Jerome, A Poor Man Part 9

She beckoned her brother out of the room the first chance she got, and questioned him.

"What ails mother?" she whispered, out in the woodshed, holding to the edge of his jacket and looking at him with piteous, scared eyes.

Jerome stood with his shoulders back, and seemed to look down at her from his superior height of courageous spirit, though she was as tall as he.

"She's come to herself," said Jerome.

"She wasn't ever like this before."

"Yes, she was--inside. She ain't anything but a woman. She's come to herself."

Elmira began to sob nervously, still holding to her brother's jacket, not trying to hide her convulsed little face. "I don't care, she scares me," she gasped, under her breath, lest her mother hear. "She ain't any way I've ever seen her. I'm 'fraid she's goin' to be crazy.

I'm dreadful 'fraid mother's goin' to be crazy, Jerome."

"No, she ain't," said Jerome. "She's just come to herself, I tell you."

"Father's dead and mother's crazy, and Doctor Prescott has got the mortgage," wailed Elmira, in an utter rebellion of grief.

Jerome caught her by the arm and pulled her after him at a run, out of the shed, into the cool spring morning air. So early in the day, with no stir of life except the birds in sight or sound, the new gra.s.s and flowering branches and blooming distances seemed like the unreal heaven of a dream; and, indeed, nothing save their own dire strait of life was wholly tangible and met them but with shocks of unfamiliar things.

Jerome, out in the yard, took his sister by both arms, piteously slender and cold through their thin gingham sleeves, and shook her hard, and shook her again.

"Jerome Edwards, what--you doin'--so--for?" she gasped.

"'Ain't you got anything to you? 'Ain't you got anything to you at all?" said Jerome, fiercely.

"I--don't know what you mean! Don't, Jerome--don't! Oh, Jerome, I'm 'fraid you're crazy, like mother?"

"'Ain't you got enough to you," said Jerome, still shaking her as if she had not spoken, "to control your feelin's and do up the housework nice, and not kill mother?"

"Yes, I will--I'll be just as good as I can. You know I will. Don't, Jerome! I 'ain't cried before mother this mornin'. You know I 'ain't."

"You cried loud enough, just now in the shed, so she could hear you."

"I won't again. Don't, Jerome!"

"You're 'most a grown-up woman," said Jerome, ceasing to shake his sister, but holding her firm, and looking at her with sternly admonishing eyes. "You're 'most as old as I be, and I've got to take care of you all. It's time you showed it if there's anything to you."

"Oh, Jerome, you look just like father," whispered Elmira, suddenly, with awed, fascinated eyes on his face.

"Now you go in and wash up the dishes, and sweep the kitchen, and make up the beds, and don't you cry before mother or say anything to pester her," said Jerome.

"What you goin' to do, Jerome?" Elmira asked, timidly.

"I'm goin' to take care of the horse and finish plantin' them beans first."

"What you goin' to do then?"

"Somethin'--you wait and see." Jerome spoke with his first betrayal of boyish weakness, for a certain importance crept into his tone.

Elmira instinctively recognized it, and took advantage of it. "Ain't you goin' to ask mother, Jerome Edwards?" she said.

"I'm goin' to do what's best," answered Jerome; and again that uncanny gravity of authority which so awed her was in his face.

When he again bade her go into the house and do as he said, she obeyed with a longing, incredulous look at him.

Jerome had not eaten much breakfast; indeed, he had not finished when Elmira had beckoned him out. But he said to himself that he did not want any more--he would go straight about his tasks.

Jerome, striking out through the dewy wind of foot-path towards the old barn, heard suddenly a voice calling him by name. It was a voice as low and heavy as a man's, but had a nervous feminine impulse in it. "Jerome!" it called. "Jerome Edwards!"

Jerome turned, and saw Paulina Maria coming up the road, walking with a firm, swaying motion of her whole body from her feet, her cotton draperies blowing around her like sheathing-leaves.

Jerome stood still a minute, watching her; then he went back to the house, to the door, and stationed himself before it. He stood there like a sentinel when Paulina Maria drew near. The meaning of war was in his shoulder, his expanded boyish chest, his knitted brows, set chin and mouth, and unflinching eyes; he needed only a sword or gun to complete the picture.

Paulina Maria stopped, and looked at him with haughty wonder. She was not yet intimidated, but she was surprised, and stirred with rising indignation.

"How's your mother this morning, Jerome?" said she.

"Well 's she can be," replied Jerome, gruffly, with a wary eye upon her skirts when they swung out over her advancing knee; for Paulina Maria was minded to enter the house with no further words of parley.

He gathered himself up, in all his new armor of courage and defiance, and stood firm in her path.

"I'm going in to see your mother," said Paulina Maria, looking at him as if she suspected she did not understand aright.

"No, you ain't," returned Jerome.

"What do you mean?"

"You ain't goin' in to see my mother this mornin'."

"Why not, I'd like to know?"

"She's got to be kept still and not see anybody but us, or she'll be sick."

"I guess it won't hurt her any to see me." Paulina Maria turned herself sidewise, thrust out a sharp elbow, and prepared to force herself betwixt Jerome and the door-post like a wedge.

"You stand back!" said Jerome, and fixed his eyes upon her face.

Paulina Maria turned pale. "What do you mean, actin' so?" she said, again. "Did your mother tell you not to let me in?"

"Mother's got to be kept still and not see anybody but us, or she'll be sick. I ain't goin' to have anybody come talkin' to her to-day,"

said Jerome, with his eyes still fixed upon Paulina Maria's face.

Paulina Maria was like a soldier whose courage is invincible in all tried directions. Up to all the familiar and registered batteries of life she could walk without flinching, and yield to none; but here was something new, which savored perchance of the uncanny, and a power not of the legitimate order of things. There was something frightful and abnormal to her in Jerome's pale face, which did not seem his own, his young eyes full of authority of age, and the intimation of repelling force in his slight, childish form.

Paulina Maria might have driven a fierce watch-dog from her path with her intrepid will; she might have pushed aside a stouter arm in her way; but this defence, whose persistence in the face of apparent feebleness seemed to indicate some supernatural power, made her quail. From her spare diet and hard labor, from her cleanliness and rigid holding to one line of thought and life, the veil of flesh and grown thin and transparent, like any ascetic's of old, and she was liable to a ready conception of the abnormal and supernatural.

With one half-stern, half-fearful glance at the forbidding child in her path, she turned about and went away, pausing, however, in the vantage-point of the road and calling back in an indignant voice, which trembled slightly, "You needn't think you're goin' to send folks home this way many times, Jerome Edwards!" Then, with one last baffled glance at the pale, strange little figure in the Edwards door, she went home, debating grimly with herself over her weakness and her groundless fear.