Jerome, A Poor Man Part 51

But it was as if, when he reached the road, he met some unseen and mighty arm of denial which barred it. He stopped there for the second time. Then he went back again to the Judd house, and this time when he reached the door he opened it and went in.

When he entered the sitting-room, where Adoniram and Paulina Maria and Henry were, they all looked up in astonishment.

"Forgot anything?" inquired Adoniram.

"Yes," replied Jerome. Then he went on, speaking fast, in a strained voice, which he tried hard to make casual. "There was something I wanted to say. I've been thinking about Henry's eyes. If--you want to take him to Boston, to that doctor, I've got the money. I've got five hundred dollars you're welcome to. I believe you said it would take that." He looked straight at Paulina Maria as he spoke, and she dropped her work and looked at him.

Adoniram made a faint, gasping noise, then sat staring at them both.

Henry started, but knitted on as remorselessly as his own fate.

"How did you come by so much money?" asked Paulina Maria, in her pure, severe voice.

"I saved if from my earnings."

"What for?"

"You'll be welcome to take it, and use it for Henry."

"That ain't answering my question."

Jerome was silent.

"You needn't answer if you don't want to," said Paulina Maria, "for I know. You've kept it dark from everybody but Lawyer Means and your mother and Elmira, but your mother told me a year ago. I haven't told a soul. You've been saving up this money to build a mill with and--I've been over to your mother's this afternoon--you are going to start it to-morrow."

"I am not obliged to start it to-morrow," said Jerome.

"You're obliged to for all me. Do you think I'll take that money?"

Jerome turned to Henry. "Henry, it's for you, and not your mother,"

said he. "Will you take it?"

Henry, still knitting, shook his head.

"I tell you there is no hurry about the mill. I can wait and earn more. I give it to you freely."

"We shouldn't take it unless I give you a note of hand, Jerome,"

Adoniram interposed, in a quavering voice.

Paulina Maria looked at her husband. "What is your note of hand worth?" she asked, sternly.

"Won't you take it, Henry? I've always thought a good deal of you, and I don't want you to be blind," Jerome said.

Henry shook his head; there was an awful inexorableness with himself displayed in his steady knitting.

"There are things worse than blindness," said Paulina Maria. "n.o.body shall sacrifice himself for my son. If our own prayers and sacrifices are not sufficient, it is the will of the Lord that he should suffer, and he will suffer."

"Take it, Henry," pleaded Jerome, utterly disregarding her.

"Would you take it in my son's place?" demanded Paulina Maria, suddenly. She looked fixedly at Jerome. "Answer me," said she.

"That has nothing to do with it!" Jerome cried, angrily. "He is going blind, and this money will cure him. If you are his mother--"

"Don't ask anybody to take even a kindness that you wouldn't take yourself," said Paulina Maria.

Jerome flung out of the room without another word. When he got out-of-doors, he found Adoniram at his elbow.

"I want ye to know that I'm much obliged to ye, J'rome," he whispered. He felt for Jerome's hand and shook it. "Thank ye, thank ye, J'rome," he repeated, brokenly.

"I don't want any thanks," replied Jerome. "Can't you take the money and make Henry go with you to Boston and see the doctor, if she won't?"

"It's no use goin' agin her, J'rome."

"I believe she's crazy."

"No, she ain't, J'rome--no, she ain't. She knows how you saved up that money, an' she won't take it. She's made so she can't take anybody else's sufferin' to ease hers, an' so's Henry--he's like his mother."

"Can't you make her take it, Uncle Adoniram?"

"She can't make herself take it; but I'm jest as much obliged to ye, J'rome."

Adoniram was about to re-enter the house. "She'll wonder where I be,"

he muttered, but Jerome stopped him. "If I do begin work on the mill to-morrow," said he, "I sha'n't be able to fetch and carry to Dale, nor to do as much work in Uncle Ozias's shop. Do you suppose you can help out some?"

"I can, if I'm as well as I be now, J'rome."

"Of course, you can earn more than you do now," said Jerome. That was really the errand upon which he had come to the Judds that evening.

He had been quite elated with the thought of the pleasure it would give them, when the possibility of larger service--Henry's cure by means of his cherished h.o.a.rd--had suddenly come to him.

He arranged with Adoniram Judd that he should go to the shop the next morning, then bade him good-night, and turned his own steps thither.

When he came in sight of Ozias Lamb's shop, its window was throwing a long beam of light across the field creeping with dry gra.s.s before the frosty wind. When Jerome opened the door, he started to see Ozias seated upon his bench, his head bowed over and hidden upon his idle hands. Jerome closed the door, then stood a moment irresolute, staring at his uncle's dejected figure. "What's the matter, Uncle Ozias?" he asked.

Ozias did not speak, but made a curious, repellent motion with his bowed shoulders.

"Are you sick?"

Again Ozias seemed to shunt him out of the place with that speaking motion of his shoulder.

Jerome went close to him. "Uncle Ozias, I want to know what is the matter?" he said, then started, for suddenly Ozias raised his face and looked at him, his eyes wild under his s.h.a.ggy grizzle of hair, his mouth twisted in a fierce laugh. "Want to know, do ye?" he cried--"want to know? Well, I'll tell ye. Look at me hard; I'm a sight. Look at me. Here's a man, 'most threescore years and ten, who's been willin' to work, an' has worked, an' 'ain't been considered underwitted, who's been strugglin' to keep a roof over his head an' his wife's, an' bread in their two mouths; jest that, no more. He 'ain't had any children; n.o.body but himself an' his wife, an' she contented with next to nothin'. Jest a roof an' bread for them--jest that; an' he an able-bodied man, that's worked like a dog--jest that; an' he's got to give it up. Look at him, he's a sight for wise men an' fools." Ozias laughed.

"What on earth do you mean, Uncle Ozias?"

"Simon Ba.s.set is goin' to foreclose to-morrow."

Jerome stared at his uncle incredulously. "Why, I thought you had earned plenty to keep the interest up of late years!" he said.

"There was more than present interest to pay; there was back interest, and I've been behind on taxes, and there was an old doctor bill, when I had the fever; an' that wa'n't all--I never told ye, nor anybody. I was fool enough to sign a note for George Henry Green, in Westbrook, some years ago. He come to me with tears in his eyes, said he wouldn't care so much if it wa'n't for his wife an' children; he'd got to raise the money, an' couldn't get n.o.body to sign his note. I lost every dollar of it. It's been all I could do to pay up, an' I couldn't keep even with the interest. I knew it was comin'."

"How much interest do you owe?" asked Jerome, in an odd voice. He was very pale.