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A Jerome, Poor Man: A Novel, a novel by Mary E Wilkins Freeman |
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Chapter 39 |
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_ Chapter XXXIX The next day Jerome went again to Lawyer Means's. It was near noon when he returned; he met many people on the road, and they all looked at him strangely. Men stood in knots, and the hum of their conversation died low when he drew near. They nodded to him with curious respect and formality; after he had passed, the rumble of voices began anew. One woman, whom he met just before he turned the corner of his own road, stopped and held out a slender, trembling hand. "I want to shake hands with you, J'rome," she said, in a sweet, hysterical voice. Then she raised to his a worn face, with the piteous downward lines of old tears at mouth and eyes, and a rasped red, as of tears and frost, on thin cheeks. "That money is goin' to save my little home for me; I didn't know but I'd got to go on the town. God bless you, J'rome," she whispered, quaveringly. "The Colonel's the one to be thanked," Jerome said. "I come under that agreement, don't I?" she asked, anxiously. "They told me that lone women without anybody to support 'em came under it." "Yes, you do, Miss Patch." "Oh, God bless you, God bless you, J'rome Edwards!" she cried, with a fervor strange upon a New England tongue. "Colonel Lamson is the one to have the thanks and the credit," Jerome repeated, pushing gently past her. His face was hot. He wondered, as he approached his house, if his own family had heard the news. As soon as he opened the door he saw that they had. Elmira did not lift a white, dumbly accusing face from her work; his father looked at him with curious, open-mouthed wonder; his mother spoke. "I want to know if it's true," she said. "Yes, mother, it is." "You've given it all away?" "Yes, mother." "Your own folks won't get none of it?" Jerome shook his head. He had a feeling as if he were denying his own flesh and blood; for the moment even his own conscience turned upon him, and accused him of injustice and lack of filial love and gratitude. Ann Edwards looked at her son, with a face of pale recrimination and awe. She opened her mouth to speak, then closed it without a word. "I never had a black silk dress in my life," said she, finally, in a shaking voice, and that was all the reproach which she ever offered. "You shall have a black silk dress anyhow, mother," Jerome replied, piteously. He went out of the room, and his father got up and followed him, closing the door mysteriously. "That was a good deal to give away, J'rome," he whispered. "I know it, father, and I'll work my fingers to the bone to make it good to you and mother. That's all I've got to live for now." "J'rome," whispered the father, thrusting his old face into his son's, with an angelic expression. "What is it, father?" "_You shall have my fifteen hundred, an' build a new mill._" "Father, I'd _die_ before I'd touch a dollar of your money!" cried Jerome, passionately, and, tears in his eyes, flung away out to the barn, whither he was bound, to feed the horse. He watched all day for a chance to speak alone to Elmira, but she gave him none, until after supper that night. Then, when he beckoned her into the parlor, she followed him. "Elmira," he said, "don't feel any worse about this than you can help. I had to do it." "If you care more about strangers than you do about your own, that is all there is to it," she said, in a quiet voice, looking coldly in his face. "Elmira, it isn't that. You don't understand." "I have said all I have to say." "Let me tell you--" "I have heard all I want to." "Elmira, don't give up so. Maybe things will be brighter somehow. I had to do my duty." "It is a noble thing to do your duty," she said, with a bitter smile on her little face. Elmira, that night, seemed like a stranger to Jerome, and maybe to herself. Despair had upstirred from the depths of her nature strange, tigerish instincts, which otherwise might have slept there unmanifest forever. She also had not failed to appreciate Jerome's action in all its bearings upon herself and Lawrence Prescott, and, when she heard of it, had given up all her longing hope of happiness. "You have to do it, whether it is noble or not," returned Jerome. "Of course," said she, "and if your sister is in the way of it, trample her down; don't stop for that." She went out, but turned back, and added, harshly, "I saw Jake Noyes this afternoon on my way home. He was coming here to ask you to go up to Doctor Prescott's this evening; he wants to see you. If he says anything about me, you can tell him that as long as he and you do your duty, I am satisfied. I ask nothing more, not even his precious son." Elmira rushed across the entry, with a dry sob. Jerome stood still a moment; it seemed to him that he had undertaken more than he could bear. A dreadful thought came to him; suppose Lucina were to look upon him as his sister did. Suppose she were to take it all in the same way. It did not seem as if she could, but she was a woman, like his sister, and how could he tell? Jerome got his hat and went to Doctor Prescott's. He wondered why he had been summoned there, and braced himself for almost anything in the way of contumely, but with no dread of it. The prospect of legitimate combat, where he could hit back, acted like a stimulant after his experience with his sister. Lawrence Prescott answered his knock, and Jerome wondered, vaguely, at his radiant welcome. He shook his hand with warm emphasis. "Father is in the study," he said; "walk right in--walk right in, Jerome." Then he added, speaking close to Jerome's ear, "God bless you, old fellow!" Jerome gave an astonished glance at him as he went into the study, whose door stood open. Doctor Prescott was seated at his desk, his back towards the entrance. "Good-evening. Sit down," he said, curtly, without turning his head. "Good-evening, sir," replied Jerome, but remained standing. He stood still, and stared, with that curious retrospection into which the mind can often be diverted from even its intensest channels, at the cases of leather-bound books and the grimy medicine-bottles, green and brown with the sediments of old doses, which had so impressed him in his childhood. He saw, with an acute throb of memory, the old valerian bottle, catching the light like liquid ruby. He had stepped back so completely into his past, of a little, pitiful suppliant, yet never wholly intimidated, boy, in this gloomy, pungent interior, that he started, as across a chasm of time, when the doctor arose, came forward, and spoke again. "Be seated," he said, with an imperious wave towards a chair, and took one for himself. Jerome sat down; in spite of himself, as he looked at the doctor opposite, the same old indignant, yet none the less vital, sense of subjection in the presence of superiority was over him as in his childhood. He saw again Doctor Seth Prescott as the incarnation of force and power. There was, in truth, something majestic about the man--he was an autocrat in a narrow sphere; but his autocracy was genuine. The czar of a little New England village may be as real in quality as the Czar of all the Russias. The doctor began to speak, moving his finely cut lips with clear precision. "I understand," said he, "that you have fulfilled the promise which you made in my presence several years ago, to give away twenty-five thousand dollars, should such a sum be given to you. Am I right in so understanding?" "Yes, sir." "Do you know that the instrument, drawn up by Lawyer Means at that time is illegal, that no obligation stated therein could be enforced?" "Yes, sir." "Who told you--Mr. Means?" "Yes, sir." "Before you gave the money or after?" "Before." "You know that I am not under the slightest legal restriction to give the sum for which I stand pledged in that instrument, even though you have fulfilled your part of the agreement." "It depends upon what you consider a legal restriction." "What do you mean by that?" "I mean that I make no promise which is not a legal restriction upon myself," replied Jerome, with a proud look at the other man. "Neither do I," returned the doctor, with a look as proud; "but your remark is simply a quibble, which we will pass over. I say again, that I am under no legal restriction, in the common acceptance of that term, to give a fourth part of my property to the poor of this town. That you admit?" Jerome nodded. "Well, sir," said the doctor, "knowing that fact myself, having it admitted by you and all others, I have yet determined to abide by my part of that instrument, and relinquish one fourth part of the property of which I stand possessed." Jerome started; he could scarcely believe his ears. "But," the doctor continued, "since I am in no wise bound by the terms of the instrument, as drawn up by Lawyer Means, I propose to alter some of them, as I deem judicious for the public welfare. One-fourth of my property, which consists largely of real estate, cannot manifestly be given in ready money without great delay and loss. Therefore I propose giving to a large extent in land, and in a few cases liquidations of mortgage deeds; and--I also propose giving in such proportions and to such individuals as I shall approve and select; a strictly indiscriminate division is directly opposed to my views. I trust that you do not consider that this method is to be objected to on the grounds of any infringement upon my legal restrictions." "No, sir, I don't," replied Jerome. "There is one other point, then I have done," said Doctor Prescott. "I have withdrawn my objection to my son's marriage with your sister. That is all. I have said and heard all I wish, and I will not detain you any longer." Doctor Prescott looked at him with a pale and forbidding majesty in his clear-cut face. Jerome arose, and was passing out without a word, as he was bidden, when the old man held out his hand. He had the air of extending a sceptre, and a haughty downward look, as if the whole world, and his own self, were under his feet. Jerome shook the proffered hand, and went. His hand was on the latch of the outer door, when the sitting-room door on the left opened, and he felt himself enveloped, as it were, in a softly gracious feminine presence, made evident by wide rustlings of silken skirts, pointed foldings of lavender-scented white wool over out-stretched arms, and heaving waves of white lace over a high, curving bosom. Doctor Prescott's wife drew Jerome to her as if he were still a child, and kissed him on his cheek. "Give your sister my fondest love, and may God give you your own reward, dear boy," she said, in her beautiful voice, which was like no other woman's for sweetness and softness, though she was as large as a queen. Then she was gone, and Jerome went home, with the scent of lavender from her laces and silks and white wools still in his nostrils, and a subtler sweetness of womanhood and fine motherhood dimly perceived in his soul. When he got home, he knew, by the light in the parlor windows, that Lawrence was with his sister. He had been in bed some time before he heard the front door shut. Elmira, when she came up-stairs, opened his door a crack, and whispered, in a voice tremulous with happiness, "Jerome, you asleep?" "No." "Do--you know--about Lawrence and me?" "Yes; I'm real glad, Elmira." "I hope you'll forgive me for speaking to you the way I did, Jerome." "That's all right, Elmira." _ |
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