Chapter 34

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_ Chapter XXXIV

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 shirt-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 fishing-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 peacock, if that poor little girl I married was only alive, and I could buy her a damned 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 hoarse, 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 damned 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 fashion. "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 shore 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 identity 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, passed out of sight, as behind a slanting white curtain. The village houses receded through shifting 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."

Ann was knitting fast, sitting over against a window thick with clinging shreds of snow. Her face was in the shadow, but she looked as if she had been crying. She did not speak when Jerome entered.

"What ails mother?" he whispered to Elmira, following her into the pantry when he had a chance.

"She's been telling a dream she had last night about father, and it made her feel bad. Hush!"

When they were all seated at the supper-table, Ann, of her own accord, began to talk again of her dream.

"I've been tellin' your sister about a dream I had last night," said she, with a curious, tearful defiance, "an' I'm goin' to tell you. It won't hurt you any to have your poor father brought to mind once in a while."

"Of course you can tell it, mother, though I don't need that to bring father to mind. I was thinking about him all the way home," Jerome answered.

"Well, I guess you don't often think about him all the way home. I guess you and your sister both don't think about your poor father, that worked and slaved for you, enough to hurt you. I had a dream last night that I 'ain't been able to get out of my mind all day. I dreamt that I was in this room, an' it was stormin', jest as it is now. I could hear the wind whistlin' an' howlin', an' the windows were all thick with snow. I dreamt I had a little baby in my arms that was sick; it was cryin' an' moanin', an' I was walkin' up an' down, up an' down, tryin' to quiet it. I didn't have my rheumatism, could walk as well as anybody. All of a sudden, as I was walkin', I smelt flowers, an' there on the hearth-stone was a rose-bush, all in bloom. I went up an' picked a rose, an' shook it in the baby's face to please it, an' then I heard a strange noise, that drowned out the wind in the chimney an' the baby's cryin'. It sounded like cattle bellowing, dreadful loud and mournful. I laid the baby down in the rockin'-chair, an' first thing I knew it wasn't there. Instead of it there was a most beautiful bird, like a dove, as white as snow. It flew 'round my head once, and then it was gone. I thought it went up chimney.

"The cattle bellowing sounded nearer, an' I could hear them trampin'. I run to the front door, an' there they were, comin' down the road, hundreds of 'em, horns a-tossin' an' tails a-lashin', flingin' up the snow like water. I clapped to the front door, an' bolted it, an' run into the parlor, an' looked out of the window, an' there on the other side, as plain as I ever see it in my life, was your father's face--there was my husband's face.

"He didn't look a day older than when he left, an' his eyes an' his mouth were smilin' as I hadn't seen 'em since he was a young man.

"'Oh, Able!' says I. 'Oh, Abel!' An' then the face wa'n't there, an' I heard a noise behind me, an' looked around.

"I couldn't believe my eyes when I saw that parlor. All the chairs an' the sofa were covered with my weddin'-dress, that was made over for Elmira; the window-curtains were made of it, an' the table-spread. Thinks I, 'How was there enough of that silk, when we had hard work to get Elmira's dress out?'

"Then I saw, in the middle of the room, a great long thing, all covered over with silk, an' I thought it was a coffin. I went up to it, an' there was Abel's hat on it, the one he wore when he went away. I took the hat off, an' the weddin'-silk, an' there was a coffin.

"I thought it was Abel's. I raised the lid and looked. The coffin was full of beautiful clear water, an' I could see through it the bottom, all covered with bright gold dollars. I leant over it, and there was my own face in the water, jest as plain as in a lookin'-glass, an' there was Abel's beside it. Then I turned around quick, an' there was Abel--there was my husband, standin' there alive an' well. Then I woke up."

Ann ended with a hysterical sob. Jerome and Elmira exchanged terrified glances.

"That was a beautiful dream, mother," Jerome said, soothingly. "Now try to eat your supper."

"It's been so real all day. I feel as if--your father had come an' gone again," Ann sobbed.

"Try and eat some of this milk-toast, mother; it's real nice," urged Elmira.

But Ann could eat no supper. She seemed completely unstrung, for some mysterious reason. They persuaded her to go to bed early; but she was not asleep when they went up-stairs, about ten o'clock, for she called out sharply to know if it was still snowing.

"No, mother," Jerome answered, "I have just looked out, and there are some stars overhead. I guess the storm is over."

"Oh, Jerome, you don't suppose mother is going to be sick, do you?" Elmira whispered, when they were on the stairs.

"No, I guess she's only nervous about her dream. The storm may have something to do with it, too."

"Oh, Jerome, I feel exactly as if something was going to happen!"

"Nonsense," said Jerome, laughing. "You are nervous yourself. I'll give you and mother some valerian, both of you."

"Jerome, I am _sure_ something is going to happen."

"It would be strange if something didn't. Something is happening all over the earth with every breath we draw."

"Jerome, I mean to _us!_"

Jerome gave his sister a little push into her room. "Go to bed, and to sleep," said he, "and leave your door open if you're scared, and I'll leave mine."

Jerome himself could not get to sleep soon; once or twice Elmira spoke to him, and he called back reassuringly, but his own nerves were at a severe tension. "What has got into us all?" he thought, impatiently. It was midnight before he lost himself, and he had slept hardly an hour when he wakened with a great start.

A wild clamor, which made his blood run cold, came from below. He leaped out of bed and pulled on his trousers, hearing all the while, as in a dream, his mother's voice shrilling higher and higher. "Oh, Abel, Abel, Abel! Oh, Abel!"

Elmira, with a shawl over her night-gown, bearing a flaring candle, rushed across the landing from her room. "Oh," she gasped, "what is it? what is it?"

"I guess mother has been dreaming again," Jerome replied, hoarsely, but the thought was in his mind that his mother had gone mad.

"There's--cold air--coming--in," Elmira said, in her straining voice. "The front door is--wide open."

At that Jerome pushed her aside and rushed down the stairs and into the kitchen.

There stood his mother over an old man, seated in her rocking-chair. 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. "Do _you_ see him?" he whispered, sharply, to Elmira.

"Yes; who is it? _Who_ is it?"

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."

At the sound of his voice Ann turned around. "It's your father!" she cried out, sharply--"it's your father come home. Abel, here's the children."

Jerome eyed a small japanned box, or trunk, on the floor, a stout stick, and a handkerchief parcel. He noted then clots of melting snow where the old man had trod. Somehow the sight of the snow did more to restore his faculties than anything else. "For Heaven's sake, let us go to work!" he cried to Elmira, "or he'll die. He's exhausted with tramping through the snow. Get some of that brandy in the cupboard, quick, while I start up the fire."

"Is it father? Oh, Jerome, is it father?"

"Mother says so. Get the brandy, quick."

Jerome stirred the fire into a blaze, and put on the kettle, then he went to his mother and laid his hand on her shoulder. "Now, mother," he said, "he must be put into a warm bed."

"Yes, put him into his own bed--his own bed!" shrieked his mother. "Oh, Abel, dear soul, come and sleep in your own bed again, after all these years! Poor man, poor man, you've got home to your own bed!"

Jerome gave his mother's thin, vibrating shoulder a firm shake. "Mother," he said, "tell me--you must tell me--is this man father?"

"Don't you know him? Don't you know your own father? Look at him." Ann threw back her head and pointed at the old worn face on her breast.

Jerome stared at it. "Where--did he come--from?" he panted.

"I don't know. He's come. Oh, Abel, Abel, you've come home!"

"Give me some of that brandy, quick," Jerome called to Elmira, who stood trembling, holding the bottle and glass. He poured out some brandy, and, with a teaspoon, fed the old man, a few drops at a time. Presently he raised his head feebly, but it sank back. He tried to speak. "Don't try to talk," said Jerome; "wait till you're rested. Mother, let him alone now; sit down there. Elmira, you must try and help me a little."

"If you've got to be helped, I'll help," cried Ann, fiercely.

With that his mother, who had not walked since he could remember, ran into the bedroom, and began spreading the sheets smooth and shaking the pillows.

The old man was a light-weight. Jerome almost carried him into the bedroom, and laid him on the bed. He fed him with more brandy, and put hot-water bottles around him. Presently he breathed evenly in a sweet sleep. Ann sat by his side, holding his hand, and would not stir, though Jerome besought her to go up-stairs to Elmira's room.

"I guess I don't leave him to stray away again," said she.

Out in the kitchen, Elmira pressed close to Jerome. "Is it," she whispered in his ear--"is it father?"

Jerome nodded.

"How do you know?"

"I remember."

"Are you sure?"

"Yes, he's grown old, but I remember."

"Where--did he--come from?"

"I don't know. We must wait till he wakes up."

The brother and sister huddled close together over the fire, and waited. Elmira held Jerome's hand fast in her little cold one.

"What's in that little tin trunk?"

"Hush; I don't know."

"Jerome, mother _walked!_"

"Hush; I saw her."

It was an hour before they heard a sound from the bedroom. Then Ann's voice rang out clearly, and another, husky and feeble, sounded in response. Jerome and Elmira went into the room, and stood beside the bed.

"Here's the children, Abel," said Ann.

The face on the pillow looked stranger than before to Jerome. When half unconscious it had worn a certain stern restraint, which coincided with his old memories; now it was full of an innocent pleasantness, like a child's, which puzzled him. The old man began talking eagerly too, and Jerome remembered his father as very slow-spoken, though it might have been the slowness of self-control, not temperament.

"How they've grown!" he said, looking at his children and then at Ann. "That's Jerome, and that's Elmira. How I've lotted on this day." He held out a feeble hand; Elmira took it, timidly, then leaned over and kissed him. Jerome took it then, and it seemed to him like a hand from the grave. His doubt passed; he knew that this man was his father.

"I hadn't got asleep," Ann said; "I was thinkin' about him. I heard somebody at the front door; I got up and went; I knew it was him."

The old man smiled at them all. "I'll tell you where I've been," he said. "It won't take long. I was behindhand in that interest money. I couldn't earn enough to get ahead nohow. I was nothin' but a drag on you all, nothin' but a drag. All of a sudden, that day when I went away, I reasoned of it out. Says I, that mortgage will be foreclosed; my stayin' where I be won't make no difference about that. I ain't doin' anythin' for my family, anyway. I'm wore out tryin', and it's no use. If I go away, I can do more for 'em than if I stay. I can save every cent I earn, till I get enough to pay that mortgage up. I'll get a chance that way to do somethin' for 'em. So I went."

The utter inconsequence of his father's reasoning struck Jerome like a chill. "His mind isn't just right," he thought.

"Where did you go, Abel?" asked his mother.

"To West Linfield."

"What!" cried Jerome. "That's only twenty miles away."

Abel Edwards laughed with child-like cunning. "I know it," he said. "I went to work on Jabez Summers's farm there. It's way up the hill-road; nobody ever came there that knew me. I took another name, too--called myself Ephraim Green. I've saved up fifteen hundred dollars. It's there in that little tin chist. I bought that of Summers for a shillin', to keep my money in. There's five hundred in gold, an' the rest in bank-bills. You needn't worry now, mother. We'll pay that mortgage up to-morrow."

"The mortgage is all paid. We've paid it, Abel," cried Ann.

"Paid! The mortgage ain't paid!"

"Yes, we've paid it. We all earnt money an' paid it."

"Then we can keep the money," said the old man, happily. "We can keep it, mother; I thought it would go kinder hard partin' with it. I've worked so hard to save it. I 'ain't had many clothes, an' I 'ain't ever been to meetin' lately, my coat got so ragged."

Elmira was crying.

"How did you get here to-night, father?" Jerome asked, huskily.

"I walked from West Linfield; started yesterday afternoon. I come as far as Westbrook, an' it began to snow. I put up at Hayes's Tavern."

"At Hayes's Tavern, with all that money!" exclaimed Elmira.

"Why, ain't they honest there?" asked the old man, quickly.

"Yes, father, they're all right, I guess. Go on."

"They seemed real honest," said his father. "I told 'em all about it, and they acted real interested. Mis' Hayes she fried me some slapjacks for supper. I had a good room, with a man who was goin' to Boston this mornin'. He started afore light; he was gone when I woke up. I stayed there till afternoon, then I started out. I got a lift as far as the Corners, then I walked a spell and went into a house, where they give me some supper, and give me another lift as far as the Stone Hill Meetin'-house. I've been trampin' since. It was ruther hard, on account of the roads bein' some drifted, but it's stopped snowin'."

"Why didn't you come on the coach, Abel, when you had all that money?" asked Ann, pitifully. "I wonder it hadn't killed you."

"Do you suppose I was goin' to spend that money for coach hire? You dun'no' how awful hard it come, mother," replied the old man. He closed his eyes as he spoke; he was weary almost to death.

"He'll go to sleep again if you don't talk, mother," Jerome whispered.

"Well, I'll lay down side of him, an' mebbe we'll both go to sleep," his mother said, with a strange docility. Jerome assisted her into the bed, then he and Elmira went back to the kitchen.

Jerome motioned to Elmira to be quiet, and cautiously lifted the little japanned trunk and passed it from one hand to the other, as if testing its weight. Elmira watched him with her bewildered, tearful eyes. Finally he tiptoed softly out with it, motioning her to follow with the candle. They went into the icy parlor and closed the door.

"What's the matter, Jerome?" Elmira whispered.

"I'm afraid there may be something wrong with the money. I'm going to find it out before he does, if there is."

There was a little padlock on the trunk, but it was tied together with a bit of leather shoestring, not locked. Jerome took out his jack-knife, cut the string, and opened the trunk. Elmira held the candle while he examined the contents. There was a large old wallet stuffed with bank-notes, also several parcels of them tied up carefully.

"It's just as I thought," Jerome muttered.

"What?"

"Some of the money is gone. The gold isn't here. It might have been the man who roomed with him at Hayes's Tavern. There have been queer things done there before now. All I wonder is, he didn't take it all."

"Oh, Jerome, it isn't gone?"

"Yes, the gold is gone. Here is the bag it was in. The thief left that. Suppose he thought he might be traced by it."

"Oh, poor father, poor father, what will he do!" moaned Elmira.

"He'll do nothing. He'll never know it," said Jerome.

"What do you mean?"

"Wait here a minute." Jerome went noiselessly out of the room and up-stairs. He returned soon with a leathern bag, which he carried with great caution. "I'm trying to keep this from jingling," he whispered.

"Oh, Jerome, what is it?"

Jerome laughed and untied the mouth of the bag. "You must help me put it into the other bag; every dollar will have to be counted out separately."

"Oh, Jerome, is it money you've saved?"

"Yes; and don't you ever tell of it to either of them, or anybody else, as long as you live. I guess poor father sha'n't know he's lost any of his money he's worked so hard to get, if I can help it." _

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