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A Jerome, Poor Man: A Novel, a novel by Mary E Wilkins Freeman |
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Chapter 40 |
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_ Chapter XL 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." _ |
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