It had gone on for years—this waiting for Richard at the foot of the staircase. Malachi had never missed a night when his master was at home. It was not his duty—not a part of the established regime of the old house. No other family servant about Kennedy Square performed a like service for master or mistress. It was not even a custom of the times.
It was only one of "Malachi's ways," Richard would say, with a gentle smile quivering about his lips.
"I do dat 'cause it's Marse Richard—dat's all," Malachi would answer, drawing himself up with the dignity of a chamberlain serving a king, when someone had the audacity to question him—a liberty he always resented.
They had been boys together—these two. They had fished and hunted and robbed birds' nests and gone swimming with each other. They had fought for each other, and been whipped for each other many and many a time in the old plantation-days. Night after night in the years that followed they had sat by each other when one or the other was ill.
And now that each was an old man the mutual service was still continued.
"How are you getting on now, Malachi—better? Ah, that's good—" and the master's thin white hand would be laid on the black wrinkled head with a soothing touch.
"Allus feels better, Marse Richard, when I kin git hold ob yo' han', sah—" Malachi would answer.
Not his slave, remember. Not so many pounds of human flesh and bone and brains condemned to his service for life; for Malachi was free to come and go and had been so privileged since the day the old Horn estate had been settled twenty years before, when Richard had given him his freedom with the other slaves that fell to his lot; not that kind of a servitor at all, but his comrade, his chum, his friend; the one man, black as he was, in all the world who in laying down his life for him would but have counted it as gain.
Just before tea Mrs. Horn, with a thin gossamer shawl about her shoulders, would come down from her bedroom above and join her husband. Then young Oliver himself would come bounding in, always a little late, but always with his face aglow and always bubbling over with laughter, until Malachi, now that the last member of the family was at home, would throw open the mahogany doors, and high tea would be served in the dining-room on the well-rubbed, unclothed mahogany table, the plates, forks, and saucers under Malachi's manipulations touching the polished wood as noiselessly as soap-bubbles.
Tea served and over, Malachi would light the candies in the big, cut-glass chandelier in the front parlor—the especial pride of the hostess, it having hung in her father's house in Virginia.