Chapter 31

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_ Chapter XXXI

On the evening of the next day Jerome went to call on Lawyer Eliphalet Means. Lawyer Means lived near the northern limit of the village, on the other side of the brook.

Jerome, going through the covered bridge which crossed the brook, paused and looked through a space between the side timbers. This brook was a sturdy little torrent at all times; in spring it was a river. Now, under the white concave of wintry moonlight, it broke over its stony bed with a fierce persistency of advance. Jerome looked down at the rapid, shifting water-hillocks and listened to their lapsing murmur, incessantly overborne by the gathering rush of onset, then nodded his head conclusively, as if in response to some mental question, and moved on.

Lawyer Eliphalet Means lived in the old Means house. It upreared itself on a bare moon-silvered hill at the right of the road, with a solid state of simplest New England architecture. It dated back to the same epoch as Doctor Prescott's and Squire Merritt's houses, but lacked even the severe ornaments of their time.

Jerome climbed the shining slope of the hill to the house door, which was opened by Lawyer Means himself; then he followed him into the sitting-room. A great cloud of tobacco smoke came in his face when the sitting-room door was thrown open. Through it Jerome could scarcely see Colonel Jack Lamson, in a shabby old coat, seated before the blazing hearth-fire, with a tumbler of rum-and-water on a little table at his right hand.

"Sit down," said Means to Jerome, and pulled another chair forward. "Quite a sharp night out," he added.

"Yes, sir," replied Jerome, seating himself.

Lawyer Means resumed his own chair and his pipe, at which he puffed with that jealous comfort which comes after interruption. Colonel Lamson, when he had given a friendly nod of greeting to the young man, without removing his pipe from his mouth, leaned back his head again, stretched his legs more luxuriously, and blew the smoke in great wreaths around his face. This sitting-room of Lawyer Means's was a scandal to the few matrons of Upham who had ever penetrated it. "Don't look as if a woman had ever set foot in it," they said. The ancient female relative of Lawyer Means who kept his house had not been a notable house-keeper in her day, and her day was nearly past. Moreover, she had small control over this particular room.

The great apartment, with the purple clouds of tobacco smoke, which were settling against its low ceiling and in its far corners, transfused with golden gleams of candles and rosy flashes of fire-light, dingy as to wall-paper and carpet, with the dust of months upon all shiny surfaces, seemed a very fortress of bachelorhood wherein no woman might enter.

The lawyer's books in the tall cases were arranged in close ranks of strictest order, as were also the neatly ticketed files of letters and documents in the pigeon-holes of the great desk; otherwise the whole room seemed fluttering and protruding out of its shadows with loose ends of paper and corners of books. All the free lines in the room were the tangents of irrelevancy and disorder.

The lawyer, puffing at his pipe, with eyes half closed, did not look at Jerome, but his attitude was expectant.

Jerome stared at the blazing fire with a hesitating frown, then he turned with sudden resolution to Means. "Can I see you alone a minute?" he asked.

The Colonel rose, without a word, and lounged out of the room; when the door had shut behind him, Jerome turned again to the lawyer. "I want to know if you are willing to sell me two hundred and sixty-five dollars' worth of your land," said he.

"Which land?"

"Your land on Graystone brook. I want one hundred and thirty-two dollars and fifty cents' worth on each side."

"Why don't you make it even dollars, and what in thunder do you want the land on two sides for?" asked the lawyer, in his dry voice, threaded between his lips and pipe.

Jerome took an old wallet from his pocket. "Because two hundred and sixty-five dollars is all the money I've got saved," he replied, "and--"

"You haven't brought it here to close the bargain on the spot?" interrupted the lawyer.

"Yes; I knew you could make out the deed."

Means puffed hard at his pipe, but his face twitched as if with laughter.

"I want it on both sides of the brook," Jerome said, "because I don't want anybody else to get it. I want to build a saw-mill, and I want to control all the water-power."

"I thought you said that was all the money you had."

"It is."

"How are you going to build a saw-mill, then? That money won't pay for enough land, let alone the mill."

"I am going to wait until I save more money; then I shall buy more land and build the mill," replied Jerome.

"Why not borrow the money?"

Jerome shook his head.

"Suppose I let you have some money at six per cent.; suppose you build the mill, and I take a mortgage on that and the land."

"No, sir."

"Why not? If I am willing to trust a young fellow like you with money, what is your objection to taking it?"

"I would rather wait until I can pay cash down, sir," replied Jerome, sturdily.

"You'll be gray as a badger before you get the money."

"Then I'll be gray," said Jerome. His handsome young face, full of that stern ardor which was a principle of his nature, confronted the lawyer's, lean and dry, deepening its shrewdly quizzical lines about mouth and eyes.

Means looked sharply at Jerome. "What has started you in this? What makes you think it will be a good thing?" he asked.

"No saw-mill nearer than Westbrook, good water-power, straight course of brook, below the falls can float logs down to the mill from above, then down to Dale. People in Dale are paying heavy prices for lumber on account of freight; then the railroad will go through Dale within five years, and they will want sleepers, and--"

"Perhaps they won't take them from you, young man."

"I have been to Squire Lennox, in Dale; he is the prime mover in the railroad, and will be a director, if not the president; he has given me the refusal of the job."

"Where will you get your logs?"

"I have bargained with two parties."

"Five years is a long time ahead."

"It won't be, if I wait long enough."

"You are a damned fool not to borrow the money. The railroad may go through in another year, and all the standing wood in the county may burn down," said Means, quietly.

"Let it then," said Jerome, looking at him.

The lawyer laughed, silently.

When Jerome went home he had in his pocket a deed of the land, but on the right bank of the brook only, the lawyer having covenanted not to sell or build upon the left bank. Thus he had enough land upon which to build his mill when he should have saved the money. He felt nearer Lucina than he had ever done before. The sanguineness of youth, which is its best stimulant for advance, thrilled through all his veins. He had mentioned five years as the possible length of time before acquisition; secretly he laughed at the idea. Five years! Why, he could save enough money in three years--in less than three years--in two years! It had been only a short time since he had made the last payment on the mortgage, and he had saved his two hundred and sixty-five dollars. A saw-mill would not cost much. He could build a great part of it himself.

That night Jerome truly counted his eggs before they were hatched. All the future seemed but a nest for his golden hopes. He would work and save--he was working and saving. He would build his mill; as he thought further, the foundation-stones were laid, the wheel turned, and the saw hissed through the live wood. He would marry Lucina; he saw her in her bridal white--

All this time, with that sublime cruelty which man can show towards one beloved when working for love's final good, and which is a feeble prototype of the Higher method, Jerome gave not one thought to the fact that Lucina knew nothing of his plans, and, if she loved him, as she had said, must suffer. When, moreover, one has absolute faith in, and knowledge of, his own intentions for the welfare of another, it is difficult to conceive that the other may not be able to spell out his actions towards the same meaning.

Jerome really felt as if Lucina knew. The next Sunday he watched her come into meeting with an exquisite sense of possession, which he imagined her to understand.

When he did not go to see her that night, but, instead, sat happily brooding over the future, it never once occurred to him that it might be otherwise with her.

All poor Lucina's ebullition of spirits from her pleasant visit, her pretty gowns, and her fond belief that Jerome could not have meant what he said, and would come to see her after her return, was fast settling into the dregs of disappointment.

Night after night she put on one of her prettiest gowns, and waited with that wild torture of waiting which involves uncertainty and concealment, and Jerome did not come. Lucina began to believe that Jerome did not love her; she tried to call her maidenly pride to her aid, and succeeded in a measure. She stopped putting on a special gown to please Jerome should he come; she stopped watching out for him; she stopped healing her mind with hope in order that it might be torn open afresh with disappointment, but the wound remained and gaped to her consciousness, and Lucina was a tender thing. She held her beautiful head high and forced her face to gentle smiles, but she went thin and pale, and could not sleep of a night, and her mother began to fret about her, and her father to lay down his knife and fork and stare at her across the table when she could not eat.

Squire Eben at that time ransacked the woods for choice game, and himself stood over old Hannah or his wife, broiling the delicate birds that they be done to a turn, and was fit to weep when his pretty Lucina could scarcely taste them. Often, too, he sent surreptitously to Boston for dainties not obtainable at home--East India fruits and jellies and such--to tempt his daughter's appetite, and watched her with great frowns of anxious love when they were set before her.

One afternoon, when Lucina had gone up to her chamber to lie down, having left her dinner almost untasted, though there was a little fat wild bird and guava jelly served on a china plate, and an orange and figs to come after, the Squire beckoned his wife into the sitting-room and shut the door.

"D'ye think she's going into a decline?" he whispered. His great frame trembled all over when he asked the question, and his face was yellow-white. Years ago a pretty young sister of his, whose namesake Lucina was, had died of a decline, as they had termed it, and, ever since, death of the young and fair had worn that guise to the fancy of the Squire. He remembered just how his young sister had looked when she was fading to her early tomb, and to-day he had seemed to see her expression in his daughter's face.

Abigail laid her little hand on his arm. "Don't look so, Eben," she said. "I don't think she is in a decline; she doesn't cough."

"What ails her, Abigail?"

Mrs. Merritt hesitated. "I don't know that much ails her, Eben," she said, evasively. "Girls often get run down, then spring up again."

"Abigail, you don't think the child is fretting about--that boy again?"

"She hasn't mentioned his name to me for weeks, Eben," replied Abigail, and her statement carried reassurance, since the Squire argued, with innocent masculine prejudice, that what came not to a woman's tongue had no abiding in her mind.

His wife, if she were more subtle, gave no evidence of it. "I think the best plan would be for her to go away again," she added.

The Squire looked at her wistfully. "Do you think it would, Abigail?"

"I think she would brighten right up, the way she did before."

"She did brighten up, didn't she?" said the Squire, with a sigh. "Well, maybe you're right, Abigail, but you've got to go with her this time. The child isn't going away, looking as she does now, without her mother."

So it happened that, a week or two later, Jerome, going to his work, met the coach again, and this time had a glimpse of Abigail Merritt's little, sharply alert face beside her daughter's pale, flower-like droop of profile. He had not been in the shop long before his uncle's wife came with the news. She stood in the doorway, quite filling it with her voluminosity of skirts and softly palpitating bulk, holding a little fluttering shawl together under her chin.

"They've gone out West, to Ohio, to Mis' Merritt's cousin, Mary Jane Anstey, that was; she married rich, years ago, and went out there to live, and Abigail 'ain't seen her since. She's been teasin' her to come for years; her own folks are all dead an' gone, an' her husband is poorly, an' she can't leave him to come here. Camilla, she paid the expenses of one of 'em out there. Lucina's been real miserable lately, an' they're worried about her. The Squire's sister, that she was named for, went down in a decline in six months; so her mother has taken her out there for a change, an' they're goin' to make a long visit. Lucina is real poorly. I had it from 'Lizy Wells. Camilla told her."

Jerome shifted his back towards his aunt as he sat on his bench. His face, bent over his work, was white and rigid.

"You're coldin' of the shop off, Belindy," said Ozias.

"Well, I s'pose I be," said she, with a pleasant titter of apology, and backed off the threshold and shut the door.

"That's a woman," said Ozias, "who 'ain't got any affairs of her own, but she's perfectly contented an' happy with her neighbors', taken weak. That's the kind of woman to marry if you ain't got anythin' to give her--no money, no interests in life, no anythin'."

Jerome made no reply. His uncle gave a shrewd glance at him. "When ye can't eat lollypops, it's jest as well not to have them under your nose," he remarked, with seemingly no connection, but Jerome said nothing to that either.

He worked silently, with fierce energy, the rest of the morning. He had not heard before of Lucina's ill health; she had not been to church the Sunday previous, but he had thought of nothing serious from that. Now the dreadful possibility came to him--suppose she should die and leave his world entirely, of what avail would all his toil be then? When he went home that noon he ate his dinner hastily, then, on his way back to the shop, left the road, crossed into a field, and sat down in the wide solitude, on a rock humping out of the dun roll of sere grass-land. Always, in his stresses of spirit, Jerome sought instinctively some closet which he had made of the free fastnesses of nature.

The day was very dull and cold; snow threatened, should the weather moderate. Overhead was a suspended drift of gray clouds. The earth was stark as a corpse in utter silence. The stillness of the frozen air was like the stillness of death and despair. A fierce blast would have given at least the sense of life and fighting power. "Suppose she dies," thought Jerome--"suppose she dies."

He tried to imagine the world without Lucina, but he could not, for with all his outgoing spirit his world was too largely within him. For the first time in his life, the conception of the death of that which he loved better than his life was upon him, and it was a conception of annihilation. "If Lucina is not, then I am not, and that upon which I look is not," was in his mind.

When he rose, he staggered, and could scarcely see his way across the field. When he entered his uncle's shop, Ozias looked at him sharply. "If you're sick you'd better go home and go to bed," he said, in a voice of harsh concern.

"I am not sick," said Jerome, and fell to work with a sort of fury.

As the days went on it seemed to him that he could not bear life any longer if he did not hear how Lucina was, and yet the most obvious steps to hear he did not take. It never occurred to him to march straight to the Squire's house, and inquire of him concerning his daughter's health. Far from that, he actually dreaded to meet him, lest he read in his face that she was worse. He did not go to meeting, lest the minister mention her in his prayer for the sick; he stayed as little as possible in the company of his mother and sister, lest they repeat the sad news concerning her; if a neighbor came in, he got up and left the room directly. He never went to the village store of an evening; he ostracized himself from his kind, lest they stab him with the confirmation of his agonizing fear. For the first time in his life Jerome had turned coward.

One day, when Lucina had been gone about a month, he was coming home from Dale when he heard steps behind him and a voice shouting for him to stop. He turned and saw Colonel Jack Lamson coming with breathless quickening of his stiff military gait.

When the Colonel reached him he could scarcely speak; his wheezing chest strained his coat to exceeding tightness, his face was purple, he swung his cane with spasmodic jerks. "Fine day," he gasped out.

"Yes, sir," said Jerome.

It was near the end of February, the snow was thawing, and for the first time there was a suggestion of spring in the air which caused one, with the recurrence of an old habit of mind, to listen and sniff as for birds and flowers.

The two men stepped along, picking their way through the melting snow. "The doctor has ordered me out for a three-mile march every day. I'm going to stent myself," said the Colonel, still breathing hard; then he looked keenly at Jerome. "What have you been doing to yourself, young fellow?" he asked.

"Nothing. I don't know what you mean," answered Jerome.

"Nothing! Why, you have aged ten years since I last saw you!"

"I am well enough, Colonel Lamson."

"How about that deed I witnessed? Have you got enough money to build the mill yet?"

"No, I haven't," replied Jerome, with a curious tone of defiance and despair, which the Colonel interpreted wrongly.

"Oh, don't give up yet," he said, cheerfully. "Rome wasn't built in a day, you know."

Jerome made no reply, but trudged on doggedly.

"How is she?" asked the Colonel, suddenly.

Jerome turned white and looked at him. "Who?" he said.

The Colonel laughed, with wheezy facetiousness. "Why, she--_she_. Young men don't build nests or saw-mills unless there is a she in the case."

"There isn't--" began Jerome. Then he shut his mouth hard and walked on.

"It's only my joke, Jerome," laughed the Colonel, but there was no responsive smile on Jerome's face. Colonel Lamson eyed him narrowly. "The Squire had a letter from his wife yesterday," he said, with no preface. Then he started, for Jerome turned upon him a face as of one who is braced for death.

"How--is she?" he gasped out.

"Who? Mrs. Merritt? No, confound it all, my boy, she's better! Hold on to yourself, my boy; I tell you she's better."

Jerome gave a deep sigh, and walked ahead so fast that the Colonel had to quicken his pace. "Wait a minute," he panted; "I want a word with you."

Jerome stopped, and the Colonel came up and faced him. "Look here, young man," he said, with sudden wrath, "if I thought for a minute you had jilted that girl, I wouldn't stop for words; I would take you by the neck like a puppy, and I'd break every bone in your body."

Jerome squared his shoulders involuntarily; his face, confronting the Colonel's, twitched. "I'll kill you or any other man who dares to say I did," he cried out, fiercely.

"If I hadn't known you didn't I would have seen you damned before I'd spoken to you," returned the Colonel; "but what I want to ask now is, what in--are you doing?"

"I'd like to know what business 'tis of yours!"

"What in--are you doing, my boy?" repeated the Colonel.

There was something ludicrous in the contrast between his strong language and his voice, into which had come suddenly a tone of kindness which was almost caressing. Jerome, since his father's day, had heard few such tones addressed to him, and his proudly independent heart was softened and weakened by his anxiety and relief over Lucina.

"I am--working my fingers to the bone--to win her, sir," he blurted out, brokenly.

"Does she know it?"

"Do you think I would say anything to her to bind her when I might never be able to marry her?" said Jerome, with almost an accent of wonder.

The Colonel whistled and said no more, for just then Belinda Lamb and Paulina Maria came up, holding their petticoats high out of the slush.

The two men walked on to Upham village, the Colonel straight, as if at the head of a battalion, though his lungs pumped hard at every step, holding back his square shoulders, protruding his tight broadcloth, swinging his stick airily, Jerome at his side, burdened like a peasant, with his sheaf of cut leather, but holding up his head like a prince. _

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