"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!"
That afternoon when the sun was setting, the sick man wakened from a long, deep sleep. The first thing he saw was the bright pale-yellow of a tree out in the yard, which had changed color since he had seen it last. It was a golden tree now as it stood in the sun, its leaves rustling in a faint, chill wind. The next thing, he knew that there were people in the room who sat silent and all looked at him with kindly, even reverent, eyes. Then he turned a little and saw his child, who bent towards him with dilated eyes and trembling, parted lips. A strange, vague memory of weary pain and dragging, uncertain days and nights came to him and he knew, and yet felt no fear.
"Louisianny!" he said.
He could only speak in a whisper and tremulously. Those who sat about him hushed their very breath.
"Lay yer head—on the piller—nigh me," he said.
She laid it down and put her hand in his. The great tears were streaming down her face, but she said not a word.
"I haint got long—honey," he faltered. "The Lord—He'll keer—fer ye."
Then for a few minutes he lay breathing faintly, but with his eyes open and smiling as they rested on the golden foliage of the tree.
"How yaller—it is!" he whispered. "Like gold. Ianthy was powerful—sot on it. It—kinder beckons."
It seemed as if he could not move his eyes from it, and the pause that followed was so long that Louisiana could bear it no longer, and she lifted her head and kissed him.
"Father!" she cried. "Say something to me! Say something to me!"
It drew him back and he looked up into her eyes as she bent over him.
"Ye'll be happy—" he said, "afore long. I kinder—know. Lord! how I've—loved ye, honey—an' ye've desarved it—all. Don't ye—do no one—a onjestice."
And then as she dropped her white face upon the pillow again he saw her no longer—nor the people, nor the room, but lay quite still with parted lips and eyes wide open, smiling still at the golden tree waving and beckoning in the wind.
This he saw last of all, and seemed still to see even when some one came silently, though with tears, and laid a hand upon his eyes.