Part 7 (1/2)
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 fas.h.i.+on, 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 wors.h.i.+p 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 suns.h.i.+ne, 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 nights.h.i.+rt, 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-fas.h.i.+oned 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.