Jerome, A Poor Man Part 54

The Squire stared at him. "Yes; why?"

"Nothing, only seeing him just now set me to wondering if you were still of the same mind about it."

"If being willing that Lucina should have the man she sets her heart on is the same mind, of course I am; but, good Lord, Jack, that's all over! He hasn't been to the house for a year, and Lucina never thinks of him!"

Colonel Lamson laughed wheezily. "Well, that's all I wanted to know, Eben."

"What made you ask me that?" asked the Squire, suspiciously.

"Nothing; seeing Jerome and his mill brought it to mind. Well, I'll be along to-night."

"That's all over," the Squire called out again to the Colonel, going slowly up the hill to the house door. However, when he got home, he questioned Abigail.

"I haven't heard Lucina mention Jerome Edwards's name for months,"

said she, "and he never comes here; but she seems perfectly contented and happy. I think that's all over."

"I thought so," said Eben.

Abigail was preparing the punch, for the Squire expected his friends that evening. Jennings came first; some time after Means and Lamson arrived. They had a strange air of grave excitement and elation.

When the game of cards was fairly under way, the Colonel played in a manner which confused them all.

"By the Lord Harry, Jack, this is the third time you've thrown away an honor!" the Squire roared out, finally. "Is it the punch that's gone to your head?"

"No, Eben," replied the Colonel, in a hoa.r.s.e voice, with solemn and oratorical cadences, as if he rose to address a meeting. "It is not the punch. I am _used_ to punch. It is money. I've just had word that--that old mining stock I bought when I was in the service, and haven't thought worth more than a New England sheep farm, has been sold for sixty-five thousand dollars."

Chapter x.x.xIV

The next week Colonel Lamson went to Boston, and took his friend John Jennings with him. Whether the trip was purely a business one, or was to be regarded in the light of a celebration of the Colonel's good fortune, never transpired.

Upham people exchanged wishes to the effect that John Jennings and Colonel Lamson might not take, in their old age, to sowing again the wild oats of their youth. "John Jennings drank himself most into his grave; an' as for Colonel Lamson, it's easy enough to see that he's always had his dram, when he felt like it. If they get home sober an'

alive with all that money, they're lucky," people said. It was the general impression in Upham that the Colonel had gone to Boston with his sixty-five thousand dollars in his pocket. Lawyer Means's ancient relative, who served as house-keeper, was reported to have confessed that she was on tenter-hooks about it.

However, in a week the Colonel and his friend returned, and the most anxious could find nothing in their appearance to justify their gloomy fears. They had never looked so spick and span and prosperous within the memory of Upham, for both of them were clad in glossiest new broadcloth, of city cut, and both wore silk bell-hats, which gave them the air of London dandies. Jennings, moreover, displayed in his fine s.h.i.+rt-front a new diamond pin, and the Colonel stepped out with stately flourishes of a magnificent gold-headed cane.

Soon it was told on good authority that the lawyer's house-keeper, and John Jennings's also, had a present from the Colonel of a rich black satin gown, that the lawyer had a gold-headed cane--which he was, indeed, seen to carry, holding it stiff and straight, like a roll of parchment, with never a flourish--and the Squire a gun mounted in silver, and such a fis.h.i.+ng-rod as had never been seen in the village. When Lucina Merritt came to meeting the Sunday after the Colonel's return, there glistened in her little ears, between her curls, some diamond ear-drops, and Abigail wore a shawl which had never been seen in Upham before.

Lawyer Means's female relative, and Jennings's house-keeper, said, emphatically, that they didn't believe that either of them drank a drop of anything stronger than water all the time they were gone.

The Colonel was radiant with satisfaction; he went about with his face beaming as unreservedly as a child's who has gotten a treasure.

He often confided to Means his perfect delight in his new wealth.

"Hang it all, Means," he would say, "I wouldn't find a word of fault, not a word, I'd strut like a peac.o.c.k, if that poor little girl I married was only alive, and I could buy her a d.a.m.ned thing out of it; then there's something else, Means--" the Colonel's face would take on an expression of mingled seriousness and humor--"Means," he would conclude, in a hoa.r.s.e, facetious whisper, "I bought those stocks when I was first married; thought I'd got to pitch in and provide for my family, and in order to save enough money to get them I ran in debt for a new uniform and some cavalry boots and a pony, and d.a.m.ned if I know if I ever paid for them."

Jerome, going to the mill one day shortly afterwards, reached the Means house as the Colonel was coming down the hill. "Stop a moment,"

the Colonel called, and Jerome waited until he reached him. "Fine day," said the Colonel.

"Yes, sir, 'tis," replied Jerome; then he added, "I was glad to hear of your good fortune, sir."

"Suppose," said the Colonel, abruptly, "that twenty-five thousand of it had come to you, what would you have done with it?"

Jerome looked at him in a bewildered fas.h.i.+on. "It wasn't mine, and there's no use talking about it," he said.

"What would you do with it? Out with it! Would you stick to that bargain you made in Robinson's that evening?"

Jerome hesitated.

"You needn't be afraid to speak," urged the Colonel. "If you'd stick to it, say so. I sha'n't call it any reflection upon me; I haven't the slightest intention of giving twenty-five thousand dollars to the poor, and if you've changed your mind, say so."

"I haven't changed my mind, and I would stick to it," Jerome replied then.

"And," said the Colonel, "you are sticking to that other resolution of yours, to work until you win a certain fair lady, are you?"

Jerome colored high. He was inclined to be indignant, but there was a strange earnestness in the Colonel's manner.

"I'm not the sort of fellow not to stick to a resolution of that kind when I've once made it," he replied, shortly.

The Colonel chuckled. "Well, I didn't think you were," he returned--"didn't think you were, Jerome. That's all. Good-day."

With that, to Jerome's utter astonishment, Colonel Lamson trudged laboriously up the hill to the Means house again.

"He must have come down just to ask me those questions," thought Jerome, and thought with more bewilderment still that the Colonel must even have been watching for him. He had no conception of his meaning, but he laughed to himself at the bare fancy of twenty-five thousand dollars coming to him, and also at the suggestion that he would not be true to his resolution to win Lucina. Jerome was beginning to feel as if she were already won. The next spring, if he continued to prosper, he had decided to speak to her, and, as the months went on, nothing happened to discourage him.

The next winter the snows were uncommonly heavy. They began before Thanksgiving and came in thick storms. There were great drifts in all the door-yards, the stone walls and fences were hidden, the trees stood in deep, swirling hollows of snow. Now and then a shed-roof broke under the frozen weight; one walked through the village street as through clear-cut furrows of snow, all the shadows were blue, there was a dazzle of glacier light over the whole village when the sun arose. However, it was a fine winter for Jerome, as far as his work was concerned. Wood is drawn easily on sleds, and the snow air nerves one for sharp labors. Jerome calculated that by May he should be not only doing a prosperous business, but should have a snug little sum clear. Then he would delay no longer.

On the nineteenth day of March came the last snow-storm, and the worst of the season. Martin Cheeseman went home early. Jerome did not stay in the mill long after he left. The darkness was settling down fast, and he could do little by himself.

Moreover, an intense eagerness to be at home seized him. He began to imagine that something had happened to his mother or Elmira, and imagination of evil was so foreign to him that it had almost the force of conviction.

He fell also to thinking of his father, inconsequently, as it seemed, yet it was not so, for imagined disasters lead back by retrograde of sequence to memories of real ones.

He lived over again his frenzied search for his father, his discovery of the hat on the sh.o.r.e of the deep pond. "Poor father!" he muttered.

All the way home this living anxiety for his mother and sister, and this dead sorrow haunted him. He thought as he struggled through the snow, his face bent before the drive of the sleet as before a flail of ice, how often in all weathers his father had traversed this same road, how his own feet could scarcely step out of his old tracks. He thought how many a night, through such a storm as this, his father had toiled wearily home, and with no such fire of youth and hope in his heart to cheer him on. "Father must have given up a long time before he died," he said to himself.

The imagination of his father plodding homeward in his old harness of hopeless toil grew so strong that his own ident.i.ty paled. He seemed to lose all ambition and zeal, a kind of heredity of discouragement overspread him. "I don't know but I'll have to give up, finally, the way he did," he muttered, panting under the buffeting of the snow wind.

He met no one on his way home. Once a loaded wood-sled came up behind him with a faint creak and jingle of harness, then the straining flanks of the horse, the cubic pile of wood shaded out of shape by the snow, the humped back of the driver on the top, pa.s.sed out of sight, as behind a slanting white curtain. The village houses receded through s.h.i.+fting distances of pale gloom; one could scarcely distinguish the white slants of their roofs, and the lamp-lights which shone out newly in some of the windows made rosy nimbuses.

When Jerome drew near his own home he looked eagerly, and saw, with relief, that the white thickness of the storm was suffused with light opposite the kitchen windows.

"Everything all right?" he asked, when he entered, stamping and shaking himself.

Elmira was toasting bread, and she turned her flushed face wonderingly. "Yes; why shouldn't it be?" she said.

"No reason why. It's an awful storm."