Mary Eleanor Wilkins Freeman

“ 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. ”

“ It often happens that one receiving for the first time a great and long-desired blessing, can feel, for the moment, not joy and triumph so much as awe and fear at its sudden glory of fairness in contact with his unworthiness.
But, all at once, as Jerome hesitated a soft red came flaming over Lucina's face and neck, and tears of distress welled up in her eyes. Far it was from her to understand how her lover felt, for awe of herself was beyond her imagination, and a dreadful fear lest her mother had been mistaken and Jerome did not want her after all, was in her heart. ”

“ 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. ”

“ She did not reflect that no human soul is too transparent to be clouded to the vision of others, and its own, by the sacred intimacy with its own desires. Her daughter, looking up at her with limpid blue eyes, replying to her interrogation with sweet readiness, like a bird that would pipe to a call, was as darkly unknown to her as one beyond the grave. She could not even spell out clearly her hieroglyphics of life with the key in her own nature.
The day after Lucina had met Jerome on the Dale road, and had failed to set the matter right, she took her embroidery-work over to her Aunt Camilla's. ”

“ Births and deaths, all natural stresses of life, its occasional tragedies, and even his own bitter wrath could this small, equally poised man meet with calm superiority over them and command over himself. Doctor Seth Prescott never lost his personal dignity—he could not, since it was so inseparable from his personality. If he chastised his son, it was with the judicial majesty of a king, and never with a self-demeaning show of anger. He ate and drank in his own house like a guest of state at a feast; he drove his fine sorrel in his sulky like a war-horse in a chariot. ”

“ When he reached the barn, there sat Mindy Toggs, as of old, chanting his accusatory refrain, “Simon Basset, Simon Basset.”
Hitherto Jerome had viewed all this humiliation of poverty from a slight but no less real eminence of benefaction; to-day he had a miserable sense of community with it. “It is not having what we want that makes us all paupers,” he told himself, bitterly; “I'm as much a pauper as any of them. I'm in a worse poor-house than the town of Upham's. I'm in the poor-house of life where the paupers are all fed on stones.” ”

“ I thought a man could go to see a woman when he was in love with her, and could bear it when the love was all on his side, and there was no—chance of marriage. I thought I could bear it if it pleased you, but—I didn't know it would be like this. I was never in love, and I did not know. I could think of nothing but wanting you. It was spoiling me for everything else, and there are other things in the world besides this. If I came much longer I should not be fit to come. I could not come any longer.” Jerome looked down at Lucina, with an air of stern, yet wistful, argument. ”

“ Who knows if a rose does not really cease to be, in its own sense, to a soul in an extremity of joy or grief?
Whatever it might be for others, the spring wood was not to-day what it had ever been before to Jerome. All its shining, and sweetening, and growing were so forced into accord with himself that the whole wood took, as it were, the motion of his own soul. Jerome looked at a fine young poplar-tree, and saw not a tree but a maid, revealing with innocent helplessness her white body through her skirts of transparent green. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Squire Eben Merritt stood looking at his friend, a frown of jealous reverie on his open face. Suddenly, with no warning, as if from a sudden uplifting of the spirit, it cleared away. He laughed out his great hearty laugh. “Well, by the Lord Harry, Jack,” said he, “when the girl does lose her heart, though I hope it won't be for many a day yet, if it's to a good man that can take care of her and fight for her when he's gone, her old father won't stand in the way. Lucina always did have what she wanted, and she always shall.” ”

“ Often, on arousing from a deep sleep, one has a sense of calm and wonderless observation as of a new birth. Jerome looked for a moment at Lucina with no surprise. In a new world all things may be, and impossibilities become commonplaces.
Then he sprang up, and went close to her. “Is it you?” he said, in a sobbing voice.
Lucina looked at him piteously. She wanted to run away, but her limbs trembled, her little hands twitched in the folds of her muslin skirt. Jerome saw her trembling, and a soft pink suffusing her fair face, even her sweet throat and her arms, under her thin sleeves. ”

“ The mill quivered in every beam, and the floor canted like the deck of a vessel. Martin Cheeseman rushed in and caught Jerome roughly by the arm. “For God's sake, what ye up to?” he shouted above the roar of the water, “Come along with ye. She's goin'!”
The old man had a rope tied to his middle; Jerome followed him, unresistingly, and they crossed, almost waist-deep and in danger of being swept from their foothold by the current. Cheeseman kept tight hold of Jerome's arm. “Bear up,” he said, in a hoarse whisper, as they struggled out of the water; “life's more'n a mill.” ”

“ 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. ”

“ Miss Camilla gazed at her reflectively. She had a mild but active imagination, which had never been dispelled by experience, for romance and hearts transfixed with darts of love. “I hope he will never be so unfortunate as to place his affections where they cannot be reciprocated, since he is in such poor circumstances that he cannot marry,” she sighed, so gently that one could scarcely suspect her of any hidden meaning.
“I do not think,” said Lucina, still with steadfast eyes upon her embroidery, “that a woman should consider poverty if she loves.” ”

“ Every little flower upon which his idle gaze fell was no flower, but an eye of love—a bird called to his mate with the call of his own heart. Every sight, and sound, and sweetness of the wood wooed and tempted him, with the reflex motion of his own new ardor of love and passion. He had not gone to meeting lest he see Lucina Merritt again, and wished to drive her image from his mind, and here he was peopling his solitude with symbols of her which were bolder than she, and made his hunger worse to bear. ”

“ When Jerome and Elmira came down-stairs he led the way at once into the north parlor, where the most of the guests were assembled. There were the village young women in their best attire, decked as to heads and bosoms with sweet drooping flowers, displaying all their humble stores of lace and ribbons and trinkets, jostling one another with slurring hisses of silk and crisp rattle of muslins, speaking affectedly with pursed lips, ending often a sibilant with a fine whistle, or silent, with mouths set in conscious smiles and cheeks hot with blushes. ”

“ And Jerome, who was the originator of all this, went out helplessly, slighted and indignant. He did think the Squire might have interceded for him to stay, knowing what he knew. Even youth has its disadvantages.
But Squire Eben stood somewhat aloof, looking at the small, frail, pugnacious woman in the rocking-chair with perplexity and growing impatience. He wanted to go fishing that morning, and the vision of the darting trout in their still, clear pool was before him, like a vision of his own earthly paradise. He gave a despairing glance at Doctor Prescott, who had hitherto said little. ”

“ The Colonel whistled and said no more, for just then Belinda Lamb and Paulina Maria came up, holding their petticoats high out of the slush.
The two men walked on to Upham village, the Colonel straight, as if at the head of a battalion, though his lungs pumped hard at every step, holding back his square shoulders, protruding his tight broadcloth, swinging his stick airily, Jerome at his side, burdened like a peasant, with his sheaf of cut leather, but holding up his head like a prince. ”

“ Love, even when it has apparently no past, is at once a memory and a revelation. Lucina saw the little lover of her innocent childish dreams asleep there, she saw the poor boy who had gone hungry and barefoot, she saw the young man familiar in the strangeness of the future. And, more than that, Lucina, who had hitherto shown fully to her awakening heart only her thought of Jerome, having never dared to look at him and love him at the same time, now gazed boldly at him asleep, and a sense of a great mystery came over her. ”