“I will hear no profanity in my house. Stand aside! Dost thou not hear me? Am I to be disobeyed in my own house?”
I but half took in his meaning, and stood still. The next moment he seized me by the lapels of my coat, and, spinning me round like a child, pushed me from him. I fell into the great Penn chair he had turned from the table when he rose. He threw open the door, and I saw him walk quickly down the hall and out into the orchard garden.
For a week he did no more than speak to me a word when business made it needful, and then the monotonous days went on as before in the gray, dismal home, out of which the light of life’s gladness departed when those dear mother-eyes were closed in death.
XIV
While, throughout that sad summer, my Jack was slowly coming back to health, even the vast events of the war now under way moved me but little. My Aunt Gainor would think of no one but her young Quaker. Her house was no longer gay, nor would she go to the country, until Mr. Warder agreed that she should take Jack with us to the Hill Farmhouse, where, in the warm months, she moved among her cattle, and fed the hens, and helped and bullied every poor housewife far and near.
In a bright-tinted hammock I fetched from Madeira, Jack used to lie under the apple-trees that June and July, with my aunt for company; better could hardly have been. When I came from town in June, with news of what the farmers and their long rifles had done at Bunker Hill, it was a little too much for Jack’s strength, and he burst into tears. But Dr. Rush declared that self-control was an affair of physical health, and that he who had too little blood—and Jack was lily-white—could be neither courageous, nor able to contain his emotions. I suppose it may be true.
I went in and out of town daily, my father being unwilling to go to Merion. At times I met James Wilson, who was steadily urging me to enter the army. Wetherill had scarce any other words for me. But my father, Jack’s condition, and my aunt’s depending on me, all stood in my way, and I did but content myself with an hour’s daily drill in town with others, who were thus preparing themselves for active service.
We were taught, and well too, by an Irish sergeant—I fear a deserter from one of his Majesty’s regiments. As Jack got better, he was eager to have me put him through his facings, but before he was fit the summer was nigh over.