Jerome, A Poor Man Part 61

"Yes, sir."

"You know what you're going to lose. You remember that your own family--your father and mother and sister--can't profit by the gift?"

"Yes, sir; I have thought it all over."

"Do you realize that if you stick to your part of the bargain, it does not follow that the doctor and Ba.s.set will stick to theirs?"

Jerome stared at him. "Didn't they sign that doc.u.ment before witnesses?"

The lawyer laughed. "That doc.u.ment isn't worth the paper it's written on. It was all horse-play. Didn't you know that, Jerome?"

"Did the doctor and Ba.s.set know it?"

"The doctor did. He wouldn't have signed, otherwise. As for Ba.s.set--well, I don't know, but if he comes and asks me, as he will before he unties his purse strings, I shall tell him the truth about it, as I'm bound to, and not a dollar will he part with after he finds out that he hasn't got to. You can judge for yourself whether Doctor Seth Prescott is likely to fling away a fourth of his property in any such fool fas.h.i.+on as this."

"Well, I don't know that it makes any difference to me whether they give or not," said Jerome, proudly.

"Do you mean that you will abide by your part of the agreement if the others do not abide by theirs?"

"I mean, that I keep my promise when I can; and if every other man under G.o.d's footstool breaks his, it is no reason why I should break mine."

"That sounds very fine," said the lawyer, dryly; "but do you realize, my young friend, how far your large fortune alone would go when divided among the poor of this village?"

"Yes, sir; I have reckoned it up. There are about one hundred who would come under the terms of the agreement. My money alone, divided among them, would give about two hundred and fifty dollars apiece."

"That is a large sum."

"It is large to a man who has never seen fifty dollars at once in his hand, and it is large when several unite and form a company for a new factory, with machines."

"Do you think they will do that?"

"Yes, sir. Henry Eames will set it going; give him a chance."

"Why don't you, instead of parting with your money, set up the factory yourself, and employ the whole village?"

"That is not what I said I would do, and it is better for the village to employ itself. I might fail, or my factory might go, as my mill has."

"How long do you suppose it will be that every man will have his two hundred and fifty dollars after you have given it to him? Tell me that, if you can."

"That isn't my lookout."

"Why isn't it your lookout? A careless giver is as bad as a thief, sir."

"I am not a careless giver," replied Jerome, stoutly. "I can't tell, and no man can tell, how long they will keep what I give them, or how long it will be before the stingiest and wisest get their shares away from the weak; but that is no more reason why I should not give this money than it is a reason why the Lord Almighty should not furnish us all with fingers and toes, and our five senses, and our stomachs."

"You might add, our immortal souls, which the parsons say we'll get s.n.a.t.c.hed away from us if we don't watch out," said Means, with a short laugh. "Well, Jerome, it is too late for me to attend to this business to-night. I am worn out, too, by what I have been through lately. Come to-morrow, and, if you are of the same mind, we'll fix it up."

Somewhat to Jerome's surprise, the lawyer extended a lean, brown hand for his, which he shook warmly, with a hearty "Good-night, sir."

"I don't believe he was trying to hinder me from giving it, after all," Jerome thought, as he went down the hill.

Eliphalet Means, shuffling in loose slippers, returned to his sitting-room, where were John Jennings and Eben Merritt. There were no cards, and no punch, and no conviviality for the three bereaved friends that night. The three sat before the fire, and each smoked a melancholy pipe, and each, when he looked at or spoke to the others, looked and spoke, whatever his words might be, to the memory of their dead comrade.

The chair in which the Colonel had been used to sit stood a little aloof, at a corner of the fireplace. Often one of the trio would eye it with furtive mournfulness, looking away again directly without a glance at the others.

When Means entered, he was smiling, for the first time that evening.

"Well," he said, "I have seen something to-night that I have never seen before, that I shall never see again, and that no man in this town has ever seen before, or will see again, unless he lives till the millennium."

The others stared at him. "What d'ye mean?" asked the Squire.

"I have seen something rarer than a white black-bird, and harder to discover than the north pole. I have seen a poor man, clothed and in his right mind, give away every dollar of a fortune within three days after he got it."

The two men looked at him, speechless. "He hasn't!" gasped the Squire, finally.

"He has."

"By the Lord Harry!"

"Well," said John Jennings, slowly, "if I had started out on a search for such a man I should have wanted more than Diogenes's lantern."

"And I should have called for blue-lights and rockets, the aurora borealis, chain lightning, the solar system, and the eternal light of nature, but I discovered him with a penny dip," said Eliphalet Means, chuckling. He stood on the hearth before his two friends, his back to the fire; it was a cool night, and he had got chilled at the open door.

"He is going to give away the whole of it?" John Jennings said, with wondering rumination.

"Every dollar."

Means looked at them, all the shrewd humor faded out of his face.

"I've got something to tell both of you," he said, gravely; "and, Eben, while I think of it, I have a letter that _he_ wanted given to your daughter. Remind me to hand it over to you to take to her when you go home to-night. I've got something to tell you; the time has come; _he_ said it would. I didn't half believe it, G.o.d forgive me. I tell you, I've got a keen scent for the bad in human nature, but he had a keen one for the good. He'd have made a sharp counsel on the right side. After _he_ got his money, he used to talk day and night about the poverty of this town. He had a great heart. He--_wanted and intended that twenty-five thousand dollars to go just the way it is going_." The lawyer, with every word, shook his skinny right hand before the others' faces; he paused a second and looked at them with solemn impressiveness; then he continued: "He wanted to give that twenty-five thousand dollars, in equal parts, to the poor of this town, as indicated in that instrument which I drew up at Robinson's for Prescott and Ba.s.set, but instead of giving it himself he left it to Jerome Edwards to give. He said that it would amount to the same thing, and I tried to argue him out of it. I did not believe any man could stand the temptation of a fortune between his fingers, but _he_ said Jerome Edwards could and would, and the money was as sure to go as he intended it to as if he doled it out himself in dollars and cents, and he was right. G.o.d bless him! And--_that twenty-five thousand dollars is going just the way he meant it to go_."

Chapter x.x.xIX

The next day Jerome went again to Lawyer Means's. It was near noon when he returned; he met many people on the road, and they all looked at him strangely. Men stood in knots, and the hum of their conversation died low when he drew near. They nodded to him with curious respect and formality; after he had pa.s.sed, the rumble of voices began anew. One woman, whom he met just before he turned the corner of his own road, stopped and held out a slender, trembling hand.

"I want to shake hands with you, J'rome," she said, in a sweet, hysterical voice. Then she raised to his a worn face, with the piteous downward lines of old tears at mouth and eyes, and a rasped red, as of tears and frost, on thin cheeks. "That money is goin' to save my little home for me; I didn't know but I'd got to go on the town. G.o.d bless you, J'rome," she whispered, quaveringly.

"The Colonel's the one to be thanked," Jerome said.

"I come under that agreement, don't I?" she asked, anxiously. "They told me that lone women without anybody to support 'em came under it."

"Yes, you do, Miss Patch."

"Oh, G.o.d bless you, G.o.d bless you, J'rome Edwards!" she cried, with a fervor strange upon a New England tongue.

"Colonel Lamson is the one to have the thanks and the credit," Jerome repeated, pus.h.i.+ng gently past her. His face was hot. He wondered, as he approached his house, if his own family had heard the news. As soon as he opened the door he saw that they had. Elmira did not lift a white, dumbly accusing face from her work; his father looked at him with curious, open-mouthed wonder; his mother spoke.