"Jane!"
"Yes, father."
"Is the house locked up?"
"Yes."
"Are ye sure, now?"
"Why, yes, dear; I just did it."
"Well, won't ye see?"
"But I have seen, father." Jane did not often make so many words about
this little matter, but she was particularly tired to-night.
The old man fell back wearily.
"Seems ter me, Jane, ye might jest see," he fretted. "'T ain't much I'm
askin' of ye, an' ye know them spoons--"
"Yes, yes, dear, I'll go," interrupted the woman hurriedly.
"And, Jane!"
"Yes." The woman turned and waited. She knew quite well what was coming,
but it was the very exquisiteness of her patient care that allowed her
to give no sign that she had waited in that same spot to hear those same
words every night for long years past.
"An' ye might count 'em--them spoons," said the old man.
"Yes."
"An' the forks."
"Yes."
"An' them photygraph pictures in the parlor."
"All right, father." The woman turned away. Her step was slow, but
confident--the last word had been said.
To Jane Pendergast her father had gone with the going of his keen, clear
mind, twenty years before. This fretful, childish, exacting old man that
pottered about the house all day was but the shell that had held the
kernel--the casket that had held the jewel. But because of what it had
held, Jane guarded it tenderly, laying at its feet her life as a willing
sacrifice.
There had been four children: Edgar, the eldest; Jane, Mary, and Fred.
Edgar had left home early, and was a successful business man in Boston.
Mary had married a wealthy lawyer of the same city; and Fred had opened
a real estate office in a thriving Southern town.
Jane had stayed at home. There had been a time, it is true, when she had
planned to go away to school; but the death of Mrs. Pendergast left no
one at home to care for Mary and Fred, so Jane had abandoned the idea.
Later, after Mary had married and Fred had gone away, there was still
her father to be cared for, though at this time he was well and strong.
Jane had passed her thirty-fifth birthday, when she became palpitatingly
aware of a pair of blue-gray eyes, and a determined, smooth-shaven chin
belonging to the recently arrived principal of the village school. In
spite of her stern admonition to herself to remember her years and not
quite lose her head, she was fast drifting into a rosy dream of romance
that was all the more enthralling because so belated, when the summons
of a small boy brought her sharply back to the realities.
"It's yer father, miss. They want ye ter come," he panted. "Somethin'
has took him. He's in Mackey's drug store, talkin' awful queer. He ain't
his self, ye know. They thought maybe you could--do somethin'."
Jane went at once--but she could do nothing except to lead gently home
the chattering, shifting-eyed thing that had once been her father. One
after another the village physicians shook their heads--they could do
nothing. Skilled alienists from the city--they, too, could do nothing.
There was nothing that could be done, they said, except to care for him
as one would for a child. He would live years, probably. His
constitution was wonderfully good. He would not be violent--just foolish
and childish, with perhaps a growing irritability as the years passed
and his physical strength failed.
Mary and Edgar had come home at once. Mary had stayed two days and Edgar
five hours. They were shocked and dismayed at their father's condition.
So overwhelmed with grief were they, indeed, that they fled from the
room almost immediately upon seeing him, and Edgar took the first train
out of town.
Mary, shiveringly, crept from room to room, trying to find a place where
the cackling laugh and the fretful voice would not reach her. But the
old man, like a child with a new toy, was pleased at his daughter's
arrival, and followed her about the house with unfailing persistence.
"But, Mary, he won't hurt you. Why do you run?" remonstrated Jane.
Mary shuddered and covered her face with her hands.
"Jane, Jane, how can you take it so calmly!" she moaned. "How can you
bear it?"
There was a moment's pause. A curious expression had come to Jane's
face.
"Some one--has to," she said at last, quietly.
Jane went down to the village the next afternoon, leaving her sister in
charge at home. When she returned, an hour later, Mary met her at the
gate, crying and wringing her hands.
"Jane, Jane, I thought you would never come! I can't do a thing with
him. He insists that he isn't at home, and that he wants to go there. I
told him, over and over again, that he _was_ at home already, but
it didn't do a bit of good. I've had a perfectly awful time."
"Yes, I know. Where is he?"
"In the kitchen. I--I tied him. He just would go, and I couldn't hold
him."
"Oh, _Mary_!" And Jane fairly flew up the walk to the kitchen door.
A minute later she appeared, leading an old man, who was whimpering
pitifully.
"Home, Jane. I want ter go home."
"Yes, dear, I know. We'll go." And Mary watched with wondering eyes
while the two walked down the path, through the gate and across the
street to the next corner, then slowly crossed again and came back
through the familiar doorway.
"Home!" chuckled the old man gleefully.
"We've come home!"
Mary went back to Boston the next day. She said it was fortunate,
indeed, that Jane's nerves were so strong. For her part, she could not
have stood it another day.
The days slipped into weeks, and the weeks into months. Jane took the
entire care of her father, except that she hired a woman to come in for
an hour or two once or twice a week, when she herself was obliged to
leave the house.
The owner of the blue-gray eyes did not belie the determination of his
chin, but made a valiant effort to establish himself on the basis of the
old intimacy; but Miss Pendergast held herself sternly aloof, and
refused to listen to him. In a year he had left town--but it was not his
fault that he was obliged to go away alone, as Jane Pendergast well
knew.
One by one the years passed. Twenty had gone by now since the small boy
came with his fateful summons that June day. Jane was fifty-five now, a
thin-faced, stoop-shouldered, tired woman--but a woman to whom release
from this constant care was soon to come, for she was not yet fifty-six
when her father died.
All the children and some of the grandchildren came to the funeral. In
the evening the family, with the exception of Jane, gathered in the
sitting-room and discussed the future, while upstairs the woman whose
fate was most concerned laid herself wearily in bed with almost a pang
that she need not now first be doubly sure that doors were locked and
spoons were counted.
In the sitting-room below, discussion waxed warm.
"But what shall we do with her?" demanded Mary. "I had meant to give her
my share of the property," she added with an air of great generosity,
"but it seems there's nothing to give."
"No, there's nothing to give," returned Edgar. "The house had to be
mortgaged long ago to pay their living expenses, and it will have to be
sold."
"But she's got to live somewhere!" Mary's voice was fretful,
questioning.
For a moment there was silence; then Edgar stirrad in his chair.
"Well, why can't she go to you, Mary?" he asked.
"Me!" Mary almost screamed the word.
"Why, Edgar!--when you know how much I have on my hands with my great
house and all my social duties, to say nothing of Belle's engagement!"
"Well, maybe Jane could help."
"Help! How, pray?--to entertain my guests?" And even Edgar smiled as he
thought of Jane, in her five-year-old bonnet and her ten-year-old black
gown, standing in the receiving line at an exclusive Commonwealth Avenue
reception.
"Well, but--" Edgar paused impotently.
"Why don't you take her?" It was Mary who made the suggestion.
"I? Oh, but I--" Edgar stopped and glanced uneasily at his wife.
"Why, of course, if it's _necessary_," murmured Mrs. Edgar, with a
resigned air. "I should certainly never wish it said that I refused a
home to any of my husband's poor relations."
"Oh, good Heavens! Let her come to us," cut in Fred sharply. "I reckon
we can take care of our 'poor relations' for a spell yet; eh, Sally?"
"Why, sure we can," retorted. Fred's wife, in her soft Southern drawl.
"We'll be right glad to take her, I reckon." And there the matter
ended.
* * * * *
Jane Pendergast had been South two months, when one day Edgar received a
letter from his brother Fred.
Jane's going North [wrote Fred]. Sally says she can't have her in the
house another week. 'Course, we don't want to tell Jane exactly
that--but we've fixed it so she's going to leave.
I'm sorry if this move causes you folks any trouble, but there just
wasn't any other way out of it. You see, Sally is Southern and
easy-going, and I suppose not over-particular in the eyes of you stiff
Northerners. I don't mind things, either, and I suppose I'm easy, too.
Well, great Scott!--Jane hadn't been down here five minutes before she
began to "slick up," as she called it--and she's been "slickin' up" ever
since. Sally always left things round handy, and so've the children; but
since Jane came, we haven't been able to find a thing when we wanted it.
All our boots and shoes are put away, turned toes out, and all our hats
and coats are snatched up and hung on pegs the minute we toss them off.
Maybe this don't seem much to you, but it's lots to us. Anyhow, Jane's
going North. She says she's going to visit Edgar a little while, and I
told her I'd write and tell you she's coming. She'll be there about the
20th. Will wire you what train.