Chapter 27

________________________________________________
_ Chapter XXVII

Lucina in those days was occupied with some pieces of embroidery in gay wools on cloth. There were varied designs of little dogs with bead eyes, baskets of flowers, wreaths, and birds on sprays. She had an ambition to embroider a whole set of parlor-chairs, as some young ladies in her school had done, and there was in her mind a dim and scarcely admitted fancy that these same chairs might add state to some future condition of hers.

Lucina had always innocently taken it for granted that she should some day be married and have a house of her own, and very near her father's. When she had begun the embroidery she had furnished a shadowy little parlor of a shadowy house with the fine chairs, and admitted at the parlor door a dim and stately presence, so shadowy to her timid maiden fancy that there was scarcely a suggestion of substance.

Now, however, the shadow seemed to deepen and clear in outline. Lucina fell to wondering if Jerome Edwards thought embroidered chairs pretty or silly. Often she would pause in her counting and setting even cross-barred stitches, lean her soft cheek on her slender white hand, and sit so a long while, with her fair curls drooping over her gentle, brooding face. Her mother often noticed her sitting so, and thought, partly from quick maternal intuition, partly from knowledge gained from her own experience, that if it were possible, she should judge her to have had her heart turned to some maiden fancy. But she knew that Lucina had cared for none of her lovers away from home, and at home there were none feasible, unless, perhaps, Lawrence Prescott. Lawrence had not been to see her lately; could it be possible the child was hurt by it? Abigail sounded cautiously the depths of her daughter's heart, and found to her satisfaction no image of Lawrence Prescott therein.

"Lawrence is a good boy," said Lucina; "it is a pity he is no taller, and looks so like his father; but he is very good. I do think, though, he might go to ride with me sometimes and save father from going. I would rather have father, but I know he does not like to ride. Lawrence had been planning to go to ride with me all through the summer. It was strange he stopped--was it not, mother?"

"Perhaps he is busy. I saw him driving with his father the other day," said Abigail.

"Well, perhaps he is," assented Lucina, easily. Then she asked advice as to this or that shade in the ears of the little poodle-dog which she was embroidering.

"Lucina is as transparent as glass," her mother thought. "She could never speak of Lawrence Prescott in that way if she were in love with him, and there is no one else in town."

Abigail Merritt, acute and tender mother as she was, settled into the belief that her daughter was merely given to those sweetly melancholy and wondering reveries natural to a maiden soul upon the threshold of discovery of life. "I used to do just so, busy as I always was, before Eben came," she thought, with a little pang of impatient shame for herself and her daughter that they must yield to such necessities of their natures. Abigail Merritt had never been a rebel, indeed, but there had been unruly possibilities within her. She remembered well what she had told her mother when her vague dreams had ended and Eben Merritt had come a-wooing. "I like him, and I suppose, because I like him I've got to marry him, but it makes me mad, mother."

Looking now at this daughter of hers, with her exceeding beauty and delicacy, which a touch would seem to profane and soil as much as that of a flower or butterfly, she had an impulse to hide her away and cover her always from the sight and handling of all except maternal love. She took much comfort in the surety that there was as yet no definite lover in Lucina's horizon. She did not reflect that no human soul is too transparent to be clouded to the vision of others, and its own, by the sacred intimacy with its own desires. Her daughter, looking up at her with limpid blue eyes, replying to her interrogation with sweet readiness, like a bird that would pipe to a call, was as darkly unknown to her as one beyond the grave. She could not even spell out clearly her hieroglyphics of life with the key in her own nature.

The day after Lucina had met Jerome on the Dale road, and had failed to set the matter right, she took her embroidery-work over to her Aunt Camilla's. She had resolved upon a plan which was to her quite desperate, involving, as it did, some duplicity of manoeuvre which shocked her.

The afternoon was a warm one, and she easily induced, as she had hoped, her Aunt Camilla to sit in the summer-house in the garden. Everything was very little changed from that old summer afternoon of years ago. If Miss Camilla had altered, it had been with such a fine conservation of general effect, in spite of varying detail, that the alteration was scarcely visible. She wore the same softly spreading lilac gown, she wrote on her portfolio with the same gold pencil presumably the same thoughts. If her softly drooping curls were faded and cast lighter shadows over thinner cheeks, one could more easily attribute the dimness and thinness to the lack of one's own memory than to change in her.

The garden was the same, sweetening with the ardor of pinks and mignonette, the tasted breaths of thyme and lavender, like under-thoughts of reason, and the pungent evidence of box.

Lucina looked out of the green gloom of the summer-house at the same old carnival of flowers, swarming as lightly as if untethered by stems, upon wings of pink and white and purpling blue, blazing out to sight as with a very rustle of color from the hearts of green bushes and the sides of tall green-sheathed stalks, in spikes and plumes, and soft rosettes of silken bloom. Even the yellow cats of Miss Camilla's famous breed, inheriting the love of their ancestors for following the steps of their mistress, came presently between the box rows with the soft, sly glide of the jungle, and established themselves for a siesta on the arbor bench.

Lucina was glad that it was all so like what it had been, even to the yellow cats, seeming scarcely more than a second rendering of a tune, and it made it possible for her to open truthfully and easily upon her plan. She herself, whose mind was so changed from its old childish habit of simple outlook and waiting into personal effort for its own ends, and whose body was so advanced in growth of grace, was perhaps the most altered of all. However, there was much of the child left in her.

"Aunt Camilla," said she, in almost the same tone of timid deprecation which the little Lucina of years before might have used.

Camilla looked up, with gentle inquiry, from her portfolio.

"I have been thinking," said Lucina, bending low over her embroidery that her aunt might not see the pink confusion of her face, which she could not, after all, control, "how I came here and spent the afternoon, once, years ago; do you remember?"

"You came here often--did you not, dear?"

"Yes," said Lucina, "but that once in particular, Aunt Camilla?"

"I fear I do not remember, dear," said Camilla, whose past had been for years a peaceful monotone as to her own emotions, and had so established a similar monotone of memory.

"Don't you remember, Aunt Camilla? I came first with a stent to knit on a garter, and we sat out here. Then the yellow cats came, and father had been fishing, and he brought some speckled trout, and--then--the Edwards boy--"

"Oh, the little boy I had to weed my garden! A good little boy," Camilla said.

Lucina winced a little. She did not quite like Jerome to be spoken of in that mildly reminiscent way. "He's grown up now, you know, Aunt Camilla," said she.

"Yes, my dear, and he is as good a young man as he was a boy, I hear."

"Father speaks very highly of him," said Lucina, with a soft tremor and mounting of color, to which her aunt responded sensitively.

People said that Camilla Merritt had never had a lover, but the same wind can strike the same face of the heart.

"I have heard him very highly spoken of," she agreed; and there was a betraying quiver in her voice also.

"We had plum-cake, and tea in the pink cups--don't you remember, Aunt Camilla?"

"So many times we had them--did we not, dear?"

"Yes, but that one time?"

"I fear that I cannot distinguish that time from the others, dear."

There was a pause. Lucina took a few more stitches on her embroidery. Miss Camilla poised her gold pencil reflectively over her portfolio. "Aunt Camilla," said Lucina then.

"Well, dear?"

"I have been thinking how pleasant it would be to have another little tea-party, here in the arbor; would you have any objections?"

"My dear Lucina!" cried Miss Camilla, and looked at her niece with gentle delight at the suggestion.

The early situation was not reversed, for Lucina still admired and revered her aunt as the realization of her farthest ideal of ladyhood, but Miss Camilla fully reciprocated. The pride in her heart for her beautiful niece was stronger than any which she had ever felt for herself. She pictured Lucina instead of herself to her fancy; she seemed to almost see Lucina's face instead of her own in her looking-glass. When it came to giving Lucina a pleasure, she gave twofold.

"Thank you, Aunt Camilla," said Lucina, delightedly, and yet with a little confusion. She felt very guilty--still, how could she tell her aunt all her reasons for wishing the party?

"Shall we have your father and mother, or only young people, dear?" asked Miss Camilla.

"Only young people, I think, aunt. Mother comes any time, and as for father, he would rather go fishing."

"You would like the Edwards boy, since he came so long ago?"

"Yes, I think so, aunt."

"He is poor, and works hard, and has not been in fine company much, I presume, but that is nothing against him. He will enjoy it all the more, if he is not too shy. You do not think he is too shy to enjoy it, dear?"

"I should never have known from his manners at my party that he had not been in fine company all his life. He is not like the other young men in Upham," protested Lucina, with a quick rise of spirit.

"Well, I used to hear your grandfather say that there are those who can suit their steps to any gait," her aunt said. "I understand that he is a very good young man. We will have him and--"

"I think his sister," said Lucina; "she is such a pretty girl--the prettiest girl in the village, and it will please her so to be asked."

"The Edwards boy and his sister, and who else?"

"No one else, I think, Aunt Camilla, except Lawrence Prescott. There will not be room for more in the arbor."

Lucina did not blush when she said Lawrence Prescott, but her aunt did. She had often romanced about the two. "Well, dear," she said, "when shall we have the tea-party?"

"Day after to-morrow, please, Aunt Camilla."

"That will give 'Liza time to make cake," said Camilla. "I will send the invitations to-morrow, dear."

"'Liza will be too busy cake-making to run on errands," said Lucina, though her heart smote her, for this was where the true gist of her duplicity came in; "write them now, Aunt Camilla, and give them to me. I will see that they are delivered."

The afternoon of the next day Lucina, being out riding, passed Doctor Prescott's house, and called to Jake Noyes in the yard to take Miss Camilla's little gilt-edged, lavender-scented note of invitation. "Please give this to Mr. Lawrence," said she, prettily, and rode on. The other notes were in her pocket, but she had not delivered them when she returned home at sunset.

"I am going to run over to Elmira Edwards and carry them," she told her mother after supper, and pleaded that she would like the air when Mrs. Merritt suggested that Hannah be sent.

Thus it happened that Jerome Edwards, coming home about nine o'clock that night, noticed, the moment he opened the outer door, the breath of roses and lavender, and a subtle thrill of excitement and almost fear passed over him. "Who is it?" he thought. He listened, and heard voices in the parlor. He wanted to pass the door, but he could not. He opened it and peered in, white-faced and wide-eyes, and there was Lucina with his mother and sister.

Mrs. Edwards and Elmira looked nervously flushed and elated; there were bright spots on their cheeks, their eyes shone. On the table were Miss Camilla's little gilt-edged missives. Lucina was somewhat pale, and her face had been furtively watchful and listening. When Jerome opened the door, her look changed to one of relief, which had yet a certain terror and confusion in it. She rose at once, bowed gracefully, until the hem of her muslin skirt swept the floor, and bade Jerome good-evening. As for Jerome, he stood still, looking at her.

"Why, J'rome, don't you see who 'tis?" cried his mother, in her sharp, excited voice, yet with an encouraging smile--the smile of a mother who would put a child upon its best behavior for the sake of her own pride.

Jerome murmured, "Good-evening." He made a desperate grasp at his self-possession, but scarcely succeeded.

Lucina pulled a little fleecy white wrap over her head, and immediately took leave. Jerome stood aside to let her pass. Elmira followed her to the outer door, and his mother called him in a sharp whisper, "J'rome, come here."

When he had reached his mother's side she pinched his arm hard. "Go home with her," she whispered.

Jerome stared at her.

"Do ye hear what I say? Go home with her."

"I can't," he almost groaned then.

"Can't? Ain't you ashamed of yourself? What ails ye? Lettin' of a lady like her go home all alone this dark night."

Elmira ran back into the parlor. "Oh, Jerome, you ought to go with her, you ought to!" she cried, softly. "It's real dark. She felt it, I know. She looked real sober. Run after her, quick, Jerome."

"When she came to invite you to a party, too!" said Mrs. Edwards, but Jerome did not hear that, he was out of the house and hurrying up the road after Lucina.

She had not gone far. Jerome did not know what to say when he overtook her, so he said nothing--he merely walked along by her side. A great anger at himself, that he had almost let this tender and beautiful creature go out alone in the night and the dark, was over him, but he knew not what to say for excuse.

He wondered, pitifully, if she were so indignant that she did not like him to walk home with her now. But in a moment Lucina spoke, and her voice, though a little tremulous, was full of the utmost sweetness of kindness.

"I fear you are too tired to walk home with me," she said, "and I am not afraid to go by myself."

"No, it is too dark for you to go alone; I am not tired," replied Jerome, quickly, and almost roughly, to hide the tumult of his heart.

But Lucina did not understand that. "I am not afraid," she repeated, in a little, grieved, and anxious way; "please leave me at the turn of the road, I am truly not afraid."

"No, it is too dark for you to go alone," said Jerome, hoarsely, again. It came to him that he should offer her his arm, but he dared not trust his voice for that. He reached down, caught her hand, and thrust it through his arm, thinking, with a thrill of terror as he did so, that she would draw it away, but she did not.

She leaned so slightly on his arm that it seemed more the inclination of spirit than matter, but still she accepted his support and walked along easily at his side. So far from her resenting his summary taking of her hand, she was grateful, with the humble gratitude of the primeval woman for the kindness of a master whom she has made wroth.

Lucina had attributed Jerome's stiffness at sight of her, and his delay in accompanying her home, to her unkind treatment of him. Now he showed signs of forgiveness, her courage returned. When they had passed the turn of the road, and were on the main street, she spoke quite sweetly and calmly.

"There is something I have been wanting to say to you," said she. "I tried to say it the other night when I was riding and met you, but I did not succeed very well. What I wanted to say was--I fear that when you suggested coming to see me, the Sunday night after my party, I did not seem cordial enough, and make you understand that I should be very happy to see you, and that was why you did not come."

"O--h!" said Jerome, with a long-drawn breath of wonder and despair. He had been thinking that he had offended her beyond forgiveness and of his own choice, and she, with her sweet humility, was twice suing him for pardon.

"I am very sorry," Lucina said, softly.

"That was not the reason why I did not," Jerome gasped.

"Then you were not hurt?"

"No; I--thought you spoke as if you would like to have me come--"

"Perhaps you were ill," Lucina said, hesitatingly.

"No, I was not. I did not--"

"Oh, it was not because you did not want to come!" Lucina cried out, quickly, and yet with exceeding gentleness and sad wonder, that he should force such a suspicion upon her.

"No, it was not. I--wanted to come more than--I wanted to come, but--I did not think it--best." Jerome said the last so defiantly that poor Lucina started.

"But it was because of nothing I had said, and it was not because you did not want to?" she said, piteously.

"No," said Jerome. Then he said, again, as if he found strength in the repetition. "I did not think it best."

"I thought you were coming that night," Lucina said, with scarcely the faintest touch of reproach but with more of wonder. Why should he not have thought it best?

"I am sorry," said Jerome. "I wanted to tell you, but I had no reason but that to give, and I--thought you might not understand."

Lucina made no reply. The path narrowed just there and gave her an excuse for quitting Jerome's arm. She did so with a gentle murmur of explanation, for she could do nothing abruptly, then went on before him swiftly. Her white shawl hung from her head to her waist in sharp slants. She moved through the dusk with the evanescent flit of a white moth.

"Of course," stammered Jerome, painfully and boyishly, "I--knew--you would not care if--I did not come. It was not as if--I had thought you--would."

Lucina said nothing to that either. Jerome thought miserably that she did not hear, or, hearing, agreed with what he said.

Soon, however, Lucina spoke, without turning her head. "I can understand," said she, with the gentlest and yet the most complete dignity, for she spoke from her goodness of heart, "that a person has often to do what he thinks best, and not explain it to any other person, because it is between him and his own conscience. I am quite sure that you had some very good reason for not coming to see me that Sunday night, and you need not tell me what it was. I am very glad that you did not, as I feared, stay away because I had not treated you with courtesy. Now, we will say no more about it." With that, the path being a little wider, she came to his side again, and looked up in his face with the most innocent friendliness and forgiveness in hers.

Jerome could have gone down at her feet and worshipped her.

"What a beautiful night it is!" said Lucina, tilting her face up towards the stars.

"Beautiful!" said Jerome, looking at her, breathlessly.

"I never saw the stars so thick," said she, musingly. "Everybody has his own star, you know. I wonder which my star is, and yours. Did you ever think of it?"

"I guess my star isn't there," said Jerome.

"Why, yes," cried Lucina, earnestly, "it must be!"

"No, it isn't there," repeated Jerome, with a soft emphasis on the last word.

Lucina looked up at him, then her eyes fell before his. She laughed confusedly. "Did you know what I came to your house to-night for?" said she, trying to speak unconsciously.

"To see Elmira?"

"No, to give both of you an invitation to tea at Aunt Camilla's to-morrow afternoon at five o'clock."

"I am very much obliged to you," said Jerome, "but--"

"You cannot come?"

"No, I am afraid not."

"The tea is to be in the arbor in the garden, the way it was that other time, when we were both children; there is to be plum-cake and the best pink cups. Nobody is asked but you and your sister and Lawrence Prescott," said Lucina, but with no insistence in her voice. Her gentle pride was up.

"I am very much obliged, but I am afraid I can't come," Jerome said, pleadingly.

Lucina did not say another word.

Jerome glanced down at her, and her fair face, between the folds of her white shawl, had a look which smote his heart, so full it was of maiden dignity and yet of the surprise of pain.

A new consideration came to Jerome. "Why should I stay away from her, refuse all her little invitations, and treat her so?" he thought. "What if I do get to wanting her more, and get hurt, if it pleases her? There is no danger for her; she does not care about me, and will not. The suffering will all be on my side. I guess I can bear it; if it pleases her to have me come I will do it. I have been thinking only of myself, and what is a hurt to myself in comparison with a little pleasure for her? She has asked me to this tea-party, and here I am hurting her by refusing, because I am so afraid of getting hurt myself!"

Suddenly Jerome looked at Lucina, with a patient and tender smile that her father might have worn for her. "I shall be very happy to come," said he.

"Not unless you can make it perfectly convenient," Lucina replied, with cold sweetness; "I would rather not urge you."

"It will be perfectly convenient," said Jerome. "I thought at first I ought not to go, that was all."

"Of course, Aunt Camilla and I will be very happy to have you come, if you can," said Lucina. Still, she was not appeased. Jerome's hesitating acceptance of this last invitation had hurt her more than all that had gone before. She began to wish, with a great pang of shame, that she had not gone to his house that night, had not tried to see him, had not proposed this miserable party. Perhaps he did mean to slight her, after all, though nobody ever had before, and how she had followed him up!

She walked on very fast; they were nearly home. When they reached her gate, she said good-night, quickly, and would have gone in without another word, but Jerome stopped her. He had begun to understand her understanding of it all, and had taken a sudden resolution. "Better anything than she should think herself shamed and slighted," he told himself.

"Will you wait just a minute?" he said; "I've got something I want to say."

Lucina waited, her face averted.

"I've made up my mind to tell you why I thought I ought not to come, that Sunday night," said Jerome; "I didn't think of telling you, but I can see now that you may think I meant to slight you, if I don't. I did not think at first that you could dream I _could_ slight anybody like you, and not want to go to see you, but I begin to see that you don't just know how every one looks at you."

"I thought I ought not to come, because all of a sudden I found out that I was--what they call in love with you."

Lucina stood perfectly still, her face turned away.

"I hope you are not offended," said Jerome; "I knew, of course, that there is no question of--your liking me. I would not want you to. I am not telling you for that, but only that you may not feel hurt because I slighted your invitation the other night, and because I thought at first I could not accept this. But I was foolish about it, I guess. If you would like to have me come, that is enough."

"You have not known me long enough to like me," said Lucina, in a very small, sweet voice, still keeping her face averted.

"I guess time don't count much in anything like this," said Jerome.

"Well," said Lucina, with a soft, long breath, "I cannot see why your liking me should hinder you from coming."

"I guess you're right; it shouldn't if you want me to come."

"Why did you ever think it should?" Lucina flashed her blue eyes around at him a second, then looked away again.

"I was afraid if--I saw you too often I should want to marry you so much that I would want nothing else, not even to help other people," said Jerome.

"Why need you think about marrying? Can't you come to see me like a friend? Can't we be happy so?" asked Lucina, with a kind of wistful petulance.

"I needn't think about it, and we can--"

"I don't want to think about marrying yet," said Lucina; "I don't know as I shall ever marry. I don't see why you should think so much about that."

"I don't," said Jerome; "I shall never marry."

"You will, some time," Lucina said, softly.

"No; I never shall."

Lucina turned. "I must go in," said she.

Her hand and Jerome's found each other, with seemingly no volition of their own. "I am glad you didn't come because you didn't like me," Lucina said, softly; "and we can be friends and no need of thinking of that other."

"Yes," Jerome said, all of a tremble under her touch; "and--you won't feel offended because I told you?"

"No, only I can't see why you stayed away for that." _

Read next: Chapter 28

Read previous: Chapter 26

Table of content of Jerome, Poor Man: A Novel


GO TO TOP OF SCREEN

Post your review
Your review will be placed after the table of content of this book