Old Lady Number 31 Part 7

Before Angy could make any reply, Blossy called to the couple softly but insistently from the foot of the stairs; and Angy, wrenching herself free, hastened down the steps, for once in her life glad to get away from Abe. He lost no time in following. No matter where Angy went, he would follow until all was well between her and him again.

But what was this? At the landing, Angy halted and so did Abe, for in the center of the sisters stood Blossy with her Sunday bonnet perched on her silver-gold hair and her white India shawl over her shoulders, and beside Blossy stood Captain Samuel Darby with a countenance exceedingly radiant, his hand clasped fast in that of the aged beauty.

"Oh, hurry, Sister Angy and Brother Abe!" called Blossy. "We were waiting for you, and I've got some news for all my friends." She waited smilingly for them to join the others; then with a gesture which included every member of the household, she proceeded: "The pink tea, I want you all to know, had a double significance, and first, of course, it was to celebrate the anniversary of Brother Abe's sojourn with us; but next it was my farewell to the Home." Here Blossy gurgled and gave the man at her right so coy a glance that Samuel's face flamed red and he hung his head lower to one side than usual, like a little boy that had been caught stealing apples. "I left the tea a trifle early--you must forgive me, Brother Abe, but I heard the train-whistle." Abe stood beside Angeline, rooted in astonishment, while Blossy continued to address him directly. "You gave Samuel so many good recommendations, dear brother, that when the time approached for his June visit, I felt that I simply could not let him miss it as he did in December. Last year, on the day you entered, he was here through no desire of mine.

To-day he is here at my request. My friends," again she included the entire Home in her glance, "we'll come back a little later to say Good-by. Now, we're on the way to the minister's."

The pair, Samuel tongue-tied and bewildered by the joy of his finally won success, moved toward the door. On the threshold of the Home Blossy turned and waved farewell to the companions of her widowhood, while Samuel bowed in a dazed fashion, his face still as red as it was blissful. Then quickly the two pa.s.sed out upon the porch. No one moved to see them off. Abe looked everywhere yet nowhere at all. Not a word was spoken even when the carriage was heard rolling down the drive; but the sound of the wheels seemed to arouse Angy from her stupor of amazement; and presently Abraham became conscious of a touch,--a touch sympathetic, tender and true,--a touch all-understanding--the touch of Angy's hand within his own.

X

THE TURN OF THE TIDE

From time immemorial the history of the popular hero has ever been the same. To king and patriot, to the favorite girl at school and the small boy who is leader of the "gang," to politician, to preacher, to actor and author, comes first worship then eclipse. The great Napoleon did not escape this common fate; and the public idol who was kissed only yesterday for his gallant deeds is scorned to-day for having permitted the kissing. Oh, caprice of the human heart! Oh, cry of the race for the unaccustomed!

From that first anniversary of his entrance into the Home, Abraham felt his popularity decrease--in fact more than decrease. He saw the weather-vane go square about, and where he had known for three hundred and sixty-five days the gentle, balmy feel of the southwest zephyr, he found himself standing of a sudden in a cold, bleak northeast wind. The change bewildered the old man, and reacted on his disposition. As he had blossomed in the sunshine, so now he began to droop in the shade.

Feeling that he was suspected and criticized, he began to grow suspicious and fault-finding himself. His old notion that he had no right to take a woman's place in the Inst.i.tution came back to his brain, and he would brood over it for hours at a time, sitting out on the porch with his pipe and Angy.

The old wife grieved to think that Father was growing old and beginning to show his years. She made him some tansy tea, but neither her persuasions nor those of the whole household could induce him to take it. He had never liked "doctoring" anyway, although he had submitted to it more or less during the past year in unconscious subservience to his desire to increase his popularity; but now he fancied that where once he had been served as a king by all these female attendants, he was simply being "pestered" as a punishment for his past behavior with Blossy. Ah, with its surprising ending that had been a humiliating affair; and he felt too that he would be long in forgiving Mrs. Darby for not having confided to him her actual intentions. Now he was afraid to be decently courteous to one of the sisters for fear that they might accuse him of light dalliance again; and he scarcely ever addressed the new member who came to take Blossy's little room, for he had been cut to the quick by her look of astonishment when she was told that he belonged there.

In his mental ferment the old man began to nag at Angy. Sad though it is to confess of a hero honestly loved, Abraham had nagged a little all his married life when things went wrong. And Angeline, fretted and nervous, herself worried almost sick over Father's condition, was guilty once in a while out of the depths of her anxiety of nagging back again. So do we hurt those whom we love best as we would and could hurt no other.

"I told yer I never could stand it here amongst all these dratted women-folks," Abe would declare. "It's all your fault that I didn't go to the poorhouse in peace."

"I notice yew didn't raise no objections until yew'd lived here a year,"

Angy would retort; but ignoring this remark, he would go on:

"It's 'Brother Abe' this an' 'Brother Abe' that! as ef I had thirty wives a-pesterin' me instid of one. I can't kill a fly but it's 'Brother Abe, lemme bury him fer yew.' Do yer all think I be a baby?" demanded the old gentleman with glaring eye. "I guess I'm able ter do somethin'

fer myself once in a while. I hain't so old as some folks might think,"

he continued with superb inconsistence. "I be a mere child compared with that air plagued Nancy Smith."

It took very little to exhaust Angy's ability for this style of repartee, and she would rejoin with tender but mistaken efforts to soothe and comfort him:

"Thar, thar, Father! don't git excited neow. Seems ter me ye 're a leetle bit feverish. Ef only yew 'd take this here tansy tea."

Abraham would give one exasperated glance at the tin cup and mutter into the depths of his beard:

"Tansy tea an' old women! Old women an' tansy tea! Tansy tea be durned!"

Abe failed perceptibly during the summer, grew feebler as the autumn winds blew in, and by November he took to his bed and the physician of the Home, a little whiffet of a pompous idiot, was called to attend him.

The doctor, determined at the start to make a severe case of the old man's affliction in order that he might have the greater glory in the end, be it good or bad, looked very grave over Abraham's tongue and pulse, prescribed medicine for every half-hour, and laid especial stress upon the necessity of keeping the patient in bed.

"Humbug!" growled the secretly terrified invalid, and in an excess of bravado took his black silk necktie from where it hung on the bedpost and tied it in a bow-knot around the collar of his pink-striped nightshirt, so that he would be in proper shape to receive any of the sisters. Then he lay very still, his eyes closed, as they came tiptoeing in and out. Their tongues were on gentle tiptoe too, although not so gentle but that he could hear them advising: one, a "good, stiff mustard plaster"; one, an "onion poultice"; another, a "Spanish blister"; while Aunt Nancy stopped short of nothing less than "old-fashioned bleeding."

Abe lay very still and wondered if they meant to kill him. He was probably going to die anyhow, so why torment him. Only when he was dead, he hoped that they would think more kindly of him. And so surrounded yet alone, the old man fought his secret terror until mercifully he went to sleep.

When he awoke there were the sisters again; and day after day they spent their combined efforts in keeping him on his back and forcing him to take his medicine, the only appreciable good resulting therefrom being the fact that with this tax upon their devotion the old ladies came once more to regard Abe as the most precious possession of the Home.

"What ef he should die?" they whispered among themselves, repentant enough of their late condemnation of him and already desolate at the thought of his leaving this little haven with them for the "great haven"

over there; and the whisper reaching the sickroom, Abe's fever would rise, while he could never lift his lashes except to see the specter of helpless old age on one side of the bed and death upon the other.

"What's the matter with me?" he demanded of the doctor, as one who would say: "Pooh! pooh! You're a humbug! What do you mean by keeping me in bed?" Yet the old man was trembling with that inner fear. The physician, a feminine kind of a bearded creature himself, took Abe's hand in his--an engaging trick he had with the old ladies.

"Now, my friend, do not distress yourself. Of course, you are a very sick man; I cannot deceive you as to that; but during my professional career, I have seen some remarkable cases of recovery and--"

"But what's the matter with me?" broke in Abe, by this time fairly white with fear. The doctor had a.s.sured him that all his organs were sound, so he could only conclude that he must have one of those unusual diseases such as Miss Abigail was reading about in the paper yesterday.

Maybe, although his legs were so thin to-day, he was on the verge of an attack of elephantiasis!

"What's the matter with me?" he repeated, his eyes growing wilder and wilder.

What the doctor really replied would be difficult to tell; but out of the confusion of his technicalities Abe caught the words, "nerves" and "hysteria."

"Mother, yew hear that?" he cried. "I got narvous hysterics. I told yer somethin' would happen ter me a-comin' to this here place. All them old woman's diseases is ketchin'. Why on 'arth didn't yer let me go to the poorhouse?"

He fell back on the pillow and drew the bedclothes up to his ears, while Angy followed the doctor out into the hall to receive, as Abe supposed, a more detailed description of his malady. He felt too weak, however, to question Angy when she returned, and stubbornly kept his eyes closed until he heard Mrs. Homan tiptoe into the room to announce in hushed tones that Blossy and Samuel Darby were below, and Samuel wanted to know if he might see the invalid.

Then Abe threw off the covers in a hurry and sat up. "Sam'l Darby?" he asked, the strength coming back into his voice. "A man! Nary a woman ner a doctor! Yes--yes, show him up!"

Angy nodded in response to Mrs. Homan's glance of inquiry; for had not the doctor told her that it would not hasten the end to humor the patient in any reasonable whim? And she also consented to withdraw when Abe informed her that he wished to be left alone with his visitor, as it was so long since he had been face to face with a man "an' no petticoat a-hangin' 'round the corner."

"Naow, be keerful, Cap'n Darby," the little mother-wife cautioned at the door, "be very keerful. Don't stay tew long an' don't rile him up, fer he's dretful excited, Abe is."

XI

MENTAL TREATMENT

Little Samuel Darby paused at the foot of the bed and stared at Abe without saying a word, while Abe fixed his dim, distressed eyes on his visitor with a dumb appeal for a.s.sistance. Samuel looked a very different man from the old bachelor who used to come a-wooing every six months at the Home. Either marriage had brought him a new growth of hair, or else Blossy had selected a new wig for him--a modest, close, iron-gray which fitted his poll to perfection. Marriage or Blossy had also overcome in Samuel that tendency to hang his head "to starb'd"; and now he lifted his bright eyes with the manner of one who would say:

"See! I'm king of myself and my household! Behold what one woman has done for me!" And in turn Abe's unstrung vigor and feeble dependence cried out as loudly: "I haven't a leg left to stand on. Behold what too much woman has done for me!"

"Ain't yew a-goin' ter shake hands?" inquired Abraham at last, wondering at the long silence and the incomprehensible stare, his fears accentuated by this seeming indication of a supreme and hopeless pity.

"Ain't yew a-goin' ter shake hands? Er be yew afeard of ketchin' it, tew?"

For a moment longer Samuel continued to stare, then of a sudden he roared, "Git up!"

"Huh?" queried Abe, not believing his own ears. "Why, Cap'n Sam'l, don't yew know that I'm a doomed man? I got the 'narvous hysterics.'"

"Yew got the pip!" retorted Captain Darby contemptuously, and trotting quickly around to the side of the bed, he seized Abe by the shoulders and began to drag him out upon the floor, crying again, "Git up!"

The sick man could account for this remarkable behavior in no way except by concluding that his old captain had gone into senile dementia--oh, cruel, cruel afflictions that life brings to old folks when life is almost done! Well, thought Abe, he would rather be sick and die in his right mind than go crazy. He began to whimper, whereupon Samuel threw him back upon his pillows in disgust.

"Cryin'! Oh, I swan, he's cryin'!" Darby gave a short laugh pregnant with scorn. "Abe Rose, dew yew know what ails yew?" he demanded fixing his eyes fiercely upon the invalid. "Dew yew know what'll happen tew yew ef yew don't git out o' this bed an' this here house? Either yer beard'll fall out an' yew'll dwindle deown ter the size o' a baby or yew'll turn into a downright old woman--Aunt Abraham!--won't that sound nice? Or yew'll die or yew'll go crazy. _Git out er bed!_"