"IANTHY!"
It was later than usual when Louisiana awakened in the morning. She
awakened suddenly and found herself listening to the singing of a bird
on the tree near her window. Its singing was so loud and shrill that
it overpowered her and aroused her to a consciousness of fatigue and
exhaustion.
It seemed to her at first that no one was stirring in the house below,
but after a few minutes she heard some one talking in her father's
room--talking rapidly in monotonous tone.
"I wonder who it is," she said, and lay back upon her pillow, feeling
tired out and bewildered between the bird's shrill song and the strange
voice.
And then she heard heavy feet on the stairs and listened to them
nervously until they reached her door and the door was pushed open
unceremoniously.
The negro woman Nancy thrust her head into the room.
"Miss Louisianny, honey," she said. "Ye aint up yet?"
"No."
"Ye'd better _git_ up, honey--an' come down stairs."
But the girl made no movement.
"Why?" she asked, listlessly.
"Yer pappy, honey--he's sorter cur'us. He don't seem to be right well.
He didn't seem to be quite at hisself when I went to light his fire.
He----"
Louisiana sat upright in bed, her great coil of black hair tumbling
over one shoulder and making her look even paler than she was.
"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 buttoning her wrapper at the throat. Such a tremor fell
upon her that she could not finish what she was doing. She left the
button 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 'cumylatin' 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.