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A Jerome, Poor Man: A Novel, a novel by Mary E Wilkins Freeman |
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Chapter 20 |
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_ Chapter XX They who have sensitive palates for all small, sweet, but secondary savors of life that come in their way, and no imaginative desires for others, are contented in spirit. When also small worries and affairs, even those of their neighbors in lieu of their own, serve them as well as large ones to keep their minds to a healthy temper of excitement and zest of life, there is no need to pity them for any lack of full experience. Imogen and Sarah Lawson, the two elderly single sisters whom Elmira Edwards sought in Granby that day, were in a way happier than she, all flushed with her hope of young love, for they held in certain tenure that which they had. They were sitting stitching on fine linen shirts in the little kitchen of the cottage house in which they had been born. There was a broad slant of sunlight athwart the floor, a great cat purred in a rocking-chair, the clock ticked, a pot of greens boiled over the fire. They seemed to look out of a little secure home radiance of peace at Elmira when she entered, all glowing and tremulous with sweet excitement which she strove hard to conceal. No romances had there been in the lives of the Lawson sisters, and no repining over the lack of them. They had, in their youth, speculated as to what husbands the Lord might provide for them, and looked about for them with furtive alertness. When He provided none, they stopped speculating, and went on as sharply askant as hens at any smaller good pecks life might have for them. The Lawson sisters had always been considered dressy. They owned their house and garden, also several acres which yielded fair crops of hay, and some good woodland. They earned considerable money making fine shirts for a little Jew peddler who let out work in several neighboring villages, and were enabled to devote the greater part of that to their wardrobes. They were said to always buy everything of the best--the finest muslins, the stiffest silks, the richest ribbons. Each of the sisters possessed several silk gowns, a fine cashmere shawl, and a satin pelisse; each had two beautiful bonnets, one for winter and one for summer, and each possessed the value of her fine apparel to the uttermost, and realized from it a petty, perhaps, but no less comforting, illumination of spirit. Many of the lights of happiness of this world are feeble and even ignoble, but one must see to live, and even a penny dip is exalted if it save one from the darkness of despair. It is not given to every one to light his way with a sun, or a full moon, or even a star. The two Lawson sisters, Imogen and Sarah, greeted Elmira with a shrill feminine clamor of hospitality, as was their wont, examined her mother's wedding silk with critical eyes and fingers, and pronounced it well worth making over. "It's best to buy a good thing while you're about it, if it does cost a little more," said Imogen. "Yes, that's true," assented her sister. "Now I shouldn't be a mite surprised if Ann paid as much as one an' sixpence for this silk when 'twas new; but look at it now--there ain't a break in it. It's as good as your blue-and-yellow changeable silk, Imogen." "Dun'no' but 'tis," said Imogen, reflectively. Sarah went with Elmira to the mantua-maker's, who lived in the next house, to get the dress cut, while Imogen prepared the dinner. In the afternoon the two sisters gave Elmira an hour's work on her new gown, one stitching up the body, the other sewing breadths; then they borrowed the neighbor's horse and wagon and drove her home to Upham. Elmira was glad to ride; she thought that she should die of shame should she walk home and meet Lawrence Prescott again. Imogen drove. She was the older, but the larger and stronger of the two. Elmira sat in the rear gloom of the covered wagon with Sarah, holding her silk gown spread carefully over her knees. She thought of nothing all the way but the possibility of meeting Lawrence. She made up her mind that if she did she would sit far back in the wagon and not thrust her head forward at all. "If he acts as if he thought I might be in here, and looks real hard, then it will be time for me to do my part," she thought. Whenever she saw a man or a team in the distance, her heart beat violently, but it was never Lawrence. All her sweet panic of expectation would have been quieted had she known that he was at that very time seated in Miss Camilla Merritt's arbor, drinking tea and eating fruit cake with her and pretty Lucina. "Didn't you think Elmira seemed dreadful kind of flighty to-day--still as a mouse one minute and carryin' on the next?" Sarah asked Imogen, as they were driving home in the evening. They had waited, staying to tea and letting the horse rest, until the full moon arose. "Yes, I did," said Imogen, "but Ann was just like her at her age. That silk is well enough, but it ain't no such quality as my blue an' yellow changeable one." "Well, I dun'no' as it is. I dun'no' as it's as good as my figured brown one." It was a beautiful spring night; the moon was one for lovers to light their fondest thoughts and fancies into reality. The two old sisters driving home met and passed many young couples on the country road. "If they don't look out I shall run over some of them fellars an' girls," said Imogen. "I don't b'lieve Elmira has ever had anybody waitin' on her, do you, Sarah?" "Never heard of anybody," replied Sarah. "Well, anyhow, she's goin' to have a real handsome dress out of that silk." "Yes, she is," said Imogen, and just then from before the great plunging feet of her horse a pair of young lovers sprang with a laugh, having seen nothing of team nor the old sisters nor yet of the little side lamps of happiness they bore, in the great dazzling circle of their own. Elmira finished her dress Saturday. She had sat up nearly two nights stitching on it, but nobody would have dreamed it when she came down out of her chamber Sunday morning all ready for meeting. Her mother was sitting in the parlor beside a window, with her Bible on her knees. The window was opened wide, and the room was full of the reverberations of the meeting bell. Always on a pleasant Sunday morning in summer-time Ann Edwards sat with her Bible at the open window and listened to the meeting bell. As Elmira entered, the bell tolled again, and the long wavering and dying of its sweet multiple tones commenced afresh. Elmira stood before her mother, and turned slowly about that she might view her on all sides in her new attire. Elmira whirled slowly, in a whispering, shimmering circle of pale green silk; a little wrought-lace cape, which also had been part of her mother's bridal array, covered her bare neck, for the dress was cut low. She had bought a new ribbon of green and white, like the striped grass of the gardens, for her bonnet, and tied it in a crisp and dainty bow under her chin. This same bonnet, of a fine Florence braid, had served her for best for nearly ten years. She had worn a bright ribbon on it in the winter season and a delicate-hued one in summer-time, but it was always the same bonnet. Elmira had not had a new summer ribbon for three years, and now, in addition, she had purchased some rosebuds, and arranged them in little clusters in a frilling of lace inside the brim. Her pretty face looked out of this little millinery halo with an indescribably mild and innocent radiance. One caught one's self looking past her fixed shining eyes for the brightness which they saw and reflected. "Well," said her mother, "I guess you look as well as some other folks, if you didn't lay out quite so much money. I guess folks will have to give in you do." Ann Edwards's little nervous face wore rather an expression of antagonistic triumph than a smile of motherly approval; so hostile had been all her conditions of life that she never laid down her weapons, and went with spear in rest, as it were, even into her few by-paths of delight. She pulled Elmira's skirts here and there to be sure they hung evenly; she bade her stand close, and picked out the ribbon bow under her chin. "Now you'd better run along," said she, "or the bell will stop tollin'." She watched the girl, in her own old bridal array, step down the front path, with more happiness than she had known since her husband's disappearance. Elmira had told her mother that Lawrence Prescott was coming to see her, and she had immediately leaped to furthest conclusions. Ann Edwards had not a doubt that Lawrence and Elmira would be married. She had, when it was once awakened, that highest order of ambition which ignores even the existence of obstacles. As Elmira's green skirts fluttered out of sight behind some lilac-bushes pluming to the wind with purple blossoms Jerome came in, and his mother turned to him. "I guess Elmira will do about as well as any of the girls," said she, with her tone of blissful yet half-vindictive triumph. Jerome looked at her wonderingly. "Why shouldn't she?" said he. Immediately Mrs. Edwards put forth her feminine craft like an involuntary tentacle of protection for her excess of imagination, against the masculine practicality of her son. Neither she nor Elmira had said anything about Lawrence Prescott to him; both knew how he would regard the matter. It seemed to Mrs. Edwards that she had fairly heard him say: "Marry Doctor Prescott's son! You know better, mother." Now she, with her Bible on her knees, shunted rapidly the whole truth behind a half-truth. "I guess she'll cut full as good a figure in my old silk and her old bonnet with a new ribbon on it as any of the girls," said she. Then she added, with a skilful swerve from whole truths and half-truths alike: "You'd better hurry, Jerome, or you'll be late to meetin'. Elmira is out of sight, an' the bell's 'most stopped tollin'." "I am not going this morning," said Jerome. "Why not, I'd like to know?" "John Upham sent his oldest boy over here this morning to tell me the baby's sick. I am going over there and see if I can do anything." "I should think John Upham had better send for Doctor Prescott instead of taking you away from meeting." "You know he won't, mother. I believe he'd let the baby die before he would. I've got to go there and do the best I can." "Well, all I've got to say is, he ought to be ashamed of himself if he'd let his own baby die before he'd call in the doctor, I don't care how bad he's treated him. I shouldn't wonder if John Upham was some to blame about that; there's always two sides to a story." Jerome made no reply. He would have been puzzled several times lately, had he considered it of sufficient moment, by his mother's change of attitude towards Doctor Prescott. He went to the china-closet beside the chimney. On the upper shelves was his mother's best china tea-set; on the lower a little array of cloudy bottles; some small bunches of herbs, all nicely labelled, were packed in the wide space at the bottom. His mother's antagonistic eyes followed him. "I dun'no' as I can have them herbs in my china-closet much longer," said she; "they're scentin' up the dishes too much. If I want to have a little company to tea, I ain't goin' to have the tea all flavored with spearmint an' catnip." "Well, I'll move them when I come home," said Jerome, with his usual concession, which always aggravated his mother more than open rebellion, although she admired him for it. "I only brought those little bundles down from the barn loft to have them handy. I'll rig up a cupboard for them in the woodshed." Jerome tucked a bottle or two in his pocket, and rolled up a little bouquet of herbs in paper. "I should think it would be time for you to go and see that young one after meeting," said his mother, varying her point of attack when she met with no resistance. "I'll go to meeting this afternoon," replied Jerome, in the tone with which he might have pacified a fretful child. There was no self-justification in it. "I s'pose Doctor Prescott will be mad if he hears of your goin' there, an' I dun'no' but I should be in his place," she said, as Jerome went out. Then, as he did not answer, she added, calling out shrilly: "I don't see why John Upham can't call in Lawrence, if he wants a doctor; he's begun to study with his father; he can't have nothin' against him. I guess he knows as much as you do." "Mother's queer," Jerome told himself as he went down the road, and then dismissed the matter from his mind, for the consideration of the Upham baby and the probable nature of its ailment, upon which, however, he did not allow himself to dwell too long. Early in his amateur practice Jake Noyes had inculcated one precept in his mind, upon which he always acted. "There's one thing I want to tell ye, J'rome, and I want ye to remember it," Jake Noyes had said, "and that is, a doctor had ought to be like jurymen--he'd ought to be sworn in to be unprejudiced when he goes to see a patient, just as a juryman is when he goes to court. If you don't know what ails 'em, don't ye go to speculatin', as to what 'tis an' what ye'll do, on the way there. Ten chances to one, if you're workin' up measles in your mind an' what you'll do for them, you'll find it's mumps, an' then you've got to cure your own measles afore you cure their mumps; an' if you're hard-bitted an' can't stop yourself easy when you're once headed, you may give saffron tea to bring out the measles whether or no. Think of the prospect, or the gals, or your soul's salvation, or anythin' but the sick folks, before you get to 'em the first time and don't know what ails 'em." In girls Jerome had, so far, no interest; in his soul's salvation he had little active concern. The revivals which were occasionally upstirred in the community by prayer, and the besom of threatened destruction, passed over him like a hot wind, for which he had no power of sensation, sometimes to his own wonder. Probably the cause lay in the fact that he was too thoroughly, without knowing it, rooted and grounded in his own creed to be emotionally moved by religious appeals. Jerome had, as most have, consciously or not, and vitally or not, his own creed. He believed simply in the unquestionable justice of the intent of God, the thwarting struggles against it by free man, and that his duty to apply his small strength towards furthering what he could, if no more than an atom, of the eternal will lay plain before him. Jerome, who had not yet been disturbed by love of woman, who fretted not over the salvation of his own soul, had therefore, in order to follow his mentor's advice, to turn his attention to the prospect. His way led in an opposite direction from the church, and he was late, so met none of the worshippers bound to meeting. He was rather glad of that. After he left the village the road lay through the woods, and now and then between blueberry-fields or open spaces of meadow, with green water-lines and shadows purple with violets in the hollows. Red cows in the meadows stared at him as he passed, with their mysterious abstraction from all reflection, then grazed again, moving in one direction from the sun. The blueberry-patches spread a pale green glimmer of blossoms, like a sheen of satin in a high light; young ferns curled beside the road like a baby's fingers grasping at life; the trees, which were late in leafing, also reached out towards the sun little rosy clasping fingers whereby to hold fast to the motherhood of the spring. The air was full of that odor so delicate that it is scarcely an odor at all, much less a fragrance, which certain so-called scentless plants give out, and then only to wide recognition when they bloom in multitudes--it was only the simplest evidence of life itself. Through that came now and then great whiffs of perfume from some unseen flowering bush, calling, as it were, from its obscurity, with halloos of fragrance, to the careless passer-by, to search it out. Jerome passed along, seeing and comprehending all the sweet pageant of the spring morning, yet as an observer merely. Nature had as yet not established her fullest relationship to himself, and he knew not that her secret glory of meaning was like his own. _ |
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