boys came one pale-faced, elderly
woman, with her cap awry and her apron over her shoulders. She was
Miss Rachel Blodgett, Eliphalet Means's house-keeper.
She took up her position by the Means's gate, and the crowd gathered
about her as a nucleus. Other women came running out of neighboring
houses, and pressed close to her skirts. Cyrus Robinson's son pushed
before her, and, when she began to speak in a strained treble,
overpowered it with a coarse volume of bass. "Let me tell what I've
got to first," he ordered, importantly. "My part comes first, then
it's your turn. I've got to go back to the store. It was just about
noon that Simon Basset come in ag'in and asked for a piece of rope.
Said he wanted it to tie his cow with. I got out some rope, and he
tried to beat me down on it; asked me if I hadn't got some
second-hand rope I'd let him have a piece of. Finally I got mad, and
asked him why, if he wasn't willing to pay for rope what it was
worth, he didn't use a halter or his clothes-line.
"He whined out that his halter was broke, and he hadn't had a
clothes-line for years. That last I believed, quick enough, for I
knew he didn't ever have any washing done.
"Then I asked him why he didn't steal a rope if he was too poor to
pay for it, and he said he was too poor. He wasn't worth more than
five thousand dollars in the world, and he'd given away all he was
going to of that. When he got started on that, he ripped and raved
the way he did this morning; hang it, if I didn't begin to think he
was out of his mind. Then he went off, about ten minutes past twelve,
without his rope. I suppose there were pieces of rope enough around,
but I got mad, he acted so darned mean about it, and wouldn't hunt it
up for him, and I'm glad now I didn't."
Rachel Blodgett, who had been teetering with eagerness on her thin
old ankles, interposing now and then sharp quavers of abortive
speech, cut short Robinson's last words with the impetuosity of her
delivered torrent. "I washed to-day," said she. "I didn't wash
yesterday because it wasn't a good drying-day, and last week I had my
clothes around three days in the tub, and I made up my mind I
wouldn't do it again. So I washed to-day.
"I got my clothes all hung out before dinner. I had an uncommon heavy
wash to-day, an extra table-cloth--Mr. Means tipped his coffee over
yesterday morning--and the sheets of the spare chamber bed were in,
so I put up a little piece of line I had, between those two trees,
beside my regular clothes-line.
"About an hour ago I thought to myself the clothes ought to be dry,
and I'd just step out and look. So I run out, and there were the
clothes I'd hung on the little line--some dish-towels, and two of my
aprons, and one of Mr. Means's shirts--down on the ground in the
dirt, and the line was gone. Thinks I, 'Where's that line gone to?'
"I stood there gaping, I couldn't make head or tail of it. Then I see
the little Crossman boy out in the yard, and I hollered to
him--'Willy,' says I, 'come here a minute.'
"He come running over, and I asked him if he'd seen anybody in our
yard since noon. He said he hadn't seen anybody but Mr. Basset. He
saw him coming out of our yard tucking something under his coat.
"That put me on the track. If I do say it of the dead, and one that's
gone to his account in an awful way, Mr. Basset had been over here
time and time again, and helped himself. I ain't going to say he
stole; he helped himself. He helped himself to our kindling wood, and
our hammer, and our spade, and our rake. After the spade went, I made
a notch on the rake-handle so I could tell it, and when that went, I
slipped over to Mr. Basset's one day when I knew he wasn't there, and
there was our rake in his shed. I said nothing to nobody, but I just
brought our rake home again, and I hid it where he didn't find it
again. Mr. Means, though he's a lawyer, looks out sharper for other
folks' belongings than he does for his own. He'd never say anything;
he went and bought another spade and hammer, and he'd bought another
rake if I hadn't got that.
"When that little Crossman boy said he'd seen Mr. Basset coming out
of our yard tucking something under his coat, it put me right on the
track, though I couldn't think what he wanted with that little piece
of rope. I should have thought he wanted it to mend a harness with,
but his old horse died last winter; folks said he didn't have enough
to eat, but I ain't going to pass any judgment on that, and I knew he
sold his old harness, because the man he sold it to had been to Mr.
Means to get damages for being taken in. The harness had broke, and
his horse had run away, and the man declared that that harness had
been glued together in places.
"But I don't know anything about that. The poor man is dead, and if
he glued his harness, it's for him to give account of, not me. I
couldn't think what he wanted that rope for, but I felt mad. The rope
wasn't worth much, but it was his helping himself to it, without
leave or license, that riled me, and there were my clean clothes all
down in the dirt--there they are now, you can see 'em there--and I
knew I'd got to wash 'em over.
"So I made up my mind I'd got spunk enough, and I'd go right over
there and tell Simon Basset I wanted my rope. So I took off my apron
and clapped it over my shoulders--I've had a little rheumatism
lately, and the wind's kind of cold to-day--and I run over there.
"I--don't know what came over me. When I got to the house, a chill
struck all through my bones. I trembled like a leaf. I felt as if
something had happened. I thought, at first, I'd turn around and go
home, and then I thought I wouldn't be so silly, that it was just
nerves, and nothing had happened. I went round to the side door, and
I didn't see him puttering around anywhere, so I peeked into the
wood-shed. I thought if I saw my rope there I'd just take it, and run
home and say nothing to nobody.
"But I didn't see it, so I went back to the door and knocked. I
knocked three times, and nobody came. Then I opened the door a crack,
and hollered--'Mr. Basset!' says I, 'Mr. Basset!'
"I called a number of times, then I got out of patience. I thought
he'd gone away somewhere, and I might as well go in and see if I
couldn't find my rope. So I opened the door wide and stepped in.
"It was awful still in there--somehow the stillness seemed to hit my
ears. It was just like a tomb. That dreadful horror came over me
again. I felt the cold stealing down my back. I made up my mind I'd
just peek into the kitchen, and if I didn't see my rope, I wouldn't
look any farther; I'd go home.
"So--the kitchen door was ajar, and I pushed it, and it swung open,
and--I looked, and there--there!"
Suddenly the woman's shrill monologue was intensified by hysteria.
She pointed wildly, as if she saw again the awful sight which she had
seen through that open door.
"There, there!" she shrieked--"there! He was--there--oh--Willy--the
doctor--Jerome Edwards--Willy--oh, there, there!" She caught her
breath with choking sobs, she laughed, and the laugh ended in a
wailing scream; she clutched her throat, she struggled, she was
beside herself for the time, run off her track of reason by her
panic-stricken nerves.
Two pale, chattering women, nearly as hysterical as she, led her,
weeping shrilly all the way, into the house, and the crowd dispersed;
some, whose curiosity was not yet satisfied, to seek the scene of the
tragedy, some to return home with the news. Two men of the latter,
walking along the village street, discussed the amount of the
property left by the dead man. "It's as much as fifty thousand
dollars," said one.
"Every dollar of it," assented the other.
"It ain't likely he's made a will. Who's goin' to heir it? He 'ain't
got a relation that I know of. All the folks I ever heard of his
havin', since I can remember, was his step-father an' his brother
Sam, an' they died twenty odd years ago."
"Adoniram Judd's father was Simon Basset's mother's cousin."
"He wa'n't."
"Yes, he was. They both come from Westbrook, where I was born."
"Now they can pay off the mortgage, and get Henry's eyes fixed."
"Adoniram Judd ain't goin' to get all that money!"
"I wouldn't sell ye his chance on 't for forty thousand dollars."