"Father!" she said. "He was quite well late last night. It was after midnight when we went to bed, and he was well then."
The woman began to fumble uneasily at the latch.
"Don"t ye git skeered, chile," she said. "Mebbe "taint nothin"--but seemed to me like--like he didn"t know me."
Louisiana was out of bed, standing upon the floor and dressing hurriedly.
"He was well last night," she said, piteously. "Only a few hours ago.
He was well and talked to me and----"
She stopped suddenly to listen to the voice down-stairs--a new and terrible thought flashing upon her.
"Who is with him?" she asked. "Who is talking to him?"
"Thar aint no one with him," was the answer. "He"s by hisself, honey."
Louisiana was b.u.t.toning her wrapper at the throat. Such a tremor fell upon her that she could not finish what she was doing. She left the b.u.t.ton unfastened and pushed past Nancy and ran swiftly down the stairs, the woman following her.
The door of her father"s room stood open and the fire Nancy had lighted burned and crackled merrily. Mr. Rogers was lying high upon his pillow, watching the blaze. His face was flushed and he had one hand upon his chest. He turned his eyes slowly upon Louisiana as she entered and for a second or so regarded her wonderingly. Then a change came upon him, his face lighted up--it seemed as if he saw all at once who had come to him.
"Ianthy!" he said. "I didn"t sca"cely know ye! Ye"ve bin gone so long! Whar hev ye bin?"
But even then she could not realize the truth. It was so short a time since he had bidden her good-night and kissed her at the door.
"Father!" she cried. "It is Louisiana! Father, look at me!"
But he was looking at her, and yet he only smiled again.
"It"s bin such a long time, Ianthy," he said. "Sometimes I"ve thought ye wouldn"t never come back at all."
And when she fell upon her knees at the bedside, with a desolate cry of terror and anguish, he did not seem to hear it at all, but lay fondling her bent head and smiling still, and saying happily:
"Lord! I _am_ glad to see ye!"
When the doctor came--he was a mountaineer like the rest of them, a rough good-natured fellow who had "read a course" with somebody and ""tended lectures in Cincinnatty"--he could tell her easily enough what the trouble was.
"Pneumony," he said. "And pretty bad at that. He haint hed no health fer a right smart while. He haint never got over thet spell he hed last winter. This yere change in the weather"s what"s done it. He was a-complainin" to me the other day about thet thar old pain in his chist. Things hes bin kinder "c.u.mylatin" on him."
"He does not know me!" said Louisiana. "He is very ill--he is very ill!"
Doctor Hankins looked at his patient for a moment, dubiously.
"Wa-al, thet"s so," he said, at length. "He"s purty bad off--purty bad!"
By night the house was full of visitors and volunteer nurses. The fact that "Uncle Elbert Rogers was down with pneumony, an" Louisianny thar without a soul anigh her" was enough to rouse sympathy and curiosity.
Aunt "Mandy, Aunt Ca"line and Aunt "Nervy came up one after the other.
"Louisianny now, she aint nothin" but a young thing, an" don"t know nothin"," they said. "An" Elbert bein" sich nigh kin, it"d look powerful bad if we didn"t go."
They came in wagons or ricketty buggies and brought their favorite medicines and liniments with them in slab-sided, enamel-cloth valises.
They took the patient under their charge, applied their nostrums and when they were not busy seemed to enjoy talking his symptoms over in low tones. They were very good to Louisiana, relieving her of every responsibility in spite of herself, and shaking their heads at each other pityingly when her back was turned.
"She never give him no trouble," they said. "She"s got thet to hold to. An" they was powerful sot on her, both him an" Ianthy. I"ve heern "em say she allus was kinder tender an" easy to manage."
Their husbands came to "sit up" with them at night, and sat by the fire talking about their crops and the elections, and expectorating with regularity into the ashes. They tried to persuade Louisiana to go to bed, but she would not go.
"Let me sit by him, if there is nothing else I can do," she said. "If he should come to himself for a minute he would know me if I was near him."
In his delirium he seemed to have gone back to a time before her existence--the time when he was a young man and there was no one in the new house he had built, but himself and "Ianthy." Sometimes he fancied himself sitting by the fire on a winter"s night and congratulating himself upon being there.
"Jest to think," he would say in a quiet, speculative voice, "that two year ago I didn"t know ye--an" thar ye air, a-sittin" sewin", and the fire a-cracklin", an" the house all fixed. This yere"s what I call solid comfort, Ianthy--jest solid comfort!"
Once he wakened suddenly from a sleep and finding Louisiana bending over him, drew her face down and kissed her.
"I didn"t know ye was so nigh, Ianthy," he whispered. "Lord! jest to think yer allers nigh an" thar cayn"t nothin" separate us."
The desolateness of so living a life outside his, was so terrible to the poor child who loved him, that at times she could not bear to remain in the room, but would go out into the yard and ramble about aimless and heart-broken, looking back now and then at the new, strange house, with a wild pang.
"There will be nothing left if he leaves me," she said. "There will be nothing."
And then she would hurry back, panting, and sit by him again, her eyes fastened upon his unconscious face, watching its every shade of expression and change.
"She"ll take it mighty hard," she heard Aunt Ca"line whisper one day, "ef----"
And she put her hands to her ears and buried her face in the pillow, that she might not hear the rest.
CHAPTER XVI.
"DON"T DO NO ONE A ONJESTICE."
He was not ill very long. Toward the end of the second week the house was always full of visitors who came to sympathize and inquire and prescribe, and who, in many cases, came from their farms miles away attracted by the news that "Uncle Elbert Rogers" was "mighty bad off."
They came on horseback and in wagons or buggies--men in homespun, and women in sun-bonnets--and they hitched their horses at the fence and came into the house with an awkwardly subdued air, and stood in silence by the sick bed for a few minutes, and then rambled towards the hearth and talked in spectral whispers.
"The old man"s purty low," they always said, "he"s purty low." And then they added among themselves that he had "allers bin mighty clever, an" a good neighbor."
When she heard them speak of him in this manner, Louisiana knew what it meant. She never left the room again after the first day that they spoke so, and came in bodies to look at him, and turn away and say that he had been good to them. The men never spoke to her after their first nod of greeting, and the women but rarely, but they often glanced hurriedly askance at her as she sat or stood by the sick man"s pillow.
Somehow none of them had felt as if they were on very familiar terms with her, though they all spoke in a friendly way of her as being "a mighty purty, still, kind o" a harmless young critter." They thought, when they saw her pallor and the anguish in her eyes, that she was "takin" it powerful hard, an" no wonder," but they knew nothing of her desperate loneliness and terror.
"Uncle Elbert he"ll leave a plenty," they said in undertones. "She"ll be well pervided fer, will Louisianny."
And they watched over their charge and nursed him faithfully, feeling not a little sad themselves as they remembered his simple good nature and neighborliness and the kindly prayers for which he had been noted in "meetin"."
On the last day of the second week the doctor held a consultation with Aunt "Nervy and Aunt Ca"line on the front porch before he went away, and when they re-entered the room they spoke in whispers even lower than before and moved about stealthily. The doctor himself rode away slowly and stopped at a house or so on the wayside, where he had no patients, to tell the inhabitants what he had told the head nurses.
"We couldn"t hev expected him to stay allers," he said, "but we"ll miss him mightily. He haint a enemy in the county--nary one!"