Jerome, A Poor Man A Novel / Freeman, Mary Eleanor Wilkins, 1852-1930

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Title: Jerome, A Poor Man
       A Novel

Author: Mary E. Wilkins Freeman

Release Date: March 1, 2006 [EBook #17886]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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Produced by Jeff Kaylin and Andrew Sly






Jerome, A Poor Man

A Novel

By
Mary E. Wilkins

Author of
"Prembroke" "Jane Field" "Madelon"
"A Humble Romance" etc.

Illustrated
by A. I. Keller

New York and London
Harper & Brothers Publishers
1897



To My Father




Chapter I


One morning in early May, when the wind was cold and the sun hot, and
Jerome about twelve years old, he was in a favorite lurking-place of
his, which nobody but himself knew.

Three fields' width to the northward from the Edwardses' house was a
great rock ledge; on the southern side of it was a famous warm
hiding-place for a boy on a windy spring day. There was a hollow in
the rock for a space as tall as Jerome, and the ledge extended itself
beyond it like a sheltering granite wing to the westward.

The cold northwester blowing from over the lingering Canadian
snow-banks could not touch him, and he had the full benefit of the
sun as it veered imperceptibly south from east. He lay there basking
in it like some little animal which had crawled out from its winter
nest. Before him stretched the fields, all flushed with young green.
On the side of a gentle hill at the left a file of blooming
peach-trees looked as if they were moving down the slope to some
imperious march music of the spring.

In the distance a man was at work with plough and horse. His shouts
came faintly across, like the ever-present notes of labor in all the
harmonies of life. The only habitation in sight was Squire Eben
Merritt's, and of that only the broad slants of shingled roof and
gray end wall of the barn, with a pink spray of peach-trees against
it.

Jerome stared out at it all, without a thought concerning it in his
brain. He was actively conscious only of his own existence, which had
just then a wondrously pleasant savor for him. A sweet exhilarating
fire seemed leaping through every vein in his little body. He was
drowsy, and yet more fully awake than he had been all winter. All his
pulses tingled, and his thoughts were overborne by the ecstasy in
them. Jerome had scarcely felt thoroughly warm before, since last
summer. That same little, tight, and threadbare jacket had been his
thickest garment all winter. The wood had been stinted on the hearth,
the coverings on his bed; but now the full privilege of the spring
sun was his, and the blood in this little meagre human plant, chilled
and torpid with the winter's frosts, stirred and flowed like that in
any other. Who could say that the bliss of renewed vitality which the
boy felt, as he rested there in his snug rock, was not identical with
that of the springing grass and the flowering peach-trees? Who could
say that he was more to all intents and purposes, for that minute,
than the rock-honeysuckle opening its red cups on the ledge over his
head? He was conscious of no more memory or forethought.

Presently he shut his eyes, and the sunlight came in a soft rosy glow
through his closed lids. Then it was that a little girl came across
the fields, clambering cautiously over the stone walls, lest she
should tear her gown, stepping softly over the green grass in her
little morocco shoes, and finally stood still in front of the boy
sitting with his eyes closed in the hollow of the rock. Twice she
opened her mouth to speak, then shut it again. At last she gained
courage.

"Be you sick, boy?" she inquired, in a sweet, timid voice.

Jerome opened his eyes with a start, and stared at the little quaint
figure standing before him. Lucina wore a short blue woollen gown;
below it her starched white pantalets hung to the tops of her morocco
shoes. She wore also a white tier, and over that a little coat, and
over that a little green cashmere shawl sprinkled with palm leaves,
which her mother had crossed over her bosom and tied at her back for
extra warmth. Lucina's hood was of quilted blue silk, and her smooth
yellow curls flowed from under it quite down to her waist. Moreover,
her mother had carefully arranged four, two on each side, to escape
from the frill of her hood in front and fall softly over her pink
cheeks. Lucina's face was very fair and sweet--the face of a good and
gentle little girl, who always minded her mother and did her daily
tasks.

Her dark blue eyes, set deeply under seriously frowning childish
brows, surveyed Jerome with innocent wonder; her pretty mouth drooped
anxiously at the corners. Jerome knew her well enough, although he
had never before exchanged a word with her. She was little Lucina
Merritt, whose father had money and bought her everything she wanted,
and whose mother rigged her up like a puppet, as he had heard his
mother say.

"No, ain't sick," he said, in a half-intelligible grunt. A cross
little animal poked into wakefulness in the midst of its nap in the
sun might have responded in much the same way. Gallantry had not yet
developed in Jerome. He saw in this pretty little girl only another
child, and, moreover, one finely shod and clothed, while he went
shoeless and threadbare. He looked sulkily at her blue silk hood,
pulled his old cap down with a twitch to his black brows, and
shrugged himself closer to the warm rock.

The little girl eyed his bare toes. "Be you cold?" she ventured.

"No, ain't cold," grunted Jerome. Then he caught sight of something
in her hand--a great square of sugar-gingerbread, out of which she
had taken only three dainty bites as she came along, and in spite of
himself there was a hungry flash of his black eyes.

Lucina held out the gingerbread. "I'd just as lives as not you had
it," said she, timidly. "It's most all there. I've just had three
teenty bites."

Jerome turned on her fiercely. "Don't want your old gingerbread," he
cried. "Ain't hungry--have all I want to home."

The little Lucina jumped, and her blue eyes filled with tears. She
turned away without a word, and ran falteringly, as if she could not
see for tears, across the field; and there was a white lamb trotting
after her. It had appeared from somewhere in the fields, and Jerome
had not noticed it. He remembered hearing that Lucina Merritt had a
cosset lamb that followed her everywhere. "Has everything," he
muttered--"lambs an' everything. Don't want your old gingerbread."

Suddenly he sprang up and began feeling in his pocket; then he ran
like a deer after the little girl. She rolled her frightened, tearful
blue eyes over her shoulder at him, and began to run too, and the
cosset lamb cantered faster at her heels; but Jerome soon gained on
them.

"Stop, can't ye?" he sang out. "Ain't goin' to hurt ye. What ye
'fraid of?"  He laid his hand on her green-shawled shoulders, and she
stood panting, her little face looking up at him, half reassured,
half terrified, from her blue silk hood-frills and her curls.

"Like sas'fras?" inquired Jerome, with a lordly air. An emperor about
to bestow a largess upon a slave could have had no more of the very
grandeur of beneficence in his mien.

Lucina nodded meekly.

Jerome drew out a great handful of strange articles from his pocket,
and they might, from his manner of handling them, have been gold
pieces and jewels. There were old buttons, a bit of chalk, and a stub
of slate-pencil. There were a horse-chestnut and some grains of
parched sweet-corn and a dried apple-core. There were other things
which age and long bondage in the pocket had brought to such passes
that one could scarcely determine their identities. From all this
Jerome selected one undoubted treasure--a great jagged cut of
sassafras root. It had been nicely scraped, too, and looked white and
clean.

"Here," said Jerome.

"Don't you want it?" asked Lucina, shyly.

"No--had a great piece twice as big as that yesterday. Know where
there's lots more in the cedar swamp. Here, take it."

"Thank you," said Lucina, and took it, and fumbled nervously after
her little pocket.

"Why don't you eat it?" asked Jerome, and Lucina took an obedient
little nibble.

"Ain't that good and strong?"

"It's real good," replied Lucina, smiling gratefully.

"Mebbe I'll dig you some more some time," said Jerome, as if the
cedar swamp were a treasure-chest.

"Thank you," said the little girl. Then she timidly extended the
gingerbread again. "I only took three little bites, an' it's real
nice, honest," said she, appealingly.

But she jumped again at the flash in Jerome's black eyes.

"Don't want your old gingerbread!" he cried. "Ain't hungry; have
more'n I want to eat to home. Guess my folks have gingerbread. Like
to know what you're tryin' to give me victuals for! Don't want any of
your old gingerbread!"

"It ain't old, honest," pleaded Lucina, tearfully. "It ain't
old--Hannah, she just baked it this morning."  But the boy was gone,
pelting hard across the field, and all there was for the little girl
to do was to go home, with her sassafras in her pocket and her
gingerbread in her hand, with an aromatic savor on her tongue and the
sting of slighted kindness in her heart, with her cosset lamb
trotting at heel, and tell her mother.

Jerome did not return to his nook in the rock. As he neared it he
heard the hollow note of a horn from the northwest.

"S'pose mother wants me," he muttered, and went on past the rock
ledge to the west, and climbed the stone wall into the first of the
three fields which separated him from his home. Across the young
springing grass went Jerome--a slender little lad moving with an
awkward rustic lope. It was the gait of the homely toiling men of the
village which his young muscles had caught, as if they had in
themselves powers of observation and assimilation. Jerome at twelve
walked as if he had held plough-shares, bent over potato hills, and
hewn wood in cedar swamps for half a century. Jerome's feet were
bare, and his red rasped ankles showed below his hitching trousers.
His poor winter shoes had quite failed him for many weeks, his blue
stockings had shown at the gaps in their sides which had torn away
from his mother's strong mending. Now the soles had gone, and his
uncle Ozias Lamb, who was a cobbler, could not put in new ones
because there was not strength enough in the uppers to hold them.
"You can't have soles in shoes any more than you can in folks,
without some body," said Ozias Lamb. It seemed as if Ozias might have
made and presented some new shoes, soles and all, to his needy
nephew, but he was very poor, and not young, and worked painfully to
make every cent count. So Jerome went barefoot after the soles parted
from his shoes; but he did not care, because it was spring and the
snow was gone. Jerome had, moreover, a curious disregard of physical
discomfort for a boy who could take such delight in sheer existence
in a sunny hollow of a rock. He had had chilblains all winter from
the snow-water which had soaked in through his broken shoes; his
heels were still red with them, but not a whimper had he made. He had
treated them doggedly himself with wood-ashes, after an old country
prescription, and said nothing, except to reply, "Doctorin'
chilblains," when his mother asked him what he was doing.

Jerome also often went hungry. He was hungry now as he loped across
the field. A young wolf that had roamed barren snow-fields all winter
might not have felt more eager for a good meal than Jerome, and he
was worse off, because he had no natural prey. But he never made a
complaint.

Had any one inquired if he were hungry, he would have flown at him as
he had done at little Lucina Merritt when she offered him her
gingerbread. He knew, and all his family knew, that the neighbors
thought they had not enough to eat, and the knowledge so stung their
pride that it made them defy the fact itself. They would not own to
each other that they were hungry; they denied it fiercely to their
own craving stomachs.

Jerome had had nothing that morning but a scanty spoonful of
corn-meal porridge, but he would have maintained stoutly that he had
eaten a good breakfast. He took another piece of sassafras from his
pocket and chewed it as he went along. After all, now the larder of
Nature was open and the lock of the frost on her cupboards was
broken, a boy would not fare so badly; he could not starve. There was
sassafras root in the swamps--plenty of it for the digging; there
were young winter-green leaves, stinging pleasantly his palate with
green aromatic juice; later there would be raspberries and
blackberries and huckleberries. There were also the mysterious cedar
apples, and the sour-sweet excrescences sometimes found on swamp
bushes. These last were the little rarities of Nature's table which a
boy would come upon by chance when berrying and snatch with delighted
surprise. They appealed to his imagination as well as to his tongue,
since they belonged not to the known fruits in his spelling-book and
dictionary, and possessed a strange sweetness of fancy and mystery
beyond their woodland savor. In a few months, too, the garden would
be grown and there would be corn and beans and potatoes. Then
Jerome's lank outlines would begin to take on curves and the hungry
look would disappear from his face. He was a handsome boy, with a
fearless outlook of black eyes from his lean, delicate face, and a
thick curling crop of fair hair which the sun had bleached like
straw. Always protected from the weather, Jerome's hair would have
been brown; but his hats failed him like his shoes, and often in the
summer season were crownless. However, his mother mended them as long
as she was able. She was a thrifty woman, although she was a
semi-invalid, and sat all day long in a high-backed rocking-chair.
She was not young either; she had been old when she married and her
children were born, but there was a strange element of toughness in
her--a fibre either of body or spirit that kept her in being, like
the fibre of an old tree.

Before Jerome entered the house his mother's voice saluted him.
"Where have you been, Jerome Edwards?" she demanded. Her voice was
querulous, but strongly shrill. It could penetrate every wall and
door. Ann Edwards, as she sat in her rocking-chair, lifted up her
voice, and it sounded all over her house like a trumpet, and all her
household marched to it.

"Been over in the pasture," answered Jerome, with quick and yet
rather defiant obedience, as he opened the door.

His mother's face, curiously triangular in outline, like a cat's,
with great hollow black eyes between thin parted curtains of black
false hair, confronted him when he entered the room. She always sat
face to the door and window, and not a soul who passed or entered
escaped her for a minute. "What have you been doing in the pasture?"
said she.

"Sittin'."

"Sittin'?"

"I've been sitting on the warm side of the big rock a little while,"
said Jerome. He looked subdued before his mother's gaze, and yet not
abashed. She always felt sure that there was some hidden reserve of
rebellion in Jerome, coerce him into obedience as she might. She
never really governed him, as she did her daughter Elmira, who stood
washing dishes at the sink. But she loved Jerome better, although she
tried not to, and would not own it to herself.

"Do you know what time it is?" said she, severely.

Jerome glanced at the tall clock in the corner. It was nearly ten. He
glanced and made no reply. He sometimes had a dignified masculine
way, beyond his years, of eschewing all unnecessary words. His mother
saw him look at the time; why should he speak? She did not wait for
him. "'Most ten o'clock," said she, "and a great boy twelve years old
lazing round on a rock in a pasture when all his folks are working.
Here's your mother, feeble as she is, workin' her fingers to the
bone, while you're doing nothing a whole forenoon. I should think
you'd be ashamed of yourself. Now you take the spade and go right out
and go to work in the garden. It's time them beans are in, if they're
going to be. Your father has had to go down to the wood-lot and get a
load of wood for Doctor Prescott, and here 'tis May and the garden
not planted. Go right along."  All the time Jerome's mother talked,
her little lean strong fingers flew, twirling bright colored rags in
and out. She was braiding a rug for this same Doctor Prescott's wife.
The bright strips spread and twirled over her like snakes, and the
balls wherein the rags were wound rolled about the floor. Most women
kept their rag balls in a basket when they braided, but Ann Edwards
worked always in a sort of untidy fury.

Jerome went out, little hungry boy with the winter chill again
creeping through his veins, got the spade out of the barn, and set to
work in the garden. The garden lay on the sunny slope of a hill which
rose directly behind the house; when his spade struck a stone Jerome
would send it rolling out of his way to the foot of the hill. He got
considerable amusement from that, and presently the work warmed him.

The robins were singing all about. Every now and then one flew out of
the sweet spring distance, lit, and silently erected his red breast
among some plough ridges lower down. It was like a veritable
transition from sound to sight.

Below where Jerome spaded, and upon the left, stretched long waving
plough ridges where the corn was planted. Jerome's father had been at
work there with the old white horse that was drawing wood for him
to-day. Much of the garden had to be spaded instead of ploughed,
because this same old white horse was needed for other work.

As Jerome spaded, the smell of the fresh earth came up in his face.
Now and then a gust of cold wind, sweet with unseen blossoms, smote
him powerfully, bending his slender body before it like a sapling. A
bird flashed past him with a blue dazzle of wings, and Jerome stopped
and looked after it. It lit on the fence in front of the house, and
shone there in the sunlight like a blue precious stone. The boy gazed
at it, leaning on his spade. Jerome always looked hard out of all his
little open windows of life, and saw every precious thing outside his
daily grind of hard, toilsome childhood which came within his sight.

The bird flew away, and Jerome spaded again. He knew that he must
finish so much before dinner or his mother would scold. He was not
afraid of his mother's sharp tongue, but he avoided provoking it with
a curious politic and tolerant submission which he had learned from
his father. "Mother ain't well, you know, an' she's high-sperited,
and we've got to humor her all we can," Abel Edwards had said,
confidentially, many a time to his boy, who had listened sagely and
nodded.

Jerome obeyed his mother with the patient obedience of a superior who
yields because his opponent is weaker than he, and a struggle beneath
his dignity, not because he is actually coerced. Neither he nor his
father ever answered back or contradicted; when her shrill voice
waxed loudest and her vituperation seemed to fairly hiss in their
ears, they sometimes looked at each other and exchanged a solemn wink
of understanding and patience. Neither ever opened mouth in reply.

Jerome worked fast in his magnanimous concession to his mother's
will, and had accomplished considerable when his sister opened the
kitchen window, thrust out her dark head, and called in a voice
shrill as her mother's, but as yet wholly sweet, with no harsh notes
in it: "Jerome! Jerome! Dinner is ready."

Jerome whooped in reply, dropped his spade, and went leaping down the
hill. When he entered the kitchen his mother was sitting at the table
and Elmira was taking up the dinner. Elmira was a small, pretty girl,
with little, nervous hands and feet, and eager black eyes, like her
mother's. She stretched on tiptoe over the fire, and ladled out a
steaming mixture from the kettle with an arduous swing of her sharp
elbow. Elmira's sleeves were rolled up and her thin, sharply-jointed,
girlish arms showed.

"Don't you know enough, without being told, to lift that kettle off
the fire for Elmira?" demanded Mrs. Edwards of Jerome.

Jerome lifted the kettle off the fire without a word.

"It seems sometimes as if you might do something without being told,"
said his mother. "You could see, if you had eyes to your head, that
your sister wa'n't strong enough to lift that kettle off, and was
dippin' it up so's to make it lighter, an' the stew 'most burnin'
on."

Jerome made no response. He sniffed hungrily at the savory steam
arising from the kettle. "What is it?" he asked his sister, who
stooped over the kettle sitting on the hearth, and plunged in again
the long-handled tin dipper.

Mrs. Edwards never allowed any one to answer a question when she
could do it herself. "It's a parsnip stew," said she, sharply.
"Elmira dug some up in the old garden-patch, where we thought they
were dead. I put in a piece of pork, when I'd ought to have saved it.
It's good 'nough for anybody, I don't care who 'tis, if it's Doctor
Prescott, or Squire Merritt, or the minister. You'd better be
thankful for it, both of you."

"Where's father?" said Jerome.

"He 'ain't come home yet. I dun'no' where he is. He's been gone long
enough to draw ten cords of wood. I s'pose he's potterin' round
somewheres--stopped to talk to somebody, or something. I ain't going
to wait any longer. He'll have to eat his dinner cold if he can't get
home."

Elmira put the dish of stew on the table. Jerome drew his chair up.
Mrs. Edwards grasped the long-handled dipper preparatory to
distributing the savory mess, then suddenly stopped and turned to
Elmira.

"Elmira," said she, "you go into the parlor an' git the china bowl
with pink flowers on it, an' then you go to the chest in the spare
bedroom an' get out one of them fine linen towels."

"What for?" said Elmira, wonderingly.

"No matter what for. You do what I tell you to."

Elmira went out, and after a little reappeared with the china bowl
and the linen towel. Jerome sat waiting, with a kind of fierce
resignation. He was almost starved, and the smell of the stew in his
nostrils made him fairly ravenous.

"Give it here," said Mrs. Edwards, and Elmira set the bowl before her
mother. It was large, almost large enough for a punch-bowl, and had
probably been used for one. It was a stately old dish from overseas,
a relic from Mrs. Edwards's mother, who had seen her palmy days
before her marriage. Mrs. Edwards had also in her parlor cupboard a
part of a set of blue Indian china which had belonged to her mother.
The children watched while their mother dipped the parsnip stew into
the china bowl. Elmira, while constantly more amenable to her mother,
was at the moment more outspoken against her.

"There won't be enough left for us," she burst forth, excitedly.

"I guess you'll get all you need; you needn't worry."

"There won't be enough for father when he comes home, anyhow."

"I ain't a mite worried about your father; I guess he won't starve."

Mrs. Edwards went on dipping the stew into the bowl while the
children watched. She filled it nearly two-thirds full, then stopped,
and eyed the girl and boy critically. "I guess you'd better go,
Elmira," said she. "Jerome can't unless he's all cleaned up. Get my
little red cashmere shawl, and you can wear my green silk pumpkin
hood. Yours don't look nice enough to go there with."

"Can't I eat dinner first, mother?" pleaded Elmira, pitifully.

"No, you can't. I guess you won't starve if you wait a little while.
I ain't 'goin' to send stew to folks stone-cold. Hurry right along
and get the shawl and hood. Don't stand there lookin' at me."

Elmira went out forlornly.

Mrs. Edwards began pinning the linen towel carefully over the bowl.

"Let Elmira stay an' eat her dinner. I'd just as lives go. Don't care
if I don't ever have anythin' to eat," spoke up Jerome.

His mother flashed her black eyes round at him. "Don't you be saucy,
Jerome Edwards," said she, "or you'll go back to your spadin' without
a mouthful! I told your sister she was goin', an' I don't want any
words about it from either of you."

When Elmira returned with her mother's red cashmere shawl pinned
carefully over her childish shoulders, with her sharply pretty,
hungry-eyed little face peering meekly out of the green gloom of the
great pumpkin hood, Mrs. Edwards gave her orders. "There," said she,
"you take this bowl, an' you be real careful and don't let it fall
and break it, nor slop the stew over my best shawl, an' you carry it
down the road to Doctor Prescott's; an' whoever comes to the door,
whether it's the hired girl, or Lawrence, or the hired man, you ask
to see Mis' Doctor Prescott. Don't you give this bowl to none of the
others, you mind. An' when Mis' Doctor Prescott comes, you courtesy
an' say, 'Good-mornin', Mis' Prescott. Mis' Abel Edwards sends you
her compliments, and hopes you're enjoyin' good health, an' begs
you'll accept this bowl of parsnip stew. She thought perhaps you
hadn't had any this season.'"

Mrs. Edwards repeated the speech in a little, fine, mincing voice,
presumably the one which Elmira was to use. "Can you remember that?"
she asked, sharply, in her natural tone.

"Yes, ma'am."

"Say it over."

Poor little Elmira Edwards said it over like a parrot, imitating her
mother's fine, stilted tone perfectly. In truth, it was a formula of
presentation which she had often used.

"Don't you forget the 'compliments,' an' 'I thought she hadn't had
any parsnip stew this season.'"

"No, ma'am."

"Take the bowl up, real careful, and carry it stiddy."

Elmira threw back the ends of the red cashmere shawl, lifted the big
bowl in her two small hands, and went out carrying it before her.
Jerome opened the door, and shut it after her.

"Now I guess Mis' Doctor Prescott won't think we're starvin' to death
here, if her husband has got a mortgage on our house," said Mrs.
Edwards. "I made up my mind that time she sent over that pitcher of
lamb broth that I'd send her somethin' back, if I lived. I wouldn't
have taken it anyhow, if it hadn't been for the rest of you. I guess
I'll let folks know we ain't quite beggars yet."

Jerome nodded. A look of entire sympathy with his mother came into
his face. "Guess so too," said he.

Mrs. Edwards threw back her head with stiff pride, as if it bore a
crown. "So far," said she, "nobody on this earth has ever give me a
thing that I 'ain't been able to pay 'em for in some way. I guess
there's a good many rich folks can't say 's much as that."

"Guess so too," said Jerome.

"Pass over your plate; you must be hungry by this time," said his
mother. She heaped his plate with the stew. "There," said she, "don't
you wait any longer. I guess mebbe you'd better set the dish down on
the hearth to keep warm for Elmira and your father first, though."

"Ain't you goin' to eat any yourself?" asked Jerome.

"I couldn't touch a mite of that stew if you was to pay me for it. I
never set much by parsnip stew myself, anyway."

Jerome eyed his mother soberly. "There's enough," said he. "I've got
all I can eat here."

"I tell you I don't want any. Ain't that enough? There's plenty of
stew if I wanted it, but I don't. I never liked it any too well, an'
to-day seems as if it fairly went against my stomach. Set it down on
the hearth the way I told you to, an' eat your dinner before it gets
any colder."

Jerome obeyed. He ate his plate of stew; then his mother obliged him
to eat another. When Elmira returned she had her fill, and there was
plenty left for Abel Edwards when he should come home.

Jerome, well fed, felt like another boy when he returned to his task
in the garden. "Guess I can get this spadin' 'most done this
afternoon," he said to himself. He made the brown earth fly around
him. He whistled as he worked. As the afternoon wore on he began to
wonder if he could not finish the garden before his father got home.
He was sure he had not come as yet, for he had kept an eye on the
road, and besides he would have heard the heavy rattle of the
wood-wagon. "Father 'll be real tickled when he sees the garden all
done," said Jerome, and he stopped whistling and bent all his young
spirit and body to his work. He never thought of feeling anxious
about his father.

At five o'clock the back door of the Edwards house opened. Elmira
came out with a shawl over her head and hurried up the hill. "Oh,
Jerome," she panted, when she got up to him. "You must stop working,
mother says, and go right straight off to the ten-acre lot. Father
'ain't come home yet, an' we're dreadful worried about him. She says
she's afraid something has happened to him."

Jerome stuck his spade upright in the ground and stared at her. "What
does she s'pose has happened?" he said, slowly. Jerome had no
imagination for disasters.

"She thinks maybe he's fell down, or some wood's fell on him, or
Peter's run away."

"Peter wouldn't ever run away; it's much as ever he'll walk lately,
an' father don't ever fall down."

Elmira fairly danced up and down in the fresh mould. She caught her
brother's arm and twitched it and pushed him fiercely. "Go along, go
along!" she cried. "Go right along, Jerome Edwards! I tell you
something dreadful has happened to father. Mother says so. Go right
along!"

Jerome pulled himself away from her nervous clutch, and collected
himself for flight. "He was goin' to carry that wood to Doctor
Prescott's," said he, reflectively. "Ain't any sense goin' to the
ten-acre lot till I see if he's been there."

"It's on the way," cried Elmira, frantically. "Hurry up! Oh, do hurry
up, Jerome! Poor father! Mother says he's--fell--down--"  Elmira
crooked her little arm around her face and broke into a long wail as
she started down the hill. "Poor--father--oh--oh--poor--father!"
floated back like a wake of pitiful sound.




Chapter II


Jerome started, and once started he raced. Long-legged,
light-flanked, long-winded, and underfed, he had the adaptability for
speed of a little race-horse. Jerome Edwards was quite a famous boy
in the village for his prowess in running. No other boy could equal
him. Marvellous stories were told about it. "Jerome Edwards, he can
run half a mile in five minutes any day, yes he can, sir," the
village boys bragged if perchance a cousin from another town came
a-visiting and endeavored to extol himself and his comrades beyond
theirs. In some curious fashion Jerome, after he had out-speeded all
the other boys, furnished them with his own victories for a boast.
They seemed, in exulting over the glory of this boy of their village,
to forget that the glory came only through their defeat. It was
national pride on a very small and childish scale.

Jerome, swift little runner that he was, ran that day as he had never
run before. The boys whom he met stood aside hastily, gaped down the
road behind him to see another runner laboring far in the rear, and
then, when none appeared, gaped after his flying heels.

"Wonder what he's a-runnin' that way fur?" said one boy.

"Ain't nobody a-tryin' to ketch up with him, fur's I can see," said
another.

 "Mebbe his mother's took worse, an' he's a-runnin' fur the doctor,"
said a third, who was Henry Judd, a distant cousin of Jerome's.

The boys stood staring even when Jerome was quite out of sight.
Jerome had about three-quarters of a mile to run to Doctor Prescott's
house. He was almost there when he caught sight of a team coming.
"There's father, now," he thought, and stood still, breathing hard.
Although Jerome's scanty food made him a swift runner, it did not
make him a strong one.

The team came rattling slowly on. The old white horse which drew it
planted his great hoofs lumberingly in the tracks, nodding at every
step.

As it came nearer, Jerome, watching, gave a quick gasp. The wagon
contained wood nicely packed; the reins were wound carefully around
one of the stakes; and there was no driver. Jerome tried to call out,
tried to run forward, but he could not. He could only stand still,
watching, his boyish face deadly white, his eyes dilating. The old
white horse came on, dragging his load faithfully and steadily
towards his home. He never swerved from his tracks except once, when
he turned out carefully for a bad place in the road, where the ground
seemed to be caving in, which Abel Edwards had always avoided with a
loaded team. There was something awful about this old animal, with
patient and laborious stupidity in every line of his plodding body,
obeying still that higher intelligence which was no longer visible at
his guiding-reins, and perhaps had gone out of sight forever. It had
all the uncanny horror of a headless spectre advancing down the road.

Jerome collected himself when the white horse came alongside. "Whoa!
Whoa, Peter!" he gasped out. The horse stopped and stood still, his
great forefeet flung stiffly forward, his head and ears and neck
hanging as inertly as a broken tree-bough with all its leaves
drooping.

The boy stumbled weakly to the side of the wagon and stretched
himself up on tiptoe. There was nothing there but the wood. He stood
a minute, thinking. Then he began searching for the hitching-rope in
the front of the wagon, but he could not find it. Finally he led the
horse to the side of the road, unwound the reins from the stake, and
fastened him as well as he could to a tree.

Then he went on down the road. His knees felt weak under him, but
still he kept up a good pace. When he reached the Prescott place he
paused and looked irresolutely a moment through the trees at the
great square mansion-house, with its green, glancing window-panes.

Then he ran straight on. The ten-acre wood-lot which belonged to his
father was about a half-mile farther. It was a birch and chestnut
wood, and was full of the green shimmer of new leaves and the silvery
glistening of white boughs as delicate as maidens' arms. There was a
broad cart-path leading through it. Jerome entered this directly when
he reached the wood. Then he began calling. "Father!" he called.
"Father! father!" over and over again, stopping between to listen.
There was no sound in response; there was no sound in the wood except
the soft and elusive rustling of the new foliage, like the rustling
of the silken garments of some one in hiding or some one passing out
of sight. It brought also at this early season a strange sense of a
presence in the wood. Jerome felt it, and called with greater
importunity: "Father! father! father, where be you? Father!"

Jerome looked very small among the trees--no more than a little pale
child. His voice rang out shrill and piteous. It seemed as much a
natural sound of the wood as a bird's, and was indeed one of the
primitive notes of nature: the call of that most helpless human young
for its parent and its shield.

Jerome pushed on, calling, until he came to the open space where his
father had toiled felling trees all winter. Cords of wood were there,
all neatly piled and stacked. The stumps between them were sending
out shoots of tender green. "Father! father!" Jerome called, but this
time more cautiously, hushing his voice a little. He thought that his
father might be lying there among the stumps, injured in some way. He
remembered how a log had once fallen on Samuel Lapham's leg and
broken it when he was out alone in the woods, and he had lain there a
whole day before anybody found him. He thought something like that
might have happened to his father. He searched everywhere, peering
with his sharp young eyes among the stumps and between the piles of
wood. "Mebbe father's fainted away," he muttered.

Finally he became sure that his father was nowhere in the clearing,
and he raised his voice again and shouted, and hallooed, and
listened, and hallooed again, and got no response.

Suddenly a chill seemed to strike Jerome's heart. He thought of the
pond. Little given as he was to forebodings of evil, when once he was
possessed of one it became a certainty.

"Father's fell in the pond and got drowned," he burst out with a
great sob. "What will mother do?"

The boy went forward, stumbling half blindly over the stumps. Once he
fell, bruising his knee severely, and picked himself up, sobbing
piteously. All the child in Jerome had asserted itself.

Beyond the clearing was a stone wall that bounded Abel Edwards's
property. Beyond that was a little grove of old thick-topped
pine-trees; beyond that the little woodland pond. It was very shallow
in places, but it never dried up, and was said to have deep holes in
it. The boys told darkly braggart stories about this pond. They had
stood on this rock and that rock with poles of fabulous length; they
had probed the still water of the pond, and "never once hit the
bottom, sir."  They had flung stones with all their might, and,
listening sharply forward like foxes, had not heard them "strike
bottom, sir."

One end of this pond, reaching up well among the pine-trees, had the
worst repute, and was called indeed a darkly significant name--the
"Dead Hole."  It was confidently believed by all the village children
to have no bottom at all. There was a belief current among them that
once, before they were born, a man had been drowned there, and his
body never found.

They would stand on the shore and look with horror, which yet gave
somehow a pleasant titillation to their youthful spirits, at this
water which bore such an evil name. Their elders did not need to
caution them; even the most venturesome had an awe of the Dead Hole,
and would not meddle with it unduly.

Jerome climbed over the stone wall. The land on the other side
belonged to Doctor Prescott. He went through the grove of pine-trees
and reached the pond--the end called the Dead Hole. He stood there
looking and listening. It was a small sheet of water; the other
shore, swampy and skirted with white-flowering bushes and young
trees, looked very near; a cloying, honey sweetness came across, and
a silvery smoke of mist was beginning to curl up from it. The frogs
were clamorous, and every now and then came the bass boom of a
bull-frog. A red light from the westward sun came through the thin
growth opposite, and lay over the pond and the shore. Little swarms
of gnats danced in it.

A swarm of the little gauzy things, so slight and ephemeral that they
seemed rather a symbolism of life than life itself, whirled before
the boy's wild, tearful eyes, and he moved aside and looked down, and
then cried out and snatched something from the ground at his feet. It
was the hat Abel Edwards had worn when he left home that morning.
Jerome stood holding his father's hat, gazing at it with a look in
his face like an old man's. Indeed, it may have been that a sudden
old age of the spirit came in that instant over the boy. He had not
before conceived of anything but an accident happening to his father;
now all at once he saw plainly that if his father, Abel Edwards, had
come to his death in the pond it must have been through his own
choice. "He couldn't have fell in," muttered Jerome, with stiff lips,
looking at the gently curving shore and looking at the hat.

Suddenly he straightened himself, and an expression of desperate
resolution came into his face. He set his teeth hard; somehow,
whether through inherited instincts or through impressions he had got
from his mother, he had a firm conviction that suicide was a horrible
disgrace to the dead man himself and to his family.

"Nobody shall ever know it," the boy thought. He nodded fiercely, as
if to confirm it, and began picking up stones from the shore of the
pond. He filled the crown of the hat with them, got a string out of
his pocket, tied it firmly around the crown, making a strong knot;
then he swung his arm back at the shoulder, brought it forward with a
wide sweep, and flung the hat past the middle of the Dead Hole.

"There," said Jerome; "guess nobody 'll ever know now. There ain't no
bottom to the Dead Hole."  The boy hurried out of the woods and down
the road again. When he reached the Prescott house a man was just
coming out of the yard, following the path from the south door. When
he came up to Jerome he eyed him curiously; then he grasped him by
the shoulder.

"Sick?" said he.

"No," said Jerome.

"What on airth makes you look so?"

"Father's lost."

"Lost--where's he lost? What d'ye mean?"

"Went to get a load of wood for Doctor Prescott this mornin', an'
'ain't got home."

"Now, I want to know! Didn't I see his team go up the road a few
minutes ago?"

Jerome nodded. "Met it, an' he wa'n't on," said he.

"Lord!" cried the man, and stared at him. He was a middle-aged man,
with a small wiry shape and a gait like a boy's. His name was Jake
Noyes, and he was the doctor's hired man. He took care of his horse,
and drove for him, and some said helped him compound his
prescriptions. There was great respect in the village for Jake Noyes.
He had a kind of reflected glory from the doctor, and some of his
own.

Jerome pulled his shoulder away. "Got to be goin'," said he.

"Stop," said Jake Noyes. "This has got to be looked into. He must
have got hurt. He must be in the woods where he was workin'."

"Ain't. I've been there," said Jerome, shortly, and broke away.

"Where did ye look?"

"Everywhere," the boy called back. But Jake followed him up.

"Stop a minute," said he; "I want to know. Did you go as fur 's the
pond?"

"What should I want to go to the pond for, like to know?"  Jerome
looked around at him fiercely.

"I didn't know but he might have fell in the pond; it's pretty near."

"I'd like to know what you think my father would jump in the pond
for?" Jerome demanded.

"Lord, I didn't say he jumped in. I said fell in."

"You know he couldn't have fell in. You know he would have had to
gone in of his own accord. I'll let you know my father wa'n't the man
to do anything like that, Jake Noyes!"  The boy actually shook his
puny fist in the man's face. "Say it again, if ye dare!" he cried.

"Lord!" said Jake Noyes, with half-comical consternation. He screwed
up one blue eye after a fashion he had--people said he had acquired
it from dropping drugs for the doctor--and looked with the other at
the boy.

"Say it again an' I'll kill ye, I will!" cried Jerome, his voice
breaking into a hoarse sob, and was off.

"Be ye crazy?" Jake Noyes called after him. He stood staring at him a
minute, then went into the house on a run.

Jerome ran to the place where he had left his father's team, untied
the horse, climbed up on the seat, and drove home. He could not go
fast; the old horse could proceed no faster than a walk with a load.
When he came in sight of home he saw a blue flutter at the gate. It
was Elmira's shawl; she was out there watching. When she saw the team
she came running down the road to meet it. "Where's father?" she
cried out. "Jerome, where's father?"

"Dun'no'," said Jerome. He sat high above her, holding the reins. His
pale, set face looked over her head.

"Jerome--haven't you--seen--father?"

"No."

Elmira burst out with a great wail. "Oh, Jerome, where's father?
Jerome, where is he? Is he killed? Oh, father, father!"

"Keep still," said Jerome. "Mother 'll hear you."

"Oh, Jerome, where's father?"

"I tell you, hold your tongue. Do you want to kill mother, too?"

Poor little Elmira, running alongside the team, wept convulsively.
"Elmira, I tell you to keep still," said Jerome, in such a voice that
she immediately choked back her sobs.

Jerome drew up the wood-team at the gate with a great creak. "Stand
here 'side of the horse a minute," he said to Elmira. He swung
himself off the load and went up the path to the house. As he drew
near the door he could hear his mother's chair. Ann Edwards, crippled
as she was, managed, through some strange manipulation of muscles, to
move herself in her rocking-chair all about the house. Now the
jerking scrape of the rockers on the uncarpeted floor sounded loud.
When Jerome opened the door he saw his mother hitching herself
rapidly back and forth in a fashion she had when excited. He had seen
her do so before, a few times.

When she saw Jerome she stopped short and screwed up her face before
him as if to receive a blow. She did not ask a question.

"I met the team comin' home," said Jerome.

Still his mother said nothing, but kept that cringing face before a
coming blow.

"Father wa'n't on it," said Jerome.

Still his mother waited.

"I hitched the horse," said Jerome, "and then I went up to the
ten-acre lot, and I looked everywhere. He ain't there."

Suddenly Ann Edwards seemed to fall back upon herself before his
eyes. Her head sank helplessly; she slipped low in her chair.

Jerome ran to the water-pail, dipped out some water, and sprinkled
his mother's face. Then he rubbed her little lean hands with his
hard, boyish palm. He had seen his mother faint before. In fact, he
had been all prepared for it now.

Presently she began to gasp and struggle feebly, and he knew she was
coming to. "Feel better?" he asked, in a loud voice, as if she were
miles away; indeed, he had a feeling that she was. "Feel better,
mother?"

Mrs. Edwards raised herself. "Your--father has fell down and died,"
she said. "There needn't anybody say anything else. Wipe this water
off my face. Get a towel."  Jerome obeyed.

"There needn't anybody say anything else," repeated his mother.

"I guess they needn't, either," assented Jerome, coming with the
towel and wiping her face gently. "I'd like to hear anybody," he
added, fiercely.

"He's fell down--and died," said his mother. She made sounds like
sobs as she spoke, but there were no tears in her eyes.

"I s'pose I ought to go an' take the horse out," said Jerome.

"Well."

"I'll send Elmira in; she's holdin' him."

"Well."

Jerome lighted a candle first, for it was growing dark, and went out.
"You go in and stay with mother," he said to Elmira, "an' don't you
go to cryin' an' makin' her worse--she's been faintin' away. Any tea
in the house?"

"No," said the little girl, trying to control her quivering face.

"Make her some hot porridge, then--she'd ought to have something. You
can do that, can't you?"

Elmira nodded; she dared not speak for fear she should cry.

"Go right in, then," said Jerome; and she obeyed, keeping her face
turned away. Her childish back looked like an old woman's as she
entered the door.

Jerome unharnessed the horse, led him into the barn, fed him, and
drew some water for him from the well. When he came out of the barn,
after it was all done, he saw Doctor Prescott's chaise turning into
the yard. The doctor and Jake Noyes were in it. When the chaise
stopped, Jerome went up to it, bobbed his head and scraped his foot.
A handsome, keenly scowling face looked out of the chaise at him.
Doctor Seth Prescott was over fifty, with a smooth-shaven face as
finely cut as a woman's, with bright blue eyes under bushy brows, and
a red scratch-wig. Before years and snows and rough winds had
darkened and seamed his face, he had been a delicately fair man. "Has
he come yet?" he demanded, peremptorily.

Jerome bobbed and scraped again. "No, sir."

"You didn't see a sign of him in the woods?"

Jerome hesitated visibly.

The doctor's eyes shone more sharply. "You didn't, eh?"

"No, sir," said Jerome.

"Does your mother know it?"

"Yes, sir."

"How is she?"

"She fainted away, but she's better."

The doctor got stiffly out of the chaise, took his medicine-chest,
and went into the house. "Stay here till I come out," he ordered
Jerome, without looking back.

"The doctor's goin' to send a posse out lookin' with lanterns," Jake
Noyes told Jerome.

Jerome made a grunt, both surly and despairing, in response. He was
leaning against the wheel of the chaise; he felt strangely weak.

"Mebbe we'll find him 'live an' well," said Jake, consolingly.

"No, ye won't."

"Mebbe 'twon't be nothin' wuss than a broken bone noway, an' the
doctor, he can fix that."

Jerome shook his head.

"The doctor, he's goin' to do everything that can be done," said
Jake. "He's sent Lawrence over to East Corners for some ropes an'
grapplin'-hooks."

Then Jerome roused himself. "What for?" he demanded, in a furious
voice.

Jake hesitated and colored. "Mebbe I hadn't ought to have said that,"
he stammered. "Course there ain't no need of havin' 'em. It's just
because the doctor wants to do everything he can."

"What for?"

"Well--you know there's the pond--an'--"

"Didn't I tell you my father didn't go near the pond?"

"Well, I don't s'pose he did," said Jake, shrewdly; "but it won't do
no harm to drag it, an' then everybody will know for sure he didn't."

"Can't drag it anyhow," said Jerome, and there was an odd accent of
triumph in his voice. "The Dead Hole 'ain't got any bottom."

Jake laughed. "That's a darned lie," said he. "I helped drag it
myself once, forty year ago; a girl by the name of 'Lizy Ann Gooch
used to live 'bout a mile below here on the river road, was missin'.
She wa'n't there; found her bones an' her straw bonnet in the swamp
two years afterwards, but, Lord, we dragged the Dead hole--scraped
bottom every time."

Jerome stared at him, his chin dropping.

"Of course it ain't nothin' but a form, an' we sha'n't find him there
any more than we did 'Lizy Ann," said Jake Noyes, consolingly.

Doctor Prescott came out of the house, and as he opened the door a
shrill cry of "There needn't anybody say anything else" came from
within.

"Now you'd better go in and stay with your mother," ordered Doctor
Prescott. "I have given her a composing powder. Keep her as quiet as
possible, and don't talk to her about your father."

Doctor Prescott got into his chaise and drove away up the road, and
Jerome went in to his mother. For a while she kept her rocking-chair
in constant motion; she swung back and forth or hitched fiercely
across the floor; she repeated her wild cry that her husband had
fallen down and died, and nobody need say anything different; she
prayed and repeated Scripture texts. Then she succumbed to the
Dover's powder which the doctor had given her, and fell asleep in her
chair.

Jerome and Elmira dared not awake her that she might go to bed. They
sat, each at a window, staring out into the night, watching for their
father, or some one to come with news that his body was found--they
did not know which. Now and then they heard the report of a gun, but
did not know what it meant. Sometimes Elmira wept a little, but
softly, that she might not waken her mother.

The moon was full, and it was almost as light as day outside. When a
little after midnight a team came in sight they could tell at once
that it was the doctor's chaise, and Jake Noyes was driving. The boy
and girl left the windows and stole noiselessly out of the house.
Jake drew up at the gate. "You'd better go in an' go to bed, both on
you," he said. "We'll find him safe an' sound somewheres to-morrow.
There's nigh two hundred men an' boys out with lanterns an' torches,
an' firin' guns for signals. We'll find him with nothing wuss than a
broken bone to-morrow. We've dragged the whole pond, an' he ain't
there, sure."




Chapter III


The pond undoubtedly partook somewhat of the nature of an Eastern
myth in this little New England village. Although with the
uncompromising practicality of their natures the people had given it
a name so directly significant as to make it lose all poetical
glamour, and render it the very commonplace of ghastliness, it still
appealed to their imaginations.

The laws of natural fancy obtained here as everywhere else, although
in small and homely measure. The village children found no nymphs in
the trees of their New England woods. If there were fauns among them,
and the children took their pointed ears for leaves as they lay
sleeping in the undergrowth, they never knew it. They had none of
these, but they had their pond, with its unfathomable depth. They
could not give that up for any testimony of people with ropes and
grappling-hooks. Had they not sounded it in vain with farther-reaching
lines?

Not a boy in the village believed that the bottom of that famous Dead
Hole had once been touched. Jerome Edwards certainly did not. Then,
too, they had not brought his father's hat to light--or, if they had,
had made no account of it.

Some of the elders, as well as the boys, believed in their hearts
that the pond had not, after all, been satisfactorily examined, and
that Abel Edwards might still lie there. "Ever since I can remember
anything, I've heard that pond in that place 'ain't got any bottom,"
one old man would say, and another add, with triumphant conclusion,
"If he ain't there, where is he?"

That indeed was the question. All solutions of mysteries have their
possibilities in the absence of proof. No trace of Abel Edwards had
been found in the woodland where he had been working, and no trace of
him for miles around. The search had been thorough. Other ponds of
less evil repute had also been dragged, and the little river which
ran through the village, and two brooks of considerable importance in
the spring. If Able Edwards had taken his own life, the conclusion
was inevitable that his body must lie in the pond, which had always
been reported unfathomable, and might be, after all.

"The way I look at it is this," said Simon Basset one night in the
village store. He raised the index-finger of his right hand, pointed
it at the company, shook it authoritatively as he spoke, as if to
call ocular attention also to his words. "Ef Abel Edwards did make
'way with himself any other way than by jumping into the Dead Hole,
_what_ did he do with his remains? He couldn't bury himself nohow."
Simon Basset chuckled dryly and looked at the others with conclusive
triumph. His face was full of converging lines of nose and chin and
brows, which seemed to bring it to a general point of craft and
astuteness. Even his grizzled hair slanted forward in a stiff cowlick
over his forehead, and his face bristled sharply with his gray beard.
Simon Basset was the largest land-owner in the village, and the dust
and loam of his own acres seemed to have formed a gray grime over all
his awkward homespun garb. Never a woman he met but looked
apprehensively at his great, clomping, mud-clogged boots.

It was believed by many that Simon Basset never removed a suit of
clothes, after he had once put it on, until it literally dropped from
him in rags. He was also said to have argued, when taken to task for
this most untidy custom, that birds and animals never shifted their
coats until they were worn out, and it behooved men to follow their
innocent and natural habits as closely as possible.

Simon Basset, sitting in an old leather-cushioned arm-chair in the
midst of the lounging throng, waited for applause after his
conclusive opinion upon Abel Edwards's disappearance; but there were
only affirmative grunts from a few. Many had their own views.

"I ain't noways clear in my mind that Abel did kill himself," said a
tall man, with a great length of thin, pale whiskers falling over his
breast. He had a vaguely elongated effect, like a shadow, and had,
moreover, a way of standing behind people like one. When he spoke
everybody started and looked around at him.

"I'd like to know what you think did happen to him, Adoniram Judd,"
cried Simon Basset.

"I don't think Abel Edwards ever killed himself," repeated the tall
man, solemnly. His words had weight, for he was a distant relative of
the missing man.

"Do you know of anybody that had anything agin him?" demanded Simon
Basset.

"No, I dun'no' 's I do," admitted the tall man.

"Then what in creation would anybody want to kill him for? Guess they
wouldn't be apt to do it for anything they would get out of Abel
Edwards."  Simon Basset chuckled triumphantly; and in response there
was a loud and exceedingly bitter laugh from a man sitting on an old
stool next to him. Everybody started, for the man was Ozias Lamb,
Abel Edwards's brother-in-law.

"What ye laughin' at?" inquired Simon Basset, defiantly; but he edged
his chair away a little at the same time. Ozias Lamb had the
reputation of a very high temper.

"Mebbe," said Ozias Lamb, "somebody killed poor Abel for his
mortgage. I dun'no' of anything else he had."  Ozias laughed again.
He was a stout, squat man, leaning forward upon his knees as he sat,
with a complete subsidence of all his muscles, which showed that it
was his accustomed attitude. Just in that way had Ozias Lamb sat and
cobbled shoes on his lapboard for nearly forty years. He was almost
resolved into a statue illustrative of his own toil. He never stood
if he could help it; indeed, his knees felt weak under him if he
tried to do so. He sank into the first seat and settled heavily
forward into his one pose of life.

All the other men looked rather apprehensively at him. His face was
all broadened with sardonic laughter, but his blue eyes were fierce
under his great bushy head of fair hair. "Abel Edwards has been
lugging of that mortgage 'round for the last ten years," said he,
"an' it's been about all he had to lug. It's been the meat in his
stomach an' the hope in his heart. He 'ain't been a-lookin' forward
to eatin', but to payin' up the interest money when it came due; he
'ain't been a-lookin' forward to heaven, but to clearin' off the
mortgage. It's been all he's had; it's bore down on his body and his
soul, an' it's braced him up to keep on workin'. He's been a-livin'
in this Christian town for ten years a-carryin' of this fine mortgage
right out in plain sight, an' I shouldn't be a mite surprised if
somebody see it an' hankered arter it. Folks are so darned anxious in
this 'ere Christian town to get holt of each other's burdens!"

Simon Basset edged his chair away still farther; then he spoke.
"Don't s'pose you expected folks to up an' pay Abel Edwards's
mortgage for him," he said.

"No, I didn't," returned Ozias Lamb, and the sardonic curves around
his mouth deepened.

"An' I don't s'pose you'd expect Doctor Prescott to make him a
present of it," said Jake Noyes, suddenly, from the outskirts of the
group. He had come in for the doctor's mail, and was lounging with
one great red-sealed missive and a religious newspaper in his hand.

"No," said Ozias Lamb, "I shouldn't never expect the doctor to make a
present to anybody but himself or the Lord or the meetin'-house."

A general chuckle ran over the group at that. Doctor Prescott was
regarded in the village as rather parsimonious except in those three
directions.

Jake Noyes colored angrily and stepped forward. "I ain't goin' to
hear no nonsense about Doctor Prescott," he exclaimed. "I won't stan'
it from none of ye. I give ye fair warnin'. I don't eat no man's
flapjacks an' hear him talked agin within swing of my fists if I can
help it."

The storekeeper and postmaster, Cyrus Robinson, had been leaning over
his counter between the scales and a pile of yellow soap bars,
smiling and shrewdly observant. Now he spoke, and the savor of honey
for all was in his words.

"It's fust-rate of you, Jake, to stand up for the doctor," said he.
"We all of us feel all wrought up about poor Abel. I understand the
doctor's goin' to be easy with the widder about the mortgage. I
thought likely he would be. Sometimes folks do considerable more good
than they get credit for. I shouldn't be surprised if Doctor
Prescott's left hand an' his neighbors didn't know all he did."

Ozias Lamb turned slowly around and looked at the storekeeper.
"Doctor Prescott's a pretty good customer of yours, ain't he?" he
inquired.

There was a subdued titter. Cyrus Robinson colored, but kept his
pleasant smile. "Everybody in town is a good customer," said he. "I
haven't any bad customers."

"P'r'aps 'cause you won't trust 'em," said Ozias Lamb. This time the
titter was audible. Cyrus Robinson's business caution was well known.

The storekeeper said no more, turned abruptly, took a key from his
pocket, went to the little post-office in the corner, and locked the
door. Then he began putting up the window-shutters.

There was a stir among the company, a scraping of chairs and stools,
and a shuffling of heavy feet, and they went lingeringly out of the
store. Cyrus Robinson usually put up his shutters too early for them.
His store was more than a store--it was the nursery of the town, the
place where her little commonweal was evolved and nurtured, and it
was also her judgment-seat. There her simple citizens formed their
simple opinions upon town government and town officials, upon which
they afterwards acted in town meeting. There they sat in judgment
upon all men who were not within reach of their voices, and upon all
crying evils of the times which were too mighty for them to struggle
against. This great country store of Cyrus Robinson's--with its rank
odors of molasses and spices, whale oil, and West India rum; with its
counters, its floor, its very ceiling heaped and hung with all the
paraphernalia of a New England village; its clothes, its food, and
its working-utensils--was also in a sense the nucleus of this village
of Upham Corners. There was no tavern. Although this was the largest
of the little cluster of Uphams, the tavern was in the West Corners,
and the stages met there. However, all the industries had centred in
Upham Corners on account of its superior water privileges: the
grist-mill was there, and the saw-mill. People from the West and East
Corners came to trade at Robinson's store, which was also a factory
in a limited sense. Cyrus Robinson purchased leather in considerable
quantities, and employed several workmen in a great room above the
store to cut out the rude shoes worn in the country-side. These he
let out in lots to the towns-folk to bind and close and finish,
paying them for their work in store goods, seldom in cash, then
selling the shoes himself at a finely calculated profit.

Robinson had, moreover, several spare rooms in his house adjoining
the store, and there, if he were so disposed, he could entertain
strangers who wished to remain in Upham overnight, and neither he nor
his wife was averse to increasing their income in that way. Cyrus
Robinson was believed by many to be as rich as Doctor Prescott and
Simon Basset.

When the men left the store that night, Simon Basset's, Jake Noyes's,
and Adoniram Judd's way lay in the same direction. They still
discussed poor Abel Edwards's disappearance as they went along. Their
voices were rising high, when suddenly Jake Noyes gave Simon Basset a
sharp nudge. "Shut up," he whispered; "the Edwards boy's behind us."

And indeed, as he spoke, Jerome's little light figure came running
past them. He was evidently anxious to get by without notice, but
Simon Basset grasped his arm and brought him to a standstill.

"Hullo!" said he. "You're Abel Edwards's boy, ain't you?"

"I can't stop," said Jerome, pulling away. "I've got to go home.
Mother's waiting for me."

"I don't s'pose you've heard anything yet from your father?"

"No, I 'ain't. I've got to go home."

"Where've you been, Jerome?" asked Adoniram Judd.

"Up to Uncle Ozias's to get Elmira's shoes."  Jerome had the stout
little shoes, one in each hand.

"I don't s'pose you've formed any idee of what's become of your
father," said Simon Basset.

Jerome, who had been pulling away from his hold, suddenly stood
still, and turned a stern little white face upon him.

"He's dead," said he.

"Yes, of course he's dead. That is, we're all afraid he is, though we
all hope for the best; but that ain't the question," said Simon
Basset. "The question is, how did he die?"

Jerome looked up in Simon Basset's face. "He died the same way you
will, some time," said he. And with that Simon Basset let go his arm
suddenly, and he was gone.

"Lord!" said Jake Noyes, under his breath. Simon Basset said not
another word; his grandfather, his uncle, and a brother had all taken
their own lives, and he knew that the others were thinking of it.
They all wondered if the boy had been keen-witted enough to give this
hard hit at Simon intentionally, but he had not. Poor little Jerome
had never speculated on the laws of heredity; he had only meant to
deny that his father had come to any more disgraceful end than the
common one of all mankind. He did not dream, as he raced along home
with his sister's shoes, of the different construction which they had
put upon his words, but he felt angry and injured.

"That Sim' Basset pickin' on me that way," he thought. A wild sense
of the helplessness of his youth came over him. "Wish I was a man,"
he muttered--"wish I was a man; I'd show 'em! All them men
talkin'--sayin' anything--'cause I'm a boy."

Just before he reached home Jerome met two more men, and he heard his
father's name distinctly. One of them stretched out a detaining hand
as he passed, and called out, "Hullo! you're the Edwards boy?"

"Let me go, I tell you," shouted Jerome, in a fury, and was past them
with a wild flourish of heels, like a rebellious colt.

"What in creation ails the boy?" said the man, with a start aside;
and he and the other stood staring after Jerome.

When Jerome got home and opened the kitchen door he stood still with
surprise. It was almost ten o'clock, and his mother and Elmira had
begun to make pies. His mother had pushed herself up to the table and
was mixing the pastry, while Elmira was beating eggs.

Mrs. Edwards looked around at Jerome. "What you standin' there
lookin' for?" said she, with her sharp, nervous voice. "Put them
shoes down, an' bring that quart pail of milk out of the pantry. Be
careful you don't spill it."

Jerome obeyed. When he set the milk-pail on the table, Elmira gave
him a quick, piteously confidential glance from under her tearful
lids. Elmira, with her blue checked pinafore tied under her chin, sat
in a high wooden chair, with her little bare feet curling over a
round, and beat eggs with a wooden spoon in a great bowl.

"What you doin'?" asked Jerome.

Her mother answered for her. "She's mixin' up some custard for pies,"
said she. "I dun'no' as there's any need of you standin' lookin' as
if you never saw any before."

"Never saw you makin' custard-pies at ten o'clock at night before,"
returned Jerome, with blunt defiance.

"Do you s'pose," said his mother, "that I'm goin' to let your father
go off an' die all alone an' take no notice of it?"

"Dun'no' what you mean?"

"Don't you know it's three days since he went off to get that wood
an' never come back?"

Jerome nodded.

"Do you s'pose I'm goin' to let it pass an' die away, an' folks
forget him, an' not have any funeral or anything? I made up my mind
I'd wait until nine o'clock to-night, an' then, if he wa'n't found, I
wouldn't wait any longer. I'd get ready for the funeral. I've sent
over for Paulina Maria and your aunt B'lindy to come in an' help.
Henry come over here to see if I'd heard anything, and I told him to
go right home an' tell his mother to come, an' stop on the way an'
tell Paulina Maria. There's a good deal to do before two o'clock
to-morrow afternoon, an' I can't do much myself; somebody's got to
help. In the mornin' you'll have to take the horse an' go over to the
West Corners, an' tell Amelia an' her mother an' Lyddy Stokes's
folks. There won't be any time to send word to the Greens over in
Westbrook. They're only second-cousins anyway, an' they 'ain't got
any horse, an' I dun'no' as they'd think they could afford to hire
one. Now you take that fork an' go an' lift the cover off that
kettle, an' stick it into the dried apples, an' see if they've begun
to get soft."

Ann Edwards's little triangular face had grown plainly thinner and
older in three days, but the fire in her black eyes still sparkled.
Her voice was strained and hoarse on the high notes, from much
lamentation, but she still raised it imperiously. She held the wooden
mixing-bowl in her lap, and stirred with as desperate resolution,
compressing her lips painfully, as if she were stirring the dregs of
her own cup of sorrow.

Pretty soon there were voices outside and steps on the path. The door
opened, and two women came in. One was Paulina Maria, Adoniram Judd's
wife; the other was Belinda, the wife of Ozias Lamb.

Belinda Lamb spoke first. She was a middle-aged woman, with a pretty
faded face. She wore her light hair in curls, which fell over her
delicate, thin cheeks, and her blue eyes had no more experience in
them than a child's, although they were reddened now with gentle
tears. She had the look of a young girl who had been out like a
flower in too strong a light, and faded out her pretty tints, but was
a young girl still. Belinda always smiled an innocent girlish simper,
which sometimes so irritated the austere New England village women
that they scowled involuntarily back at her. Paulina Maria Judd and
Ann Edwards both scowled without knowing it now as she spoke, her
words never seeming to disturb that mildly ingratiating upward curve
of her lips.

"I've come right over," said she, in a soft voice; "but it ain't true
what Henry said, is it?"

"What ain't true?" asked Ann, grimly.

"It ain't true you're goin' to have a funeral?"  Tears welled up
afresh in Belinda's blue eyes, and flowed slowly down her delicate
cheeks, but not a muscle of her face changed, and she smiled still.

"Why can't I have a funeral?"

"Why, Ann, how can you have a funeral, when there ain't--when they
'ain't found him?"

"I'd like to know why I can't!"

Belinda's blue, weeping eyes surveyed her with the helpless
bewilderment of a baby. "Why, Ann," she gasped, "there won't be
any--remains!"

"What of that? I guess I know it."

"There won't be nothin' for anybody to go round an' look at; there
won't be any coffin--Ann, you ain't goin' to have any coffin when he
ain't found, be you?"

"Be you a fool, Belindy Lamb?" said Ann. A hard sniff came from
Paulina Maria.

"Well, I didn't s'pose you was," said Belinda, with meek abashedness.
"Of course I knew you wasn't--I only asked; but I don't see how you
can have a funeral no way, Ann. There won't be any coffin, nor any
hearse, nor any procession, nor--"

"There'll be mourners," broke in Ann.

"They're what makes a funeral," said Paulina Maria, putting on an
apron she had brought. "Folks that's had funerals knows."

She cast an austere glance at Belinda Lamb, who colored to the roots
of her fair curls, and was conscious of a guilty lack of funeral
experience, while Paulina Maria had lost seven children, who all died
in infancy. Poor Belinda seemed to see the other woman's sternly
melancholy face in a halo of little coffins and funeral wreaths.

"I know you've had a good deal more to contend with than I have," she
faltered. "I 'ain't never lost anybody till poor--Abel."  She broke
into gentle weeping, but Paulina Maria thrust a broom relentlessly
into her hand.

"Here," said she, "take this broom an' sweep, an' it might as well be
done to-night as any time. Of course you 'ain't got your spring
cleanin' done, none of it, Ann?"

"No," replied Mrs. Edwards; "I was goin' to begin next week."

"Well," said Paulina Maria, "if this house has got to be all cleaned,
an' cookin' done, in time for the funeral, somebody's got to work. I
s'pose you expect some out-of-town folks, Ann?"

"I dare say some 'll come from the West Corners. I thought I wouldn't
try to get word to Westbrook, it's so far; but mebbe I'd send to
Granby--there's some there that might come."

"Well," said Paulina Maria, "I shouldn't be surprised if as many as a
dozen came, an' supper 'll have to be got for 'em. What are you goin'
to do about black, Ann?"

"I thought mebbe I could borrow a black bonnet an' a veil. I guess my
black bombazine dress will do to wear."

"Mis' Whitby had a new one when her mother died, an' didn't use her
mother's old one. I don't believe but what you can borrow that," said
Paulina Maria. She was moving about the kitchen, doing this and that,
waiting for no commands or requests. Jerome and Elmira kept well back
out of her way, although she had not half the fierce impetus that
their mother sometimes had when hitching about in her chair. Paulina
Maria, in her limited field of action, had the quick and unswerving
decision of a general, and people marshalled themselves at her nod,
whether they would or no. She was an example of the insistence of a
type. The prevailing traits of the village women were all intensified
and fairly dominant in her. They kept their houses clean, but she
kept hers like a temple for the footsteps of divinity. Marvellous
tales were told of Paulina Maria's exceeding neatness. It was known
for a fact that the boards of her floors were so arranged that they
could be lifted from their places and cleaned on their under as well
as upper sides. Could Paulina Maria have cleaned the inner as well as
the outer surface of her own skin she would doubtless have been
better satisfied. As it was, the colorless texture of her thin face
and hands, through which the working of her delicate jaws and muscles
could be plainly seen, gave an impression of extreme purity and
cleanliness. "Paulina Maria looks as ef she'd been put to soak in
rain-water overnight," Simon Basset said once, after she had gone out
of the store. Everybody called her Paulina Maria--never Mrs. Judd,
nor Mrs. Adoniram Judd.

The village women were, as a rule, full of piety. Paulina Maria was
austere. She had the spirit to have scourged herself had she once
convicted herself of wrong; but that she had never done. The power of
self-blame was not in her. Paulina Maria had never labored under
conviction of sin; she had had no orthodox conversion; but she set
her slim unswerving feet in the paths of righteousness, and walked
there with her head up. In her the uncompromising spirit of
Puritanism was so strong that it defeated its own ends. The other
women were at times inflexible; Paulina Maria was always rigid. The
others could be severe; Paulina Maria might have conducted an
inquisition. She had in her possibilities of almost mechanical
relentlessness which had never been tested in her simple village
life. Paulina Maria never shirked her duty, but it could not be said
that she performed it in any gentle and Christ-like sense. She rather
attacked it and slew it, as if it were a dragon in her path. That
night she was very weary. She had toiled hard all day at her own
vigorous cleaning. Her bones and muscles ached. The spring languor
also was upon her. She was not a strong woman, but she never dreamed
of refusing to go to Ann Edwards's and assist her in her sad
preparations.

She and Belinda Lamb remained and worked until midnight; then they
went home. Jerome had to escort them through the silent village
street--he had remained up for that purpose. Elmira had been sent to
bed. When the boy came home alone along the familiar road, between
the houses with their windows gleaming with blank darkness in his
eyes, with no sound in his ears save the hoarse bark of a dog when
his footsteps echoed past, a great strangeness of himself in his own
thoughts was upon him.

He had not the feminine ability to ease descent into the depths of
sorrow by catching at all its minor details on the way. He plunged
straight down; no questions of funeral preparations or mourning
bonnets arrested him for a second. "My father is dead," Jerome told
himself; "he jumped into the pond and drowned himself, and here's
mother, and Elmira, and the mortgage, and me."

This poor little _me_ of the village boy seemed suddenly to have
grown in stature, to have bent, as it grew, under a grievous burden,
and to have lost all its childish carelessness and childish ambition.
Jerome saw himself in the likeness of his father, bearing the
mortgage upon his shoulders, and his boyish self never came fully
back to him afterwards. The mantle of the departed, that, whether
they will or not, covers those that stand nearest, was over him, and
he had henceforth to walk under it.




Chapter IV


The next morning Paulina Maria and Belinda Lamb returned to finish
preparations, and Jerome was sent over to the West Corners to notify
some relatives there of the funeral service. Just as he was starting,
it was decided that he had better ride some six miles farther to
Granby, and see some others who might think they had a claim to an
invitation.

"Imogen Lawson an' Sarah were always dreadful touchy," said Mrs.
Edwards. "They'll never get over it if they ain't asked. I guess
you'd better go there, Jerome."

"Yes, he had," said Paulina Maria.

"It's a real pleasant day, an' I guess they'll enjoy comin'," said
Belinda. Paulina Maria gave her a poke with a hard elbow, that hurt
her soft side, and she looked at her wonderingly.

"Enjoy!" repeated Ann Edwards, bitterly.

"I dun'no' what you mean," half whimpered Belinda.

"No, I don't s'pose you do," returned Ann. "There's one thing about
it--folks can always tell what _you_ mean. You don't mean nothin',
an' never did. You couldn't be put in a dictionary. Noah Webster
couldn't find any meanin' fer you if he was to set up all night."  A
nervous sob shook Mrs. Edwards's little frame. She was almost
hysterical that morning. Her black eyes were brightly dilated, her
mouth tremulous, and her throat swollen.

Paulina Maria grasped Belinda by the shoulder. "You'd better get the
broom an' sweep out the wood-shed," said she, and Belinda went out
with a limp flutter of her cotton skirts and her curls.

Jerome rode the old white horse, that could only travel at a heavy
jog, and he did not get home until noon--not much in advance of the
funeral guests he had bidden. They had directly left all else, got
out what mourning-weeds they could muster, and made ready.

When Jerome reached home, he was immediately seized by Paulina Maria.
"Go right out and wash your face and hands real clean," said she,
"and then go up-stairs and change your clothes. I've laid them out on
the bed. When you get to the neckerchief, you come down here, and
I'll tie it for you; it's your father's. You've got to wear somethin'
black, to be decent."

Jerome obeyed. All the incipient masculine authority in him was
overwhelmed by this excess of feminine strength. He washed his face
and hands faithfully, and donned his little clean, coarse shirt and
his poor best garments. Then he came down with the black silk
neckerchief, and Paulina Maria tied it around his boyish neck.

"His father thought so much of that neckerchief," said Mrs. Edwards,
catching her breath. "It was 'most the only thing he bought for
himself for ten year that he didn't actually need."

"Jerome is the one to have it," said Paulina Maria, and she made the
black silk knot tight and firm.

An hour before the time set for the funeral Ann Edwards was all
dressed and ready. They had drawn her chair into the front parlor,
and there she sat in state. She wore the borrowed black bonnet and
veil. The decent black shawl and gown were her own. The doctor's wife
had sent over some black silk gloves, and she wore them. They were
much too large. Ann crossed her tiny hands, wrinkled over with the
black silk, with long, empty black silk fingers dangling in her lap,
over a fine white linen handkerchief. She had laid her gloved hands
over the handkerchief with a gesture full of resolution. "I sha'n't
give way," she said to Paulina Maria. That meant that, although she
took the handkerchief in obedience to custom, it would not be used to
dry the tears of affliction.

Ann's face, through the black gloom of her crape veil, revealed only
the hard lines of resolution about her mouth and the red stain of
tears about her eyes. She held now her emotions in check like a vise.

Jerome and poor little Elmira, whom Paulina Maria had dressed in a
little black Canton-crape shawl of her own, sat on either side.
Elmira wept now and then, trying to stifle her sobs, but Jerome sat
as immovable as his mother.

The funeral guests arrived, and seated themselves solemnly in the
rows of chairs which had been borrowed from the neighbors. Adoniram
Judd and Ozias Lamb had carried chairs for a good part of the
forenoon. Nearly all the village people came; the strange
circumstances of this funeral, wherein there was no dead man to carry
solemnly in the midst of a long black procession to his grave, had
attracted many. Then, too, Abel Edwards had been known to them all
since his childhood, and well liked in the main, although the hard
grind of his daily life had of late years isolated him from his old
mates.

Men sat there with stiff bowed heads, and glances of solemn
furtiveness at new-comers, who had played with Abel in his boyhood,
and to whom those old memories were more real than those of the last
ten years. Abel Edwards, in the absence both of his living soul and
his dead body, was present in the minds of many as a sturdy,
light-hearted boy.

The people of Upham Corners assembled there together, dressed in
their best, displaying their most staid and decorous demeanor, showed
their fortunes in life plainly enough. Generally speaking, they were
a poor and hard-working folk--poorer and harder working than the
average people in villages. Upham Corners, from its hilly site,
freely intersected with rock ledges, was not well calculated for
profitable farming. The farms therein were mortgaged, and scarcely
fed their tillers. The water privileges were good and mills might
have flourished, but the greater markets were too far away, and few
workmen could be employed.

Most of the women at poor Abel Edwards's funeral were worn and old
before their prime, their mouths sunken, wearing old women's caps
over their locks at thirty. Their decent best gowns showed that
piteous conservation of poverty more painful almost than squalor.

The men were bent and gray with the unseen, but no less tangible,
burdens of life. Scarcely one there but bore, as poor Abel Edwards
had borne, a mortgage among them. It was a strange thing that
although all of the customary mournful accessories of a funeral were
wanting, although no black coffin with its silent occupant stood in
their midst, and no hearse waited at the door, yet that mortgage of
Abel Edwards's--that burden, like poor Christian's, although not of
sin, but misfortune, which had doubled him to the dust--seemed still
to be present.

The people had the thought of it ever in their minds. They looked at
Ann Edwards and her children, and seemed to see in truth the mortgage
bearing down upon them, like a very shadow of death.

They looked across at Doctor Seth Prescott furtively, as if he might
perchance read their thoughts, and wondered if he would foreclose.

Doctor Prescott, in his broadcloth surtout, with his black satin
stock muffling richly his stately neck, sat in the room with the
mourners, directly opposite the Edwards family. His wife was beside
him. She was a handsome woman, taller and larger than her husband,
with a face of gentlest serenity set in shining bands of auburn hair.
Mrs. Doctor Prescott looked like an empress among the other women,
with her purple velvet pelisse sweeping around her in massive folds,
and her purple velvet bonnet with a long ostrich plume curling over
the side--the purple being considered a sort of complimentary
half-mourning. Squire Eben Merritt's wife, Abigail, could not
approach her, although she was finely dressed in black satin, and a
grand cashmere shawl from overseas. Mrs. Eben Merritt was a small and
plain-visaged little woman; people had always wondered why Squire
Eben Merritt had married her. Eben Merritt had not come to the
funeral. It was afterwards reported that he had gone fishing instead,
and people were scandalized, and indignantly triumphant, because it
was what they had expected of him. Little Lucina had come with her
mother, and sat in the high chair where they had placed her, with her
little morocco-shod feet dangling, her little hands crossed in her
lap, and her blue eyes looking out soberly and anxiously from her
best silk hood. Once in a while she glanced timidly at Jerome, and
reflected how he had given her sassafras, and how he hadn't any
father.

When the singing began, the tears came into her eyes and her lip
quivered; but she tried not to cry, although there were smothered
sobs all around her. There was that about the sweet, melancholy drone
of the funeral hymn which stirred something more than sympathy in the
hearts of the listeners. Imagination of like bereavements for
themselves awoke within them, and they wept for their own sorrows in
advance.

The minister offered a prayer, in which he made mention of all the
members of poor Abel's family, and even distant relatives. In fact,
Paulina Maria had furnished him with a list, which he had studied
furtively during the singing. "Don't forget any of 'em, or they won't
like it," she had charged. So the minister, Solomon Wells, bespoke
the comfort and support of the Lord in this affliction for all the
second and third cousins upon his list, who bowed their heads with a
sort of mournful importance as they listened.

Solomon Wells was an elderly man, tall, and bending limberly under
his age like an old willow, his spare long body in nicely kept
broadcloth sitting and rising with wide flaps of black coat-tails,
his eyes peering forth mildly through spectacles. He was a widower of
long standing. His daughter Eliza, who kept his house, sat beside
him. She resembled her father closely, and herself looked like an old
person anywhere but beside him. There the juvenility of comparison
was hers.

Solomon Wells, during the singing, before he offered prayer, had cast
sundry perplexed glances at a group of strangers on his right, and
then at his list. He was quite sure that they were not mentioned
thereon. Once he looked perplexedly at Paulina Maria, but she was
singing hard, in a true strong voice, and did not heed him. The
strangers sat behind her. There was a large man, lumbering and
uncomfortable in his best clothes, a small woman, and three little
girls, all dressed in blue delaine gowns and black silk mantillas and
blue bonnets.

The minister had a strong conviction that these people should be
mentioned in his prayer. He gave his daughter Eliza a little nudge,
and looked inquiringly at them and at her, but she shook her head
slightly--she did not know who they were. Her father had to content
himself with vaguely alluding in his petition to all other relatives
of this afflicted family.

During the eulogy upon the departed, which followed, he made also
casual mention of the respect in which he was held by strangers as
well as by his own towns-people. The minister gave poor Abel a very
good character. He spoke at length of his honesty, industry, and
sobriety. He touched lightly upon the unusual sadness of the
circumstances of his death. He expressed no doubt; he gave no hints
of any dark tragedy. "Don't speak as if you thought he killed
himself; if you do, it'll make her about crazy," Paulina Maria had
charged him. Ann, listening jealously to every word, could take no
exception to one. Solomon Wells was very mindful of the feelings of
others. He seemed at times to move with a sidewise motion of his very
spirit to avoid hurting theirs.

After dwelling upon Abel Edwards's simple virtues, fairly dinning
them like sweet notes into the memories of his neighbors, Solomon
Wells, with a sweep of his black coat-skirts around him, sat down.
Then there was a solemn and somewhat awkward pause. The people looked
at each other; they did not know what to do next. All the customary
routine of a funeral was disturbed. The next step in the regular
order of funeral exercises was to pass decorously around a coffin,
pause a minute, bend over it with a long last look at the white face
therein; the next, to move out of the room and take places in the
funeral procession. Now that was out of the question; they were
puzzled as to further proceedings.

Doctor Seth Prescott made the first move. He arose, and his wife
after him, with a soft rustle of her silken skirts. They both went up
to Ann Edwards, shook hands, and went out of the room. After them
Mrs. Squire Merritt, with Lucina in hand, did likewise; then
everybody else, except the relatives and the minister and his
daughter.

After the decorous exit of the others, the relatives sat stiffly
around the room and waited. They knew there was to be a funeral
supper, for the fragrance of sweet cake and tea was strong over all
the house. There had been some little doubt concerning it among the
out-of-town relatives: some had opined that there would be none, on
account of the other irregularities of the exercises; some had opined
that the usual supper would be provided. The latter now sniffed and
nodded triumphantly at the others--particularly Amelia Stokes's
childish old mother. She, half hidden in the frills of a great
mourning-bonnet and the folds of a great black shawl, kept repeating,
in a sharp little gabble, like a child's: "I smell the tea, 'Melia--I
do, I smell it. Yes, I do--I told ye so. I tell ye, I smell the tea."

Poor Amelia Stokes, who was a pretty, gentle-faced spinster, could
not hush her mother, whisper as pleadingly as she might into the
sharp old ear in the bonnet-frills. The old woman was full of the
desire for tea, and could scarcely be restrained from following up
its fragrant scent at once.

The two Lawson sisters sat side by side, their sharp faces under
their black bonnets full of veiled alertness. Nothing escaped them;
they even suspected the truth about Ann's bonnet and gloves. Ann
still sat with her gloved hands crossed in her lap and her black veil
over her strained little face. She did not move a muscle; but in the
midst of all her restrained grief the sight of the large man, the
woman, and the three girls in the blue thibets, the black silk
mantillas, and the blue bonnets filled her with a practical dismay.
They were the relatives from Westbrook, who had not been bidden to
the funeral. They must have gotten word in some irregular manner, and
the woman held her blue-bonneted head with a cant of war, which Ann
knew well of old.

For a little while there was silence, except for Paulina Maria's
heavy tramp and the soft shuffle of Belinda Lamb's cloth shoes out in
the kitchen. They were hurrying to get the supper in readiness.
Another appetizing odor was now stealing over the house, the odor of
baking cream-of-tartar biscuits.

Suddenly, with one accord, as if actuated by one mental impulse, the
little woman, the large man, and the three girls arose and advanced
upon Ann Edwards. She grasped the arm of her chair hard, as if
bracing herself to meet a shock.

The little woman spoke. Her eyes seemed full of black sparks, her
voice shook, red spots flamed out in her cheeks. "We'll bid you
good-bye now, Cousin Ann," said she.

"Ain't you going to stay and have some supper?" asked Ann. Her manner
was at once defiant and conciliatory.

Then the little woman made her speech. All the way from her distant
village, in the rear gloom of the covered wagon, she had been
composing it. She delivered it with an assumption of calm dignity, in
spite of her angry red cheeks and her shaking voice. "Cousin Ann,"
said the little woman, "me and mine go nowhere where we are not
invited. We came to the funeral--though you didn't see fit to even
tell us when it was, and we only heard of it by accident from the
butcher--out of respect to poor Abel. He was my own second-cousin,
and our folks used to visit back and forth a good deal before he was
married. I felt as if I must come to his funeral, whether I was
wanted or not, because I know if he'd been alive he'd said to come;
but staying to supper is another thing. I am sorry for you, Cousin
Ann; we are all sorry for you in your affliction. We all hope it may
be sanctified to you; but I don't feel, and 'Lisha and the girls
don't feel, as if we could stay and eat victuals in a house where
we've been shown very plainly we ain't wanted."

Then Ann spoke, and her voice was unexpectedly loud. "You haven't any
call to think you wasn't all welcome," said she. "You live ten miles
off, and I hadn't a soul to send but Jerome, with a horse that can't
get out of a walk. I didn't know myself there'd be a funeral for
certain till yesterday. There wasn't time to send for you. I thought
of it, but I knew there wouldn't be time to get word to you in season
for you to start. You might, as long as you're a professing
Christian, Eloise Green, have a little mercy in a time like this."
Ann's voice quavered a little, but she set her mouth harder.

The large man nudged his wife and whispered something. He drew the
back of his rough hand across his eyes. The three little blue-clad
girls stood toeing in, dangling their cotton-gloved hands.

"I thought you might have sent word by the butcher," said the little
woman. Her manner was softer, but she wanted to cover her defeat
well.

"I couldn't think of butchers and all the wherewithals," said Ann,
with stern dignity. "I didn't think Abel's relations would lay it up
against me if I didn't."

The large man's face worked; tears rolled down his great cheeks. He
pulled out a red handkerchief and wiped his eyes.

"You'd ought to had a white handkerchief, father," whispered the
little woman; then she turned to Ann. "I'm sure I don't want to lay
up anything," said she.

"I don't think you have any call to," responded Ann. "I haven't
anything more to say. If you feel like staying to supper I shall be
glad to have you, but I don't feel as if I had strength to urge
anybody."

The large man sobbed audibly in his red handkerchief. His wife cast
an impatient glance at him. "Well, if that is the way it was, of
course we shall all be happy to stay and have a cup of tea," said
she. "We've got a long ride before us, and I don't feel quite as well
as common this spring. Of course I didn't understand how it happened,
and I felt kind of hurt; it was only natural. I see how it was, now.
'Lisha, hadn't you better slip out and see how the horse is
standing?"  The little woman thrust her own white handkerchief into
her husband's hand as he started. "You put that red one under the
wagon seat," she whispered loud in his ear. Then she and the little
girls in blue returned to their chairs. The rest of the company had
been listening with furtive attention. Jerome had been trembling with
indignation at his mother's side. He looked at the large man, and
wondered impatiently why he did not shake that small woman, since he
was able. There was as yet no leniency on the score of sex in the
boy. He would have well liked to fly at that little wrathful body who
was attacking his mother, and also blaming him for not riding those
ten miles to notify her of the funeral. He scowled hard at her and
the three little girls after they had returned to their seats. One of
the girls, a pretty child with red curls, caught his frown, and
stared at him with scared but fascinated blue eyes.

Supper was announced shortly. Belinda Lamb, instigated by Paulina
Maria, stood in the door and said, with melancholy formality, "Will
you come out now and have a little refreshment before you go home?"

Ann did not stir. The others went out lingeringly, holding back for
politeness' sake; she sat still with her black veil over her face and
her black gloved hands crossed in her lap. Paulina Maria came to her
and tried to induce her to remove her bonnet and have some tea with
the rest, but she shook her head. "I want to just sit here and keep
still till they're gone," said she.

She sat there. Some of the others came and added their persuasions to
Paulina Maria's, but she was firm. Jerome remained beside his mother;
Elmira had been bidden to go into the other room and help wait upon
the company.

"There's room for Jerome at the table, if you ain't coming," said
Paulina Maria to Ann; but Jerome answered for himself.

"I'll wait till that crowd are gone," said he, with a fierce gesture.

"You wouldn't speak that way if you were my boy," said Paulina Maria.

Jerome muttered under his breath that he wasn't her boy. Paulina
Maria cast a stern glance at him as she went out.

"Don't you be saucy, Jerome Edwards," Ann said, in a sharp whisper
through her black veil. "She's done a good deal for us."

"I'd like to kill the whole lot!" said the boy, clinching his little
fist.

"Hold your tongue! You're a wicked, ungrateful boy!" said his mother;
but all the time she had a curious sympathy with him. Poor Ann was
seized with a strange unreasoning rancor against all that decorously
feeding company in the other room. There are despairing moments, when
the happy seem natural enemies of the miserable, and Ann was passing
through them. As she sat there in her gloomy isolation of widowhood,
her black veil and her dark thoughts coloring her whole outlook on
life, she felt a sudden fury of blindness against all who could see.
Had she been younger, she would have given vent to her emotion like
Jerome. Her son seemed the very expression of her own soul, although
she rebuked him.

The people were a long time at supper. The funeral cake was sweet to
their tongues, and the tea mildly exhilarating. When they came at
last to bid farewell to Ann there was in their faces a pleasant
unctuousness which they could not wholly veil with sympathetic
sorrow. The childish old lady was openly hilarious. "That was the
best cup o' tea I ever drinked," she whispered loud in Ann's ear.
Jerome gave a scowl of utter contempt at her. When they were all
gone, and the last covered wagon had rolled out of the yard, Ann
allowed Paulina Maria to divest her of her bonnet and gloves and
bring her a cup of tea. Jerome and Elmira ate their supper at one end
of the disordered table; then they both worked hard, under the orders
of Paulina Maria, to set the house in order. It was quite late that
night before Jerome was at liberty to creep off to his own bed up in
the slanting back chamber. Paulina Maria and Belinda Lamb had gone
home, and the bereaved family were all alone in the house. Jerome's
boyish heart ached hard, but he was worn out physically, and he soon
fell asleep.

About midnight he awoke with a startling sound in his ears. He sat up
in bed and listened, straining ears and eyes in the darkness. Out of
the night gloom and stillness below came his mother's voice, raised
loud and hoarse in half-accusatory prayer, not caring who heard, save
the Lord.

"What hast thou done, O Lord?" demanded this daring and pitiful
voice. "Why hast thou taken away from me the husband of my youth?
What have I done to deserve it? Haven't I borne patiently the yoke
Thou laidst upon me before? Why didst Thou try so hard one already
broken on the wheel of Thy wrath? Why didst Thou drive a good man to
destruction? O Lord, give me back my husband, if Thou art the Lord!
If Thou art indeed the Almighty, prove it unto me by working this
miracle which I ask of Thee! Give me back Abel! give him back!"

Ann's voice arose with a shriek; then there was silence for a little
space. Presently she spoke again, but no longer in prayer--only in
bitter, helpless lament. She used no longer the formal style of
address to a Divine Sovereign; she dropped into her own common
vernacular of pain.

"It ain't any use! it ain't any use!" she wailed out. "If there is a
God He won't hear me, He won't help me, He won't bring him back. He
only does His own will forever. Oh, Abel, Abel, Abel! Oh, my husband!
Where are you? where are you? Where is the head that I've held on my
breast? Where are the lips I have kissed? I couldn't even see him
laid safe in his grave--not even that comfort! Oh, Abel, Abel, my
husband, my husband! my own flesh and my own soul, torn away from me,
and I left to draw the breath of life! Abel, Abel, come back, come
back, come back!"

Ann Edwards's voice broke into inarticulate sobs and moans; then she
did not speak audibly again. Jerome lay back in his bed, cold and
trembling. Elmira, in the next chamber, was sound asleep, but he
slept no more that night. A revelation of the love and sorrow of this
world had come to him through his mother's voice. He was shamed and
awed and overwhelmed by this glimpse of the nakedness of nature and
that mighty current which swept him on with all mankind. The taste of
knowledge was all at once upon the boy's soul.




Chapter V


The next morning Jerome arose at dawn, and crept down-stairs
noiselessly on his bare feet, that he might not awake his mother.
However, still as he was, he had hardly crossed the threshold of the
kitchen before his mother called to him from her bedroom, the door of
which stood open.

"Who's that?" called Ann Edwards, in a strained voice; and Jerome
knew that she had a wild hope that it was his father's step she heard
instead of his. The boy caught his breath, hesitating a second, and
his mother called again: "Who's that? Who's that out in the kitchen?"

"It's only me," answered Jerome, with that most pitiful of apologies
in his tone--the apology for presence and very existence in the stead
of one more beloved.

His mother drew a great shuddering sigh. "Come in here," she called
out, harshly, and Jerome went into the bedroom and stood beside her
bed. The curtain was not drawn over the one window, and the little
homely interior was full of the pale dusk of dawn. This had been Ann
Edwards's bridal chamber, and her children had been born there. The
face of that little poor room was as familiar to Jerome as the face
of his mother. From his earliest memory the high bureau had stood
against the west wall, near the window, and a little round table,
with a white towel and a rosewood box on it, in the corner at the
head of the great high-posted bedstead, which filled the rest of the
room, with scant passageway at the foot and one side. Ann's little
body scarcely raised the patchwork quilt on the bed; her face, sunken
in the feather pillows, looked small and weazened as a sick child's
in the dim light. She reached out one little bony hand, clutched
Jerome's poor jacket, and pulled him close. "What's goin' to be
done?" she demanded, querulously. "What's goin' to be done? Do you
know what's goin' to be done, Jerome Edwards?"

The boy stared at her, and her sharply questioning eyes struck him
dumb.

Ann Edwards had always been the dominant spirit in her own household.
The fact that she was so, largely on masculine sufferance, had never
been fully recognized by herself or others. Now, for the first time,
the stratum of feminine dependence and helplessness, which had
underlain all her energetic assertion, was made manifest, and poor
little Jerome was spurred out of his boyhood into manhood to meet
this new demand.

"What's goin' to be done?" his mother cried again. "Why don't you
speak, Jerome Edwards?"

Then Jerome drew himself up, and a new look came into his face. "I've
been thinkin' of it over," he said, soberly, "an'--I've got a plan."

"What's goin' to be done?"  Ann raised herself in bed by her clutch
at her son's arm. Then she let go, and rocked herself to and fro,
hugging herself with her little lean arms, and wailing weakly.
"What's goin' to be done? Oh, oh! what's goin' to be done? Abel's
dead, he's dead, and Doctor Prescott, he holds the mortgage. We
'ain't got any money, or any home. What's goin' to be done? What's
goin' to be done? Oh, oh, oh, oh!"

Jerome grasped his mother by the shoulder and tried to force her back
upon her pillows. "Come, mother, lay down," said he.

"I won't! I won't! I never will. What's goin' to be done? What's
goin' to be done?"

"Mother, you lay right down and stop your cryin'," said Jerome; and
his mother started, and hushed, and stared at him, for his voice
sounded like his father's. The boy's wiry little hands upon her
shoulders, and his voice like his father's, constrained her strongly,
and she sank back; and her face appeared again, like a thin wedge of
piteous intelligence, in the great feather pillow.

"Now you lay still, mother," said Jerome, and to his mother's excited
eyes he looked taller and taller, as if in very truth this sudden
leap of his boyish spirit into the stature of a man had forced his
body with it. He straightened the quilt over his mother's meagre
shoulders. "I'm goin' to start the fire," said he, "and put on the
hasty-pudding, and when it's all ready I'll call Elmira, and we'll
help you up."

"What's goin' to be done?" his mother quavered again; but this time
feebly, as if her fierce struggles were almost hushed by contact with
authority.

"I've got a plan," said Jerome. "You just lay still, mother, and I'll
see what's best."

Ann Edwards's eyes rolled after the boy as he went out of the room,
but she lay still, obediently, and said not another word. An
unreasoning confidence in this child seized upon her. She leaned
strongly upon what, until now, she had held the veriest reed--to her
own stupefaction and with doubtful content, but no resistance. Jerome
seemed suddenly no longer her son; the memory of the time when she
had cradled and swaddled him failed her. The spirit of his father
awakened in him filled her at once with strangeness and awed
recognition.

She heard the boy pattering about in the kitchen, and, in spite of
herself, the conviction that his father was out there, doing the
morning task which had been his for so many years, was strong upon
her.

When at length Jerome and Elmira came and told her breakfast was
ready, and assisted her to rise and dress, she was as unquestioningly
docile as if the relationship between them were reversed. When she
was seated in her chair she even forbore, as was her wont, to start
immediately with sharp sidewise jerks of her rocker, but waited until
her children pushed and drew her out into the next room, up to the
breakfast-table. There were, moreover, no sharp commands and chidings
as to the household tasks that morning. Jerome and Elmira did as they
would, and their mother sat quietly and ate her breakfast.

Elmira kept staring at her mother, and then glancing uneasily at
Jerome. Her pretty face was quite pale that morning, and her eyes
looked big. She moved hesitatingly, or with sharp little runs of
decision. She went often to the window and stared down the
road--still looking for her father; for hope dies hard in youth, and
she had words of triumph at the sight of him all ready upon her
tongue. Her mother's strange demeanor frightened her, and made her
almost angry. She was too young to grasp any but the more familiar
phases of grief, and revelations of character were to her
revolutions.

She beckoned her brother out of the room the first chance she got,
and questioned him.

"What ails mother?" she whispered, out in the woodshed, holding to
the edge of his jacket and looking at him with piteous, scared eyes.

Jerome stood with his shoulders back, and seemed to look down at her
from his superior height of courageous spirit, though she was as tall
as he.

"She's come to herself," said Jerome.

"She wasn't ever like this before."

"Yes, she was--inside. She ain't anything but a woman. She's come to
herself."

Elmira began to sob nervously, still holding to her brother's jacket,
not trying to hide her convulsed little face. "I don't care, she
scares me," she gasped, under her breath, lest her mother hear. "She
ain't any way I've ever seen her. I'm 'fraid she's goin' to be crazy.
I'm dreadful 'fraid mother's goin' to be crazy, Jerome."

"No, she ain't," said Jerome. "She's just come to herself, I tell
you."

"Father's dead and mother's crazy, and Doctor Prescott has got the
mortgage," wailed Elmira, in an utter rebellion of grief.

Jerome caught her by the arm and pulled her after him at a run, out
of the shed, into the cool spring morning air. So early in the day,
with no stir of life except the birds in sight or sound, the new
grass and flowering branches and blooming distances seemed like the
unreal heaven of a dream; and, indeed, nothing save their own dire
strait of life was wholly tangible and met them but with shocks of
unfamiliar things.

Jerome, out in the yard, took his sister by both arms, piteously
slender and cold through their thin gingham sleeves, and shook her
hard, and shook her again.

"Jerome Edwards, what--you doin'--so--for?" she gasped.

"'Ain't you got anything to you? 'Ain't you got anything to you at
all?" said Jerome, fiercely.

"I--don't know what you mean! Don't, Jerome--don't! Oh, Jerome, I'm
'fraid you're crazy, like mother?"

"'Ain't you got enough to you," said Jerome, still shaking her as if
she had not spoken, "to control your feelin's and do up the housework
nice, and not kill mother?"

"Yes, I will--I'll be just as good as I can. You know I will. Don't,
Jerome! I 'ain't cried before mother this mornin'. You know I
'ain't."

"You cried loud enough, just now in the shed, so she could hear you."

"I won't again. Don't, Jerome!"

"You're 'most a grown-up woman," said Jerome, ceasing to shake his
sister, but holding her firm, and looking at her with sternly
admonishing eyes. "You're 'most as old as I be, and I've got to take
care of you all. It's time you showed it if there's anything to you."

"Oh, Jerome, you look just like father," whispered Elmira, suddenly,
with awed, fascinated eyes on his face.

"Now you go in and wash up the dishes, and sweep the kitchen, and
make up the beds, and don't you cry before mother or say anything to
pester her," said Jerome.

"What you goin' to do, Jerome?" Elmira asked, timidly.

"I'm goin' to take care of the horse and finish plantin' them beans
first."

"What you goin' to do then?"

"Somethin'--you wait and see."  Jerome spoke with his first betrayal
of boyish weakness, for a certain importance crept into his tone.

Elmira instinctively recognized it, and took advantage of it. "Ain't
you goin' to ask mother, Jerome Edwards?" she said.

"I'm goin' to do what's best," answered Jerome; and again that
uncanny gravity of authority which so awed her was in his face.

When he again bade her go into the house and do as he said, she
obeyed with a longing, incredulous look at him.

Jerome had not eaten much breakfast; indeed, he had not finished when
Elmira had beckoned him out. But he said to himself that he did not
want any more--he would go straight about his tasks.

Jerome, striking out through the dewy wind of foot-path towards the
old barn, heard suddenly a voice calling him by name. It was a voice
as low and heavy as a man's, but had a nervous feminine impulse in
it. "Jerome!" it called. "Jerome Edwards!"

Jerome turned, and saw Paulina Maria coming up the road, walking with
a firm, swaying motion of her whole body from her feet, her cotton
draperies blowing around her like sheathing-leaves.

Jerome stood still a minute, watching her; then he went back to the
house, to the door, and stationed himself before it. He stood there
like a sentinel when Paulina Maria drew near. The meaning of war was
in his shoulder, his expanded boyish chest, his knitted brows, set
chin and mouth, and unflinching eyes; he needed only a sword or gun
to complete the picture.

Paulina Maria stopped, and looked at him with haughty wonder. She was
not yet intimidated, but she was surprised, and stirred with rising
indignation.

"How's your mother this morning, Jerome?" said she.

"Well 's she can be," replied Jerome, gruffly, with a wary eye upon
her skirts when they swung out over her advancing knee; for Paulina
Maria was minded to enter the house with no further words of parley.
He gathered himself up, in all his new armor of courage and defiance,
and stood firm in her path.

"I'm going in to see your mother," said Paulina Maria, looking at him
as if she suspected she did not understand aright.

"No, you ain't," returned Jerome.

"What do you mean?"

"You ain't goin' in to see my mother this mornin'."

"Why not, I'd like to know?"

"She's got to be kept still and not see anybody but us, or she'll be
sick."

"I guess it won't hurt her any to see me."  Paulina Maria turned
herself sidewise, thrust out a sharp elbow, and prepared to force
herself betwixt Jerome and the door-post like a wedge.

"You stand back!" said Jerome, and fixed his eyes upon her face.

Paulina Maria turned pale. "What do you mean, actin' so?" she said,
again. "Did your mother tell you not to let me in?"

"Mother's got to be kept still and not see anybody but us, or she'll
be sick. I ain't goin' to have anybody come talkin' to her to-day,"
said Jerome, with his eyes still fixed upon Paulina Maria's face.

Paulina Maria was like a soldier whose courage is invincible in all
tried directions. Up to all the familiar and registered batteries of
life she could walk without flinching, and yield to none; but here
was something new, which savored perchance of the uncanny, and a
power not of the legitimate order of things. There was something
frightful and abnormal to her in Jerome's pale face, which did not
seem his own, his young eyes full of authority of age, and the
intimation of repelling force in his slight, childish form.

Paulina Maria might have driven a fierce watch-dog from her path with
her intrepid will; she might have pushed aside a stouter arm in her
way; but this defence, whose persistence in the face of apparent
feebleness seemed to indicate some supernatural power, made her
quail. From her spare diet and hard labor, from her cleanliness and
rigid holding to one line of thought and life, the veil of flesh and
grown thin and transparent, like any ascetic's of old, and she was
liable to a ready conception of the abnormal and supernatural.

With one half-stern, half-fearful glance at the forbidding child in
her path, she turned about and went away, pausing, however, in the
vantage-point of the road and calling back in an indignant voice,
which trembled slightly, "You needn't think you're goin' to send
folks home this way many times, Jerome Edwards!"  Then, with one last
baffled glance at the pale, strange little figure in the Edwards
door, she went home, debating grimly with herself over her weakness
and her groundless fear.

Jerome waited until she was out of sight, gave one last look down the
road to be sure no other invaders were approaching his fortress, and
then went on to the barn. When he rolled back the door and entered,
the old white horse stirred in his stall and turned to look at him.
There was something in the glance over the shoulder of that long
white face which caused the heart of the boy to melt within him. He
pressed into the stall, flung up his little arms around the great
neck, and sobbed and sobbed, his face hid against the heaving side.

The old horse had looked about, expecting to see Jerome's father
coming to feed and harness him into the wood-wagon, and Jerome knew
it, and there was something about the consciousness of loss and
sorrow of this faithful dumb thing which smote him in a weaker place
than all human intelligence of it.

Abel Edwards had loved this poor animal well, and had set great store
by his faithful service; and the horse had loved him, after the dumb
fashion of his kind, and, indeed, not sensing that he was dead, loved
him still, with a love as for the living, which no human being could
compass. Jerome, clinging to this dumb beast, to which alone the love
of his father had not commenced, by those cruel and insensible
gradations, to become the memory which is the fate, as inevitable as
death itself, of all love when life is past, felt for the minute all
his new strength desert him, and relapsed into childhood and clinging
grief. "You loved him, didn't you?" he whispered between his sobs.
"You loved poor father, didn't you, Peter?"  And when the horse
turned his white face and looked at him, with that grave
contemplation seemingly indicative of a higher rather than a lower
intelligence, with which an animal will often watch human emotion, he
sobbed and sobbed again, and felt his heart fail him at the
realization of his father's death, and of himself, a poor child, with
the burden of a man upon his shoulders. But it was only for a few
minutes that he yielded thus, for the stature of the mind of the boy
had in reality advanced, and soon he drew himself up to it, stopped
weeping, led the horse out to the well, drew bucket after bucket of
water, and held them patiently to his plashing lips. Then a neighbor
in the next house, a half-acre away, looking across the field, called
her mother to see how much Jerome Edwards looked like his father. "It
gave me quite a turn when I see him come out, he looked so much like
his father, for all he's so small," said she. "He walked out just
like him; I declare, I didn't know but he'd come back."

Jerome, leading the horse, walked back to the barn in his father's
old tracks, with his father's old gait, reproducing the dead with the
unconscious mimicry of the living, while the two women across the
field watched him from their window. "It ain't a good sign--he's got
a hard life before him," said the older of the two, who had wild blue
eyes under a tousle of gray hair, and was held in somewhat dubious
repute because of spiritualistic tendencies.

"Guess he'll have a hard life enough, without any signs--most of us
do. He won't have to make shirts, anyhow," rejoined her daughter, who
had worn out her youth with fine stitching of linen shirts for a Jew
peddler. Then she settled back over her needle-work with a heavy
sigh, indicative of a return from the troubles of others to her own.

Jerome fed the old horse, and rubbed him down carefully. "Sha'n't be
sold whilst I'm alive," he assured him, with a stern nod, as he
combed out his forelock, and the animal looked at him again, with
that strange attention which is so much like the attention of
understanding.

After his tasks in the barn were done Jerome went out to the sloping
garden and finished planting the beans. He could see Elmira's smooth
dark head passing to and fro before the house windows, and knew that
she was fulfilling his instructions.

He kept a sharp watch upon the road for other female friends of his
mother's, who, he was resolved, should not enter.

"Them women will only get her all stirred up again. She's got to get
used to it, and they'll just hinder her," he said, quite aloud to
himself, having in some strange fashion discovered the truth that the
human mind must adjust itself to its true balance after the upheaval
of sorrow.

After the beans were planted it was only nine o'clock. Jerome went
soberly down the garden-slope, stepping carefully between the planted
ridges, then into the house, with a noiseless lift of the latch and
glide over the threshold; for Elmira signalled him from the window to
be still.

His mother sat in her high-backed rocker, fast asleep, her sharp eyes
closed, her thin mouth gaping, an expression of vacuous peace over
her whole face, and all her wiry little body relaxed. Jerome motioned
to Elmira, and the two tiptoed out across the little front entry to
the parlor.

"How long has she been asleep?" whispered Jerome.

"'Most an hour. You don't s'pose mother's goin' to die too, do you,
Jerome?"

"Course she ain't."

"I never saw her go to sleep in the daytime before. Mother don't act
a mite like herself. She 'ain't spoke out to me once this mornin',"
poor little Elmira whimpered; but her brother hushed her, angrily.

"Don't you know enough to keep still--a great big girl like you?" he
said.

"Jerome, I have. I 'ain't cried a mite before her, and she couldn't
hear that," whispered Elmira, chokingly.

"Mother's got awful sharp ears, you know she has," insisted Jerome.
"Now I'm goin' away, and don't you let anybody come in here while I'm
gone and bother mother."

"I'll have to let Cousin Paulina Maria and Aunt Belinda in, if they
come," said Elmira, staring at him wonderingly. Neither she nor her
mother knew that Paulina Maria had already been there and been turned
away.

"You just lock the house up, and not go to the door," said Jerome,
decisively.

Elmira kept staring at him, as if she doubted her eyes and ears. She
felt a certain awe of her brother. "Where you goin'?" she inquired,
half timidly.

"I'll tell you when I get back," replied Jerome. He went out with
dignity, and Elmira heard him on the stairs. "He's goin' to dress
up," she thought.

She sat down by the window, well behind the curtain, that any one
approaching might not see her, and waited. She had wakened that
morning as into a new birth of sense, and greeted the world with
helpless childish weeping, but now she was beginning to settle
comfortably into this strange order of things. Her face, as she sat
thus, wore the ready curves of smiles instead of tears. Elmira was
one whose strength would always be in dependence. Now her young
brother showed himself, as if by a miracle, a leader and a strong
prop, and she could assume again her natural attitude of life and
growth. She was no longer strange to herself in these strange ways,
and that was wherein all the bitterness of strangeness lay.

When Jerome came down-stairs, in his little poor best jacket and
trousers and his clean Sunday shirt, she stood in the door and looked
at him curiously, but with a perfect rest of confidence.

Jerome looked at her with dignity, and yet with a certain childish
importance, without which he would have ceased to be himself at all.
"Look out for mother," he whispered, admonishingly, and went out,
holding his head up and his shoulders back, and feeling his sister's
wondering and admiring eyes upon him, with a weakness of pride, and
yet with no abatement of his strength of purpose, which was great
enough to withstand self-recognition.

The boy that morning had a new gait when he had once started down the
road. The habit of his whole life--and, more than that, an inherited
habit--ceased to influence him. This new exaltation of spirit
controlled even bones and muscles.

Jerome, now he had fairly struck out in life with a purpose of his
own, walked no longer like his poor father, with that bent shuffling
lope of worn-out middle age. His soul informed his whole body, and
raised it above that of any simple animal that seeks a journey's end.
His head was up and steady, as if he bore a treasure-jar on it, his
back flat as a soldier's; he swung his little arms at his sides and
advanced with proud and even pace.

Jerome's old gaping shoes were nicely greased, and he himself had
made a last endeavor to close the worst apertures with a bit of
shoemaker's thread. He had had quite a struggle with himself, before
starting, regarding these forlorn old shoes and another pair, spick
and span and black, and heavily clamping with thick new soles, which
Uncle Ozias Lamb had sent over for him to wear to the funeral.

"He sent 'em over, an' says you may wear 'em to the funeral, if
you're real careful," his aunt Belinda had said, and then added, with
her gentle sniff of deprecation and apology: "He says you'll have to
give 'em back again--they ain't to keep. He says he's got so
behindhand lately he 'ain't got any tithes to give to the Lord. He
says he 'ain't got nothing that will divide up into ten parts, 'cause
he 'ain't got more'n half one whole part himself."  Belinda Lamb
repeated her husband's bitter saying out of his heart of poverty with
a scared look, and yet with a certain relish and soft aping of his
defiant manner.

"I don't want anybody to give when I can't give back again," Ann had
returned. "Ozias has always done full as much for us as we've done
for him."  Then she had charged Jerome to be careful of the shoes,
and not stub the toes, so his uncle would have difficulty in selling
them.

"I'll wear my old shoes," Jerome had replied, sullenly, but then had
been borne down by the chorus of feminine rebuke and misunderstanding
of his position. They thought, one and all, that he was wroth because
the shoes were not given to him, and the very pride which forbade him
to wear them constrained him to do so.

However, this morning he had looked at them long, lifted them and
weighed them, turning them this way and that, put them on his feet
and stood contemplating them. He was ashamed to wear his old broken
shoes to call on grand folks, but he was too proud and too honest,
after all, to wear these borrowed ones.

So he stepped along now with an occasional uneasy glance at his feet,
but with independence in his heart. Jerome walked straight down the
road to Squire Eben Merritt's. The cut across the fields would have
been much shorter, for the road made a great curve for nearly half a
mile, but the boy felt that the dignified highway was the only route
for him, bent on such errands, in his best clothes.




Chapter VI


Squire Eben Merritt's house stood behind a file of dark pointed
evergreen trees, which had grown and thickened until the sunlight
never reached the house-front, which showed, in consequence, green
patches of moss and mildew. One entering had, moreover, to turn out,
as it were, for the trees, and take a circuitous route around them to
the right to the front-door path, which was quite slippery with a
film of green moss.

There had been, years ago, a gap betwixt the trees--a gate's
width--but now none could enter unless the branches were lopped, and
Eben Merritt would not allow that. His respect for that silent file
of sylvan giants, keeping guard before his house against winds and
rains and fierce snows, was greater than his hospitality and concern
for the ease of guests. "Let 'em go round--it won't hurt 'em," he
would say, with his great merry laugh, when his wife sometimes
suggested that the old gateway should be repaired. However, it was
only a few times during the year that the matter disturbed her, for
she was not one to falter long at the small stumbling-blocks of life;
a cheerful skip had she over them, or a placid glide aside. When she
had the minister's daughter and other notable ladies to tea, who held
it due to themselves to enter the front door, she was somewhat uneasy
lest they draggle their fine petticoats skirting the trees,
especially if the grass was dewy or there was snow; otherwise, s