Jerome

“ 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. ”

“ Now he looked hard at Jerome, and could not for the life of him tell what particular boy he was, yet recognized him fully in the broader sense of young helplessness and timid need. “Speak up,” said he; “don't be scared. I know all the children, and I don't know one of 'em. Speak up like a man.”
Then Jerome, stung to the resolution to show this great Squire, Eben Merritt, that he was not to be classed among the children, but was a man indeed, and equivalent to those duties of one which had suddenly been thrust upon him, looked his questioner boldly in the face and answered. ”

“ Jerome got his hat, stole softly down-stairs, and out of the front door. “I've got to be alone somewhere, where I can think,” he said to himself, and forthwith made for the site of his mill; he could be sure of solitude there at that hour.
When he arrived, he sat down on a pile of logs and gazed unseeingly at the broad current of the brook, silvering out of the shadows to the light of a young moon. The roar of it was loud in his ears, but he did not seem to hear it. There are times when the spirit of the living so intensifies that it comes into a silence and darkness of nature like death. ”

“ Jerome sat down; in spite of himself, as he looked at the doctor opposite, the same old indignant, yet none the less vital, sense of subjection in the presence of superiority was over him as in his childhood. He saw again Doctor Seth Prescott as the incarnation of force and power. There was, in truth, something majestic about the man—he was an autocrat in a narrow sphere; but his autocracy was genuine. The czar of a little New England village may be as real in quality as the Czar of all the Russias. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ When at length Jerome and Elmira came and told her breakfast was ready, and assisted her to rise and dress, she was as unquestioningly docile as if the relationship between them were reversed. When she was seated in her chair she even forbore, as was her wont, to start immediately with sharp sidewise jerks of her rocker, but waited until her children pushed and drew her out into the next room, up to the breakfast-table. ”

“ When Jerome went home he had in his pocket a deed of the land, but on the right bank of the brook only, the lawyer having covenanted not to sell or build upon the left bank. Thus he had enough land upon which to build his mill when he should have saved the money. He felt nearer Lucina than he had ever done before. The sanguineness of youth, which is its best stimulant for advance, thrilled through all his veins. ”

“ Abel Edwards had said, confidentially, many a time to his boy, who had listened sagely and nodded.
Jerome obeyed his mother with the patient obedience of a superior who yields because his opponent is weaker than he, and a struggle beneath his dignity, not because he is actually coerced. Neither he nor his father ever answered back or contradicted; when her shrill voice waxed loudest and her vituperation seemed to fairly hiss in their ears, they sometimes looked at each other and exchanged a solemn wink of understanding and patience. ”

“ Jerome slept. He could breathe up here under the open sky, and wanted to be alone. For the first time, consciously, in his life, he felt a full sufficiency in his own being. He had made a mess of wedding his destiny to other destinies. He was through with women, and wanted to feel himself free of them, quite free. It was sweet to lie up here in the dark all alone and mourn his baby’s death, and begin to pull himself together a little, and look toward the future. ”

“ 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.” ”

“ Doctor Prescott might hold the mortgage and exact his pound of flesh, these poor backs might bend to the yoke, but there was no cringing in the hearts of Abel Edwards and his wife. It was easy to see where Jerome got his spirit.
However, spirit needs long experience and great strength to assert itself fully at all times before long-recognized power. Jerome, going up the road to Doctor Prescott's, felt rather a fierce submission and obligatory humility than defiance. He felt as if this great man held not only himself, but his mother and sister, their lives and fortunes, at his disposal. ”

“ The old man always took it, and spat it out when the boy's back was turned.
Jerome used to be fond of storing up checker-berries and sassafras root, and doling them out to a strange small creature with wild, askant eyes and vaguely smiling mouth, with white locks blowing as straightly and coarsely as dry swamp grass, who was wont to sit, huddling sharp little elbows and knees together, even in severe weather, on a stone by the path. She had come into the world and the poorhouse by the shunned byway of creation. ”

“ There she stood, pressing his white head against her breast, calling over and over again in a tone through whose present jubilation sounded the wail of past woe, “Oh, Abel, Abel, Abel!”
Jerome looked at them. He wondered, dazedly, if he were really there and awake, or asleep and dreaming up-stairs in his bed. Elmira came close beside him and clutched his arm—even that did not clear his bewildered perceptions into certainty. It is always easier for the normal mind, when confronted by astonishing spectacles, to doubt its own accuracy rather than believe in them. ”

“ I pleaded with Jerome to turn again, but he was inexorable.
"I expect to find out something to-night," he explained.
Of this ball I remember nothing but that the slippery floor, in which a man could see his own face, kept me in deadly fear lest my sword trip me. Jerome was gay and talkative, pointing out many people of whom I had heard, but they did not look so great after all.
"For sake of heaven man, wear not so long a face; it is not the funeral of thy mistress I have brought thee to." ”

“ By the Lord Harry, he ought to go down on his face like a heathen when she looks at him!”
“Eben,” said Abigail, “will you listen to me? I tell you, Jerome is behaving as well as any young man can. I know he is, from what Lucina has told me. He loves her, and he is proving it by giving her up. You know that he cannot marry her unless he drags her into poverty, and you know how much you have to help them with. You know, too, good as Jerome is, and worthy of praise for what he has done, that Lucina ought to do better than marry him.” ”

“ Then Jerome, in his utter bewilderment, spoke out the secret which he had kept since childhood.
“It can't be father,” said he—“it can't be. I found his hat on the shore of the Dead Hole. Father drowned himself there.” ”

“ The image even of beautiful Lucina, which had dwelt with him since Sunday, faded, for she was not yet become of his spirit, and pertained scarcely to his flesh, except through the simplest and most rudimentary of human instincts. Jerome glanced at the parcel containing the fine new vest and coat which he had purchased, and frowned scornfully at this childish vanity, which would lead him to perk and plume and glitter to the sun, like any foolish bird which would awake the desire of the eyes in another. ”

“ Jerome threw up his head in the thin, sparkling air. “I will have her yet,” he said, quite aloud; and “if I do not, I can bear that.”
He felt like one who would crush the stings of fate, even if against his own heart. He had grown old and thin during the last weeks; he had worked so hard and resolutely, yet with so little hope; and he who toils without hope is no better than a slave to his own will. That day, when he went home, his eyes were bright and his cheeks glowing. His mother and sister noticed the difference.
“I was afraid he was gettin' all run down,” Ann Edwards told Elmira ”

“ Jerome said, with a flash of white face and black eyes at the other.
Lawrence looked wonderingly at him, laughed first, then responded with some indignation, “Good Lord, Jerome, what are you talking about?”
“What I mean. My sister doesn't marry any man over another woman's heart if I know it.”
“Good Lord!” said Lawrence. “Why, Jerome, do you suppose I'd hurt little Lucina? She doesn't care for me in that way, she never would. ”

“ Jerome, standing straight before the doctor, with a little twitching hand hanging at each side, with his color coming and going, and pulses which could be seen beating hard in his temples and throat, spoke and delivered himself of that innocently overreaching scheme which he had propounded to Squire Eben Merritt.
It seems probable that mental states have their own reflective powers, which sometimes enable one to suddenly see himself in the conception of another, to the complete modification of all his own ideas and opinions. ”

“ When I wheeled down the lane toward Versailles, Jerome's clatter and dust was just dying away over the crest of a distant hill, making most excellent time in the direction of Paris.
Now that this new danger was past, I rode on heavy-hearted enough, for I had grown to love Jerome, and blamed him little for his sudden touch of fury. For I was nearly in the same boat, borne on by the same strong currents as Jerome.
Verily, what will man not do for woman? ”

“ Jerome stared at his mother in utter bewilderment. “Mother, are you out of your senses?” he gasped.
“I don't know why I am,” said she.
“Don't you know that Doctor Prescott would turn Lawrence out of house and home if he thought he was going to marry Elmira?”
“I guess she's good enough for him. You can run down your own sister all you want to, Jerome Edwards.”
“I am not running her down. I don't deny she's good enough for any man on earth, but not with the kind of goodness that counts. Mother, don't you know that nothing but trouble can come to Elmira from this? ”

“ Jerome laughed awkwardly. Nobody knew how much joy those words of Lawrence Prescott's gave him, and how hard he tried to check the joy, because it should not matter to him except for Elmira's sake.
“Did you ever see a girl with such sweet ways as your sister?” persisted Lawrence.
“Elmira is a good girl,” Jerome admitted, confusedly. He loved his sister, and would have defended her against depreciation with his life, but he compared inwardly, with scorn, her sweet ways with Lucina's.
“There isn't a girl her equal in this world,” cried her lover, enthusiastically. “Don't you say so, Jerome? ”

“ Jerome is wrong to think that he will be able to count upon any weakness on my part, for, not having the rights of a father, I cannot entertain for him the feeling of a father; a father allows himself to be blinded, and it pleases him to be blinded because he identifies his son with himself.... But what am I to Jerome? ”

“ Her skirt was ruffled to her slender waist with tiniest frills of the diaphanous muslin. Elmira in her party gown looked like a double white flower herself.
As for Jerome, he felt awkwardly self-conscious in his new clothes, but bore himself so proudly as to conceal it. It requires genuine valor to overcome new clothes, when one seldom has them. They become, under such circumstances, more than clothes—they are at least skin-deep. However, Jerome had that valor. He had bought a suit of fine blue cloth, and a vest of flowered white satin like a bridegroom's. ”

“ Jerome mocked and taunted me into a fine rage, which he deftly pacified in wonderment at himself. I should never have known him again for the plain Jerome. Arrayed in much the same character of finery which bedecked me, I could give no accurate description of his dress, except that with glossy wig and a bit of colour in his cheeks he strutted valiantly as a crowing cock in his own barnyard.
"Come, Placide, we are going to a ball; we can do nothing in our quest to-night." ”