Jerome, A Poor Man Part 64

"I've got to work at something," Jerome told himself; "if it isn't one thing, it's got to be another." He dwelt always upon Lucina: what she was thinking of him; if she thought that he did not love her, because he had given her up; if she would look at him, if she were to see him, as his sister had done the night before. Jerome had not yet answered Lucina's letter. He did not know how to answer it; but he carried it with him night and day.

He went home, got his horse and plough, and fell to work in his hilly garden ground. His father came out and sat on a stone and watched him happily. Jerome was scarcely accustomed to his father yet, but he treated him as tenderly as if he were a child, and the old man followed him like one. Indeed, he seemed to prefer his son to his wife, though Ann watched him with jealous affection. Ann Edwards had never walked since the night of her husband's return. She never alluded to it; sometimes her children thought that she had not known it herself.

Jerome was still ploughing in the afternoon when his uncle Ozias Lamb came.

Ozias stumped softly through the new-turned mould. He had a folded paper in his hand, and he extended it towards Jerome. "D'ye know anythin' about this?" he asked. His face was ashy.

Jerome brought his horse to a stand. "What is it?"

"Don't ye know?"

"No, I don't."

"Well, it's that mortgage deed that Ba.s.set held on my place, with--the signature torn off, cancelled--" Ozias said, in a hoa.r.s.e voice. "D'ye know anythin' about it now?"

"No, I don't," replied Jerome, with emphasis.

"Well," said Ozias, "I found it under the front door-sill. Belindy said she heard a knock on the front door, but when she went there wa'n't n.o.body there, an' there was this paper. She come runnin' out to the shop with it. It was jest before noon. What d'ye s'pose it means?"

Jerome took the deed and examined it closely. "Have you read what's written above the heading of it?" he asked.

"No; what is it, J'rome?"

Ozias put on his spectacles; Jerome pointed to a crabbed line above the heading of the mortgage deed.

"I giv as present the forth part of my proputty, this morgidge to Ozier Lamm.

"Simon Ba.s.set."

"He's took crazy!" cried Ozias, staring wildly at it.

"Guess he's been crazy over dollars and cents all his life, and this is just an acute phase of it," replied Jerome, calmly, taking up his plough handles again.

"I b'lieve the hull town's crazy. I've heard that Doctor Prescott has give his place back to John Upham, an' Peter Thomas is comin' out of the poor-farm an' goin' back to his old house. J'rome, I declar' to reason, I b'lieve you're crazy, an' the hull town has caught it.

What's that? Who's comin'?"

A wild-eyed little boy, with fair hair stiff to the breeze, came racing across the plough ridges. "Come quick! Come quick!" he gasped.

"They've sent me--Doctor Prescott's ain't to home--he's most dead!

Come quick!"

"Where to?" shouted Jerome, pulling the tackle off the horse.

"Come quick, J'rome!"

"Where _to?_"

"Speak up, can't ye?" cried Ozias, shaking the boy by his small shoulder.

"To Ba.s.set's!" screamed the boy, shrilly, jerked away from Ozias, and was off, clearing the ground like a hound, with long leaps.

"Lord," said Ozias, looking at the deed, "it's killed him!"

Jerome had freed the horse from the plough, and now sprang upon his back.

"Ye ain't goin' to ride him bare-back?" asked Ozias.

"I'm not going to stop for a saddle. G'long!" Jerome bent forward, slapped the horse on the neck, dug his heels into his sides, and was off at a gallop.

Ozias followed, still clutching the deed. Abel Edwards came out as he reached the house. "Where's J'rome goin' to?" he asked.

"Down to Ba.s.set's; somethin's happened. He's fell dead or somethin'.

I'm goin' to see what the matter is."

"Wait till I git my hat, an' I'll go with ye."

The two old men went at a fast trot down the road, and many joined them, all hurrying to Simon Ba.s.set's.

They had reached Lawyer Means's house, which stood in sight of Ba.s.set's, before they met a returning company. "It's no use your goin'," shouted a man in advance. "He's gone. J'rome Edwards said so the minute he see him, an' now Doctor Prescott he's come, an' he says so. He was dead before they cut him down."

With the throng of excited men and boys came one pale-faced, elderly woman, with her cap awry and her ap.r.o.n over her shoulders. She was Miss Rachel Blodgett, Eliphalet Means's house-keeper.

She took up her position by the Means's gate, and the crowd gathered about her as a nucleus. Other women came running out of neighboring houses, and pressed close to her skirts. Cyrus Robinson's son pushed before her, and, when she began to speak in a strained treble, overpowered it with a coa.r.s.e volume of ba.s.s. "Let me tell what I've got to first," he ordered, importantly. "My part comes first, then it's your turn. I've got to go back to the store. It was just about noon that Simon Ba.s.set come in ag'in and asked for a piece of rope.

Said he wanted it to tie his cow with. I got out some rope, and he tried to beat me down on it; asked me if I hadn't got some second-hand rope I'd let him have a piece of. Finally I got mad, and asked him why, if he wasn't willing to pay for rope what it was worth, he didn't use a halter or his clothes-line.

"He whined out that his halter was broke, and he hadn't had a clothes-line for years. That last I believed, quick enough, for I knew he didn't ever have any was.h.i.+ng done.

"Then I asked him why he didn't steal a rope if he was too poor to pay for it, and he said he was too poor. He wasn't worth more than five thousand dollars in the world, and he'd given away all he was going to of that. When he got started on that, he ripped and raved the way he did this morning; hang it, if I didn't begin to think he was out of his mind. Then he went off, about ten minutes past twelve, without his rope. I suppose there were pieces of rope enough around, but I got mad, he acted so darned mean about it, and wouldn't hunt it up for him, and I'm glad now I didn't."

Rachel Blodgett, who had been teetering with eagerness on her thin old ankles, interposing now and then sharp quavers of abortive speech, cut short Robinson's last words with the impetuosity of her delivered torrent. "I washed to-day," said she. "I didn't wash yesterday because it wasn't a good drying-day, and last week I had my clothes around three days in the tub, and I made up my mind I wouldn't do it again. So I washed to-day.

"I got my clothes all hung out before dinner. I had an uncommon heavy wash to-day, an extra table-cloth--Mr. Means tipped his coffee over yesterday morning--and the sheets of the spare chamber bed were in, so I put up a little piece of line I had, between those two trees, beside my regular clothes-line.

"About an hour ago I thought to myself the clothes ought to be dry, and I'd just step out and look. So I run out, and there were the clothes I'd hung on the little line--some dish-towels, and two of my ap.r.o.ns, and one of Mr. Means's s.h.i.+rts--down on the ground in the dirt, and the line was gone. Thinks I, 'Where's that line gone to?'

"I stood there gaping, I couldn't make head or tail of it. Then I see the little Crossman boy out in the yard, and I hollered to him--'w.i.l.l.y,' says I, 'come here a minute.'

"He come running over, and I asked him if he'd seen anybody in our yard since noon. He said he hadn't seen anybody but Mr. Ba.s.set. He saw him coming out of our yard tucking something under his coat.

"That put me on the track. If I do say it of the dead, and one that's gone to his account in an awful way, Mr. Ba.s.set had been over here time and time again, and helped himself. I ain't going to say he stole; he helped himself. He helped himself to our kindling wood, and our hammer, and our spade, and our rake. After the spade went, I made a notch on the rake-handle so I could tell it, and when that went, I slipped over to Mr. Ba.s.set's one day when I knew he wasn't there, and there was our rake in his shed. I said nothing to n.o.body, but I just brought our rake home again, and I hid it where he didn't find it again. Mr. Means, though he's a lawyer, looks out sharper for other folks' belongings than he does for his own. He'd never say anything; he went and bought another spade and hammer, and he'd bought another rake if I hadn't got that.

"When that little Crossman boy said he'd seen Mr. Ba.s.set coming out of our yard tucking something under his coat, it put me right on the track, though I couldn't think what he wanted with that little piece of rope. I should have thought he wanted it to mend a harness with, but his old horse died last winter; folks said he didn't have enough to eat, but I ain't going to pa.s.s any judgment on that, and I knew he sold his old harness, because the man he sold it to had been to Mr.

Means to get damages for being taken in. The harness had broke, and his horse had run away, and the man declared that that harness had been glued together in places.

"But I don't know anything about that. The poor man is dead, and if he glued his harness, it's for him to give account of, not me. I couldn't think what he wanted that rope for, but I felt mad. The rope wasn't worth much, but it was his helping himself to it, without leave or license, that riled me, and there were my clean clothes all down in the dirt--there they are now, you can see 'em there--and I knew I'd got to wash 'em over.

"So I made up my mind I'd got s.p.u.n.k enough, and I'd go right over there and tell Simon Ba.s.set I wanted my rope. So I took off my ap.r.o.n and clapped it over my shoulders--I've had a little rheumatism lately, and the wind's kind of cold to-day--and I run over there.

"I--don't know what came over me. When I got to the house, a chill struck all through my bones. I trembled like a leaf. I felt as if something had happened. I thought, at first, I'd turn around and go home, and then I thought I wouldn't be so silly, that it was just nerves, and nothing had happened. I went round to the side door, and I didn't see him puttering around anywhere, so I peeked into the wood-shed. I thought if I saw my rope there I'd just take it, and run home and say nothing to n.o.body.