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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Rose Garden Husband, by Margaret Widdemer
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Rose Garden Husband
+
+Author: Margaret Widdemer
+
+Release Date: September 16, 2008 [EBook #26635]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE ROSE GARDEN HUSBAND ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Mark C. Orton, Linda McKeown and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+THE
+
+ROSE-GARDEN HUSBAND
+
+BY
+
+MARGARET WIDDEMER
+
+
+WITH ILLUSTRATIONS BY
+
+WALTER BIGGS
+
+
+NEW YORK GROSSET & DUNLAP PUBLISHERS
+
+COPYRIGHT 1914, BY J. B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANY
+
+COPYRIGHT 1915, BY J. B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANY
+
+
+PUBLISHED, JANUARY 27, 1915
+
+SECOND PRINTING, FEBRUARY 6, 1915
+
+THIRD PRINTING, MARCH 12, 1915
+
+FOURTH PRINTING, APRIL 23, 1915
+
+FIFTH PRINTING, JUNE 10, 1915
+
+SIXTH PRINTING, AUGUST 6, 1915
+
+SEVENTH PRINTING, OCTOBER 21, 1915
+
+EIGHTH PRINTING, MAY 1, 1916
+
+NINTH PRINTING, OCTOBER 30, 1916
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+[Illustration: "YOU KNOW, I MARRIED YOU PRINCIPALLY FOR A ROSE-GARDEN,
+AND THAT'S _LOVELY_!"
+
+_Page 172_]
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+IN LOVING MEMORY
+
+OF
+
+HOWARD TAYLOR WIDDEMER
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+THE ROSE-GARDEN HUSBAND
+
+
+
+
+I
+
+
+The Liberry Teacher lifted her eyes from a half-made catalogue-card,
+eyed the relentlessly slow clock and checked a long wriggle of purest,
+frankest weariness. Then she gave a furtive glance around to see if the
+children had noticed she was off guard; for if they had she knew the
+whole crowd might take more liberties than they ought to, and have to be
+spoken to by the janitor. He could do a great deal with them, because he
+understood their attitude to life, but that wasn't good for the Liberry
+Teacher's record.
+
+It was four o'clock of a stickily wet Saturday. As long as it is
+anything from Monday to Friday the average library attendant goes around
+thanking her stars she isn't a school-teacher; but the last day of the
+week, when the rest of the world is having its relaxing Saturday off and
+coming to gloat over you as it acquires its Sunday-reading best seller,
+if you work in a library you begin just at noon to wish devoutly that
+you'd taken up scrubbing-by-the-day, or hack-driving, or porch-climbing
+or--anything on earth that gave you a weekly half-holiday!
+
+So the Liberry Teacher braced herself severely, and put on her
+reading-glasses with a view to looking older and more firm. "Liberry
+Teacher," it might be well to explain, was not her official title. Her
+description on the pay-roll ran "Assistant for the Children's
+Department, Greenway Branch, City Public Library." Grown-up people, when
+she happened to run across them, called her Miss Braithwaite. But
+"Liberry Teacher" was the only name the children ever used, and she saw
+scarcely anybody but the children, six days a week, fifty-one weeks a
+year. As for her real name, that nobody ever called her by, _that_ was
+Phyllis Narcissa.
+
+She was quite willing to have such a name as that buried out of sight.
+She had a sense of fitness; and such a name belonged back in an old New
+England parsonage garden full of pink roses and nice green caterpillars
+and girl-dreams, and the days before she was eighteen: not in a smutty
+city library, attached to a twenty-five-year-old young woman with
+reading-glasses and fine discipline and a woolen shirt-waist!
+
+It wasn't that the Liberry Teacher didn't like her position. She not
+only liked it, but she had a great deal of admiration for it, because it
+had been exceedingly hard to get. She had held it firmly now for a whole
+year. Before that she had been in the Cataloguing, where your eyes hurt
+and you get a little pain between your shoulders, but you sit down and
+can talk to other girls; and before that in the Circulation, where it
+hurts your feet and you get ink on your fingers, but you see lots of
+funny things happening. She had started at eighteen years old, at thirty
+dollars a month. Now she was twenty-five, and she got all of fifty
+dollars, so she ought to have been a very happy Liberry Teacher indeed,
+and generally she was. When the children wanted to specify her
+particularly they described her as "the pretty one that laughs." But at
+four o'clock of a wet Saturday afternoon, in a badly ventilated, badly
+lighted room full of damp little unwashed foreign children, even the
+most sunny-hearted Liberry Teacher may be excused for having thoughts
+that are a little tired and cross and restless.
+
+She flung herself back in her desk-chair and watched, with brazen
+indifference, Giovanni and Liberata Bruno stickily pawing the colored
+Bird Book that was supposed to be looked at only under supervision; she
+ignored the fact that three little Czechs were fighting over the wailing
+library cat; and the sounds of conflict caused by Jimsy Hoolan's desire
+to get the last-surviving Alger book away from John Zanowski moved her
+not a whit. The Liberry Teacher had stopped, for five minutes, being
+grown-up and responsible, and she was wishing--wishing hard and
+vengefully. This is always a risky thing to do, because you never know
+when the Destinies may overhear you and take you at your exact word.
+With the detailed and careful accuracy one acquires in library work, she
+was wishing for a sum of money, a garden, and a husband--but
+principally a husband. This is why:
+
+That day as she was returning from her long-deferred twenty-minute
+dairy-lunch, she had charged, umbrella down, almost full into a pretty
+lady getting out of a shiny gray limousine. Such an unnecessarily pretty
+lady, all furs and fluffles and veils and perfumes and waved hair! Her
+cheeks were pink and her expression was placid, and each of her
+white-gloved hands held tight to a pretty picture-book child who was
+wriggling with wild excitement. One had yellow frilly hair and one had
+brown bobbed hair, and both were quaintly, immaculately, expensively
+kissable. They were the kind of children every girl wishes she could
+have a set like, and hugs when she gets a chance. Mother and children
+were making their way, under an awning that crossed the street, to the
+matinee of a fairy-play.
+
+The Liberry Teacher smiled at the children with more than her accustomed
+goodwill, and lowered her umbrella quickly to let them pass. The mother
+smiled back, a smile that changed, as the Liberry Teacher passed, to
+puzzled remembrance. The gay little family went on into the theatre, and
+Phyllis Braithwaite hurried on back to her work, trying to think who the
+pretty lady could have been, to have seemed to almost remember her.
+Somebody who took books out of the library, doubtless. Still the pretty
+lady's face did not seem to fit that conjecture, though it still worried
+her by its vague familiarity. Finally the solution came, just as Phyllis
+was pulling off her raincoat in the dark little cloak-room. She nearly
+dropped the coat.
+
+"Eva Atkinson!" she said.
+
+Eva Atkinson!... If it had been anybody else but _Eva_!
+
+You see, back in long-ago, in the little leisurely windblown New England
+town where Phyllis Braithwaite had lived till she was almost eighteen,
+there had been a Principal Grocer. And Eva Atkinson had been his
+daughter, not so very pretty, not so very pleasant, not so very clever,
+and about six years older than Phyllis. Phyllis, as she tried vainly to
+make her damp, straight hair go back the way it should, remembered
+hearing that Eva had married and come to this city to live. She had
+never heard where. And this had been Eva--Eva, by the grace of gold,
+radiantly complexioned, wonderfully groomed, beautifully gowned, and
+looking twenty-four, perhaps, at most: with a car and a placid
+expression and _heaps_ of money, and pretty, clean children! The Liberry
+Teacher, severely work-garbed and weather-draggled, jerked herself away
+from the small greenish cloak-room mirror that was unkind to you at your
+best.
+
+She dashed down to the basement, harried by her usual panic-stricken
+twenty-minutes-late feeling. She had only taken one glance at herself in
+the wiggly mirror, but that one had been enough for her peace of mind,
+supposing her to have had any left before. She felt as if she wanted to
+break all the mirrors in the world, like the wicked queen in the French
+fairy-tale.
+
+Most people rather liked the face Phyllis saw in the mirror; but to her
+own eyes, fresh from the dazzling vision of that Eva Atkinson who had
+been dowdy and stupid in the far-back time when seventeen-year-old
+Phyllis was "growin' up as pretty as a picture," the tired,
+twenty-five-year-old, workaday face in the green glass was _dreadful_.
+What made her feel worst--and she entertained the thought with a
+whimsical consciousness of its impertinent vanity--was that she'd had so
+much more raw material than Eva! And the world had given Eva a chance
+because her father was rich. And she, Phyllis, was condemned to be tidy
+and accurate, and no more, just because she had to earn her living. That
+face in the greenish glass, looking tiredly back at her! She gave a
+little out-loud cry of vexation now as she thought of it, two hours
+later.
+
+"I must have looked to Eva like a battered bisque doll--no wonder she
+couldn't place me!" she muttered crossly.
+
+And it must be worse and more of it now, because in the interval between
+two and four there had been many little sticky fingers pulling at her
+sleeves and skirt, and you just _have_ to cuddle dear little library
+children, even when they're not extra clean; and when Vera Aronsohn
+burst into heartbroken tears on the Liberry Teacher's blue woolen
+shoulder because her pet fairy-book was missing, she had caught several
+strands of the Teacher's yellow hair in her anguish, much to the hair's
+detriment.
+
+It was straight, heavy hair, and it would have been of a dense and
+fluffy honey-color, only that it was tarnished for lack of the constant
+sunnings and brushings which blonde hair must have to stay its best
+self. And her skin, too, that should have been a living rose-and-cream,
+was dulled by exposure to all weathers, and lack of time to pet it with
+creams and powders; perhaps a little, too, by the very stupid things to
+eat one gets at a dairy-lunch and boarding-house. Some of the assistants
+did interesting cooking over the library gas-range, but the Liberry
+Teacher couldn't do that because she hadn't time.
+
+She went on defiantly thinking about her looks. It isn't a noble-minded
+thing to do, but when you might be so very, very pretty if you only had
+a little time to be it in--"Yes, I _might_!" said Phyllis to her
+shocked self defiantly.... Yes, the shape of her face was all right
+still. Hard work and scant attention couldn't spoil its pretty oval. But
+her eyes--well, you can't keep your eyes as blue and luminous and
+childlike as they were back in the New England country, when you have
+been using them hard for years in a bad light. And oh, they had been
+such _nice_ eyes when she was just Phyllis Narcissa at home, so long and
+blue and wondering! And now the cataloguing had heavied the lids and
+etched a line between her straight brown brows. They weren't decorative
+eyes now ... and they filled with indignant self-sympathy. The Liberry
+Teacher laughed at herself a little here. The idea of eyes that cried
+about themselves was funny, somehow.
+
+"Direct from producer to consumer!" she quoted half-aloud, and wiped
+each eye conscientiously by itself.
+
+"Teacher! I want a liberry called 'Bride of Lemon Hill!' demanded a
+small citizen just here. The school teacher, she says I must to have
+it!"
+
+Phyllis thought hard. But she had to search the pinned-up list of
+required reading for schools for three solid minutes before she bestowed
+"The Bride of Lammermoor" on a thirteen-year-old daughter of Hungary.
+
+"This is it, isn't it, honey?" she asked with the flashing smile for
+which her children, among other things, adored her.
+
+"Yes, ma'am, thank you, teacher," said the thirteen-year-old gratefully;
+and went off to a corner, where she sat till closing time entranced over
+her own happy choice, "The Adventures of Peter Rabbit," with colored
+pictures dotting it satisfactorily. The Liberry Teacher knew that it was
+her duty to go over and hypnotize the child into reading something which
+would lead more directly to Browning and Strindberg. But she didn't.
+
+"Poor little wop!" she thought unacademically. "Let her be happy in her
+own way!"
+
+And the Liberry Teacher herself went on being unhappy in _her_ own way.
+
+"I'm just a battered bisque doll!" she repeated to herself bitterly.
+
+But she was wrong. One is apt to exaggerate things on a workaday
+Saturday afternoon. She looked more like a pretty bisque figurine; slim
+and clear-cut, and a little neglected, perhaps, by its owners, and
+dressed in working clothes instead of the pretty draperies it should
+have had; but needing only a touch or so, a little dusting, so to speak,
+to be as good as ever.
+
+"Eva _never_ was as pretty as I was!" her rebellious thoughts went on.
+You think things, you know, that you'd never say aloud. "I'm sick of
+elevating the public! I'm sick of working hard fifty-one weeks out of
+fifty-two for board and lodging and carfare and shirtwaists and the
+occasional society of a few girls who don't get any more out of life
+than I do! I'm sick of libraries, and of being efficient! I want to be a
+real girl! Oh, I wish--I wish I had a lot of money, and a rose-garden,
+and a _husband_!"
+
+The Liberry Teacher was aghast at herself. She hadn't meant to wish such
+a very unmaidenly thing so hard. She jumped up and dashed across the
+room and began frantically to shelf-read books, explaining meanwhile
+with most violent emphasis to the listening Destinies:
+
+"I didn't--oh, I _didn_'t mean a _real_ husband. It isn't that I yearn
+to be married to some good man, like an old maid or a Duchess novel.
+I--I just want all the lovely things Eva has, or any girl that _marries_
+them, without any trouble but taking care of a man. One man _couldn't_
+but be easier than a whole roomful of library babies. I want to be
+looked after, and have time to keep pretty, and a chance to make
+friends, and lovely frocks with lots of lace on them, and just months
+and months and months when I never had to do anything by a
+clock--and--and a rose-garden!"
+
+This last idea was dangerous. It isn't a good thing, if you want to be
+contented with your lot, to think of rose-gardens in a stuffy city
+library o' Saturdays; especially when where you were brought up
+rose-gardens were one of the common necessities of life; and more
+especially when you are tired almost to the crying-point, and have all
+the week's big sisters back of it dragging on you, and all its little
+sisters to come worrying at you, and--time not up till six.
+
+But the Liberry Teacher went blindly on straightening shelves nearly as
+fast as the children could muss them up, and thinking about that
+rose-garden she wanted, with files of masseuses and manicures and French
+maids and messenger-boys with boxes banked soothingly behind every bush.
+And the thought became too beautiful to dally with.
+
+"I'd marry _anything_ that would give me a rose-garden!" reiterated the
+Liberry Teacher passionately to the Destinies, who are rather catty
+ladies, and apt to catch up unguarded remarks you make. "_Anything_--so
+long as it was a gentleman--and he didn't scold me--and--and--I didn't
+have to associate with him!" her New England maidenliness added in
+haste.
+
+Then, for the librarian who cannot laugh, like the one who reads, is
+supposed in library circles to be lost, Phyllis shook herself and
+laughed at herself a little, bravely. Then she collected the most
+uproarious of her flock around her and began telling them stories out of
+the "Merry Adventures of Robin Hood." It would keep the children quiet,
+and her thoughts, too. She put rose-gardens, not to say manicurists and
+husbands, severely out of her head. But you can't play fast and loose
+with the Destinies that way.
+
+"Done!" they had replied quietly to her last schedule of requirements.
+"We'll send our messenger over right away." It was not their fault that
+the Liberry Teacher could not hear them.
+
+
+
+
+II
+
+
+He was gray-haired, pink-cheeked, curvingly side-whiskered and
+immaculately gray-clad; and he did not look in the least like a
+messenger of Fate.
+
+The Liberry Teacher was at a highly keyed part of her narrative, and
+even the most fidgety children were tense and open-mouthed.
+
+"'And where art thou now?' cried the Stranger to Robin Hood. And Robin
+roared with laughter. 'Oh, in the flood, and floating down the stream
+with all the little fishes,' said he--" she was relating breathlessly.
+
+"_Tea_-cher!" hissed Isaac Rabinowitz, snapping his fingers at her at
+this exciting point. "Teacher! There's a guy wants to speak to you!"
+
+"Aw, shut-_tup_!" chorused his indignant little schoolmates. "Can't you
+see that Teacher's tellin' a story? Go chase yerself! Go do a tango
+roun' de block!"
+
+Isaac, a small Polish Jew with tragic, dark eyes and one suspender,
+received these and several more such suggestions with all the calm
+impenetrability of his race.
+
+"Here's de guy," was all he vouchsafed before he went back to the
+unsocial nook where, afternoon by faithful afternoon, he read away at a
+fat three-volume life of Alexander Hamilton.
+
+The Liberry Teacher looked up without stopping her story, and smiled a
+familiar greeting to the elderly gentleman, who was waiting a little
+uncertainly at the Children's Room door, and had obviously been looking
+for her in vain. He smiled and nodded in return.
+
+"Just a minute, please, Mr. De Guenther," said the Liberry Teacher
+cheerfully.
+
+The elderly gentleman nodded again, crossed to Isaac and his ponderous
+volumes, and began to talk to him with that benign lack of haste which
+usually means a very competent personality. Phyllis hurried somewhat
+with Robin Hood among his little fishes, and felt happier. It was
+always, in her eventless life, something of a pleasant adventure to
+have Mr. De Guenther or his wife drop in to see her. There was usually
+something pleasant at the end of it.
+
+They were an elderly couple whom she had known for some years. They were
+so leisurely and trim and gentle-spoken that long ago, when she was only
+a timorous substitute behind the circle of the big charging-desk, she
+had picked them both out as people-you'd-like-if-you-got-the-chance.
+Then she had waited on them, and identified them by their cards as
+belonging to the same family. Then, one day, with a pleased little
+quiver of joy, she had found him in the city Who's Who, age, profession
+(he was a corporation lawyer), middle names, favorite recreation, and
+all. Gradually she had come to know them both very well in a waiting-on
+way. She often chose love-stories that ended happily and had colored
+illustrations for Mrs. De Guenther when she was at home having
+rheumatism; she had saved more detective stories for Mr. De Guenther
+than her superiors ever knew; and once she had found his black-rimmed
+eye-glasses where he had left them between the pages of the Pri-Zuz
+volume of the encyclopedia, and mailed them to him.
+
+When she had vanished temporarily from sight into the nunnery-promotion
+of the cataloguing room the De Guenthers had still remembered her. Twice
+she had been asked to Sunday dinner at their house, and had joyously
+gone and remembered it as joyously for months afterward. Now that she
+was out in the light of partial day again, in the Children's Room, she
+ran across both of them every little while in her errands upstairs; and
+once Mrs. De Guenther, gentle, lorgnetted and gray-clad, had been shown
+over the Children's Room. The couple lived all alone in a great,
+handsome old house that was being crowded now by the business district.
+She had always thought that if she were a Theosophist she would try to
+plan to have them for an uncle and aunt in her next incarnation. They
+suited her exactly for the parts.
+
+But it's a long way down to the basement where city libraries are apt to
+keep their children, and the De Guenthers hadn't been down there since
+the last time they asked her to dinner. And here, with every sign of
+having come to say something _very_ special, stood Mr. De Guenther!
+Phyllis' irrepressibly cheerful disposition gave a little jump toward
+the light. But she went on with her story--business before pleasure!
+
+However, she did manage to get Robin Hood out of his brook a little more
+quickly than she had planned. She scattered her children with a swift
+executive whisk, and made so straight for her friend that she deceived
+the children into thinking they were going to see him expelled, and they
+banked up and watched with anticipatory grins.
+
+"I do hope you want to see me especially!" she said brightly.
+
+The children, disappointed, relaxed their attention.
+
+Mr. De Guenther rose slowly and neatly from his seat beside the rather
+bored Isaac Rabinowitz, who dived into his book again with alacrity.
+
+"Good afternoon, Miss Braithwaite," he said in the amiably precise voice
+which matched so admirably his beautifully precise movements and his
+immaculate gray spats. "Yes. In the language of our young friend here,
+'I am the guy.'"
+
+Phyllis giggled before she thought. Some people in the world always make
+your spirits go up with a bound, and the De Guenther pair invariably had
+that effect on her.
+
+"Oh, Mr. De Guenther!" she said, "I am shocked at you! That's slang!"
+
+"It was more in the nature of a quotation," said he apologetically. "And
+how are you this exceedingly unpleasant day, Miss Braithwaite? We have
+seen very little of you lately, Mrs. De Guenther and I."
+
+The Liberry Teacher, gracefully respectful in her place, wriggled with
+invisible impatience over this carefully polite conversational opening.
+He had come down here on purpose to see her--there must be something
+going to happen, even if it was only a request to save a seven-day book
+for Mrs. De Guenther! Nobody ever wanted _something_, any kind of a
+something, to happen more wildly than the Liberry Teacher did that
+bored, stickily wet Saturday afternoon, with those tired seven years at
+the Greenway Branch dragging at the back of her neck, and the seven
+times seven to come making her want to scream. So few things can
+possibly happen to you, no matter how good you are, when you work by the
+day. And now maybe something--oh, please, the very smallest kind of a
+something would be welcomed!--was going to occur. Maybe Mrs. De Guenther
+had sent her a ticket to a concert; she had once before. Or maybe, since
+you might as well wish for big things while you're at it, it might even
+be a ticket to an expensive seat in a real theatre! Her pleasure-hungry,
+work-heavy blue eyes burned luminous at the idea.
+
+"But I really shouldn't wish," she reminded her prancing mind belatedly.
+"He may only have come down to talk about the weather. It mayn't any of
+it be true."
+
+So she stood up straight and gravely, and answered very courteously and
+holding-tightly all the amiable roundabout remarks the old gentleman was
+shoving forward like pawns on a chessboard before the real game begins.
+She answered with the same trained cheerfulness she could give her
+library children when her head and her disposition ached worst; and even
+warmed to a vicious enthusiasm over the state of the streets and the
+wetness of the damp weather.
+
+"He knows lots of real things to say," she complained to herself, "why
+doesn't he say them, instead of talking editorials? I suppose this is
+his bedside--no, lawyers don't have bedside manners--well, his barside
+manner, then----"
+
+It is difficult to think and listen at the same time: by this time she
+had missed a beautiful long paragraph about the Street-Cleaning
+Department; and something else, apparently. For her friend was holding
+out to her a note addressed to her flowingly in his wife's English hand,
+and was saying,
+
+"--which she has asked me to deliver. I trust you have no imperative
+engagement for to-morrow night."
+
+Something _had_ happened!
+
+"Why, no!" said the Liberry Teacher delightedly. "No, indeed! Thank you,
+and her, too. I'd love to come."
+
+"Teacher!" clamored a small chocolate-colored citizen in a Kewpie
+muffler, "my maw she want' a book call' 'Ugwin!' She say it got a yellow
+cover an' pictures in it."
+
+"Just a moment!" said Phyllis; and sent him upstairs with a note asking
+for "Hugh Wynne" in the two-volume edition. She was used to translating
+that small colored boy's demands. Last week he had described to her a
+play he called "Eas' Limb", with the final comment, "But it wan't no
+good. 'Twant no limb in it anywhar, ner no trees atall!"
+
+"Do you have much of that?" Mr. De Guenther asked idly.
+
+"Lots!" said Phyllis cheerfully. "You take special training in guesswork
+at library school. They call them 'teasers'. They say they're good for
+your intellect."
+
+"Ah--yes," said Mr. De Guenther absently in the barside manner.
+
+And then, sitting calmly with his silvery head against a Washington's
+Birthday poster so that three scarlet cherries stuck above him in the
+manner of a scalp-lock, he said something else remarkably real:
+
+"I have--we have--a little matter of business to discuss with you
+to-morrow night, my dear; an offer, I may say, of a different line of
+work. And I want you to satisfy yourself thoroughly--thoroughly, my dear
+child, of my reputableness. Mr. Johnstone, the chief of the city
+library, whose office I believe to be in this branch, is one of my
+oldest friends. I am, I think I may say, well known as a lawyer in this
+my native city. I should be glad to have you satisfy yourself personally
+on these points, because----" could it be that the eminently poised Mr.
+De Guenther was embarrassed? "Because the line of work which I wish, or
+rather my wife wishes, to lay before you is--is a very different line of
+work!" ended the old gentleman inconclusively. There was no mistake
+about it this time--he _was_ embarrassed.
+
+"Oh, Mr. De Guenther!" cried Phyllis before she thought, out of the
+fulness of her heart, catching his arm in her eagerness; "Oh, Mr. De
+Guenther, _could_ the Very Different Line of Work have a--have a
+_rose-garden_ attached to it anywhere?"
+
+Before she was fairly finished she knew what a silly question she had
+asked. How could any line of work she was qualified to do possibly have
+rose-gardens attached to it? You can't catalogue roses on neat cards, or
+improve their minds by the Newark Ladder System, or do anything at all
+librarious to them, except pressing them in books to mummify; and the
+Liberry Teacher didn't think that was at all a courteous thing to do to
+roses. So Mr. De Guenther's reply quite surprised her.
+
+"There--seems--to be--no good reason," he said, slowly and placidly,
+as if he were dropping his words one by one out of a slot;--"why
+there should not--be--a very satisfactory rose-garden, or
+even--_two_--connected with it. None--whatever."
+
+That was all the explanation he offered. But the Liberry Teacher asked
+no more. "_Oh!_" she said rapturously.
+
+"Then we may expect you to-morrow at seven?" he said; and smiled
+politely and moved to the door. He walked out as matter-of-coursely as
+if he had dropped in to ask the meaning of "circumflex," or who
+invented smallpox, or the name of Adam's house-cat, or how long it would
+take her to do a graduation essay for his daughter--or any such little
+things that librarians are prepared for most days.
+
+And instead--his neat gray elderly back seemed to deny it--he had left
+with her, the Liberry Teacher, her, dusty, tousled, shopworn Phyllis
+Braithwaite, an invitation to consider a Line of Work which was so
+mysteriously Different that she had to look up the spotless De Guenther
+reputation before she came!
+
+One loses track of time, staring at a red George Washington poster, and
+wondering about a future with a sudden Different Line in it.... It was
+ten minutes past putting-out-children time! She stared aghast at the
+ruthless clock, then created two Monitors for Putting Out at one royal
+sweep. She managed the nightly eviction with such gay expedition that it
+almost felt like ten minutes ago when the place, except for the
+pride-swollen monitors, was cleared. While these officers watched the
+commonalty clumping reluctantly upstairs toward the umbrella-rack, the
+Liberry Teacher paced sedately around the shelves, giving the books that
+routine straightening they must have before seven struck and the horde
+rushed in again. It was really her relieving officer's work, but the
+Liberry Teacher felt that her mind needed straightening, too, and this
+always seemed to do it.
+
+She looked, as she moved slowly down along the shelves, very much like
+most of the librarians you see; alert, pleasant, slender, a little
+dishevelled, a little worn. But there was really no librarian there.
+There was only Phyllis Narcissa--that dreaming young Phyllis who had had
+to stay pushed out of sight all the seven years that Miss Braithwaite
+had been efficiently earning her living.
+
+She let her mind stray happily as far as it would over the possibilities
+Mr. De Guenther had held out to her, and woke to discover herself trying
+to find a place under "Domestic Economy--Condiments" for "Five Little
+Peppers and How They Grew." She laughed aloud in the suddenly empty
+room, and then lifted her head to find Miss Black, the night-duty girl
+that week, standing in the doorway ready to relieve guard.
+
+"Oh, Anna, see what I've done!" she laughed. Somehow everything seemed
+merely light-hearted and laughable since Mr. De Guenther's most
+fairy-tale visit, with its wild hints of Lines of Work. Anna Black came,
+looked, laughed.
+
+"In the 640's!" she said. "Well, you're liable to do nearly everything
+by the time it's Saturday. Last Saturday, Dolly Graham up in the
+Circulation was telling me, an old colored mammy said she'd lost her
+mittens in the reading-room; and the first they knew Dolly was hunting
+through the Woollen Goods classification, and Mary Gayley pawing the
+dictionary wildly for m-i-t!"
+
+"And they found the mittens hung around her neck by the cord," finished
+the Liberry Teacher. "I know--it was a thrilling story. Well, good-by
+till Monday, Anna Black. I'm going home now, to have some lovely prunes
+and some real dried beef, and maybe a glass of almost-milk if I can
+persuade the landlady I need it."
+
+"Mine prefers dried apricots," responded Miss Black cheerfully, "but she
+never has anything but canned milk in the house, thus sparing us the
+embarrassment of asking for real. Good-by--good luck!"
+
+But as the Liberry Teacher pinned her serviceable hat close, and
+fastened her still good raincoat over her elderly sweater, neither
+prunes nor mittens nor next week's work worried her at all. After all,
+living among the fairy-stories with the Little People makes that
+pleasant land where wanting is having, and all the impossibilities can
+come true, very easy of access. Phyllis Braithwaite's mind, as she
+picked her way down the bedraggled street, wandered innocently off in a
+dream-place full of roses, till the muddy marble steps of her
+boarding-place gleamed sloppily before her through the foggy rain.
+
+She sat up late that night, doing improving things to the white net
+waist that went with her best suit, which was black. As her needle
+nibbled busily down the seams she continued happily to wonder about that
+Entirely Different Line. It sounded to her more like a reportership on
+a yellow journal than anything else imaginable. Or, perhaps, could she
+be wanted to join the Secret Service?
+
+"At any rate," she concluded light-heartedly, as she stitched the last
+clean ruching into the last wrist-covering, sedate sleeve, "at any rate
+I'll have a chance to-morrow to wear mother's gold earrings that I
+mustn't have on in the library. And oh, how lovely it will be to have a
+dinner that wasn't cooked by a poor old bored boarding-house cook or a
+shiny tiled syndicate!"
+
+And she went to bed--to dream of Entirely Different Lines all the colors
+of the rainbow, that radiated out from the Circulation Desk like
+tight-ropes. She never remembered Eva Atkinson's carefully prettied
+face, or her own vivid, work-worn one, at all. She only dreamed that far
+at the end of the pink Entirely Different Line--a very hard one to
+walk--there was a rose-garden exactly like a patchwork quilt, where she
+was to be.
+
+
+
+
+III
+
+
+When Phyllis woke next morning everything in the world had a
+light-hearted, holiday feeling. Her Sundays, gloriously unoccupied,
+generally did, but this was extra-special. The rain had managed to clear
+away every vestige of last week's slush, and had then itself most
+unselfishly retired down the gutters. The sun shone as if May had come,
+and the wind, through the Liberry Teacher's window, had a springy,
+pussy-willowy, come-for-a-walk-in-the-country feel to it. She found that
+she had slept too late to go to church, and prepared for a joyful dash
+to the boarding-house bathtub. There might be--who knew but there
+actually might be--on this day of days, enough hot water for a real
+bath!
+
+"I feel as if everything was going to be lovely all day!" she said
+without preface to old black Maggie, who was clumping her accustomed
+bed-making way along the halls, with her woolly head tied up in her
+Sunday silk handkerchief. Even she looked happier, Phyllis thought,
+than she had yesterday. She grinned broadly at Phyllis, leaning
+smilingly against the door in her kimona.
+
+"Ah dunno, Miss Braithways," she said, and entered the room and took a
+pillow-case-corner in her mouth. "Ah never has dem premeditations!"
+
+Phyllis laughed frankly, and Maggie, much flattered at the happy
+reception of her reply, grinned so widely that you might almost have
+tied her mouth behind her ears.
+
+"You sure is a cheerful person, Miss Braithways!" said Maggie, and went
+on making the bed.
+
+Phyllis fled on down the hall, laughing still. She had just remembered
+another of old Maggie's compliments, made on one of the rare occasions
+when Phyllis had sat down and sung to the boarding-house piano. (She
+hadn't been able to do it long, because the Mental Science Lady on the
+next floor had sent down word that it stopped her from concentrating,
+and as she had a very expensive room there was nothing for the landlady
+to do but make Phyllis stop.) Phyllis had come out in the hall to find
+old Maggie listening rapturously.
+
+"Oh, Miss Braithways!" she had murmured, rolling her eyes, "you
+certainly does equalize a martingale!"
+
+It had been a compliment Phyllis never forgot. She smiled to herself as
+she found the bathroom door open. Why, the world was full of a number of
+things, many of them funny. Being a Liberry Teacher was rather nice,
+after all, when you were fresh from a long night's sleep. And if that
+Mental Science Lady _wouldn't_ let her play the piano, why, her
+thrilling tales of what she could do when her mind was unfettered were
+worth the price. That story she told so seriously about how the pipes
+burst--and the plumber wouldn't come, and "My dear, I gave those pipes
+only half an hour's treatment, and they closed right up!" It was quite
+as much fun--well, almost as much--hearing her, as it would have been to
+play.
+
+... All of the contented, and otherwise, elderly people who inhabited
+the boarding-house with Phyllis appeared to have gone off without using
+hot water, for there actually was some. The Liberry Teacher found that
+she could have a genuine bath, and have enough water besides to wash her
+hair, which is a rite all girls who work have to reserve for Sundays.
+This was surely a day of days!
+
+She used the water--alas for selfish human nature!--to the last warm
+drop and went gayly back to her little room with no emotions whatever
+for the poor other boarders, soon to find themselves wrathfully
+hot-waterless. And then--she thoughtlessly curled down on the bed, and
+slept and slept and slept! She wakened dimly in time for the one o'clock
+dinner, dressed, and ate it in a half-sleep. She went back upstairs
+planning a trolley-ride that should take her out into the country, where
+a long walk might be had. And midway in changing her shoes she lay back
+across the bed and--fell asleep again. The truth was, Phyllis was about
+as tired as a girl can get.
+
+She waked at dusk, with a jerk of terror lest she should have overslept
+her time for going out. But it was only six. She had a whole hour to
+prink in, which is a very long time for people who are used to being in
+the library half-an-hour after the alarm-clock wakes them.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Some houses, all of themselves, and before you meet a soul who lives in
+them, are silently indifferent to you. Some make you feel that you are
+not wanted in the least; these usually have a lot of gilt furniture, and
+what are called objects of art set stiffly about. Some seem to be having
+an untidy good time all to themselves, in which you are not included.
+
+The De Guenther house, staid and softly toned, did none of these things.
+It gave the Liberry Teacher, in her neat, last year's best suit, a
+feeling as of gentle welcome-home. She felt contented and _belonging_
+even before quick-smiling, slender little Mrs. De Guenther came rustling
+gently in to greet her. Then followed Mr. De Guenther, pleasant and
+unperturbed as usual, and after him an agreeable, back-arching gray cat,
+who had copied his master's walk as exactly as it can be done with four
+feet.
+
+All four sat amiably about the room and held precise and pleasant
+converse, something like a cheerful essay written in dialogue, about
+many amusing, intelligent things which didn't especially matter. The
+Liberry Teacher liked it. It was pleasant beyond words to sit nestlingly
+in a pluffy chair, and hear about all the little lightly-treated
+scholarly day-before-yesterday things her father had used to talk of.
+She carried on her own small part in the talk blithely enough. She
+approved of herself and the way she was behaving, which makes very much
+for comfort. There was only once that she was ashamed of herself, and
+thought about it in bed afterwards and was mortified; when her eyes
+filled with quick tears at a quite dry and unemotional--indeed, rather a
+sarcastic--quotation from Horace on the part of Mr. De Guenther. But she
+smiled, when she saw that they noticed her.
+
+"That's the first time I've heard a Latin quotation since I came away
+from home," she found herself saying quite simply in explanation, "and
+Father quoted Horace so much every day that--that I felt as if an old
+friend had walked in!"
+
+But her hosts didn't seem to mind. Mr. De Guenther in his careful
+evening clothes looked swiftly across at Mrs. De Guenther in her
+gray-silk-and-cameo, and they both nodded little satisfied nods, as if
+she had spoken in a way that they were glad to hear. And then dinner was
+served, a dinner as different--well, she didn't want to remember in its
+presence the dinners it differed from; they might have clouded the
+moment. She merely ate it with a shameless inward joy.
+
+It ended, still to a pleasant effortless accompaniment of talk about
+books and music and pictures that Phyllis was interested in, and had
+found nobody to share her interest with for so long--so long! She felt
+happily running though everything the general, easy taking-for-granted
+of all the old, gentle, inflexible standards of breeding that she had
+nearly forgotten, down in the heart of the city among her obstreperous,
+affectionate little foreigners.
+
+They had coffee in the long old-fashioned salon parlor, and then Mr. De
+Guenther straightened himself, and Mrs. De Guenther folded her veined,
+ringed old white hands, and Phyllis prepared thrilledly to listen.
+Surely now she would hear about that Different Line of Work.
+
+There was nothing, at first, about work of any sort. They merely began
+to tell her alternately about some clients of theirs, a Mrs. Harrington
+and her son: rather interesting people, from what Phyllis could make
+out. She wondered if she was going to hear that they needed a librarian.
+
+"This lady, my client, Mrs. Harrington," continued her host gravely, "is
+the one for whom I may ask you to consider doing some work. I say may,
+but it is a practical certainty. She is absolutely alone, my dear Miss
+Braithwaite, except for her son. I am afraid I must ask you to listen to
+a long story about them."
+
+It was coming!
+
+"Oh, but I want to hear!" said Phyllis, with that quick, affectionate
+sympathy of hers that was so winning, leaning forward and watching them
+with the lighted look in her blue eyes. It all seemed to her tired,
+alert mind like some story she might have read to her children, an
+Arabian Nights narrative which might begin, "And the Master of the
+House, ascribing praise unto Allah, repeated the following Tale."
+
+"There have always been just the two of them, mother and son," said the
+Master of the House. "And Allan has always been a very great deal to his
+mother."
+
+"Poor Angela!" murmured his wife.
+
+"They are old friends of ours," her husband explained. "My wife and Mrs.
+Harrington were schoolmates.
+
+"Well, Allan, the boy, grew up, dowered with everything a mother could
+possibly desire for her son, personally and otherwise. He was handsome
+and intelligent, with much charm of manner."
+
+"I know now what people mean by 'talking like a book,'" thought Phyllis
+irreverently. "And I don't believe any one man _could_ be all that!"
+
+"There was practically nothing," Mr. De Guenther went on, "which the
+poor lad had not. That was one trouble, I imagine. If he had not been
+highly intelligent he would not have studied so hard; if he had not been
+strong and active he might not have taken up athletic sports so
+whole-heartedly; and when I add that Allan possessed charm, money and
+social status you may see that what he did would have broken down most
+young fellows. In short, he kept studies, sports and social affairs all
+going at high pressure during his four years of college. But he was
+young and strong, and might not have felt so much ill effects from all
+that; though his doctors said afterwards that he was nearly at the
+breaking point when he graduated."
+
+Phyllis bent closer to the story-teller in her intense interest. Why, it
+_was_ like one of her fairy-tales! She held her breath to listen, while
+the old lawyer went gravely on.
+
+"Allan could not have been more than twenty-two when he graduated, and
+it was a very short while afterwards that he became engaged to a young
+girl, the daughter of a family friend. Louise Frey was her name, was it
+not, love?"
+
+"Yes, that is right," said his wife, "Louise Frey."
+
+"A beautiful girl," he went on, "dark, with a brilliant color, and full
+of life and good spirits. They were both very young, but there was no
+good reason why the marriage should be delayed, and it was set for the
+following September."
+
+A princess, too, in the story! But--where had she gone? "The two of them
+only," he had said.
+
+"It must have been scarcely a month," the story went on--Mr. De Guenther
+was telling it as if he were stating a case--"nearly a month before the
+date set for the wedding, when the lovers went for a long automobile
+ride, across a range of mountains near a country-place where they were
+both staying. They were alone in the machine.
+
+"Allan, of course, was driving, doubtless with a certain degree of
+impetuosity, as he did most things.... They were on an unfrequented part
+of the road," said Mr. De Guenther, lowering his voice, "when there
+occurred an unforeseen wreckage in the car's machinery. The car was
+thrown over and badly splintered. Both young people were pinned under
+it.
+
+"So far as he knew at the time, Allan was not injured, nor was he in any
+pain; but he was held in absolute inability to move by the car above
+him. Miss Frey, on the contrary, was badly hurt, and in suffering. She
+died in about three hours, a little before relief came to them."
+
+Phyllis clutched the arms of her chair, thrilled and wide-eyed. She
+could imagine all the horror of the happening through the old lawyer's
+precise and unemotional story. The boy-lover, pinioned, helpless,
+condemned to watch his sweetheart dying by inches, and unable to help
+her by so much as lifting a hand--could anything be more awful not only
+to endure, but to remember?
+
+"And yet," she thought whimsically, "it mightn't be so bad to have one
+_real_ tragedy to remember, if you haven't anything else! All _I'll_
+have to remember when I'm old will be bad little children and good
+little children, and books and boarding-houses, and the recollection
+that people said I was a very worthy young woman once!" But she threw
+off the thought. It's just as well not to think of old age when all the
+idea brings up is a vision of a nice, clean Old Ladies' Home.
+
+"But you said he was an invalid?" she said aloud.
+
+"Yes, I regret to say," answered Mr. De Guenther. "You see, it was found
+that the shock to the nerves, acting on an already over-keyed mind and
+body, together with some spinal blow concerning which the doctors are
+still in doubt, had affected Allan's powers of locomotion." (Mr. De
+Guenther certainly did like long words!) "He has been unable to walk
+since. And, which is sadder, his state of mind and body has become
+steadily worse. He can scarcely move at all now, and his mental attitude
+can only be described as painfully morbid--yes, I may say _very_
+painfully morbid. Sometimes he does not speak at all for days together,
+even to his mother, or his attendant."
+
+"Oh, poor boy!" said Phyllis. "How long has he been this way?"
+
+"Seven years this fall," the answer came consideringly. "Is it not,
+love?"
+
+"Yes," said his wife, "seven years."
+
+"_Oh!_" said the Liberry Teacher, with a quick catch of sympathy at her
+heart.
+
+Just as long as she had been working for her living in the big, dusty
+library. Supposing--oh, supposing she'd had to live all that time in
+such suffering as this poor Allan had endured and his mother had had to
+witness! She felt suddenly as if the grimy, restless Children's Room,
+with its clatter of turbulent little outland voices, were a safe, sunny
+paradise in comparison.
+
+Mr. De Guenther did not speak. He visibly braced himself and was visibly
+ill-at-ease.
+
+"I have told most of the story, Isabel, love," said he at last. "Would
+you not prefer to tell the rest? It is at your instance that I have
+undertaken this commission for Mrs. Harrington, you will remember."
+
+It struck Phyllis that he didn't think it was quite a dignified
+commission, at that.
+
+"Very well, my dear," said his wife, and took up the tale in her swift,
+soft voice.
+
+"You can fancy, my dear Miss Braithwaite, how intensely his mother has
+felt about it."
+
+"Indeed, yes!" said Phyllis pitifully.
+
+"Her whole life, since the accident, has been one long devotion to her
+son. I don't think a half-hour ever passes that she does not see him.
+But in spite of this constant care, as my husband has told you, he grows
+steadily worse. And poor Angela has finally broken under the strain. She
+was never strong. She is dying now--they give her maybe two months more.
+
+"Her one anxiety, of course, is for poor Allan's welfare. You can
+imagine how you would feel if you had to leave an entirely helpless son
+or brother to the mercies of hired attendants, however faithful. And
+they have no relatives--they are the last of the family."
+
+The listening girl began to see. She was going to be asked to act as
+nurse, perhaps attendant and guardian, to this morbid invalid with the
+injured mind and body.
+
+[Illustration: "NO," SAID MRS. DE GUENTHER GRAVELY. "YOU WOULD NOT. YOU
+WOULD HAVE TO BE HIS WIFE"]
+
+"But how would I be any better for him than a regular trained nurse?"
+she wondered. "And they said he had an attendant."
+
+She looked questioningly at the pair.
+
+"Where does my part come in?" she asked with a certain sweet directness
+which was sometimes hers. "Wouldn't I be a hireling too if--if I had
+anything to do with it?"
+
+"No," said Mrs. De Guenther gravely. "You would not. You would have to
+be his wife."
+
+
+
+
+IV
+
+
+The Liberry Teacher, in her sober best suit, sat down in her entirely
+commonplace chair in the quiet old parlor, and looked unbelievingly at
+the sedate elderly couple who had made her this wild proposition. She
+caught her breath. But catching her breath did not seem to affect
+anything that had been said. Mr. De Guenther took up the explanation
+again, a little deprecatingly, she thought.
+
+"You see now why I requested you to investigate our reputability?" he
+said. "Such a proposition as this, especially to a young lady who has no
+parent or guardian, requires a considerable guarantee of good faith and
+honesty of motive."
+
+"Will you please tell me more about it?" she asked quietly. She did not
+feel now as if it were anything which had especially to do with her. It
+seemed more like an interesting story she was unravelling sentence by
+sentence. The long, softly lighted old room, with its Stuarts and
+Sullys, and its gracious, gray-haired host and hostess, seemed only a
+picturesque part of it.... Her hostess caught up the tale again.
+
+"Angela has been nearly distracted," she said. "And the idea has come to
+her that if she could find some conscientious woman, a lady, and a
+person to whom what she could offer would be a consideration, who would
+take charge of poor Allan, that she could die in peace."
+
+"But why did you think of asking me?" the girl asked breathlessly. "And
+why does she want me married to him? And how could you or she be sure
+that I would not be as much of a hireling as any nurse she may have
+now?"
+
+Mrs. De Guenther answered the last two questions together.
+
+"Mrs. Harrington's idea is, and I think rightly, that a conscientious
+woman would feel the marriage tie, however nominal, a bond that would
+obligate her to a certain duty toward her husband. As to why we selected
+you, my dear, my husband and I have had an interest in you for some
+years, as you know. We have spoken of you as a girl whom we should like
+for a relative----"
+
+"Why, isn't that strange?" cried Phyllis, dimpling. "That's just what
+I've thought about you!"
+
+Mrs. De Guenther flushed, with a delicate old shyness.
+
+"Thank you, dear child," she said. "I was about to add that we have not
+seen you at your work all these years without knowing you to have the
+kind heart and sense of honor requisite to poor Angela's plan. We feel
+sure you could be trusted to take the place. Mr. De Guenther has asked
+his friend Mr. Johnston, the head of the library, such things as we
+needed to supplement our personal knowledge of you. You have everything
+that could be asked, even to a certain cheerfulness of outlook which
+poor Angela, naturally, lacks in a measure."
+
+"But--but what about _me_?" asked Phyllis Braithwaite a little
+piteously, in answer to all this.
+
+They seemed so certain she was what they wanted--was there anything in
+this wild scheme that would make _her_ life better than it was as the
+tired, ill-paid, light-hearted keeper of a roomful of turbulent little
+foreigners?
+
+"Unless you are thinking of marriage--" Phyllis shook her head--"you
+would have at least a much easier life than you have now. Mrs.
+Harrington would settle a liberal income on you, contingent, of course,
+of your faithful wardership over Allan. We would be your only judges as
+to that. You would have a couple or more months of absolute freedom
+every year, control of much of your own time, ample leisure to enjoy it.
+You would give only your chances of actual marriage for perhaps five
+years, for poor Allan cannot live longer than that at his present state
+of retrogression, and some part of every day to seeing that Allan was
+not neglected. If you bestow on him half of the interest and effort I
+have known of your giving any one of a dozen little immigrant boys, his
+mother has nothing to fear for him."
+
+Mr. De Guenther stopped with a grave little bow, and he and his wife
+waited for the reply.
+
+The Liberry Teacher sat silent, her eyes on her slim hands, that were
+roughened and reddened by constant hurried washings to get off the dirt
+of the library books. It was true--a good deal of it, anyhow. And one
+thing they had not said was true also: her sunniness and accuracy and
+strength, her stock-in-trade, were wearing thin under the pressure of
+too long hours and too hard work and too few personal interests. Her
+youth was worn down. And--marriage? What chance of love and marriage had
+she, a working-girl alone, too poor to see anything of the class of men
+she would be willing to marry? She had not for years spent six hours
+with a man of her own kind and age. She had not even been specially in
+love, that she could remember, since she was grown up. She did not feel
+much, now, as if she ever would be. All that she had to give up in
+taking this offer was her freedom, such as it was--and those fluttering
+perhapses that whisper such pleasant promises when you are young. But,
+then, she wouldn't be young so _very_ much longer. Should she--she put
+it to herself crudely--should she wait long, hard, closed-in years in
+the faith that she would learn to be absolutely contented, or that some
+man she could love would come to the cheap boarding-house, or the little
+church she attended occasionally when she was not too tired, fall in
+love with her work-dimmed looks at sight, and--marry her? It had not
+happened all these years while her girlhood had been more attractive and
+her personality more untired. There was scarcely a chance in a hundred
+for her of a kind lover-husband and such dear picture-book children as
+she had seen Eva Atkinson convoying. Well--her mind suddenly came up
+against the remembrance, as against a sober fact, that in her passionate
+wishings of yesterday she had not wished for a lover-husband, nor for
+children. She had asked for a husband who would give her money, and
+leisure to be rested and pretty, and--a rose-garden! And here,
+apparently, was her wish uncannily fulfilled.
+
+"Well, what are you going to do about it?" inquired the Destinies with
+their traditional indifference. "We can't wait all night!"
+
+She lifted her head and cast an almost frightened look at the De
+Guenthers, waiting courteously for her decision. In reply to the look,
+Mr. De Guenther began giving her details about the money, and the
+leisure time, and the business terms of the contract generally. She
+listened attentively. All that--for a little guardianship, a little
+kindness, and the giving-up of a little piece of life nobody wanted and
+a few little hopes and dreams!
+
+Phyllis laughed, as she always did when there were big black problems to
+be solved.
+
+"After all, it's fairly usual," she said. "I heard last week of a woman
+who left money along with her pet dog, very much the same way."
+
+"Did you? Did you, dear?" asked Mrs. De Guenther, beaming. "Then you
+think you will do it?"
+
+The Liberry Teacher rose, and squared her straight young shoulders under
+the worn net waist.
+
+"If Mrs. Harrington thinks I'll do for the situation!" she said
+gallantly,--and laughed again.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"It feels partly like going into a nunnery and partly like going into a
+fairy-story," she said to herself that night as she wound her alarm.
+"But--I wonder if anybody's remembered to ask the consent of the
+groom!"
+
+
+
+
+V
+
+
+He looked like a young Crusader on a tomb. That was Phyllis's first
+impression of Allan Harrington. He talked and acted, if a moveless man
+can be said to act, like a bored, spoiled small boy. That was her
+second.
+
+Mrs. Harrington, fragile, flushed, breathlessly intense in her
+wheel-chair, had yet a certain resemblance in voice and gesture to Mrs.
+De Guenther--a resemblance which puzzled Phyllis till she placed it as
+the mark of that far-off ladies' school they had attended together.
+There was also a graceful, mincing white wolfhound which, contrary to
+the accepted notion of invalids' faithful hounds, didn't seem to care
+for his master's darkened sick-room at all, but followed the one sunny
+spot in Mrs. Harrington's room with a wistful persistence. It was such a
+small spot for such a long wolfhound--that was the principal thing which
+impressed itself on Phyllis's frightened mind throughout her visit.
+
+Mrs. De Guenther convoyed her to the Harrington house for inspection a
+couple of days after she had accepted some one's proposal to marry Allan
+Harrington. (Whether it counted as her future mother-in-law's proposal,
+or her future trustee's, she was never sure. The only sure thing was
+that it did not come from the groom.) She had borrowed a half-day from
+the future on purpose, though she did not want to go at all. But the
+reality was not bad; only a fluttering, emotional little woman who clung
+to her hands and talked to her and asked useless questions with a
+nervous insistence which would have been nerve-wearing for a steady
+thing, but was only pitiful to a stranger.
+
+You see strange people all the time in library work, and learn to place
+them, at length, with almost as much accuracy as you do your books. The
+fact that Mrs. Harrington was not long for this world did not prevent
+Phyllis from classing her, in her mental card-catalogue, as a very
+perfect specimen of the Loving Nagger. She was lying back, wrapped in
+something gray and soft, when her visitors came, looking as if the
+lifting of her hand would be an effort. She was evidently pitifully
+weak. But she had, too, an ineradicable vitality she could summon at
+need. She sprang almost upright to greet her visitors, a hand out to
+each, an eager flood of words on her lips.
+
+"And you are Miss Braithwaite, that is going to look after my boy?" she
+ended. "Oh, it is so good of you--I am so glad--I can go in peace now.
+Are you sure--sure you will know the minute his attendants are the least
+bit negligent? I watch and watch them all the time. I tell Allan to ring
+for me if anything ever is the least bit wrong--I am always begging him
+to remember. I go in every night and pray with him--do you think you
+could do that? But I always cry so before I'm through--I cry and cry--my
+poor, helpless boy--he was so strong and bright! And you are sure you
+are conscientious----"
+
+At this point Phyllis stopped the flow of Mrs. Harrington's conversation
+firmly, if sweetly.
+
+"Yes, indeed," she said cheerfully. "But you know, if I'm not, Mr. De
+Guenther can stop all my allowance. It wouldn't be to my own interest
+not to fulfil my duties faithfully."
+
+"Yes, that is true," said Mrs. Harrington. "That was a good thought of
+mine. My husband always said I was an unusual woman where business was
+concerned."
+
+So they went on the principle that she had no honor beyond working for
+what she would get out of it! Although she had made the suggestion
+herself, Phyllis's cheeks burned, and she was about to answer sharply.
+Then somehow the poor, anxious, loving mother's absolute preoccupation
+with her son struck her as right after all.
+
+"If it were my son," thought Phyllis, "I wouldn't worry about any
+strange hired girl's feelings either, maybe. I'd just think about
+him.... I promise I'll look after Mr. Harrington's welfare as if he were
+my own brother!" she ended aloud impulsively. "Indeed, you may trust
+me."
+
+"I am--sure you will," panted Mrs. Harrington. "You look like--a good
+girl, and--and old enough to be responsible--twenty-eight--thirty?"
+
+"Not very far from that," said Phyllis serenely.
+
+"And you are sure you will know when the attendants are neglectful? I
+speak to them all the time, but I never can be sure.... And now you'd
+better see poor Allan. This is one of his good days. Just think, dear
+Isabel, he spoke to me twice without my speaking to him this morning!"
+
+"Oh--must I?" asked Phyllis, dismayed. "Couldn't I wait till--till it
+happens?"
+
+Mrs. Harrington actually laughed a little at her shyness, lighting up
+like a girl. Phyllis felt dimly, though she tried not to, that through
+it all her mother-in-law-elect was taking pleasure in the dramatic side
+of the situation she had engineered.
+
+"Oh, my dear, you must see him. He expects you," she answered almost
+gayly. The procession of three moved down the long room towards a door,
+Phyllis's hand guiding the wheel-chair. She was surprised to find
+herself shaking with fright. Just what she expected to find beyond the
+door she did not know, but it must have been some horror, for it was
+with a heart-bound of wild relief that she finally made out Allan
+Harrington, lying white in the darkened place.
+
+A Crusader on a tomb. Yes, he looked like that. In the room's half-dusk
+the pallor of his still, clear-featured face and his long, clear-cut
+hands was nearly the same as the whiteness of the couch-draperies. His
+hair, yellow-brown and waving, flung back from his forehead like a
+crest, and his dark brows and lashes made the only note of darkness
+about him. To Phyllis's beauty-loving eyes he seemed so perfect an image
+that she could have watched him for hours.
+
+"Here's Miss Braithwaite, my poor darling," said his mother. "The young
+lady we have been talking about so long."
+
+The Crusader lifted his eyelids and let them fall again.
+
+"Is she?" he said listlessly.
+
+"Don't you want to talk to her, darling boy?" his mother persisted, half
+out of breath, but still full of that unrebuffable, loving energy and
+insistence which she would probably keep to the last minute of her
+life.
+
+"No," said the Crusader, still in those empty, listless tones. "I'd
+rather not talk. I'm tired."
+
+His mother seemed not at all put out.
+
+"Of course, darling," she said, kissing him. She sat by him still,
+however, and poured out sentence after sentence of question, insistence,
+imploration, and pity, eliciting no answer at all. Phyllis wondered how
+it would feel to have to lie still and have that done to you for a term
+of years. The result of her wonderment was a decision to forgive her
+unenthusiastic future bridegroom for what she had at first been ready to
+slap him.
+
+Presently Mrs. Harrington's breath flagged, and the three women went
+away, back to the room they had been in before. Phyllis sat and let
+herself be talked to for a little longer. Then she rose impulsively.
+
+"May I go back and see your son again for just a minute?" she asked, and
+had gone before Mrs. Harrington had finished her permission. She darted
+into the dark room before her courage had time to fail, and stood by the
+white couch again.
+
+"Mr. Harrington," she said clearly, "I'm sorry you're tired, but I'm
+afraid I am going to have to ask you to listen to me. You know, don't
+you, that your mother plans to have me marry you, for a sort of
+interested head-nurse? Are you willing to have it happen? Because I
+won't do it unless you really prefer it."
+
+The heavy white lids half-lifted again.
+
+"I don't mind," said Allan Harrington listlessly. "I suppose you are
+quiet and trustworthy, or De Guenther wouldn't have sent you. It will
+give mother a little peace and it makes no difference to me."
+
+He closed his eyes and the subject at the same time.
+
+"Well, then, that's all right," said Phyllis cheerfully, and started to
+go. Then, drawn back by a sudden, nervous temper-impulse, she moved back
+on him. "And let me tell you," she added, half-laughing,
+half-impertinently, "that if you ever get into my quiet, trustworthy
+clutches you may have an awful time! You're a very spoiled invalid."
+
+She whisked out of the room before he could have gone very far with his
+reply. But he had not cared to reply, apparently. He lay unmoved and
+unmoving.
+
+Phyllis discovered, poising breathless on the threshold, that somehow
+she had seen his eyes. They had been a little like the wolfhound's, a
+sort of wistful gold-brown.
+
+For some reason she found that Allan Harrington's attitude of absolute
+detachment made the whole affair seem much easier for her. And when Mrs.
+Harrington slipped a solitaire diamond into her hand as she went,
+instead of disliking it she enjoyed its feel on her finger, and the
+flash of it in the light. She thanked Mrs. Harrington for it with real
+gratitude. But it made her feel more than ever engaged to marry her
+mother-in-law.
+
+She walked home rather silently with Mrs. De Guenther. Only at the foot
+of the De Guenther steps, she made one absent remark.
+
+"He must have been delightful," she said, "when he was alive!"
+
+
+
+
+VI
+
+
+After a week of the old bustling, dusty hard work, the Liberry Teacher's
+visit to the De Guenthers' and the subsequent one at the Harringtons',
+and even her sparkling white ring, seemed part of a queer story she had
+finished and put back on the shelf. The ring was the most real thing,
+because it was something of a worry. She didn't dare leave it at home,
+nor did she want to wear it. She finally sewed it in a chamois bag that
+she safety-pinned under her shirt-waist. Then she dismissed it from her
+mind also. There is very little time in a Liberry Teacher's life for
+meditation. Only once in a while would come to her the vision of the
+wistful Harrington wolfhound following his inadequate patch of sunlight,
+or of the dusky room where Allan Harrington lay inert and white, and
+looking like a wonderful carved statue on a tomb.
+
+She began to do a little to her clothes, but not very much, because she
+had neither time nor money. Mr. De Guenther had wanted her to take some
+money in advance, but she had refused. She did not want it till she had
+earned it, and, anyway, it would have made the whole thing so real, she
+knew, that she would have backed out.
+
+"And it isn't as if I were going to a lover," she defended herself to
+Mrs. De Guenther with a little wistful smile. "Nobody will know what I
+have on, any more than they do now."
+
+Mrs. De Guenther gave a scandalized little cry. Her attitude was
+determinedly that it was just an ordinary marriage, as good an excuse
+for sentiment and pretty frocks as any other.
+
+"My dear child," she replied firmly, "you are going to have one pretty
+frock and one really good street-suit _now_, or I will know why! The
+rest you may get yourself after the wedding, but you must obey me in
+this. Nonsense!--you can get a half-day, as you call it, perfectly well!
+What's Albert in politics for, if he can't get favors for his friends!"
+
+And, in effect, it proved that Albert was in politics to some purpose,
+for orders came up from the Head's office within twenty minutes after
+Mrs. De Guenther had used the telephone on her husband, that Miss
+Braithwaite was to have a half-day immediately--as far as she could make
+out, in order to transact city affairs! She felt as if the angels had
+told her she could have the last fortnight over again, as a favor, or
+something of the sort. A half-day out of turn was something nobody had
+ever heard of. She was even too surprised to object to the frock part of
+the situation. She tried to stand out a little longer, but it's a very
+stoical young woman who can refuse to have pretty clothes bought for
+her, and the end of it was a seat in a salon which she had always
+considered so expensive that you scarcely ought to look in the window.
+
+"Had it better be a black suit?" asked Mrs. De Guenther doubtfully, as
+the tall lady in floppy charmeuse hovered haughtily about them,
+expecting orders. "It seems horrible to buy mourning when dear Angela is
+not yet passed away, but it would only be showing proper respect; and I
+remember my own dear mother planned all our mourning outfits while she
+was dying. It was quite a pleasure to her."
+
+Phyllis kept her face straight, and slipped one persuasive hand through
+her friend's arm.
+
+"I don't believe I _could_ buy mourning, dear," she said. "And--oh, if
+you knew how long I'd wanted a really _blue_ blue suit! Only, it would
+have been too vivid to wear well--I always knew that--because you can
+only afford one every other year. And"--Phyllis rather diffidently
+voiced a thought which had been in the back of her mind for a long
+time--"if I'm going to be much around Mr. Harrington, don't you think
+cheerful clothes would be best? Everything in that house seems sombre
+enough now."
+
+"Perhaps you are right, dear child," said Mrs. De Guenther. "I hope you
+may be the means of putting a great deal of brightness into poor Allan's
+life before he joins his mother."
+
+"Oh, don't!" cried Phyllis impulsively. Somehow she could not bear to
+think of Allan Harrington's dying. He was too beautiful to be dead,
+where nobody could see him any more. Besides, Phyllis privately
+considered that a long vacation before he joined his mother would be
+only the fair thing for "poor Allan." Youth sides with youth. And--the
+clear-cut white lines of him rose in her memory and stayed there. She
+could almost hear that poor, tired, toneless voice of his, that was yet
+so deep and so perfectly accented.... She bought docilely whatever her
+guide directed, and woke from a species of gentle daze at the
+afternoon's end to find Mrs. De Guenther beaming with the weary rapture
+of the successful shopper, and herself the proprietress of a turquoise
+velvet walking-suit, a hat to match, a pale blue evening frock, a pale
+green between-dress with lovely clinging lines, and a heavenly white
+crepe thing with rosy ribbons and filmy shadow-laces--the negligee of
+one's dreams. There were also slippers and shoes and stockings and--this
+was really too bad of Mrs. De Guenther--a half-dozen set of lingerie,
+straight through. Mrs. De Guenther sat and continued to beam joyously
+over the array, in Phyllis's little bedroom.
+
+"It's my present, dearie," she said calmly. "So you needn't worry about
+using Angela's money. Gracious, it's been _lovely_! I haven't had such a
+good time since my husband's little grand-niece came on for a week.
+There's nothing like dressing a girl, after all."
+
+And Phyllis could only kiss her. But when her guest had gone she laid
+all the boxes of finery under her bed, the only place where there was
+any room. She would not take any of it out, she determined, till her
+summons came. But on second thought, she wore the blue velvet
+street-suit on Sunday visits to Mrs. Harrington, which became--she never
+knew just when or how--a regular thing. The vivid blue made her eyes
+nearly sky-color, and brightened her hair very satisfactorily. She was
+taking more time and trouble over her looks now--one has to live up to a
+turquoise velvet hat and coat! She found herself, too, becoming very
+genuinely fond of the restless, anxiously loving, passionate, unwise
+child who dwelt in Mrs. Harrington's frail elderly body and had almost
+worn it out. She sat, long hours of every Sunday afternoon, holding Mrs.
+Harrington's thin little hot hands, and listening to her swift,
+italicised monologues about Allan--what he must do, what he must not do,
+how he must be looked after, how his mother had treated him, how his
+wishes must be ascertained and followed.
+
+"Though all he wants now is dark and quiet," said his mother piteously.
+"I don't even go in there now to cry."
+
+She spoke as if it were an established ritual. Had she been using her
+son's sick-room, Phyllis wondered, as a regular weeping-place? She could
+feel in Mrs. Harrington, even in this mortal sickness, the tremendous
+driving influence which is often part of a passionately active and not
+very wise personality. That certitude and insistence of Mrs.
+Harrington's could hammer you finally into believing or doing almost
+anything. Phyllis wondered how much his mother's heartbroken adoration
+and pity might have had to do with making her son as hopeless-minded as
+he was.
+
+Naturally, the mother-in-law-elect she had acquired in such a strange
+way became very fond of Phyllis. But indeed there was something very gay
+and sweet and honest-minded about the girl, a something which gave
+people the feeling that they were very wise in liking her. Some people
+you are fond of against your will. When people cared for Phyllis it was
+with a quite irrational feeling that they were doing a sensible thing.
+They never gave any of the credit to her very real, though almost
+invisible, charm.
+
+She never saw Allan Harrington on any of the Sunday visits. She was sure
+the servants thought she did, for she knew that every one in the great,
+dark old house knew her as the young lady who was to marry Mr. Allan.
+She believed that she was supposed to be an old family friend, perhaps a
+distant relative. She did not want to see Allan. But she did want to be
+as good to his little, tensely-loving mother as she could, and reassure
+her about Allan's future care. And she succeeded.
+
+It was on a Friday about two that the summons came. Phyllis had thought
+she expected it, but when the call came to her over the library
+telephone she found herself as badly frightened as she had been the
+first time she went to the Harrington house. She shivered as she laid
+down the dater she was using, and called the other librarian to take her
+desk. Fortunately, between one and four the morning and evening shifts
+overlapped, and there was some one to take her place.
+
+"Mrs. Harrington cannot last out the night," came Mr. De Guenther's
+clear, precise voice over the telephone, without preface. "I have
+arranged with Mr. Johnston. You can go at once. You had better pack a
+suit-case, for you possibly may not be able to get back to your
+boarding-place."
+
+So it was to happen now! Phyllis felt, with her substitute in her place,
+her own wraps on, and her feet taking her swiftly towards her goal, as
+if she were offering herself to be made a nun, or have a hand or foot
+cut off, or paying herself away in some awful, irrevocable fashion. She
+packed, mechanically, all the pretty things Mrs. De Guenther had given
+her, and nothing else. She found herself at the door of her room with
+the locked suit-case in her hand, and not even a nail-file of the things
+belonging to her old self in it. She shook herself together, managed to
+laugh a little, and returned and put in such things as she thought she
+would require for the night. Then she went. She always remembered that
+journey as long as she lived; her hands and feet and tongue going on,
+buying tickets, giving directions--and her mind, like a naughty child,
+catching at everything as they went, and screaming to be allowed to go
+back home, back to the dusty, matter-of-course library and the dreary
+little boarding-house bedroom!
+
+
+
+
+VII
+
+
+They were all waiting for her, in what felt like a hideously quiet
+semicircle, in Allan's great dark room. Mrs. Harrington, deadly pale,
+and giving an impression of keeping herself alive only by force of that
+wonderful fighting vitality of hers, lay almost at length in her
+wheel-chair. There was a clergyman in vestments. There were the De
+Guenthers; Mr. De Guenther only a little more precise than his every-day
+habit was, Mrs. De Guenther crying a little, softly and furtively.
+
+As for Allan Harrington, he lay just as she had seen him that other
+time, white and moveless, seeming scarcely conscious except by an
+effort. Only she noticed a slight contraction, as of pain, between his
+brows.
+
+"Phyllis has come," panted Mrs. Harrington. "Now it will be--all right.
+You must marry him quickly--quickly, do you hear, Phyllis? Oh, people
+never will--do--what I want them to----"
+
+"Yes--yes, indeed, dear," said Phyllis, taking her hands soothingly.
+"We're going to attend to it right away. See, everything is ready."
+
+It occurred to her that Mrs. Harrington was not half as correct in her
+playing of the part of a dying woman as she would have seen to it that
+anyone else was; also, that things did not seem legal without the
+wolfhound. Then she was shocked at herself for such irrelevant thoughts.
+The thing to do was to keep poor Mrs. Harrington quieted. So she
+beckoned the clergyman and the De Guenthers nearer, and herself sped the
+marrying of herself to Allan Harrington.
+
+... When you are being married to a Crusader on a tomb, the easiest way
+is to kneel down by him. Phyllis registered this fact in her mind quite
+blankly, as something which might be of use to remember in future....
+The marrying took an unnecessarily long time, it seemed to her. It did
+not seem as if she were being married at all. It all seemed to concern
+somebody else. When it came to the putting on of the wedding-ring, she
+found herself, very naturally, guiding Allan's relaxed fingers to hold
+it in its successive places, and finally slip it on the wedding-finger.
+And somehow having to do that checked the chilly awe she had had before
+of Allan Harrington. It made her feel quite simply sorry for him, as if
+he were one of her poor little boys in trouble. And when it was all over
+she bent pitifully before she thought, and kissed one white, cold cheek.
+He seemed so tragically helpless, yet more alive, in some way, since she
+had touched his hand to guide it. Then, as her lips brushed his cheek,
+she recoiled and colored a little. She had felt that slight roughness
+which a man's cheek, however close-shaven, always has--the _man_-feel.
+It made her realize unreasonably that it was a man she had married,
+after all, not a stone image nor a sick child--a live man! With the
+thought, or rather instinct, came a swift terror of what she had done,
+and a swift impulse to rise. She was half-way risen from her knees when
+a hand on her shoulder, and the clergyman's voice in her ear, checked
+her.
+
+"Not yet," he murmured almost inaudibly. "Stay as you are till--till
+Mrs. Harrington is wheeled from the room."
+
+Phyllis understood. She remained as she was, her body a shield before
+Allan Harrington's eyes, her hand just withdrawing from his shoulder,
+till she heard the closing of the door, and a sigh as of relaxed tension
+from the three people around her. Then she rose. Allan lay still with
+closed eyelids. It seemed to her that he had flushed, if ever so
+faintly, at the touch of her lips on his cheek. She laid his hand on the
+coverlet with her own roughened, ringed one, and followed the others
+out, into the room where the dead woman had been taken, leaving him with
+his attendant.
+
+The rest of the evening Phyllis went about in a queer-keyed, almost
+light-hearted frame of mind. It was only the reaction from the
+long-expected terror that was over now, but it felt indecorous. It was
+just as well, however. Some one's head had to be kept. The servants were
+upset, of course, and there were many arrangements to be made. She and
+Mr. De Guenther worked steadily together, telephoning, ordering,
+guiding, straightening out all the tangles. There never was a wedding,
+she thought, where the bride did so much of the work! She even
+remembered to see personally that Allan's dinner was sent up to him. The
+servants had doubtless been told to come to her for orders--at any rate,
+they did. Phyllis had not had much experience in running a house, but a
+good deal in keeping her head. And that, after all, is the main thing.
+She had a far-off feeling as if she were hearing some other young woman
+giving swift, poised, executive orders. She rather admired her.
+
+After dinner the De Guenthers went. And Phyllis Braithwaite, the little
+Liberry Teacher who had been living in a hall bedroom on much less money
+than she needed, found herself alone, sole mistress of the great
+Harrington house, a corps of servants, a husband passive enough to
+satisfy the most militant suffragette, a check-book, a wistful
+wolfhound, and five hundred dollars, cash, for current expenses. The
+last weighed on her mind more than all the rest put together.
+
+"Why, I don't know how to make Current Expenses out of all that!" she
+had said to Mr. De Guenther. "It looks to me exactly like about ten
+months' salary! I'm perfectly certain I shall get up in my sleep and try
+to pay my board ahead with it, so I shan't have it all spent before the
+ten months are up! There was a blue bead necklace," she went on
+meditatively, "in the Five-and-Ten, that I always wanted to buy. Only I
+never quite felt I could afford it. Oh, just imagine going to the
+Five-and-Ten and buying at least five dollars' worth of things you
+didn't need!"
+
+"You have great discretionary powers--great discretionary powers, my
+dear, you will find!" Mr. De Guenther had said, as he patted her
+shoulder. Phyllis took it as a compliment at the time. "Discretionary
+powers" sounded as if he thought she was a quite intelligent young
+person. It did not occur to her till he had gone, and she was alone with
+her check-book, that it meant she had a good deal of liberty to do as
+she liked.
+
+It seemed to be expected of her to stay. Nobody even suggested a
+possibility of her going home again, even to pack her trunk. Mrs. De
+Guenther casually volunteered to do that, a little after the housekeeper
+had told her where her rooms were. She had been consulting with the
+housekeeper for what seemed ages, when she happened to want some pins
+for something, and asked for her suit-case.
+
+"It's in your rooms," said the housekeeper. "Mrs. Harrington--the late
+Mrs. Harrington, I should say----"
+
+Phyllis stopped listening at this point. Who was the present Mrs.
+Harrington? she wondered before she thought--and then remembered.
+Why--_she_ was! So there was no Phyllis Braithwaite any more! Of course
+not.... Yet she had always liked the name so--well, a last name was a
+small thing to give up.... Into her mind fitted an incongruous, silly
+story she had heard once at the library, about a girl whose last name
+was Rose, and whose parents christened her Wild, because the combination
+appealed to them. And then she married a man named Bull.... Meanwhile
+the housekeeper had been going on.
+
+... "She had the bedroom and bath opening from the other side of Mr.
+Allan's day-room ready for you, madam. It's been ready several weeks."
+
+"Has it?" said Phyllis. It was like Mrs. Harrington, that careful
+planning of even where she should be put. "Is Mr. Harrington in his
+day-room now?"
+
+For some reason she did not attempt to give herself, she did not want to
+see him again just now. Besides, it was nearly eleven and time a very
+tired girl was in bed. She wanted a good night's rest, before she had to
+get up and be Mrs. Harrington, with Allan and the check-book and the
+Current Expenses all tied to her.
+
+Some one had laid everything out for her in the bedroom; the filmy new
+nightgown over a chair, the blue satin mules underneath, her plain
+toilet-things on a dressing-table, and over another chair the exquisite
+ivory crepe negligee with its floating rose ribbons. She took a hasty
+bath--there was so much hot water that she was quite reconciled for a
+moment to being a check-booked and wolf hounded Mrs. Harrington--and
+slid straight into bed without even stopping to braid her loosened,
+honey-colored hair.
+
+It seemed to her that she was barely asleep when there came an urgent
+knocking at her door.
+
+"Yes?" she said sleepily, looking mechanically for her alarm-clock as
+she switched on the light. "What is it, please?"
+
+"It's I, Wallis, Mr. Allan's man, Madame," said a nervous voice. "Mr.
+Allan's very bad. I've done all the usual things, but nothing seems to
+quiet him. He hates doctors so, and they make him so wrought up--please
+could you come, ma'am? He says as how all of us are all dead--oh,
+_please_, Mrs. Harrington!"
+
+There was panic in the man's voice.
+
+"All right," said Phyllis sleepily, dropping to the floor as she spoke
+with the rapidity that only the alarm-clock-broken know. She snatched
+the negligee around her, and thrust her feet hastily into the blue satin
+slippers--why, she was actually using her wedding finery! And what an
+easily upset person that man was! But everybody in the house seemed to
+have nerves on edge. It was no wonder about Allan--he wanted his
+mother, of course, poor boy! She felt, as she ran fleetly across the
+long room that separated her sleeping quarters from her husband's, the
+same mixture of pity and timidity that she had felt with him before.
+Poor boy! Poor, silent, beautiful statue, with his one friend gone! She
+opened the door and entered swiftly into his room.
+
+She was not thinking about herself at all, only of how she could help
+Allan, but there must have been something about her of the picture-book
+angel to the pain-racked man, lying tensely at length in the room's
+darkest corner. Her long, dully gold hair, loosening from its twist,
+flew out about her, and her face was still flushed with sleep. There was
+a something about her that was vividly alight and alive, perhaps the
+light in her blue eyes.
+
+From what the man had said Phyllis had thought Allan was delirious, but
+she saw at once that he was only in severe pain, and talking more
+disconnectedly, perhaps, than the slow-minded Englishman could follow.
+He did not look like a statue now. His cheeks were burning with evident
+pain, and his yellow-brown eyes, wide-open, and dilated to darkness,
+stared straight out. His hands were clenching and unclenching, and his
+head moved restlessly from side to side. Every nerve and muscle, she
+could see, was taut.
+
+"They're all dead," he muttered. "Father and Mother and Louise--and
+I--only I'm not dead enough to bury. Oh, God, I wish I was!"
+
+That wasn't delirium; it was something more like heart-break. Phyllis
+moved closer to him, and dropped one of her sleep-warm hands on his
+cold, clenched one.
+
+"Oh, poor boy!" she said. "I'm so sorry--so sorry!" She closed her hands
+tight over both his.
+
+Some of her strong young vitality must have passed between them and
+helped him, for almost immediately his tenseness relaxed a little, and
+he looked at her.
+
+"You--you're not a nurse," he said. "They go around--like--like
+a--vault----"
+
+She had caught his attention! That was a good deal, she felt. She
+forgot everything about him, except that he was some one to be
+comforted, and her charge. She sat down on the bed by him, still holding
+tight to his hands.
+
+"No, indeed," she said, bending nearer him, her long loose hair falling
+forward about her resolutely-smiling young face. "Don't you remember
+seeing me? I never was a nurse."
+
+"What--are you?" he asked feebly.
+
+"I'm--why, the children call me the Liberry Teacher," she answered. It
+occurred to her that it would be better to talk on brightly at random
+than to risk speaking of his mother to him, as she must if she reminded
+him of their marriage. "I spend my days in a basement, making bad little
+boys get so interested in the Higher Culture that they'll forget to
+shoot crap and smash windows."
+
+One of the things which had aided Phyllis to rise from desk-assistant to
+one of the Children's Room librarians was a very sweet and carrying
+voice--a voice which arrested even a child's attention, and held his
+interest. It held Allan now; merely the sound of it, seemingly.
+
+"Go on--talking," he murmured. Phyllis smiled and obeyed.
+
+"Sometimes the Higher Culture doesn't work," she said. "Yesterday one of
+my imps got hold of a volume of Shaw, and in half an hour his aunt
+marched in on me and threatened I don't know what to a library that
+'taught chilren to disrespect their lawful guardeens.'"
+
+"I remember now," said Allan. "You are the girl in the blue dress. The
+girl mother had me marry. I remember."
+
+"Yes," said Phyllis soothingly, and a little apologetically. "I know.
+But that--oh, please, it needn't make a bit of difference. It was only
+so I could see that you were looked after properly, you know. I'll never
+be in the way, unless you want me to do something for you."
+
+"I don't mind," he said listlessly, as he had before.... "_Oh, this
+dreadful darkness, and mother dead in it somewhere!_"
+
+"Wallis," called Phyllis swiftly, "turn up the lights!"
+
+The man slipped the close green silk shades from the electric bulbs.
+Allan shrank as if he had been hurt.
+
+"I can't stand the glare," he cried.
+
+"Yes, you can for a moment," she said firmly. "It's better than the
+ghastly green glow."
+
+It was probably the first time Allan Harrington had been contradicted
+since his accident. He said nothing more for a minute, and Phyllis
+directed Wallis to bring a sheet of pink tissue paper from her
+suit-case, where she remembered it lay in the folds of some new muslin
+thing. Under her direction still, he wrapped the globes in it and
+secured it with string.
+
+"There!" she told Allan triumphantly when Wallis was done. "See, there
+is no glare now; only a pretty rose-colored glow. Better than the green,
+isn't it?"
+
+Allan looked at her again. "You are--kind," he said. "Mother said--you
+would be kind. Oh, mother--mother!" He tried uselessly to lift one arm
+to cover his convulsed face, and could only turn his head a little
+aside.
+
+"You can go, Wallis," said Phyllis softly, with her lips only. "Be in
+the next room." The man stole out and shut the door softly. Phyllis
+herself rose and went toward the window, and busied herself in braiding
+up her hair. There was almost silence in the room for a few minutes.
+
+"Thank--you," said Allan brokenly. "Will you--come back, please?"
+
+She returned swiftly, and sat by him as she had before.
+
+"Would you mind--holding my wrists again?" he asked. "I feel quieter,
+somehow, when you do--not so--lost." There was a pathetic boyishness in
+his tone that the sad, clear lines of his face would never prepare you
+for.
+
+Phyllis took his wrists in her warm, strong hands obediently.
+
+"Are you in pain, Allan?" she asked. "Do you mind if I call you Allan?
+It's the easiest way."
+
+He smiled at her a little, faintly. It occurred to her that perhaps the
+novelty of her was taking his mind a little from his own feelings.
+
+"No--no pain. I haven't had any for a very long time now. Only this
+dreadful blackness dragging at my mind, a blackness the light hurts."
+
+"_Why!_" said Phyllis to herself, being on known ground here--"why, it's
+nervous depression! I believe cheering-up _would_ help. I know," she
+said aloud; "I've had it."
+
+"You?" he said. "But you seem so--happy!"
+
+"I suppose I am," said Phyllis shyly. She felt a little afraid of "poor
+Allan" still, now that there was nothing to do for him, and they were
+talking together. And he had not answered her question, either;
+doubtless he wanted her to say "Mr. Allan" or even "Mr. Harrington!" He
+replied to her thought in the uncanny way invalids sometimes do.
+
+"You said something about what we were to call each other," he murmured.
+"It would be foolish, of course, not to use first names. Yours is Alice,
+isn't it?"
+
+Phyllis laughed. "Oh, worse than that!" she said. "I was named out of a
+poetrybook, I believe--Phyllis Narcissa. But I always conceal the
+Narcissa."
+
+"Phyllis. Thank you," he said wearily. ... "_Phyllis, don't let go!
+Talk_ to me!" His eyes were those of a man in torment.
+
+"What shall I talk about?" she asked soothingly, keeping the two cold,
+clutching hands in her warm grasp. "Shall I tell you a story? I know a
+great many stories by heart, and I will say them for you if you like. It
+was part of my work."
+
+"Yes," he said. "Anything."
+
+Phyllis arranged herself more comfortably on the bed, for it looked as
+if she had some time to stay, and began the story she knew best, because
+her children liked it best, Kipling's "How the Elephant Got His Trunk."
+"A long, long time ago, O Best Beloved...."
+
+Allan listened, and, she thought, at times paid attention to the words.
+He almost smiled once or twice, she was nearly sure. She went straight
+on to another story when the first was done. Never had she worked so
+hard to keep the interest of any restless circle of children as she
+worked now, sitting up in the pink light in her crepe wrappings, with
+her school-girl braids hanging down over her bosom, and Allan
+Harrington's agonized golden-brown eyes fixed on her pitying ones.
+
+"You must be tired," he said more connectedly and quietly when she had
+ended the second story. "Can't you sit up here by me, propped on the
+pillows? And you need a quilt or something, too."
+
+This from an invalid who had been given nothing but himself to think of
+this seven years back! Phyllis's opinion of Allan went up very much. She
+had supposed he would be very selfish. But she made herself a bank of
+pillows, and arranged herself by Allan's side so that she could keep
+fast to his hands without any strain, something as skaters hold. She
+wrapped a down quilt from the foot of the bed around her mummy-fashion
+and went on to her third story. Allan's eyes, as she talked on, grew
+less intent--drooped. She felt the relaxation of his hands. She went
+monotonously on, closing her own eyes--just for a minute, as she
+finished her story.
+
+
+
+
+VIII
+
+
+"I've overslept the alarm!" was Phyllis's first thought next morning
+when she woke. "It must be--" Where was she? So tired, so very tired,
+she remembered being, and telling some one an interminable story.... She
+held her sleepy eyes wide open by will-power, and found that a silent
+but evidently going clock hung in sight. Six-thirty. Then she hadn't
+overslept the alarm. But ... she hadn't set any alarm. And she had been
+sleeping propped up in a sitting position, half on--why, it was a
+shoulder. And she was rolled tight in a terra-cotta down quilt. She sat
+up with a jerk--fortunately a noiseless one--and turned to look. Then
+suddenly she remembered all about it, that jumbled, excited,
+hard-working yesterday which had held change and death and marriage for
+her, and which she had ended by perching on "poor Allan Harrington's"
+bed and sending him to sleep by holding his hands and telling him
+children's stories. She must have fallen asleep after he did, and slid
+down on his shoulder. A wonder it hadn't disturbed him! She stole
+another look at him, as he lay sleeping still, heavily and quietly.
+After all, she was married to him, and she had a perfect right to recite
+him to sleep if she wanted to. She unrolled herself cautiously, and slid
+out like a shadow.
+
+She almost fell over poor Wallis, sleeping too in his clothes outside
+the door, on Allan's day couch. He came quickly to his feet, as if he
+were used to sudden waking.
+
+"Don't disturb Mr. Harrington," said Phyllis as staidly as if she had
+been giving men-servants orders in her slipper-feet all her life. "He
+seems to be sleeping quietly."
+
+"Begging your pardon, Mrs. Harrington, but you haven't been giving him
+anything, have you?" asked Wallis. "He hasn't slept without a break for
+two hours to my knowledge since I've been here, not without medicine."
+
+"Not a thing," said Phyllis, smiling with satisfaction. "He must have
+been sleeping nearly three hours now! I read him to sleep, or what
+amounted to it. I got his nerves quiet, I think. Please kill anybody
+that tries to wake him, Wallis."
+
+"Very good, ma'am," said Wallis gravely. "And yourself, ma'am?"
+
+"I'm going to get some sleep, too," she said. "Call me if there's
+anything--useful."
+
+She meant "necessary," but she wanted so much more sleep she never knew
+the difference. When she got into her room she found that there also she
+was not alone: the wistful wolfhound was curled plaintively across her
+bed, which he overlapped. From his nose he seemed to have been dipping
+largely into the cup of chocolate somebody had brought to her, and which
+she had forgotten to drink when she found it, on her first retiring.
+
+"You aren't a _bit_ high-minded," said Phyllis indignantly. She was too
+sleepy to do more than shove him over to the back of the bed. "All--the
+beds here are so--_full_," she complained sleepily; and crawled inside,
+and never woke again till nearly afternoon.
+
+There was all the grave business to be done, in the days that followed,
+of taking Mrs. Harrington to a quiet place beside her husband, and
+drawing together again the strings of the disorganized household.
+Phyllis found herself whispering over and over again:
+
+
+   "The sweeping up the heart
+     And putting love away
+   We shall not need to use again.
+     Until the Judgment Day."
+
+
+And with all there was to see after, it was some days before she saw
+Allan again, more than to speak to brightly as she crossed their common
+sitting-room. He did not ask for her. She looked after his comfort
+faithfully, and tried to see to it that his man Wallis was all he should
+be--a task which was almost hopeless from the fact that Wallis knew much
+more about his duties than she did, even with Mrs. Harrington's
+painstakingly detailed notes to help her. Also his attitude to his
+master was of such untiring patience and worship that it made Phyllis
+feel like a rude outsider interfering between man and wife.
+
+However, Wallis was inclined to approve of his new mistress, who was
+not fussy, seemed kind, and had given his beloved Mr. Allan nearly three
+hours of unbroken sleep. Allan had been a little better ever since.
+Wallis had told Phyllis this. But she was inclined to think that the
+betterment was caused by the counter-shock of his mother's death, which
+had shaken him from his lethargy, and perhaps even given his nerves a
+better balance. And she insisted that the pink paper stay on the
+electric lights.
+
+After about a week of this, Phyllis suddenly remembered that she had not
+been selfish at all yet. Where was her rose-garden--the garden she had
+married the wolfhound and Allan and the check-book for? Where were all
+the things she had intended to get? The only item she had bought as yet
+ran, on the charge account she had taken over with the rest, "1 doz.
+checked dish-towels"; and Mrs. Clancy, the housekeeper's, pressing
+demand was responsible for these.
+
+"It's certainly time I was selfish," said Phyllis to the wolfhound, who
+followed her round unendingly as if she had patches of sunshine in her
+pocket: glorious patches, fit for a life-sized wolfhound. Perhaps he was
+grateful because she had ordered him long daily walks. He wagged his
+tail now as she spoke, and rubbed himself curvingly against her. He was
+a rather affected dog.
+
+So Phyllis made herself out a list in a superlatively neat library hand:
+
+
+   One string of blue beads.
+   One lot of very fluffy summer frocks with flowers on them.
+   One rose-garden.
+   One banjo and a self-teacher. (And a sound-proof room.)
+   One set Arabian Nights.
+   One set of Stevenson, all but his novels.
+   Ever so many Maxfield Parrish pictures full of Prussian-blue skies.
+   A house to put them in, with fireplaces.
+   A lady's size motor-car that likes me.
+   A plain cat with a tame disposition.
+   A hammock.
+   A sun-dial. (But that might be thrown in with the garden.)
+   A gold watch-bracelet.
+   All the colored satin slippers I want.
+   A room big enough to put all father's books up.
+
+
+It looked shamelessly long, but Phyllis's "discretionary powers" would
+cover it, she knew. Mrs. Harrington's final will, while full of advice,
+had been recklessly trusting.
+
+She could order everything in one afternoon, she was sure, all but the
+house, the garden, the motor, which she put checks against, and the
+plain cat, which she thought she could pick up in the village where her
+house would be.
+
+Next she went to see Allan. She didn't want to bother him, but she did
+feel that she ought to share her plans with him as far as possible.
+Besides, it occurred to her that she could scarcely remember what he was
+like to speak to, and really owed it to herself to go. She fluffed out
+her hair loosely, put on her pale-green gown that had clinging lines,
+and pulled some daffodils through her sash. She had resolved to avoid
+anything sombre where Allan was concerned--and the green gown was very
+becoming. Then, armed with her list and a pencil, she crossed boldly to
+the couch where her Crusader lay in the old attitude, moveless and with
+half-closed eyes.
+
+"Allan," she asked, standing above him, "do you think you could stand
+being talked to for a little while?"
+
+"Why--yes," said Allan, opening his eyes a little more. "Wallis,
+get--Mrs. Harrington--a chair."
+
+He said the name haltingly, and Phyllis wondered if he disliked her
+having it. She dropped down beside him, like a smiling touch of spring
+in the dark room.
+
+"Do you mind their calling me that?" she asked. "If there's anything
+else they could use----"
+
+"Mother made you a present of the name," he said, smiling faintly. "No
+reason why I should mind."
+
+"All right," said Phyllis cheerfully. After all, there was nothing else
+to call her, speaking of her. The servants, she knew, generally said
+"the young madam," as if her mother-in-law were still alive.
+
+"I want to talk to you about things," she began; and had to stop to deal
+with the wolfhound, who was trying to put both paws on her shoulders.
+"Oh, Ivan, _get_ down, honey! I _wish_ somebody would take a day off
+some time to explain to you that you're not a lap-dog! Do you like
+wolfhounds specially better than any other kind of dog, Allan?"
+
+"Not particularly," said Allan, patting the dog languidly as he put his
+head in a convenient place for the purpose. "Mother bought him, she
+said, because he would look so picturesque in my sick-room. She wanted
+him to lie at my feet or something. But he never saw it that
+way--neither did I. Hates sick-rooms. Don't blame him."
+
+This was the longest speech Allan had made yet, and Phyllis learned
+several things from it that she had only guessed before. One was that
+the atmosphere of embodied grief and regret in the house had been Mrs.
+Harrington's, not Allan's--that he was more young and natural than she
+had thought, better material for cheering; that his mother's devotion
+had been something of a pressure on him at times; and that he himself
+was not interested in efforts to stage his illness correctly.
+
+What he really had said when the dog was introduced, she learned later
+from the attached Wallis, was that he might be a cripple, but he wasn't
+going to be part of any confounded tableau. Whereupon his mother had
+cried for an hour, kissing and pitying him in between, and his night
+had been worse than usual. But the hound had stayed outside.
+
+Phyllis made an instant addition to her list. "One bull-pup, convenient
+size, for Allan." The plain cat could wait. She had heard of publicity
+campaigns; she had made up her mind, and a rather firm young mind it
+was, that she was going to conduct a cheerfulness campaign in behalf of
+this listless, beautiful, darkness-locked Allan of hers. Unknowingly,
+she was beginning to regard him as much her property as the check-book,
+and rather more so than the wolfhound. She moved back a little, and
+reconciled herself to the dog, who had draped as much of his body as
+would go, over her, and was batting his tail against her joyfully.
+
+"Poor old puppy," she said. "I want to talk over some plans with you,
+Allan," she began again determinedly. She was astonished to see Allan
+wince.
+
+"_Don't!_" he said, "for heaven's sake! You'll drive me crazy!"
+
+Phyllis drew back a little indignantly, but behind the couch she saw
+Wallis making some sort of face that was evidently intended for a
+warning. Then he slipped out of the room, as if he wished her to follow
+soon and be explained to. "Plans" must be a forbidden subject. Anyhow,
+crossness was a better symptom than apathy!
+
+"Very well," she said brightly, smiling her old, useful,
+cheering-a-bad-child library smile at him. "It was mostly about things I
+wanted to buy for myself, any way--satin slippers and such. I don't
+suppose they _would_ interest a man much."
+
+"Oh, that sort of thing," said Allan relievedly. "I thought you meant
+things that had to do with me. If you have plans about me, go ahead, for
+you know I can't do anything to stop you--but for heaven's sake, don't
+discuss it with me first!"
+
+He spoke carelessly, but the pity of it struck to Phyllis's heart. It
+was true, he couldn't stop her. His foolish, adoring little desperate
+mother, in her anxiety to have her boy taken good care of, had exposed
+him to a cruel risk. Phyllis knew herself to be trustworthy. She knew
+that she could no more put her own pleasures before her charge's welfare
+than she could steal his watch. Her conscience was New-England rock.
+But, oh! suppose Mr. De Guenther had chosen some girl who didn't care,
+who would have taken the money and not have done the work! She shivered
+at the thought of what Allan had escaped, and caught his hand
+impulsively, as she had on that other night of terror.
+
+"Oh, Allan Harrington, I _wouldn't_ do anything I oughtn't to! I know
+it's dreadful, having a strange girl wished on you this way, but truly I
+mean to be as good as I can, and never in the way or anything! Indeed,
+you may trust me! You--you don't mind having me round, do you?"
+
+Allan's cold hand closed kindly on hers. He spoke for the first time as
+a well man speaks, quietly, connectedly, and with a little authority.
+
+"The fact that I am married to you does not weigh on me at all, my dear
+child," he said. "I shall be dead, you know, this time five years, and
+what difference does it make whether I'm married or not? I don't mind
+you at all. You seem a very kind and pleasant person. I am sure I can
+trust you. Now are you reassured?"
+
+"Oh, _yes_," said Phyllis radiantly, "and you _can_ trust me, and I
+_won't_ fuss. All you have to do if I bore you is to look bored. You
+can, you know. You don't know how well you do it! And I'll stop. I'm
+going to ask Wallis how much of my society you'd better have, if any."
+
+"Why, I don't think a good deal of it would hurt me," he said
+indifferently. But he smiled in a quite friendly fashion.
+
+"All right," said Phyllis again brightly. But she fell silent then.
+There were two kinds of Allan, she reflected. This kind of Allan, who
+was very much more grown-up and wise than she was, and of whom she still
+stood a little in awe; and the little-boy Allan who had clung to her in
+nervous dread of the dark the other night--whom she had sent to sleep
+with children's stories. She wondered which was real, which he had been
+when he was well.
+
+"I must go now and have something out with Mrs. Clancy," she said,
+smiling and rising. "She's perfectly certain carpets have to come up
+when you put down mattings, and I'm perfectly certain they don't."
+
+She tucked the despised list, to which she had furtively added her
+bull-pup, into her sleeve, took her hand from his and went away. It
+seemed to Allan that the room was a little darker.
+
+
+
+
+IX
+
+
+Outside the sitting-room door stood Wallis, who had been lying in wait.
+
+"I wanted to explain, madam, about the plans," he said. "It worries Mr.
+Allan. You see, madam, the late Mrs. Harrington was a great one for
+plans. She had, if I may say so, a new one every day, and she'd argue
+you deaf, dumb, and blind--not to speak ill of the dead--till you were
+fair beat out fighting it. Then you'd settle down to it--and next day
+there be another one, with Mrs. Harrington rooting for it just as hard,
+and you, with your mouth fixed for the other plan, so to speak, would
+have to give in to that. The plan she happened to have last always went
+through, because she fought for that as hard as she had for the others,
+and you were so bothered by then you didn't care what."
+
+Wallis's carefully impersonal servant-English had slipped from him, and
+he was talking to Phyllis as man to man, but she was very glad of it.
+These were the sort of facts she had to elicit.
+
+"When Mr. Allan was well," he went on, "he used to just laugh and say,
+'All right, mother darling,' and pet her and do his own way--he was
+always laughing and carrying on then, Mr. Allan--but after he was hurt,
+of course, he couldn't get away, and the old madam, she'd sit by his
+couch by the hour, and he nearly wild, making plans for him. She'd spend
+weeks planning details of things over and over, never getting tired. And
+then off again to the next thing! It was all because she was so fond of
+him, you see. But if you'll pardon my saying so, madam"--Wallis was
+resuming his man-servant manners--"it was not always good for Mr.
+Allan."
+
+"I think I understand," said Phyllis thoughtfully, as she and the
+wolfhound went to interview Mrs. Clancy. So that was why! She had
+imagined something of the sort. And she--she herself--was doubtless the
+outcome of one of Mrs. Harrington's long-detailed plans, insisted on to
+Allan till he had acquiesced for quiet's sake! ... But he said now he
+didn't mind. She was somehow sure he wouldn't have said it if it had not
+been true. Then Wallis's other words came to her, "He was always
+laughing then," and suddenly there surged up in Phyllis a passionate
+resolve to give Allan back at least a little of his lightness of heart.
+He might be going to die--though she didn't believe it--but at least she
+could make things less monotonous and dark for him; and she wouldn't
+offer him plans! And if he objected when the plans rose up and hit him,
+why, the shock might do him good. She thought she was fairly sure of an
+ally in Wallis.
+
+She cut her interview with Mrs. Clancy short. Allan, lying motionless,
+caught a green flash of her, crossing into her room to dress, another
+blue flash as she went out; dropped his eyelids and crossed his hands to
+doze a little, an innocent and unwary Crusader. He did not know it, but
+a Plan was about to rise up and hit him. The bride his mother had left
+him as a parting legacy had gone out to order a string of blue beads, a
+bull-pup, a house, a motor, a banjo, and a rose-garden; as she went she
+added a talking machine to the list; and he was to be planted in the
+very centre of everything.
+
+"Seems like a nice girl, Wallis," said Allan dreamily. And the discreet
+Wallis said nothing (though he knew a good deal) about his mistress's
+shopping-list.
+
+"Yes, Mr. Allan," he conceded.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It was Phyllis Harrington's firm belief that Mr. De Guenther could
+produce anything anybody wanted at any time, or that if he couldn't his
+wife could. So it was to him that she went on her quest for the
+rose-garden, with its incidental house. The rest of the items she
+thought she could get for herself. It was nearly the last of April, and
+she wanted a well-heated elderly mansion, preferably Colonial, not too
+unwieldily large, with as many rose-trees around it as her discretionary
+powers would stand. And she wanted it as near and as soon as possible.
+By the help of Mr. De Guenther, amused but efficient, Mrs. De Guenther,
+efficient but sentimental; and an agent who was efficient merely, she
+got very nearly what she wanted. Money could do a great deal more than a
+country minister's daughter had ever had any way of imagining. By its
+aid she found it possible to have furniture bought and placed inside a
+fortnight, even to a list of books set up in sliding sectional cases.
+She had hoped to buy those cases some day, one at a time, and getting
+them at one fell swoop seemed to her more arrogantly opulent than the
+purchase of the house and grounds--than even the big shiny victrola. She
+had bought that herself, before there was a house to put it in, going on
+the principle that all men not professional musicians have a concealed
+passion for music that they can create themselves by merely winding up
+something. And--to anticipate--she found that as far as Allan was
+concerned she was quite right.
+
+"But why do you take this very radical step, my dear?" asked Mrs. De
+Guenther gently, as she helped Phyllis choose furniture.
+
+"I am going to try the only thing Allan's mother seems to have
+omitted," said Phyllis dauntlessly. "A complete change of surroundings."
+
+"Oh, my dear!" breathed Mrs. De Guenther. "It may help poor Allan more
+than we know! And dear Angela did discuss moving often, but she could
+never bear to leave the city house, where so many of her dear ones have
+passed away."
+
+"Well, none of _my_ dear ones are going to pass away there," said
+Phyllis irreverently, "unless Mrs. Clancy wants to. I'm not even taking
+any servants but Wallis. The country-house doesn't need any more than a
+cook, a chambermaid, and outdoor man. Mrs. Clancy is getting them. I
+told her I didn't care what age or color she chose, but they had to be
+cheerful. She will stay in the city and keep the others straight, in
+something she calls board-wages. I'm starting absolutely fresh."
+
+They were back at Mrs. De Guenther's house by the time Phyllis was done
+telling her plans, Phyllis sitting in the identical pluffy chair where
+she had made her decision to marry Allan. Mrs. De Guenther sprang from
+her own chair, and came over and impulsively kissed her.
+
+"God bless you, dear!" she said. "I believe it was Heaven that inspired
+Albert and myself to choose you to carry on poor Angela's work."
+
+Phyllis flushed indignantly.
+
+"I'm undoing a little of it, I hope," she said passionately. "If I can
+only make that poor boy forget some of those dreadful years she spent
+crying over him, I shan't have lived in vain!"
+
+Mrs. De Guenther looked at Phyllis earnestly--and, most unexpectedly,
+burst into a little tinkling laugh.
+
+"My dear," she said mischievously, "what about all the fine things you
+were going to do for yourself to make up for being tied to poor Allan?
+You should really stop being unselfish, and enjoy yourself a little."
+
+Phyllis felt herself flushing crimson. Elderly people did seem to be so
+sentimental!
+
+"I've bought myself lots of things," she defended herself. "Most of this
+is really for me. And--I can't help being good to him. It's only common
+humanity. I was never so sorry for anybody in my life--you'd be, too, if
+it were Mr. De Guenther!"
+
+She thought her explanation was complete. But she must have said
+something that she did not realize, for Mrs. De Guenther only laughed
+her little tinkling laugh again, and--as is the fashion of elderly
+people--kissed her.
+
+"I would, indeed, my dear," said she.
+
+
+
+
+X
+
+
+Allan Harrington lay in his old attitude on his couch in the darkened
+day-room, his tired, clear-cut face a little thrown back, eyes
+half-closed. He was not thinking of anything or any one especially;
+merely wrapped in a web of the dragging, empty, gray half-thoughts of
+weariness in general that had hung about him so many years. Wallis was
+not there. Wallis had been with him much less lately, and he had
+scarcely seen Phyllis for a fortnight; or, for the matter of that, the
+dog, or any one at all. Something was going on, he supposed, but he
+scarcely troubled himself to wonder what. The girl was doubtless making
+herself boudoirs or something of the sort in a new part of the house. He
+closed his eyes entirely, there in the dusky room, and let the web of
+dreary, gray, formless thought wrap him again.
+
+Phyllis's gay, sweetly carrying voice rang from outside the door:
+
+"The three-thirty, then, Wallis, and I feel as if I were going to steal
+Charlie Ross! Well----"
+
+On the last word she broke off and pushed the sitting-room door softly
+open and slid in. She walked in a pussy-cat fashion which would have
+suggested to any one watching her a dark burden on her conscience.
+
+She crossed straight to the couch, looked around for the chair that
+should have been by it but wasn't, and sat absently down on the floor.
+She liked floors.
+
+"Allan!" she said.
+
+No answer.
+
+"Allan _Harrington_!"
+
+Still none. Allan was half-asleep, or what did instead, in one of his
+abstracted moods.
+
+"_All-an Harrington!_"
+
+This time she reached up and pulled at his heavy silk sleeve as she
+spoke.
+
+"Yes," said Allan courteously, as if from an infinite distance.
+
+"Would you mind," asked Phyllis guilelessly, "if Wallis--we--moved
+you--a little? I can tell you all about everything, unless you'd rather
+not have the full details of the plan----"
+
+"Anything," said Allan wearily from the depths of his gray cloud; "only
+don't _bother_ me about it!"
+
+Phyllis jumped to her feet, a whirl of gay blue skirts and cheerfully
+tossing blue feathers. "Good-by, dear Crusader!" she said with a catch
+in her voice that might have been either a laugh or a sob. "The next
+time you see me you'll probably _hate_ me! Wallis!"
+
+Wallis appeared like the Slave of the Lamp. "It's all right, Wallis,"
+she said, and ran. Wallis proceeded thereupon to wheel his master's
+couch into the bedroom.
+
+"If you're going to be moved, you'd better be dressed a little heavier,
+sir," he said with the same amiable guilelessness, if the victim had but
+noticed it, which Phyllis had used from her seat on the floor not long
+before.
+
+"Very well," said Allan resignedly from his cloud. And Wallis proceeded
+to suit the action to the word.
+
+Allan let him go on in unnoticing silence till it came to that totally
+unfamiliar thing these seven years, a stand-up collar. A shiningly new
+linen collar of the newest cut, a beautiful golden-brown knit tie, a
+gray suit----
+
+"What on earth?" inquired Allan, awakening from his lethargy. "I don't
+need a collar and tie to keep me from getting cold on a journey across
+the house. And where did you get those clothes? They look new."
+
+Wallis laid his now fully dressed master back to a reclining
+position--he had been propped up--and tucked a handkerchief into the
+appropriate pocket as he replied, "Grant & Moxley's, sir, where you
+always deal." And he wheeled the couch back to the day-room, over to its
+very door.
+
+It did not occur to Allan, as he was being carried downstairs by Wallis
+and Arthur, another of the servants, that anything more than a change of
+rooms was intended; nor, as he was carried out at its door to a long
+closed carriage, that it was anything worse than his new keeper's
+mistaken idea that drives would be good for him. He was a little
+irritable at the length and shutupness of the drive, though, as his cot
+had been swung deftly from the ceiling of the carriage, he was not
+jarred. But when Wallis and Arthur carried the light pallet on which he
+lay swiftly up a plank walk laid to the door of a private car--why then
+it began to occur to Allan Harrington that something was happening.
+And--which rather surprised himself--he did not lift a supercilious
+eyebrow and say in a soft, apathetic voice, "Very we-ell!" Instead, he
+turned his head towards the devoted Wallis, who had helped two
+conductors swing the cot from the ceiling, and was now waiting for the
+storm to break. And what he said to Wallis was this:
+
+"What the deuce does this tomfoolery mean?" As he spoke he felt the
+accumulated capacity for temper of the last seven years surging up
+toward Wallis, and Arthur, and Phyllis, and the carriage-horses, and
+everything else, down to the two conductors. Wallis seemed rather
+relieved than otherwise. Waiting for a storm to break is rather wearing.
+
+"Well, sir, Mrs. Harrington, she thought, sir, that--that a little move
+would do you good. And you didn't want to be bothered, sir----"
+
+"Bothered!" shouted Allan, not at all like a bored and dying invalid. "I
+should think I did, when a change in my whole way of life is made! Who
+gave you, or Mrs. Harrington, permission for this outrageous
+performance! It's sheer, brutal, insulting idiocy!"
+
+"Nobody, sir--yes, sir," replied Wallis meekly. "Would you care for a
+drink, sir--or anything?"
+
+"_No!_" thundered Allan.
+
+"Or a fan?" ventured Wallis, approaching near with that article and
+laying it on the coverlid. Allan's hand snatched the fan angrily--and
+before he thought he had hurled it at Wallis! Weakly, it is true, for it
+lighted ingloriously about five feet away; but he had _thrown_ it, with
+a movement that must have put to use the muscles of the long-disused
+upper arm. Wallis sat suddenly down and caught his breath.
+
+"Mr. Allan!" he said. "Do you know what you did then? You _threw_, and
+you haven't been able to use more than your forearm before! Oh, Mr.
+Allan, you're getting better!"
+
+Allan himself lay in astonishment at his feat, and forgot to be angry
+for a moment. "I certainly did!" he said.
+
+"And the way you lost your temper!" went on Wallis enthusiastically.
+"Oh, Mr. Allan, it was beautiful! You haven't been more than to say
+snarly since the accident! It was so like the way you used to throw
+hair-brushes----"
+
+But at the mention of his lost temper Allan remembered to lose it still
+further. His old capacity for storming, a healthy lad's healthy young
+hot-temperedness, had been weakened by long disuse, but he did fairly
+well. Secretly it was a pleasure to him to find that he was alive enough
+to care what happened, enough for anger. He demanded presently where he
+was going.
+
+"Not more than two hours' ride, sir, I heard Mr. De Guenther mention,"
+answered Wallis at once. "A little place called Wallraven--quite
+country, sir, I believe."
+
+"So the De Guenthers are in it, too!" said Allan. "What the dickens has
+this girl done to them, to hypnotize them so?"
+
+"But I've heard say it's a very pretty place, sir," was all Wallis
+vouchsafed to this. The De Guenthers were not the only people Phyllis
+had hypnotized.
+
+He gave Allan other details as they went on, however. His clothes and
+personal belongings were coming on immediately. There were two
+suit-cases, perhaps he had noticed, in the car with them. The young
+madam was planning to stay all the summer, he believed. Mrs. Clancy had
+been left behind to look after the other servants, and he understood
+that she had seen to the engagement of a fresh staff of servants for the
+country. And Allan, still awakened by his fit of temper, and fresh from
+the monotony of his seven years' seclusion, found all the things Wallis
+could tell him very interesting.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Phyllis's rose-garden house had, among other virtues, the charm of being
+near the little station: a new little mission station which had
+apparently been called Wallraven by some poetic young real-estate
+agency, for the surrounding countryside looked countrified enough to be
+a Gray's Corners, or Smith's Crossing, or some other such placid old
+country name. There were more trees to be seen in Allan's quick passage
+from the train to the long old carryall (whose seats had been removed to
+make room for his cot) than he had remembered existed. There were sleepy
+birds to be heard, too, talking about how near sunset and their bedtime
+had come, and a little brook splashed somewhere out of sight. Altogether
+spring was to be seen and heard and felt, winningly insistent. Allan
+forgave Wallis, not to speak of Phyllis and the conductors, to a certain
+degree. He ordered the flapping black oilcloth curtain in front rolled
+up so he could see out, and secretly enjoyed the drive, unforeseen
+though it had been. His spine never said a word. Perhaps it, too,
+enjoyed having a change from a couch in a dark city room.
+
+They saw no one in their passage through the long, low old house.
+Phyllis evidently had learned that Allan didn't like his carryings
+about done before people.
+
+Wallis seemed to be acting under a series of detailed orders. He and
+Arthur carried their master to a long, well-lighted room at the end of
+the house, and deftly transferred him to a couch much more convenient,
+being newer, than the old one. On this he was wheeled to his adjoining
+bedroom, and when Wallis had made him comfortable there, he left him
+mysteriously for a while. It was growing dark by now, and the lights
+were on. They were rose-shaded, Allan noticed, as the others had been at
+home. Allan watched the details of his room with that vivid interest in
+little changes which only invalids can know. There was an old-fashioned
+landscape story paper on the walls, with very little repeat. Over it,
+but not where they interfered with tracing out the adventures of the
+paper people, were a good many pictures, quite incongruous, for they
+were of the Remington type men like, but pleasant to see nevertheless.
+The furniture was chintz-covered and gay. There was not one thing in
+the room to remind a man that he was an invalid. It occurred to Allan
+that Phyllis must have put a good deal of deliberate work on the place.
+He lay contentedly, watching the grate fire, and trying to trace out the
+story of the paper, for at least a half-hour. He found himself, at
+length, much to his own surprise, thinking with a certain longing of his
+dinner-tray. He was thinking of it more and more interestedly by the
+time Wallis--trayless--came back.
+
+"Mr. and Mrs. De Guenther and the young madam are waiting for you in the
+living-room," he announced. "They would be glad if you would have supper
+with them."
+
+"Very well," said Allan amiably, still much to his own surprise. The
+truth was, he was still enough awake and interested to want to go on
+having things happen.
+
+The room Wallis wheeled him back into was a long, low one, wainscoted
+and bare-floored. It was furnished with the best imitation Chippendale
+to be obtained in a hurry, but over and above there were cushioned
+chairs and couches enough for solid comfort. There were more cheerful
+pictures, the Maxfield Parrishes Phyllis had wanted, over the
+green-papered walls. There was a fire here also. The room had no more
+period than a girl's sentence, but there was a bright air of welcomeness
+and informality that was winning. An old-fashioned half-table against
+the wall was covered with a great many picknicky things to eat. Another
+table had more things, mostly to eat with, on it. And there were the De
+Guenthers and Phyllis. On the whole it felt very like a welcome-home.
+
+Phyllis, in a satiny rose-colored gown he had never seen before, came
+over to his couch to meet him. She looked very apprehensive and young
+and wistful for the rôle of Bold Bad Hypnotist. She bent towards him
+with her hand out, seemed about to speak, then backed, flushed, and
+acted as if something had frightened her badly.
+
+"Is she as afraid of me as all that?" thought Allan. Wallis must have
+given her a lurid account of how he had behaved. His quick impulse was
+to reassure her.
+
+"Well, Phyllis, my dear, you certainly didn't bother me with plans
+_this_ time!" he said, smiling. "This is a bully surprise!"
+
+"I--I'm glad you like it," said his wife shyly, still backing away.
+
+"Of course he'd like it," said Mrs. De Guenther's kind staccato voice
+behind him. "Kiss your husband, and tell him he's welcome home, Phyllis
+child!"
+
+Now, Phyllis was tired with much hurried work, and overstrung. And
+Allan, lying there smiling boyishly up at her, Allan seen for the first
+time in these usual-looking gray man-clothes, was like neither the
+marble Crusader she had feared nor the heartbroken little boy she had
+pitied. He was suddenly her contemporary, a very handsome and attractive
+young fellow, a little her senior. From all appearances, he might have
+been well and normal, and come home to her only a little tired, perhaps,
+by the day's work or sport, as he lay smiling at her in that friendly,
+intimate way! It was terrifyingly different. Everything felt different.
+All her little pieces of feeling for him, pity and awe and friendliness
+and love of service, seemed to spring suddenly together and make
+something else--something unplaced and disturbing. Her cheeks burned
+with a childish embarrassment as she stood there before him in her
+ruffled pink gown. What should she do?
+
+It was just then that Mrs. De Guenther's crisply spoken advice came.
+Phyllis was one of those people whose first unconscious instinct is to
+obey an unspoken order. She bent blindly to Allan's lips, and kissed him
+with a child's obedience, then straightened up, aghast. He would think
+her very bold!
+
+But he did not, for some reason. It may have seemed only comforting and
+natural to him, that swift childish kiss, and Phyllis's honey-colored,
+violet-scented hair brushing his face. Men take a great deal without
+question as their rightful due.
+
+The others closed around him then, welcoming him, laughing at the
+surprise and the way he had taken it, telling him all about it as if
+everything were as usual and pleasant as possible, and the present state
+of things had always been a pleasant commonplace. And Wallis began to
+serve the picnic supper.
+
+
+
+
+XI
+
+
+There were trays and little tables, and the food itself would have
+betrayed a southern darky in the kitchen if nothing else had. It was the
+first meal Allan had eaten with any one for years, and he found it so
+interesting as to be almost exciting. Wallis took the plates invisibly
+away when they were done, and they continued to stay in their
+half-circle about the fire and talk it all over. Phyllis, tired to death
+still, had slid to her favorite floor-seat, curled on cushions and
+leaning against the couch-side. Allan could have touched her hair with
+his hand. She thought of this, curled there, but she was too tired to
+move. It was exciting to be near him, somehow, tired as she was.
+
+Most of the short evening was spent celebrating the fact that Allan had
+thrown something at Wallis, who was recalled to tell the story three
+times in detail. Then there was the house to discuss, its good and bad
+points, its nearnesses and farnesses.
+
+"Let me tell you, Allan," said Mrs. De Guenther warmly at this point,
+from her seat at the foot of the couch, "this wife of yours is a wonder.
+Not many girls could have had a house in this condition two weeks after
+it was bought."
+
+Allan looked down at the heap of shining hair below him, all he could
+see of Phyllis.
+
+"Yes," he said consideringly. "She certainly is."
+
+At a certain slowness in his tone, Phyllis sprang up. "You must be tired
+to _death_!" she said. "It must be nearly ten. Do you feel worn out?"
+
+Before he could say anything, Mrs. De Guenther had also risen, and was
+sweeping away her husband.
+
+"Of course he is," she said decisively. "What have we all been thinking
+of? And we must go to bed, too, Albert, if you insist on taking that
+early train in the morning, and I insist on going with you. Good-night,
+children."
+
+Wallis had appeared by this time, and was wheeling Allan from the room
+before he had a chance to say much of anything but good-night. The De
+Guenthers talked a little longer to Phyllis, and were gone also. Phyllis
+flung herself full-length on the rugs and pillows before the fire, too
+tired to move further.
+
+Well, she had everything that she had wished for on that wet February
+day in the library. Money, leisure to be pretty, a husband whom she
+"didn't have to associate with much," rest, if she ever gave herself
+leave to take it, and the rose-garden. She had her wishes, as uncannily
+fulfilled as if she had been ordering her fate from a department store,
+and had money to pay for it.... And back there in the city it was
+somebody's late night, and that somebody--it would be Anna Black's turn,
+wouldn't it?--was struggling with John Zanowskis and Sadie Rabinowitzes
+by the lapful, just as she had. And yet--and yet they had really cared
+for her, those dirty, dear little foreigners of hers. But she'd had to
+work for their liking.... Perhaps--perhaps she could make Allan
+Harrington like her as much as the children did. He had been so kind
+to-night about the move and all, and so much brighter, her handsome
+Allan in his gray, every-day-looking man-clothes! If she could stay
+brave enough and kind enough and bright enough ... her eyelids
+drooped.... Wallis was standing respectfully over her.
+
+"Mrs. Harrington," he was saying, with a really masterly ignoring of her
+attitude on the rug, "Mr. Harrington says you haven't bid him good-night
+yet."
+
+An amazing message! Had she been in the habit of it, that he demanded it
+like a small boy? But she sprang up and followed Wallis into Allan's
+room. He was lying back in his white silk sleeping things among the
+white bed-draperies, looking as he always had before. Only, he seemed
+too alive and awake still for his old rôle of Crusader-on-a-tomb.
+
+"Phyllis," he began eagerly, as she sat down beside him, "what made you
+so frightened when I first came? Wallis hadn't worried you, had he?"
+
+"Oh, no; it wasn't that at all," said Phyllis. "And thank you for being
+so generous about it all."
+
+"I wasn't generous," said her husband. "I behaved like everything to old
+Wallis about it. Well, what was it, then?"
+
+"I--I--only--you looked so different in--_clothes_," pleaded Phyllis,
+"like any man my age or older--as if you might get up and go to
+business, or play tennis, or anything, and--and I was _afraid_ of you!
+That's all, truly!"
+
+She was sitting on the bed's edge, her eyes down, her hands quivering in
+her lap, the picture of a school-girl who isn't quite sure whether she's
+been good or not.
+
+"Why, that sounds truthful!" said Allan, and laughed. It was the first
+time she had heard him, and she gave a start. Such a clear, cheerful,
+_young_ laugh! Maybe he would laugh more, by and by, if she worked hard
+to make him.
+
+"Good-night, Allan," she said.
+
+"Aren't you going to kiss me good-night?" demanded this new Allan,
+precisely as if she had been doing it ever since she met him. Evidently
+that kiss three hours ago had created a precedent. Phyllis colored to
+her ears. She seemed to herself to be always coloring now. But she
+mustn't cross Allan, tired as he must be!
+
+"Good-night, Allan," she said again sedately, and kissed his cheek as
+she had done a month ago--years ago!--when they had been married. Then
+she fled.
+
+"Wallis," said his master dreamily when his man appeared again, "I want
+some more real clothes. Tired of sleeping-suits. Get me some, please.
+Good-night."
+
+As for Phyllis, in her little green-and-white room above him, she was
+crying comfortably into her pillow. She had not the faintest idea why,
+except that she liked doing it. She felt, through her sleepiness, a
+faint, hungry, pleasant want of something, though she hadn't an idea
+what it could be. She had everything, except that it wasn't time for the
+roses to be out yet. Probably that was the trouble.... Roses.... She,
+too, went to sleep.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"How did Mr. Allan pass the night?" Phyllis asked Wallis anxiously,
+standing outside his door next morning. She had been up since seven,
+speeding the parting guests and interviewing the cook and chambermaid.
+Mrs. Clancy's choice had been cheerful to a degree, and black, all of
+it; a fat Virginia cook, a slim young Tuskegee chambermaid of a pale
+saddle-color, and a shiny brown outdoor man who came from nowhere in
+particular, but was very useful now he was here. Phyllis had seen them
+all this morning, and found them everything servants should be. Now she
+was looking after Allan, as her duty was.
+
+Wallis beamed from against the door-post, his tray in his hands.
+
+"Mrs. Harrington, it's one of the best sleeps Mr. Allan's had! Four
+hours straight, and then sleeping still, if broken, till six! And still
+taking interest in things. Oh, ma'am, you should have heard him
+yesterday on the train, as furious as furious! It was beautiful!"
+
+"Then his spine wasn't jarred," said Phyllis thoughtfully. "Wallis, I
+believe there was more nervous shock and nervous depression than ever
+the doctors realized. And I believe all he needs is to be kept happy, to
+be much, much better. Wouldn't it be wonderful if he got so he could
+move freely from the waist up? I believe that may happen if we can keep
+him cheered and interested."
+
+Wallis looked down at his tray. "Yes, ma'am," he said. "Not to speak ill
+of the dead, Mrs. Harrington, the late Mrs. Harrington was always saying
+'My poor stricken boy,' and things like that--'Do not jar him with
+ill-timed light or merriment,' and reminding him how bad he was. And she
+certainly didn't jar him with any merriment, ma'am."
+
+"What were the doctors thinking about?" demanded Phyllis indignantly.
+
+"Well, ma'am, they did all sorts of things to poor Mr. Allan for the
+first year or so. And then, as nothing helped, and they couldn't find
+out what was wrong to have paralyzed him so, he begged to have them
+stopped hurting him. So we haven't had one for the past five years."
+
+"I think a masseur and a wheel-chair are the next things to get," said
+Phyllis decisively. "And remember, Wallis, there's something the matter
+with Mr. Allan's shutters. They won't always close the sunshine out as
+they should."
+
+Wallis almost winked, if an elderly, mutton-chopped servitor can be
+imagined as winking.
+
+"No, ma'am," he promised. "Something wrong with 'em. I'll remember,
+ma'am."
+
+Phyllis went singing on down the sunny old house, swinging her colored
+muslin skirts and prancing a little with sheer joy of being twenty-five,
+and prettily dressed, with a dear house all her own, and--yes--a dear
+Allan a little her own, too! Doing well for a man what another woman has
+done badly has a perennial joy for a certain type of woman, and this was
+what Phyllis was in the very midst of. She pranced a little more, and
+came almost straight up against a long old mirror with gilt cornices,
+which had come with the house and was staying with it. Phyllis stopped
+and looked critically at herself.
+
+"I haven't taken time yet to be pretty," she reminded the girl in the
+glass, and began then and there to take account of stock, by way of
+beginning. Why--a good deal had done itself! Her hair had been washed
+and sunned and sunned and washed about every ten minutes since she had
+been away from the library. It was springy and three shades more golden.
+She had not been rushing out in all weathers unveiled, nor washing
+hastily with hard water and cheap library soap eight or ten times a day,
+because private houses are comparatively clean places. So her complexion
+had been getting back, unnoticed, a good deal of its original country
+rose-and-cream, with a little gold glow underneath. And the tired
+heaviness was gone from her eyelids, because she had scarcely used her
+eyes since she had married Allan--there had been too much else to do!
+The little frown-lines between the brows had gone, too, with the need of
+reading-glasses and work under electricity. She was more rounded, and
+her look was less intent. The strained Liberry Teacher look was gone.
+The luminous long blue eyes in the glass looked back at her girlishly.
+"Would you think we were twenty-five even?" they said. Phyllis smiled
+irrepressibly at the mirrored girl.
+
+"Yas'm," said the rich and comfortable voice of Lily-Anna, the cook,
+from the dining-room door; "you sholy is pretty. Yas'm--a lady _wants_
+to stay pretty when she's married. Yo' don' look much mo'n a bride,
+ma'am, an' dat's a fac'. Does you want yo' dinnehs brought into de
+sittin'-room regular till de gem'man gits well?"
+
+"Yes--no--yes--for the present, any way," said Phyllis, with a mixture
+of confusion and dignity. Fortunately the doorbell chose this time to
+ring.
+
+A business-like young messenger with a rocking crate wanted to speak to
+the madam. The last item on Phyllis's shopping list had come.
+
+"The wolfhound's doing fine, ma'am," the messenger answered in response
+to her questions. "Like a different dog already. All he needed was
+exercise and a little society. Yes'm, this pup's broken--in a manner,
+that is. Your man picked you out the best-tempered little feller in the
+litter. Here, Foxy--careful, lady! Hold on to his leash!"
+
+There was the passage of the check, a few directions about
+dog-biscuits, and then the messenger from the kennels drove back to the
+station, the crate, which had been emptied of a wriggling six-months
+black bull-dog, on the seat beside him.
+
+
+
+
+XII
+
+
+Allan, lying at the window of the sunny bedroom, and wondering if they
+had been having springs like this all the time he had lived in the city,
+heard a scuffle outside the door. His wife's voice inquired breathlessly
+of Wallis, "Can Mr. Allan--see me?... Oh, gracious--_don't_, Foxy, you
+little black gargoyle! Open the door, or--shut it--quick, Wallis!"
+
+But the door, owing to circumstances over which nobody but the black dog
+had any control, flew violently open here, and Allan had a flying vision
+of his wife, flushed, laughing, and badly mussed, being railroaded
+across the room by a prancingly exuberant French bull at the end of a
+leash.
+
+"He's--he's a cheerful dog," panted Phyllis, trying to bring Foxy to
+anchor near Allan, "and I don't think he knows how to keep still long
+enough to pose across your feet--he wouldn't become them anyhow--he's a
+real man-dog, Allan, not an interior decoration.... Oh, Wallis, he has
+Mr. Allan's slipper! Foxy, you little fraud! Did him want a drink,
+angel-puppy?"
+
+"Did you get him for me, Phyllis?" asked Allan when the tumult and the
+shouting had died, and the caracoling Foxy had buried his hideous little
+black pansy-face in a costly Belleek dish of water.
+
+"Yes," gasped Phyllis from her favorite seat, the floor; "but you
+needn't keep him unless you want to. I can keep him where you'll never
+see him--can't I, honey-dog-gums? Only I thought he'd be company for
+you, and don't you think he seems--cheerful?"
+
+Allan threw his picturesque head back on the cushions, and laughed and
+laughed.
+
+"Cheerful!" he said. "Most assuredly! Why--thank you, ever so much,
+Phyllis. You're an awfully thoughtful girl. I always did like bulls--had
+one in college, a Nelson. Come here, you little rascal!"
+
+He whistled, and the puppy lifted its muzzle from the water, made a
+dripping dash to the couch, and scrambled up over Allan as if they had
+owned each other since birth. Never was a dog less weighed down by the
+glories of ancestry.
+
+Allan pulled the flopping bat-ears with his most useful hand, and asked
+with interest, "Why on earth did they call a French bull Foxy?"
+
+"Yes, sir," said Wallis. "I understand, sir, that he was the most active
+and playful of the litter, and chewed up all his brothers' ears, sir.
+And the kennel people thought it was so clever that they called him
+Foxy."
+
+"The best-tempered dog in the litter!" cried Phyllis, bursting into
+helpless laughter from the floor.
+
+"That doesn't mean he's bad-tempered," explained master and man eagerly
+together. Phyllis began to see that she had bought a family pet as much
+for Wallis as for Allan. She left them adoring the dog with that
+reverent emotion which only very ugly bull-dogs can wake in a man's
+breast, and flitted out, happy over the success of her new toy for
+Allan.
+
+"Take him out when he gets too much for Mr. Allan," she managed to say
+softly to Wallis as she passed him. But, except for a run or so for his
+health, Wallis and Allan between them kept the dog in the bedroom most
+of the day. Phyllis, in one of her flying visits, found the little
+fellow, tired with play, dog-biscuits, and other attentions, snuggled
+down by his master, his little crumpled black muzzle on the pillow close
+to Allan's contented, sleeping face. She felt as if she wanted to cry.
+The pathetic lack of interests which made the coming of a new little dog
+such an event!
+
+Before she hung one more picture, before she set up even a book from the
+boxes which had been her father's, before she arranged one more article
+of furniture, she telephoned to the village for the regular delivery of
+four daily papers, and a half-dozen of the most masculine magazines she
+could think of on the library lists. She had never known of Allan's
+doing any reading. That he had cared for books before the accident, she
+knew. At any rate, she was resolved to leave no point uncovered that
+might, just possibly _might_, help her Allan just a little way to
+interest in life, which she felt to be the way to recovery. He liked
+being told stories to, any way.
+
+"Do you think Mr. Allan will feel like coming into the living-room
+to-day?" she asked Wallis, meeting him in the hall about two o'clock.
+
+"Why, he's dressed, ma'am," was Wallis's astonishing reply, "and him and
+the pup is having a fine game of play. He's got more use of that hand
+an' arm, ma'am, than we thought."
+
+"Do you think he'd care to be wheeled into the living-room about four?"
+asked Phyllis.
+
+"For tea, ma'am?" inquired Wallis, beaming. "I should think so, ma'am.
+I'll ask, anyhow."
+
+Phyllis had not thought of tea--one does not stop for such leisurely
+amenities in a busy public library--but she saw the beauty of the idea,
+and saw to it that the tea was there. Lily-Anna was a jewel. She built
+the fire up to a bright flame, and brought in some daffodils from the
+garden without a word from her mistress. Phyllis herself saw that the
+victrola was in readiness, and cleared a space for the couch near the
+fire. There was quite a festal feeling.
+
+The talking-machine was also a surprise for Allan. Phyllis thought
+afterward that she should have saved it for another day, but the
+temptation to grace the occasion with it was too strong. She and Allan
+were as excited over it as a couple of children, and the only drawback
+to Allan's enjoyment was that he obviously wanted to take the records
+out of her unaccustomed fingers and adjust them himself. He knew how, it
+appeared, and Phyllis naturally didn't. However, she managed to follow
+his directions successfully. She had bought recklessly of rag-time
+discs, and provided a fair amount of opera selections. Allan seemed
+equally happy over both. After the thing had been playing for
+three-quarters of an hour, and most of the records were exhausted,
+Phyllis rang for tea. It was getting a little darker now, and the
+wood-fire cast fantastic red and black lights and shadows over the room.
+It was very intimate and thrilling to Phyllis suddenly, the fire-lit
+room, with just their two selves there. Allan, on his couch before the
+fire, looked bright and contented. The adjustable couch-head had been
+braced to such a position that he was almost sitting up. The bull-dog,
+who had lately come back from a long walk with the gratified outdoor
+man, snored regularly on the rug near his master, wakening enough to bat
+his tail on the floor if he was referred to. The little tea-table was
+between Allan and Phyllis, crowned with a bunch of apple-blossoms, whose
+spring-like scent dominated the warm room. Phyllis, in her green gown,
+her cheeks pink with excitement, was waiting on her lord and master a
+little silently.
+
+Allan watched her amusedly for awhile--she was as intent as a good child
+over her tea-ball and her lemon and her little cakes.
+
+"Say something, Phyllis," he suggested with the touch of mischief she
+was not yet used to, coming from him.
+
+"This is a serious matter," she replied gravely. "Do you know I haven't
+made tea--afternoon tea, that is--for so long it's a wonder I know which
+is the cup and which is the saucer?"
+
+"Why not?" he asked idly, yet interestedly too.
+
+"I was otherwise occupied. I was a Daughter of Toil," explained Phyllis
+serenely, setting down her own cup to relax in her chair, hands behind
+her head; looking, in her green gown, the picture of graceful, strong,
+young indolence. "I was a librarian--didn't you know?"
+
+"No. I wish you'd tell me, if you don't mind," said Allan. "About you, I
+mean, Phyllis. Do you know, I feel awfully married to you this
+afternoon--you've bullied me so much it's no wonder--and I really ought
+to know about my wife's dark past."
+
+Phyllis's heart beat a little faster. She, too, had felt "awfully
+married" here alone in the fire-lit living-room, dealing so intimately
+and gayly with Allan.
+
+"There isn't much to tell," she said soberly.
+
+"Come over here closer," commanded Allan the spoilt. "We've both had all
+the tea we want. Come close by the couch. I want to see you when you
+talk."
+
+Phyllis did as he ordered.
+
+"I was a New England country minister's daughter," she began. "New
+England country ministers always know lots about Greek and Latin and how
+to make one dollar do the work of one-seventy-five, but they never have
+any dollars left when the doing's over. Father and I lived alone
+together always, and he taught me things, and I petted him--fathers need
+it, specially when they have country congregations--and we didn't bother
+much about other folks. Then he--died. I was eighteen, and I had six
+hundred dollars. I couldn't do arithmetic, because Father had always
+said it was left out of my head, and I needn't bother with it. So I
+couldn't teach. Then they said, 'You like books, and you'd better be a
+librarian.' As a matter of fact, a librarian never gets a chance to
+read, but you can't explain that to the general public. So I came to the
+city and took the course at library school. Then I got a position in the
+Greenway Branch--two years in the circulating desk, four in the
+cataloguing room, and one in the Children's Department. The short and
+simple annals of the poor!"
+
+"Go on," said Allan.
+
+"I believe it's merely that you like the sound of the human voice," said
+Phyllis, laughing. "I'm going to go on with the story of the Five Little
+Pigs--you'll enjoy it just as much!"
+
+"Exactly," said Allan. "Tell me what it was like in the library,
+please."
+
+"It was rather interesting," said Phyllis, yielding at once. "There are
+so many different things to be done that you never feel any monotony, as
+I suppose a teacher does. But the hours are not much shorter than a
+department store's, and it's exacting, on-your-feet work all the time. I
+liked the work with the children best. Only--you never have any time to
+be anything but neat in a library, and you do get so tired of being just
+neat, if you're a girl."
+
+"And a pretty one," said Allan. "I don't suppose the ugly ones mind as
+much."
+
+It was the first thing he had said about her looks. Phyllis's ready
+color came into her cheeks. So he thought she was pretty!
+
+"Do you--think I'm pretty?" she asked breathlessly. She couldn't help
+it.
+
+"Of course I do, you little goose," said Allan, smiling at her.
+
+Phyllis plunged back into the middle of her story:
+
+"You see, you can't sit up nights to sew much, or practise doing your
+hair new ways, because you need all your strength to get up when the
+alarm-clock barks next morning. And then, there's always the
+money-worry, if you have nothing but your salary. Of course, this last
+year, when I've been getting fifty dollars a month, things have been all
+right. But when it was only thirty a month in the Circulation--well,
+that was pretty hard pulling," said Phyllis thoughtfully. "But the
+worst--the worst, Allan, was waking up nights and wondering what would
+happen if you broke down for a long time. Because you _can't_ very well
+save for sickness-insurance on even fifty a month. And the work--well,
+of course, most girls' work is just a little more than they have the
+strength for, always. But I was awfully lucky to get into children's
+work. Some of my imps, little Poles and Slovaks and Hungarians mostly,
+are the cleverest, most affectionate babies----"
+
+She began to tell him stories of wonderful ten-year-olds who were
+Socialists by conviction, and read economics, and dazed little atypical
+sixteen-year-olds who read Mother Goose, and stopped even that because
+they got married.
+
+"You poor little girl!" said Allan, unheeding. "What brutes they were to
+you! Well, thank Heaven, that's over now!"
+
+"Why, Allan!" she said, laying a soothing hand on his. "Nobody was a
+brute. There's never more than one crank-in-authority in any library,
+they say. Ours was the Supervisor of the Left Half of the Desk, and
+after I got out of Circulation I never saw anything of her."
+
+Allan burst into unexpected laughter. "It sounds like a Chinese title of
+honor," he explained. "'Grand Warder of the Emperor's Left
+Slipper-Rosette,' or something of the sort."
+
+"The Desk's where you get your books stamped," she explained, "and the
+two shifts of girls who attend to that part of the work each have a
+supervisor--the Right and Left halves. The one that was horrid had
+favorites, and snapped at the ones that weren't. I wasn't under her,
+though. My Supervisor was lovely, an Irishwoman with the most florid
+hats, and the kindest, most just disposition, and always laughing. We
+all adored her, she was so fair-minded."
+
+"You think a good deal about laughing," said Allan thoughtfully. "Does it
+rank as a virtue in libraries, or what?"
+
+"You have to laugh," explained Phyllis. "If you don't see the laugh-side
+of things, you see the cry-side. And you can't afford to be unhappy if
+you have to earn your living. People like brightness best. And it's more
+comfortable for yourself, once you get used to it."
+
+"So that was your philosophy of life," said Allan. His hand tightened
+compassionately on hers. "You _poor_ little girl!... Tell me about the
+cry-side, Phyllis."
+
+His voice was very moved and caressing, and the darkness was deepening
+as the fire sank. Only an occasional tongue of flame glinted across
+Phyllis's silver slipper-buckle and on the seal-ring Allan wore. It was
+easy to tell things there in the perfumed duskiness. It was a great many
+years since any one had cared to hear the cry-side. And it was so dark,
+and the hand keeping hers in the shadows might have been any kind,
+comforting hand. She found herself pouring it all out to Allan, there
+close by her; the loneliness, the strain, the hard work, the lack of all
+the woman-things in her life, the isolation and dreariness at night, the
+over-fatigue, and the hurt of watching youth and womanhood sliding away,
+unused, with nothing to show for all the years; only a cold hope that
+her flock of little transient aliens might be a little better for the
+guidance she could give them--
+
+
+   Years hence in rustic speech a phrase,
+   As in rude earth a Grecian vase.
+
+
+And then, that wet, discouraged day in February, and the vision of Eva
+Atkinson, radiantly fresh and happy, kept young and pretty by unlimited
+money and time.
+
+"Her children were so pretty," said Phyllis wistfully, "and mine, dear
+little villains, were such dirty, untaught, rude little things--oh, it
+sounds snobbish, but I'd have given everything I had to have a dainty,
+clean little _lady_-child throw her arms around me and kiss me, instead
+of my pet little handsome, sticky Polish Jewess. Up at home everything
+had been so clean and old and still that you always could remember it
+had been finished for three hundred years. And Father's clean, still old
+library----"
+
+Phyllis did not know how she was revealing to Allan the unconscious
+motherhood in her; but Allan, femininely sensitive to unspoken things
+from his long sojourn in the dark--Allan did. It was the mother-instinct
+that she was spending on him, but mother-instinct of a kind he had never
+known before; gayly self-effacing, efficient, shown only in its results.
+And she could never have anything else to spend it on, he thought. Well,
+he was due to die in a few years.... But he didn't want to. Living was
+just beginning to be interesting again, somehow. There seemed no
+satisfactory solution for the two of them.... Well, he'd be unselfish
+and die, any way. Meanwhile, why not be happy? Here was Phyllis. His
+hand clasped hers more closely.
+
+"And when Mr. De Guenther made me that offer," she murmured, coloring in
+the darkness, "I was tired and discouraged, and the years seemed so
+endless! It didn't seem as though I'd be harming any one--but I wouldn't
+have done it if you'd said a word against it--truly I wouldn't, dear."
+
+The last little word slipped out unnoticed. She had been calling her
+library children "dear" for a year now, and the word slipped out of
+itself. But Allan liked it.
+
+"My poor little girl!" he said. "In your place I'd have married the
+devil himself--up against a life like that."
+
+"Then--then you don't--mind?" asked Phyllis anxiously, as she had asked
+before.
+
+"No, indeed!" said Allan, with a little unnecessary firmness. "I _told_
+you that, didn't I? I like it."
+
+"So you did tell me," she said penitently.
+
+"But supposing De Guenther hadn't picked out some one like you----"
+
+"That's just what I've often thought myself," said Phyllis naively. "She
+might have been much worse than I.... Oh, but I was frightened when I
+saw you first! I didn't know what you'd be like. And then, when I looked
+at you----"
+
+"Well, when you looked at me?" demanded Allan.
+
+But Phyllis refused to go on.
+
+"But that's not all," said Allan. "What about--men?"
+
+"What men?" asked Phyllis innocently.
+
+"Why, men you were interested in, of course," he answered.
+
+"There weren't any," said Phyllis. "I hadn't any place to meet them, or
+anywhere to entertain them if I had met them. Oh, yes, there was one--an
+old bookkeeper at the boarding-house. All the boarders there were old.
+That was why the people at home had chosen it. They thought it would be
+safe. It was all of that!"
+
+"Well, the bookkeeper?" demanded Allan. "You're straying off from your
+narrative. The bookkeeper, Phyllis, my dear!"
+
+"I'm telling you about him," protested Phyllis. "He was awfully cross
+because I wouldn't marry him, but I didn't see any reason why I should.
+I didn't like him especially, and I would probably have gone on with my
+work afterwards. There didn't seem to me to be anything to it for any
+one but him--for of course I'd have had his mending and all that to do
+when I came home from the library, and I scarcely got time for my own.
+But he lost his temper fearfully because I didn't want to. Then, of
+course, men would try to flirt in the library, but the janitor always
+made them go out when you asked him to. He loved doing it.... Why,
+Allan, it must be seven o'clock! Shall I turn on more lights?"
+
+"No.... Then you were quite as shut up in your noisy library as I was in
+my dark rooms," said Allan musingly.
+
+"I suppose I was," she said, "though I never thought of it before. You
+mustn't think it was horrid. It was fun, lots of it. Only, there wasn't
+any being a real girl in it."
+
+"There isn't much in this, I should think," said Allan savagely,
+"except looking after a big doll."
+
+Phyllis's laugh tinkled out. "Oh, I _love_ playing with dolls," she said
+mischievously. "And you ought to see my new slippers! I have pink ones,
+and blue ones, and lavender and green, all satin and suede. And when I
+get time I'm going to buy dresses to match. And a banjo, maybe, with a
+self-teacher. There's a room upstairs where nobody can hear a thing you
+do. I've wanted slippers and a banjo ever since I can remember."
+
+"Then you're fairly happy?" demanded Allan suddenly.
+
+"Why, of course!" said Phyllis, though she had not really stopped to ask
+herself before whether she was or not. There had been so many exciting
+things to do. "Wouldn't you be happy if you could buy everything you
+wanted, and every one was lovely to you, and you had pretty clothes and
+a lovely house--and a rose-garden?"
+
+"Yes--if I could buy everything I wanted," said Allan. His voice dragged
+a little. Phyllis sprang up, instantly penitent.
+
+"You're tired, and I've been talking and talking about my silly little
+woes till I've worn you out!" she said. "But--Allan, you're getting
+better. Try to move this arm. The hand I'm holding. There! That's a lot
+more than you could do when I first came. I think--I think it would be a
+good plan for a masseur to come down and see it."
+
+"Now look here, Phyllis," protested Allan, "I like your taste in houses
+and music-boxes and bull-dogs, but I'll be hanged if I'll stand for a
+masseur. There's no use, they can't do me any good, and the last one
+almost killed me. There's no reason why I should be tormented simply
+because a professional pounder needs the money."
+
+"No, no!" said Phyllis. "Not that kind! Wallis can have orders to shoot
+him or something if he touches your spinal column. All I meant was a man
+who would give the muscles of your arms and shoulders a little exercise.
+That couldn't hurt, and might help you use them. That wouldn't be any
+trouble, would it? _Please!_ The first minute he hurts, you can send him
+flying. You know they call massage lazy people's exercise."
+
+"I believe you're really interested in making me better," said Allan,
+after a long silence.
+
+"Why, of course," said Phyllis, laughing. "That's what I'm here for!"
+
+But this answer did not seem to suit Allan, for some reason. Phyllis
+said no more about the masseur. She only decided to summon him, any way.
+And presently Wallis came in and turned all the lights on.
+
+
+
+
+XIII
+
+
+In due course of time June came. So did the masseur, and more flowered
+frocks for Phyllis, and the wheel-chair for Allan. The immediate effect
+of June was to bring out buds all over the rose-trees; of the flowered
+dresses, to make Phyllis very picturesquely pretty. As for the masseur,
+he had more effect than anything else. It was as Phyllis had hoped: the
+paralysis of Allan's arms had been less permanent than any one had
+thought, and for perhaps the last three years there had been little more
+the matter than entire loss of strength and muscle-control, from long
+disuse. By the time they had been a month in the country Allan's use of
+his arms and shoulders was nearly normal, and Phyllis was having wild
+hopes, that she confided to no one but Wallis, of even more sweeping
+betterments. Allan slept much better, from the slight increase of
+activity, and also perhaps because Phyllis had coaxed him outdoors as
+soon as the weather became warm, and was keeping him there. Sometimes
+he lay in the garden on his couch, sometimes he sat up in the
+wheel-chair, almost always with Phyllis sitting, or lying in her hammock
+near him, and the devoted Foxy pretending to hunt something near by.
+
+There were occasional fits of the old depression and silence, when Allan
+would lie silently in his own room with his hands crossed and his eyes
+shut, answering no one--not even Foxy. Wallis and Phyllis respected
+these moods, and left him alone till they were over, but the adoring
+Foxy had no such delicacy of feeling. And it is hard to remain silently
+sunk in depression when an active small dog is imploring you by every
+means he knows to throw balls for him to run after. For the rest, Allan
+proved to have naturally a lighter heart and more carefree disposition
+than Phyllis. His natural disposition was buoyant. Wallis said that he
+had never had a mood in his life till the accident.
+
+His attitude to his wife became more and more a taking-for-granted
+affection and dependence. It is to be feared that Phyllis spoiled him
+badly. But it was so long since she had been needed by any one person as
+Allan needed her! And he had such lovable, illogical, masculine ways of
+being wronged if he didn't get the requisite amount of petting, and
+grateful for foolish little favors and taking big ones for granted,
+that--entirely, as Phyllis insisted to herself, from a sense of combined
+duty and grateful interest--she would have had her pretty head removed
+and sent him by parcel-post, if he had idly suggested his possible need
+of a girl's head some time.
+
+And it was so heavenly--oh, but it was heavenly there in Phyllis's
+rose-garden, with the colored flowers coming out, and the little green
+caterpillars roaming over the leaves, and pretty dresses to wear, and
+Foxy-dog to play with--and Allan! Allan demanded--no, not exactly
+demanded, but expected and got--so much of Phyllis's society in these
+days that she had learned to carry on all her affairs, even the
+housekeeping, out in her hammock by his wheel-chair or couch. She wore
+large, floppy white hats with roses on them, by way of keeping the sun
+off; but Allan, it appeared, did not think much of hats except as an
+ornament for girls, and his uncovered curly hair was burned to a sort of
+goldy-russet all through, and his pallor turned to a clear pale brown.
+
+Phyllis looked up from her work one of these heavenly last-of-June days,
+and tried to decide whether she really liked the change or not. Allan
+was handsomer unquestionably, though that had hardly been necessary. But
+the resignedly statuesque look was gone.
+
+Allan felt her look, and looked up at her. He had been reading a
+magazine, for Phyllis had succeeded in a large measure in reviving his
+taste for magazines and books. "Well, Phyllis, my dear," said he,
+smiling, "what's the problem now? I feel sure there is something new
+going to be sprung on me--get the worst over!"
+
+"You wrong me," she said, beginning to thread some more pink embroidery
+silk. "I was only wondering whether I liked you as well tanned as I did
+when you were so nice and white, back in the city."
+
+"Cheerful thought!" said Allan, laying down his magazine entirely.
+"Shall I ring for Wallis and some peroxide? As you said the other day,
+'I have to be approved of or I'm unhappy!'"
+
+"Oh, it really doesn't matter," said Phyllis mischievously. "You know, I
+married you principally for a rose-garden, and that's _lovely_!"
+
+"I suppose I spoil the perspective," said Allan, unexpectedly ruffled.
+
+Phyllis leaned forward in her blossom-dotted draperies and stroked his
+hand, that long carven hand she so loved to watch.
+
+"Not a bit, Allan," she said, laughing at him. "You're exceedingly
+decorative! I remember the first time I saw you I thought you looked
+exactly like a marble knight on a tomb."
+
+Allan--Allan the listless, tranced invalid of four months before--threw
+his head back and shouted with laughter.
+
+"I suppose I serve the purpose of garden statuary," he said. "We used to
+have some horrors when I was a kid. I remember two awful bronze deer
+that always looked as if they were trying not to get their feet wet,
+and a floppy bronze dog we called Fido. He was meant for a Gordon
+setter, I think, but it didn't go much further than intention. Louise
+and I used to ride the deer."
+
+His face shadowed a little as he spoke, for nearly the first time, of
+the dead girl.
+
+"Allan," Phyllis said, bending closer to him, all rosy and golden in her
+green hammock, "tell me about--Louise Frey--if you don't mind talking
+about her? Would it be bad for you, do you think?"
+
+Allan's eyes dwelt on his wife pleasurably. She was very real and near
+and lovable, and Louise Frey seemed far away and shadowy in his
+thoughts. He had loved her very dearly and passionately, that
+boisterous, handsome young Louise, but that gay boy-life she had
+belonged to seemed separated now from this pleasant rose-garden, with
+its golden-haired, wisely-sweet young chatelaine, by thousands of black
+years. The blackness came back when he remembered what lay behind it.
+
+"There's nothing much to tell, Phyllis," he said, frowning a little.
+"She was pretty and full of life. She had black hair and eyes and a
+good deal of color. We were more or less friends all our lives, for our
+country-places adjoined. She was eighteen when--it happened."
+
+"Eighteen," said Phyllis musingly. "She would have been just my age....
+We won't talk about it, then, Allan ... Well, Viola?"
+
+The pretty Tuskegee chambermaid was holding out a tray with a card on
+it.
+
+"The doctor, ma'am," she said.
+
+"The doctor!" echoed Allan, half-vexed, half-laughing. "I _knew_ you had
+something up your sleeve, Phyllis! What on earth did you have him for?"
+
+Phyllis's face was a study of astonishment. "On my honor, I hadn't a
+notion he was even in existence," she protested. "He's not _my_ doctor!"
+
+"He must have 'just growed,' or else Lily-Anna's called him in,"
+suggested Allan sunnily. "Bring him along, Viola."
+
+Viola produced him so promptly that nobody had time to remember the
+professional doctor's visits don't usually have cards, or thought to
+look at the card for enlightenment. So the surprise was complete when
+the doctor appeared.
+
+"Johnny Hewitt!" ejaculated Allan, throwing out both hands in greeting.
+"Of all people! Well, you old fraud, pretending to be a doctor! The last
+I heard about you, you were trying to prove that you weren't the man
+that tied a mule into old Sumerley's chair at college."
+
+"I never did prove it," responded Johnny Hewitt, shaking hands
+vigorously, "but the fellows said afterwards that I ought to
+apologize--to the mule. He was a perfectly good mule. But I'm a doctor
+all right. I live here in Wallraven. I wondered if it might be you by
+any chance, Allan, when I heard some Harringtons had bought here. But
+this is the first chance a promising young chickenpox epidemic has given
+me to find out."
+
+"It's what's left of me," said Allan, smiling ruefully. "And--Phyllis,
+this doctor-person turns out to be an old friend of mine. This is Mrs.
+Harrington, Johnny."
+
+"Oh, I'm so glad!" beamed Phyllis, springing up from her hammock, and
+looking as if she loved Johnny. Here was exactly what was
+needed--somebody for Allan to play with! She made herself delightful to
+the newcomer for a few minutes, and then excused herself. They would
+have a better time alone, for awhile, any way, and there was dinner to
+order. Maybe this Johnny Hewitt-doctor would stay for dinner. He should
+if she could make him! She sang a little on her way to the house, and
+almost forgot the tiny hurt it had been when Allan seemed so saddened by
+speaking of Louise Frey. She had no right to feel hurt, she knew. It was
+only to be expected that Allan would always love Louise's memory. She
+didn't know much about men, but that was the way it always was in
+stories. A man's heart would die, under an automobile or anywhere else,
+and all there was left for anybody else was leavings. It wasn't fair!
+And then Phyllis threw back her shoulders and laughed, as she had
+sometimes in the library days, and reminded herself what a nice world it
+was, any way, and that Allan was going to be much helped by Johnny
+Hewitt. That was a cheering thought, anyhow. She went on singing, and
+ordered a beautiful, festively-varied dinner, a very poem of gratitude.
+Then she pounced on the doctor as he was leaving and made him stay for
+it.
+
+Allan's eyes were bright and his face lighted with interest. Phyllis, at
+the head of the table, kept just enough in the talk to push the men on
+when it seemed flagging, which was not often. She learned more about
+Allan, and incidentally Johnny Hewitt, in the talk as they lingered
+about the table, than she had ever known before. She and Allan had lived
+so deliberately in the placid present, with its almost childish
+brightnesses and interests, that she knew scarcely more about her
+husband's life than the De Guenthers had told her before she married
+him. But she could see the whole picture of it as she listened now: the
+active, merry, brilliant boy who had worked and played all day and
+danced half the night; who had lived, it almost seemed to her, two or
+three lives in one. And then the change to the darkened room--helpless,
+unable to move, with the added sorrow of his sweetheart's death, and
+his mother's deliberate fostering of that sorrow. It was almost a shock
+to see him in the wheel-chair at the foot of the table, his face lighted
+with interest in what he and his friend were saying. What if he did care
+for Louise Frey's memory still! He'd had such a hard time that anything
+Phyllis could do for him oughtn't to be too much!
+
+When Dr. Hewitt went at last Phyllis accompanied him to the door. She
+kept him there for a few minutes, talking to him about Allan and making
+him promise to come often. He agreed with her that, this much progress
+made, a good deal more might follow. He promised to come back very soon,
+and see as much of them as possible.
+
+Allan, watching them, out of earshot, from the living-room where he had
+been wheeled, saw Phyllis smiling warmly up at his friend, lingering in
+talk with him, giving him both hands in farewell; and he saw, too,
+Hewitt's rapt interest and long leave-taking. At last the door closed,
+and Phyllis came back to him, flushed and animated. He realized,
+watching her return with that swift lightness of foot her long years of
+work had lent her, how young and strong and lovely she was, with the
+rose-color in her cheeks and the light from above making her hair
+glitter. And suddenly her slim young strength and her bright vitality
+seemed to mock him, instead of being a comfort and support as
+heretofore. A young, beautiful, kind girl like that--it was natural she
+should like Hewitt. And it was going to come natural to Hewitt to like
+Phyllis. He could see that plainly enough.
+
+"Tired, Allan Harrington?" she asked brightly, coming over to him and
+dropping a light hand on his chair, in a caressing little way she had
+dared lately.... Kindness! Yes, she was the incarnation of kindness.
+Doubtless she had spoken to and touched those little ragamuffins she had
+told him of just so.
+
+He had got into a habit of feeling that Phyllis belonged to him
+absolutely. He had forgotten--what was it she had said to him that
+afternoon, half in fun--but oh, doubtless half in earnest!--about
+marrying him for a rose-garden? She had done just that. She had never
+made any secret of it--why, how could she, marrying him before she had
+spoken a half-dozen words to him? But how wonderful she had been to him
+since--sometimes almost as if she cared for him....
+
+He moved ungraciously. "Don't _touch_ me, Phyllis!" he said irritably.
+"Wallis! You can wheel me into my room."
+
+"Oh-h!" said Phyllis, behind him. The little forlorn sound hurt him, but
+it pleased him, too. So he could hurt her, if only by rudeness? Well,
+that was a satisfaction. "Shut the door," he ordered Wallis swiftly.
+
+Phyllis, her hands at her throat, stood hurt and frightened in the
+middle of the room. It never occurred to her that Allan was jealous, or
+indeed that he could care enough for her to be jealous.
+
+"It was talking about Louise Frey," she said. "That, and Dr. Hewitt
+bringing up old times. Oh, _why_ did I ask about her? He was
+contented--I know he was contented! He'd gotten to like having me with
+him--he even wanted me. Oh, Allan, Allan!"
+
+She did not want to cry downstairs, so she ran for her own room. There
+she threw herself down and cried into a pillow till most of the case was
+wet. She was silly--she knew she was silly. She tried to think of all
+the things that were still hers, the garden, the watch-bracelet, the
+leisure, the pretty gowns--but nothing, _nothing_ seemed of any
+consequence beside the fact that--she had not kissed Allan good-night!
+It seemed the most intolerable thing that had ever happened to her.
+
+
+
+
+XIV
+
+
+It was just as well, perhaps, that Phyllis did not do much sleeping that
+night, for at about two Wallis knocked at her door. It seemed like
+history repeating itself when he said: "Could you come to Mr. Allan,
+please? He seems very bad."
+
+She threw on the silk crepe negligee and followed him, just as she had
+done before, on that long-ago night after her mother-in-law had died.
+
+"Did Dr. Hewitt's visit overexcite him, do you think?" he asked as they
+went.
+
+"I don't know, ma'am," Wallis said. "He's almost as bad as he was after
+the old madam died--you remember?"
+
+"Oh, yes," said Phyllis mechanically. "I remember."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Allan lay so exactly as he had on that other night, that the strange
+surroundings seemed incongruous. Just the same, except that his
+restlessness was more visible, because he had more power of motion.
+
+She bent and held the nervously clenching hands, as she had before.
+"What is it, Allan?" she said soothingly.
+
+"Nothing," said her husband savagely. "Nerves, hysteria--any other silly
+womanish thing a cripple could have. Let me alone, Phyllis. I wish you
+could put me out of the way altogether!"
+
+Phyllis made herself laugh, though her heart hurried with fright. She
+had seen Allan suffer badly before--be apathetic, irritable, despondent,
+but never in a state where he did not cling to her.
+
+"I can't let you alone," she said brightly. "I've come to stay with you
+till you feel quieter.... Would you rather I talked to you, or kept
+quiet?"
+
+"Oh, do your wifely duty, whatever it is," he said.... "It was a
+mistake, the whole thing. You've done more than your duty, child,
+but--oh, you'd better go away."
+
+Phyllis's heart turned over. Was it as bad as this? Was he as sick of
+her as this?
+
+"You mean--you think," she faltered, "it was a mistake--our marriage?"
+
+"Yes," he said restlessly. "Yes.... It wasn't fair."
+
+She had no means of knowing that he meant it was unfair to her. She held
+on to herself, though she felt her face turning cold with the sudden
+pallor of fright.
+
+"I think it can be annulled," she said steadily. "No, I suppose it
+wasn't fair."
+
+She stopped to get her breath and catch at the only things that
+mattered--steadiness, quietness, ability to soothe Allan!
+
+"It can be annulled," she said again evenly. "But listen to me now,
+Allan. It will take quite a while. It can't be done to-night, or before
+you are stronger. So for your own sake you must try to rest now.
+Everything shall come right. I promise you it shall be annulled. But
+forget it now, please. I am going to hold your wrists and talk to you,
+recite things for you, till you go back to sleep."
+
+She wondered afterwards how she could have spoken with that hard
+serenity, how she could have gone steadily on with story after story,
+poem after poem, till Allan's grip on her hands relaxed, and he fell
+into a heavy, tired sleep.
+
+[Illustration: "BUT YOU SEE--HE'S--ALL I HAVE ... GOOD-NIGHT, WALLIS"]
+
+She sat on the side of the bed and looked at him, lying still against
+his white pillows. She looked and looked, and presently the tears began
+to slide silently down her cheeks. She did not lift her hands to wipe
+them away. She sat and cried silently, openly, like a desolate, unkindly
+treated child.
+
+"Mrs. Allan! Mrs. Allan, ma'am!" came Wallis's concerned whisper from
+the doorway. "Don't take it as hard as that. It's just a little relapse.
+He was overtired. I shouldn't have called you, but you always quiet him
+so."
+
+Phyllis brushed off her tears, and smiled. You seemed to have to do so
+much smiling in this house!
+
+"I know," she said. "I worry about his condition too much. But you
+see--he's--all I have.... Good-night, Wallis."
+
+Once out of Allan's room, she ran at full speed till she gained her own
+bed, where she could cry in peace till morning if she wanted to, with no
+one to interrupt. That was all right. The trouble was going to be next
+morning.
+
+But somehow, when morning came, the old routine was dragged through
+with. Directions had to be given the servants as usual, Allan's comfort
+and amusement seen to, just as if nothing had happened. It was a perfect
+day, golden and perfumed, with just that little tang of fresh windiness
+that June days have in the northern states. And Allan must not lose
+it--he must be wheeled out into the garden.
+
+She came out to him, in the place where they usually sat, and sank for a
+moment in the hammock, that afternoon. She had avoided him all the
+morning.
+
+"I just came to see if everything was all right," she said, leaning
+toward him in that childlike, earnest way he knew so well. "I don't need
+to stay here if I worry you."
+
+"I'd rather you'd stay, if you don't mind," he answered. Phyllis looked
+at him intently. He was white and dispirited, and his voice was
+listless. Oh, Phyllis thought, if Louise Frey had only been kind enough
+to die in babyhood, instead of under Allan's automobile! What could
+there have been about her to hold Allan so long? She glanced at his
+weary face again. This would never do! What had come to be her dominant
+instinct, keeping Allan's spirits up, emboldened her to bend forward,
+and even laugh a little.
+
+"Come, Allan!" she said. "Even if we're not going to stay together
+always, we might as well be cheerful till we do part. We used to be good
+friends enough. Can't we be so a little longer?" It sounded heartless to
+her after she had said it, but it seemed the only way to speak. She
+smiled at him bravely.
+
+Allan looked at her mutely for a moment, as if she had hurt him.
+
+"You're right," he said suddenly. "There's no time but the present,
+after all. Come over here, closer to me, Phyllis. You've been awfully
+good to me, child--isn't there anything--_anything_ I could do for
+you--something you could remember afterwards, and say, 'Well, he did
+that for me, any way?'"
+
+Phyllis's eyes filled with tears. "You have given me everything
+already," she said, catching her breath. She didn't feel as if she could
+stand much more of this.
+
+"Everything!" he said bitterly. "No, I haven't. I can't give you what
+every girl wants--a well, strong man to be her husband--the health and
+strength that any man in the street has."
+
+"Oh, don't speak that way, Allan!"
+
+She bent over him sympathetically, moved by his words. In another moment
+the misunderstanding might have been straightened out, if it had not
+been for his reply.
+
+"I wish I never had to see you at all!" he said involuntarily. In her
+sensitive state of mind the hurt was all she felt--not the deeper
+meaning that lay behind the words.
+
+"I'll relieve you of my presence for awhile," she flashed back. Before
+she gave herself time to think, she had left the garden, with something
+which might be called a flounce. "When people say things like that to
+you," she said as she walked away from him, "it's carrying being an
+invalid a little _too_ far!"
+
+Allan heard the side-door slam. He had never suspected before that
+Phyllis had a temper. And yet, what could he have said? But she gave him
+no opportunity to find out. In just about the time it might take to
+find gloves and a parasol, another door clanged in the distance. The
+street door. Phyllis had evidently gone out.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Phyllis, on her swift way down the street, grew angrier and angrier. She
+tried to persuade herself to make allowances for Allan, but they refused
+to be made. She felt more bitterly toward him than she ever had toward
+any one in her life. If she only hadn't leaned over him and been sorry
+for him, just before she got a slap in the face like that!
+
+She walked rapidly down the main street of the little village. She
+hardly knew where she was going. She had been called on by most of the
+local people, but she did not feel like being agreeable, or making
+formal calls, just now. And what was the use of making friends, any way,
+when she was going back to her rags, poor little Cinderella that she
+was! Below and around and above everything else came the stinging
+thought that she had given Allan so much--that she had taken so much for
+granted.
+
+Her quick steps finally took her to the outskirts of the village, to a
+little green stretch of woods. There she walked up and down for awhile,
+trying to think more quietly. She found the tide of her anger ebbing
+suddenly, and her mind forming all sorts of excuses for Allan. But that
+was not the way to get quiet--thinking of Allan! She tried to put him
+resolutely from her mind, and think about her own future plans. The
+first thing to do, she decided, was to rub up her library work a little.
+
+It was with an unexpected feeling of having returned to her own place
+that she crossed the marble floor of the village library. She felt as if
+she ought to hurry down to the cloak-room, instead of waiting leisurely
+at the desk for her card. It all seemed uncannily like home--there was
+even a girl inside the desk who looked like Anna Black of her own
+Greenway Branch. Phyllis could hear, with a faint amusement, that the
+girl was scolding energetically in Anna Black's own way. The words
+struck on her quick ears, though they were not intended to carry.
+
+"That's what comes of trusting to volunteer help. Telephones at the last
+moment 'she has a headache,' and not a single soul to look after the
+story-hour! And the children are almost all here already."
+
+"We'll just have to send them home," said the other girl, looking up
+from her trayful of cards. "It's too late to get anybody else, and
+goodness knows _we_ can't get it in!"
+
+"They ought to have another librarian," fretted the girl who looked like
+Anna. "They could afford it well enough, with their Soldiers' Monuments
+and all."
+
+Phyllis smiled to herself from where she was investigating the
+card-catalogue. It all sounded so exceedingly natural. Then that swift
+instinct of hers to help caught her over to the desk, and she heard
+herself saying:
+
+"I've had some experience in story telling; maybe I could help you with
+the story-hour. I couldn't help hearing that your story-teller has
+disappointed you."
+
+The girl like Anna fell on her with rapture.
+
+"Heaven must have sent you," she said. The other one, evidently slower
+and more cautious by nature, rose too, and came toward her. "You have a
+card here, haven't you?" she said. "I think I've seen you."
+
+"Yes," Phyllis said, with a pang at speaking the name she had grown to
+love bearing; "I'm Mrs. Harrington--Phyllis Harrington. We live at the
+other end of the village."
+
+"Oh, in the house with the garden all shut off from the lane!" said the
+girl like Anna, delightedly. "That lovely old house that used to belong
+to the Jamesons. Oh, yes, I know. You're here for the summer, aren't
+you, and your husband has been very ill?"
+
+"Exactly," said Phyllis, smiling, though she wished people wouldn't talk
+about Allan! They seemed possessed to mention him!
+
+"We'll be obliged forever if you'll do it," said the other girl,
+evidently the head librarian. "Can you do it now? The children are
+waiting."
+
+"Certainly," said Phyllis, and followed the younger girl straightway to
+the basement, where, it seemed, the story-hour was held. She wondered,
+as they went, if the girl envied her her expensively perishable summer
+organdie, with its flying sashes and costly accessories; if the girl
+thought about her swinging jewelries and endless leisure with a wish to
+have them for herself. She had wanted such things, she knew, when she
+was being happy on fifty dollars a month. And perhaps some of the women
+she had watched then had had heartaches under their furs....
+
+The children, already sitting in a decorous ring on their low chairs,
+seemed after the first surprise to approve of Phyllis. The librarian
+lingered for a little by way of keeping order if it should be necessary,
+watched the competent sweep with which Phyllis gathered the children
+around her, heard the opening of the story, and left with an air of
+astonished approval. Phyllis, late best story-teller of the Greenway
+Branch, watched her go with a bit of professional triumph in her heart.
+
+She told the children stories till the time was up, and then "just one
+story more." She had not forgotten how, she found. But she never told
+them the story of "How the Elephant Got His Trunk," that foolish,
+fascinating story-hour classic that she had told Allan the night his
+mother had died; the story that had sent him to sleep quietly for the
+first time in years.... Oh, dear, was everything in the world connected
+with Allan in some way or other?
+
+It was nearly six when she went up, engulfed in children, to the
+circulating room. There the night-librarian caught her. She had
+evidently been told to try to get Phyllis for more story-hours, for she
+did her best to make her promise. They talked shop together for perhaps
+an hour and a half. Then the growing twilight reminded Phyllis that it
+was time to go back. She had been shirking going home, she realized now,
+all the afternoon. She said good-by to the night-librarian, and went on
+down the village street, lagging unconsciously. It must have been about
+eight by this time.
+
+It was a mile back to the house. She could have taken the trolley part
+of the way, but she felt restless and like walking. She had forgotten
+that walking at night through well-known, well-lighted city streets, and
+going in half-dusk through country byways, were two different things.
+She was destined to be reminded of the difference.
+
+"Can you help a poor man, lady?" said a whining voice behind her, when
+she had a quarter of the way yet to go. She turned to see a big tramp, a
+terrifying brute with a half-propitiating, half-fierce look on his
+heavy, unshaven face. She was desperately frightened. She had been
+spoken to once or twice in the city, but there there was always a
+policeman, or a house you could run into if you had to. But here, in the
+unguarded dusk of a country lane, it was a different matter. The long
+gold chain that swung below her waist, the big diamond on her finger,
+the gold mesh-purse--all the jewelry she took such a childlike delight
+in wearing--she remembered them in terror. She was no brown-clad little
+working-girl now, to slip along disregarded. And the tramp did not look
+like a deserving object.
+
+"If you will come to the house to-morrow," she said, hurrying on as she
+spoke, "I'll have some work for you. The first house on this street that
+you come to." She did not dare give him anything, or send him away.
+
+"Won't you gimme somethin' now, lady?" whined the tramp, continuing to
+follow. "I'm a starvin' man."
+
+She dared not open her purse and appease him by giving him money--she
+had too much with her. That morning she had received the check for her
+monthly income from Mr. De Guenther, sent Wallis down to cash it, and
+then stuffed it in her bag and forgotten it in the distress of the day.
+The man might take the money and strike her senseless, even kill her.
+
+"To-morrow," she said, going rapidly on. She had now what would amount
+to about three city blocks to traverse still. There was a short way from
+outside the garden-hedge through to the garden, which cut off about a
+half-block. If she could gain this she would be safe.
+
+"Naw, yeh don't," snarled the tramp, as she fled on. "Ye'll set that
+bull-pup o' yours on me. I been there, an' come away again. You just
+gimme some o' them rings an' things an' we'll call it square, me fine
+lady!"
+
+Phyllis's heart stood still at this open menace, but she ran on still. A
+sudden thought came to her. She snatched her gilt sash-buckle--a pretty
+thing but of small value--from her waist, and hurled it far behind the
+tramp. In the half-light it might have been her gold mesh-bag.
+
+"There's my money--go get it!" she gasped--and ran for her life. The
+tramp, as she had hoped he would, dashed back after it and gave her the
+start she needed. Breathless, terrified to death, she raced on, tearing
+her frock, dropping the library cards and parasol she still had held in
+her hand. Once she caught her sash on a tree-wire. Once her slipper-heel
+caught and nearly threw her. The chase seemed unending. She could hear
+the dreadful footsteps of the tramp behind her, and his snarling,
+swearing voice panting out threats. He was drunk, she realized with
+another thrill of horror. It was a nightmare happening.
+
+On and on--she stumbled, fell, caught herself--but the tramp had gained.
+Then at last the almost invisible gap in the hedge, and she fled
+through.
+
+"_Allan! Allan! Allan!_" she screamed, fleeing instinctively to his
+chair.
+
+The rose-garden was like a place of enchanted peace after the terror of
+outside. Her quick vision as she rushed in was of Allan still there,
+moveless in his chair, with the little black bull-dog lying asleep
+across his arms and shoulder like a child. It often lay so. As she
+entered, the scene broke up before her eyes like a dissolving view. She
+saw the little dog wake and make what seemed one flying spring to the
+tramp's throat, and sink his teeth in it--and Allan, at her scream,
+_spring from his chair_!
+
+Phyllis forgot everything at the sight of Allan, standing. Wallis and
+the outdoor man, who had run to the spot at Phyllis's screams, were
+dealing with the tramp, who was writhing on the grass, choking and
+striking out wildly. But neither Phyllis nor Allan saw that. Which
+caught the other in an embrace they never knew. They stood locked
+together, forgetting everything else, he in the idea of her peril, she
+in the wonder of his standing.
+
+"Oh, darling, darling!" Allan was saying over and over again. "You are
+safe--thank heaven you are safe! Oh, Phyllis, I could never forgive
+myself if you had been hurt! Phyllis! Speak to me!"
+
+But Phyllis's own safety did not concern her now. She could only think
+of one thing. "_You can stand! You can stand!_" she reiterated. Then a
+wonderful thought came to her, striking across the others, as she stood
+locked in this miraculously raised Allan's arms. She spoke without
+knowing that she had said it aloud. "_Do you care, too?_" she said very
+low. Then the dominant thought returned. "You must sit down again," she
+said hurriedly, to cover her confusion, and what she had said. "Please,
+Allan, sit down. Please, dear--you'll tire yourself."
+
+Allan sank into his chair again, still holding her. She dropped on her
+knees beside him, with her arms around him. She had a little leisure
+now to observe that Wallis, the ever-resourceful, had tied the tramp
+neatly with the outdoor man's suspenders, which were nearer the surface
+than his own, and succeeded in prying off the still unappeased Foxy, who
+evidently was wronged at not having the tramp to finish. They carried
+him off, into the back kitchen garden. Allan, now that he was certain of
+Phyllis's safety, paid them not the least attention.
+
+"Did you mean it?" he said passionately. "Tell me, did you mean what you
+said?"
+
+Phyllis dropped her dishevelled head on Allan's shoulder.
+
+"I'm afraid--I'm going to cry, and--and I know you don't like it!" she
+panted. Allan half drew, half guided her up into his arms.
+
+"Was it true?" he insisted, giving her an impulsive little shake. She sat
+up on his knees, wide-eyed and wet-cheeked like a child.
+
+"But you knew that all along!" she said. "That was why I felt so
+humiliated. It was _you_ that _I_ thought didn't care----"
+
+Allan laughed joyously. "Care!" he said. "I should think I did, first,
+last, and all the time! Why, Phyllis, child, didn't I behave like a
+brute because I was jealous enough of John Hewitt to throw him in the
+river? He was the first man you had seen since you married
+me--attractive, and well, and clever, and all that--it would have been
+natural enough if you'd liked him."
+
+"Liked him!" said Phyllis in disdain. "When there was you? And I
+thought--I thought it was the memory of Louise Frey that made you act
+that way. You didn't want to talk about her, and you said it was all a
+mistake----"
+
+"I was a brute," said Allan again. "It was the memory that I was about
+as useful as a rag doll, and that the world was full of live men with
+real legs and arms, ready to fall in love with you.
+
+"There's nobody but _you_ in the world," whispered Phyllis.... "But
+you're well now, or you will be soon," she added joyously. She slipped
+away from him. "Allan, don't you want to try to stand again? If you did
+it then, you can do it now."
+
+"Yes, by Jove, I do!" he said. But this time the effort to rise was
+noticeable. Still, he could do it, with Phyllis's eager help.
+
+"It must have been what Dr. Hewitt called neurasthenic inhibition," said
+Phyllis, watching the miracle of a standing Allan. "That was what we
+were talking about by the door that night, you foolish boy!... Oh, how
+tall you are! I never realized you were tall, lying down, somehow!"
+
+"I don't have to bend very far to kiss you, though," suggested Allan,
+suiting the action to the word.
+
+But Phyllis, when this was satisfactorily concluded, went back to the
+great business of seeing how much Allan could walk. He sat down again
+after a half-dozen steps, a little tired in spite of his excitement.
+
+"I can't do much at a time yet, I suppose," he said a little ruefully.
+"Do you mean to tell me, sweetheart--come over here closer, where I can
+touch you--you're awfully far away--do you mean to tell me that all that
+ailed me was I thought I couldn't move?"
+
+"Oh, no!" explained Phyllis, moving her chair close, and then, as that
+did not seem satisfactory, perching on the arm of Allan's. "You'd been
+unable to move for so long that when you were able to at last your
+subconscious mind clamped down on your muscles and was convinced you
+couldn't. So no matter how much you consciously tried, you couldn't make
+the muscles go till you were so strongly excited it broke the
+inhibition--just as people can lift things in delirium or excitement
+that they couldn't possibly move at other times. Do you see?"
+
+"I do," said Allan, kissing the back of her neck irrelevantly. "If
+somebody'd tried to shoot me up five years ago I might be a well man
+now. That's a beautiful word of yours, Phyllis, inhibition. What a lot
+of big words you know!"
+
+"Oh, if you won't be serious!" said she.
+
+"We'll have to be," said Allan, laughing, "for here's Wallis, and, as I
+live, from the direction of the house. I thought they carried our friend
+the tramp out through the hedge--he must have gone all the way around."
+
+Phyllis was secretly certain that Wallis had been crying a little, but
+all he said was, "We've taken the tramp to the lock-up, sir."
+
+But his master and his mistress were not so dignified. They showed him
+exhaustively that Allan could really stand and walk, and Allan
+demonstrated it, and Wallis nearly cried again. Then they went in, for
+Phyllis was sure Allan needed a thorough rest after all this. She was
+shaking from head to foot herself with joyful excitement, but she did
+not even know it. And it was long past dinner-time, though every one but
+Lily-Anna, to whom the happy news had somehow filtered, had forgotten
+it.
+
+"I've always wanted to hold you in my arms, this way," said Allan late
+that evening, as they stood in the rose-garden again; "but I thought I
+never would.... Phyllis, did you ever want me to?"
+
+It was too beautiful a moonlight night to waste in the house, or even on
+the porch. The couch had been wheeled to its accustomed place in the
+rose-garden, and Allan was supposed to be lying on it as he often did in
+the evenings. But it was hard to make him stay there.
+
+"Oh, you _must_ lie down," said Phyllis hurriedly, trying to move out of
+the circle of his arms. "You mustn't stand till we find how much is
+enough.... I'm going to send for the wolfhound next week. You won't mind
+him now, will you?"
+
+"Did you ever want to be here in my arms, Phyllis?"
+
+"Of course not!" said Phyllis, as a modest young person should.
+"But--but----"
+
+"Well, my wife?"
+
+"I've often wondered just where I'd reach to," said Phyllis in a
+rush.... "Allan, _please_ don't stand any longer!"
+
+"I'll lie down if you'll sit on the couch by me."
+
+"Very well," said Phyllis; and sat obediently in the curve of his arm
+when he had settled himself in the old position, the one that looked so
+much more natural for him.
+
+"Mine, every bit of you!" he said exultantly. "Heaven bless that
+tramp!... And to think we were talking about annulments!... Do you
+remember that first night, dear, after mother died? I was half-mad with
+grief and physical pain. And Wallis went after you. I didn't want him
+to. But he trusted you from the first--good old Wallis! And you came in
+with that swift, sweeping step of yours, as I've seen you come fifty
+times since--half-flying, it seemed to me then--with all your pretty
+hair loose, and an angelic sort of a white thing on. I expect I was a
+brute to you--I don't remember how I acted--but I know you sat on the
+bed by me and took both my wrists in those strong little hands of yours,
+and talked to me and quieted me till I fell fast asleep. You gave me the
+first consecutive sleep I'd had in four months. It felt as if life and
+calmness and strength were pouring from you to me. You stayed till I
+fell asleep."
+
+"I remember," said Phyllis softly. She laid her cheek by his, as it had
+been on that strange marriage evening that seemed so far away now. "I
+was afraid of you at first. But I felt that, too, as if I were giving
+you my strength. I was so glad I could! And then I fell asleep, too,
+over on your shoulder."
+
+"You never told me that," said Allan reproachfully. Phyllis laughed a
+little.
+
+"There never seemed to be any point in our conversations where it fitted
+in neatly," she said demurely. Allan laughed, too.
+
+"You should have made one. But what I was going to tell you was--I think
+I began to be in love with you then. I didn't know it, but I did. And it
+got worse and worse but I didn't know what ailed me till Johnny drifted
+in, bless his heart! Then I did. Oh, Phyllis, it was awful! To have you
+with me all the time, acting like an angel, waiting on me hand and foot,
+and not knowing whether you had any use for me or not!... And you never
+kissed me good-night last night."
+
+Phyllis did not answer. She only bent a little, and kissed her husband
+on the lips, very sweetly and simply, of her own accord. But she said
+nothing then of the long, restless, half-happy, half-wretched time when
+she had loved him and never even hoped he would care for her. There was
+time for all that. There were going to be long, joyous years together,
+years of being a "real woman," as she had so passionately wished to be
+that day in the library. She would never again need to envy any woman
+happiness or love or laughter. It was all before her now, youth and joy
+and love, and Allan, her Allan, soon to be well, and loving her--loving
+nobody else but her!
+
+"Oh, I love you, Allan!" was all she said.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's The Rose Garden Husband, by Margaret Widdemer
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+      The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Rose-Garden Husband, by Margaret Widdemer.
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+
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Rose Garden Husband, by Margaret Widdemer
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Rose Garden Husband
+
+Author: Margaret Widdemer
+
+Release Date: September 16, 2008 [EBook #26635]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE ROSE GARDEN HUSBAND ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Mark C. Orton, Linda McKeown and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
+
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+</pre>
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 372px;">
+<img src="images/fcover.jpg" width="372" height="600" alt="" title="cover" />
+</div>
+
+
+<h1>THE ROSE-GARDEN HUSBAND</h1>
+
+
+<h3>BY</h3>
+
+<h2>MARGARET WIDDEMER</h2>
+
+
+
+<p class="center">WITH ILLUSTRATIONS BY</p>
+
+<h3>WALTER BIGGS<br /><br /></h3>
+
+
+<p class="center">NEW YORK GROSSET &amp; DUNLAP PUBLISHERS<br />
+
+COPYRIGHT 1914, BY J. B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANY<br />
+
+COPYRIGHT 1915, BY J. B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANY<br />
+
+<br /><br />
+
+PUBLISHED, JANUARY 27, 1915<br />
+
+SECOND PRINTING, FEBRUARY 6, 1915<br />
+
+THIRD PRINTING, MARCH 12, 1915<br />
+
+FOURTH PRINTING, APRIL 23, 1915<br />
+
+FIFTH PRINTING, JUNE 10, 1915<br />
+
+SIXTH PRINTING, AUGUST 6, 1915<br />
+
+SEVENTH PRINTING, OCTOBER 21, 1915<br />
+
+EIGHTH PRINTING, MAY 1, 1916<br />
+
+NINTH PRINTING, OCTOBER 30, 1916</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 442px;">
+<img src="images/illus-004.jpg" width="442" height="600" alt="YOU KNOW, I MARRIED YOU PRINCIPALLY FOR A ROSE-GARDEN" title="" />
+<span class="caption">"YOU KNOW, I MARRIED YOU PRINCIPALLY FOR A ROSE-GARDEN,
+AND THAT'S <i>LOVELY</i>!"</span>
+<br /><i>Page <a href='#Page_172'><b>172</b></a></i>
+</div>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<h3><br /><br />IN LOVING MEMORY</h3>
+
+<h4>OF</h4>
+
+<h2>HOWARD TAYLOR WIDDEMER<br /><br /></h2>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_7" id="Page_7">[Pg 7]</a></span></p>
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+
+<h3>CONTENTS</h3>
+
+<div class='centered'>
+<table border="0" cellpadding="4" width="50%" cellspacing="0" summary="CONTENTS">
+
+
+<tr><td rowspan="14"><img src="images/spine.jpg" width="121" height="600" alt="book spine" title="" /></td><td align='left'><a href="#I"><b>CHAPTER I</b></a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><a href="#II"><b>CHAPTER II</b></a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><a href="#III"><b>CHAPTER III</b></a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><a href="#IV"><b>CHAPTER IV</b></a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><a href="#V"><b>CHAPTER V</b></a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><a href="#VI"><b>CHAPTER VI</b></a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><a href="#VII"><b>CHAPTER VII</b></a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><a href="#VIII"><b>CHAPTER VIII</b></a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><a href="#IX"><b>CHAPTER IX</b></a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><a href="#X"><b>CHAPTER X</b></a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><a href="#XI"><b>CHAPTER XI</b></a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><a href="#XII"><b>CHAPTER XII</b></a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><a href="#XIII"><b>CHAPTER XIII</b></a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><a href="#XIV"><b>CHAPTER XIV</b></a></td></tr>
+</table></div>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><br /><br /><a name="THE_ROSE-GARDEN_HUSBAND" id="THE_ROSE-GARDEN_HUSBAND"></a>THE ROSE-GARDEN HUSBAND<br /><br /></h2>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="I" id="I"></a>I</h2>
+
+
+<p>The Liberry Teacher lifted her eyes from a half-made catalogue-card,
+eyed the relentlessly slow clock and checked a long wriggle of purest,
+frankest weariness. Then she gave a furtive glance around to see if the
+children had noticed she was off guard; for if they had she knew the
+whole crowd might take more liberties than they ought to, and have to be
+spoken to by the janitor. He could do a great deal with them, because he
+understood their attitude to life, but that wasn't good for the Liberry
+Teacher's record.</p>
+
+<p>It was four o'clock of a stickily wet Saturday. As long as it is
+anything from Monday to Friday the average library attendant goes around
+thanking her stars she isn't a school-teacher; but the last day of the
+week, when the rest of the world is having its relaxing Saturday off and
+coming<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_8" id="Page_8">[Pg 8]</a></span> to gloat over you as it acquires its Sunday-reading best seller,
+if you work in a library you begin just at noon to wish devoutly that
+you'd taken up scrubbing-by-the-day, or hack-driving, or porch-climbing
+or&mdash;anything on earth that gave you a weekly half-holiday!</p>
+
+<p>So the Liberry Teacher braced herself severely, and put on her
+reading-glasses with a view to looking older and more firm. "Liberry
+Teacher," it might be well to explain, was not her official title. Her
+description on the pay-roll ran "Assistant for the Children's
+Department, Greenway Branch, City Public Library." Grown-up people, when
+she happened to run across them, called her Miss Braithwaite. But
+"Liberry Teacher" was the only name the children ever used, and she saw
+scarcely anybody but the children, six days a week, fifty-one weeks a
+year. As for her real name, that nobody ever called her by, <i>that</i> was
+Phyllis Narcissa.</p>
+
+<p>She was quite willing to have such a name as that buried out of sight.
+She had a sense of fitness; and such a name belonged back<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_9" id="Page_9">[Pg 9]</a></span> in an old New
+England parsonage garden full of pink roses and nice green caterpillars
+and girl-dreams, and the days before she was eighteen: not in a smutty
+city library, attached to a twenty-five-year-old young woman with
+reading-glasses and fine discipline and a woolen shirt-waist!</p>
+
+<p>It wasn't that the Liberry Teacher didn't like her position. She not
+only liked it, but she had a great deal of admiration for it, because it
+had been exceedingly hard to get. She had held it firmly now for a whole
+year. Before that she had been in the Cataloguing, where your eyes hurt
+and you get a little pain between your shoulders, but you sit down and
+can talk to other girls; and before that in the Circulation, where it
+hurts your feet and you get ink on your fingers, but you see lots of
+funny things happening. She had started at eighteen years old, at thirty
+dollars a month. Now she was twenty-five, and she got all of fifty
+dollars, so she ought to have been a very happy Liberry Teacher indeed,
+and generally she was. When the children wanted to specify her
+particularly they described her<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_10" id="Page_10">[Pg 10]</a></span> as "the pretty one that laughs." But at
+four o'clock of a wet Saturday afternoon, in a badly ventilated, badly
+lighted room full of damp little unwashed foreign children, even the
+most sunny-hearted Liberry Teacher may be excused for having thoughts
+that are a little tired and cross and restless.</p>
+
+<p>She flung herself back in her desk-chair and watched, with brazen
+indifference, Giovanni and Liberata Bruno stickily pawing the colored
+Bird Book that was supposed to be looked at only under supervision; she
+ignored the fact that three little Czechs were fighting over the wailing
+library cat; and the sounds of conflict caused by Jimsy Hoolan's desire
+to get the last-surviving Alger book away from John Zanowski moved her
+not a whit. The Liberry Teacher had stopped, for five minutes, being
+grown-up and responsible, and she was wishing&mdash;wishing hard and
+vengefully. This is always a risky thing to do, because you never know
+when the Destinies may overhear you and take you at your exact word.
+With the detailed and careful accuracy one acquires in library work, she
+was wishing<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_11" id="Page_11">[Pg 11]</a></span> for a sum of money, a garden, and a husband&mdash;but
+principally a husband. This is why:</p>
+
+<p>That day as she was returning from her long-deferred twenty-minute
+dairy-lunch, she had charged, umbrella down, almost full into a pretty
+lady getting out of a shiny gray limousine. Such an unnecessarily pretty
+lady, all furs and fluffles and veils and perfumes and waved hair! Her
+cheeks were pink and her expression was placid, and each of her
+white-gloved hands held tight to a pretty picture-book child who was
+wriggling with wild excitement. One had yellow frilly hair and one had
+brown bobbed hair, and both were quaintly, immaculately, expensively
+kissable. They were the kind of children every girl wishes she could
+have a set like, and hugs when she gets a chance. Mother and children
+were making their way, under an awning that crossed the street, to the
+matinee of a fairy-play.</p>
+
+<p>The Liberry Teacher smiled at the children with more than her accustomed
+goodwill, and lowered her umbrella quickly to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_12" id="Page_12">[Pg 12]</a></span> let them pass. The mother
+smiled back, a smile that changed, as the Liberry Teacher passed, to
+puzzled remembrance. The gay little family went on into the theatre, and
+Phyllis Braithwaite hurried on back to her work, trying to think who the
+pretty lady could have been, to have seemed to almost remember her.
+Somebody who took books out of the library, doubtless. Still the pretty
+lady's face did not seem to fit that conjecture, though it still worried
+her by its vague familiarity. Finally the solution came, just as Phyllis
+was pulling off her raincoat in the dark little cloak-room. She nearly
+dropped the coat.</p>
+
+<p>"Eva Atkinson!" she said.</p>
+
+<p>Eva Atkinson!... If it had been anybody else but <i>Eva</i>!</p>
+
+<p>You see, back in long-ago, in the little leisurely windblown New England
+town where Phyllis Braithwaite had lived till she was almost eighteen,
+there had been a Principal Grocer. And Eva Atkinson had been his
+daughter, not so very pretty, not so very pleasant, not so very clever,
+and about six years older than Phyllis. Phyllis,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_13" id="Page_13">[Pg 13]</a></span> as she tried vainly to
+make her damp, straight hair go back the way it should, remembered
+hearing that Eva had married and come to this city to live. She had
+never heard where. And this had been Eva&mdash;Eva, by the grace of gold,
+radiantly complexioned, wonderfully groomed, beautifully gowned, and
+looking twenty-four, perhaps, at most: with a car and a placid
+expression and <i>heaps</i> of money, and pretty, clean children! The Liberry
+Teacher, severely work-garbed and weather-draggled, jerked herself away
+from the small greenish cloak-room mirror that was unkind to you at your
+best.</p>
+
+<p>She dashed down to the basement, harried by her usual panic-stricken
+twenty-minutes-late feeling. She had only taken one glance at herself in
+the wiggly mirror, but that one had been enough for her peace of mind,
+supposing her to have had any left before. She felt as if she wanted to
+break all the mirrors in the world, like the wicked queen in the French
+fairy-tale.</p>
+
+<p>Most people rather liked the face Phyllis saw in the mirror; but to her
+own eyes, fresh from the dazzling vision of that Eva Atkinson<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_14" id="Page_14">[Pg 14]</a></span> who had
+been dowdy and stupid in the far-back time when seventeen-year-old
+Phyllis was "growin' up as pretty as a picture," the tired,
+twenty-five-year-old, workaday face in the green glass was <i>dreadful</i>.
+What made her feel worst&mdash;and she entertained the thought with a
+whimsical consciousness of its impertinent vanity&mdash;was that she'd had so
+much more raw material than Eva! And the world had given Eva a chance
+because her father was rich. And she, Phyllis, was condemned to be tidy
+and accurate, and no more, just because she had to earn her living. That
+face in the greenish glass, looking tiredly back at her! She gave a
+little out-loud cry of vexation now as she thought of it, two hours
+later.</p>
+
+<p>"I must have looked to Eva like a battered bisque doll&mdash;no wonder she
+couldn't place me!" she muttered crossly.</p>
+
+<p>And it must be worse and more of it now, because in the interval between
+two and four there had been many little sticky fingers pulling at her
+sleeves and skirt, and you just <i>have</i> to cuddle dear little library
+children, even when they're not extra clean;<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_15" id="Page_15">[Pg 15]</a></span> and when Vera Aronsohn
+burst into heartbroken tears on the Liberry Teacher's blue woolen
+shoulder because her pet fairy-book was missing, she had caught several
+strands of the Teacher's yellow hair in her anguish, much to the hair's
+detriment.</p>
+
+<p>It was straight, heavy hair, and it would have been of a dense and
+fluffy honey-color, only that it was tarnished for lack of the constant
+sunnings and brushings which blonde hair must have to stay its best
+self. And her skin, too, that should have been a living rose-and-cream,
+was dulled by exposure to all weathers, and lack of time to pet it with
+creams and powders; perhaps a little, too, by the very stupid things to
+eat one gets at a dairy-lunch and boarding-house. Some of the assistants
+did interesting cooking over the library gas-range, but the Liberry
+Teacher couldn't do that because she hadn't time.</p>
+
+<p>She went on defiantly thinking about her looks. It isn't a noble-minded
+thing to do, but when you might be so very, very pretty if you only had
+a little time to be it in&mdash;"Yes, I <i>might</i>!" said Phyllis to her
+shocked<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_16" id="Page_16">[Pg 16]</a></span> self defiantly.... Yes, the shape of her face was all right
+still. Hard work and scant attention couldn't spoil its pretty oval. But
+her eyes&mdash;well, you can't keep your eyes as blue and luminous and
+childlike as they were back in the New England country, when you have
+been using them hard for years in a bad light. And oh, they had been
+such <i>nice</i> eyes when she was just Phyllis Narcissa at home, so long and
+blue and wondering! And now the cataloguing had heavied the lids and
+etched a line between her straight brown brows. They weren't decorative
+eyes now ... and they filled with indignant self-sympathy. The Liberry
+Teacher laughed at herself a little here. The idea of eyes that cried
+about themselves was funny, somehow.</p>
+
+<p>"Direct from producer to consumer!" she quoted half-aloud, and wiped
+each eye conscientiously by itself.</p>
+
+<p>"Teacher! I want a liberry called 'Bride of Lemon Hill!' demanded a
+small citizen just here. The school teacher, she says I must to have
+it!"</p>
+
+<p>Phyllis thought hard. But she had to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_17" id="Page_17">[Pg 17]</a></span> search the pinned-up list of
+required reading for schools for three solid minutes before she bestowed
+"The Bride of Lammermoor" on a thirteen-year-old daughter of Hungary.</p>
+
+<p>"This is it, isn't it, honey?" she asked with the flashing smile for
+which her children, among other things, adored her.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, ma'am, thank you, teacher," said the thirteen-year-old gratefully;
+and went off to a corner, where she sat till closing time entranced over
+her own happy choice, "The Adventures of Peter Rabbit," with colored
+pictures dotting it satisfactorily. The Liberry Teacher knew that it was
+her duty to go over and hypnotize the child into reading something which
+would lead more directly to Browning and Strindberg. But she didn't.</p>
+
+<p>"Poor little wop!" she thought unacademically. "Let her be happy in her
+own way!"</p>
+
+<p>And the Liberry Teacher herself went on being unhappy in <i>her</i> own way.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm just a battered bisque doll!" she repeated to herself bitterly.</p>
+
+<p>But she was wrong. One is apt to exag<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_18" id="Page_18">[Pg 18]</a></span>gerate things on a workaday
+Saturday afternoon. She looked more like a pretty bisque figurine; slim
+and clear-cut, and a little neglected, perhaps, by its owners, and
+dressed in working clothes instead of the pretty draperies it should
+have had; but needing only a touch or so, a little dusting, so to speak,
+to be as good as ever.</p>
+
+<p>"Eva <i>never</i> was as pretty as I was!" her rebellious thoughts went on.
+You think things, you know, that you'd never say aloud. "I'm sick of
+elevating the public! I'm sick of working hard fifty-one weeks out of
+fifty-two for board and lodging and carfare and shirtwaists and the
+occasional society of a few girls who don't get any more out of life
+than I do! I'm sick of libraries, and of being efficient! I want to be a
+real girl! Oh, I wish&mdash;I wish I had a lot of money, and a rose-garden,
+and a <i>husband</i>!"</p>
+
+<p>The Liberry Teacher was aghast at herself. She hadn't meant to wish such
+a very unmaidenly thing so hard. She jumped up and dashed across the
+room and began frantically to shelf-read books, explaining<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_19" id="Page_19">[Pg 19]</a></span> meanwhile
+with most violent emphasis to the listening Destinies:</p>
+
+<p>"I didn't&mdash;oh, I <i>didn</i>'t mean a <i>real</i> husband. It isn't that I yearn
+to be married to some good man, like an old maid or a Duchess novel.
+I&mdash;I just want all the lovely things Eva has, or any girl that <i>marries</i>
+them, without any trouble but taking care of a man. One man <i>couldn't</i>
+but be easier than a whole roomful of library babies. I want to be
+looked after, and have time to keep pretty, and a chance to make
+friends, and lovely frocks with lots of lace on them, and just months
+and months and months when I never had to do anything by a
+clock&mdash;and&mdash;and a rose-garden!"</p>
+
+<p>This last idea was dangerous. It isn't a good thing, if you want to be
+contented with your lot, to think of rose-gardens in a stuffy city
+library o' Saturdays; especially when where you were brought up
+rose-gardens were one of the common necessities of life; and more
+especially when you are tired almost to the crying-point, and have all
+the week's big sisters back of it dragging on you, and all its little
+sisters to come<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_20" id="Page_20">[Pg 20]</a></span> worrying at you, and&mdash;time not up till six.</p>
+
+<p>But the Liberry Teacher went blindly on straightening shelves nearly as
+fast as the children could muss them up, and thinking about that
+rose-garden she wanted, with files of masseuses and manicures and French
+maids and messenger-boys with boxes banked soothingly behind every bush.
+And the thought became too beautiful to dally with.</p>
+
+<p>"I'd marry <i>anything</i> that would give me a rose-garden!" reiterated the
+Liberry Teacher passionately to the Destinies, who are rather catty
+ladies, and apt to catch up unguarded remarks you make. "<i>Anything</i>&mdash;so
+long as it was a gentleman&mdash;and he didn't scold me&mdash;and&mdash;and&mdash;I didn't
+have to associate with him!" her New England maidenliness added in
+haste.</p>
+
+<p>Then, for the librarian who cannot laugh, like the one who reads, is
+supposed in library circles to be lost, Phyllis shook herself and
+laughed at herself a little, bravely. Then she collected the most
+uproarious of her flock around her and began telling them stories out of
+the "Merry Adventures of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_21" id="Page_21">[Pg 21]</a></span> Robin Hood." It would keep the children quiet,
+and her thoughts, too. She put rose-gardens, not to say manicurists and
+husbands, severely out of her head. But you can't play fast and loose
+with the Destinies that way.</p>
+
+<p>"Done!" they had replied quietly to her last schedule of requirements.
+"We'll send our messenger over right away." It was not their fault that
+the Liberry Teacher could not hear them.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_22" id="Page_22">[Pg 22]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="II" id="II"></a>II</h2>
+
+
+<p>He was gray-haired, pink-cheeked, curvingly side-whiskered and
+immaculately gray-clad; and he did not look in the least like a
+messenger of Fate.</p>
+
+<p>The Liberry Teacher was at a highly keyed part of her narrative, and
+even the most fidgety children were tense and open-mouthed.</p>
+
+<p>"'And where art thou now?' cried the Stranger to Robin Hood. And Robin
+roared with laughter. 'Oh, in the flood, and floating down the stream
+with all the little fishes,' said he&mdash;" she was relating breathlessly.</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Tea</i>-cher!" hissed Isaac Rabinowitz, snapping his fingers at her at
+this exciting point. "Teacher! There's a guy wants to speak to you!"</p>
+
+<p>"Aw, shut-<i>tup</i>!" chorused his indignant little schoolmates. "Can't you
+see that Teacher's tellin' a story? Go chase yerself! Go do a tango
+roun' de block!"</p>
+
+<p>Isaac, a small Polish Jew with tragic, dark<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_23" id="Page_23">[Pg 23]</a></span> eyes and one suspender,
+received these and several more such suggestions with all the calm
+impenetrability of his race.</p>
+
+<p>"Here's de guy," was all he vouchsafed before he went back to the
+unsocial nook where, afternoon by faithful afternoon, he read away at a
+fat three-volume life of Alexander Hamilton.</p>
+
+<p>The Liberry Teacher looked up without stopping her story, and smiled a
+familiar greeting to the elderly gentleman, who was waiting a little
+uncertainly at the Children's Room door, and had obviously been looking
+for her in vain. He smiled and nodded in return.</p>
+
+<p>"Just a minute, please, Mr. De Guenther," said the Liberry Teacher
+cheerfully.</p>
+
+<p>The elderly gentleman nodded again, crossed to Isaac and his ponderous
+volumes, and began to talk to him with that benign lack of haste which
+usually means a very competent personality. Phyllis hurried somewhat
+with Robin Hood among his little fishes, and felt happier. It was
+always, in her eventless life, something of a pleasant<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_24" id="Page_24">[Pg 24]</a></span> adventure to
+have Mr. De Guenther or his wife drop in to see her. There was usually
+something pleasant at the end of it.</p>
+
+<p>They were an elderly couple whom she had known for some years. They were
+so leisurely and trim and gentle-spoken that long ago, when she was only
+a timorous substitute behind the circle of the big charging-desk, she
+had picked them both out as people-you'd-like-if-you-got-the-chance.
+Then she had waited on them, and identified them by their cards as
+belonging to the same family. Then, one day, with a pleased little
+quiver of joy, she had found him in the city Who's Who, age, profession
+(he was a corporation lawyer), middle names, favorite recreation, and
+all. Gradually she had come to know them both very well in a waiting-on
+way. She often chose love-stories that ended happily and had colored
+illustrations for Mrs. De Guenther when she was at home having
+rheumatism; she had saved more detective stories for Mr. De Guenther
+than her superiors ever knew; and once she had found his black-rimmed
+eye-glasses where he had left them between the pages<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_25" id="Page_25">[Pg 25]</a></span> of the Pri-Zuz
+volume of the encyclopedia, and mailed them to him.</p>
+
+<p>When she had vanished temporarily from sight into the nunnery-promotion
+of the cataloguing room the De Guenthers had still remembered her. Twice
+she had been asked to Sunday dinner at their house, and had joyously
+gone and remembered it as joyously for months afterward. Now that she
+was out in the light of partial day again, in the Children's Room, she
+ran across both of them every little while in her errands upstairs; and
+once Mrs. De Guenther, gentle, lorgnetted and gray-clad, had been shown
+over the Children's Room. The couple lived all alone in a great,
+handsome old house that was being crowded now by the business district.
+She had always thought that if she were a Theosophist she would try to
+plan to have them for an uncle and aunt in her next incarnation. They
+suited her exactly for the parts.</p>
+
+<p>But it's a long way down to the basement where city libraries are apt to
+keep their children, and the De Guenthers hadn't been down there since
+the last time they<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_26" id="Page_26">[Pg 26]</a></span> asked her to dinner. And here, with every sign of
+having come to say something <i>very</i> special, stood Mr. De Guenther!
+Phyllis' irrepressibly cheerful disposition gave a little jump toward
+the light. But she went on with her story&mdash;business before pleasure!</p>
+
+<p>However, she did manage to get Robin Hood out of his brook a little more
+quickly than she had planned. She scattered her children with a swift
+executive whisk, and made so straight for her friend that she deceived
+the children into thinking they were going to see him expelled, and they
+banked up and watched with anticipatory grins.</p>
+
+<p>"I do hope you want to see me especially!" she said brightly.</p>
+
+<p>The children, disappointed, relaxed their attention.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. De Guenther rose slowly and neatly from his seat beside the rather
+bored Isaac Rabinowitz, who dived into his book again with alacrity.</p>
+
+<p>"Good afternoon, Miss Braithwaite," he said in the amiably precise voice
+which matched so admirably his beautifully precise<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_27" id="Page_27">[Pg 27]</a></span> movements and his
+immaculate gray spats. "Yes. In the language of our young friend here,
+'I am the guy.'"</p>
+
+<p>Phyllis giggled before she thought. Some people in the world always make
+your spirits go up with a bound, and the De Guenther pair invariably had
+that effect on her.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, Mr. De Guenther!" she said, "I am shocked at you! That's slang!"</p>
+
+<p>"It was more in the nature of a quotation," said he apologetically. "And
+how are you this exceedingly unpleasant day, Miss Braithwaite? We have
+seen very little of you lately, Mrs. De Guenther and I."</p>
+
+<p>The Liberry Teacher, gracefully respectful in her place, wriggled with
+invisible impatience over this carefully polite conversational opening.
+He had come down here on purpose to see her&mdash;there must be something
+going to happen, even if it was only a request to save a seven-day book
+for Mrs. De Guenther! Nobody ever wanted <i>something</i>, any kind of a
+something, to happen more wildly than the Liberry Teacher did<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_28" id="Page_28">[Pg 28]</a></span> that
+bored, stickily wet Saturday afternoon, with those tired seven years at
+the Greenway Branch dragging at the back of her neck, and the seven
+times seven to come making her want to scream. So few things can
+possibly happen to you, no matter how good you are, when you work by the
+day. And now maybe something&mdash;oh, please, the very smallest kind of a
+something would be welcomed!&mdash;was going to occur. Maybe Mrs. De Guenther
+had sent her a ticket to a concert; she had once before. Or maybe, since
+you might as well wish for big things while you're at it, it might even
+be a ticket to an expensive seat in a real theatre! Her pleasure-hungry,
+work-heavy blue eyes burned luminous at the idea.</p>
+
+<p>"But I really shouldn't wish," she reminded her prancing mind belatedly.
+"He may only have come down to talk about the weather. It mayn't any of
+it be true."</p>
+
+<p>So she stood up straight and gravely, and answered very courteously and
+holding-tightly all the amiable roundabout remarks the old gentleman was
+shoving forward like pawns on a chessboard before the real game<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_29" id="Page_29">[Pg 29]</a></span> begins.
+She answered with the same trained cheerfulness she could give her
+library children when her head and her disposition ached worst; and even
+warmed to a vicious enthusiasm over the state of the streets and the
+wetness of the damp weather.</p>
+
+<p>"He knows lots of real things to say," she complained to herself, "why
+doesn't he say them, instead of talking editorials? I suppose this is
+his bedside&mdash;no, lawyers don't have bedside manners&mdash;well, his barside
+manner, then&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>It is difficult to think and listen at the same time: by this time she
+had missed a beautiful long paragraph about the Street-Cleaning
+Department; and something else, apparently. For her friend was holding
+out to her a note addressed to her flowingly in his wife's English hand,
+and was saying,</p>
+
+<p>"&mdash;which she has asked me to deliver. I trust you have no imperative
+engagement for to-morrow night."</p>
+
+<p>Something <i>had</i> happened!</p>
+
+<p>"Why, no!" said the Liberry Teacher delightedly. "No, indeed! Thank you,
+and her, too. I'd love to come."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_30" id="Page_30">[Pg 30]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Teacher!" clamored a small chocolate-colored citizen in a Kewpie
+muffler, "my maw she want' a book call' 'Ugwin!' She say it got a yellow
+cover an' pictures in it."</p>
+
+<p>"Just a moment!" said Phyllis; and sent him upstairs with a note asking
+for "Hugh Wynne" in the two-volume edition. She was used to translating
+that small colored boy's demands. Last week he had described to her a
+play he called "Eas' Limb", with the final comment, "But it wan't no
+good. 'Twant no limb in it anywhar, ner no trees atall!"</p>
+
+<p>"Do you have much of that?" Mr. De Guenther asked idly.</p>
+
+<p>"Lots!" said Phyllis cheerfully. "You take special training in guesswork
+at library school. They call them 'teasers'. They say they're good for
+your intellect."</p>
+
+<p>"Ah&mdash;yes," said Mr. De Guenther absently in the barside manner.</p>
+
+<p>And then, sitting calmly with his silvery head against a Washington's
+Birthday poster so that three scarlet cherries stuck above him in the
+manner of a scalp-lock, he said something else remarkably real:<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_31" id="Page_31">[Pg 31]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"I have&mdash;we have&mdash;a little matter of business to discuss with you
+to-morrow night, my dear; an offer, I may say, of a different line of
+work. And I want you to satisfy yourself thoroughly&mdash;thoroughly, my dear
+child, of my reputableness. Mr. Johnstone, the chief of the city
+library, whose office I believe to be in this branch, is one of my
+oldest friends. I am, I think I may say, well known as a lawyer in this
+my native city. I should be glad to have you satisfy yourself personally
+on these points, because&mdash;&mdash;" could it be that the eminently poised Mr.
+De Guenther was embarrassed? "Because the line of work which I wish, or
+rather my wife wishes, to lay before you is&mdash;is a very different line of
+work!" ended the old gentleman inconclusively. There was no mistake
+about it this time&mdash;he <i>was</i> embarrassed.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, Mr. De Guenther!" cried Phyllis before she thought, out of the
+fulness of her heart, catching his arm in her eagerness; "Oh, Mr. De
+Guenther, <i>could</i> the Very Different Line of Work have a&mdash;have a
+<i>rose-garden</i> attached to it anywhere?"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_32" id="Page_32">[Pg 32]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Before she was fairly finished she knew what a silly question she had
+asked. How could any line of work she was qualified to do possibly have
+rose-gardens attached to it? You can't catalogue roses on neat cards, or
+improve their minds by the Newark Ladder System, or do anything at all
+librarious to them, except pressing them in books to mummify; and the
+Liberry Teacher didn't think that was at all a courteous thing to do to
+roses. So Mr. De Guenther's reply quite surprised her.</p>
+
+<p>"There&mdash;seems&mdash;to be&mdash;no good reason," he said, slowly and placidly, as
+if he were dropping his words one by one out of a slot;&mdash;"why there
+should not&mdash;be&mdash;a very satisfactory rose-garden, or
+even&mdash;<i>two</i>&mdash;connected with it. None&mdash;whatever."</p>
+
+<p>That was all the explanation he offered. But the Liberry Teacher asked
+no more. "<i>Oh!</i>" she said rapturously.</p>
+
+<p>"Then we may expect you to-morrow at seven?" he said; and smiled
+politely and moved to the door. He walked out as matter-of-coursely as
+if he had dropped in to ask the meaning of "circumflex," or who<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_33" id="Page_33">[Pg 33]</a></span>
+invented smallpox, or the name of Adam's house-cat, or how long it would
+take her to do a graduation essay for his daughter&mdash;or any such little
+things that librarians are prepared for most days.</p>
+
+<p>And instead&mdash;his neat gray elderly back seemed to deny it&mdash;he had left
+with her, the Liberry Teacher, her, dusty, tousled, shopworn Phyllis
+Braithwaite, an invitation to consider a Line of Work which was so
+mysteriously Different that she had to look up the spotless De Guenther
+reputation before she came!</p>
+
+<p>One loses track of time, staring at a red George Washington poster, and
+wondering about a future with a sudden Different Line in it.... It was
+ten minutes past putting-out-children time! She stared aghast at the
+ruthless clock, then created two Monitors for Putting Out at one royal
+sweep. She managed the nightly eviction with such gay expedition that it
+almost felt like ten minutes ago when the place, except for the
+pride-swollen monitors, was cleared. While these officers watched the
+commonalty clumping reluctantly upstairs toward the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_34" id="Page_34">[Pg 34]</a></span> umbrella-rack, the
+Liberry Teacher paced sedately around the shelves, giving the books that
+routine straightening they must have before seven struck and the horde
+rushed in again. It was really her relieving officer's work, but the
+Liberry Teacher felt that her mind needed straightening, too, and this
+always seemed to do it.</p>
+
+<p>She looked, as she moved slowly down along the shelves, very much like
+most of the librarians you see; alert, pleasant, slender, a little
+dishevelled, a little worn. But there was really no librarian there.
+There was only Phyllis Narcissa&mdash;that dreaming young Phyllis who had had
+to stay pushed out of sight all the seven years that Miss Braithwaite
+had been efficiently earning her living.</p>
+
+<p>She let her mind stray happily as far as it would over the possibilities
+Mr. De Guenther had held out to her, and woke to discover herself trying
+to find a place under "Domestic Economy&mdash;Condiments" for "Five Little
+Peppers and How They Grew." She laughed aloud in the suddenly empty
+room, and then lifted her head to find Miss<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_35" id="Page_35">[Pg 35]</a></span> Black, the night-duty girl
+that week, standing in the doorway ready to relieve guard.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, Anna, see what I've done!" she laughed. Somehow everything seemed
+merely light-hearted and laughable since Mr. De Guenther's most
+fairy-tale visit, with its wild hints of Lines of Work. Anna Black came,
+looked, laughed.</p>
+
+<p>"In the 640's!" she said. "Well, you're liable to do nearly everything
+by the time it's Saturday. Last Saturday, Dolly Graham up in the
+Circulation was telling me, an old colored mammy said she'd lost her
+mittens in the reading-room; and the first they knew Dolly was hunting
+through the Woollen Goods classification, and Mary Gayley pawing the
+dictionary wildly for m-i-t!"</p>
+
+<p>"And they found the mittens hung around her neck by the cord," finished
+the Liberry Teacher. "I know&mdash;it was a thrilling story. Well, good-by
+till Monday, Anna Black. I'm going home now, to have some lovely prunes
+and some real dried beef, and maybe a glass of almost-milk if I can
+persuade the landlady I need it."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_36" id="Page_36">[Pg 36]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Mine prefers dried apricots," responded Miss Black cheerfully, "but she
+never has anything but canned milk in the house, thus sparing us the
+embarrassment of asking for real. Good-by&mdash;good luck!"</p>
+
+<p>But as the Liberry Teacher pinned her serviceable hat close, and
+fastened her still good raincoat over her elderly sweater, neither
+prunes nor mittens nor next week's work worried her at all. After all,
+living among the fairy-stories with the Little People makes that
+pleasant land where wanting is having, and all the impossibilities can
+come true, very easy of access. Phyllis Braithwaite's mind, as she
+picked her way down the bedraggled street, wandered innocently off in a
+dream-place full of roses, till the muddy marble steps of her
+boarding-place gleamed sloppily before her through the foggy rain.</p>
+
+<p>She sat up late that night, doing improving things to the white net
+waist that went with her best suit, which was black. As her needle
+nibbled busily down the seams she continued happily to wonder about that
+Entirely Different Line. It sounded<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_37" id="Page_37">[Pg 37]</a></span> to her more like a reportership on
+a yellow journal than anything else imaginable. Or, perhaps, could she
+be wanted to join the Secret Service?</p>
+
+<p>"At any rate," she concluded light-heartedly, as she stitched the last
+clean ruching into the last wrist-covering, sedate sleeve, "at any rate
+I'll have a chance to-morrow to wear mother's gold earrings that I
+mustn't have on in the library. And oh, how lovely it will be to have a
+dinner that wasn't cooked by a poor old bored boarding-house cook or a
+shiny tiled syndicate!"</p>
+
+<p>And she went to bed&mdash;to dream of Entirely Different Lines all the colors
+of the rainbow, that radiated out from the Circulation Desk like
+tight-ropes. She never remembered Eva Atkinson's carefully prettied
+face, or her own vivid, work-worn one, at all. She only dreamed that far
+at the end of the pink Entirely Different Line&mdash;a very hard one to
+walk&mdash;there was a rose-garden exactly like a patchwork quilt, where she
+was to be.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_38" id="Page_38">[Pg 38]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="III" id="III"></a>III</h2>
+
+
+<p>When Phyllis woke next morning everything in the world had a
+light-hearted, holiday feeling. Her Sundays, gloriously unoccupied,
+generally did, but this was extra-special. The rain had managed to clear
+away every vestige of last week's slush, and had then itself most
+unselfishly retired down the gutters. The sun shone as if May had come,
+and the wind, through the Liberry Teacher's window, had a springy,
+pussy-willowy, come-for-a-walk-in-the-country feel to it. She found that
+she had slept too late to go to church, and prepared for a joyful dash
+to the boarding-house bathtub. There might be&mdash;who knew but there
+actually might be&mdash;on this day of days, enough hot water for a real
+bath!</p>
+
+<p>"I feel as if everything was going to be lovely all day!" she said
+without preface to old black Maggie, who was clumping her accustomed
+bed-making way along the halls, with her woolly head tied up in her
+Sunday silk handkerchief. Even she looked happier,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_39" id="Page_39">[Pg 39]</a></span> Phyllis thought,
+than she had yesterday. She grinned broadly at Phyllis, leaning
+smilingly against the door in her kimona.</p>
+
+<p>"Ah dunno, Miss Braithways," she said, and entered the room and took a
+pillow-case-corner in her mouth. "Ah never has dem premeditations!"</p>
+
+<p>Phyllis laughed frankly, and Maggie, much flattered at the happy
+reception of her reply, grinned so widely that you might almost have
+tied her mouth behind her ears.</p>
+
+<p>"You sure is a cheerful person, Miss Braithways!" said Maggie, and went
+on making the bed.</p>
+
+<p>Phyllis fled on down the hall, laughing still. She had just remembered
+another of old Maggie's compliments, made on one of the rare occasions
+when Phyllis had sat down and sung to the boarding-house piano. (She
+hadn't been able to do it long, because the Mental Science Lady on the
+next floor had sent down word that it stopped her from concentrating,
+and as she had a very expensive room there was nothing for the landlady
+to do but make Phyllis<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_40" id="Page_40">[Pg 40]</a></span> stop.) Phyllis had come out in the hall to find
+old Maggie listening rapturously.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, Miss Braithways!" she had murmured, rolling her eyes, "you
+certainly does equalize a martingale!"</p>
+
+<p>It had been a compliment Phyllis never forgot. She smiled to herself as
+she found the bathroom door open. Why, the world was full of a number of
+things, many of them funny. Being a Liberry Teacher was rather nice,
+after all, when you were fresh from a long night's sleep. And if that
+Mental Science Lady <i>wouldn't</i> let her play the piano, why, her
+thrilling tales of what she could do when her mind was unfettered were
+worth the price. That story she told so seriously about how the pipes
+burst&mdash;and the plumber wouldn't come, and "My dear, I gave those pipes
+only half an hour's treatment, and they closed right up!" It was quite
+as much fun&mdash;well, almost as much&mdash;hearing her, as it would have been to
+play.</p>
+
+<p>... All of the contented, and otherwise, elderly people who inhabited
+the boarding-house with Phyllis appeared to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_41" id="Page_41">[Pg 41]</a></span> have gone off without using
+hot water, for there actually was some. The Liberry Teacher found that
+she could have a genuine bath, and have enough water besides to wash her
+hair, which is a rite all girls who work have to reserve for Sundays.
+This was surely a day of days!</p>
+
+<p>She used the water&mdash;alas for selfish human nature!&mdash;to the last warm
+drop and went gayly back to her little room with no emotions whatever
+for the poor other boarders, soon to find themselves wrathfully
+hot-waterless. And then&mdash;she thoughtlessly curled down on the bed, and
+slept and slept and slept! She wakened dimly in time for the one o'clock
+dinner, dressed, and ate it in a half-sleep. She went back upstairs
+planning a trolley-ride that should take her out into the country, where
+a long walk might be had. And midway in changing her shoes she lay back
+across the bed and&mdash;fell asleep again. The truth was, Phyllis was about
+as tired as a girl can get.</p>
+
+<p>She waked at dusk, with a jerk of terror lest she should have overslept
+her time for going out. But it was only six. She had a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_42" id="Page_42">[Pg 42]</a></span> whole hour to
+prink in, which is a very long time for people who are used to being in
+the library half-an-hour after the alarm-clock wakes them.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>Some houses, all of themselves, and before you meet a soul who lives in
+them, are silently indifferent to you. Some make you feel that you are
+not wanted in the least; these usually have a lot of gilt furniture, and
+what are called objects of art set stiffly about. Some seem to be having
+an untidy good time all to themselves, in which you are not included.</p>
+
+<p>The De Guenther house, staid and softly toned, did none of these things.
+It gave the Liberry Teacher, in her neat, last year's best suit, a
+feeling as of gentle welcome-home. She felt contented and <i>belonging</i>
+even before quick-smiling, slender little Mrs. De Guenther came rustling
+gently in to greet her. Then followed Mr. De Guenther, pleasant and
+unperturbed as usual, and after him an agreeable, back-arching gray cat,
+who had copied his master's walk as exactly as it can be done with four
+feet.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_43" id="Page_43">[Pg 43]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>All four sat amiably about the room and held precise and pleasant
+converse, something like a cheerful essay written in dialogue, about
+many amusing, intelligent things which didn't especially matter. The
+Liberry Teacher liked it. It was pleasant beyond words to sit nestlingly
+in a pluffy chair, and hear about all the little lightly-treated
+scholarly day-before-yesterday things her father had used to talk of.
+She carried on her own small part in the talk blithely enough. She
+approved of herself and the way she was behaving, which makes very much
+for comfort. There was only once that she was ashamed of herself, and
+thought about it in bed afterwards and was mortified; when her eyes
+filled with quick tears at a quite dry and unemotional&mdash;indeed, rather a
+sarcastic&mdash;quotation from Horace on the part of Mr. De Guenther. But she
+smiled, when she saw that they noticed her.</p>
+
+<p>"That's the first time I've heard a Latin quotation since I came away
+from home," she found herself saying quite simply in explanation, "and
+Father quoted Horace<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_44" id="Page_44">[Pg 44]</a></span> so much every day that&mdash;that I felt as if an old
+friend had walked in!"</p>
+
+<p>But her hosts didn't seem to mind. Mr. De Guenther in his careful
+evening clothes looked swiftly across at Mrs. De Guenther in her
+gray-silk-and-cameo, and they both nodded little satisfied nods, as if
+she had spoken in a way that they were glad to hear. And then dinner was
+served, a dinner as different&mdash;well, she didn't want to remember in its
+presence the dinners it differed from; they might have clouded the
+moment. She merely ate it with a shameless inward joy.</p>
+
+<p>It ended, still to a pleasant effortless accompaniment of talk about
+books and music and pictures that Phyllis was interested in, and had
+found nobody to share her interest with for so long&mdash;so long! She felt
+happily running though everything the general, easy taking-for-granted
+of all the old, gentle, inflexible standards of breeding that she had
+nearly forgotten, down in the heart of the city among her obstreperous,
+affectionate little foreigners.</p>
+
+<p>They had coffee in the long old-fashioned<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_45" id="Page_45">[Pg 45]</a></span> salon parlor, and then Mr. De
+Guenther straightened himself, and Mrs. De Guenther folded her veined,
+ringed old white hands, and Phyllis prepared thrilledly to listen.
+Surely now she would hear about that Different Line of Work.</p>
+
+<p>There was nothing, at first, about work of any sort. They merely began
+to tell her alternately about some clients of theirs, a Mrs. Harrington
+and her son: rather interesting people, from what Phyllis could make
+out. She wondered if she was going to hear that they needed a librarian.</p>
+
+<p>"This lady, my client, Mrs. Harrington," continued her host gravely, "is
+the one for whom I may ask you to consider doing some work. I say may,
+but it is a practical certainty. She is absolutely alone, my dear Miss
+Braithwaite, except for her son. I am afraid I must ask you to listen to
+a long story about them."</p>
+
+<p>It was coming!</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, but I want to hear!" said Phyllis, with that quick, affectionate
+sympathy of hers that was so winning, leaning forward and watching them
+with the lighted look<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_46" id="Page_46">[Pg 46]</a></span> in her blue eyes. It all seemed to her tired,
+alert mind like some story she might have read to her children, an
+Arabian Nights narrative which might begin, "And the Master of the
+House, ascribing praise unto Allah, repeated the following Tale."</p>
+
+<p>"There have always been just the two of them, mother and son," said the
+Master of the House. "And Allan has always been a very great deal to his
+mother."</p>
+
+<p>"Poor Angela!" murmured his wife.</p>
+
+<p>"They are old friends of ours," her husband explained. "My wife and Mrs.
+Harrington were schoolmates.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, Allan, the boy, grew up, dowered with everything a mother could
+possibly desire for her son, personally and otherwise. He was handsome
+and intelligent, with much charm of manner."</p>
+
+<p>"I know now what people mean by 'talking like a book,'" thought Phyllis
+irreverently. "And I don't believe any one man <i>could</i> be all that!"</p>
+
+<p>"There was practically nothing," Mr. De Guenther went on, "which the
+poor lad had not. That was one trouble, I imagine. If<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_47" id="Page_47">[Pg 47]</a></span> he had not been
+highly intelligent he would not have studied so hard; if he had not been
+strong and active he might not have taken up athletic sports so
+whole-heartedly; and when I add that Allan possessed charm, money and
+social status you may see that what he did would have broken down most
+young fellows. In short, he kept studies, sports and social affairs all
+going at high pressure during his four years of college. But he was
+young and strong, and might not have felt so much ill effects from all
+that; though his doctors said afterwards that he was nearly at the
+breaking point when he graduated."</p>
+
+<p>Phyllis bent closer to the story-teller in her intense interest. Why, it
+<i>was</i> like one of her fairy-tales! She held her breath to listen, while
+the old lawyer went gravely on.</p>
+
+<p>"Allan could not have been more than twenty-two when he graduated, and
+it was a very short while afterwards that he became engaged to a young
+girl, the daughter of a family friend. Louise Frey was her name, was it
+not, love?"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_48" id="Page_48">[Pg 48]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Yes, that is right," said his wife, "Louise Frey."</p>
+
+<p>"A beautiful girl," he went on, "dark, with a brilliant color, and full
+of life and good spirits. They were both very young, but there was no
+good reason why the marriage should be delayed, and it was set for the
+following September."</p>
+
+<p>A princess, too, in the story! But&mdash;where had she gone? "The two of them
+only," he had said.</p>
+
+<p>"It must have been scarcely a month," the story went on&mdash;Mr. De Guenther
+was telling it as if he were stating a case&mdash;"nearly a month before the
+date set for the wedding, when the lovers went for a long automobile
+ride, across a range of mountains near a country-place where they were
+both staying. They were alone in the machine.</p>
+
+<p>"Allan, of course, was driving, doubtless with a certain degree of
+impetuosity, as he did most things.... They were on an unfrequented part
+of the road," said Mr. De Guenther, lowering his voice, "when there
+occurred an unforeseen wreckage in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_49" id="Page_49">[Pg 49]</a></span> the car's machinery. The car was
+thrown over and badly splintered. Both young people were pinned under
+it.</p>
+
+<p>"So far as he knew at the time, Allan was not injured, nor was he in any
+pain; but he was held in absolute inability to move by the car above
+him. Miss Frey, on the contrary, was badly hurt, and in suffering. She
+died in about three hours, a little before relief came to them."</p>
+
+<p>Phyllis clutched the arms of her chair, thrilled and wide-eyed. She
+could imagine all the horror of the happening through the old lawyer's
+precise and unemotional story. The boy-lover, pinioned, helpless,
+condemned to watch his sweetheart dying by inches, and unable to help
+her by so much as lifting a hand&mdash;could anything be more awful not only
+to endure, but to remember?</p>
+
+<p>"And yet," she thought whimsically, "it mightn't be so bad to have one
+<i>real</i> tragedy to remember, if you haven't anything else! All <i>I'll</i>
+have to remember when I'm old will be bad little children and good
+little children, and books and boarding-houses, and the recollection
+that people said I was a very<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_50" id="Page_50">[Pg 50]</a></span> worthy young woman once!" But she threw
+off the thought. It's just as well not to think of old age when all the
+idea brings up is a vision of a nice, clean Old Ladies' Home.</p>
+
+<p>"But you said he was an invalid?" she said aloud.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, I regret to say," answered Mr. De Guenther. "You see, it was found
+that the shock to the nerves, acting on an already over-keyed mind and
+body, together with some spinal blow concerning which the doctors are
+still in doubt, had affected Allan's powers of locomotion." (Mr. De
+Guenther certainly did like long words!) "He has been unable to walk
+since. And, which is sadder, his state of mind and body has become
+steadily worse. He can scarcely move at all now, and his mental attitude
+can only be described as painfully morbid&mdash;yes, I may say <i>very</i>
+painfully morbid. Sometimes he does not speak at all for days together,
+even to his mother, or his attendant."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, poor boy!" said Phyllis. "How long has he been this way?"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_51" id="Page_51">[Pg 51]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Seven years this fall," the answer came consideringly. "Is it not,
+love?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," said his wife, "seven years."</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Oh!</i>" said the Liberry Teacher, with a quick catch of sympathy at her
+heart.</p>
+
+<p>Just as long as she had been working for her living in the big, dusty
+library. Supposing&mdash;oh, supposing she'd had to live all that time in
+such suffering as this poor Allan had endured and his mother had had to
+witness! She felt suddenly as if the grimy, restless Children's Room,
+with its clatter of turbulent little outland voices, were a safe, sunny
+paradise in comparison.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. De Guenther did not speak. He visibly braced himself and was visibly
+ill-at-ease.</p>
+
+<p>"I have told most of the story, Isabel, love," said he at last. "Would
+you not prefer to tell the rest? It is at your instance that I have
+undertaken this commission for Mrs. Harrington, you will remember."</p>
+
+<p>It struck Phyllis that he didn't think it was quite a dignified
+commission, at that.</p>
+
+<p>"Very well, my dear," said his wife, and took up the tale in her swift,
+soft voice.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_52" id="Page_52">[Pg 52]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"You can fancy, my dear Miss Braithwaite, how intensely his mother has
+felt about it."</p>
+
+<p>"Indeed, yes!" said Phyllis pitifully.</p>
+
+<p>"Her whole life, since the accident, has been one long devotion to her
+son. I don't think a half-hour ever passes that she does not see him.
+But in spite of this constant care, as my husband has told you, he grows
+steadily worse. And poor Angela has finally broken under the strain. She
+was never strong. She is dying now&mdash;they give her maybe two months more.</p>
+
+<p>"Her one anxiety, of course, is for poor Allan's welfare. You can
+imagine how you would feel if you had to leave an entirely helpless son
+or brother to the mercies of hired attendants, however faithful. And
+they have no relatives&mdash;they are the last of the family."</p>
+
+<p>The listening girl began to see. She was going to be asked to act as
+nurse, perhaps attendant and guardian, to this morbid invalid with the
+injured mind and body.</p>
+
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 460px;">
+<img src="images/illus-055.jpg" width="460" height="600" alt="NO,&quot; SAID MRS. DE GUENTHER GRAVELY." title="" />
+<span class="caption">"NO," SAID MRS. DE GUENTHER GRAVELY. "YOU WOULD NOT. YOU
+WOULD HAVE TO BE HIS WIFE"</span>
+</div>
+
+
+<p>"But how would I be any better for him<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_53" id="Page_53">[Pg 53]</a></span> than a regular trained nurse?"
+she wondered. "And they said he had an attendant."</p>
+
+<p>She looked questioningly at the pair.</p>
+
+<p>"Where does my part come in?" she asked with a certain sweet directness
+which was sometimes hers. "Wouldn't I be a hireling too if&mdash;if I had
+anything to do with it?"</p>
+
+<p>"No," said Mrs. De Guenther gravely. "You would not. You would have to
+be his wife."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_54" id="Page_54">[Pg 54]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="IV" id="IV"></a>IV</h2>
+
+
+<p>The Liberry Teacher, in her sober best suit, sat down in her entirely
+commonplace chair in the quiet old parlor, and looked unbelievingly at
+the sedate elderly couple who had made her this wild proposition. She
+caught her breath. But catching her breath did not seem to affect
+anything that had been said. Mr. De Guenther took up the explanation
+again, a little deprecatingly, she thought.</p>
+
+<p>"You see now why I requested you to investigate our reputability?" he
+said. "Such a proposition as this, especially to a young lady who has no
+parent or guardian, requires a considerable guarantee of good faith and
+honesty of motive."</p>
+
+<p>"Will you please tell me more about it?" she asked quietly. She did not
+feel now as if it were anything which had especially to do with her. It
+seemed more like an interesting story she was unravelling sentence by
+sentence. The long, softly lighted old room, with its Stuarts and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_55" id="Page_55">[Pg 55]</a></span>
+Sullys, and its gracious, gray-haired host and hostess, seemed only a
+picturesque part of it.... Her hostess caught up the tale again.</p>
+
+<p>"Angela has been nearly distracted," she said. "And the idea has come to
+her that if she could find some conscientious woman, a lady, and a
+person to whom what she could offer would be a consideration, who would
+take charge of poor Allan, that she could die in peace."</p>
+
+<p>"But why did you think of asking me?" the girl asked breathlessly. "And
+why does she want me married to him? And how could you or she be sure
+that I would not be as much of a hireling as any nurse she may have
+now?"</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. De Guenther answered the last two questions together.</p>
+
+<p>"Mrs. Harrington's idea is, and I think rightly, that a conscientious
+woman would feel the marriage tie, however nominal, a bond that would
+obligate her to a certain duty toward her husband. As to why we selected
+you, my dear, my husband and I have had an interest in you for<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_56" id="Page_56">[Pg 56]</a></span> some
+years, as you know. We have spoken of you as a girl whom we should like
+for a relative&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Why, isn't that strange?" cried Phyllis, dimpling. "That's just what
+I've thought about you!"</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. De Guenther flushed, with a delicate old shyness.</p>
+
+<p>"Thank you, dear child," she said. "I was about to add that we have not
+seen you at your work all these years without knowing you to have the
+kind heart and sense of honor requisite to poor Angela's plan. We feel
+sure you could be trusted to take the place. Mr. De Guenther has asked
+his friend Mr. Johnston, the head of the library, such things as we
+needed to supplement our personal knowledge of you. You have everything
+that could be asked, even to a certain cheerfulness of outlook which
+poor Angela, naturally, lacks in a measure."</p>
+
+<p>"But&mdash;but what about <i>me</i>?" asked Phyllis Braithwaite a little
+piteously, in answer to all this.</p>
+
+<p>They seemed so certain she was what they<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_57" id="Page_57">[Pg 57]</a></span> wanted&mdash;was there anything in
+this wild scheme that would make <i>her</i> life better than it was as the
+tired, ill-paid, light-hearted keeper of a roomful of turbulent little
+foreigners?</p>
+
+<p>"Unless you are thinking of marriage&mdash;" Phyllis shook her head&mdash;"you
+would have at least a much easier life than you have now. Mrs.
+Harrington would settle a liberal income on you, contingent, of course,
+of your faithful wardership over Allan. We would be your only judges as
+to that. You would have a couple or more months of absolute freedom
+every year, control of much of your own time, ample leisure to enjoy it.
+You would give only your chances of actual marriage for perhaps five
+years, for poor Allan cannot live longer than that at his present state
+of retrogression, and some part of every day to seeing that Allan was
+not neglected. If you bestow on him half of the interest and effort I
+have known of your giving any one of a dozen little immigrant boys, his
+mother has nothing to fear for him."</p>
+
+<p>Mr. De Guenther stopped with a grave<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_58" id="Page_58">[Pg 58]</a></span> little bow, and he and his wife
+waited for the reply.</p>
+
+<p>The Liberry Teacher sat silent, her eyes on her slim hands, that were
+roughened and reddened by constant hurried washings to get off the dirt
+of the library books. It was true&mdash;a good deal of it, anyhow. And one
+thing they had not said was true also: her sunniness and accuracy and
+strength, her stock-in-trade, were wearing thin under the pressure of
+too long hours and too hard work and too few personal interests. Her
+youth was worn down. And&mdash;marriage? What chance of love and marriage had
+she, a working-girl alone, too poor to see anything of the class of men
+she would be willing to marry? She had not for years spent six hours
+with a man of her own kind and age. She had not even been specially in
+love, that she could remember, since she was grown up. She did not feel
+much, now, as if she ever would be. All that she had to give up in
+taking this offer was her freedom, such as it was&mdash;and those fluttering
+perhapses that whisper such pleasant promises when you are young. But,
+then, she<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_59" id="Page_59">[Pg 59]</a></span> wouldn't be young so <i>very</i> much longer. Should she&mdash;she put
+it to herself crudely&mdash;should she wait long, hard, closed-in years in
+the faith that she would learn to be absolutely contented, or that some
+man she could love would come to the cheap boarding-house, or the little
+church she attended occasionally when she was not too tired, fall in
+love with her work-dimmed looks at sight, and&mdash;marry her? It had not
+happened all these years while her girlhood had been more attractive and
+her personality more untired. There was scarcely a chance in a hundred
+for her of a kind lover-husband and such dear picture-book children as
+she had seen Eva Atkinson convoying. Well&mdash;her mind suddenly came up
+against the remembrance, as against a sober fact, that in her passionate
+wishings of yesterday she had not wished for a lover-husband, nor for
+children. She had asked for a husband who would give her money, and
+leisure to be rested and pretty, and&mdash;a rose-garden! And here,
+apparently, was her wish uncannily fulfilled.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, what are you going to do about<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_60" id="Page_60">[Pg 60]</a></span> it?" inquired the Destinies with
+their traditional indifference. "We can't wait all night!"</p>
+
+<p>She lifted her head and cast an almost frightened look at the De
+Guenthers, waiting courteously for her decision. In reply to the look,
+Mr. De Guenther began giving her details about the money, and the
+leisure time, and the business terms of the contract generally. She
+listened attentively. All that&mdash;for a little guardianship, a little
+kindness, and the giving-up of a little piece of life nobody wanted and
+a few little hopes and dreams!</p>
+
+<p>Phyllis laughed, as she always did when there were big black problems to
+be solved.</p>
+
+<p>"After all, it's fairly usual," she said. "I heard last week of a woman
+who left money along with her pet dog, very much the same way."</p>
+
+<p>"Did you? Did you, dear?" asked Mrs. De Guenther, beaming. "Then you
+think you will do it?"</p>
+
+<p>The Liberry Teacher rose, and squared her straight young shoulders under
+the worn net waist.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_61" id="Page_61">[Pg 61]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"If Mrs. Harrington thinks I'll do for the situation!" she said
+gallantly,&mdash;and laughed again.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>"It feels partly like going into a nunnery and partly like going into a
+fairy-story," she said to herself that night as she wound her alarm.
+"But&mdash;I wonder if anybody's remembered to ask the consent of the
+groom!"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_62" id="Page_62">[Pg 62]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="V" id="V"></a>V</h2>
+
+
+<p>He looked like a young Crusader on a tomb. That was Phyllis's first
+impression of Allan Harrington. He talked and acted, if a moveless man
+can be said to act, like a bored, spoiled small boy. That was her
+second.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Harrington, fragile, flushed, breathlessly intense in her
+wheel-chair, had yet a certain resemblance in voice and gesture to Mrs.
+De Guenther&mdash;a resemblance which puzzled Phyllis till she placed it as
+the mark of that far-off ladies' school they had attended together.
+There was also a graceful, mincing white wolfhound which, contrary to
+the accepted notion of invalids' faithful hounds, didn't seem to care
+for his master's darkened sick-room at all, but followed the one sunny
+spot in Mrs. Harrington's room with a wistful persistence. It was such a
+small spot for such a long wolfhound&mdash;that was the principal thing which
+impressed itself on Phyllis's frightened mind throughout her visit.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_63" id="Page_63">[Pg 63]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Mrs. De Guenther convoyed her to the Harrington house for inspection a
+couple of days after she had accepted some one's proposal to marry Allan
+Harrington. (Whether it counted as her future mother-in-law's proposal,
+or her future trustee's, she was never sure. The only sure thing was
+that it did not come from the groom.) She had borrowed a half-day from
+the future on purpose, though she did not want to go at all. But the
+reality was not bad; only a fluttering, emotional little woman who clung
+to her hands and talked to her and asked useless questions with a
+nervous insistence which would have been nerve-wearing for a steady
+thing, but was only pitiful to a stranger.</p>
+
+<p>You see strange people all the time in library work, and learn to place
+them, at length, with almost as much accuracy as you do your books. The
+fact that Mrs. Harrington was not long for this world did not prevent
+Phyllis from classing her, in her mental card-catalogue, as a very
+perfect specimen of the Loving Nagger. She was lying back, wrapped in
+something gray and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_64" id="Page_64">[Pg 64]</a></span> soft, when her visitors came, looking as if the
+lifting of her hand would be an effort. She was evidently pitifully
+weak. But she had, too, an ineradicable vitality she could summon at
+need. She sprang almost upright to greet her visitors, a hand out to
+each, an eager flood of words on her lips.</p>
+
+<p>"And you are Miss Braithwaite, that is going to look after my boy?" she
+ended. "Oh, it is so good of you&mdash;I am so glad&mdash;I can go in peace now.
+Are you sure&mdash;sure you will know the minute his attendants are the least
+bit negligent? I watch and watch them all the time. I tell Allan to ring
+for me if anything ever is the least bit wrong&mdash;I am always begging him
+to remember. I go in every night and pray with him&mdash;do you think you
+could do that? But I always cry so before I'm through&mdash;I cry and cry&mdash;my
+poor, helpless boy&mdash;he was so strong and bright! And you are sure you
+are conscientious&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>At this point Phyllis stopped the flow of Mrs. Harrington's conversation
+firmly, if sweetly.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_65" id="Page_65">[Pg 65]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Yes, indeed," she said cheerfully. "But you know, if I'm not, Mr. De
+Guenther can stop all my allowance. It wouldn't be to my own interest
+not to fulfil my duties faithfully."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, that is true," said Mrs. Harrington. "That was a good thought of
+mine. My husband always said I was an unusual woman where business was
+concerned."</p>
+
+<p>So they went on the principle that she had no honor beyond working for
+what she would get out of it! Although she had made the suggestion
+herself, Phyllis's cheeks burned, and she was about to answer sharply.
+Then somehow the poor, anxious, loving mother's absolute preoccupation
+with her son struck her as right after all.</p>
+
+<p>"If it were my son," thought Phyllis, "I wouldn't worry about any
+strange hired girl's feelings either, maybe. I'd just think about
+him.... I promise I'll look after Mr. Harrington's welfare as if he were
+my own brother!" she ended aloud impulsively. "Indeed, you may trust
+me."</p>
+
+<p>"I am&mdash;sure you will," panted Mrs. Harrington. "You look like&mdash;a good
+girl,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_66" id="Page_66">[Pg 66]</a></span> and&mdash;and old enough to be responsible&mdash;twenty-eight&mdash;thirty?"</p>
+
+<p>"Not very far from that," said Phyllis serenely.</p>
+
+<p>"And you are sure you will know when the attendants are neglectful? I
+speak to them all the time, but I never can be sure.... And now you'd
+better see poor Allan. This is one of his good days. Just think, dear
+Isabel, he spoke to me twice without my speaking to him this morning!"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh&mdash;must I?" asked Phyllis, dismayed. "Couldn't I wait till&mdash;till it
+happens?"</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Harrington actually laughed a little at her shyness, lighting up
+like a girl. Phyllis felt dimly, though she tried not to, that through
+it all her mother-in-law-elect was taking pleasure in the dramatic side
+of the situation she had engineered.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, my dear, you must see him. He expects you," she answered almost
+gayly. The procession of three moved down the long room towards a door,
+Phyllis's hand guiding the wheel-chair. She was surprised to find
+herself shaking with fright. Just what she expected to find beyond the
+door<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_67" id="Page_67">[Pg 67]</a></span> she did not know, but it must have been some horror, for it was
+with a heart-bound of wild relief that she finally made out Allan
+Harrington, lying white in the darkened place.</p>
+
+<p>A Crusader on a tomb. Yes, he looked like that. In the room's half-dusk
+the pallor of his still, clear-featured face and his long, clear-cut
+hands was nearly the same as the whiteness of the couch-draperies. His
+hair, yellow-brown and waving, flung back from his forehead like a
+crest, and his dark brows and lashes made the only note of darkness
+about him. To Phyllis's beauty-loving eyes he seemed so perfect an image
+that she could have watched him for hours.</p>
+
+<p>"Here's Miss Braithwaite, my poor darling," said his mother. "The young
+lady we have been talking about so long."</p>
+
+<p>The Crusader lifted his eyelids and let them fall again.</p>
+
+<p>"Is she?" he said listlessly.</p>
+
+<p>"Don't you want to talk to her, darling boy?" his mother persisted, half
+out of breath, but still full of that unrebuffable, loving energy and
+insistence which she<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_68" id="Page_68">[Pg 68]</a></span> would probably keep to the last minute of her
+life.</p>
+
+<p>"No," said the Crusader, still in those empty, listless tones. "I'd
+rather not talk. I'm tired."</p>
+
+<p>His mother seemed not at all put out.</p>
+
+<p>"Of course, darling," she said, kissing him. She sat by him still,
+however, and poured out sentence after sentence of question, insistence,
+imploration, and pity, eliciting no answer at all. Phyllis wondered how
+it would feel to have to lie still and have that done to you for a term
+of years. The result of her wonderment was a decision to forgive her
+unenthusiastic future bridegroom for what she had at first been ready to
+slap him.</p>
+
+<p>Presently Mrs. Harrington's breath flagged, and the three women went
+away, back to the room they had been in before. Phyllis sat and let
+herself be talked to for a little longer. Then she rose impulsively.</p>
+
+<p>"May I go back and see your son again for just a minute?" she asked, and
+had gone before Mrs. Harrington had finished her<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_69" id="Page_69">[Pg 69]</a></span> permission. She darted
+into the dark room before her courage had time to fail, and stood by the
+white couch again.</p>
+
+<p>"Mr. Harrington," she said clearly, "I'm sorry you're tired, but I'm
+afraid I am going to have to ask you to listen to me. You know, don't
+you, that your mother plans to have me marry you, for a sort of
+interested head-nurse? Are you willing to have it happen? Because I
+won't do it unless you really prefer it."</p>
+
+<p>The heavy white lids half-lifted again.</p>
+
+<p>"I don't mind," said Allan Harrington listlessly. "I suppose you are
+quiet and trustworthy, or De Guenther wouldn't have sent you. It will
+give mother a little peace and it makes no difference to me."</p>
+
+<p>He closed his eyes and the subject at the same time.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, then, that's all right," said Phyllis cheerfully, and started to
+go. Then, drawn back by a sudden, nervous temper-impulse, she moved back
+on him. "And let me tell you," she added, half-laughing,
+half-impertinently, "that if you ever get into my quiet, trustworthy
+clutches you may have an<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_70" id="Page_70">[Pg 70]</a></span> awful time! You're a very spoiled invalid."</p>
+
+<p>She whisked out of the room before he could have gone very far with his
+reply. But he had not cared to reply, apparently. He lay unmoved and
+unmoving.</p>
+
+<p>Phyllis discovered, poising breathless on the threshold, that somehow
+she had seen his eyes. They had been a little like the wolfhound's, a
+sort of wistful gold-brown.</p>
+
+<p>For some reason she found that Allan Harrington's attitude of absolute
+detachment made the whole affair seem much easier for her. And when Mrs.
+Harrington slipped a solitaire diamond into her hand as she went,
+instead of disliking it she enjoyed its feel on her finger, and the
+flash of it in the light. She thanked Mrs. Harrington for it with real
+gratitude. But it made her feel more than ever engaged to marry her
+mother-in-law.</p>
+
+<p>She walked home rather silently with Mrs. De Guenther. Only at the foot
+of the De Guenther steps, she made one absent remark.</p>
+
+<p>"He must have been delightful," she said, "when he was alive!"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_71" id="Page_71">[Pg 71]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="VI" id="VI"></a>VI</h2>
+
+
+<p>After a week of the old bustling, dusty hard work, the Liberry Teacher's
+visit to the De Guenthers' and the subsequent one at the Harringtons',
+and even her sparkling white ring, seemed part of a queer story she had
+finished and put back on the shelf. The ring was the most real thing,
+because it was something of a worry. She didn't dare leave it at home,
+nor did she want to wear it. She finally sewed it in a chamois bag that
+she safety-pinned under her shirt-waist. Then she dismissed it from her
+mind also. There is very little time in a Liberry Teacher's life for
+meditation. Only once in a while would come to her the vision of the
+wistful Harrington wolfhound following his inadequate patch of sunlight,
+or of the dusky room where Allan Harrington lay inert and white, and
+looking like a wonderful carved statue on a tomb.</p>
+
+<p>She began to do a little to her clothes, but not very much, because she
+had neither<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_72" id="Page_72">[Pg 72]</a></span> time nor money. Mr. De Guenther had wanted her to take some
+money in advance, but she had refused. She did not want it till she had
+earned it, and, anyway, it would have made the whole thing so real, she
+knew, that she would have backed out.</p>
+
+<p>"And it isn't as if I were going to a lover," she defended herself to
+Mrs. De Guenther with a little wistful smile. "Nobody will know what I
+have on, any more than they do now."</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. De Guenther gave a scandalized little cry. Her attitude was
+determinedly that it was just an ordinary marriage, as good an excuse
+for sentiment and pretty frocks as any other.</p>
+
+<p>"My dear child," she replied firmly, "you are going to have one pretty
+frock and one really good street-suit <i>now</i>, or I will know why! The
+rest you may get yourself after the wedding, but you must obey me in
+this. Nonsense!&mdash;you can get a half-day, as you call it, perfectly well!
+What's Albert in politics for, if he can't get favors for his friends!"</p>
+
+<p>And, in effect, it proved that Albert was<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_73" id="Page_73">[Pg 73]</a></span> in politics to some purpose,
+for orders came up from the Head's office within twenty minutes after
+Mrs. De Guenther had used the telephone on her husband, that Miss
+Braithwaite was to have a half-day immediately&mdash;as far as she could make
+out, in order to transact city affairs! She felt as if the angels had
+told her she could have the last fortnight over again, as a favor, or
+something of the sort. A half-day out of turn was something nobody had
+ever heard of. She was even too surprised to object to the frock part of
+the situation. She tried to stand out a little longer, but it's a very
+stoical young woman who can refuse to have pretty clothes bought for
+her, and the end of it was a seat in a salon which she had always
+considered so expensive that you scarcely ought to look in the window.</p>
+
+<p>"Had it better be a black suit?" asked Mrs. De Guenther doubtfully, as
+the tall lady in floppy charmeuse hovered haughtily about them,
+expecting orders. "It seems horrible to buy mourning when dear Angela is
+not yet passed away, but it would only<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_74" id="Page_74">[Pg 74]</a></span> be showing proper respect; and I
+remember my own dear mother planned all our mourning outfits while she
+was dying. It was quite a pleasure to her."</p>
+
+<p>Phyllis kept her face straight, and slipped one persuasive hand through
+her friend's arm.</p>
+
+<p>"I don't believe I <i>could</i> buy mourning, dear," she said. "And&mdash;oh, if
+you knew how long I'd wanted a really <i>blue</i> blue suit! Only, it would
+have been too vivid to wear well&mdash;I always knew that&mdash;because you can
+only afford one every other year. And"&mdash;Phyllis rather diffidently
+voiced a thought which had been in the back of her mind for a long
+time&mdash;"if I'm going to be much around Mr. Harrington, don't you think
+cheerful clothes would be best? Everything in that house seems sombre
+enough now."</p>
+
+<p>"Perhaps you are right, dear child," said Mrs. De Guenther. "I hope you
+may be the means of putting a great deal of brightness into poor Allan's
+life before he joins his mother."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, don't!" cried Phyllis impulsively.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_75" id="Page_75">[Pg 75]</a></span> Somehow she could not bear to
+think of Allan Harrington's dying. He was too beautiful to be dead,
+where nobody could see him any more. Besides, Phyllis privately
+considered that a long vacation before he joined his mother would be
+only the fair thing for "poor Allan." Youth sides with youth. And&mdash;the
+clear-cut white lines of him rose in her memory and stayed there. She
+could almost hear that poor, tired, toneless voice of his, that was yet
+so deep and so perfectly accented.... She bought docilely whatever her
+guide directed, and woke from a species of gentle daze at the
+afternoon's end to find Mrs. De Guenther beaming with the weary rapture
+of the successful shopper, and herself the proprietress of a turquoise
+velvet walking-suit, a hat to match, a pale blue evening frock, a pale
+green between-dress with lovely clinging lines, and a heavenly white
+crepe thing with rosy ribbons and filmy shadow-laces&mdash;the negligee of
+one's dreams. There were also slippers and shoes and stockings and&mdash;this
+was really too bad of Mrs. De Guenther&mdash;a half-dozen set of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_76" id="Page_76">[Pg 76]</a></span> lingerie,
+straight through. Mrs. De Guenther sat and continued to beam joyously
+over the array, in Phyllis's little bedroom.</p>
+
+<p>"It's my present, dearie," she said calmly. "So you needn't worry about
+using Angela's money. Gracious, it's been <i>lovely</i>! I haven't had such a
+good time since my husband's little grand-niece came on for a week.
+There's nothing like dressing a girl, after all."</p>
+
+<p>And Phyllis could only kiss her. But when her guest had gone she laid
+all the boxes of finery under her bed, the only place where there was
+any room. She would not take any of it out, she determined, till her
+summons came. But on second thought, she wore the blue velvet
+street-suit on Sunday visits to Mrs. Harrington, which became&mdash;she never
+knew just when or how&mdash;a regular thing. The vivid blue made her eyes
+nearly sky-color, and brightened her hair very satisfactorily. She was
+taking more time and trouble over her looks now&mdash;one has to live up to a
+turquoise velvet hat and coat! She found<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_77" id="Page_77">[Pg 77]</a></span> herself, too, becoming very
+genuinely fond of the restless, anxiously loving, passionate, unwise
+child who dwelt in Mrs. Harrington's frail elderly body and had almost
+worn it out. She sat, long hours of every Sunday afternoon, holding Mrs.
+Harrington's thin little hot hands, and listening to her swift,
+italicised monologues about Allan&mdash;what he must do, what he must not do,
+how he must be looked after, how his mother had treated him, how his
+wishes must be ascertained and followed.</p>
+
+<p>"Though all he wants now is dark and quiet," said his mother piteously.
+"I don't even go in there now to cry."</p>
+
+<p>She spoke as if it were an established ritual. Had she been using her
+son's sick-room, Phyllis wondered, as a regular weeping-place? She could
+feel in Mrs. Harrington, even in this mortal sickness, the tremendous
+driving influence which is often part of a passionately active and not
+very wise personality. That certitude and insistence of Mrs.
+Harrington's could hammer you finally into believing or doing almost
+anything. Phyllis wondered how much<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_78" id="Page_78">[Pg 78]</a></span> his mother's heartbroken adoration
+and pity might have had to do with making her son as hopeless-minded as
+he was.</p>
+
+<p>Naturally, the mother-in-law-elect she had acquired in such a strange
+way became very fond of Phyllis. But indeed there was something very gay
+and sweet and honest-minded about the girl, a something which gave
+people the feeling that they were very wise in liking her. Some people
+you are fond of against your will. When people cared for Phyllis it was
+with a quite irrational feeling that they were doing a sensible thing.
+They never gave any of the credit to her very real, though almost
+invisible, charm.</p>
+
+<p>She never saw Allan Harrington on any of the Sunday visits. She was sure
+the servants thought she did, for she knew that every one in the great,
+dark old house knew her as the young lady who was to marry Mr. Allan.
+She believed that she was supposed to be an old family friend, perhaps a
+distant relative. She did not want to see Allan. But she did want to be
+as good to his little, tensely-loving mother<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_79" id="Page_79">[Pg 79]</a></span> as she could, and reassure
+her about Allan's future care. And she succeeded.</p>
+
+<p>It was on a Friday about two that the summons came. Phyllis had thought
+she expected it, but when the call came to her over the library
+telephone she found herself as badly frightened as she had been the
+first time she went to the Harrington house. She shivered as she laid
+down the dater she was using, and called the other librarian to take her
+desk. Fortunately, between one and four the morning and evening shifts
+overlapped, and there was some one to take her place.</p>
+
+<p>"Mrs. Harrington cannot last out the night," came Mr. De Guenther's
+clear, precise voice over the telephone, without preface. "I have
+arranged with Mr. Johnston. You can go at once. You had better pack a
+suit-case, for you possibly may not be able to get back to your
+boarding-place."</p>
+
+<p>So it was to happen now! Phyllis felt, with her substitute in her place,
+her own wraps on, and her feet taking her swiftly towards her goal, as
+if she were offering<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_80" id="Page_80">[Pg 80]</a></span> herself to be made a nun, or have a hand or foot
+cut off, or paying herself away in some awful, irrevocable fashion. She
+packed, mechanically, all the pretty things Mrs. De Guenther had given
+her, and nothing else. She found herself at the door of her room with
+the locked suit-case in her hand, and not even a nail-file of the things
+belonging to her old self in it. She shook herself together, managed to
+laugh a little, and returned and put in such things as she thought she
+would require for the night. Then she went. She always remembered that
+journey as long as she lived; her hands and feet and tongue going on,
+buying tickets, giving directions&mdash;and her mind, like a naughty child,
+catching at everything as they went, and screaming to be allowed to go
+back home, back to the dusty, matter-of-course library and the dreary
+little boarding-house bedroom!<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_81" id="Page_81">[Pg 81]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="VII" id="VII"></a>VII</h2>
+
+
+<p>They were all waiting for her, in what felt like a hideously quiet
+semicircle, in Allan's great dark room. Mrs. Harrington, deadly pale,
+and giving an impression of keeping herself alive only by force of that
+wonderful fighting vitality of hers, lay almost at length in her
+wheel-chair. There was a clergyman in vestments. There were the De
+Guenthers; Mr. De Guenther only a little more precise than his every-day
+habit was, Mrs. De Guenther crying a little, softly and furtively.</p>
+
+<p>As for Allan Harrington, he lay just as she had seen him that other
+time, white and moveless, seeming scarcely conscious except by an
+effort. Only she noticed a slight contraction, as of pain, between his
+brows.</p>
+
+<p>"Phyllis has come," panted Mrs. Harrington. "Now it will be&mdash;all right.
+You must marry him quickly&mdash;quickly, do you hear, Phyllis? Oh, people
+never will&mdash;do&mdash;what I want them to&mdash;&mdash;"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_82" id="Page_82">[Pg 82]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Yes&mdash;yes, indeed, dear," said Phyllis, taking her hands soothingly.
+"We're going to attend to it right away. See, everything is ready."</p>
+
+<p>It occurred to her that Mrs. Harrington was not half as correct in her
+playing of the part of a dying woman as she would have seen to it that
+anyone else was; also, that things did not seem legal without the
+wolfhound. Then she was shocked at herself for such irrelevant thoughts.
+The thing to do was to keep poor Mrs. Harrington quieted. So she
+beckoned the clergyman and the De Guenthers nearer, and herself sped the
+marrying of herself to Allan Harrington.</p>
+
+<p>... When you are being married to a Crusader on a tomb, the easiest way
+is to kneel down by him. Phyllis registered this fact in her mind quite
+blankly, as something which might be of use to remember in future....
+The marrying took an unnecessarily long time, it seemed to her. It did
+not seem as if she were being married at all. It all seemed to concern
+somebody else. When it came to the putting on of the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_83" id="Page_83">[Pg 83]</a></span> wedding-ring, she
+found herself, very naturally, guiding Allan's relaxed fingers to hold
+it in its successive places, and finally slip it on the wedding-finger.
+And somehow having to do that checked the chilly awe she had had before
+of Allan Harrington. It made her feel quite simply sorry for him, as if
+he were one of her poor little boys in trouble. And when it was all over
+she bent pitifully before she thought, and kissed one white, cold cheek.
+He seemed so tragically helpless, yet more alive, in some way, since she
+had touched his hand to guide it. Then, as her lips brushed his cheek,
+she recoiled and colored a little. She had felt that slight roughness
+which a man's cheek, however close-shaven, always has&mdash;the <i>man</i>-feel.
+It made her realize unreasonably that it was a man she had married,
+after all, not a stone image nor a sick child&mdash;a live man! With the
+thought, or rather instinct, came a swift terror of what she had done,
+and a swift impulse to rise. She was half-way risen from her knees when
+a hand on her shoulder, and the clergyman's voice in her ear, checked
+her.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_84" id="Page_84">[Pg 84]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Not yet," he murmured almost inaudibly. "Stay as you are till&mdash;till
+Mrs. Harrington is wheeled from the room."</p>
+
+<p>Phyllis understood. She remained as she was, her body a shield before
+Allan Harrington's eyes, her hand just withdrawing from his shoulder,
+till she heard the closing of the door, and a sigh as of relaxed tension
+from the three people around her. Then she rose. Allan lay still with
+closed eyelids. It seemed to her that he had flushed, if ever so
+faintly, at the touch of her lips on his cheek. She laid his hand on the
+coverlet with her own roughened, ringed one, and followed the others
+out, into the room where the dead woman had been taken, leaving him with
+his attendant.</p>
+
+<p>The rest of the evening Phyllis went about in a queer-keyed, almost
+light-hearted frame of mind. It was only the reaction from the
+long-expected terror that was over now, but it felt indecorous. It was
+just as well, however. Some one's head had to be kept. The servants were
+upset, of course, and there were many arrangements to be made. She and
+Mr. De Guenther worked steadily<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_85" id="Page_85">[Pg 85]</a></span> together, telephoning, ordering,
+guiding, straightening out all the tangles. There never was a wedding,
+she thought, where the bride did so much of the work! She even
+remembered to see personally that Allan's dinner was sent up to him. The
+servants had doubtless been told to come to her for orders&mdash;at any rate,
+they did. Phyllis had not had much experience in running a house, but a
+good deal in keeping her head. And that, after all, is the main thing.
+She had a far-off feeling as if she were hearing some other young woman
+giving swift, poised, executive orders. She rather admired her.</p>
+
+<p>After dinner the De Guenthers went. And Phyllis Braithwaite, the little
+Liberry Teacher who had been living in a hall bedroom on much less money
+than she needed, found herself alone, sole mistress of the great
+Harrington house, a corps of servants, a husband passive enough to
+satisfy the most militant suffragette, a check-book, a wistful
+wolfhound, and five hundred dollars, cash, for current expenses. The
+last weighed on her mind more than all the rest put together.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_86" id="Page_86">[Pg 86]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Why, I don't know how to make Current Expenses out of all that!" she
+had said to Mr. De Guenther. "It looks to me exactly like about ten
+months' salary! I'm perfectly certain I shall get up in my sleep and try
+to pay my board ahead with it, so I shan't have it all spent before the
+ten months are up! There was a blue bead necklace," she went on
+meditatively, "in the Five-and-Ten, that I always wanted to buy. Only I
+never quite felt I could afford it. Oh, just imagine going to the
+Five-and-Ten and buying at least five dollars' worth of things you
+didn't need!"</p>
+
+<p>"You have great discretionary powers&mdash;great discretionary powers, my
+dear, you will find!" Mr. De Guenther had said, as he patted her
+shoulder. Phyllis took it as a compliment at the time. "Discretionary
+powers" sounded as if he thought she was a quite intelligent young
+person. It did not occur to her till he had gone, and she was alone with
+her check-book, that it meant she had a good deal of liberty to do as
+she liked.</p>
+
+<p>It seemed to be expected of her to stay. Nobody even suggested a
+possibility of her<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_87" id="Page_87">[Pg 87]</a></span> going home again, even to pack her trunk. Mrs. De
+Guenther casually volunteered to do that, a little after the housekeeper
+had told her where her rooms were. She had been consulting with the
+housekeeper for what seemed ages, when she happened to want some pins
+for something, and asked for her suit-case.</p>
+
+<p>"It's in your rooms," said the housekeeper. "Mrs. Harrington&mdash;the late
+Mrs. Harrington, I should say&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>Phyllis stopped listening at this point. Who was the present Mrs.
+Harrington? she wondered before she thought&mdash;and then remembered.
+Why&mdash;<i>she</i> was! So there was no Phyllis Braithwaite any more! Of course
+not.... Yet she had always liked the name so&mdash;well, a last name was a
+small thing to give up.... Into her mind fitted an incongruous, silly
+story she had heard once at the library, about a girl whose last name
+was Rose, and whose parents christened her Wild, because the combination
+appealed to them. And then she married a man named Bull.... Meanwhile
+the housekeeper had been going on.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_88" id="Page_88">[Pg 88]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>... "She had the bedroom and bath opening from the other side of Mr.
+Allan's day-room ready for you, madam. It's been ready several weeks."</p>
+
+<p>"Has it?" said Phyllis. It was like Mrs. Harrington, that careful
+planning of even where she should be put. "Is Mr. Harrington in his
+day-room now?"</p>
+
+<p>For some reason she did not attempt to give herself, she did not want to
+see him again just now. Besides, it was nearly eleven and time a very
+tired girl was in bed. She wanted a good night's rest, before she had to
+get up and be Mrs. Harrington, with Allan and the check-book and the
+Current Expenses all tied to her.</p>
+
+<p>Some one had laid everything out for her in the bedroom; the filmy new
+nightgown over a chair, the blue satin mules underneath, her plain
+toilet-things on a dressing-table, and over another chair the exquisite
+ivory crepe negligee with its floating rose ribbons. She took a hasty
+bath&mdash;there was so much hot water that she was quite reconciled for a
+moment to being a check-booked and wolf hounded Mrs. Harrington&mdash;and
+slid<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_89" id="Page_89">[Pg 89]</a></span> straight into bed without even stopping to braid her loosened,
+honey-colored hair.</p>
+
+<p>It seemed to her that she was barely asleep when there came an urgent
+knocking at her door.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes?" she said sleepily, looking mechanically for her alarm-clock as
+she switched on the light. "What is it, please?"</p>
+
+<p>"It's I, Wallis, Mr. Allan's man, Madame," said a nervous voice. "Mr.
+Allan's very bad. I've done all the usual things, but nothing seems to
+quiet him. He hates doctors so, and they make him so wrought up&mdash;please
+could you come, ma'am? He says as how all of us are all dead&mdash;oh,
+<i>please</i>, Mrs. Harrington!"</p>
+
+<p>There was panic in the man's voice.</p>
+
+<p>"All right," said Phyllis sleepily, dropping to the floor as she spoke
+with the rapidity that only the alarm-clock-broken know. She snatched
+the negligee around her, and thrust her feet hastily into the blue satin
+slippers&mdash;why, she was actually using her wedding finery! And what an
+easily upset person that man was! But everybody in the house seemed to
+have<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_90" id="Page_90">[Pg 90]</a></span> nerves on edge. It was no wonder about Allan&mdash;he wanted his
+mother, of course, poor boy! She felt, as she ran fleetly across the
+long room that separated her sleeping quarters from her husband's, the
+same mixture of pity and timidity that she had felt with him before.
+Poor boy! Poor, silent, beautiful statue, with his one friend gone! She
+opened the door and entered swiftly into his room.</p>
+
+<p>She was not thinking about herself at all, only of how she could help
+Allan, but there must have been something about her of the picture-book
+angel to the pain-racked man, lying tensely at length in the room's
+darkest corner. Her long, dully gold hair, loosening from its twist,
+flew out about her, and her face was still flushed with sleep. There was
+a something about her that was vividly alight and alive, perhaps the
+light in her blue eyes.</p>
+
+<p>From what the man had said Phyllis had thought Allan was delirious, but
+she saw at once that he was only in severe pain, and talking more
+disconnectedly, perhaps, than the slow-minded Englishman could follow.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_91" id="Page_91">[Pg 91]</a></span>
+He did not look like a statue now. His cheeks were burning with evident
+pain, and his yellow-brown eyes, wide-open, and dilated to darkness,
+stared straight out. His hands were clenching and unclenching, and his
+head moved restlessly from side to side. Every nerve and muscle, she
+could see, was taut.</p>
+
+<p>"They're all dead," he muttered. "Father and Mother and Louise&mdash;and
+I&mdash;only I'm not dead enough to bury. Oh, God, I wish I was!"</p>
+
+<p>That wasn't delirium; it was something more like heart-break. Phyllis
+moved closer to him, and dropped one of her sleep-warm hands on his
+cold, clenched one.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, poor boy!" she said. "I'm so sorry&mdash;so sorry!" She closed her hands
+tight over both his.</p>
+
+<p>Some of her strong young vitality must have passed between them and
+helped him, for almost immediately his tenseness relaxed a little, and
+he looked at her.</p>
+
+<p>"You&mdash;you're not a nurse," he said. "They go around&mdash;like&mdash;like
+a&mdash;vault&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>She had caught his attention! That was<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_92" id="Page_92">[Pg 92]</a></span> a good deal, she felt. She
+forgot everything about him, except that he was some one to be
+comforted, and her charge. She sat down on the bed by him, still holding
+tight to his hands.</p>
+
+<p>"No, indeed," she said, bending nearer him, her long loose hair falling
+forward about her resolutely-smiling young face. "Don't you remember
+seeing me? I never was a nurse."</p>
+
+<p>"What&mdash;are you?" he asked feebly.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm&mdash;why, the children call me the Liberry Teacher," she answered. It
+occurred to her that it would be better to talk on brightly at random
+than to risk speaking of his mother to him, as she must if she reminded
+him of their marriage. "I spend my days in a basement, making bad little
+boys get so interested in the Higher Culture that they'll forget to
+shoot crap and smash windows."</p>
+
+<p>One of the things which had aided Phyllis to rise from desk-assistant to
+one of the Children's Room librarians was a very sweet and carrying
+voice&mdash;a voice which arrested even a child's attention, and held<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_93" id="Page_93">[Pg 93]</a></span> his
+interest. It held Allan now; merely the sound of it, seemingly.</p>
+
+<p>"Go on&mdash;talking," he murmured. Phyllis smiled and obeyed.</p>
+
+<p>"Sometimes the Higher Culture doesn't work," she said. "Yesterday one of
+my imps got hold of a volume of Shaw, and in half an hour his aunt
+marched in on me and threatened I don't know what to a library that
+'taught chilren to disrespect their lawful guardeens.'"</p>
+
+<p>"I remember now," said Allan. "You are the girl in the blue dress. The
+girl mother had me marry. I remember."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," said Phyllis soothingly, and a little apologetically. "I know.
+But that&mdash;oh, please, it needn't make a bit of difference. It was only
+so I could see that you were looked after properly, you know. I'll never
+be in the way, unless you want me to do something for you."</p>
+
+<p>"I don't mind," he said listlessly, as he had before.... "<i>Oh, this
+dreadful darkness, and mother dead in it somewhere!</i>"</p>
+
+<p>"Wallis," called Phyllis swiftly, "turn up the lights!"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_94" id="Page_94">[Pg 94]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The man slipped the close green silk shades from the electric bulbs.
+Allan shrank as if he had been hurt.</p>
+
+<p>"I can't stand the glare," he cried.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, you can for a moment," she said firmly. "It's better than the
+ghastly green glow."</p>
+
+<p>It was probably the first time Allan Harrington had been contradicted
+since his accident. He said nothing more for a minute, and Phyllis
+directed Wallis to bring a sheet of pink tissue paper from her
+suit-case, where she remembered it lay in the folds of some new muslin
+thing. Under her direction still, he wrapped the globes in it and
+secured it with string.</p>
+
+<p>"There!" she told Allan triumphantly when Wallis was done. "See, there
+is no glare now; only a pretty rose-colored glow. Better than the green,
+isn't it?"</p>
+
+<p>Allan looked at her again. "You are&mdash;kind," he said. "Mother said&mdash;you
+would be kind. Oh, mother&mdash;mother!" He tried uselessly to lift one arm
+to cover his convulsed face, and could only turn his head a little
+aside.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_95" id="Page_95">[Pg 95]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"You can go, Wallis," said Phyllis softly, with her lips only. "Be in
+the next room." The man stole out and shut the door softly. Phyllis
+herself rose and went toward the window, and busied herself in braiding
+up her hair. There was almost silence in the room for a few minutes.</p>
+
+<p>"Thank&mdash;you," said Allan brokenly. "Will you&mdash;come back, please?"</p>
+
+<p>She returned swiftly, and sat by him as she had before.</p>
+
+<p>"Would you mind&mdash;holding my wrists again?" he asked. "I feel quieter,
+somehow, when you do&mdash;not so&mdash;lost." There was a pathetic boyishness in
+his tone that the sad, clear lines of his face would never prepare you
+for.</p>
+
+<p>Phyllis took his wrists in her warm, strong hands obediently.</p>
+
+<p>"Are you in pain, Allan?" she asked. "Do you mind if I call you Allan?
+It's the easiest way."</p>
+
+<p>He smiled at her a little, faintly. It occurred to her that perhaps the
+novelty of her was taking his mind a little from his own feelings.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_96" id="Page_96">[Pg 96]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"No&mdash;no pain. I haven't had any for a very long time now. Only this
+dreadful blackness dragging at my mind, a blackness the light hurts."</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Why!</i>" said Phyllis to herself, being on known ground here&mdash;"why, it's
+nervous depression! I believe cheering-up <i>would</i> help. I know," she
+said aloud; "I've had it."</p>
+
+<p>"You?" he said. "But you seem so&mdash;happy!"</p>
+
+<p>"I suppose I am," said Phyllis shyly. She felt a little afraid of "poor
+Allan" still, now that there was nothing to do for him, and they were
+talking together. And he had not answered her question, either;
+doubtless he wanted her to say "Mr. Allan" or even "Mr. Harrington!" He
+replied to her thought in the uncanny way invalids sometimes do.</p>
+
+<p>"You said something about what we were to call each other," he murmured.
+"It would be foolish, of course, not to use first names. Yours is Alice,
+isn't it?"</p>
+
+<p>Phyllis laughed. "Oh, worse than that!" she said. "I was named out of a
+poetry<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_97" id="Page_97">[Pg 97]</a></span>book, I believe&mdash;Phyllis Narcissa. But I always conceal the
+Narcissa."</p>
+
+<p>"Phyllis. Thank you," he said wearily. ... "<i>Phyllis, don't let go!
+Talk</i> to me!" His eyes were those of a man in torment.</p>
+
+<p>"What shall I talk about?" she asked soothingly, keeping the two cold,
+clutching hands in her warm grasp. "Shall I tell you a story? I know a
+great many stories by heart, and I will say them for you if you like. It
+was part of my work."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," he said. "Anything."</p>
+
+<p>Phyllis arranged herself more comfortably on the bed, for it looked as
+if she had some time to stay, and began the story she knew best, because
+her children liked it best, Kipling's "How the Elephant Got His Trunk."
+"A long, long time ago, O Best Beloved...."</p>
+
+<p>Allan listened, and, she thought, at times paid attention to the words.
+He almost smiled once or twice, she was nearly sure. She went straight
+on to another story when the first was done. Never had she worked so
+hard to keep the interest of any restless circle of children as she
+worked now,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_98" id="Page_98">[Pg 98]</a></span> sitting up in the pink light in her crepe wrappings, with
+her school-girl braids hanging down over her bosom, and Allan
+Harrington's agonized golden-brown eyes fixed on her pitying ones.</p>
+
+<p>"You must be tired," he said more connectedly and quietly when she had
+ended the second story. "Can't you sit up here by me, propped on the
+pillows? And you need a quilt or something, too."</p>
+
+<p>This from an invalid who had been given nothing but himself to think of
+this seven years back! Phyllis's opinion of Allan went up very much. She
+had supposed he would be very selfish. But she made herself a bank of
+pillows, and arranged herself by Allan's side so that she could keep
+fast to his hands without any strain, something as skaters hold. She
+wrapped a down quilt from the foot of the bed around her mummy-fashion
+and went on to her third story. Allan's eyes, as she talked on, grew
+less intent&mdash;drooped. She felt the relaxation of his hands. She went
+monotonously on, closing her own eyes&mdash;just for a minute, as she
+finished her story.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_99" id="Page_99">[Pg 99]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="VIII" id="VIII"></a>VIII</h2>
+
+
+<p>"I've overslept the alarm!" was Phyllis's first thought next morning
+when she woke. "It must be&mdash;" Where was she? So tired, so very tired,
+she remembered being, and telling some one an interminable story.... She
+held her sleepy eyes wide open by will-power, and found that a silent
+but evidently going clock hung in sight. Six-thirty. Then she hadn't
+overslept the alarm. But ... she hadn't set any alarm. And she had been
+sleeping propped up in a sitting position, half on&mdash;why, it was a
+shoulder. And she was rolled tight in a terra-cotta down quilt. She sat
+up with a jerk&mdash;fortunately a noiseless one&mdash;and turned to look. Then
+suddenly she remembered all about it, that jumbled, excited,
+hard-working yesterday which had held change and death and marriage for
+her, and which she had ended by perching on "poor Allan Harrington's"
+bed and sending him to sleep by holding his hands and telling him
+children's stories. She<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_100" id="Page_100">[Pg 100]</a></span> must have fallen asleep after he did, and slid
+down on his shoulder. A wonder it hadn't disturbed him! She stole
+another look at him, as he lay sleeping still, heavily and quietly.
+After all, she was married to him, and she had a perfect right to recite
+him to sleep if she wanted to. She unrolled herself cautiously, and slid
+out like a shadow.</p>
+
+<p>She almost fell over poor Wallis, sleeping too in his clothes outside
+the door, on Allan's day couch. He came quickly to his feet, as if he
+were used to sudden waking.</p>
+
+<p>"Don't disturb Mr. Harrington," said Phyllis as staidly as if she had
+been giving men-servants orders in her slipper-feet all her life. "He
+seems to be sleeping quietly."</p>
+
+<p>"Begging your pardon, Mrs. Harrington, but you haven't been giving him
+anything, have you?" asked Wallis. "He hasn't slept without a break for
+two hours to my knowledge since I've been here, not without medicine."</p>
+
+<p>"Not a thing," said Phyllis, smiling with satisfaction. "He must have
+been sleeping nearly three hours now! I read him to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_101" id="Page_101">[Pg 101]</a></span> sleep, or what
+amounted to it. I got his nerves quiet, I think. Please kill anybody
+that tries to wake him, Wallis."</p>
+
+<p>"Very good, ma'am," said Wallis gravely. "And yourself, ma'am?"</p>
+
+<p>"I'm going to get some sleep, too," she said. "Call me if there's
+anything&mdash;useful."</p>
+
+<p>She meant "necessary," but she wanted so much more sleep she never knew
+the difference. When she got into her room she found that there also she
+was not alone: the wistful wolfhound was curled plaintively across her
+bed, which he overlapped. From his nose he seemed to have been dipping
+largely into the cup of chocolate somebody had brought to her, and which
+she had forgotten to drink when she found it, on her first retiring.</p>
+
+<p>"You aren't a <i>bit</i> high-minded," said Phyllis indignantly. She was too
+sleepy to do more than shove him over to the back of the bed. "All&mdash;the
+beds here are so&mdash;<i>full</i>," she complained sleepily; and crawled inside,
+and never woke again till nearly afternoon.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_102" id="Page_102">[Pg 102]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>There was all the grave business to be done, in the days that followed,
+of taking Mrs. Harrington to a quiet place beside her husband, and
+drawing together again the strings of the disorganized household.
+Phyllis found herself whispering over and over again:</p>
+
+<p>
+<span style="margin-left: 1.5em;">"The sweeping up the heart</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">And putting love away</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1.5em;">We shall not need to use again.</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">Until the Judgment Day."</span><br />
+</p>
+
+<p>And with all there was to see after, it was some days before she saw
+Allan again, more than to speak to brightly as she crossed their common
+sitting-room. He did not ask for her. She looked after his comfort
+faithfully, and tried to see to it that his man Wallis was all he should
+be&mdash;a task which was almost hopeless from the fact that Wallis knew much
+more about his duties than she did, even with Mrs. Harrington's
+painstakingly detailed notes to help her. Also his attitude to his
+master was of such untiring patience and worship that it made Phyllis
+feel like a rude outsider interfering between man and wife.</p>
+
+<p>However, Wallis was inclined to approve<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_103" id="Page_103">[Pg 103]</a></span> of his new mistress, who was
+not fussy, seemed kind, and had given his beloved Mr. Allan nearly three
+hours of unbroken sleep. Allan had been a little better ever since.
+Wallis had told Phyllis this. But she was inclined to think that the
+betterment was caused by the counter-shock of his mother's death, which
+had shaken him from his lethargy, and perhaps even given his nerves a
+better balance. And she insisted that the pink paper stay on the
+electric lights.</p>
+
+<p>After about a week of this, Phyllis suddenly remembered that she had not
+been selfish at all yet. Where was her rose-garden&mdash;the garden she had
+married the wolfhound and Allan and the check-book for? Where were all
+the things she had intended to get? The only item she had bought as yet
+ran, on the charge account she had taken over with the rest, "1 doz.
+checked dish-towels"; and Mrs. Clancy, the housekeeper's, pressing
+demand was responsible for these.</p>
+
+<p>"It's certainly time I was selfish," said Phyllis to the wolfhound, who
+followed her<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_104" id="Page_104">[Pg 104]</a></span> round unendingly as if she had patches of sunshine in her
+pocket: glorious patches, fit for a life-sized wolfhound. Perhaps he was
+grateful because she had ordered him long daily walks. He wagged his
+tail now as she spoke, and rubbed himself curvingly against her. He was
+a rather affected dog.</p>
+
+<p>So Phyllis made herself out a list in a superlatively neat library hand:</p>
+
+<p>
+<span style="margin-left: 1.5em;">One string of blue beads.</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1.5em;">One lot of very fluffy summer frocks with flowers on them.</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1.5em;">One rose-garden.</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1.5em;">One banjo and a self-teacher. (And a sound-proof room.)</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1.5em;">One set Arabian Nights.</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1.5em;">One set of Stevenson, all but his novels.</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1.5em;">Ever so many Maxfield Parrish pictures full of Prussian-blue skies.</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1.5em;">A house to put them in, with fireplaces.</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1.5em;">A lady's size motor-car that likes me.</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1.5em;">A plain cat with a tame disposition.</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1.5em;">A hammock.</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1.5em;">A sun-dial. (But that might be thrown in with the garden.)</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1.5em;">A gold watch-bracelet.</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1.5em;">All the colored satin slippers I want.</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1.5em;">A room big enough to put all father's books up.</span><br />
+</p>
+
+<p>It looked shamelessly long, but Phyllis's "discretionary powers" would
+cover it, she knew. Mrs. Harrington's final will, while full of advice,
+had been recklessly trusting.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_105" id="Page_105">[Pg 105]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>She could order everything in one afternoon, she was sure, all but the
+house, the garden, the motor, which she put checks against, and the
+plain cat, which she thought she could pick up in the village where her
+house would be.</p>
+
+<p>Next she went to see Allan. She didn't want to bother him, but she did
+feel that she ought to share her plans with him as far as possible.
+Besides, it occurred to her that she could scarcely remember what he was
+like to speak to, and really owed it to herself to go. She fluffed out
+her hair loosely, put on her pale-green gown that had clinging lines,
+and pulled some daffodils through her sash. She had resolved to avoid
+anything sombre where Allan was concerned&mdash;and the green gown was very
+becoming. Then, armed with her list and a pencil, she crossed boldly to
+the couch where her Crusader lay in the old attitude, moveless and with
+half-closed eyes.</p>
+
+<p>"Allan," she asked, standing above him, "do you think you could stand
+being talked to for a little while?"</p>
+
+<p>"Why&mdash;yes," said Allan, opening his<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_106" id="Page_106">[Pg 106]</a></span> eyes a little more. "Wallis,
+get&mdash;Mrs. Harrington&mdash;a chair."</p>
+
+<p>He said the name haltingly, and Phyllis wondered if he disliked her
+having it. She dropped down beside him, like a smiling touch of spring
+in the dark room.</p>
+
+<p>"Do you mind their calling me that?" she asked. "If there's anything
+else they could use&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Mother made you a present of the name," he said, smiling faintly. "No
+reason why I should mind."</p>
+
+<p>"All right," said Phyllis cheerfully. After all, there was nothing else
+to call her, speaking of her. The servants, she knew, generally said
+"the young madam," as if her mother-in-law were still alive.</p>
+
+<p>"I want to talk to you about things," she began; and had to stop to deal
+with the wolfhound, who was trying to put both paws on her shoulders.
+"Oh, Ivan, <i>get</i> down, honey! I <i>wish</i> somebody would take a day off
+some time to explain to you that you're not a lap-dog! Do you like
+wolfhounds specially better than any other kind of dog, Allan?"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_107" id="Page_107">[Pg 107]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Not particularly," said Allan, patting the dog languidly as he put his
+head in a convenient place for the purpose. "Mother bought him, she
+said, because he would look so picturesque in my sick-room. She wanted
+him to lie at my feet or something. But he never saw it that
+way&mdash;neither did I. Hates sick-rooms. Don't blame him."</p>
+
+<p>This was the longest speech Allan had made yet, and Phyllis learned
+several things from it that she had only guessed before. One was that
+the atmosphere of embodied grief and regret in the house had been Mrs.
+Harrington's, not Allan's&mdash;that he was more young and natural than she
+had thought, better material for cheering; that his mother's devotion
+had been something of a pressure on him at times; and that he himself
+was not interested in efforts to stage his illness correctly.</p>
+
+<p>What he really had said when the dog was introduced, she learned later
+from the attached Wallis, was that he might be a cripple, but he wasn't
+going to be part of any confounded tableau. Whereupon his mother had
+cried for an hour, kissing and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_108" id="Page_108">[Pg 108]</a></span> pitying him in between, and his night
+had been worse than usual. But the hound had stayed outside.</p>
+
+<p>Phyllis made an instant addition to her list. "One bull-pup, convenient
+size, for Allan." The plain cat could wait. She had heard of publicity
+campaigns; she had made up her mind, and a rather firm young mind it
+was, that she was going to conduct a cheerfulness campaign in behalf of
+this listless, beautiful, darkness-locked Allan of hers. Unknowingly,
+she was beginning to regard him as much her property as the check-book,
+and rather more so than the wolfhound. She moved back a little, and
+reconciled herself to the dog, who had draped as much of his body as
+would go, over her, and was batting his tail against her joyfully.</p>
+
+<p>"Poor old puppy," she said. "I want to talk over some plans with you,
+Allan," she began again determinedly. She was astonished to see Allan
+wince.</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Don't!</i>" he said, "for heaven's sake! You'll drive me crazy!"</p>
+
+<p>Phyllis drew back a little indignantly,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_109" id="Page_109">[Pg 109]</a></span> but behind the couch she saw
+Wallis making some sort of face that was evidently intended for a
+warning. Then he slipped out of the room, as if he wished her to follow
+soon and be explained to. "Plans" must be a forbidden subject. Anyhow,
+crossness was a better symptom than apathy!</p>
+
+<p>"Very well," she said brightly, smiling her old, useful,
+cheering-a-bad-child library smile at him. "It was mostly about things I
+wanted to buy for myself, any way&mdash;satin slippers and such. I don't
+suppose they <i>would</i> interest a man much."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, that sort of thing," said Allan relievedly. "I thought you meant
+things that had to do with me. If you have plans about me, go ahead, for
+you know I can't do anything to stop you&mdash;but for heaven's sake, don't
+discuss it with me first!"</p>
+
+<p>He spoke carelessly, but the pity of it struck to Phyllis's heart. It
+was true, he couldn't stop her. His foolish, adoring little desperate
+mother, in her anxiety to have her boy taken good care of, had exposed
+him to a cruel risk. Phyllis knew herself<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_110" id="Page_110">[Pg 110]</a></span> to be trustworthy. She knew
+that she could no more put her own pleasures before her charge's welfare
+than she could steal his watch. Her conscience was New-England rock.
+But, oh! suppose Mr. De Guenther had chosen some girl who didn't care,
+who would have taken the money and not have done the work! She shivered
+at the thought of what Allan had escaped, and caught his hand
+impulsively, as she had on that other night of terror.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, Allan Harrington, I <i>wouldn't</i> do anything I oughtn't to! I know
+it's dreadful, having a strange girl wished on you this way, but truly I
+mean to be as good as I can, and never in the way or anything! Indeed,
+you may trust me! You&mdash;you don't mind having me round, do you?"</p>
+
+<p>Allan's cold hand closed kindly on hers. He spoke for the first time as
+a well man speaks, quietly, connectedly, and with a little authority.</p>
+
+<p>"The fact that I am married to you does not weigh on me at all, my dear
+child," he said. "I shall be dead, you know, this time five years, and
+what difference does it<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_111" id="Page_111">[Pg 111]</a></span> make whether I'm married or not? I don't mind
+you at all. You seem a very kind and pleasant person. I am sure I can
+trust you. Now are you reassured?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, <i>yes</i>," said Phyllis radiantly, "and you <i>can</i> trust me, and I
+<i>won't</i> fuss. All you have to do if I bore you is to look bored. You
+can, you know. You don't know how well you do it! And I'll stop. I'm
+going to ask Wallis how much of my society you'd better have, if any."</p>
+
+<p>"Why, I don't think a good deal of it would hurt me," he said
+indifferently. But he smiled in a quite friendly fashion.</p>
+
+<p>"All right," said Phyllis again brightly. But she fell silent then.
+There were two kinds of Allan, she reflected. This kind of Allan, who
+was very much more grown-up and wise than she was, and of whom she still
+stood a little in awe; and the little-boy Allan who had clung to her in
+nervous dread of the dark the other night&mdash;whom she had sent to sleep
+with children's stories. She wondered which was real, which he had been
+when he was well.</p>
+
+<p>"I must go now and have something out<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_112" id="Page_112">[Pg 112]</a></span> with Mrs. Clancy," she said,
+smiling and rising. "She's perfectly certain carpets have to come up
+when you put down mattings, and I'm perfectly certain they don't."</p>
+
+<p>She tucked the despised list, to which she had furtively added her
+bull-pup, into her sleeve, took her hand from his and went away. It
+seemed to Allan that the room was a little darker.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_113" id="Page_113">[Pg 113]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="IX" id="IX"></a>IX</h2>
+
+
+<p>Outside the sitting-room door stood Wallis, who had been lying in wait.</p>
+
+<p>"I wanted to explain, madam, about the plans," he said. "It worries Mr.
+Allan. You see, madam, the late Mrs. Harrington was a great one for
+plans. She had, if I may say so, a new one every day, and she'd argue
+you deaf, dumb, and blind&mdash;not to speak ill of the dead&mdash;till you were
+fair beat out fighting it. Then you'd settle down to it&mdash;and next day
+there be another one, with Mrs. Harrington rooting for it just as hard,
+and you, with your mouth fixed for the other plan, so to speak, would
+have to give in to that. The plan she happened to have last always went
+through, because she fought for that as hard as she had for the others,
+and you were so bothered by then you didn't care what."</p>
+
+<p>Wallis's carefully impersonal servant-English had slipped from him, and
+he was talking to Phyllis as man to man, but she<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_114" id="Page_114">[Pg 114]</a></span> was very glad of it.
+These were the sort of facts she had to elicit.</p>
+
+<p>"When Mr. Allan was well," he went on, "he used to just laugh and say,
+'All right, mother darling,' and pet her and do his own way&mdash;he was
+always laughing and carrying on then, Mr. Allan&mdash;but after he was hurt,
+of course, he couldn't get away, and the old madam, she'd sit by his
+couch by the hour, and he nearly wild, making plans for him. She'd spend
+weeks planning details of things over and over, never getting tired. And
+then off again to the next thing! It was all because she was so fond of
+him, you see. But if you'll pardon my saying so, madam"&mdash;Wallis was
+resuming his man-servant manners&mdash;"it was not always good for Mr.
+Allan."</p>
+
+<p>"I think I understand," said Phyllis thoughtfully, as she and the
+wolfhound went to interview Mrs. Clancy. So that was why! She had
+imagined something of the sort. And she&mdash;she herself&mdash;was doubtless the
+outcome of one of Mrs. Harrington's long-detailed plans, insisted on to
+Allan till he had acquiesced for quiet's sake!<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_115" id="Page_115">[Pg 115]</a></span> ... But he said now he
+didn't mind. She was somehow sure he wouldn't have said it if it had not
+been true. Then Wallis's other words came to her, "He was always
+laughing then," and suddenly there surged up in Phyllis a passionate
+resolve to give Allan back at least a little of his lightness of heart.
+He might be going to die&mdash;though she didn't believe it&mdash;but at least she
+could make things less monotonous and dark for him; and she wouldn't
+offer him plans! And if he objected when the plans rose up and hit him,
+why, the shock might do him good. She thought she was fairly sure of an
+ally in Wallis.</p>
+
+<p>She cut her interview with Mrs. Clancy short. Allan, lying motionless,
+caught a green flash of her, crossing into her room to dress, another
+blue flash as she went out; dropped his eyelids and crossed his hands to
+doze a little, an innocent and unwary Crusader. He did not know it, but
+a Plan was about to rise up and hit him. The bride his mother had left
+him as a parting legacy had gone out to order a string of blue beads, a
+bull-pup, a house, a motor, a banjo, and a rose<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_116" id="Page_116">[Pg 116]</a></span>-garden; as she went she
+added a talking machine to the list; and he was to be planted in the
+very centre of everything.</p>
+
+<p>"Seems like a nice girl, Wallis," said Allan dreamily. And the discreet
+Wallis said nothing (though he knew a good deal) about his mistress's
+shopping-list.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, Mr. Allan," he conceded.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>It was Phyllis Harrington's firm belief that Mr. De Guenther could
+produce anything anybody wanted at any time, or that if he couldn't his
+wife could. So it was to him that she went on her quest for the
+rose-garden, with its incidental house. The rest of the items she
+thought she could get for herself. It was nearly the last of April, and
+she wanted a well-heated elderly mansion, preferably Colonial, not too
+unwieldily large, with as many rose-trees around it as her discretionary
+powers would stand. And she wanted it as near and as soon as possible.
+By the help of Mr. De Guenther, amused but efficient, Mrs. De Guenther,
+efficient but sentimental; and an agent who was efficient<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_117" id="Page_117">[Pg 117]</a></span> merely, she
+got very nearly what she wanted. Money could do a great deal more than a
+country minister's daughter had ever had any way of imagining. By its
+aid she found it possible to have furniture bought and placed inside a
+fortnight, even to a list of books set up in sliding sectional cases.
+She had hoped to buy those cases some day, one at a time, and getting
+them at one fell swoop seemed to her more arrogantly opulent than the
+purchase of the house and grounds&mdash;than even the big shiny victrola. She
+had bought that herself, before there was a house to put it in, going on
+the principle that all men not professional musicians have a concealed
+passion for music that they can create themselves by merely winding up
+something. And&mdash;to anticipate&mdash;she found that as far as Allan was
+concerned she was quite right.</p>
+
+<p>"But why do you take this very radical step, my dear?" asked Mrs. De
+Guenther gently, as she helped Phyllis choose furniture.</p>
+
+<p>"I am going to try the only thing Allan's<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_118" id="Page_118">[Pg 118]</a></span> mother seems to have
+omitted," said Phyllis dauntlessly. "A complete change of surroundings."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, my dear!" breathed Mrs. De Guenther. "It may help poor Allan more
+than we know! And dear Angela did discuss moving often, but she could
+never bear to leave the city house, where so many of her dear ones have
+passed away."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, none of <i>my</i> dear ones are going to pass away there," said
+Phyllis irreverently, "unless Mrs. Clancy wants to. I'm not even taking
+any servants but Wallis. The country-house doesn't need any more than a
+cook, a chambermaid, and outdoor man. Mrs. Clancy is getting them. I
+told her I didn't care what age or color she chose, but they had to be
+cheerful. She will stay in the city and keep the others straight, in
+something she calls board-wages. I'm starting absolutely fresh."</p>
+
+<p>They were back at Mrs. De Guenther's house by the time Phyllis was done
+telling her plans, Phyllis sitting in the identical pluffy chair where
+she had made her decision to marry Allan. Mrs. De Guenther<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_119" id="Page_119">[Pg 119]</a></span> sprang from
+her own chair, and came over and impulsively kissed her.</p>
+
+<p>"God bless you, dear!" she said. "I believe it was Heaven that inspired
+Albert and myself to choose you to carry on poor Angela's work."</p>
+
+<p>Phyllis flushed indignantly.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm undoing a little of it, I hope," she said passionately. "If I can
+only make that poor boy forget some of those dreadful years she spent
+crying over him, I shan't have lived in vain!"</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. De Guenther looked at Phyllis earnestly&mdash;and, most unexpectedly,
+burst into a little tinkling laugh.</p>
+
+<p>"My dear," she said mischievously, "what about all the fine things you
+were going to do for yourself to make up for being tied to poor Allan?
+You should really stop being unselfish, and enjoy yourself a little."</p>
+
+<p>Phyllis felt herself flushing crimson. Elderly people did seem to be so
+sentimental!</p>
+
+<p>"I've bought myself lots of things," she defended herself. "Most of this
+is really for me. And&mdash;I can't help being good to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_120" id="Page_120">[Pg 120]</a></span> him. It's only common
+humanity. I was never so sorry for anybody in my life&mdash;you'd be, too, if
+it were Mr. De Guenther!"</p>
+
+<p>She thought her explanation was complete. But she must have said
+something that she did not realize, for Mrs. De Guenther only laughed
+her little tinkling laugh again, and&mdash;as is the fashion of elderly
+people&mdash;kissed her.</p>
+
+<p>"I would, indeed, my dear," said she.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_121" id="Page_121">[Pg 121]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="X" id="X"></a>X</h2>
+
+
+<p>Allan Harrington lay in his old attitude on his couch in the darkened
+day-room, his tired, clear-cut face a little thrown back, eyes
+half-closed. He was not thinking of anything or any one especially;
+merely wrapped in a web of the dragging, empty, gray half-thoughts of
+weariness in general that had hung about him so many years. Wallis was
+not there. Wallis had been with him much less lately, and he had
+scarcely seen Phyllis for a fortnight; or, for the matter of that, the
+dog, or any one at all. Something was going on, he supposed, but he
+scarcely troubled himself to wonder what. The girl was doubtless making
+herself boudoirs or something of the sort in a new part of the house. He
+closed his eyes entirely, there in the dusky room, and let the web of
+dreary, gray, formless thought wrap him again.</p>
+
+<p>Phyllis's gay, sweetly carrying voice rang from outside the door:</p>
+
+<p>"The three-thirty, then, Wallis, and I<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_122" id="Page_122">[Pg 122]</a></span> feel as if I were going to steal
+Charlie Ross! Well&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>On the last word she broke off and pushed the sitting-room door softly
+open and slid in. She walked in a pussy-cat fashion which would have
+suggested to any one watching her a dark burden on her conscience.</p>
+
+<p>She crossed straight to the couch, looked around for the chair that
+should have been by it but wasn't, and sat absently down on the floor.
+She liked floors.</p>
+
+<p>"Allan!" she said.</p>
+
+<p>No answer.</p>
+
+<p>"Allan <i>Harrington</i>!"</p>
+
+<p>Still none. Allan was half-asleep, or what did instead, in one of his
+abstracted moods.</p>
+
+<p>"<i>All-an Harrington!</i>"</p>
+
+<p>This time she reached up and pulled at his heavy silk sleeve as she
+spoke.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," said Allan courteously, as if from an infinite distance.</p>
+
+<p>"Would you mind," asked Phyllis guilelessly, "if Wallis&mdash;we&mdash;moved
+you&mdash;a little? I can tell you all about everything, unless<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_123" id="Page_123">[Pg 123]</a></span> you'd rather
+not have the full details of the plan&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Anything," said Allan wearily from the depths of his gray cloud; "only
+don't <i>bother</i> me about it!"</p>
+
+<p>Phyllis jumped to her feet, a whirl of gay blue skirts and cheerfully
+tossing blue feathers. "Good-by, dear Crusader!" she said with a catch
+in her voice that might have been either a laugh or a sob. "The next
+time you see me you'll probably <i>hate</i> me! Wallis!"</p>
+
+<p>Wallis appeared like the Slave of the Lamp. "It's all right, Wallis,"
+she said, and ran. Wallis proceeded thereupon to wheel his master's
+couch into the bedroom.</p>
+
+<p>"If you're going to be moved, you'd better be dressed a little heavier,
+sir," he said with the same amiable guilelessness, if the victim had but
+noticed it, which Phyllis had used from her seat on the floor not long
+before.</p>
+
+<p>"Very well," said Allan resignedly from his cloud. And Wallis proceeded
+to suit the action to the word.</p>
+
+<p>Allan let him go on in unnoticing silence<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_124" id="Page_124">[Pg 124]</a></span> till it came to that totally
+unfamiliar thing these seven years, a stand-up collar. A shiningly new
+linen collar of the newest cut, a beautiful golden-brown knit tie, a
+gray suit&mdash;&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"What on earth?" inquired Allan, awakening from his lethargy. "I don't
+need a collar and tie to keep me from getting cold on a journey across
+the house. And where did you get those clothes? They look new."</p>
+
+<p>Wallis laid his now fully dressed master back to a reclining
+position&mdash;he had been propped up&mdash;and tucked a handkerchief into the
+appropriate pocket as he replied, "Grant &amp; Moxley's, sir, where you
+always deal." And he wheeled the couch back to the day-room, over to its
+very door.</p>
+
+<p>It did not occur to Allan, as he was being carried downstairs by Wallis
+and Arthur, another of the servants, that anything more than a change of
+rooms was intended; nor, as he was carried out at its door to a long
+closed carriage, that it was anything worse than his new keeper's
+mistaken idea that drives would be good for him. He was a little
+irritable at the length and shut<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_125" id="Page_125">[Pg 125]</a></span>upness of the drive, though, as his cot
+had been swung deftly from the ceiling of the carriage, he was not
+jarred. But when Wallis and Arthur carried the light pallet on which he
+lay swiftly up a plank walk laid to the door of a private car&mdash;why then
+it began to occur to Allan Harrington that something was happening.
+And&mdash;which rather surprised himself&mdash;he did not lift a supercilious
+eyebrow and say in a soft, apathetic voice, "Very we-ell!" Instead, he
+turned his head towards the devoted Wallis, who had helped two
+conductors swing the cot from the ceiling, and was now waiting for the
+storm to break. And what he said to Wallis was this:</p>
+
+<p>"What the deuce does this tomfoolery mean?" As he spoke he felt the
+accumulated capacity for temper of the last seven years surging up
+toward Wallis, and Arthur, and Phyllis, and the carriage-horses, and
+everything else, down to the two conductors. Wallis seemed rather
+relieved than otherwise. Waiting for a storm to break is rather wearing.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, sir, Mrs. Harrington, she thought,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_126" id="Page_126">[Pg 126]</a></span> sir, that&mdash;that a little move
+would do you good. And you didn't want to be bothered, sir&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Bothered!" shouted Allan, not at all like a bored and dying invalid. "I
+should think I did, when a change in my whole way of life is made! Who
+gave you, or Mrs. Harrington, permission for this outrageous
+performance! It's sheer, brutal, insulting idiocy!"</p>
+
+<p>"Nobody, sir&mdash;yes, sir," replied Wallis meekly. "Would you care for a
+drink, sir&mdash;or anything?"</p>
+
+<p>"<i>No!</i>" thundered Allan.</p>
+
+<p>"Or a fan?" ventured Wallis, approaching near with that article and
+laying it on the coverlid. Allan's hand snatched the fan angrily&mdash;and
+before he thought he had hurled it at Wallis! Weakly, it is true, for it
+lighted ingloriously about five feet away; but he had <i>thrown</i> it, with
+a movement that must have put to use the muscles of the long-disused
+upper arm. Wallis sat suddenly down and caught his breath.</p>
+
+<p>"Mr. Allan!" he said. "Do you know what you did then? You <i>threw</i>, and
+you<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_127" id="Page_127">[Pg 127]</a></span> haven't been able to use more than your forearm before! Oh, Mr.
+Allan, you're getting better!"</p>
+
+<p>Allan himself lay in astonishment at his feat, and forgot to be angry
+for a moment. "I certainly did!" he said.</p>
+
+<p>"And the way you lost your temper!" went on Wallis enthusiastically.
+"Oh, Mr. Allan, it was beautiful! You haven't been more than to say
+snarly since the accident! It was so like the way you used to throw
+hair-brushes&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>But at the mention of his lost temper Allan remembered to lose it still
+further. His old capacity for storming, a healthy lad's healthy young
+hot-temperedness, had been weakened by long disuse, but he did fairly
+well. Secretly it was a pleasure to him to find that he was alive enough
+to care what happened, enough for anger. He demanded presently where he
+was going.</p>
+
+<p>"Not more than two hours' ride, sir, I heard Mr. De Guenther mention,"
+answered Wallis at once. "A little place called Wallraven&mdash;quite
+country, sir, I believe."</p>
+
+<p>"So the De Guenthers are in it, too!"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_128" id="Page_128">[Pg 128]</a></span> said Allan. "What the dickens has
+this girl done to them, to hypnotize them so?"</p>
+
+<p>"But I've heard say it's a very pretty place, sir," was all Wallis
+vouchsafed to this. The De Guenthers were not the only people Phyllis
+had hypnotized.</p>
+
+<p>He gave Allan other details as they went on, however. His clothes and
+personal belongings were coming on immediately. There were two
+suit-cases, perhaps he had noticed, in the car with them. The young
+madam was planning to stay all the summer, he believed. Mrs. Clancy had
+been left behind to look after the other servants, and he understood
+that she had seen to the engagement of a fresh staff of servants for the
+country. And Allan, still awakened by his fit of temper, and fresh from
+the monotony of his seven years' seclusion, found all the things Wallis
+could tell him very interesting.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>Phyllis's rose-garden house had, among other virtues, the charm of being
+near the little station: a new little mission station<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_129" id="Page_129">[Pg 129]</a></span> which had
+apparently been called Wallraven by some poetic young real-estate
+agency, for the surrounding countryside looked countrified enough to be
+a Gray's Corners, or Smith's Crossing, or some other such placid old
+country name. There were more trees to be seen in Allan's quick passage
+from the train to the long old carryall (whose seats had been removed to
+make room for his cot) than he had remembered existed. There were sleepy
+birds to be heard, too, talking about how near sunset and their bedtime
+had come, and a little brook splashed somewhere out of sight. Altogether
+spring was to be seen and heard and felt, winningly insistent. Allan
+forgave Wallis, not to speak of Phyllis and the conductors, to a certain
+degree. He ordered the flapping black oilcloth curtain in front rolled
+up so he could see out, and secretly enjoyed the drive, unforeseen
+though it had been. His spine never said a word. Perhaps it, too,
+enjoyed having a change from a couch in a dark city room.</p>
+
+<p>They saw no one in their passage through the long, low old house.
+Phyllis evidently<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_130" id="Page_130">[Pg 130]</a></span> had learned that Allan didn't like his carryings
+about done before people.</p>
+
+<p>Wallis seemed to be acting under a series of detailed orders. He and
+Arthur carried their master to a long, well-lighted room at the end of
+the house, and deftly transferred him to a couch much more convenient,
+being newer, than the old one. On this he was wheeled to his adjoining
+bedroom, and when Wallis had made him comfortable there, he left him
+mysteriously for a while. It was growing dark by now, and the lights
+were on. They were rose-shaded, Allan noticed, as the others had been at
+home. Allan watched the details of his room with that vivid interest in
+little changes which only invalids can know. There was an old-fashioned
+landscape story paper on the walls, with very little repeat. Over it,
+but not where they interfered with tracing out the adventures of the
+paper people, were a good many pictures, quite incongruous, for they
+were of the Remington type men like, but pleasant to see nevertheless.
+The furniture was chintz-covered and gay. There was not one thing in
+the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_131" id="Page_131">[Pg 131]</a></span> room to remind a man that he was an invalid. It occurred to Allan
+that Phyllis must have put a good deal of deliberate work on the place.
+He lay contentedly, watching the grate fire, and trying to trace out the
+story of the paper, for at least a half-hour. He found himself, at
+length, much to his own surprise, thinking with a certain longing of his
+dinner-tray. He was thinking of it more and more interestedly by the
+time Wallis&mdash;trayless&mdash;came back.</p>
+
+<p>"Mr. and Mrs. De Guenther and the young madam are waiting for you in the
+living-room," he announced. "They would be glad if you would have supper
+with them."</p>
+
+<p>"Very well," said Allan amiably, still much to his own surprise. The
+truth was, he was still enough awake and interested to want to go on
+having things happen.</p>
+
+<p>The room Wallis wheeled him back into was a long, low one, wainscoted
+and bare-floored. It was furnished with the best imitation Chippendale
+to be obtained in a hurry, but over and above there were cushioned
+chairs and couches enough for<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_132" id="Page_132">[Pg 132]</a></span> solid comfort. There were more cheerful
+pictures, the Maxfield Parrishes Phyllis had wanted, over the
+green-papered walls. There was a fire here also. The room had no more
+period than a girl's sentence, but there was a bright air of welcomeness
+and informality that was winning. An old-fashioned half-table against
+the wall was covered with a great many picknicky things to eat. Another
+table had more things, mostly to eat with, on it. And there were the De
+Guenthers and Phyllis. On the whole it felt very like a welcome-home.</p>
+
+<p>Phyllis, in a satiny rose-colored gown he had never seen before, came
+over to his couch to meet him. She looked very apprehensive and young
+and wistful for the r&ocirc;le of Bold Bad Hypnotist. She bent towards him
+with her hand out, seemed about to speak, then backed, flushed, and
+acted as if something had frightened her badly.</p>
+
+<p>"Is she as afraid of me as all that?" thought Allan. Wallis must have
+given her a lurid account of how he had behaved. His quick impulse was
+to reassure her.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, Phyllis, my dear, you certainly<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_133" id="Page_133">[Pg 133]</a></span> didn't bother me with plans
+<i>this</i> time!" he said, smiling. "This is a bully surprise!"</p>
+
+<p>"I&mdash;I'm glad you like it," said his wife shyly, still backing away.</p>
+
+<p>"Of course he'd like it," said Mrs. De Guenther's kind staccato voice
+behind him. "Kiss your husband, and tell him he's welcome home, Phyllis
+child!"</p>
+
+<p>Now, Phyllis was tired with much hurried work, and overstrung. And
+Allan, lying there smiling boyishly up at her, Allan seen for the first
+time in these usual-looking gray man-clothes, was like neither the
+marble Crusader she had feared nor the heartbroken little boy she had
+pitied. He was suddenly her contemporary, a very handsome and attractive
+young fellow, a little her senior. From all appearances, he might have
+been well and normal, and come home to her only a little tired, perhaps,
+by the day's work or sport, as he lay smiling at her in that friendly,
+intimate way! It was terrifyingly different. Everything felt different.
+All her little pieces of feeling for him, pity and awe and friendliness
+and love of service, seemed to spring suddenly<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_134" id="Page_134">[Pg 134]</a></span> together and make
+something else&mdash;something unplaced and disturbing. Her cheeks burned
+with a childish embarrassment as she stood there before him in her
+ruffled pink gown. What should she do?</p>
+
+<p>It was just then that Mrs. De Guenther's crisply spoken advice came.
+Phyllis was one of those people whose first unconscious instinct is to
+obey an unspoken order. She bent blindly to Allan's lips, and kissed him
+with a child's obedience, then straightened up, aghast. He would think
+her very bold!</p>
+
+<p>But he did not, for some reason. It may have seemed only comforting and
+natural to him, that swift childish kiss, and Phyllis's honey-colored,
+violet-scented hair brushing his face. Men take a great deal without
+question as their rightful due.</p>
+
+<p>The others closed around him then, welcoming him, laughing at the
+surprise and the way he had taken it, telling him all about it as if
+everything were as usual and pleasant as possible, and the present state
+of things had always been a pleasant commonplace. And Wallis began to
+serve the picnic supper.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_135" id="Page_135">[Pg 135]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="XI" id="XI"></a>XI</h2>
+
+
+<p>There were trays and little tables, and the food itself would have
+betrayed a southern darky in the kitchen if nothing else had. It was the
+first meal Allan had eaten with any one for years, and he found it so
+interesting as to be almost exciting. Wallis took the plates invisibly
+away when they were done, and they continued to stay in their
+half-circle about the fire and talk it all over. Phyllis, tired to death
+still, had slid to her favorite floor-seat, curled on cushions and
+leaning against the couch-side. Allan could have touched her hair with
+his hand. She thought of this, curled there, but she was too tired to
+move. It was exciting to be near him, somehow, tired as she was.</p>
+
+<p>Most of the short evening was spent celebrating the fact that Allan had
+thrown something at Wallis, who was recalled to tell the story three
+times in detail. Then there was the house to discuss, its good and bad
+points, its nearnesses and farnesses.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_136" id="Page_136">[Pg 136]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Let me tell you, Allan," said Mrs. De Guenther warmly at this point,
+from her seat at the foot of the couch, "this wife of yours is a wonder.
+Not many girls could have had a house in this condition two weeks after
+it was bought."</p>
+
+<p>Allan looked down at the heap of shining hair below him, all he could
+see of Phyllis.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," he said consideringly. "She certainly is."</p>
+
+<p>At a certain slowness in his tone, Phyllis sprang up. "You must be tired
+to <i>death</i>!" she said. "It must be nearly ten. Do you feel worn out?"</p>
+
+<p>Before he could say anything, Mrs. De Guenther had also risen, and was
+sweeping away her husband.</p>
+
+<p>"Of course he is," she said decisively. "What have we all been thinking
+of? And we must go to bed, too, Albert, if you insist on taking that
+early train in the morning, and I insist on going with you. Good-night,
+children."</p>
+
+<p>Wallis had appeared by this time, and was wheeling Allan from the room
+before he had a chance to say much of anything<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_137" id="Page_137">[Pg 137]</a></span> but good-night. The De
+Guenthers talked a little longer to Phyllis, and were gone also. Phyllis
+flung herself full-length on the rugs and pillows before the fire, too
+tired to move further.</p>
+
+<p>Well, she had everything that she had wished for on that wet February
+day in the library. Money, leisure to be pretty, a husband whom she
+"didn't have to associate with much," rest, if she ever gave herself
+leave to take it, and the rose-garden. She had her wishes, as uncannily
+fulfilled as if she had been ordering her fate from a department store,
+and had money to pay for it.... And back there in the city it was
+somebody's late night, and that somebody&mdash;it would be Anna Black's turn,
+wouldn't it?&mdash;was struggling with John Zanowskis and Sadie Rabinowitzes
+by the lapful, just as she had. And yet&mdash;and yet they had really cared
+for her, those dirty, dear little foreigners of hers. But she'd had to
+work for their liking.... Perhaps&mdash;perhaps she could make Allan
+Harrington like her as much as the children did. He had been so kind
+to-night about<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_138" id="Page_138">[Pg 138]</a></span> the move and all, and so much brighter, her handsome
+Allan in his gray, every-day-looking man-clothes! If she could stay
+brave enough and kind enough and bright enough ... her eyelids
+drooped.... Wallis was standing respectfully over her.</p>
+
+<p>"Mrs. Harrington," he was saying, with a really masterly ignoring of her
+attitude on the rug, "Mr. Harrington says you haven't bid him good-night
+yet."</p>
+
+<p>An amazing message! Had she been in the habit of it, that he demanded it
+like a small boy? But she sprang up and followed Wallis into Allan's
+room. He was lying back in his white silk sleeping things among the
+white bed-draperies, looking as he always had before. Only, he seemed
+too alive and awake still for his old r&ocirc;le of Crusader-on-a-tomb.</p>
+
+<p>"Phyllis," he began eagerly, as she sat down beside him, "what made you
+so frightened when I first came? Wallis hadn't worried you, had he?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, no; it wasn't that at all," said Phyllis. "And thank you for being
+so generous about it all."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_139" id="Page_139">[Pg 139]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"I wasn't generous," said her husband. "I behaved like everything to old
+Wallis about it. Well, what was it, then?"</p>
+
+<p>"I&mdash;I&mdash;only&mdash;you looked so different in&mdash;<i>clothes</i>," pleaded Phyllis,
+"like any man my age or older&mdash;as if you might get up and go to
+business, or play tennis, or anything, and&mdash;and I was <i>afraid</i> of you!
+That's all, truly!"</p>
+
+<p>She was sitting on the bed's edge, her eyes down, her hands quivering in
+her lap, the picture of a school-girl who isn't quite sure whether she's
+been good or not.</p>
+
+<p>"Why, that sounds truthful!" said Allan, and laughed. It was the first
+time she had heard him, and she gave a start. Such a clear, cheerful,
+<i>young</i> laugh! Maybe he would laugh more, by and by, if she worked hard
+to make him.</p>
+
+<p>"Good-night, Allan," she said.</p>
+
+<p>"Aren't you going to kiss me good-night?" demanded this new Allan,
+precisely as if she had been doing it ever since she met him. Evidently
+that kiss three hours ago had created a precedent. Phyllis colored to
+her ears. She seemed to herself to be<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_140" id="Page_140">[Pg 140]</a></span> always coloring now. But she
+mustn't cross Allan, tired as he must be!</p>
+
+<p>"Good-night, Allan," she said again sedately, and kissed his cheek as
+she had done a month ago&mdash;years ago!&mdash;when they had been married. Then
+she fled.</p>
+
+<p>"Wallis," said his master dreamily when his man appeared again, "I want
+some more real clothes. Tired of sleeping-suits. Get me some, please.
+Good-night."</p>
+
+<p>As for Phyllis, in her little green-and-white room above him, she was
+crying comfortably into her pillow. She had not the faintest idea why,
+except that she liked doing it. She felt, through her sleepiness, a
+faint, hungry, pleasant want of something, though she hadn't an idea
+what it could be. She had everything, except that it wasn't time for the
+roses to be out yet. Probably that was the trouble.... Roses.... She,
+too, went to sleep.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>"How did Mr. Allan pass the night?" Phyllis asked Wallis anxiously,
+standing outside his door next morning. She had been up since seven,
+speeding the parting<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_141" id="Page_141">[Pg 141]</a></span> guests and interviewing the cook and chambermaid.
+Mrs. Clancy's choice had been cheerful to a degree, and black, all of
+it; a fat Virginia cook, a slim young Tuskegee chambermaid of a pale
+saddle-color, and a shiny brown outdoor man who came from nowhere in
+particular, but was very useful now he was here. Phyllis had seen them
+all this morning, and found them everything servants should be. Now she
+was looking after Allan, as her duty was.</p>
+
+<p>Wallis beamed from against the door-post, his tray in his hands.</p>
+
+<p>"Mrs. Harrington, it's one of the best sleeps Mr. Allan's had! Four
+hours straight, and then sleeping still, if broken, till six! And still
+taking interest in things. Oh, ma'am, you should have heard him
+yesterday on the train, as furious as furious! It was beautiful!"</p>
+
+<p>"Then his spine wasn't jarred," said Phyllis thoughtfully. "Wallis, I
+believe there was more nervous shock and nervous depression than ever
+the doctors realized. And I believe all he needs is to be kept happy, to
+be much, much better. Wouldn't<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_142" id="Page_142">[Pg 142]</a></span> it be wonderful if he got so he could
+move freely from the waist up? I believe that may happen if we can keep
+him cheered and interested."</p>
+
+<p>Wallis looked down at his tray. "Yes, ma'am," he said. "Not to speak ill
+of the dead, Mrs. Harrington, the late Mrs. Harrington was always saying
+'My poor stricken boy,' and things like that&mdash;'Do not jar him with
+ill-timed light or merriment,' and reminding him how bad he was. And she
+certainly didn't jar him with any merriment, ma'am."</p>
+
+<p>"What were the doctors thinking about?" demanded Phyllis indignantly.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, ma'am, they did all sorts of things to poor Mr. Allan for the
+first year or so. And then, as nothing helped, and they couldn't find
+out what was wrong to have paralyzed him so, he begged to have them
+stopped hurting him. So we haven't had one for the past five years."</p>
+
+<p>"I think a masseur and a wheel-chair are the next things to get," said
+Phyllis decisively. "And remember, Wallis, there's something the matter
+with Mr. Allan's<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_143" id="Page_143">[Pg 143]</a></span> shutters. They won't always close the sunshine out as
+they should."</p>
+
+<p>Wallis almost winked, if an elderly, mutton-chopped servitor can be
+imagined as winking.</p>
+
+<p>"No, ma'am," he promised. "Something wrong with 'em. I'll remember,
+ma'am."</p>
+
+<p>Phyllis went singing on down the sunny old house, swinging her colored
+muslin skirts and prancing a little with sheer joy of being twenty-five,
+and prettily dressed, with a dear house all her own, and&mdash;yes&mdash;a dear
+Allan a little her own, too! Doing well for a man what another woman has
+done badly has a perennial joy for a certain type of woman, and this was
+what Phyllis was in the very midst of. She pranced a little more, and
+came almost straight up against a long old mirror with gilt cornices,
+which had come with the house and was staying with it. Phyllis stopped
+and looked critically at herself.</p>
+
+<p>"I haven't taken time yet to be pretty," she reminded the girl in the
+glass, and began then and there to take account of stock, by way of
+beginning. Why&mdash;a good deal had<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_144" id="Page_144">[Pg 144]</a></span> done itself! Her hair had been washed
+and sunned and sunned and washed about every ten minutes since she had
+been away from the library. It was springy and three shades more golden.
+She had not been rushing out in all weathers unveiled, nor washing
+hastily with hard water and cheap library soap eight or ten times a day,
+because private houses are comparatively clean places. So her complexion
+had been getting back, unnoticed, a good deal of its original country
+rose-and-cream, with a little gold glow underneath. And the tired
+heaviness was gone from her eyelids, because she had scarcely used her
+eyes since she had married Allan&mdash;there had been too much else to do!
+The little frown-lines between the brows had gone, too, with the need of
+reading-glasses and work under electricity. She was more rounded, and
+her look was less intent. The strained Liberry Teacher look was gone.
+The luminous long blue eyes in the glass looked back at her girlishly.
+"Would you think we were twenty-five even?" they said. Phyllis smiled
+irrepressibly at the mirrored girl.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_145" id="Page_145">[Pg 145]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Yas'm," said the rich and comfortable voice of Lily-Anna, the cook,
+from the dining-room door; "you sholy is pretty. Yas'm&mdash;a lady <i>wants</i>
+to stay pretty when she's married. Yo' don' look much mo'n a bride,
+ma'am, an' dat's a fac'. Does you want yo' dinnehs brought into de
+sittin'-room regular till de gem'man gits well?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes&mdash;no&mdash;yes&mdash;for the present, any way," said Phyllis, with a mixture
+of confusion and dignity. Fortunately the doorbell chose this time to
+ring.</p>
+
+<p>A business-like young messenger with a rocking crate wanted to speak to
+the madam. The last item on Phyllis's shopping list had come.</p>
+
+<p>"The wolfhound's doing fine, ma'am," the messenger answered in response
+to her questions. "Like a different dog already. All he needed was
+exercise and a little society. Yes'm, this pup's broken&mdash;in a manner,
+that is. Your man picked you out the best-tempered little feller in the
+litter. Here, Foxy&mdash;careful, lady! Hold on to his leash!"</p>
+
+<p>There was the passage of the check, a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_146" id="Page_146">[Pg 146]</a></span> few directions about
+dog-biscuits, and then the messenger from the kennels drove back to the
+station, the crate, which had been emptied of a wriggling six-months
+black bull-dog, on the seat beside him.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_147" id="Page_147">[Pg 147]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="XII" id="XII"></a>XII</h2>
+
+
+<p>Allan, lying at the window of the sunny bedroom, and wondering if they
+had been having springs like this all the time he had lived in the city,
+heard a scuffle outside the door. His wife's voice inquired breathlessly
+of Wallis, "Can Mr. Allan&mdash;see me?... Oh, gracious&mdash;<i>don't</i>, Foxy, you
+little black gargoyle! Open the door, or&mdash;shut it&mdash;quick, Wallis!"</p>
+
+<p>But the door, owing to circumstances over which nobody but the black dog
+had any control, flew violently open here, and Allan had a flying vision
+of his wife, flushed, laughing, and badly mussed, being railroaded
+across the room by a prancingly exuberant French bull at the end of a
+leash.</p>
+
+<p>"He's&mdash;he's a cheerful dog," panted Phyllis, trying to bring Foxy to
+anchor near Allan, "and I don't think he knows how to keep still long
+enough to pose across your feet&mdash;he wouldn't become them anyhow&mdash;he's a
+real man-dog, Allan, not an interior decoration.... Oh, Wallis,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_148" id="Page_148">[Pg 148]</a></span> he has
+Mr. Allan's slipper! Foxy, you little fraud! Did him want a drink,
+angel-puppy?"</p>
+
+<p>"Did you get him for me, Phyllis?" asked Allan when the tumult and the
+shouting had died, and the caracoling Foxy had buried his hideous little
+black pansy-face in a costly Belleek dish of water.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," gasped Phyllis from her favorite seat, the floor; "but you
+needn't keep him unless you want to. I can keep him where you'll never
+see him&mdash;can't I, honey-dog-gums? Only I thought he'd be company for
+you, and don't you think he seems&mdash;cheerful?"</p>
+
+<p>Allan threw his picturesque head back on the cushions, and laughed and
+laughed.</p>
+
+<p>"Cheerful!" he said. "Most assuredly! Why&mdash;thank you, ever so much,
+Phyllis. You're an awfully thoughtful girl. I always did like bulls&mdash;had
+one in college, a Nelson. Come here, you little rascal!"</p>
+
+<p>He whistled, and the puppy lifted its muzzle from the water, made a
+dripping dash to the couch, and scrambled up over Allan as if they had
+owned each other<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_149" id="Page_149">[Pg 149]</a></span> since birth. Never was a dog less weighed down by the
+glories of ancestry.</p>
+
+<p>Allan pulled the flopping bat-ears with his most useful hand, and asked
+with interest, "Why on earth did they call a French bull Foxy?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, sir," said Wallis. "I understand, sir, that he was the most active
+and playful of the litter, and chewed up all his brothers' ears, sir.
+And the kennel people thought it was so clever that they called him
+Foxy."</p>
+
+<p>"The best-tempered dog in the litter!" cried Phyllis, bursting into
+helpless laughter from the floor.</p>
+
+<p>"That doesn't mean he's bad-tempered," explained master and man eagerly
+together. Phyllis began to see that she had bought a family pet as much
+for Wallis as for Allan. She left them adoring the dog with that
+reverent emotion which only very ugly bull-dogs can wake in a man's
+breast, and flitted out, happy over the success of her new toy for
+Allan.</p>
+
+<p>"Take him out when he gets too much for Mr. Allan," she managed to say
+softly<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_150" id="Page_150">[Pg 150]</a></span> to Wallis as she passed him. But, except for a run or so for his
+health, Wallis and Allan between them kept the dog in the bedroom most
+of the day. Phyllis, in one of her flying visits, found the little
+fellow, tired with play, dog-biscuits, and other attentions, snuggled
+down by his master, his little crumpled black muzzle on the pillow close
+to Allan's contented, sleeping face. She felt as if she wanted to cry.
+The pathetic lack of interests which made the coming of a new little dog
+such an event!</p>
+
+<p>Before she hung one more picture, before she set up even a book from the
+boxes which had been her father's, before she arranged one more article
+of furniture, she telephoned to the village for the regular delivery of
+four daily papers, and a half-dozen of the most masculine magazines she
+could think of on the library lists. She had never known of Allan's
+doing any reading. That he had cared for books before the accident, she
+knew. At any rate, she was resolved to leave no point uncovered that
+might, just possibly <i>might</i>, help her Allan just a little way to
+interest in life, which she felt to be<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_151" id="Page_151">[Pg 151]</a></span> the way to recovery. He liked
+being told stories to, any way.</p>
+
+<p>"Do you think Mr. Allan will feel like coming into the living-room
+to-day?" she asked Wallis, meeting him in the hall about two o'clock.</p>
+
+<p>"Why, he's dressed, ma'am," was Wallis's astonishing reply, "and him and
+the pup is having a fine game of play. He's got more use of that hand
+an' arm, ma'am, than we thought."</p>
+
+<p>"Do you think he'd care to be wheeled into the living-room about four?"
+asked Phyllis.</p>
+
+<p>"For tea, ma'am?" inquired Wallis, beaming. "I should think so, ma'am.
+I'll ask, anyhow."</p>
+
+<p>Phyllis had not thought of tea&mdash;one does not stop for such leisurely
+amenities in a busy public library&mdash;but she saw the beauty of the idea,
+and saw to it that the tea was there. Lily-Anna was a jewel. She built
+the fire up to a bright flame, and brought in some daffodils from the
+garden without a word from her mistress. Phyllis herself saw that the
+victrola was in readi<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_152" id="Page_152">[Pg 152]</a></span>ness, and cleared a space for the couch near the
+fire. There was quite a festal feeling.</p>
+
+<p>The talking-machine was also a surprise for Allan. Phyllis thought
+afterward that she should have saved it for another day, but the
+temptation to grace the occasion with it was too strong. She and Allan
+were as excited over it as a couple of children, and the only drawback
+to Allan's enjoyment was that he obviously wanted to take the records
+out of her unaccustomed fingers and adjust them himself. He knew how, it
+appeared, and Phyllis naturally didn't. However, she managed to follow
+his directions successfully. She had bought recklessly of rag-time
+discs, and provided a fair amount of opera selections. Allan seemed
+equally happy over both. After the thing had been playing for
+three-quarters of an hour, and most of the records were exhausted,
+Phyllis rang for tea. It was getting a little darker now, and the
+wood-fire cast fantastic red and black lights and shadows over the room.
+It was very intimate and thrilling to Phyllis suddenly, the fire-lit
+room, with just their two<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_153" id="Page_153">[Pg 153]</a></span> selves there. Allan, on his couch before the
+fire, looked bright and contented. The adjustable couch-head had been
+braced to such a position that he was almost sitting up. The bull-dog,
+who had lately come back from a long walk with the gratified outdoor
+man, snored regularly on the rug near his master, wakening enough to bat
+his tail on the floor if he was referred to. The little tea-table was
+between Allan and Phyllis, crowned with a bunch of apple-blossoms, whose
+spring-like scent dominated the warm room. Phyllis, in her green gown,
+her cheeks pink with excitement, was waiting on her lord and master a
+little silently.</p>
+
+<p>Allan watched her amusedly for awhile&mdash;she was as intent as a good child
+over her tea-ball and her lemon and her little cakes.</p>
+
+<p>"Say something, Phyllis," he suggested with the touch of mischief she
+was not yet used to, coming from him.</p>
+
+<p>"This is a serious matter," she replied gravely. "Do you know I haven't
+made tea&mdash;afternoon tea, that is&mdash;for so long it's a wonder I know which
+is the cup and which is the saucer?"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_154" id="Page_154">[Pg 154]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Why not?" he asked idly, yet interestedly too.</p>
+
+<p>"I was otherwise occupied. I was a Daughter of Toil," explained Phyllis
+serenely, setting down her own cup to relax in her chair, hands behind
+her head; looking, in her green gown, the picture of graceful, strong,
+young indolence. "I was a librarian&mdash;didn't you know?"</p>
+
+<p>"No. I wish you'd tell me, if you don't mind," said Allan. "About you, I
+mean, Phyllis. Do you know, I feel awfully married to you this
+afternoon&mdash;you've bullied me so much it's no wonder&mdash;and I really ought
+to know about my wife's dark past."</p>
+
+<p>Phyllis's heart beat a little faster. She, too, had felt "awfully
+married" here alone in the fire-lit living-room, dealing so intimately
+and gayly with Allan.</p>
+
+<p>"There isn't much to tell," she said soberly.</p>
+
+<p>"Come over here closer," commanded Allan the spoilt. "We've both had all
+the tea we want. Come close by the couch. I want to see you when you
+talk."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_155" id="Page_155">[Pg 155]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Phyllis did as he ordered.</p>
+
+<p>"I was a New England country minister's daughter," she began. "New
+England country ministers always know lots about Greek and Latin and how
+to make one dollar do the work of one-seventy-five, but they never have
+any dollars left when the doing's over. Father and I lived alone
+together always, and he taught me things, and I petted him&mdash;fathers need
+it, specially when they have country congregations&mdash;and we didn't bother
+much about other folks. Then he&mdash;died. I was eighteen, and I had six
+hundred dollars. I couldn't do arithmetic, because Father had always
+said it was left out of my head, and I needn't bother with it. So I
+couldn't teach. Then they said, 'You like books, and you'd better be a
+librarian.' As a matter of fact, a librarian never gets a chance to
+read, but you can't explain that to the general public. So I came to the
+city and took the course at library school. Then I got a position in the
+Greenway Branch&mdash;two years in the circulating desk, four in the
+cataloguing room, and one in the Children's<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_156" id="Page_156">[Pg 156]</a></span> Department. The short and
+simple annals of the poor!"</p>
+
+<p>"Go on," said Allan.</p>
+
+<p>"I believe it's merely that you like the sound of the human voice," said
+Phyllis, laughing. "I'm going to go on with the story of the Five Little
+Pigs&mdash;you'll enjoy it just as much!"</p>
+
+<p>"Exactly," said Allan. "Tell me what it was like in the library,
+please."</p>
+
+<p>"It was rather interesting," said Phyllis, yielding at once. "There are
+so many different things to be done that you never feel any monotony, as
+I suppose a teacher does. But the hours are not much shorter than a
+department store's, and it's exacting, on-your-feet work all the time. I
+liked the work with the children best. Only&mdash;you never have any time to
+be anything but neat in a library, and you do get so tired of being just
+neat, if you're a girl."</p>
+
+<p>"And a pretty one," said Allan. "I don't suppose the ugly ones mind as
+much."</p>
+
+<p>It was the first thing he had said about her looks. Phyllis's ready
+color came into her cheeks. So he thought she was pretty!<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_157" id="Page_157">[Pg 157]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Do you&mdash;think I'm pretty?" she asked breathlessly. She couldn't help
+it.</p>
+
+<p>"Of course I do, you little goose," said Allan, smiling at her.</p>
+
+<p>Phyllis plunged back into the middle of her story:</p>
+
+<p>"You see, you can't sit up nights to sew much, or practise doing your
+hair new ways, because you need all your strength to get up when the
+alarm-clock barks next morning. And then, there's always the
+money-worry, if you have nothing but your salary. Of course, this last
+year, when I've been getting fifty dollars a month, things have been all
+right. But when it was only thirty a month in the Circulation&mdash;well,
+that was pretty hard pulling," said Phyllis thoughtfully. "But the
+worst&mdash;the worst, Allan, was waking up nights and wondering what would
+happen if you broke down for a long time. Because you <i>can't</i> very well
+save for sickness-insurance on even fifty a month. And the work&mdash;well,
+of course, most girls' work is just a little more than they have the
+strength for, always. But I was awfully lucky to get<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_158" id="Page_158">[Pg 158]</a></span> into children's
+work. Some of my imps, little Poles and Slovaks and Hungarians mostly,
+are the cleverest, most affectionate babies&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>She began to tell him stories of wonderful ten-year-olds who were
+Socialists by conviction, and read economics, and dazed little atypical
+sixteen-year-olds who read Mother Goose, and stopped even that because
+they got married.</p>
+
+<p>"You poor little girl!" said Allan, unheeding. "What brutes they were to
+you! Well, thank Heaven, that's over now!"</p>
+
+<p>"Why, Allan!" she said, laying a soothing hand on his. "Nobody was a
+brute. There's never more than one crank-in-authority in any library,
+they say. Ours was the Supervisor of the Left Half of the Desk, and
+after I got out of Circulation I never saw anything of her."</p>
+
+<p>Allan burst into unexpected laughter. "It sounds like a Chinese title of
+honor," he explained. "'Grand Warder of the Emperor's Left
+Slipper-Rosette,' or something of the sort."</p>
+
+<p>"The Desk's where you get your books<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_159" id="Page_159">[Pg 159]</a></span> stamped," she explained, "and the
+two shifts of girls who attend to that part of the work each have a
+supervisor&mdash;the Right and Left halves. The one that was horrid had
+favorites, and snapped at the ones that weren't. I wasn't under her,
+though. My Supervisor was lovely, an Irishwoman with the most florid
+hats, and the kindest, most just disposition, and always laughing. We
+all adored her, she was so fair-minded."</p>
+
+<p>"You think a good deal about laughing," said Allan thoughtfully. "Does it
+rank as a virtue in libraries, or what?"</p>
+
+<p>"You have to laugh," explained Phyllis. "If you don't see the laugh-side
+of things, you see the cry-side. And you can't afford to be unhappy if
+you have to earn your living. People like brightness best. And it's more
+comfortable for yourself, once you get used to it."</p>
+
+<p>"So that was your philosophy of life," said Allan. His hand tightened
+compassionately on hers. "You <i>poor</i> little girl!... Tell me about the
+cry-side, Phyllis."</p>
+
+<p>His voice was very moved and caressing, and the darkness was deepening
+as the fire<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_160" id="Page_160">[Pg 160]</a></span> sank. Only an occasional tongue of flame glinted across
+Phyllis's silver slipper-buckle and on the seal-ring Allan wore. It was
+easy to tell things there in the perfumed duskiness. It was a great many
+years since any one had cared to hear the cry-side. And it was so dark,
+and the hand keeping hers in the shadows might have been any kind,
+comforting hand. She found herself pouring it all out to Allan, there
+close by her; the loneliness, the strain, the hard work, the lack of all
+the woman-things in her life, the isolation and dreariness at night, the
+over-fatigue, and the hurt of watching youth and womanhood sliding away,
+unused, with nothing to show for all the years; only a cold hope that
+her flock of little transient aliens might be a little better for the
+guidance she could give them&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>
+<span style="margin-left: 1.5em;">Years hence in rustic speech a phrase,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1.5em;">As in rude earth a Grecian vase.</span><br />
+</p>
+
+<p>And then, that wet, discouraged day in February, and the vision of Eva
+Atkinson, radiantly fresh and happy, kept young and pretty by unlimited
+money and time.</p>
+
+<p>"Her children were so pretty," said<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_161" id="Page_161">[Pg 161]</a></span> Phyllis wistfully, "and mine, dear
+little villains, were such dirty, untaught, rude little things&mdash;oh, it
+sounds snobbish, but I'd have given everything I had to have a dainty,
+clean little <i>lady</i>-child throw her arms around me and kiss me, instead
+of my pet little handsome, sticky Polish Jewess. Up at home everything
+had been so clean and old and still that you always could remember it
+had been finished for three hundred years. And Father's clean, still old
+library&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>Phyllis did not know how she was revealing to Allan the unconscious
+motherhood in her; but Allan, femininely sensitive to unspoken things
+from his long sojourn in the dark&mdash;Allan did. It was the mother-instinct
+that she was spending on him, but mother-instinct of a kind he had never
+known before; gayly self-effacing, efficient, shown only in its results.
+And she could never have anything else to spend it on, he thought. Well,
+he was due to die in a few years.... But he didn't want to. Living was
+just beginning to be interesting again, somehow. There seemed no
+satis<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_162" id="Page_162">[Pg 162]</a></span>factory solution for the two of them.... Well, he'd be unselfish
+and die, any way. Meanwhile, why not be happy? Here was Phyllis. His
+hand clasped hers more closely.</p>
+
+<p>"And when Mr. De Guenther made me that offer," she murmured, coloring in
+the darkness, "I was tired and discouraged, and the years seemed so
+endless! It didn't seem as though I'd be harming any one&mdash;but I wouldn't
+have done it if you'd said a word against it&mdash;truly I wouldn't, dear."</p>
+
+<p>The last little word slipped out unnoticed. She had been calling her
+library children "dear" for a year now, and the word slipped out of
+itself. But Allan liked it.</p>
+
+<p>"My poor little girl!" he said. "In your place I'd have married the
+devil himself&mdash;up against a life like that."</p>
+
+<p>"Then&mdash;then you don't&mdash;mind?" asked Phyllis anxiously, as she had asked
+before.</p>
+
+<p>"No, indeed!" said Allan, with a little unnecessary firmness. "I <i>told</i>
+you that, didn't I? I like it."</p>
+
+<p>"So you did tell me," she said penitently.</p>
+
+<p>"But supposing De Guenther hadn't picked out some one like you&mdash;&mdash;"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_163" id="Page_163">[Pg 163]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"That's just what I've often thought myself," said Phyllis naively. "She
+might have been much worse than I.... Oh, but I was frightened when I
+saw you first! I didn't know what you'd be like. And then, when I looked
+at you&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Well, when you looked at me?" demanded Allan.</p>
+
+<p>But Phyllis refused to go on.</p>
+
+<p>"But that's not all," said Allan. "What about&mdash;men?"</p>
+
+<p>"What men?" asked Phyllis innocently.</p>
+
+<p>"Why, men you were interested in, of course," he answered.</p>
+
+<p>"There weren't any," said Phyllis. "I hadn't any place to meet them, or
+anywhere to entertain them if I had met them. Oh, yes, there was one&mdash;an
+old bookkeeper at the boarding-house. All the boarders there were old.
+That was why the people at home had chosen it. They thought it would be
+safe. It was all of that!"</p>
+
+<p>"Well, the bookkeeper?" demanded Allan. "You're straying off from your
+narrative. The bookkeeper, Phyllis, my dear!"</p>
+
+<p>"I'm telling you about him," protested<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_164" id="Page_164">[Pg 164]</a></span> Phyllis. "He was awfully cross
+because I wouldn't marry him, but I didn't see any reason why I should.
+I didn't like him especially, and I would probably have gone on with my
+work afterwards. There didn't seem to me to be anything to it for any
+one but him&mdash;for of course I'd have had his mending and all that to do
+when I came home from the library, and I scarcely got time for my own.
+But he lost his temper fearfully because I didn't want to. Then, of
+course, men would try to flirt in the library, but the janitor always
+made them go out when you asked him to. He loved doing it.... Why,
+Allan, it must be seven o'clock! Shall I turn on more lights?"</p>
+
+<p>"No.... Then you were quite as shut up in your noisy library as I was in
+my dark rooms," said Allan musingly.</p>
+
+<p>"I suppose I was," she said, "though I never thought of it before. You
+mustn't think it was horrid. It was fun, lots of it. Only, there wasn't
+any being a real girl in it."</p>
+
+<p>"There isn't much in this, I should think,"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_165" id="Page_165">[Pg 165]</a></span> said Allan savagely,
+"except looking after a big doll."</p>
+
+<p>Phyllis's laugh tinkled out. "Oh, I <i>love</i> playing with dolls," she said
+mischievously. "And you ought to see my new slippers! I have pink ones,
+and blue ones, and lavender and green, all satin and suede. And when I
+get time I'm going to buy dresses to match. And a banjo, maybe, with a
+self-teacher. There's a room upstairs where nobody can hear a thing you
+do. I've wanted slippers and a banjo ever since I can remember."</p>
+
+<p>"Then you're fairly happy?" demanded Allan suddenly.</p>
+
+<p>"Why, of course!" said Phyllis, though she had not really stopped to ask
+herself before whether she was or not. There had been so many exciting
+things to do. "Wouldn't you be happy if you could buy everything you
+wanted, and every one was lovely to you, and you had pretty clothes and
+a lovely house&mdash;and a rose-garden?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes&mdash;if I could buy everything I wanted," said Allan. His voice dragged
+a little. Phyllis sprang up, instantly penitent.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_166" id="Page_166">[Pg 166]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"You're tired, and I've been talking and talking about my silly little
+woes till I've worn you out!" she said. "But&mdash;Allan, you're getting
+better. Try to move this arm. The hand I'm holding. There! That's a lot
+more than you could do when I first came. I think&mdash;I think it would be a
+good plan for a masseur to come down and see it."</p>
+
+<p>"Now look here, Phyllis," protested Allan, "I like your taste in houses
+and music-boxes and bull-dogs, but I'll be hanged if I'll stand for a
+masseur. There's no use, they can't do me any good, and the last one
+almost killed me. There's no reason why I should be tormented simply
+because a professional pounder needs the money."</p>
+
+<p>"No, no!" said Phyllis. "Not that kind! Wallis can have orders to shoot
+him or something if he touches your spinal column. All I meant was a man
+who would give the muscles of your arms and shoulders a little exercise.
+That couldn't hurt, and might help you use them. That wouldn't be any
+trouble, would it? <i>Please!</i> The first minute he hurts, you can send him
+flying.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_167" id="Page_167">[Pg 167]</a></span> You know they call massage lazy people's exercise."</p>
+
+<p>"I believe you're really interested in making me better," said Allan,
+after a long silence.</p>
+
+<p>"Why, of course," said Phyllis, laughing. "That's what I'm here for!"</p>
+
+<p>But this answer did not seem to suit Allan, for some reason. Phyllis
+said no more about the masseur. She only decided to summon him, any way.
+And presently Wallis came in and turned all the lights on.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_168" id="Page_168">[Pg 168]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="XIII" id="XIII"></a>XIII</h2>
+
+
+<p>In due course of time June came. So did the masseur, and more flowered
+frocks for Phyllis, and the wheel-chair for Allan. The immediate effect
+of June was to bring out buds all over the rose-trees; of the flowered
+dresses, to make Phyllis very picturesquely pretty. As for the masseur,
+he had more effect than anything else. It was as Phyllis had hoped: the
+paralysis of Allan's arms had been less permanent than any one had
+thought, and for perhaps the last three years there had been little more
+the matter than entire loss of strength and muscle-control, from long
+disuse. By the time they had been a month in the country Allan's use of
+his arms and shoulders was nearly normal, and Phyllis was having wild
+hopes, that she confided to no one but Wallis, of even more sweeping
+betterments. Allan slept much better, from the slight increase of
+activity, and also perhaps because Phyllis had coaxed him outdoors as
+soon as the weather became warm, and was keeping<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_169" id="Page_169">[Pg 169]</a></span> him there. Sometimes
+he lay in the garden on his couch, sometimes he sat up in the
+wheel-chair, almost always with Phyllis sitting, or lying in her hammock
+near him, and the devoted Foxy pretending to hunt something near by.</p>
+
+<p>There were occasional fits of the old depression and silence, when Allan
+would lie silently in his own room with his hands crossed and his eyes
+shut, answering no one&mdash;not even Foxy. Wallis and Phyllis respected
+these moods, and left him alone till they were over, but the adoring
+Foxy had no such delicacy of feeling. And it is hard to remain silently
+sunk in depression when an active small dog is imploring you by every
+means he knows to throw balls for him to run after. For the rest, Allan
+proved to have naturally a lighter heart and more carefree disposition
+than Phyllis. His natural disposition was buoyant. Wallis said that he
+had never had a mood in his life till the accident.</p>
+
+<p>His attitude to his wife became more and more a taking-for-granted
+affection and dependence. It is to be feared that<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_170" id="Page_170">[Pg 170]</a></span> Phyllis spoiled him
+badly. But it was so long since she had been needed by any one person as
+Allan needed her! And he had such lovable, illogical, masculine ways of
+being wronged if he didn't get the requisite amount of petting, and
+grateful for foolish little favors and taking big ones for granted,
+that&mdash;entirely, as Phyllis insisted to herself, from a sense of combined
+duty and grateful interest&mdash;she would have had her pretty head removed
+and sent him by parcel-post, if he had idly suggested his possible need
+of a girl's head some time.</p>
+
+<p>And it was so heavenly&mdash;oh, but it was heavenly there in Phyllis's
+rose-garden, with the colored flowers coming out, and the little green
+caterpillars roaming over the leaves, and pretty dresses to wear, and
+Foxy-dog to play with&mdash;and Allan! Allan demanded&mdash;no, not exactly
+demanded, but expected and got&mdash;so much of Phyllis's society in these
+days that she had learned to carry on all her affairs, even the
+housekeeping, out in her hammock by his wheel-chair or couch. She wore
+large, floppy white hats with roses on them, by way of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_171" id="Page_171">[Pg 171]</a></span> keeping the sun
+off; but Allan, it appeared, did not think much of hats except as an
+ornament for girls, and his uncovered curly hair was burned to a sort of
+goldy-russet all through, and his pallor turned to a clear pale brown.</p>
+
+<p>Phyllis looked up from her work one of these heavenly last-of-June days,
+and tried to decide whether she really liked the change or not. Allan
+was handsomer unquestionably, though that had hardly been necessary. But
+the resignedly statuesque look was gone.</p>
+
+<p>Allan felt her look, and looked up at her. He had been reading a
+magazine, for Phyllis had succeeded in a large measure in reviving his
+taste for magazines and books. "Well, Phyllis, my dear," said he,
+smiling, "what's the problem now? I feel sure there is something new
+going to be sprung on me&mdash;get the worst over!"</p>
+
+<p>"You wrong me," she said, beginning to thread some more pink embroidery
+silk. "I was only wondering whether I liked you as well tanned as I did
+when you were so nice and white, back in the city."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_172" id="Page_172">[Pg 172]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Cheerful thought!" said Allan, laying down his magazine entirely.
+"Shall I ring for Wallis and some peroxide? As you said the other day,
+'I have to be approved of or I'm unhappy!'"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, it really doesn't matter," said Phyllis mischievously. "You know, I
+married you principally for a rose-garden, and that's <i>lovely</i>!"</p>
+
+<p>"I suppose I spoil the perspective," said Allan, unexpectedly ruffled.</p>
+
+<p>Phyllis leaned forward in her blossom-dotted draperies and stroked his
+hand, that long carven hand she so loved to watch.</p>
+
+<p>"Not a bit, Allan," she said, laughing at him. "You're exceedingly
+decorative! I remember the first time I saw you I thought you looked
+exactly like a marble knight on a tomb."</p>
+
+<p>Allan&mdash;Allan the listless, tranced invalid of four months before&mdash;threw
+his head back and shouted with laughter.</p>
+
+<p>"I suppose I serve the purpose of garden statuary," he said. "We used to
+have some horrors when I was a kid. I remember two awful bronze deer
+that always looked<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_173" id="Page_173">[Pg 173]</a></span> as if they were trying not to get their feet wet,
+and a floppy bronze dog we called Fido. He was meant for a Gordon
+setter, I think, but it didn't go much further than intention. Louise
+and I used to ride the deer."</p>
+
+<p>His face shadowed a little as he spoke, for nearly the first time, of
+the dead girl.</p>
+
+<p>"Allan," Phyllis said, bending closer to him, all rosy and golden in her
+green hammock, "tell me about&mdash;Louise Frey&mdash;if you don't mind talking
+about her? Would it be bad for you, do you think?"</p>
+
+<p>Allan's eyes dwelt on his wife pleasurably. She was very real and near
+and lovable, and Louise Frey seemed far away and shadowy in his
+thoughts. He had loved her very dearly and passionately, that
+boisterous, handsome young Louise, but that gay boy-life she had
+belonged to seemed separated now from this pleasant rose-garden, with
+its golden-haired, wisely-sweet young chatelaine, by thousands of black
+years. The blackness came back when he remembered what lay behind it.</p>
+
+<p>"There's nothing much to tell, Phyllis," he said, frowning a little.
+"She was pretty<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_174" id="Page_174">[Pg 174]</a></span> and full of life. She had black hair and eyes and a
+good deal of color. We were more or less friends all our lives, for our
+country-places adjoined. She was eighteen when&mdash;it happened."</p>
+
+<p>"Eighteen," said Phyllis musingly. "She would have been just my age....
+We won't talk about it, then, Allan ... Well, Viola?"</p>
+
+<p>The pretty Tuskegee chambermaid was holding out a tray with a card on
+it.</p>
+
+<p>"The doctor, ma'am," she said.</p>
+
+<p>"The doctor!" echoed Allan, half-vexed, half-laughing. "I <i>knew</i> you had
+something up your sleeve, Phyllis! What on earth did you have him for?"</p>
+
+<p>Phyllis's face was a study of astonishment. "On my honor, I hadn't a
+notion he was even in existence," she protested. "He's not <i>my</i> doctor!"</p>
+
+<p>"He must have 'just growed,' or else Lily-Anna's called him in,"
+suggested Allan sunnily. "Bring him along, Viola."</p>
+
+<p>Viola produced him so promptly that nobody had time to remember the
+professional doctor's visits don't usually have<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_175" id="Page_175">[Pg 175]</a></span> cards, or thought to
+look at the card for enlightenment. So the surprise was complete when
+the doctor appeared.</p>
+
+<p>"Johnny Hewitt!" ejaculated Allan, throwing out both hands in greeting.
+"Of all people! Well, you old fraud, pretending to be a doctor! The last
+I heard about you, you were trying to prove that you weren't the man
+that tied a mule into old Sumerley's chair at college."</p>
+
+<p>"I never did prove it," responded Johnny Hewitt, shaking hands
+vigorously, "but the fellows said afterwards that I ought to
+apologize&mdash;to the mule. He was a perfectly good mule. But I'm a doctor
+all right. I live here in Wallraven. I wondered if it might be you by
+any chance, Allan, when I heard some Harringtons had bought here. But
+this is the first chance a promising young chickenpox epidemic has given
+me to find out."</p>
+
+<p>"It's what's left of me," said Allan, smiling ruefully. "And&mdash;Phyllis,
+this doctor-person turns out to be an old friend of mine. This is Mrs.
+Harrington, Johnny."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, I'm so glad!" beamed Phyllis,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_176" id="Page_176">[Pg 176]</a></span> springing up from her hammock, and
+looking as if she loved Johnny. Here was exactly what was
+needed&mdash;somebody for Allan to play with! She made herself delightful to
+the newcomer for a few minutes, and then excused herself. They would
+have a better time alone, for awhile, any way, and there was dinner to
+order. Maybe this Johnny Hewitt-doctor would stay for dinner. He should
+if she could make him! She sang a little on her way to the house, and
+almost forgot the tiny hurt it had been when Allan seemed so saddened by
+speaking of Louise Frey. She had no right to feel hurt, she knew. It was
+only to be expected that Allan would always love Louise's memory. She
+didn't know much about men, but that was the way it always was in
+stories. A man's heart would die, under an automobile or anywhere else,
+and all there was left for anybody else was leavings. It wasn't fair!
+And then Phyllis threw back her shoulders and laughed, as she had
+sometimes in the library days, and reminded herself what a nice world it
+was, any way, and that Allan was going to be<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_177" id="Page_177">[Pg 177]</a></span> much helped by Johnny
+Hewitt. That was a cheering thought, anyhow. She went on singing, and
+ordered a beautiful, festively-varied dinner, a very poem of gratitude.
+Then she pounced on the doctor as he was leaving and made him stay for
+it.</p>
+
+<p>Allan's eyes were bright and his face lighted with interest. Phyllis, at
+the head of the table, kept just enough in the talk to push the men on
+when it seemed flagging, which was not often. She learned more about
+Allan, and incidentally Johnny Hewitt, in the talk as they lingered
+about the table, than she had ever known before. She and Allan had lived
+so deliberately in the placid present, with its almost childish
+brightnesses and interests, that she knew scarcely more about her
+husband's life than the De Guenthers had told her before she married
+him. But she could see the whole picture of it as she listened now: the
+active, merry, brilliant boy who had worked and played all day and
+danced half the night; who had lived, it almost seemed to her, two or
+three lives in one. And then the change to the darkened room&mdash;helpless,
+unable<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_178" id="Page_178">[Pg 178]</a></span> to move, with the added sorrow of his sweetheart's death, and
+his mother's deliberate fostering of that sorrow. It was almost a shock
+to see him in the wheel-chair at the foot of the table, his face lighted
+with interest in what he and his friend were saying. What if he did care
+for Louise Frey's memory still! He'd had such a hard time that anything
+Phyllis could do for him oughtn't to be too much!</p>
+
+<p>When Dr. Hewitt went at last Phyllis accompanied him to the door. She
+kept him there for a few minutes, talking to him about Allan and making
+him promise to come often. He agreed with her that, this much progress
+made, a good deal more might follow. He promised to come back very soon,
+and see as much of them as possible.</p>
+
+<p>Allan, watching them, out of earshot, from the living-room where he had
+been wheeled, saw Phyllis smiling warmly up at his friend, lingering in
+talk with him, giving him both hands in farewell; and he saw, too,
+Hewitt's rapt interest and long leave-taking. At last the door closed,
+and Phyllis<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_179" id="Page_179">[Pg 179]</a></span> came back to him, flushed and animated. He realized,
+watching her return with that swift lightness of foot her long years of
+work had lent her, how young and strong and lovely she was, with the
+rose-color in her cheeks and the light from above making her hair
+glitter. And suddenly her slim young strength and her bright vitality
+seemed to mock him, instead of being a comfort and support as
+heretofore. A young, beautiful, kind girl like that&mdash;it was natural she
+should like Hewitt. And it was going to come natural to Hewitt to like
+Phyllis. He could see that plainly enough.</p>
+
+<p>"Tired, Allan Harrington?" she asked brightly, coming over to him and
+dropping a light hand on his chair, in a caressing little way she had
+dared lately.... Kindness! Yes, she was the incarnation of kindness.
+Doubtless she had spoken to and touched those little ragamuffins she had
+told him of just so.</p>
+
+<p>He had got into a habit of feeling that Phyllis belonged to him
+absolutely. He had forgotten&mdash;what was it she had said to him<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_180" id="Page_180">[Pg 180]</a></span> that
+afternoon, half in fun&mdash;but oh, doubtless half in earnest!&mdash;about
+marrying him for a rose-garden? She had done just that. She had never
+made any secret of it&mdash;why, how could she, marrying him before she had
+spoken a half-dozen words to him? But how wonderful she had been to him
+since&mdash;sometimes almost as if she cared for him....</p>
+
+<p>He moved ungraciously. "Don't <i>touch</i> me, Phyllis!" he said irritably.
+"Wallis! You can wheel me into my room."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh-h!" said Phyllis, behind him. The little forlorn sound hurt him, but
+it pleased him, too. So he could hurt her, if only by rudeness? Well,
+that was a satisfaction. "Shut the door," he ordered Wallis swiftly.</p>
+
+<p>Phyllis, her hands at her throat, stood hurt and frightened in the
+middle of the room. It never occurred to her that Allan was jealous, or
+indeed that he could care enough for her to be jealous.</p>
+
+<p>"It was talking about Louise Frey," she said. "That, and Dr. Hewitt
+bringing up old times. Oh, <i>why</i> did I ask about her? He was
+contented&mdash;I know he was con<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_181" id="Page_181">[Pg 181]</a></span>tented! He'd gotten to like having me with
+him&mdash;he even wanted me. Oh, Allan, Allan!"</p>
+
+<p>She did not want to cry downstairs, so she ran for her own room. There
+she threw herself down and cried into a pillow till most of the case was
+wet. She was silly&mdash;she knew she was silly. She tried to think of all
+the things that were still hers, the garden, the watch-bracelet, the
+leisure, the pretty gowns&mdash;but nothing, <i>nothing</i> seemed of any
+consequence beside the fact that&mdash;she had not kissed Allan good-night!
+It seemed the most intolerable thing that had ever happened to her.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_182" id="Page_182">[Pg 182]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="XIV" id="XIV"></a>XIV</h2>
+
+
+<p>It was just as well, perhaps, that Phyllis did not do much sleeping that
+night, for at about two Wallis knocked at her door. It seemed like
+history repeating itself when he said: "Could you come to Mr. Allan,
+please? He seems very bad."</p>
+
+<p>She threw on the silk crepe negligee and followed him, just as she had
+done before, on that long-ago night after her mother-in-law had died.</p>
+
+<p>"Did Dr. Hewitt's visit overexcite him, do you think?" he asked as they
+went.</p>
+
+<p>"I don't know, ma'am," Wallis said. "He's almost as bad as he was after
+the old madam died&mdash;you remember?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, yes," said Phyllis mechanically. "I remember."</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>Allan lay so exactly as he had on that other night, that the strange
+surroundings seemed incongruous. Just the same, except that his
+restlessness was more visible, because he had more power of motion.</p>
+
+<p>She bent and held the nervously clench<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_183" id="Page_183">[Pg 183]</a></span>ing hands, as she had before.
+"What is it, Allan?" she said soothingly.</p>
+
+<p>"Nothing," said her husband savagely. "Nerves, hysteria&mdash;any other silly
+womanish thing a cripple could have. Let me alone, Phyllis. I wish you
+could put me out of the way altogether!"</p>
+
+<p>Phyllis made herself laugh, though her heart hurried with fright. She
+had seen Allan suffer badly before&mdash;be apathetic, irritable, despondent,
+but never in a state where he did not cling to her.</p>
+
+<p>"I can't let you alone," she said brightly. "I've come to stay with you
+till you feel quieter.... Would you rather I talked to you, or kept
+quiet?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, do your wifely duty, whatever it is," he said.... "It was a
+mistake, the whole thing. You've done more than your duty, child,
+but&mdash;oh, you'd better go away."</p>
+
+<p>Phyllis's heart turned over. Was it as bad as this? Was he as sick of
+her as this?</p>
+
+<p>"You mean&mdash;you think," she faltered, "it was a mistake&mdash;our marriage?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," he said restlessly. "Yes.... It wasn't fair."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_184" id="Page_184">[Pg 184]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>She had no means of knowing that he meant it was unfair to her. She held
+on to herself, though she felt her face turning cold with the sudden
+pallor of fright.</p>
+
+<p>"I think it can be annulled," she said steadily. "No, I suppose it
+wasn't fair."</p>
+
+<p>She stopped to get her breath and catch at the only things that
+mattered&mdash;steadiness, quietness, ability to soothe Allan!</p>
+
+<p>"It can be annulled," she said again evenly. "But listen to me now,
+Allan. It will take quite a while. It can't be done to-night, or before
+you are stronger. So for your own sake you must try to rest now.
+Everything shall come right. I promise you it shall be annulled. But
+forget it now, please. I am going to hold your wrists and talk to you,
+recite things for you, till you go back to sleep."</p>
+
+<p>She wondered afterwards how she could have spoken with that hard
+serenity, how she could have gone steadily on with story after story,
+poem after poem, till Allan's grip on her hands relaxed, and he fell
+into a heavy, tired sleep.</p>
+
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 386px;">
+<img src="images/illus-189.jpg" width="386" height="600" alt="BUT YOU SEE&mdash;HE&#39;S&mdash;ALL I HAVE" title="" />
+<span class="caption">"BUT YOU SEE&mdash;HE'S&mdash;ALL I HAVE ... GOOD-NIGHT, WALLIS"</span>
+</div>
+
+
+<p>She sat on the side of the bed and looked<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_185" id="Page_185">[Pg 185]</a></span> at him, lying still against
+his white pillows. She looked and looked, and presently the tears began
+to slide silently down her cheeks. She did not lift her hands to wipe
+them away. She sat and cried silently, openly, like a desolate, unkindly
+treated child.</p>
+
+<p>"Mrs. Allan! Mrs. Allan, ma'am!" came Wallis's concerned whisper from
+the doorway. "Don't take it as hard as that. It's just a little relapse.
+He was overtired. I shouldn't have called you, but you always quiet him
+so."</p>
+
+<p>Phyllis brushed off her tears, and smiled. You seemed to have to do so
+much smiling in this house!</p>
+
+<p>"I know," she said. "I worry about his condition too much. But you
+see&mdash;he's&mdash;all I have.... Good-night, Wallis."</p>
+
+<p>Once out of Allan's room, she ran at full speed till she gained her own
+bed, where she could cry in peace till morning if she wanted to, with no
+one to interrupt. That was all right. The trouble was going to be next
+morning.</p>
+
+<p>But somehow, when morning came, the old routine was dragged through
+with. Direc<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_186" id="Page_186">[Pg 186]</a></span>tions had to be given the servants as usual, Allan's comfort
+and amusement seen to, just as if nothing had happened. It was a perfect
+day, golden and perfumed, with just that little tang of fresh windiness
+that June days have in the northern states. And Allan must not lose
+it&mdash;he must be wheeled out into the garden.</p>
+
+<p>She came out to him, in the place where they usually sat, and sank for a
+moment in the hammock, that afternoon. She had avoided him all the
+morning.</p>
+
+<p>"I just came to see if everything was all right," she said, leaning
+toward him in that childlike, earnest way he knew so well. "I don't need
+to stay here if I worry you."</p>
+
+<p>"I'd rather you'd stay, if you don't mind," he answered. Phyllis looked
+at him intently. He was white and dispirited, and his voice was
+listless. Oh, Phyllis thought, if Louise Frey had only been kind enough
+to die in babyhood, instead of under Allan's automobile! What could
+there have been about her to hold Allan so long? She glanced at his
+weary face again. This would never do! What had<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_187" id="Page_187">[Pg 187]</a></span> come to be her dominant
+instinct, keeping Allan's spirits up, emboldened her to bend forward,
+and even laugh a little.</p>
+
+<p>"Come, Allan!" she said. "Even if we're not going to stay together
+always, we might as well be cheerful till we do part. We used to be good
+friends enough. Can't we be so a little longer?" It sounded heartless to
+her after she had said it, but it seemed the only way to speak. She
+smiled at him bravely.</p>
+
+<p>Allan looked at her mutely for a moment, as if she had hurt him.</p>
+
+<p>"You're right," he said suddenly. "There's no time but the present,
+after all. Come over here, closer to me, Phyllis. You've been awfully
+good to me, child&mdash;isn't there anything&mdash;<i>anything</i> I could do for
+you&mdash;something you could remember afterwards, and say, 'Well, he did
+that for me, any way?'"</p>
+
+<p>Phyllis's eyes filled with tears. "You have given me everything
+already," she said, catching her breath. She didn't feel as if she could
+stand much more of this.</p>
+
+<p>"Everything!" he said bitterly. "No, I<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_188" id="Page_188">[Pg 188]</a></span> haven't. I can't give you what
+every girl wants&mdash;a well, strong man to be her husband&mdash;the health and
+strength that any man in the street has."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, don't speak that way, Allan!"</p>
+
+<p>She bent over him sympathetically, moved by his words. In another moment
+the misunderstanding might have been straightened out, if it had not
+been for his reply.</p>
+
+<p>"I wish I never had to see you at all!" he said involuntarily. In her
+sensitive state of mind the hurt was all she felt&mdash;not the deeper
+meaning that lay behind the words.</p>
+
+<p>"I'll relieve you of my presence for awhile," she flashed back. Before
+she gave herself time to think, she had left the garden, with something
+which might be called a flounce. "When people say things like that to
+you," she said as she walked away from him, "it's carrying being an
+invalid a little <i>too</i> far!"</p>
+
+<p>Allan heard the side-door slam. He had never suspected before that
+Phyllis had a temper. And yet, what could he have said? But she gave him
+no opportunity to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_189" id="Page_189">[Pg 189]</a></span> find out. In just about the time it might take to
+find gloves and a parasol, another door clanged in the distance. The
+street door. Phyllis had evidently gone out.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>Phyllis, on her swift way down the street, grew angrier and angrier. She
+tried to persuade herself to make allowances for Allan, but they refused
+to be made. She felt more bitterly toward him than she ever had toward
+any one in her life. If she only hadn't leaned over him and been sorry
+for him, just before she got a slap in the face like that!</p>
+
+<p>She walked rapidly down the main street of the little village. She
+hardly knew where she was going. She had been called on by most of the
+local people, but she did not feel like being agreeable, or making
+formal calls, just now. And what was the use of making friends, any way,
+when she was going back to her rags, poor little Cinderella that she
+was! Below and around and above everything else came the stinging
+thought that she had given Allan so much&mdash;that she had taken so much for
+granted.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_190" id="Page_190">[Pg 190]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Her quick steps finally took her to the outskirts of the village, to a
+little green stretch of woods. There she walked up and down for awhile,
+trying to think more quietly. She found the tide of her anger ebbing
+suddenly, and her mind forming all sorts of excuses for Allan. But that
+was not the way to get quiet&mdash;thinking of Allan! She tried to put him
+resolutely from her mind, and think about her own future plans. The
+first thing to do, she decided, was to rub up her library work a little.</p>
+
+<p>It was with an unexpected feeling of having returned to her own place
+that she crossed the marble floor of the village library. She felt as if
+she ought to hurry down to the cloak-room, instead of waiting leisurely
+at the desk for her card. It all seemed uncannily like home&mdash;there was
+even a girl inside the desk who looked like Anna Black of her own
+Greenway Branch. Phyllis could hear, with a faint amusement, that the
+girl was scolding energetically in Anna Black's own way. The words
+struck on her quick ears, though they were not intended to carry.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_191" id="Page_191">[Pg 191]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"That's what comes of trusting to volunteer help. Telephones at the last
+moment 'she has a headache,' and not a single soul to look after the
+story-hour! And the children are almost all here already."</p>
+
+<p>"We'll just have to send them home," said the other girl, looking up
+from her trayful of cards. "It's too late to get anybody else, and
+goodness knows <i>we</i> can't get it in!"</p>
+
+<p>"They ought to have another librarian," fretted the girl who looked like
+Anna. "They could afford it well enough, with their Soldiers' Monuments
+and all."</p>
+
+<p>Phyllis smiled to herself from where she was investigating the
+card-catalogue. It all sounded so exceedingly natural. Then that swift
+instinct of hers to help caught her over to the desk, and she heard
+herself saying:</p>
+
+<p>"I've had some experience in story telling; maybe I could help you with
+the story-hour. I couldn't help hearing that your story-teller has
+disappointed you."</p>
+
+<p>The girl like Anna fell on her with rapture.</p>
+
+<p>"Heaven must have sent you," she said.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_192" id="Page_192">[Pg 192]</a></span> The other one, evidently slower
+and more cautious by nature, rose too, and came toward her. "You have a
+card here, haven't you?" she said. "I think I've seen you."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," Phyllis said, with a pang at speaking the name she had grown to
+love bearing; "I'm Mrs. Harrington&mdash;Phyllis Harrington. We live at the
+other end of the village."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, in the house with the garden all shut off from the lane!" said the
+girl like Anna, delightedly. "That lovely old house that used to belong
+to the Jamesons. Oh, yes, I know. You're here for the summer, aren't
+you, and your husband has been very ill?"</p>
+
+<p>"Exactly," said Phyllis, smiling, though she wished people wouldn't talk
+about Allan! They seemed possessed to mention him!</p>
+
+<p>"We'll be obliged forever if you'll do it," said the other girl,
+evidently the head librarian. "Can you do it now? The children are
+waiting."</p>
+
+<p>"Certainly," said Phyllis, and followed<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_193" id="Page_193">[Pg 193]</a></span> the younger girl straightway to
+the basement, where, it seemed, the story-hour was held. She wondered,
+as they went, if the girl envied her her expensively perishable summer
+organdie, with its flying sashes and costly accessories; if the girl
+thought about her swinging jewelries and endless leisure with a wish to
+have them for herself. She had wanted such things, she knew, when she
+was being happy on fifty dollars a month. And perhaps some of the women
+she had watched then had had heartaches under their furs....</p>
+
+<p>The children, already sitting in a decorous ring on their low chairs,
+seemed after the first surprise to approve of Phyllis. The librarian
+lingered for a little by way of keeping order if it should be necessary,
+watched the competent sweep with which Phyllis gathered the children
+around her, heard the opening of the story, and left with an air of
+astonished approval. Phyllis, late best story-teller of the Greenway
+Branch, watched her go with a bit of professional triumph in her heart.</p>
+
+<p>She told the children stories till the time<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_194" id="Page_194">[Pg 194]</a></span> was up, and then "just one
+story more." She had not forgotten how, she found. But she never told
+them the story of "How the Elephant Got His Trunk," that foolish,
+fascinating story-hour classic that she had told Allan the night his
+mother had died; the story that had sent him to sleep quietly for the
+first time in years.... Oh, dear, was everything in the world connected
+with Allan in some way or other?</p>
+
+<p>It was nearly six when she went up, engulfed in children, to the
+circulating room. There the night-librarian caught her. She had
+evidently been told to try to get Phyllis for more story-hours, for she
+did her best to make her promise. They talked shop together for perhaps
+an hour and a half. Then the growing twilight reminded Phyllis that it
+was time to go back. She had been shirking going home, she realized now,
+all the afternoon. She said good-by to the night-librarian, and went on
+down the village street, lagging unconsciously. It must have been about
+eight by this time.</p>
+
+<p>It was a mile back to the house. She<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_195" id="Page_195">[Pg 195]</a></span> could have taken the trolley part
+of the way, but she felt restless and like walking. She had forgotten
+that walking at night through well-known, well-lighted city streets, and
+going in half-dusk through country byways, were two different things.
+She was destined to be reminded of the difference.</p>
+
+<p>"Can you help a poor man, lady?" said a whining voice behind her, when
+she had a quarter of the way yet to go. She turned to see a big tramp, a
+terrifying brute with a half-propitiating, half-fierce look on his
+heavy, unshaven face. She was desperately frightened. She had been
+spoken to once or twice in the city, but there there was always a
+policeman, or a house you could run into if you had to. But here, in the
+unguarded dusk of a country lane, it was a different matter. The long
+gold chain that swung below her waist, the big diamond on her finger,
+the gold mesh-purse&mdash;all the jewelry she took such a childlike delight
+in wearing&mdash;she remembered them in terror. She was no brown-clad little
+working-girl now, to slip along disregarded. And the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_196" id="Page_196">[Pg 196]</a></span> tramp did not look
+like a deserving object.</p>
+
+<p>"If you will come to the house to-morrow," she said, hurrying on as she
+spoke, "I'll have some work for you. The first house on this street that
+you come to." She did not dare give him anything, or send him away.</p>
+
+<p>"Won't you gimme somethin' now, lady?" whined the tramp, continuing to
+follow. "I'm a starvin' man."</p>
+
+<p>She dared not open her purse and appease him by giving him money&mdash;she
+had too much with her. That morning she had received the check for her
+monthly income from Mr. De Guenther, sent Wallis down to cash it, and
+then stuffed it in her bag and forgotten it in the distress of the day.
+The man might take the money and strike her senseless, even kill her.</p>
+
+<p>"To-morrow," she said, going rapidly on. She had now what would amount
+to about three city blocks to traverse still. There was a short way from
+outside the garden-hedge through to the garden, which cut off about a
+half-block. If she could gain this she would be safe.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_197" id="Page_197">[Pg 197]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Naw, yeh don't," snarled the tramp, as she fled on. "Ye'll set that
+bull-pup o' yours on me. I been there, an' come away again. You just
+gimme some o' them rings an' things an' we'll call it square, me fine
+lady!"</p>
+
+<p>Phyllis's heart stood still at this open menace, but she ran on still. A
+sudden thought came to her. She snatched her gilt sash-buckle&mdash;a pretty
+thing but of small value&mdash;from her waist, and hurled it far behind the
+tramp. In the half-light it might have been her gold mesh-bag.</p>
+
+<p>"There's my money&mdash;go get it!" she gasped&mdash;and ran for her life. The
+tramp, as she had hoped he would, dashed back after it and gave her the
+start she needed. Breathless, terrified to death, she raced on, tearing
+her frock, dropping the library cards and parasol she still had held in
+her hand. Once she caught her sash on a tree-wire. Once her slipper-heel
+caught and nearly threw her. The chase seemed unending. She could hear
+the dreadful footsteps of the tramp behind her, and his snarling,
+swearing voice panting out threats. He was drunk,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_198" id="Page_198">[Pg 198]</a></span> she realized with
+another thrill of horror. It was a nightmare happening.</p>
+
+<p>On and on&mdash;she stumbled, fell, caught herself&mdash;but the tramp had gained.
+Then at last the almost invisible gap in the hedge, and she fled
+through.</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Allan! Allan! Allan!</i>" she screamed, fleeing instinctively to his
+chair.</p>
+
+<p>The rose-garden was like a place of enchanted peace after the terror of
+outside. Her quick vision as she rushed in was of Allan still there,
+moveless in his chair, with the little black bull-dog lying asleep
+across his arms and shoulder like a child. It often lay so. As she
+entered, the scene broke up before her eyes like a dissolving view. She
+saw the little dog wake and make what seemed one flying spring to the
+tramp's throat, and sink his teeth in it&mdash;and Allan, at her scream,
+<i>spring from his chair</i>!</p>
+
+<p>Phyllis forgot everything at the sight of Allan, standing. Wallis and
+the outdoor man, who had run to the spot at Phyllis's screams, were
+dealing with the tramp, who was writhing on the grass, choking and
+striking out wildly. But neither Phyllis<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_199" id="Page_199">[Pg 199]</a></span> nor Allan saw that. Which
+caught the other in an embrace they never knew. They stood locked
+together, forgetting everything else, he in the idea of her peril, she
+in the wonder of his standing.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, darling, darling!" Allan was saying over and over again. "You are
+safe&mdash;thank heaven you are safe! Oh, Phyllis, I could never forgive
+myself if you had been hurt! Phyllis! Speak to me!"</p>
+
+<p>But Phyllis's own safety did not concern her now. She could only think
+of one thing. "<i>You can stand! You can stand!</i>" she reiterated. Then a
+wonderful thought came to her, striking across the others, as she stood
+locked in this miraculously raised Allan's arms. She spoke without
+knowing that she had said it aloud. "<i>Do you care, too?</i>" she said very
+low. Then the dominant thought returned. "You must sit down again," she
+said hurriedly, to cover her confusion, and what she had said. "Please,
+Allan, sit down. Please, dear&mdash;you'll tire yourself."</p>
+
+<p>Allan sank into his chair again, still holding her. She dropped on her
+knees<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_200" id="Page_200">[Pg 200]</a></span> beside him, with her arms around him. She had a little leisure
+now to observe that Wallis, the ever-resourceful, had tied the tramp
+neatly with the outdoor man's suspenders, which were nearer the surface
+than his own, and succeeded in prying off the still unappeased Foxy, who
+evidently was wronged at not having the tramp to finish. They carried
+him off, into the back kitchen garden. Allan, now that he was certain of
+Phyllis's safety, paid them not the least attention.</p>
+
+<p>"Did you mean it?" he said passionately. "Tell me, did you mean what you
+said?"</p>
+
+<p>Phyllis dropped her dishevelled head on Allan's shoulder.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm afraid&mdash;I'm going to cry, and&mdash;and I know you don't like it!" she
+panted. Allan half drew, half guided her up into his arms.</p>
+
+<p>"Was it true?" he insisted, giving her an impulsive little shake. She sat
+up on his knees, wide-eyed and wet-cheeked like a child.</p>
+
+<p>"But you knew that all along!" she said. "That was why I felt so
+humiliated. It was <i>you</i> that <i>I</i> thought didn't care&mdash;&mdash;"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_201" id="Page_201">[Pg 201]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Allan laughed joyously. "Care!" he said. "I should think I did, first,
+last, and all the time! Why, Phyllis, child, didn't I behave like a
+brute because I was jealous enough of John Hewitt to throw him in the
+river? He was the first man you had seen since you married
+me&mdash;attractive, and well, and clever, and all that&mdash;it would have been
+natural enough if you'd liked him."</p>
+
+<p>"Liked him!" said Phyllis in disdain. "When there was you? And I
+thought&mdash;I thought it was the memory of Louise Frey that made you act
+that way. You didn't want to talk about her, and you said it was all a
+mistake&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"I was a brute," said Allan again. "It was the memory that I was about
+as useful as a rag doll, and that the world was full of live men with
+real legs and arms, ready to fall in love with you.</p>
+
+<p>"There's nobody but <i>you</i> in the world," whispered Phyllis.... "But
+you're well now, or you will be soon," she added joyously. She slipped
+away from him. "Allan, don't you want to try to stand again? If you did
+it then, you can do it now."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_202" id="Page_202">[Pg 202]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Yes, by Jove, I do!" he said. But this time the effort to rise was
+noticeable. Still, he could do it, with Phyllis's eager help.</p>
+
+<p>"It must have been what Dr. Hewitt called neurasthenic inhibition," said
+Phyllis, watching the miracle of a standing Allan. "That was what we
+were talking about by the door that night, you foolish boy!... Oh, how
+tall you are! I never realized you were tall, lying down, somehow!"</p>
+
+<p>"I don't have to bend very far to kiss you, though," suggested Allan,
+suiting the action to the word.</p>
+
+<p>But Phyllis, when this was satisfactorily concluded, went back to the
+great business of seeing how much Allan could walk. He sat down again
+after a half-dozen steps, a little tired in spite of his excitement.</p>
+
+<p>"I can't do much at a time yet, I suppose," he said a little ruefully.
+"Do you mean to tell me, sweetheart&mdash;come over here closer, where I can
+touch you&mdash;you're awfully far away&mdash;do you mean to tell me that all that
+ailed me was I thought I couldn't move?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, no!" explained Phyllis, moving her<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_203" id="Page_203">[Pg 203]</a></span> chair close, and then, as that
+did not seem satisfactory, perching on the arm of Allan's. "You'd been
+unable to move for so long that when you were able to at last your
+subconscious mind clamped down on your muscles and was convinced you
+couldn't. So no matter how much you consciously tried, you couldn't make
+the muscles go till you were so strongly excited it broke the
+inhibition&mdash;just as people can lift things in delirium or excitement
+that they couldn't possibly move at other times. Do you see?"</p>
+
+<p>"I do," said Allan, kissing the back of her neck irrelevantly. "If
+somebody'd tried to shoot me up five years ago I might be a well man
+now. That's a beautiful word of yours, Phyllis, inhibition. What a lot
+of big words you know!"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, if you won't be serious!" said she.</p>
+
+<p>"We'll have to be," said Allan, laughing, "for here's Wallis, and, as I
+live, from the direction of the house. I thought they carried our friend
+the tramp out through the hedge&mdash;he must have gone all the way around."</p>
+
+<p>Phyllis was secretly certain that Wallis<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_204" id="Page_204">[Pg 204]</a></span> had been crying a little, but
+all he said was, "We've taken the tramp to the lock-up, sir."</p>
+
+<p>But his master and his mistress were not so dignified. They showed him
+exhaustively that Allan could really stand and walk, and Allan
+demonstrated it, and Wallis nearly cried again. Then they went in, for
+Phyllis was sure Allan needed a thorough rest after all this. She was
+shaking from head to foot herself with joyful excitement, but she did
+not even know it. And it was long past dinner-time, though every one but
+Lily-Anna, to whom the happy news had somehow filtered, had forgotten
+it.</p>
+
+<p>"I've always wanted to hold you in my arms, this way," said Allan late
+that evening, as they stood in the rose-garden again; "but I thought I
+never would.... Phyllis, did you ever want me to?"</p>
+
+<p>It was too beautiful a moonlight night to waste in the house, or even on
+the porch. The couch had been wheeled to its accustomed place in the
+rose-garden, and Allan was supposed to be lying on it as he often did in
+the evenings. But it was hard to make him stay there.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_205" id="Page_205">[Pg 205]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Oh, you <i>must</i> lie down," said Phyllis hurriedly, trying to move out of
+the circle of his arms. "You mustn't stand till we find how much is
+enough.... I'm going to send for the wolfhound next week. You won't mind
+him now, will you?"</p>
+
+<p>"Did you ever want to be here in my arms, Phyllis?"</p>
+
+<p>"Of course not!" said Phyllis, as a modest young person should.
+"But&mdash;but&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Well, my wife?"</p>
+
+<p>"I've often wondered just where I'd reach to," said Phyllis in a
+rush.... "Allan, <i>please</i> don't stand any longer!"</p>
+
+<p>"I'll lie down if you'll sit on the couch by me."</p>
+
+<p>"Very well," said Phyllis; and sat obediently in the curve of his arm
+when he had settled himself in the old position, the one that looked so
+much more natural for him.</p>
+
+<p>"Mine, every bit of you!" he said exultantly. "Heaven bless that
+tramp!... And to think we were talking about annulments!... Do you
+remember that first night, dear, after mother died? I was half-mad with
+grief and physical pain. And<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_206" id="Page_206">[Pg 206]</a></span> Wallis went after you. I didn't want him
+to. But he trusted you from the first&mdash;good old Wallis! And you came in
+with that swift, sweeping step of yours, as I've seen you come fifty
+times since&mdash;half-flying, it seemed to me then&mdash;with all your pretty
+hair loose, and an angelic sort of a white thing on. I expect I was a
+brute to you&mdash;I don't remember how I acted&mdash;but I know you sat on the
+bed by me and took both my wrists in those strong little hands of yours,
+and talked to me and quieted me till I fell fast asleep. You gave me the
+first consecutive sleep I'd had in four months. It felt as if life and
+calmness and strength were pouring from you to me. You stayed till I
+fell asleep."</p>
+
+<p>"I remember," said Phyllis softly. She laid her cheek by his, as it had
+been on that strange marriage evening that seemed so far away now. "I
+was afraid of you at first. But I felt that, too, as if I were giving
+you my strength. I was so glad I could! And then I fell asleep, too,
+over on your shoulder."</p>
+
+<p>"You never told me that," said Allan<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_207" id="Page_207">[Pg 207]</a></span> reproachfully. Phyllis laughed a
+little.</p>
+
+<p>"There never seemed to be any point in our conversations where it fitted
+in neatly," she said demurely. Allan laughed, too.</p>
+
+<p>"You should have made one. But what I was going to tell you was&mdash;I think
+I began to be in love with you then. I didn't know it, but I did. And it
+got worse and worse but I didn't know what ailed me till Johnny drifted
+in, bless his heart! Then I did. Oh, Phyllis, it was awful! To have you
+with me all the time, acting like an angel, waiting on me hand and foot,
+and not knowing whether you had any use for me or not!... And you never
+kissed me good-night last night."</p>
+
+<p>Phyllis did not answer. She only bent a little, and kissed her husband
+on the lips, very sweetly and simply, of her own accord. But she said
+nothing then of the long, restless, half-happy, half-wretched time when
+she had loved him and never even hoped he would care for her. There was
+time for all that. There were going to be long, joyous years together,
+years of being a "real woman," as she had so passionately<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_208" id="Page_208">[Pg 208]</a></span> wished to be
+that day in the library. She would never again need to envy any woman
+happiness or love or laughter. It was all before her now, youth and joy
+and love, and Allan, her Allan, soon to be well, and loving her&mdash;loving
+nobody else but her!</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, I love you, Allan!" was all she said.</p>
+
+<p class="center">Transcriber's note:</p>
+
+<p class="center">There was no Table of Contents in the original, one has been placed in this etext to assist with navigation.</p>
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+<pre>
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's The Rose Garden Husband, by Margaret Widdemer
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@@ -0,0 +1,4382 @@
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Rose Garden Husband, by Margaret Widdemer
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Rose Garden Husband
+
+Author: Margaret Widdemer
+
+Release Date: September 16, 2008 [EBook #26635]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE ROSE GARDEN HUSBAND ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Mark C. Orton, Linda McKeown and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+THE
+
+ROSE-GARDEN HUSBAND
+
+BY
+
+MARGARET WIDDEMER
+
+
+WITH ILLUSTRATIONS BY
+
+WALTER BIGGS
+
+
+NEW YORK GROSSET & DUNLAP PUBLISHERS
+
+COPYRIGHT 1914, BY J. B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANY
+
+COPYRIGHT 1915, BY J. B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANY
+
+
+PUBLISHED, JANUARY 27, 1915
+
+SECOND PRINTING, FEBRUARY 6, 1915
+
+THIRD PRINTING, MARCH 12, 1915
+
+FOURTH PRINTING, APRIL 23, 1915
+
+FIFTH PRINTING, JUNE 10, 1915
+
+SIXTH PRINTING, AUGUST 6, 1915
+
+SEVENTH PRINTING, OCTOBER 21, 1915
+
+EIGHTH PRINTING, MAY 1, 1916
+
+NINTH PRINTING, OCTOBER 30, 1916
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+[Illustration: "YOU KNOW, I MARRIED YOU PRINCIPALLY FOR A ROSE-GARDEN,
+AND THAT'S _LOVELY_!"
+
+_Page 172_]
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+IN LOVING MEMORY
+
+OF
+
+HOWARD TAYLOR WIDDEMER
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+THE ROSE-GARDEN HUSBAND
+
+
+
+
+I
+
+
+The Liberry Teacher lifted her eyes from a half-made catalogue-card,
+eyed the relentlessly slow clock and checked a long wriggle of purest,
+frankest weariness. Then she gave a furtive glance around to see if the
+children had noticed she was off guard; for if they had she knew the
+whole crowd might take more liberties than they ought to, and have to be
+spoken to by the janitor. He could do a great deal with them, because he
+understood their attitude to life, but that wasn't good for the Liberry
+Teacher's record.
+
+It was four o'clock of a stickily wet Saturday. As long as it is
+anything from Monday to Friday the average library attendant goes around
+thanking her stars she isn't a school-teacher; but the last day of the
+week, when the rest of the world is having its relaxing Saturday off and
+coming to gloat over you as it acquires its Sunday-reading best seller,
+if you work in a library you begin just at noon to wish devoutly that
+you'd taken up scrubbing-by-the-day, or hack-driving, or porch-climbing
+or--anything on earth that gave you a weekly half-holiday!
+
+So the Liberry Teacher braced herself severely, and put on her
+reading-glasses with a view to looking older and more firm. "Liberry
+Teacher," it might be well to explain, was not her official title. Her
+description on the pay-roll ran "Assistant for the Children's
+Department, Greenway Branch, City Public Library." Grown-up people, when
+she happened to run across them, called her Miss Braithwaite. But
+"Liberry Teacher" was the only name the children ever used, and she saw
+scarcely anybody but the children, six days a week, fifty-one weeks a
+year. As for her real name, that nobody ever called her by, _that_ was
+Phyllis Narcissa.
+
+She was quite willing to have such a name as that buried out of sight.
+She had a sense of fitness; and such a name belonged back in an old New
+England parsonage garden full of pink roses and nice green caterpillars
+and girl-dreams, and the days before she was eighteen: not in a smutty
+city library, attached to a twenty-five-year-old young woman with
+reading-glasses and fine discipline and a woolen shirt-waist!
+
+It wasn't that the Liberry Teacher didn't like her position. She not
+only liked it, but she had a great deal of admiration for it, because it
+had been exceedingly hard to get. She had held it firmly now for a whole
+year. Before that she had been in the Cataloguing, where your eyes hurt
+and you get a little pain between your shoulders, but you sit down and
+can talk to other girls; and before that in the Circulation, where it
+hurts your feet and you get ink on your fingers, but you see lots of
+funny things happening. She had started at eighteen years old, at thirty
+dollars a month. Now she was twenty-five, and she got all of fifty
+dollars, so she ought to have been a very happy Liberry Teacher indeed,
+and generally she was. When the children wanted to specify her
+particularly they described her as "the pretty one that laughs." But at
+four o'clock of a wet Saturday afternoon, in a badly ventilated, badly
+lighted room full of damp little unwashed foreign children, even the
+most sunny-hearted Liberry Teacher may be excused for having thoughts
+that are a little tired and cross and restless.
+
+She flung herself back in her desk-chair and watched, with brazen
+indifference, Giovanni and Liberata Bruno stickily pawing the colored
+Bird Book that was supposed to be looked at only under supervision; she
+ignored the fact that three little Czechs were fighting over the wailing
+library cat; and the sounds of conflict caused by Jimsy Hoolan's desire
+to get the last-surviving Alger book away from John Zanowski moved her
+not a whit. The Liberry Teacher had stopped, for five minutes, being
+grown-up and responsible, and she was wishing--wishing hard and
+vengefully. This is always a risky thing to do, because you never know
+when the Destinies may overhear you and take you at your exact word.
+With the detailed and careful accuracy one acquires in library work, she
+was wishing for a sum of money, a garden, and a husband--but
+principally a husband. This is why:
+
+That day as she was returning from her long-deferred twenty-minute
+dairy-lunch, she had charged, umbrella down, almost full into a pretty
+lady getting out of a shiny gray limousine. Such an unnecessarily pretty
+lady, all furs and fluffles and veils and perfumes and waved hair! Her
+cheeks were pink and her expression was placid, and each of her
+white-gloved hands held tight to a pretty picture-book child who was
+wriggling with wild excitement. One had yellow frilly hair and one had
+brown bobbed hair, and both were quaintly, immaculately, expensively
+kissable. They were the kind of children every girl wishes she could
+have a set like, and hugs when she gets a chance. Mother and children
+were making their way, under an awning that crossed the street, to the
+matinee of a fairy-play.
+
+The Liberry Teacher smiled at the children with more than her accustomed
+goodwill, and lowered her umbrella quickly to let them pass. The mother
+smiled back, a smile that changed, as the Liberry Teacher passed, to
+puzzled remembrance. The gay little family went on into the theatre, and
+Phyllis Braithwaite hurried on back to her work, trying to think who the
+pretty lady could have been, to have seemed to almost remember her.
+Somebody who took books out of the library, doubtless. Still the pretty
+lady's face did not seem to fit that conjecture, though it still worried
+her by its vague familiarity. Finally the solution came, just as Phyllis
+was pulling off her raincoat in the dark little cloak-room. She nearly
+dropped the coat.
+
+"Eva Atkinson!" she said.
+
+Eva Atkinson!... If it had been anybody else but _Eva_!
+
+You see, back in long-ago, in the little leisurely windblown New England
+town where Phyllis Braithwaite had lived till she was almost eighteen,
+there had been a Principal Grocer. And Eva Atkinson had been his
+daughter, not so very pretty, not so very pleasant, not so very clever,
+and about six years older than Phyllis. Phyllis, as she tried vainly to
+make her damp, straight hair go back the way it should, remembered
+hearing that Eva had married and come to this city to live. She had
+never heard where. And this had been Eva--Eva, by the grace of gold,
+radiantly complexioned, wonderfully groomed, beautifully gowned, and
+looking twenty-four, perhaps, at most: with a car and a placid
+expression and _heaps_ of money, and pretty, clean children! The Liberry
+Teacher, severely work-garbed and weather-draggled, jerked herself away
+from the small greenish cloak-room mirror that was unkind to you at your
+best.
+
+She dashed down to the basement, harried by her usual panic-stricken
+twenty-minutes-late feeling. She had only taken one glance at herself in
+the wiggly mirror, but that one had been enough for her peace of mind,
+supposing her to have had any left before. She felt as if she wanted to
+break all the mirrors in the world, like the wicked queen in the French
+fairy-tale.
+
+Most people rather liked the face Phyllis saw in the mirror; but to her
+own eyes, fresh from the dazzling vision of that Eva Atkinson who had
+been dowdy and stupid in the far-back time when seventeen-year-old
+Phyllis was "growin' up as pretty as a picture," the tired,
+twenty-five-year-old, workaday face in the green glass was _dreadful_.
+What made her feel worst--and she entertained the thought with a
+whimsical consciousness of its impertinent vanity--was that she'd had so
+much more raw material than Eva! And the world had given Eva a chance
+because her father was rich. And she, Phyllis, was condemned to be tidy
+and accurate, and no more, just because she had to earn her living. That
+face in the greenish glass, looking tiredly back at her! She gave a
+little out-loud cry of vexation now as she thought of it, two hours
+later.
+
+"I must have looked to Eva like a battered bisque doll--no wonder she
+couldn't place me!" she muttered crossly.
+
+And it must be worse and more of it now, because in the interval between
+two and four there had been many little sticky fingers pulling at her
+sleeves and skirt, and you just _have_ to cuddle dear little library
+children, even when they're not extra clean; and when Vera Aronsohn
+burst into heartbroken tears on the Liberry Teacher's blue woolen
+shoulder because her pet fairy-book was missing, she had caught several
+strands of the Teacher's yellow hair in her anguish, much to the hair's
+detriment.
+
+It was straight, heavy hair, and it would have been of a dense and
+fluffy honey-color, only that it was tarnished for lack of the constant
+sunnings and brushings which blonde hair must have to stay its best
+self. And her skin, too, that should have been a living rose-and-cream,
+was dulled by exposure to all weathers, and lack of time to pet it with
+creams and powders; perhaps a little, too, by the very stupid things to
+eat one gets at a dairy-lunch and boarding-house. Some of the assistants
+did interesting cooking over the library gas-range, but the Liberry
+Teacher couldn't do that because she hadn't time.
+
+She went on defiantly thinking about her looks. It isn't a noble-minded
+thing to do, but when you might be so very, very pretty if you only had
+a little time to be it in--"Yes, I _might_!" said Phyllis to her
+shocked self defiantly.... Yes, the shape of her face was all right
+still. Hard work and scant attention couldn't spoil its pretty oval. But
+her eyes--well, you can't keep your eyes as blue and luminous and
+childlike as they were back in the New England country, when you have
+been using them hard for years in a bad light. And oh, they had been
+such _nice_ eyes when she was just Phyllis Narcissa at home, so long and
+blue and wondering! And now the cataloguing had heavied the lids and
+etched a line between her straight brown brows. They weren't decorative
+eyes now ... and they filled with indignant self-sympathy. The Liberry
+Teacher laughed at herself a little here. The idea of eyes that cried
+about themselves was funny, somehow.
+
+"Direct from producer to consumer!" she quoted half-aloud, and wiped
+each eye conscientiously by itself.
+
+"Teacher! I want a liberry called 'Bride of Lemon Hill!' demanded a
+small citizen just here. The school teacher, she says I must to have
+it!"
+
+Phyllis thought hard. But she had to search the pinned-up list of
+required reading for schools for three solid minutes before she bestowed
+"The Bride of Lammermoor" on a thirteen-year-old daughter of Hungary.
+
+"This is it, isn't it, honey?" she asked with the flashing smile for
+which her children, among other things, adored her.
+
+"Yes, ma'am, thank you, teacher," said the thirteen-year-old gratefully;
+and went off to a corner, where she sat till closing time entranced over
+her own happy choice, "The Adventures of Peter Rabbit," with colored
+pictures dotting it satisfactorily. The Liberry Teacher knew that it was
+her duty to go over and hypnotize the child into reading something which
+would lead more directly to Browning and Strindberg. But she didn't.
+
+"Poor little wop!" she thought unacademically. "Let her be happy in her
+own way!"
+
+And the Liberry Teacher herself went on being unhappy in _her_ own way.
+
+"I'm just a battered bisque doll!" she repeated to herself bitterly.
+
+But she was wrong. One is apt to exaggerate things on a workaday
+Saturday afternoon. She looked more like a pretty bisque figurine; slim
+and clear-cut, and a little neglected, perhaps, by its owners, and
+dressed in working clothes instead of the pretty draperies it should
+have had; but needing only a touch or so, a little dusting, so to speak,
+to be as good as ever.
+
+"Eva _never_ was as pretty as I was!" her rebellious thoughts went on.
+You think things, you know, that you'd never say aloud. "I'm sick of
+elevating the public! I'm sick of working hard fifty-one weeks out of
+fifty-two for board and lodging and carfare and shirtwaists and the
+occasional society of a few girls who don't get any more out of life
+than I do! I'm sick of libraries, and of being efficient! I want to be a
+real girl! Oh, I wish--I wish I had a lot of money, and a rose-garden,
+and a _husband_!"
+
+The Liberry Teacher was aghast at herself. She hadn't meant to wish such
+a very unmaidenly thing so hard. She jumped up and dashed across the
+room and began frantically to shelf-read books, explaining meanwhile
+with most violent emphasis to the listening Destinies:
+
+"I didn't--oh, I _didn_'t mean a _real_ husband. It isn't that I yearn
+to be married to some good man, like an old maid or a Duchess novel.
+I--I just want all the lovely things Eva has, or any girl that _marries_
+them, without any trouble but taking care of a man. One man _couldn't_
+but be easier than a whole roomful of library babies. I want to be
+looked after, and have time to keep pretty, and a chance to make
+friends, and lovely frocks with lots of lace on them, and just months
+and months and months when I never had to do anything by a
+clock--and--and a rose-garden!"
+
+This last idea was dangerous. It isn't a good thing, if you want to be
+contented with your lot, to think of rose-gardens in a stuffy city
+library o' Saturdays; especially when where you were brought up
+rose-gardens were one of the common necessities of life; and more
+especially when you are tired almost to the crying-point, and have all
+the week's big sisters back of it dragging on you, and all its little
+sisters to come worrying at you, and--time not up till six.
+
+But the Liberry Teacher went blindly on straightening shelves nearly as
+fast as the children could muss them up, and thinking about that
+rose-garden she wanted, with files of masseuses and manicures and French
+maids and messenger-boys with boxes banked soothingly behind every bush.
+And the thought became too beautiful to dally with.
+
+"I'd marry _anything_ that would give me a rose-garden!" reiterated the
+Liberry Teacher passionately to the Destinies, who are rather catty
+ladies, and apt to catch up unguarded remarks you make. "_Anything_--so
+long as it was a gentleman--and he didn't scold me--and--and--I didn't
+have to associate with him!" her New England maidenliness added in
+haste.
+
+Then, for the librarian who cannot laugh, like the one who reads, is
+supposed in library circles to be lost, Phyllis shook herself and
+laughed at herself a little, bravely. Then she collected the most
+uproarious of her flock around her and began telling them stories out of
+the "Merry Adventures of Robin Hood." It would keep the children quiet,
+and her thoughts, too. She put rose-gardens, not to say manicurists and
+husbands, severely out of her head. But you can't play fast and loose
+with the Destinies that way.
+
+"Done!" they had replied quietly to her last schedule of requirements.
+"We'll send our messenger over right away." It was not their fault that
+the Liberry Teacher could not hear them.
+
+
+
+
+II
+
+
+He was gray-haired, pink-cheeked, curvingly side-whiskered and
+immaculately gray-clad; and he did not look in the least like a
+messenger of Fate.
+
+The Liberry Teacher was at a highly keyed part of her narrative, and
+even the most fidgety children were tense and open-mouthed.
+
+"'And where art thou now?' cried the Stranger to Robin Hood. And Robin
+roared with laughter. 'Oh, in the flood, and floating down the stream
+with all the little fishes,' said he--" she was relating breathlessly.
+
+"_Tea_-cher!" hissed Isaac Rabinowitz, snapping his fingers at her at
+this exciting point. "Teacher! There's a guy wants to speak to you!"
+
+"Aw, shut-_tup_!" chorused his indignant little schoolmates. "Can't you
+see that Teacher's tellin' a story? Go chase yerself! Go do a tango
+roun' de block!"
+
+Isaac, a small Polish Jew with tragic, dark eyes and one suspender,
+received these and several more such suggestions with all the calm
+impenetrability of his race.
+
+"Here's de guy," was all he vouchsafed before he went back to the
+unsocial nook where, afternoon by faithful afternoon, he read away at a
+fat three-volume life of Alexander Hamilton.
+
+The Liberry Teacher looked up without stopping her story, and smiled a
+familiar greeting to the elderly gentleman, who was waiting a little
+uncertainly at the Children's Room door, and had obviously been looking
+for her in vain. He smiled and nodded in return.
+
+"Just a minute, please, Mr. De Guenther," said the Liberry Teacher
+cheerfully.
+
+The elderly gentleman nodded again, crossed to Isaac and his ponderous
+volumes, and began to talk to him with that benign lack of haste which
+usually means a very competent personality. Phyllis hurried somewhat
+with Robin Hood among his little fishes, and felt happier. It was
+always, in her eventless life, something of a pleasant adventure to
+have Mr. De Guenther or his wife drop in to see her. There was usually
+something pleasant at the end of it.
+
+They were an elderly couple whom she had known for some years. They were
+so leisurely and trim and gentle-spoken that long ago, when she was only
+a timorous substitute behind the circle of the big charging-desk, she
+had picked them both out as people-you'd-like-if-you-got-the-chance.
+Then she had waited on them, and identified them by their cards as
+belonging to the same family. Then, one day, with a pleased little
+quiver of joy, she had found him in the city Who's Who, age, profession
+(he was a corporation lawyer), middle names, favorite recreation, and
+all. Gradually she had come to know them both very well in a waiting-on
+way. She often chose love-stories that ended happily and had colored
+illustrations for Mrs. De Guenther when she was at home having
+rheumatism; she had saved more detective stories for Mr. De Guenther
+than her superiors ever knew; and once she had found his black-rimmed
+eye-glasses where he had left them between the pages of the Pri-Zuz
+volume of the encyclopedia, and mailed them to him.
+
+When she had vanished temporarily from sight into the nunnery-promotion
+of the cataloguing room the De Guenthers had still remembered her. Twice
+she had been asked to Sunday dinner at their house, and had joyously
+gone and remembered it as joyously for months afterward. Now that she
+was out in the light of partial day again, in the Children's Room, she
+ran across both of them every little while in her errands upstairs; and
+once Mrs. De Guenther, gentle, lorgnetted and gray-clad, had been shown
+over the Children's Room. The couple lived all alone in a great,
+handsome old house that was being crowded now by the business district.
+She had always thought that if she were a Theosophist she would try to
+plan to have them for an uncle and aunt in her next incarnation. They
+suited her exactly for the parts.
+
+But it's a long way down to the basement where city libraries are apt to
+keep their children, and the De Guenthers hadn't been down there since
+the last time they asked her to dinner. And here, with every sign of
+having come to say something _very_ special, stood Mr. De Guenther!
+Phyllis' irrepressibly cheerful disposition gave a little jump toward
+the light. But she went on with her story--business before pleasure!
+
+However, she did manage to get Robin Hood out of his brook a little more
+quickly than she had planned. She scattered her children with a swift
+executive whisk, and made so straight for her friend that she deceived
+the children into thinking they were going to see him expelled, and they
+banked up and watched with anticipatory grins.
+
+"I do hope you want to see me especially!" she said brightly.
+
+The children, disappointed, relaxed their attention.
+
+Mr. De Guenther rose slowly and neatly from his seat beside the rather
+bored Isaac Rabinowitz, who dived into his book again with alacrity.
+
+"Good afternoon, Miss Braithwaite," he said in the amiably precise voice
+which matched so admirably his beautifully precise movements and his
+immaculate gray spats. "Yes. In the language of our young friend here,
+'I am the guy.'"
+
+Phyllis giggled before she thought. Some people in the world always make
+your spirits go up with a bound, and the De Guenther pair invariably had
+that effect on her.
+
+"Oh, Mr. De Guenther!" she said, "I am shocked at you! That's slang!"
+
+"It was more in the nature of a quotation," said he apologetically. "And
+how are you this exceedingly unpleasant day, Miss Braithwaite? We have
+seen very little of you lately, Mrs. De Guenther and I."
+
+The Liberry Teacher, gracefully respectful in her place, wriggled with
+invisible impatience over this carefully polite conversational opening.
+He had come down here on purpose to see her--there must be something
+going to happen, even if it was only a request to save a seven-day book
+for Mrs. De Guenther! Nobody ever wanted _something_, any kind of a
+something, to happen more wildly than the Liberry Teacher did that
+bored, stickily wet Saturday afternoon, with those tired seven years at
+the Greenway Branch dragging at the back of her neck, and the seven
+times seven to come making her want to scream. So few things can
+possibly happen to you, no matter how good you are, when you work by the
+day. And now maybe something--oh, please, the very smallest kind of a
+something would be welcomed!--was going to occur. Maybe Mrs. De Guenther
+had sent her a ticket to a concert; she had once before. Or maybe, since
+you might as well wish for big things while you're at it, it might even
+be a ticket to an expensive seat in a real theatre! Her pleasure-hungry,
+work-heavy blue eyes burned luminous at the idea.
+
+"But I really shouldn't wish," she reminded her prancing mind belatedly.
+"He may only have come down to talk about the weather. It mayn't any of
+it be true."
+
+So she stood up straight and gravely, and answered very courteously and
+holding-tightly all the amiable roundabout remarks the old gentleman was
+shoving forward like pawns on a chessboard before the real game begins.
+She answered with the same trained cheerfulness she could give her
+library children when her head and her disposition ached worst; and even
+warmed to a vicious enthusiasm over the state of the streets and the
+wetness of the damp weather.
+
+"He knows lots of real things to say," she complained to herself, "why
+doesn't he say them, instead of talking editorials? I suppose this is
+his bedside--no, lawyers don't have bedside manners--well, his barside
+manner, then----"
+
+It is difficult to think and listen at the same time: by this time she
+had missed a beautiful long paragraph about the Street-Cleaning
+Department; and something else, apparently. For her friend was holding
+out to her a note addressed to her flowingly in his wife's English hand,
+and was saying,
+
+"--which she has asked me to deliver. I trust you have no imperative
+engagement for to-morrow night."
+
+Something _had_ happened!
+
+"Why, no!" said the Liberry Teacher delightedly. "No, indeed! Thank you,
+and her, too. I'd love to come."
+
+"Teacher!" clamored a small chocolate-colored citizen in a Kewpie
+muffler, "my maw she want' a book call' 'Ugwin!' She say it got a yellow
+cover an' pictures in it."
+
+"Just a moment!" said Phyllis; and sent him upstairs with a note asking
+for "Hugh Wynne" in the two-volume edition. She was used to translating
+that small colored boy's demands. Last week he had described to her a
+play he called "Eas' Limb", with the final comment, "But it wan't no
+good. 'Twant no limb in it anywhar, ner no trees atall!"
+
+"Do you have much of that?" Mr. De Guenther asked idly.
+
+"Lots!" said Phyllis cheerfully. "You take special training in guesswork
+at library school. They call them 'teasers'. They say they're good for
+your intellect."
+
+"Ah--yes," said Mr. De Guenther absently in the barside manner.
+
+And then, sitting calmly with his silvery head against a Washington's
+Birthday poster so that three scarlet cherries stuck above him in the
+manner of a scalp-lock, he said something else remarkably real:
+
+"I have--we have--a little matter of business to discuss with you
+to-morrow night, my dear; an offer, I may say, of a different line of
+work. And I want you to satisfy yourself thoroughly--thoroughly, my dear
+child, of my reputableness. Mr. Johnstone, the chief of the city
+library, whose office I believe to be in this branch, is one of my
+oldest friends. I am, I think I may say, well known as a lawyer in this
+my native city. I should be glad to have you satisfy yourself personally
+on these points, because----" could it be that the eminently poised Mr.
+De Guenther was embarrassed? "Because the line of work which I wish, or
+rather my wife wishes, to lay before you is--is a very different line of
+work!" ended the old gentleman inconclusively. There was no mistake
+about it this time--he _was_ embarrassed.
+
+"Oh, Mr. De Guenther!" cried Phyllis before she thought, out of the
+fulness of her heart, catching his arm in her eagerness; "Oh, Mr. De
+Guenther, _could_ the Very Different Line of Work have a--have a
+_rose-garden_ attached to it anywhere?"
+
+Before she was fairly finished she knew what a silly question she had
+asked. How could any line of work she was qualified to do possibly have
+rose-gardens attached to it? You can't catalogue roses on neat cards, or
+improve their minds by the Newark Ladder System, or do anything at all
+librarious to them, except pressing them in books to mummify; and the
+Liberry Teacher didn't think that was at all a courteous thing to do to
+roses. So Mr. De Guenther's reply quite surprised her.
+
+"There--seems--to be--no good reason," he said, slowly and placidly,
+as if he were dropping his words one by one out of a slot;--"why
+there should not--be--a very satisfactory rose-garden, or
+even--_two_--connected with it. None--whatever."
+
+That was all the explanation he offered. But the Liberry Teacher asked
+no more. "_Oh!_" she said rapturously.
+
+"Then we may expect you to-morrow at seven?" he said; and smiled
+politely and moved to the door. He walked out as matter-of-coursely as
+if he had dropped in to ask the meaning of "circumflex," or who
+invented smallpox, or the name of Adam's house-cat, or how long it would
+take her to do a graduation essay for his daughter--or any such little
+things that librarians are prepared for most days.
+
+And instead--his neat gray elderly back seemed to deny it--he had left
+with her, the Liberry Teacher, her, dusty, tousled, shopworn Phyllis
+Braithwaite, an invitation to consider a Line of Work which was so
+mysteriously Different that she had to look up the spotless De Guenther
+reputation before she came!
+
+One loses track of time, staring at a red George Washington poster, and
+wondering about a future with a sudden Different Line in it.... It was
+ten minutes past putting-out-children time! She stared aghast at the
+ruthless clock, then created two Monitors for Putting Out at one royal
+sweep. She managed the nightly eviction with such gay expedition that it
+almost felt like ten minutes ago when the place, except for the
+pride-swollen monitors, was cleared. While these officers watched the
+commonalty clumping reluctantly upstairs toward the umbrella-rack, the
+Liberry Teacher paced sedately around the shelves, giving the books that
+routine straightening they must have before seven struck and the horde
+rushed in again. It was really her relieving officer's work, but the
+Liberry Teacher felt that her mind needed straightening, too, and this
+always seemed to do it.
+
+She looked, as she moved slowly down along the shelves, very much like
+most of the librarians you see; alert, pleasant, slender, a little
+dishevelled, a little worn. But there was really no librarian there.
+There was only Phyllis Narcissa--that dreaming young Phyllis who had had
+to stay pushed out of sight all the seven years that Miss Braithwaite
+had been efficiently earning her living.
+
+She let her mind stray happily as far as it would over the possibilities
+Mr. De Guenther had held out to her, and woke to discover herself trying
+to find a place under "Domestic Economy--Condiments" for "Five Little
+Peppers and How They Grew." She laughed aloud in the suddenly empty
+room, and then lifted her head to find Miss Black, the night-duty girl
+that week, standing in the doorway ready to relieve guard.
+
+"Oh, Anna, see what I've done!" she laughed. Somehow everything seemed
+merely light-hearted and laughable since Mr. De Guenther's most
+fairy-tale visit, with its wild hints of Lines of Work. Anna Black came,
+looked, laughed.
+
+"In the 640's!" she said. "Well, you're liable to do nearly everything
+by the time it's Saturday. Last Saturday, Dolly Graham up in the
+Circulation was telling me, an old colored mammy said she'd lost her
+mittens in the reading-room; and the first they knew Dolly was hunting
+through the Woollen Goods classification, and Mary Gayley pawing the
+dictionary wildly for m-i-t!"
+
+"And they found the mittens hung around her neck by the cord," finished
+the Liberry Teacher. "I know--it was a thrilling story. Well, good-by
+till Monday, Anna Black. I'm going home now, to have some lovely prunes
+and some real dried beef, and maybe a glass of almost-milk if I can
+persuade the landlady I need it."
+
+"Mine prefers dried apricots," responded Miss Black cheerfully, "but she
+never has anything but canned milk in the house, thus sparing us the
+embarrassment of asking for real. Good-by--good luck!"
+
+But as the Liberry Teacher pinned her serviceable hat close, and
+fastened her still good raincoat over her elderly sweater, neither
+prunes nor mittens nor next week's work worried her at all. After all,
+living among the fairy-stories with the Little People makes that
+pleasant land where wanting is having, and all the impossibilities can
+come true, very easy of access. Phyllis Braithwaite's mind, as she
+picked her way down the bedraggled street, wandered innocently off in a
+dream-place full of roses, till the muddy marble steps of her
+boarding-place gleamed sloppily before her through the foggy rain.
+
+She sat up late that night, doing improving things to the white net
+waist that went with her best suit, which was black. As her needle
+nibbled busily down the seams she continued happily to wonder about that
+Entirely Different Line. It sounded to her more like a reportership on
+a yellow journal than anything else imaginable. Or, perhaps, could she
+be wanted to join the Secret Service?
+
+"At any rate," she concluded light-heartedly, as she stitched the last
+clean ruching into the last wrist-covering, sedate sleeve, "at any rate
+I'll have a chance to-morrow to wear mother's gold earrings that I
+mustn't have on in the library. And oh, how lovely it will be to have a
+dinner that wasn't cooked by a poor old bored boarding-house cook or a
+shiny tiled syndicate!"
+
+And she went to bed--to dream of Entirely Different Lines all the colors
+of the rainbow, that radiated out from the Circulation Desk like
+tight-ropes. She never remembered Eva Atkinson's carefully prettied
+face, or her own vivid, work-worn one, at all. She only dreamed that far
+at the end of the pink Entirely Different Line--a very hard one to
+walk--there was a rose-garden exactly like a patchwork quilt, where she
+was to be.
+
+
+
+
+III
+
+
+When Phyllis woke next morning everything in the world had a
+light-hearted, holiday feeling. Her Sundays, gloriously unoccupied,
+generally did, but this was extra-special. The rain had managed to clear
+away every vestige of last week's slush, and had then itself most
+unselfishly retired down the gutters. The sun shone as if May had come,
+and the wind, through the Liberry Teacher's window, had a springy,
+pussy-willowy, come-for-a-walk-in-the-country feel to it. She found that
+she had slept too late to go to church, and prepared for a joyful dash
+to the boarding-house bathtub. There might be--who knew but there
+actually might be--on this day of days, enough hot water for a real
+bath!
+
+"I feel as if everything was going to be lovely all day!" she said
+without preface to old black Maggie, who was clumping her accustomed
+bed-making way along the halls, with her woolly head tied up in her
+Sunday silk handkerchief. Even she looked happier, Phyllis thought,
+than she had yesterday. She grinned broadly at Phyllis, leaning
+smilingly against the door in her kimona.
+
+"Ah dunno, Miss Braithways," she said, and entered the room and took a
+pillow-case-corner in her mouth. "Ah never has dem premeditations!"
+
+Phyllis laughed frankly, and Maggie, much flattered at the happy
+reception of her reply, grinned so widely that you might almost have
+tied her mouth behind her ears.
+
+"You sure is a cheerful person, Miss Braithways!" said Maggie, and went
+on making the bed.
+
+Phyllis fled on down the hall, laughing still. She had just remembered
+another of old Maggie's compliments, made on one of the rare occasions
+when Phyllis had sat down and sung to the boarding-house piano. (She
+hadn't been able to do it long, because the Mental Science Lady on the
+next floor had sent down word that it stopped her from concentrating,
+and as she had a very expensive room there was nothing for the landlady
+to do but make Phyllis stop.) Phyllis had come out in the hall to find
+old Maggie listening rapturously.
+
+"Oh, Miss Braithways!" she had murmured, rolling her eyes, "you
+certainly does equalize a martingale!"
+
+It had been a compliment Phyllis never forgot. She smiled to herself as
+she found the bathroom door open. Why, the world was full of a number of
+things, many of them funny. Being a Liberry Teacher was rather nice,
+after all, when you were fresh from a long night's sleep. And if that
+Mental Science Lady _wouldn't_ let her play the piano, why, her
+thrilling tales of what she could do when her mind was unfettered were
+worth the price. That story she told so seriously about how the pipes
+burst--and the plumber wouldn't come, and "My dear, I gave those pipes
+only half an hour's treatment, and they closed right up!" It was quite
+as much fun--well, almost as much--hearing her, as it would have been to
+play.
+
+... All of the contented, and otherwise, elderly people who inhabited
+the boarding-house with Phyllis appeared to have gone off without using
+hot water, for there actually was some. The Liberry Teacher found that
+she could have a genuine bath, and have enough water besides to wash her
+hair, which is a rite all girls who work have to reserve for Sundays.
+This was surely a day of days!
+
+She used the water--alas for selfish human nature!--to the last warm
+drop and went gayly back to her little room with no emotions whatever
+for the poor other boarders, soon to find themselves wrathfully
+hot-waterless. And then--she thoughtlessly curled down on the bed, and
+slept and slept and slept! She wakened dimly in time for the one o'clock
+dinner, dressed, and ate it in a half-sleep. She went back upstairs
+planning a trolley-ride that should take her out into the country, where
+a long walk might be had. And midway in changing her shoes she lay back
+across the bed and--fell asleep again. The truth was, Phyllis was about
+as tired as a girl can get.
+
+She waked at dusk, with a jerk of terror lest she should have overslept
+her time for going out. But it was only six. She had a whole hour to
+prink in, which is a very long time for people who are used to being in
+the library half-an-hour after the alarm-clock wakes them.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Some houses, all of themselves, and before you meet a soul who lives in
+them, are silently indifferent to you. Some make you feel that you are
+not wanted in the least; these usually have a lot of gilt furniture, and
+what are called objects of art set stiffly about. Some seem to be having
+an untidy good time all to themselves, in which you are not included.
+
+The De Guenther house, staid and softly toned, did none of these things.
+It gave the Liberry Teacher, in her neat, last year's best suit, a
+feeling as of gentle welcome-home. She felt contented and _belonging_
+even before quick-smiling, slender little Mrs. De Guenther came rustling
+gently in to greet her. Then followed Mr. De Guenther, pleasant and
+unperturbed as usual, and after him an agreeable, back-arching gray cat,
+who had copied his master's walk as exactly as it can be done with four
+feet.
+
+All four sat amiably about the room and held precise and pleasant
+converse, something like a cheerful essay written in dialogue, about
+many amusing, intelligent things which didn't especially matter. The
+Liberry Teacher liked it. It was pleasant beyond words to sit nestlingly
+in a pluffy chair, and hear about all the little lightly-treated
+scholarly day-before-yesterday things her father had used to talk of.
+She carried on her own small part in the talk blithely enough. She
+approved of herself and the way she was behaving, which makes very much
+for comfort. There was only once that she was ashamed of herself, and
+thought about it in bed afterwards and was mortified; when her eyes
+filled with quick tears at a quite dry and unemotional--indeed, rather a
+sarcastic--quotation from Horace on the part of Mr. De Guenther. But she
+smiled, when she saw that they noticed her.
+
+"That's the first time I've heard a Latin quotation since I came away
+from home," she found herself saying quite simply in explanation, "and
+Father quoted Horace so much every day that--that I felt as if an old
+friend had walked in!"
+
+But her hosts didn't seem to mind. Mr. De Guenther in his careful
+evening clothes looked swiftly across at Mrs. De Guenther in her
+gray-silk-and-cameo, and they both nodded little satisfied nods, as if
+she had spoken in a way that they were glad to hear. And then dinner was
+served, a dinner as different--well, she didn't want to remember in its
+presence the dinners it differed from; they might have clouded the
+moment. She merely ate it with a shameless inward joy.
+
+It ended, still to a pleasant effortless accompaniment of talk about
+books and music and pictures that Phyllis was interested in, and had
+found nobody to share her interest with for so long--so long! She felt
+happily running though everything the general, easy taking-for-granted
+of all the old, gentle, inflexible standards of breeding that she had
+nearly forgotten, down in the heart of the city among her obstreperous,
+affectionate little foreigners.
+
+They had coffee in the long old-fashioned salon parlor, and then Mr. De
+Guenther straightened himself, and Mrs. De Guenther folded her veined,
+ringed old white hands, and Phyllis prepared thrilledly to listen.
+Surely now she would hear about that Different Line of Work.
+
+There was nothing, at first, about work of any sort. They merely began
+to tell her alternately about some clients of theirs, a Mrs. Harrington
+and her son: rather interesting people, from what Phyllis could make
+out. She wondered if she was going to hear that they needed a librarian.
+
+"This lady, my client, Mrs. Harrington," continued her host gravely, "is
+the one for whom I may ask you to consider doing some work. I say may,
+but it is a practical certainty. She is absolutely alone, my dear Miss
+Braithwaite, except for her son. I am afraid I must ask you to listen to
+a long story about them."
+
+It was coming!
+
+"Oh, but I want to hear!" said Phyllis, with that quick, affectionate
+sympathy of hers that was so winning, leaning forward and watching them
+with the lighted look in her blue eyes. It all seemed to her tired,
+alert mind like some story she might have read to her children, an
+Arabian Nights narrative which might begin, "And the Master of the
+House, ascribing praise unto Allah, repeated the following Tale."
+
+"There have always been just the two of them, mother and son," said the
+Master of the House. "And Allan has always been a very great deal to his
+mother."
+
+"Poor Angela!" murmured his wife.
+
+"They are old friends of ours," her husband explained. "My wife and Mrs.
+Harrington were schoolmates.
+
+"Well, Allan, the boy, grew up, dowered with everything a mother could
+possibly desire for her son, personally and otherwise. He was handsome
+and intelligent, with much charm of manner."
+
+"I know now what people mean by 'talking like a book,'" thought Phyllis
+irreverently. "And I don't believe any one man _could_ be all that!"
+
+"There was practically nothing," Mr. De Guenther went on, "which the
+poor lad had not. That was one trouble, I imagine. If he had not been
+highly intelligent he would not have studied so hard; if he had not been
+strong and active he might not have taken up athletic sports so
+whole-heartedly; and when I add that Allan possessed charm, money and
+social status you may see that what he did would have broken down most
+young fellows. In short, he kept studies, sports and social affairs all
+going at high pressure during his four years of college. But he was
+young and strong, and might not have felt so much ill effects from all
+that; though his doctors said afterwards that he was nearly at the
+breaking point when he graduated."
+
+Phyllis bent closer to the story-teller in her intense interest. Why, it
+_was_ like one of her fairy-tales! She held her breath to listen, while
+the old lawyer went gravely on.
+
+"Allan could not have been more than twenty-two when he graduated, and
+it was a very short while afterwards that he became engaged to a young
+girl, the daughter of a family friend. Louise Frey was her name, was it
+not, love?"
+
+"Yes, that is right," said his wife, "Louise Frey."
+
+"A beautiful girl," he went on, "dark, with a brilliant color, and full
+of life and good spirits. They were both very young, but there was no
+good reason why the marriage should be delayed, and it was set for the
+following September."
+
+A princess, too, in the story! But--where had she gone? "The two of them
+only," he had said.
+
+"It must have been scarcely a month," the story went on--Mr. De Guenther
+was telling it as if he were stating a case--"nearly a month before the
+date set for the wedding, when the lovers went for a long automobile
+ride, across a range of mountains near a country-place where they were
+both staying. They were alone in the machine.
+
+"Allan, of course, was driving, doubtless with a certain degree of
+impetuosity, as he did most things.... They were on an unfrequented part
+of the road," said Mr. De Guenther, lowering his voice, "when there
+occurred an unforeseen wreckage in the car's machinery. The car was
+thrown over and badly splintered. Both young people were pinned under
+it.
+
+"So far as he knew at the time, Allan was not injured, nor was he in any
+pain; but he was held in absolute inability to move by the car above
+him. Miss Frey, on the contrary, was badly hurt, and in suffering. She
+died in about three hours, a little before relief came to them."
+
+Phyllis clutched the arms of her chair, thrilled and wide-eyed. She
+could imagine all the horror of the happening through the old lawyer's
+precise and unemotional story. The boy-lover, pinioned, helpless,
+condemned to watch his sweetheart dying by inches, and unable to help
+her by so much as lifting a hand--could anything be more awful not only
+to endure, but to remember?
+
+"And yet," she thought whimsically, "it mightn't be so bad to have one
+_real_ tragedy to remember, if you haven't anything else! All _I'll_
+have to remember when I'm old will be bad little children and good
+little children, and books and boarding-houses, and the recollection
+that people said I was a very worthy young woman once!" But she threw
+off the thought. It's just as well not to think of old age when all the
+idea brings up is a vision of a nice, clean Old Ladies' Home.
+
+"But you said he was an invalid?" she said aloud.
+
+"Yes, I regret to say," answered Mr. De Guenther. "You see, it was found
+that the shock to the nerves, acting on an already over-keyed mind and
+body, together with some spinal blow concerning which the doctors are
+still in doubt, had affected Allan's powers of locomotion." (Mr. De
+Guenther certainly did like long words!) "He has been unable to walk
+since. And, which is sadder, his state of mind and body has become
+steadily worse. He can scarcely move at all now, and his mental attitude
+can only be described as painfully morbid--yes, I may say _very_
+painfully morbid. Sometimes he does not speak at all for days together,
+even to his mother, or his attendant."
+
+"Oh, poor boy!" said Phyllis. "How long has he been this way?"
+
+"Seven years this fall," the answer came consideringly. "Is it not,
+love?"
+
+"Yes," said his wife, "seven years."
+
+"_Oh!_" said the Liberry Teacher, with a quick catch of sympathy at her
+heart.
+
+Just as long as she had been working for her living in the big, dusty
+library. Supposing--oh, supposing she'd had to live all that time in
+such suffering as this poor Allan had endured and his mother had had to
+witness! She felt suddenly as if the grimy, restless Children's Room,
+with its clatter of turbulent little outland voices, were a safe, sunny
+paradise in comparison.
+
+Mr. De Guenther did not speak. He visibly braced himself and was visibly
+ill-at-ease.
+
+"I have told most of the story, Isabel, love," said he at last. "Would
+you not prefer to tell the rest? It is at your instance that I have
+undertaken this commission for Mrs. Harrington, you will remember."
+
+It struck Phyllis that he didn't think it was quite a dignified
+commission, at that.
+
+"Very well, my dear," said his wife, and took up the tale in her swift,
+soft voice.
+
+"You can fancy, my dear Miss Braithwaite, how intensely his mother has
+felt about it."
+
+"Indeed, yes!" said Phyllis pitifully.
+
+"Her whole life, since the accident, has been one long devotion to her
+son. I don't think a half-hour ever passes that she does not see him.
+But in spite of this constant care, as my husband has told you, he grows
+steadily worse. And poor Angela has finally broken under the strain. She
+was never strong. She is dying now--they give her maybe two months more.
+
+"Her one anxiety, of course, is for poor Allan's welfare. You can
+imagine how you would feel if you had to leave an entirely helpless son
+or brother to the mercies of hired attendants, however faithful. And
+they have no relatives--they are the last of the family."
+
+The listening girl began to see. She was going to be asked to act as
+nurse, perhaps attendant and guardian, to this morbid invalid with the
+injured mind and body.
+
+[Illustration: "NO," SAID MRS. DE GUENTHER GRAVELY. "YOU WOULD NOT. YOU
+WOULD HAVE TO BE HIS WIFE"]
+
+"But how would I be any better for him than a regular trained nurse?"
+she wondered. "And they said he had an attendant."
+
+She looked questioningly at the pair.
+
+"Where does my part come in?" she asked with a certain sweet directness
+which was sometimes hers. "Wouldn't I be a hireling too if--if I had
+anything to do with it?"
+
+"No," said Mrs. De Guenther gravely. "You would not. You would have to
+be his wife."
+
+
+
+
+IV
+
+
+The Liberry Teacher, in her sober best suit, sat down in her entirely
+commonplace chair in the quiet old parlor, and looked unbelievingly at
+the sedate elderly couple who had made her this wild proposition. She
+caught her breath. But catching her breath did not seem to affect
+anything that had been said. Mr. De Guenther took up the explanation
+again, a little deprecatingly, she thought.
+
+"You see now why I requested you to investigate our reputability?" he
+said. "Such a proposition as this, especially to a young lady who has no
+parent or guardian, requires a considerable guarantee of good faith and
+honesty of motive."
+
+"Will you please tell me more about it?" she asked quietly. She did not
+feel now as if it were anything which had especially to do with her. It
+seemed more like an interesting story she was unravelling sentence by
+sentence. The long, softly lighted old room, with its Stuarts and
+Sullys, and its gracious, gray-haired host and hostess, seemed only a
+picturesque part of it.... Her hostess caught up the tale again.
+
+"Angela has been nearly distracted," she said. "And the idea has come to
+her that if she could find some conscientious woman, a lady, and a
+person to whom what she could offer would be a consideration, who would
+take charge of poor Allan, that she could die in peace."
+
+"But why did you think of asking me?" the girl asked breathlessly. "And
+why does she want me married to him? And how could you or she be sure
+that I would not be as much of a hireling as any nurse she may have
+now?"
+
+Mrs. De Guenther answered the last two questions together.
+
+"Mrs. Harrington's idea is, and I think rightly, that a conscientious
+woman would feel the marriage tie, however nominal, a bond that would
+obligate her to a certain duty toward her husband. As to why we selected
+you, my dear, my husband and I have had an interest in you for some
+years, as you know. We have spoken of you as a girl whom we should like
+for a relative----"
+
+"Why, isn't that strange?" cried Phyllis, dimpling. "That's just what
+I've thought about you!"
+
+Mrs. De Guenther flushed, with a delicate old shyness.
+
+"Thank you, dear child," she said. "I was about to add that we have not
+seen you at your work all these years without knowing you to have the
+kind heart and sense of honor requisite to poor Angela's plan. We feel
+sure you could be trusted to take the place. Mr. De Guenther has asked
+his friend Mr. Johnston, the head of the library, such things as we
+needed to supplement our personal knowledge of you. You have everything
+that could be asked, even to a certain cheerfulness of outlook which
+poor Angela, naturally, lacks in a measure."
+
+"But--but what about _me_?" asked Phyllis Braithwaite a little
+piteously, in answer to all this.
+
+They seemed so certain she was what they wanted--was there anything in
+this wild scheme that would make _her_ life better than it was as the
+tired, ill-paid, light-hearted keeper of a roomful of turbulent little
+foreigners?
+
+"Unless you are thinking of marriage--" Phyllis shook her head--"you
+would have at least a much easier life than you have now. Mrs.
+Harrington would settle a liberal income on you, contingent, of course,
+of your faithful wardership over Allan. We would be your only judges as
+to that. You would have a couple or more months of absolute freedom
+every year, control of much of your own time, ample leisure to enjoy it.
+You would give only your chances of actual marriage for perhaps five
+years, for poor Allan cannot live longer than that at his present state
+of retrogression, and some part of every day to seeing that Allan was
+not neglected. If you bestow on him half of the interest and effort I
+have known of your giving any one of a dozen little immigrant boys, his
+mother has nothing to fear for him."
+
+Mr. De Guenther stopped with a grave little bow, and he and his wife
+waited for the reply.
+
+The Liberry Teacher sat silent, her eyes on her slim hands, that were
+roughened and reddened by constant hurried washings to get off the dirt
+of the library books. It was true--a good deal of it, anyhow. And one
+thing they had not said was true also: her sunniness and accuracy and
+strength, her stock-in-trade, were wearing thin under the pressure of
+too long hours and too hard work and too few personal interests. Her
+youth was worn down. And--marriage? What chance of love and marriage had
+she, a working-girl alone, too poor to see anything of the class of men
+she would be willing to marry? She had not for years spent six hours
+with a man of her own kind and age. She had not even been specially in
+love, that she could remember, since she was grown up. She did not feel
+much, now, as if she ever would be. All that she had to give up in
+taking this offer was her freedom, such as it was--and those fluttering
+perhapses that whisper such pleasant promises when you are young. But,
+then, she wouldn't be young so _very_ much longer. Should she--she put
+it to herself crudely--should she wait long, hard, closed-in years in
+the faith that she would learn to be absolutely contented, or that some
+man she could love would come to the cheap boarding-house, or the little
+church she attended occasionally when she was not too tired, fall in
+love with her work-dimmed looks at sight, and--marry her? It had not
+happened all these years while her girlhood had been more attractive and
+her personality more untired. There was scarcely a chance in a hundred
+for her of a kind lover-husband and such dear picture-book children as
+she had seen Eva Atkinson convoying. Well--her mind suddenly came up
+against the remembrance, as against a sober fact, that in her passionate
+wishings of yesterday she had not wished for a lover-husband, nor for
+children. She had asked for a husband who would give her money, and
+leisure to be rested and pretty, and--a rose-garden! And here,
+apparently, was her wish uncannily fulfilled.
+
+"Well, what are you going to do about it?" inquired the Destinies with
+their traditional indifference. "We can't wait all night!"
+
+She lifted her head and cast an almost frightened look at the De
+Guenthers, waiting courteously for her decision. In reply to the look,
+Mr. De Guenther began giving her details about the money, and the
+leisure time, and the business terms of the contract generally. She
+listened attentively. All that--for a little guardianship, a little
+kindness, and the giving-up of a little piece of life nobody wanted and
+a few little hopes and dreams!
+
+Phyllis laughed, as she always did when there were big black problems to
+be solved.
+
+"After all, it's fairly usual," she said. "I heard last week of a woman
+who left money along with her pet dog, very much the same way."
+
+"Did you? Did you, dear?" asked Mrs. De Guenther, beaming. "Then you
+think you will do it?"
+
+The Liberry Teacher rose, and squared her straight young shoulders under
+the worn net waist.
+
+"If Mrs. Harrington thinks I'll do for the situation!" she said
+gallantly,--and laughed again.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"It feels partly like going into a nunnery and partly like going into a
+fairy-story," she said to herself that night as she wound her alarm.
+"But--I wonder if anybody's remembered to ask the consent of the
+groom!"
+
+
+
+
+V
+
+
+He looked like a young Crusader on a tomb. That was Phyllis's first
+impression of Allan Harrington. He talked and acted, if a moveless man
+can be said to act, like a bored, spoiled small boy. That was her
+second.
+
+Mrs. Harrington, fragile, flushed, breathlessly intense in her
+wheel-chair, had yet a certain resemblance in voice and gesture to Mrs.
+De Guenther--a resemblance which puzzled Phyllis till she placed it as
+the mark of that far-off ladies' school they had attended together.
+There was also a graceful, mincing white wolfhound which, contrary to
+the accepted notion of invalids' faithful hounds, didn't seem to care
+for his master's darkened sick-room at all, but followed the one sunny
+spot in Mrs. Harrington's room with a wistful persistence. It was such a
+small spot for such a long wolfhound--that was the principal thing which
+impressed itself on Phyllis's frightened mind throughout her visit.
+
+Mrs. De Guenther convoyed her to the Harrington house for inspection a
+couple of days after she had accepted some one's proposal to marry Allan
+Harrington. (Whether it counted as her future mother-in-law's proposal,
+or her future trustee's, she was never sure. The only sure thing was
+that it did not come from the groom.) She had borrowed a half-day from
+the future on purpose, though she did not want to go at all. But the
+reality was not bad; only a fluttering, emotional little woman who clung
+to her hands and talked to her and asked useless questions with a
+nervous insistence which would have been nerve-wearing for a steady
+thing, but was only pitiful to a stranger.
+
+You see strange people all the time in library work, and learn to place
+them, at length, with almost as much accuracy as you do your books. The
+fact that Mrs. Harrington was not long for this world did not prevent
+Phyllis from classing her, in her mental card-catalogue, as a very
+perfect specimen of the Loving Nagger. She was lying back, wrapped in
+something gray and soft, when her visitors came, looking as if the
+lifting of her hand would be an effort. She was evidently pitifully
+weak. But she had, too, an ineradicable vitality she could summon at
+need. She sprang almost upright to greet her visitors, a hand out to
+each, an eager flood of words on her lips.
+
+"And you are Miss Braithwaite, that is going to look after my boy?" she
+ended. "Oh, it is so good of you--I am so glad--I can go in peace now.
+Are you sure--sure you will know the minute his attendants are the least
+bit negligent? I watch and watch them all the time. I tell Allan to ring
+for me if anything ever is the least bit wrong--I am always begging him
+to remember. I go in every night and pray with him--do you think you
+could do that? But I always cry so before I'm through--I cry and cry--my
+poor, helpless boy--he was so strong and bright! And you are sure you
+are conscientious----"
+
+At this point Phyllis stopped the flow of Mrs. Harrington's conversation
+firmly, if sweetly.
+
+"Yes, indeed," she said cheerfully. "But you know, if I'm not, Mr. De
+Guenther can stop all my allowance. It wouldn't be to my own interest
+not to fulfil my duties faithfully."
+
+"Yes, that is true," said Mrs. Harrington. "That was a good thought of
+mine. My husband always said I was an unusual woman where business was
+concerned."
+
+So they went on the principle that she had no honor beyond working for
+what she would get out of it! Although she had made the suggestion
+herself, Phyllis's cheeks burned, and she was about to answer sharply.
+Then somehow the poor, anxious, loving mother's absolute preoccupation
+with her son struck her as right after all.
+
+"If it were my son," thought Phyllis, "I wouldn't worry about any
+strange hired girl's feelings either, maybe. I'd just think about
+him.... I promise I'll look after Mr. Harrington's welfare as if he were
+my own brother!" she ended aloud impulsively. "Indeed, you may trust
+me."
+
+"I am--sure you will," panted Mrs. Harrington. "You look like--a good
+girl, and--and old enough to be responsible--twenty-eight--thirty?"
+
+"Not very far from that," said Phyllis serenely.
+
+"And you are sure you will know when the attendants are neglectful? I
+speak to them all the time, but I never can be sure.... And now you'd
+better see poor Allan. This is one of his good days. Just think, dear
+Isabel, he spoke to me twice without my speaking to him this morning!"
+
+"Oh--must I?" asked Phyllis, dismayed. "Couldn't I wait till--till it
+happens?"
+
+Mrs. Harrington actually laughed a little at her shyness, lighting up
+like a girl. Phyllis felt dimly, though she tried not to, that through
+it all her mother-in-law-elect was taking pleasure in the dramatic side
+of the situation she had engineered.
+
+"Oh, my dear, you must see him. He expects you," she answered almost
+gayly. The procession of three moved down the long room towards a door,
+Phyllis's hand guiding the wheel-chair. She was surprised to find
+herself shaking with fright. Just what she expected to find beyond the
+door she did not know, but it must have been some horror, for it was
+with a heart-bound of wild relief that she finally made out Allan
+Harrington, lying white in the darkened place.
+
+A Crusader on a tomb. Yes, he looked like that. In the room's half-dusk
+the pallor of his still, clear-featured face and his long, clear-cut
+hands was nearly the same as the whiteness of the couch-draperies. His
+hair, yellow-brown and waving, flung back from his forehead like a
+crest, and his dark brows and lashes made the only note of darkness
+about him. To Phyllis's beauty-loving eyes he seemed so perfect an image
+that she could have watched him for hours.
+
+"Here's Miss Braithwaite, my poor darling," said his mother. "The young
+lady we have been talking about so long."
+
+The Crusader lifted his eyelids and let them fall again.
+
+"Is she?" he said listlessly.
+
+"Don't you want to talk to her, darling boy?" his mother persisted, half
+out of breath, but still full of that unrebuffable, loving energy and
+insistence which she would probably keep to the last minute of her
+life.
+
+"No," said the Crusader, still in those empty, listless tones. "I'd
+rather not talk. I'm tired."
+
+His mother seemed not at all put out.
+
+"Of course, darling," she said, kissing him. She sat by him still,
+however, and poured out sentence after sentence of question, insistence,
+imploration, and pity, eliciting no answer at all. Phyllis wondered how
+it would feel to have to lie still and have that done to you for a term
+of years. The result of her wonderment was a decision to forgive her
+unenthusiastic future bridegroom for what she had at first been ready to
+slap him.
+
+Presently Mrs. Harrington's breath flagged, and the three women went
+away, back to the room they had been in before. Phyllis sat and let
+herself be talked to for a little longer. Then she rose impulsively.
+
+"May I go back and see your son again for just a minute?" she asked, and
+had gone before Mrs. Harrington had finished her permission. She darted
+into the dark room before her courage had time to fail, and stood by the
+white couch again.
+
+"Mr. Harrington," she said clearly, "I'm sorry you're tired, but I'm
+afraid I am going to have to ask you to listen to me. You know, don't
+you, that your mother plans to have me marry you, for a sort of
+interested head-nurse? Are you willing to have it happen? Because I
+won't do it unless you really prefer it."
+
+The heavy white lids half-lifted again.
+
+"I don't mind," said Allan Harrington listlessly. "I suppose you are
+quiet and trustworthy, or De Guenther wouldn't have sent you. It will
+give mother a little peace and it makes no difference to me."
+
+He closed his eyes and the subject at the same time.
+
+"Well, then, that's all right," said Phyllis cheerfully, and started to
+go. Then, drawn back by a sudden, nervous temper-impulse, she moved back
+on him. "And let me tell you," she added, half-laughing,
+half-impertinently, "that if you ever get into my quiet, trustworthy
+clutches you may have an awful time! You're a very spoiled invalid."
+
+She whisked out of the room before he could have gone very far with his
+reply. But he had not cared to reply, apparently. He lay unmoved and
+unmoving.
+
+Phyllis discovered, poising breathless on the threshold, that somehow
+she had seen his eyes. They had been a little like the wolfhound's, a
+sort of wistful gold-brown.
+
+For some reason she found that Allan Harrington's attitude of absolute
+detachment made the whole affair seem much easier for her. And when Mrs.
+Harrington slipped a solitaire diamond into her hand as she went,
+instead of disliking it she enjoyed its feel on her finger, and the
+flash of it in the light. She thanked Mrs. Harrington for it with real
+gratitude. But it made her feel more than ever engaged to marry her
+mother-in-law.
+
+She walked home rather silently with Mrs. De Guenther. Only at the foot
+of the De Guenther steps, she made one absent remark.
+
+"He must have been delightful," she said, "when he was alive!"
+
+
+
+
+VI
+
+
+After a week of the old bustling, dusty hard work, the Liberry Teacher's
+visit to the De Guenthers' and the subsequent one at the Harringtons',
+and even her sparkling white ring, seemed part of a queer story she had
+finished and put back on the shelf. The ring was the most real thing,
+because it was something of a worry. She didn't dare leave it at home,
+nor did she want to wear it. She finally sewed it in a chamois bag that
+she safety-pinned under her shirt-waist. Then she dismissed it from her
+mind also. There is very little time in a Liberry Teacher's life for
+meditation. Only once in a while would come to her the vision of the
+wistful Harrington wolfhound following his inadequate patch of sunlight,
+or of the dusky room where Allan Harrington lay inert and white, and
+looking like a wonderful carved statue on a tomb.
+
+She began to do a little to her clothes, but not very much, because she
+had neither time nor money. Mr. De Guenther had wanted her to take some
+money in advance, but she had refused. She did not want it till she had
+earned it, and, anyway, it would have made the whole thing so real, she
+knew, that she would have backed out.
+
+"And it isn't as if I were going to a lover," she defended herself to
+Mrs. De Guenther with a little wistful smile. "Nobody will know what I
+have on, any more than they do now."
+
+Mrs. De Guenther gave a scandalized little cry. Her attitude was
+determinedly that it was just an ordinary marriage, as good an excuse
+for sentiment and pretty frocks as any other.
+
+"My dear child," she replied firmly, "you are going to have one pretty
+frock and one really good street-suit _now_, or I will know why! The
+rest you may get yourself after the wedding, but you must obey me in
+this. Nonsense!--you can get a half-day, as you call it, perfectly well!
+What's Albert in politics for, if he can't get favors for his friends!"
+
+And, in effect, it proved that Albert was in politics to some purpose,
+for orders came up from the Head's office within twenty minutes after
+Mrs. De Guenther had used the telephone on her husband, that Miss
+Braithwaite was to have a half-day immediately--as far as she could make
+out, in order to transact city affairs! She felt as if the angels had
+told her she could have the last fortnight over again, as a favor, or
+something of the sort. A half-day out of turn was something nobody had
+ever heard of. She was even too surprised to object to the frock part of
+the situation. She tried to stand out a little longer, but it's a very
+stoical young woman who can refuse to have pretty clothes bought for
+her, and the end of it was a seat in a salon which she had always
+considered so expensive that you scarcely ought to look in the window.
+
+"Had it better be a black suit?" asked Mrs. De Guenther doubtfully, as
+the tall lady in floppy charmeuse hovered haughtily about them,
+expecting orders. "It seems horrible to buy mourning when dear Angela is
+not yet passed away, but it would only be showing proper respect; and I
+remember my own dear mother planned all our mourning outfits while she
+was dying. It was quite a pleasure to her."
+
+Phyllis kept her face straight, and slipped one persuasive hand through
+her friend's arm.
+
+"I don't believe I _could_ buy mourning, dear," she said. "And--oh, if
+you knew how long I'd wanted a really _blue_ blue suit! Only, it would
+have been too vivid to wear well--I always knew that--because you can
+only afford one every other year. And"--Phyllis rather diffidently
+voiced a thought which had been in the back of her mind for a long
+time--"if I'm going to be much around Mr. Harrington, don't you think
+cheerful clothes would be best? Everything in that house seems sombre
+enough now."
+
+"Perhaps you are right, dear child," said Mrs. De Guenther. "I hope you
+may be the means of putting a great deal of brightness into poor Allan's
+life before he joins his mother."
+
+"Oh, don't!" cried Phyllis impulsively. Somehow she could not bear to
+think of Allan Harrington's dying. He was too beautiful to be dead,
+where nobody could see him any more. Besides, Phyllis privately
+considered that a long vacation before he joined his mother would be
+only the fair thing for "poor Allan." Youth sides with youth. And--the
+clear-cut white lines of him rose in her memory and stayed there. She
+could almost hear that poor, tired, toneless voice of his, that was yet
+so deep and so perfectly accented.... She bought docilely whatever her
+guide directed, and woke from a species of gentle daze at the
+afternoon's end to find Mrs. De Guenther beaming with the weary rapture
+of the successful shopper, and herself the proprietress of a turquoise
+velvet walking-suit, a hat to match, a pale blue evening frock, a pale
+green between-dress with lovely clinging lines, and a heavenly white
+crepe thing with rosy ribbons and filmy shadow-laces--the negligee of
+one's dreams. There were also slippers and shoes and stockings and--this
+was really too bad of Mrs. De Guenther--a half-dozen set of lingerie,
+straight through. Mrs. De Guenther sat and continued to beam joyously
+over the array, in Phyllis's little bedroom.
+
+"It's my present, dearie," she said calmly. "So you needn't worry about
+using Angela's money. Gracious, it's been _lovely_! I haven't had such a
+good time since my husband's little grand-niece came on for a week.
+There's nothing like dressing a girl, after all."
+
+And Phyllis could only kiss her. But when her guest had gone she laid
+all the boxes of finery under her bed, the only place where there was
+any room. She would not take any of it out, she determined, till her
+summons came. But on second thought, she wore the blue velvet
+street-suit on Sunday visits to Mrs. Harrington, which became--she never
+knew just when or how--a regular thing. The vivid blue made her eyes
+nearly sky-color, and brightened her hair very satisfactorily. She was
+taking more time and trouble over her looks now--one has to live up to a
+turquoise velvet hat and coat! She found herself, too, becoming very
+genuinely fond of the restless, anxiously loving, passionate, unwise
+child who dwelt in Mrs. Harrington's frail elderly body and had almost
+worn it out. She sat, long hours of every Sunday afternoon, holding Mrs.
+Harrington's thin little hot hands, and listening to her swift,
+italicised monologues about Allan--what he must do, what he must not do,
+how he must be looked after, how his mother had treated him, how his
+wishes must be ascertained and followed.
+
+"Though all he wants now is dark and quiet," said his mother piteously.
+"I don't even go in there now to cry."
+
+She spoke as if it were an established ritual. Had she been using her
+son's sick-room, Phyllis wondered, as a regular weeping-place? She could
+feel in Mrs. Harrington, even in this mortal sickness, the tremendous
+driving influence which is often part of a passionately active and not
+very wise personality. That certitude and insistence of Mrs.
+Harrington's could hammer you finally into believing or doing almost
+anything. Phyllis wondered how much his mother's heartbroken adoration
+and pity might have had to do with making her son as hopeless-minded as
+he was.
+
+Naturally, the mother-in-law-elect she had acquired in such a strange
+way became very fond of Phyllis. But indeed there was something very gay
+and sweet and honest-minded about the girl, a something which gave
+people the feeling that they were very wise in liking her. Some people
+you are fond of against your will. When people cared for Phyllis it was
+with a quite irrational feeling that they were doing a sensible thing.
+They never gave any of the credit to her very real, though almost
+invisible, charm.
+
+She never saw Allan Harrington on any of the Sunday visits. She was sure
+the servants thought she did, for she knew that every one in the great,
+dark old house knew her as the young lady who was to marry Mr. Allan.
+She believed that she was supposed to be an old family friend, perhaps a
+distant relative. She did not want to see Allan. But she did want to be
+as good to his little, tensely-loving mother as she could, and reassure
+her about Allan's future care. And she succeeded.
+
+It was on a Friday about two that the summons came. Phyllis had thought
+she expected it, but when the call came to her over the library
+telephone she found herself as badly frightened as she had been the
+first time she went to the Harrington house. She shivered as she laid
+down the dater she was using, and called the other librarian to take her
+desk. Fortunately, between one and four the morning and evening shifts
+overlapped, and there was some one to take her place.
+
+"Mrs. Harrington cannot last out the night," came Mr. De Guenther's
+clear, precise voice over the telephone, without preface. "I have
+arranged with Mr. Johnston. You can go at once. You had better pack a
+suit-case, for you possibly may not be able to get back to your
+boarding-place."
+
+So it was to happen now! Phyllis felt, with her substitute in her place,
+her own wraps on, and her feet taking her swiftly towards her goal, as
+if she were offering herself to be made a nun, or have a hand or foot
+cut off, or paying herself away in some awful, irrevocable fashion. She
+packed, mechanically, all the pretty things Mrs. De Guenther had given
+her, and nothing else. She found herself at the door of her room with
+the locked suit-case in her hand, and not even a nail-file of the things
+belonging to her old self in it. She shook herself together, managed to
+laugh a little, and returned and put in such things as she thought she
+would require for the night. Then she went. She always remembered that
+journey as long as she lived; her hands and feet and tongue going on,
+buying tickets, giving directions--and her mind, like a naughty child,
+catching at everything as they went, and screaming to be allowed to go
+back home, back to the dusty, matter-of-course library and the dreary
+little boarding-house bedroom!
+
+
+
+
+VII
+
+
+They were all waiting for her, in what felt like a hideously quiet
+semicircle, in Allan's great dark room. Mrs. Harrington, deadly pale,
+and giving an impression of keeping herself alive only by force of that
+wonderful fighting vitality of hers, lay almost at length in her
+wheel-chair. There was a clergyman in vestments. There were the De
+Guenthers; Mr. De Guenther only a little more precise than his every-day
+habit was, Mrs. De Guenther crying a little, softly and furtively.
+
+As for Allan Harrington, he lay just as she had seen him that other
+time, white and moveless, seeming scarcely conscious except by an
+effort. Only she noticed a slight contraction, as of pain, between his
+brows.
+
+"Phyllis has come," panted Mrs. Harrington. "Now it will be--all right.
+You must marry him quickly--quickly, do you hear, Phyllis? Oh, people
+never will--do--what I want them to----"
+
+"Yes--yes, indeed, dear," said Phyllis, taking her hands soothingly.
+"We're going to attend to it right away. See, everything is ready."
+
+It occurred to her that Mrs. Harrington was not half as correct in her
+playing of the part of a dying woman as she would have seen to it that
+anyone else was; also, that things did not seem legal without the
+wolfhound. Then she was shocked at herself for such irrelevant thoughts.
+The thing to do was to keep poor Mrs. Harrington quieted. So she
+beckoned the clergyman and the De Guenthers nearer, and herself sped the
+marrying of herself to Allan Harrington.
+
+... When you are being married to a Crusader on a tomb, the easiest way
+is to kneel down by him. Phyllis registered this fact in her mind quite
+blankly, as something which might be of use to remember in future....
+The marrying took an unnecessarily long time, it seemed to her. It did
+not seem as if she were being married at all. It all seemed to concern
+somebody else. When it came to the putting on of the wedding-ring, she
+found herself, very naturally, guiding Allan's relaxed fingers to hold
+it in its successive places, and finally slip it on the wedding-finger.
+And somehow having to do that checked the chilly awe she had had before
+of Allan Harrington. It made her feel quite simply sorry for him, as if
+he were one of her poor little boys in trouble. And when it was all over
+she bent pitifully before she thought, and kissed one white, cold cheek.
+He seemed so tragically helpless, yet more alive, in some way, since she
+had touched his hand to guide it. Then, as her lips brushed his cheek,
+she recoiled and colored a little. She had felt that slight roughness
+which a man's cheek, however close-shaven, always has--the _man_-feel.
+It made her realize unreasonably that it was a man she had married,
+after all, not a stone image nor a sick child--a live man! With the
+thought, or rather instinct, came a swift terror of what she had done,
+and a swift impulse to rise. She was half-way risen from her knees when
+a hand on her shoulder, and the clergyman's voice in her ear, checked
+her.
+
+"Not yet," he murmured almost inaudibly. "Stay as you are till--till
+Mrs. Harrington is wheeled from the room."
+
+Phyllis understood. She remained as she was, her body a shield before
+Allan Harrington's eyes, her hand just withdrawing from his shoulder,
+till she heard the closing of the door, and a sigh as of relaxed tension
+from the three people around her. Then she rose. Allan lay still with
+closed eyelids. It seemed to her that he had flushed, if ever so
+faintly, at the touch of her lips on his cheek. She laid his hand on the
+coverlet with her own roughened, ringed one, and followed the others
+out, into the room where the dead woman had been taken, leaving him with
+his attendant.
+
+The rest of the evening Phyllis went about in a queer-keyed, almost
+light-hearted frame of mind. It was only the reaction from the
+long-expected terror that was over now, but it felt indecorous. It was
+just as well, however. Some one's head had to be kept. The servants were
+upset, of course, and there were many arrangements to be made. She and
+Mr. De Guenther worked steadily together, telephoning, ordering,
+guiding, straightening out all the tangles. There never was a wedding,
+she thought, where the bride did so much of the work! She even
+remembered to see personally that Allan's dinner was sent up to him. The
+servants had doubtless been told to come to her for orders--at any rate,
+they did. Phyllis had not had much experience in running a house, but a
+good deal in keeping her head. And that, after all, is the main thing.
+She had a far-off feeling as if she were hearing some other young woman
+giving swift, poised, executive orders. She rather admired her.
+
+After dinner the De Guenthers went. And Phyllis Braithwaite, the little
+Liberry Teacher who had been living in a hall bedroom on much less money
+than she needed, found herself alone, sole mistress of the great
+Harrington house, a corps of servants, a husband passive enough to
+satisfy the most militant suffragette, a check-book, a wistful
+wolfhound, and five hundred dollars, cash, for current expenses. The
+last weighed on her mind more than all the rest put together.
+
+"Why, I don't know how to make Current Expenses out of all that!" she
+had said to Mr. De Guenther. "It looks to me exactly like about ten
+months' salary! I'm perfectly certain I shall get up in my sleep and try
+to pay my board ahead with it, so I shan't have it all spent before the
+ten months are up! There was a blue bead necklace," she went on
+meditatively, "in the Five-and-Ten, that I always wanted to buy. Only I
+never quite felt I could afford it. Oh, just imagine going to the
+Five-and-Ten and buying at least five dollars' worth of things you
+didn't need!"
+
+"You have great discretionary powers--great discretionary powers, my
+dear, you will find!" Mr. De Guenther had said, as he patted her
+shoulder. Phyllis took it as a compliment at the time. "Discretionary
+powers" sounded as if he thought she was a quite intelligent young
+person. It did not occur to her till he had gone, and she was alone with
+her check-book, that it meant she had a good deal of liberty to do as
+she liked.
+
+It seemed to be expected of her to stay. Nobody even suggested a
+possibility of her going home again, even to pack her trunk. Mrs. De
+Guenther casually volunteered to do that, a little after the housekeeper
+had told her where her rooms were. She had been consulting with the
+housekeeper for what seemed ages, when she happened to want some pins
+for something, and asked for her suit-case.
+
+"It's in your rooms," said the housekeeper. "Mrs. Harrington--the late
+Mrs. Harrington, I should say----"
+
+Phyllis stopped listening at this point. Who was the present Mrs.
+Harrington? she wondered before she thought--and then remembered.
+Why--_she_ was! So there was no Phyllis Braithwaite any more! Of course
+not.... Yet she had always liked the name so--well, a last name was a
+small thing to give up.... Into her mind fitted an incongruous, silly
+story she had heard once at the library, about a girl whose last name
+was Rose, and whose parents christened her Wild, because the combination
+appealed to them. And then she married a man named Bull.... Meanwhile
+the housekeeper had been going on.
+
+... "She had the bedroom and bath opening from the other side of Mr.
+Allan's day-room ready for you, madam. It's been ready several weeks."
+
+"Has it?" said Phyllis. It was like Mrs. Harrington, that careful
+planning of even where she should be put. "Is Mr. Harrington in his
+day-room now?"
+
+For some reason she did not attempt to give herself, she did not want to
+see him again just now. Besides, it was nearly eleven and time a very
+tired girl was in bed. She wanted a good night's rest, before she had to
+get up and be Mrs. Harrington, with Allan and the check-book and the
+Current Expenses all tied to her.
+
+Some one had laid everything out for her in the bedroom; the filmy new
+nightgown over a chair, the blue satin mules underneath, her plain
+toilet-things on a dressing-table, and over another chair the exquisite
+ivory crepe negligee with its floating rose ribbons. She took a hasty
+bath--there was so much hot water that she was quite reconciled for a
+moment to being a check-booked and wolf hounded Mrs. Harrington--and
+slid straight into bed without even stopping to braid her loosened,
+honey-colored hair.
+
+It seemed to her that she was barely asleep when there came an urgent
+knocking at her door.
+
+"Yes?" she said sleepily, looking mechanically for her alarm-clock as
+she switched on the light. "What is it, please?"
+
+"It's I, Wallis, Mr. Allan's man, Madame," said a nervous voice. "Mr.
+Allan's very bad. I've done all the usual things, but nothing seems to
+quiet him. He hates doctors so, and they make him so wrought up--please
+could you come, ma'am? He says as how all of us are all dead--oh,
+_please_, Mrs. Harrington!"
+
+There was panic in the man's voice.
+
+"All right," said Phyllis sleepily, dropping to the floor as she spoke
+with the rapidity that only the alarm-clock-broken know. She snatched
+the negligee around her, and thrust her feet hastily into the blue satin
+slippers--why, she was actually using her wedding finery! And what an
+easily upset person that man was! But everybody in the house seemed to
+have nerves on edge. It was no wonder about Allan--he wanted his
+mother, of course, poor boy! She felt, as she ran fleetly across the
+long room that separated her sleeping quarters from her husband's, the
+same mixture of pity and timidity that she had felt with him before.
+Poor boy! Poor, silent, beautiful statue, with his one friend gone! She
+opened the door and entered swiftly into his room.
+
+She was not thinking about herself at all, only of how she could help
+Allan, but there must have been something about her of the picture-book
+angel to the pain-racked man, lying tensely at length in the room's
+darkest corner. Her long, dully gold hair, loosening from its twist,
+flew out about her, and her face was still flushed with sleep. There was
+a something about her that was vividly alight and alive, perhaps the
+light in her blue eyes.
+
+From what the man had said Phyllis had thought Allan was delirious, but
+she saw at once that he was only in severe pain, and talking more
+disconnectedly, perhaps, than the slow-minded Englishman could follow.
+He did not look like a statue now. His cheeks were burning with evident
+pain, and his yellow-brown eyes, wide-open, and dilated to darkness,
+stared straight out. His hands were clenching and unclenching, and his
+head moved restlessly from side to side. Every nerve and muscle, she
+could see, was taut.
+
+"They're all dead," he muttered. "Father and Mother and Louise--and
+I--only I'm not dead enough to bury. Oh, God, I wish I was!"
+
+That wasn't delirium; it was something more like heart-break. Phyllis
+moved closer to him, and dropped one of her sleep-warm hands on his
+cold, clenched one.
+
+"Oh, poor boy!" she said. "I'm so sorry--so sorry!" She closed her hands
+tight over both his.
+
+Some of her strong young vitality must have passed between them and
+helped him, for almost immediately his tenseness relaxed a little, and
+he looked at her.
+
+"You--you're not a nurse," he said. "They go around--like--like
+a--vault----"
+
+She had caught his attention! That was a good deal, she felt. She
+forgot everything about him, except that he was some one to be
+comforted, and her charge. She sat down on the bed by him, still holding
+tight to his hands.
+
+"No, indeed," she said, bending nearer him, her long loose hair falling
+forward about her resolutely-smiling young face. "Don't you remember
+seeing me? I never was a nurse."
+
+"What--are you?" he asked feebly.
+
+"I'm--why, the children call me the Liberry Teacher," she answered. It
+occurred to her that it would be better to talk on brightly at random
+than to risk speaking of his mother to him, as she must if she reminded
+him of their marriage. "I spend my days in a basement, making bad little
+boys get so interested in the Higher Culture that they'll forget to
+shoot crap and smash windows."
+
+One of the things which had aided Phyllis to rise from desk-assistant to
+one of the Children's Room librarians was a very sweet and carrying
+voice--a voice which arrested even a child's attention, and held his
+interest. It held Allan now; merely the sound of it, seemingly.
+
+"Go on--talking," he murmured. Phyllis smiled and obeyed.
+
+"Sometimes the Higher Culture doesn't work," she said. "Yesterday one of
+my imps got hold of a volume of Shaw, and in half an hour his aunt
+marched in on me and threatened I don't know what to a library that
+'taught chilren to disrespect their lawful guardeens.'"
+
+"I remember now," said Allan. "You are the girl in the blue dress. The
+girl mother had me marry. I remember."
+
+"Yes," said Phyllis soothingly, and a little apologetically. "I know.
+But that--oh, please, it needn't make a bit of difference. It was only
+so I could see that you were looked after properly, you know. I'll never
+be in the way, unless you want me to do something for you."
+
+"I don't mind," he said listlessly, as he had before.... "_Oh, this
+dreadful darkness, and mother dead in it somewhere!_"
+
+"Wallis," called Phyllis swiftly, "turn up the lights!"
+
+The man slipped the close green silk shades from the electric bulbs.
+Allan shrank as if he had been hurt.
+
+"I can't stand the glare," he cried.
+
+"Yes, you can for a moment," she said firmly. "It's better than the
+ghastly green glow."
+
+It was probably the first time Allan Harrington had been contradicted
+since his accident. He said nothing more for a minute, and Phyllis
+directed Wallis to bring a sheet of pink tissue paper from her
+suit-case, where she remembered it lay in the folds of some new muslin
+thing. Under her direction still, he wrapped the globes in it and
+secured it with string.
+
+"There!" she told Allan triumphantly when Wallis was done. "See, there
+is no glare now; only a pretty rose-colored glow. Better than the green,
+isn't it?"
+
+Allan looked at her again. "You are--kind," he said. "Mother said--you
+would be kind. Oh, mother--mother!" He tried uselessly to lift one arm
+to cover his convulsed face, and could only turn his head a little
+aside.
+
+"You can go, Wallis," said Phyllis softly, with her lips only. "Be in
+the next room." The man stole out and shut the door softly. Phyllis
+herself rose and went toward the window, and busied herself in braiding
+up her hair. There was almost silence in the room for a few minutes.
+
+"Thank--you," said Allan brokenly. "Will you--come back, please?"
+
+She returned swiftly, and sat by him as she had before.
+
+"Would you mind--holding my wrists again?" he asked. "I feel quieter,
+somehow, when you do--not so--lost." There was a pathetic boyishness in
+his tone that the sad, clear lines of his face would never prepare you
+for.
+
+Phyllis took his wrists in her warm, strong hands obediently.
+
+"Are you in pain, Allan?" she asked. "Do you mind if I call you Allan?
+It's the easiest way."
+
+He smiled at her a little, faintly. It occurred to her that perhaps the
+novelty of her was taking his mind a little from his own feelings.
+
+"No--no pain. I haven't had any for a very long time now. Only this
+dreadful blackness dragging at my mind, a blackness the light hurts."
+
+"_Why!_" said Phyllis to herself, being on known ground here--"why, it's
+nervous depression! I believe cheering-up _would_ help. I know," she
+said aloud; "I've had it."
+
+"You?" he said. "But you seem so--happy!"
+
+"I suppose I am," said Phyllis shyly. She felt a little afraid of "poor
+Allan" still, now that there was nothing to do for him, and they were
+talking together. And he had not answered her question, either;
+doubtless he wanted her to say "Mr. Allan" or even "Mr. Harrington!" He
+replied to her thought in the uncanny way invalids sometimes do.
+
+"You said something about what we were to call each other," he murmured.
+"It would be foolish, of course, not to use first names. Yours is Alice,
+isn't it?"
+
+Phyllis laughed. "Oh, worse than that!" she said. "I was named out of a
+poetrybook, I believe--Phyllis Narcissa. But I always conceal the
+Narcissa."
+
+"Phyllis. Thank you," he said wearily. ... "_Phyllis, don't let go!
+Talk_ to me!" His eyes were those of a man in torment.
+
+"What shall I talk about?" she asked soothingly, keeping the two cold,
+clutching hands in her warm grasp. "Shall I tell you a story? I know a
+great many stories by heart, and I will say them for you if you like. It
+was part of my work."
+
+"Yes," he said. "Anything."
+
+Phyllis arranged herself more comfortably on the bed, for it looked as
+if she had some time to stay, and began the story she knew best, because
+her children liked it best, Kipling's "How the Elephant Got His Trunk."
+"A long, long time ago, O Best Beloved...."
+
+Allan listened, and, she thought, at times paid attention to the words.
+He almost smiled once or twice, she was nearly sure. She went straight
+on to another story when the first was done. Never had she worked so
+hard to keep the interest of any restless circle of children as she
+worked now, sitting up in the pink light in her crepe wrappings, with
+her school-girl braids hanging down over her bosom, and Allan
+Harrington's agonized golden-brown eyes fixed on her pitying ones.
+
+"You must be tired," he said more connectedly and quietly when she had
+ended the second story. "Can't you sit up here by me, propped on the
+pillows? And you need a quilt or something, too."
+
+This from an invalid who had been given nothing but himself to think of
+this seven years back! Phyllis's opinion of Allan went up very much. She
+had supposed he would be very selfish. But she made herself a bank of
+pillows, and arranged herself by Allan's side so that she could keep
+fast to his hands without any strain, something as skaters hold. She
+wrapped a down quilt from the foot of the bed around her mummy-fashion
+and went on to her third story. Allan's eyes, as she talked on, grew
+less intent--drooped. She felt the relaxation of his hands. She went
+monotonously on, closing her own eyes--just for a minute, as she
+finished her story.
+
+
+
+
+VIII
+
+
+"I've overslept the alarm!" was Phyllis's first thought next morning
+when she woke. "It must be--" Where was she? So tired, so very tired,
+she remembered being, and telling some one an interminable story.... She
+held her sleepy eyes wide open by will-power, and found that a silent
+but evidently going clock hung in sight. Six-thirty. Then she hadn't
+overslept the alarm. But ... she hadn't set any alarm. And she had been
+sleeping propped up in a sitting position, half on--why, it was a
+shoulder. And she was rolled tight in a terra-cotta down quilt. She sat
+up with a jerk--fortunately a noiseless one--and turned to look. Then
+suddenly she remembered all about it, that jumbled, excited,
+hard-working yesterday which had held change and death and marriage for
+her, and which she had ended by perching on "poor Allan Harrington's"
+bed and sending him to sleep by holding his hands and telling him
+children's stories. She must have fallen asleep after he did, and slid
+down on his shoulder. A wonder it hadn't disturbed him! She stole
+another look at him, as he lay sleeping still, heavily and quietly.
+After all, she was married to him, and she had a perfect right to recite
+him to sleep if she wanted to. She unrolled herself cautiously, and slid
+out like a shadow.
+
+She almost fell over poor Wallis, sleeping too in his clothes outside
+the door, on Allan's day couch. He came quickly to his feet, as if he
+were used to sudden waking.
+
+"Don't disturb Mr. Harrington," said Phyllis as staidly as if she had
+been giving men-servants orders in her slipper-feet all her life. "He
+seems to be sleeping quietly."
+
+"Begging your pardon, Mrs. Harrington, but you haven't been giving him
+anything, have you?" asked Wallis. "He hasn't slept without a break for
+two hours to my knowledge since I've been here, not without medicine."
+
+"Not a thing," said Phyllis, smiling with satisfaction. "He must have
+been sleeping nearly three hours now! I read him to sleep, or what
+amounted to it. I got his nerves quiet, I think. Please kill anybody
+that tries to wake him, Wallis."
+
+"Very good, ma'am," said Wallis gravely. "And yourself, ma'am?"
+
+"I'm going to get some sleep, too," she said. "Call me if there's
+anything--useful."
+
+She meant "necessary," but she wanted so much more sleep she never knew
+the difference. When she got into her room she found that there also she
+was not alone: the wistful wolfhound was curled plaintively across her
+bed, which he overlapped. From his nose he seemed to have been dipping
+largely into the cup of chocolate somebody had brought to her, and which
+she had forgotten to drink when she found it, on her first retiring.
+
+"You aren't a _bit_ high-minded," said Phyllis indignantly. She was too
+sleepy to do more than shove him over to the back of the bed. "All--the
+beds here are so--_full_," she complained sleepily; and crawled inside,
+and never woke again till nearly afternoon.
+
+There was all the grave business to be done, in the days that followed,
+of taking Mrs. Harrington to a quiet place beside her husband, and
+drawing together again the strings of the disorganized household.
+Phyllis found herself whispering over and over again:
+
+
+   "The sweeping up the heart
+     And putting love away
+   We shall not need to use again.
+     Until the Judgment Day."
+
+
+And with all there was to see after, it was some days before she saw
+Allan again, more than to speak to brightly as she crossed their common
+sitting-room. He did not ask for her. She looked after his comfort
+faithfully, and tried to see to it that his man Wallis was all he should
+be--a task which was almost hopeless from the fact that Wallis knew much
+more about his duties than she did, even with Mrs. Harrington's
+painstakingly detailed notes to help her. Also his attitude to his
+master was of such untiring patience and worship that it made Phyllis
+feel like a rude outsider interfering between man and wife.
+
+However, Wallis was inclined to approve of his new mistress, who was
+not fussy, seemed kind, and had given his beloved Mr. Allan nearly three
+hours of unbroken sleep. Allan had been a little better ever since.
+Wallis had told Phyllis this. But she was inclined to think that the
+betterment was caused by the counter-shock of his mother's death, which
+had shaken him from his lethargy, and perhaps even given his nerves a
+better balance. And she insisted that the pink paper stay on the
+electric lights.
+
+After about a week of this, Phyllis suddenly remembered that she had not
+been selfish at all yet. Where was her rose-garden--the garden she had
+married the wolfhound and Allan and the check-book for? Where were all
+the things she had intended to get? The only item she had bought as yet
+ran, on the charge account she had taken over with the rest, "1 doz.
+checked dish-towels"; and Mrs. Clancy, the housekeeper's, pressing
+demand was responsible for these.
+
+"It's certainly time I was selfish," said Phyllis to the wolfhound, who
+followed her round unendingly as if she had patches of sunshine in her
+pocket: glorious patches, fit for a life-sized wolfhound. Perhaps he was
+grateful because she had ordered him long daily walks. He wagged his
+tail now as she spoke, and rubbed himself curvingly against her. He was
+a rather affected dog.
+
+So Phyllis made herself out a list in a superlatively neat library hand:
+
+
+   One string of blue beads.
+   One lot of very fluffy summer frocks with flowers on them.
+   One rose-garden.
+   One banjo and a self-teacher. (And a sound-proof room.)
+   One set Arabian Nights.
+   One set of Stevenson, all but his novels.
+   Ever so many Maxfield Parrish pictures full of Prussian-blue skies.
+   A house to put them in, with fireplaces.
+   A lady's size motor-car that likes me.
+   A plain cat with a tame disposition.
+   A hammock.
+   A sun-dial. (But that might be thrown in with the garden.)
+   A gold watch-bracelet.
+   All the colored satin slippers I want.
+   A room big enough to put all father's books up.
+
+
+It looked shamelessly long, but Phyllis's "discretionary powers" would
+cover it, she knew. Mrs. Harrington's final will, while full of advice,
+had been recklessly trusting.
+
+She could order everything in one afternoon, she was sure, all but the
+house, the garden, the motor, which she put checks against, and the
+plain cat, which she thought she could pick up in the village where her
+house would be.
+
+Next she went to see Allan. She didn't want to bother him, but she did
+feel that she ought to share her plans with him as far as possible.
+Besides, it occurred to her that she could scarcely remember what he was
+like to speak to, and really owed it to herself to go. She fluffed out
+her hair loosely, put on her pale-green gown that had clinging lines,
+and pulled some daffodils through her sash. She had resolved to avoid
+anything sombre where Allan was concerned--and the green gown was very
+becoming. Then, armed with her list and a pencil, she crossed boldly to
+the couch where her Crusader lay in the old attitude, moveless and with
+half-closed eyes.
+
+"Allan," she asked, standing above him, "do you think you could stand
+being talked to for a little while?"
+
+"Why--yes," said Allan, opening his eyes a little more. "Wallis,
+get--Mrs. Harrington--a chair."
+
+He said the name haltingly, and Phyllis wondered if he disliked her
+having it. She dropped down beside him, like a smiling touch of spring
+in the dark room.
+
+"Do you mind their calling me that?" she asked. "If there's anything
+else they could use----"
+
+"Mother made you a present of the name," he said, smiling faintly. "No
+reason why I should mind."
+
+"All right," said Phyllis cheerfully. After all, there was nothing else
+to call her, speaking of her. The servants, she knew, generally said
+"the young madam," as if her mother-in-law were still alive.
+
+"I want to talk to you about things," she began; and had to stop to deal
+with the wolfhound, who was trying to put both paws on her shoulders.
+"Oh, Ivan, _get_ down, honey! I _wish_ somebody would take a day off
+some time to explain to you that you're not a lap-dog! Do you like
+wolfhounds specially better than any other kind of dog, Allan?"
+
+"Not particularly," said Allan, patting the dog languidly as he put his
+head in a convenient place for the purpose. "Mother bought him, she
+said, because he would look so picturesque in my sick-room. She wanted
+him to lie at my feet or something. But he never saw it that
+way--neither did I. Hates sick-rooms. Don't blame him."
+
+This was the longest speech Allan had made yet, and Phyllis learned
+several things from it that she had only guessed before. One was that
+the atmosphere of embodied grief and regret in the house had been Mrs.
+Harrington's, not Allan's--that he was more young and natural than she
+had thought, better material for cheering; that his mother's devotion
+had been something of a pressure on him at times; and that he himself
+was not interested in efforts to stage his illness correctly.
+
+What he really had said when the dog was introduced, she learned later
+from the attached Wallis, was that he might be a cripple, but he wasn't
+going to be part of any confounded tableau. Whereupon his mother had
+cried for an hour, kissing and pitying him in between, and his night
+had been worse than usual. But the hound had stayed outside.
+
+Phyllis made an instant addition to her list. "One bull-pup, convenient
+size, for Allan." The plain cat could wait. She had heard of publicity
+campaigns; she had made up her mind, and a rather firm young mind it
+was, that she was going to conduct a cheerfulness campaign in behalf of
+this listless, beautiful, darkness-locked Allan of hers. Unknowingly,
+she was beginning to regard him as much her property as the check-book,
+and rather more so than the wolfhound. She moved back a little, and
+reconciled herself to the dog, who had draped as much of his body as
+would go, over her, and was batting his tail against her joyfully.
+
+"Poor old puppy," she said. "I want to talk over some plans with you,
+Allan," she began again determinedly. She was astonished to see Allan
+wince.
+
+"_Don't!_" he said, "for heaven's sake! You'll drive me crazy!"
+
+Phyllis drew back a little indignantly, but behind the couch she saw
+Wallis making some sort of face that was evidently intended for a
+warning. Then he slipped out of the room, as if he wished her to follow
+soon and be explained to. "Plans" must be a forbidden subject. Anyhow,
+crossness was a better symptom than apathy!
+
+"Very well," she said brightly, smiling her old, useful,
+cheering-a-bad-child library smile at him. "It was mostly about things I
+wanted to buy for myself, any way--satin slippers and such. I don't
+suppose they _would_ interest a man much."
+
+"Oh, that sort of thing," said Allan relievedly. "I thought you meant
+things that had to do with me. If you have plans about me, go ahead, for
+you know I can't do anything to stop you--but for heaven's sake, don't
+discuss it with me first!"
+
+He spoke carelessly, but the pity of it struck to Phyllis's heart. It
+was true, he couldn't stop her. His foolish, adoring little desperate
+mother, in her anxiety to have her boy taken good care of, had exposed
+him to a cruel risk. Phyllis knew herself to be trustworthy. She knew
+that she could no more put her own pleasures before her charge's welfare
+than she could steal his watch. Her conscience was New-England rock.
+But, oh! suppose Mr. De Guenther had chosen some girl who didn't care,
+who would have taken the money and not have done the work! She shivered
+at the thought of what Allan had escaped, and caught his hand
+impulsively, as she had on that other night of terror.
+
+"Oh, Allan Harrington, I _wouldn't_ do anything I oughtn't to! I know
+it's dreadful, having a strange girl wished on you this way, but truly I
+mean to be as good as I can, and never in the way or anything! Indeed,
+you may trust me! You--you don't mind having me round, do you?"
+
+Allan's cold hand closed kindly on hers. He spoke for the first time as
+a well man speaks, quietly, connectedly, and with a little authority.
+
+"The fact that I am married to you does not weigh on me at all, my dear
+child," he said. "I shall be dead, you know, this time five years, and
+what difference does it make whether I'm married or not? I don't mind
+you at all. You seem a very kind and pleasant person. I am sure I can
+trust you. Now are you reassured?"
+
+"Oh, _yes_," said Phyllis radiantly, "and you _can_ trust me, and I
+_won't_ fuss. All you have to do if I bore you is to look bored. You
+can, you know. You don't know how well you do it! And I'll stop. I'm
+going to ask Wallis how much of my society you'd better have, if any."
+
+"Why, I don't think a good deal of it would hurt me," he said
+indifferently. But he smiled in a quite friendly fashion.
+
+"All right," said Phyllis again brightly. But she fell silent then.
+There were two kinds of Allan, she reflected. This kind of Allan, who
+was very much more grown-up and wise than she was, and of whom she still
+stood a little in awe; and the little-boy Allan who had clung to her in
+nervous dread of the dark the other night--whom she had sent to sleep
+with children's stories. She wondered which was real, which he had been
+when he was well.
+
+"I must go now and have something out with Mrs. Clancy," she said,
+smiling and rising. "She's perfectly certain carpets have to come up
+when you put down mattings, and I'm perfectly certain they don't."
+
+She tucked the despised list, to which she had furtively added her
+bull-pup, into her sleeve, took her hand from his and went away. It
+seemed to Allan that the room was a little darker.
+
+
+
+
+IX
+
+
+Outside the sitting-room door stood Wallis, who had been lying in wait.
+
+"I wanted to explain, madam, about the plans," he said. "It worries Mr.
+Allan. You see, madam, the late Mrs. Harrington was a great one for
+plans. She had, if I may say so, a new one every day, and she'd argue
+you deaf, dumb, and blind--not to speak ill of the dead--till you were
+fair beat out fighting it. Then you'd settle down to it--and next day
+there be another one, with Mrs. Harrington rooting for it just as hard,
+and you, with your mouth fixed for the other plan, so to speak, would
+have to give in to that. The plan she happened to have last always went
+through, because she fought for that as hard as she had for the others,
+and you were so bothered by then you didn't care what."
+
+Wallis's carefully impersonal servant-English had slipped from him, and
+he was talking to Phyllis as man to man, but she was very glad of it.
+These were the sort of facts she had to elicit.
+
+"When Mr. Allan was well," he went on, "he used to just laugh and say,
+'All right, mother darling,' and pet her and do his own way--he was
+always laughing and carrying on then, Mr. Allan--but after he was hurt,
+of course, he couldn't get away, and the old madam, she'd sit by his
+couch by the hour, and he nearly wild, making plans for him. She'd spend
+weeks planning details of things over and over, never getting tired. And
+then off again to the next thing! It was all because she was so fond of
+him, you see. But if you'll pardon my saying so, madam"--Wallis was
+resuming his man-servant manners--"it was not always good for Mr.
+Allan."
+
+"I think I understand," said Phyllis thoughtfully, as she and the
+wolfhound went to interview Mrs. Clancy. So that was why! She had
+imagined something of the sort. And she--she herself--was doubtless the
+outcome of one of Mrs. Harrington's long-detailed plans, insisted on to
+Allan till he had acquiesced for quiet's sake! ... But he said now he
+didn't mind. She was somehow sure he wouldn't have said it if it had not
+been true. Then Wallis's other words came to her, "He was always
+laughing then," and suddenly there surged up in Phyllis a passionate
+resolve to give Allan back at least a little of his lightness of heart.
+He might be going to die--though she didn't believe it--but at least she
+could make things less monotonous and dark for him; and she wouldn't
+offer him plans! And if he objected when the plans rose up and hit him,
+why, the shock might do him good. She thought she was fairly sure of an
+ally in Wallis.
+
+She cut her interview with Mrs. Clancy short. Allan, lying motionless,
+caught a green flash of her, crossing into her room to dress, another
+blue flash as she went out; dropped his eyelids and crossed his hands to
+doze a little, an innocent and unwary Crusader. He did not know it, but
+a Plan was about to rise up and hit him. The bride his mother had left
+him as a parting legacy had gone out to order a string of blue beads, a
+bull-pup, a house, a motor, a banjo, and a rose-garden; as she went she
+added a talking machine to the list; and he was to be planted in the
+very centre of everything.
+
+"Seems like a nice girl, Wallis," said Allan dreamily. And the discreet
+Wallis said nothing (though he knew a good deal) about his mistress's
+shopping-list.
+
+"Yes, Mr. Allan," he conceded.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It was Phyllis Harrington's firm belief that Mr. De Guenther could
+produce anything anybody wanted at any time, or that if he couldn't his
+wife could. So it was to him that she went on her quest for the
+rose-garden, with its incidental house. The rest of the items she
+thought she could get for herself. It was nearly the last of April, and
+she wanted a well-heated elderly mansion, preferably Colonial, not too
+unwieldily large, with as many rose-trees around it as her discretionary
+powers would stand. And she wanted it as near and as soon as possible.
+By the help of Mr. De Guenther, amused but efficient, Mrs. De Guenther,
+efficient but sentimental; and an agent who was efficient merely, she
+got very nearly what she wanted. Money could do a great deal more than a
+country minister's daughter had ever had any way of imagining. By its
+aid she found it possible to have furniture bought and placed inside a
+fortnight, even to a list of books set up in sliding sectional cases.
+She had hoped to buy those cases some day, one at a time, and getting
+them at one fell swoop seemed to her more arrogantly opulent than the
+purchase of the house and grounds--than even the big shiny victrola. She
+had bought that herself, before there was a house to put it in, going on
+the principle that all men not professional musicians have a concealed
+passion for music that they can create themselves by merely winding up
+something. And--to anticipate--she found that as far as Allan was
+concerned she was quite right.
+
+"But why do you take this very radical step, my dear?" asked Mrs. De
+Guenther gently, as she helped Phyllis choose furniture.
+
+"I am going to try the only thing Allan's mother seems to have
+omitted," said Phyllis dauntlessly. "A complete change of surroundings."
+
+"Oh, my dear!" breathed Mrs. De Guenther. "It may help poor Allan more
+than we know! And dear Angela did discuss moving often, but she could
+never bear to leave the city house, where so many of her dear ones have
+passed away."
+
+"Well, none of _my_ dear ones are going to pass away there," said
+Phyllis irreverently, "unless Mrs. Clancy wants to. I'm not even taking
+any servants but Wallis. The country-house doesn't need any more than a
+cook, a chambermaid, and outdoor man. Mrs. Clancy is getting them. I
+told her I didn't care what age or color she chose, but they had to be
+cheerful. She will stay in the city and keep the others straight, in
+something she calls board-wages. I'm starting absolutely fresh."
+
+They were back at Mrs. De Guenther's house by the time Phyllis was done
+telling her plans, Phyllis sitting in the identical pluffy chair where
+she had made her decision to marry Allan. Mrs. De Guenther sprang from
+her own chair, and came over and impulsively kissed her.
+
+"God bless you, dear!" she said. "I believe it was Heaven that inspired
+Albert and myself to choose you to carry on poor Angela's work."
+
+Phyllis flushed indignantly.
+
+"I'm undoing a little of it, I hope," she said passionately. "If I can
+only make that poor boy forget some of those dreadful years she spent
+crying over him, I shan't have lived in vain!"
+
+Mrs. De Guenther looked at Phyllis earnestly--and, most unexpectedly,
+burst into a little tinkling laugh.
+
+"My dear," she said mischievously, "what about all the fine things you
+were going to do for yourself to make up for being tied to poor Allan?
+You should really stop being unselfish, and enjoy yourself a little."
+
+Phyllis felt herself flushing crimson. Elderly people did seem to be so
+sentimental!
+
+"I've bought myself lots of things," she defended herself. "Most of this
+is really for me. And--I can't help being good to him. It's only common
+humanity. I was never so sorry for anybody in my life--you'd be, too, if
+it were Mr. De Guenther!"
+
+She thought her explanation was complete. But she must have said
+something that she did not realize, for Mrs. De Guenther only laughed
+her little tinkling laugh again, and--as is the fashion of elderly
+people--kissed her.
+
+"I would, indeed, my dear," said she.
+
+
+
+
+X
+
+
+Allan Harrington lay in his old attitude on his couch in the darkened
+day-room, his tired, clear-cut face a little thrown back, eyes
+half-closed. He was not thinking of anything or any one especially;
+merely wrapped in a web of the dragging, empty, gray half-thoughts of
+weariness in general that had hung about him so many years. Wallis was
+not there. Wallis had been with him much less lately, and he had
+scarcely seen Phyllis for a fortnight; or, for the matter of that, the
+dog, or any one at all. Something was going on, he supposed, but he
+scarcely troubled himself to wonder what. The girl was doubtless making
+herself boudoirs or something of the sort in a new part of the house. He
+closed his eyes entirely, there in the dusky room, and let the web of
+dreary, gray, formless thought wrap him again.
+
+Phyllis's gay, sweetly carrying voice rang from outside the door:
+
+"The three-thirty, then, Wallis, and I feel as if I were going to steal
+Charlie Ross! Well----"
+
+On the last word she broke off and pushed the sitting-room door softly
+open and slid in. She walked in a pussy-cat fashion which would have
+suggested to any one watching her a dark burden on her conscience.
+
+She crossed straight to the couch, looked around for the chair that
+should have been by it but wasn't, and sat absently down on the floor.
+She liked floors.
+
+"Allan!" she said.
+
+No answer.
+
+"Allan _Harrington_!"
+
+Still none. Allan was half-asleep, or what did instead, in one of his
+abstracted moods.
+
+"_All-an Harrington!_"
+
+This time she reached up and pulled at his heavy silk sleeve as she
+spoke.
+
+"Yes," said Allan courteously, as if from an infinite distance.
+
+"Would you mind," asked Phyllis guilelessly, "if Wallis--we--moved
+you--a little? I can tell you all about everything, unless you'd rather
+not have the full details of the plan----"
+
+"Anything," said Allan wearily from the depths of his gray cloud; "only
+don't _bother_ me about it!"
+
+Phyllis jumped to her feet, a whirl of gay blue skirts and cheerfully
+tossing blue feathers. "Good-by, dear Crusader!" she said with a catch
+in her voice that might have been either a laugh or a sob. "The next
+time you see me you'll probably _hate_ me! Wallis!"
+
+Wallis appeared like the Slave of the Lamp. "It's all right, Wallis,"
+she said, and ran. Wallis proceeded thereupon to wheel his master's
+couch into the bedroom.
+
+"If you're going to be moved, you'd better be dressed a little heavier,
+sir," he said with the same amiable guilelessness, if the victim had but
+noticed it, which Phyllis had used from her seat on the floor not long
+before.
+
+"Very well," said Allan resignedly from his cloud. And Wallis proceeded
+to suit the action to the word.
+
+Allan let him go on in unnoticing silence till it came to that totally
+unfamiliar thing these seven years, a stand-up collar. A shiningly new
+linen collar of the newest cut, a beautiful golden-brown knit tie, a
+gray suit----
+
+"What on earth?" inquired Allan, awakening from his lethargy. "I don't
+need a collar and tie to keep me from getting cold on a journey across
+the house. And where did you get those clothes? They look new."
+
+Wallis laid his now fully dressed master back to a reclining
+position--he had been propped up--and tucked a handkerchief into the
+appropriate pocket as he replied, "Grant & Moxley's, sir, where you
+always deal." And he wheeled the couch back to the day-room, over to its
+very door.
+
+It did not occur to Allan, as he was being carried downstairs by Wallis
+and Arthur, another of the servants, that anything more than a change of
+rooms was intended; nor, as he was carried out at its door to a long
+closed carriage, that it was anything worse than his new keeper's
+mistaken idea that drives would be good for him. He was a little
+irritable at the length and shutupness of the drive, though, as his cot
+had been swung deftly from the ceiling of the carriage, he was not
+jarred. But when Wallis and Arthur carried the light pallet on which he
+lay swiftly up a plank walk laid to the door of a private car--why then
+it began to occur to Allan Harrington that something was happening.
+And--which rather surprised himself--he did not lift a supercilious
+eyebrow and say in a soft, apathetic voice, "Very we-ell!" Instead, he
+turned his head towards the devoted Wallis, who had helped two
+conductors swing the cot from the ceiling, and was now waiting for the
+storm to break. And what he said to Wallis was this:
+
+"What the deuce does this tomfoolery mean?" As he spoke he felt the
+accumulated capacity for temper of the last seven years surging up
+toward Wallis, and Arthur, and Phyllis, and the carriage-horses, and
+everything else, down to the two conductors. Wallis seemed rather
+relieved than otherwise. Waiting for a storm to break is rather wearing.
+
+"Well, sir, Mrs. Harrington, she thought, sir, that--that a little move
+would do you good. And you didn't want to be bothered, sir----"
+
+"Bothered!" shouted Allan, not at all like a bored and dying invalid. "I
+should think I did, when a change in my whole way of life is made! Who
+gave you, or Mrs. Harrington, permission for this outrageous
+performance! It's sheer, brutal, insulting idiocy!"
+
+"Nobody, sir--yes, sir," replied Wallis meekly. "Would you care for a
+drink, sir--or anything?"
+
+"_No!_" thundered Allan.
+
+"Or a fan?" ventured Wallis, approaching near with that article and
+laying it on the coverlid. Allan's hand snatched the fan angrily--and
+before he thought he had hurled it at Wallis! Weakly, it is true, for it
+lighted ingloriously about five feet away; but he had _thrown_ it, with
+a movement that must have put to use the muscles of the long-disused
+upper arm. Wallis sat suddenly down and caught his breath.
+
+"Mr. Allan!" he said. "Do you know what you did then? You _threw_, and
+you haven't been able to use more than your forearm before! Oh, Mr.
+Allan, you're getting better!"
+
+Allan himself lay in astonishment at his feat, and forgot to be angry
+for a moment. "I certainly did!" he said.
+
+"And the way you lost your temper!" went on Wallis enthusiastically.
+"Oh, Mr. Allan, it was beautiful! You haven't been more than to say
+snarly since the accident! It was so like the way you used to throw
+hair-brushes----"
+
+But at the mention of his lost temper Allan remembered to lose it still
+further. His old capacity for storming, a healthy lad's healthy young
+hot-temperedness, had been weakened by long disuse, but he did fairly
+well. Secretly it was a pleasure to him to find that he was alive enough
+to care what happened, enough for anger. He demanded presently where he
+was going.
+
+"Not more than two hours' ride, sir, I heard Mr. De Guenther mention,"
+answered Wallis at once. "A little place called Wallraven--quite
+country, sir, I believe."
+
+"So the De Guenthers are in it, too!" said Allan. "What the dickens has
+this girl done to them, to hypnotize them so?"
+
+"But I've heard say it's a very pretty place, sir," was all Wallis
+vouchsafed to this. The De Guenthers were not the only people Phyllis
+had hypnotized.
+
+He gave Allan other details as they went on, however. His clothes and
+personal belongings were coming on immediately. There were two
+suit-cases, perhaps he had noticed, in the car with them. The young
+madam was planning to stay all the summer, he believed. Mrs. Clancy had
+been left behind to look after the other servants, and he understood
+that she had seen to the engagement of a fresh staff of servants for the
+country. And Allan, still awakened by his fit of temper, and fresh from
+the monotony of his seven years' seclusion, found all the things Wallis
+could tell him very interesting.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Phyllis's rose-garden house had, among other virtues, the charm of being
+near the little station: a new little mission station which had
+apparently been called Wallraven by some poetic young real-estate
+agency, for the surrounding countryside looked countrified enough to be
+a Gray's Corners, or Smith's Crossing, or some other such placid old
+country name. There were more trees to be seen in Allan's quick passage
+from the train to the long old carryall (whose seats had been removed to
+make room for his cot) than he had remembered existed. There were sleepy
+birds to be heard, too, talking about how near sunset and their bedtime
+had come, and a little brook splashed somewhere out of sight. Altogether
+spring was to be seen and heard and felt, winningly insistent. Allan
+forgave Wallis, not to speak of Phyllis and the conductors, to a certain
+degree. He ordered the flapping black oilcloth curtain in front rolled
+up so he could see out, and secretly enjoyed the drive, unforeseen
+though it had been. His spine never said a word. Perhaps it, too,
+enjoyed having a change from a couch in a dark city room.
+
+They saw no one in their passage through the long, low old house.
+Phyllis evidently had learned that Allan didn't like his carryings
+about done before people.
+
+Wallis seemed to be acting under a series of detailed orders. He and
+Arthur carried their master to a long, well-lighted room at the end of
+the house, and deftly transferred him to a couch much more convenient,
+being newer, than the old one. On this he was wheeled to his adjoining
+bedroom, and when Wallis had made him comfortable there, he left him
+mysteriously for a while. It was growing dark by now, and the lights
+were on. They were rose-shaded, Allan noticed, as the others had been at
+home. Allan watched the details of his room with that vivid interest in
+little changes which only invalids can know. There was an old-fashioned
+landscape story paper on the walls, with very little repeat. Over it,
+but not where they interfered with tracing out the adventures of the
+paper people, were a good many pictures, quite incongruous, for they
+were of the Remington type men like, but pleasant to see nevertheless.
+The furniture was chintz-covered and gay. There was not one thing in
+the room to remind a man that he was an invalid. It occurred to Allan
+that Phyllis must have put a good deal of deliberate work on the place.
+He lay contentedly, watching the grate fire, and trying to trace out the
+story of the paper, for at least a half-hour. He found himself, at
+length, much to his own surprise, thinking with a certain longing of his
+dinner-tray. He was thinking of it more and more interestedly by the
+time Wallis--trayless--came back.
+
+"Mr. and Mrs. De Guenther and the young madam are waiting for you in the
+living-room," he announced. "They would be glad if you would have supper
+with them."
+
+"Very well," said Allan amiably, still much to his own surprise. The
+truth was, he was still enough awake and interested to want to go on
+having things happen.
+
+The room Wallis wheeled him back into was a long, low one, wainscoted
+and bare-floored. It was furnished with the best imitation Chippendale
+to be obtained in a hurry, but over and above there were cushioned
+chairs and couches enough for solid comfort. There were more cheerful
+pictures, the Maxfield Parrishes Phyllis had wanted, over the
+green-papered walls. There was a fire here also. The room had no more
+period than a girl's sentence, but there was a bright air of welcomeness
+and informality that was winning. An old-fashioned half-table against
+the wall was covered with a great many picknicky things to eat. Another
+table had more things, mostly to eat with, on it. And there were the De
+Guenthers and Phyllis. On the whole it felt very like a welcome-home.
+
+Phyllis, in a satiny rose-colored gown he had never seen before, came
+over to his couch to meet him. She looked very apprehensive and young
+and wistful for the role of Bold Bad Hypnotist. She bent towards him
+with her hand out, seemed about to speak, then backed, flushed, and
+acted as if something had frightened her badly.
+
+"Is she as afraid of me as all that?" thought Allan. Wallis must have
+given her a lurid account of how he had behaved. His quick impulse was
+to reassure her.
+
+"Well, Phyllis, my dear, you certainly didn't bother me with plans
+_this_ time!" he said, smiling. "This is a bully surprise!"
+
+"I--I'm glad you like it," said his wife shyly, still backing away.
+
+"Of course he'd like it," said Mrs. De Guenther's kind staccato voice
+behind him. "Kiss your husband, and tell him he's welcome home, Phyllis
+child!"
+
+Now, Phyllis was tired with much hurried work, and overstrung. And
+Allan, lying there smiling boyishly up at her, Allan seen for the first
+time in these usual-looking gray man-clothes, was like neither the
+marble Crusader she had feared nor the heartbroken little boy she had
+pitied. He was suddenly her contemporary, a very handsome and attractive
+young fellow, a little her senior. From all appearances, he might have
+been well and normal, and come home to her only a little tired, perhaps,
+by the day's work or sport, as he lay smiling at her in that friendly,
+intimate way! It was terrifyingly different. Everything felt different.
+All her little pieces of feeling for him, pity and awe and friendliness
+and love of service, seemed to spring suddenly together and make
+something else--something unplaced and disturbing. Her cheeks burned
+with a childish embarrassment as she stood there before him in her
+ruffled pink gown. What should she do?
+
+It was just then that Mrs. De Guenther's crisply spoken advice came.
+Phyllis was one of those people whose first unconscious instinct is to
+obey an unspoken order. She bent blindly to Allan's lips, and kissed him
+with a child's obedience, then straightened up, aghast. He would think
+her very bold!
+
+But he did not, for some reason. It may have seemed only comforting and
+natural to him, that swift childish kiss, and Phyllis's honey-colored,
+violet-scented hair brushing his face. Men take a great deal without
+question as their rightful due.
+
+The others closed around him then, welcoming him, laughing at the
+surprise and the way he had taken it, telling him all about it as if
+everything were as usual and pleasant as possible, and the present state
+of things had always been a pleasant commonplace. And Wallis began to
+serve the picnic supper.
+
+
+
+
+XI
+
+
+There were trays and little tables, and the food itself would have
+betrayed a southern darky in the kitchen if nothing else had. It was the
+first meal Allan had eaten with any one for years, and he found it so
+interesting as to be almost exciting. Wallis took the plates invisibly
+away when they were done, and they continued to stay in their
+half-circle about the fire and talk it all over. Phyllis, tired to death
+still, had slid to her favorite floor-seat, curled on cushions and
+leaning against the couch-side. Allan could have touched her hair with
+his hand. She thought of this, curled there, but she was too tired to
+move. It was exciting to be near him, somehow, tired as she was.
+
+Most of the short evening was spent celebrating the fact that Allan had
+thrown something at Wallis, who was recalled to tell the story three
+times in detail. Then there was the house to discuss, its good and bad
+points, its nearnesses and farnesses.
+
+"Let me tell you, Allan," said Mrs. De Guenther warmly at this point,
+from her seat at the foot of the couch, "this wife of yours is a wonder.
+Not many girls could have had a house in this condition two weeks after
+it was bought."
+
+Allan looked down at the heap of shining hair below him, all he could
+see of Phyllis.
+
+"Yes," he said consideringly. "She certainly is."
+
+At a certain slowness in his tone, Phyllis sprang up. "You must be tired
+to _death_!" she said. "It must be nearly ten. Do you feel worn out?"
+
+Before he could say anything, Mrs. De Guenther had also risen, and was
+sweeping away her husband.
+
+"Of course he is," she said decisively. "What have we all been thinking
+of? And we must go to bed, too, Albert, if you insist on taking that
+early train in the morning, and I insist on going with you. Good-night,
+children."
+
+Wallis had appeared by this time, and was wheeling Allan from the room
+before he had a chance to say much of anything but good-night. The De
+Guenthers talked a little longer to Phyllis, and were gone also. Phyllis
+flung herself full-length on the rugs and pillows before the fire, too
+tired to move further.
+
+Well, she had everything that she had wished for on that wet February
+day in the library. Money, leisure to be pretty, a husband whom she
+"didn't have to associate with much," rest, if she ever gave herself
+leave to take it, and the rose-garden. She had her wishes, as uncannily
+fulfilled as if she had been ordering her fate from a department store,
+and had money to pay for it.... And back there in the city it was
+somebody's late night, and that somebody--it would be Anna Black's turn,
+wouldn't it?--was struggling with John Zanowskis and Sadie Rabinowitzes
+by the lapful, just as she had. And yet--and yet they had really cared
+for her, those dirty, dear little foreigners of hers. But she'd had to
+work for their liking.... Perhaps--perhaps she could make Allan
+Harrington like her as much as the children did. He had been so kind
+to-night about the move and all, and so much brighter, her handsome
+Allan in his gray, every-day-looking man-clothes! If she could stay
+brave enough and kind enough and bright enough ... her eyelids
+drooped.... Wallis was standing respectfully over her.
+
+"Mrs. Harrington," he was saying, with a really masterly ignoring of her
+attitude on the rug, "Mr. Harrington says you haven't bid him good-night
+yet."
+
+An amazing message! Had she been in the habit of it, that he demanded it
+like a small boy? But she sprang up and followed Wallis into Allan's
+room. He was lying back in his white silk sleeping things among the
+white bed-draperies, looking as he always had before. Only, he seemed
+too alive and awake still for his old role of Crusader-on-a-tomb.
+
+"Phyllis," he began eagerly, as she sat down beside him, "what made you
+so frightened when I first came? Wallis hadn't worried you, had he?"
+
+"Oh, no; it wasn't that at all," said Phyllis. "And thank you for being
+so generous about it all."
+
+"I wasn't generous," said her husband. "I behaved like everything to old
+Wallis about it. Well, what was it, then?"
+
+"I--I--only--you looked so different in--_clothes_," pleaded Phyllis,
+"like any man my age or older--as if you might get up and go to
+business, or play tennis, or anything, and--and I was _afraid_ of you!
+That's all, truly!"
+
+She was sitting on the bed's edge, her eyes down, her hands quivering in
+her lap, the picture of a school-girl who isn't quite sure whether she's
+been good or not.
+
+"Why, that sounds truthful!" said Allan, and laughed. It was the first
+time she had heard him, and she gave a start. Such a clear, cheerful,
+_young_ laugh! Maybe he would laugh more, by and by, if she worked hard
+to make him.
+
+"Good-night, Allan," she said.
+
+"Aren't you going to kiss me good-night?" demanded this new Allan,
+precisely as if she had been doing it ever since she met him. Evidently
+that kiss three hours ago had created a precedent. Phyllis colored to
+her ears. She seemed to herself to be always coloring now. But she
+mustn't cross Allan, tired as he must be!
+
+"Good-night, Allan," she said again sedately, and kissed his cheek as
+she had done a month ago--years ago!--when they had been married. Then
+she fled.
+
+"Wallis," said his master dreamily when his man appeared again, "I want
+some more real clothes. Tired of sleeping-suits. Get me some, please.
+Good-night."
+
+As for Phyllis, in her little green-and-white room above him, she was
+crying comfortably into her pillow. She had not the faintest idea why,
+except that she liked doing it. She felt, through her sleepiness, a
+faint, hungry, pleasant want of something, though she hadn't an idea
+what it could be. She had everything, except that it wasn't time for the
+roses to be out yet. Probably that was the trouble.... Roses.... She,
+too, went to sleep.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"How did Mr. Allan pass the night?" Phyllis asked Wallis anxiously,
+standing outside his door next morning. She had been up since seven,
+speeding the parting guests and interviewing the cook and chambermaid.
+Mrs. Clancy's choice had been cheerful to a degree, and black, all of
+it; a fat Virginia cook, a slim young Tuskegee chambermaid of a pale
+saddle-color, and a shiny brown outdoor man who came from nowhere in
+particular, but was very useful now he was here. Phyllis had seen them
+all this morning, and found them everything servants should be. Now she
+was looking after Allan, as her duty was.
+
+Wallis beamed from against the door-post, his tray in his hands.
+
+"Mrs. Harrington, it's one of the best sleeps Mr. Allan's had! Four
+hours straight, and then sleeping still, if broken, till six! And still
+taking interest in things. Oh, ma'am, you should have heard him
+yesterday on the train, as furious as furious! It was beautiful!"
+
+"Then his spine wasn't jarred," said Phyllis thoughtfully. "Wallis, I
+believe there was more nervous shock and nervous depression than ever
+the doctors realized. And I believe all he needs is to be kept happy, to
+be much, much better. Wouldn't it be wonderful if he got so he could
+move freely from the waist up? I believe that may happen if we can keep
+him cheered and interested."
+
+Wallis looked down at his tray. "Yes, ma'am," he said. "Not to speak ill
+of the dead, Mrs. Harrington, the late Mrs. Harrington was always saying
+'My poor stricken boy,' and things like that--'Do not jar him with
+ill-timed light or merriment,' and reminding him how bad he was. And she
+certainly didn't jar him with any merriment, ma'am."
+
+"What were the doctors thinking about?" demanded Phyllis indignantly.
+
+"Well, ma'am, they did all sorts of things to poor Mr. Allan for the
+first year or so. And then, as nothing helped, and they couldn't find
+out what was wrong to have paralyzed him so, he begged to have them
+stopped hurting him. So we haven't had one for the past five years."
+
+"I think a masseur and a wheel-chair are the next things to get," said
+Phyllis decisively. "And remember, Wallis, there's something the matter
+with Mr. Allan's shutters. They won't always close the sunshine out as
+they should."
+
+Wallis almost winked, if an elderly, mutton-chopped servitor can be
+imagined as winking.
+
+"No, ma'am," he promised. "Something wrong with 'em. I'll remember,
+ma'am."
+
+Phyllis went singing on down the sunny old house, swinging her colored
+muslin skirts and prancing a little with sheer joy of being twenty-five,
+and prettily dressed, with a dear house all her own, and--yes--a dear
+Allan a little her own, too! Doing well for a man what another woman has
+done badly has a perennial joy for a certain type of woman, and this was
+what Phyllis was in the very midst of. She pranced a little more, and
+came almost straight up against a long old mirror with gilt cornices,
+which had come with the house and was staying with it. Phyllis stopped
+and looked critically at herself.
+
+"I haven't taken time yet to be pretty," she reminded the girl in the
+glass, and began then and there to take account of stock, by way of
+beginning. Why--a good deal had done itself! Her hair had been washed
+and sunned and sunned and washed about every ten minutes since she had
+been away from the library. It was springy and three shades more golden.
+She had not been rushing out in all weathers unveiled, nor washing
+hastily with hard water and cheap library soap eight or ten times a day,
+because private houses are comparatively clean places. So her complexion
+had been getting back, unnoticed, a good deal of its original country
+rose-and-cream, with a little gold glow underneath. And the tired
+heaviness was gone from her eyelids, because she had scarcely used her
+eyes since she had married Allan--there had been too much else to do!
+The little frown-lines between the brows had gone, too, with the need of
+reading-glasses and work under electricity. She was more rounded, and
+her look was less intent. The strained Liberry Teacher look was gone.
+The luminous long blue eyes in the glass looked back at her girlishly.
+"Would you think we were twenty-five even?" they said. Phyllis smiled
+irrepressibly at the mirrored girl.
+
+"Yas'm," said the rich and comfortable voice of Lily-Anna, the cook,
+from the dining-room door; "you sholy is pretty. Yas'm--a lady _wants_
+to stay pretty when she's married. Yo' don' look much mo'n a bride,
+ma'am, an' dat's a fac'. Does you want yo' dinnehs brought into de
+sittin'-room regular till de gem'man gits well?"
+
+"Yes--no--yes--for the present, any way," said Phyllis, with a mixture
+of confusion and dignity. Fortunately the doorbell chose this time to
+ring.
+
+A business-like young messenger with a rocking crate wanted to speak to
+the madam. The last item on Phyllis's shopping list had come.
+
+"The wolfhound's doing fine, ma'am," the messenger answered in response
+to her questions. "Like a different dog already. All he needed was
+exercise and a little society. Yes'm, this pup's broken--in a manner,
+that is. Your man picked you out the best-tempered little feller in the
+litter. Here, Foxy--careful, lady! Hold on to his leash!"
+
+There was the passage of the check, a few directions about
+dog-biscuits, and then the messenger from the kennels drove back to the
+station, the crate, which had been emptied of a wriggling six-months
+black bull-dog, on the seat beside him.
+
+
+
+
+XII
+
+
+Allan, lying at the window of the sunny bedroom, and wondering if they
+had been having springs like this all the time he had lived in the city,
+heard a scuffle outside the door. His wife's voice inquired breathlessly
+of Wallis, "Can Mr. Allan--see me?... Oh, gracious--_don't_, Foxy, you
+little black gargoyle! Open the door, or--shut it--quick, Wallis!"
+
+But the door, owing to circumstances over which nobody but the black dog
+had any control, flew violently open here, and Allan had a flying vision
+of his wife, flushed, laughing, and badly mussed, being railroaded
+across the room by a prancingly exuberant French bull at the end of a
+leash.
+
+"He's--he's a cheerful dog," panted Phyllis, trying to bring Foxy to
+anchor near Allan, "and I don't think he knows how to keep still long
+enough to pose across your feet--he wouldn't become them anyhow--he's a
+real man-dog, Allan, not an interior decoration.... Oh, Wallis, he has
+Mr. Allan's slipper! Foxy, you little fraud! Did him want a drink,
+angel-puppy?"
+
+"Did you get him for me, Phyllis?" asked Allan when the tumult and the
+shouting had died, and the caracoling Foxy had buried his hideous little
+black pansy-face in a costly Belleek dish of water.
+
+"Yes," gasped Phyllis from her favorite seat, the floor; "but you
+needn't keep him unless you want to. I can keep him where you'll never
+see him--can't I, honey-dog-gums? Only I thought he'd be company for
+you, and don't you think he seems--cheerful?"
+
+Allan threw his picturesque head back on the cushions, and laughed and
+laughed.
+
+"Cheerful!" he said. "Most assuredly! Why--thank you, ever so much,
+Phyllis. You're an awfully thoughtful girl. I always did like bulls--had
+one in college, a Nelson. Come here, you little rascal!"
+
+He whistled, and the puppy lifted its muzzle from the water, made a
+dripping dash to the couch, and scrambled up over Allan as if they had
+owned each other since birth. Never was a dog less weighed down by the
+glories of ancestry.
+
+Allan pulled the flopping bat-ears with his most useful hand, and asked
+with interest, "Why on earth did they call a French bull Foxy?"
+
+"Yes, sir," said Wallis. "I understand, sir, that he was the most active
+and playful of the litter, and chewed up all his brothers' ears, sir.
+And the kennel people thought it was so clever that they called him
+Foxy."
+
+"The best-tempered dog in the litter!" cried Phyllis, bursting into
+helpless laughter from the floor.
+
+"That doesn't mean he's bad-tempered," explained master and man eagerly
+together. Phyllis began to see that she had bought a family pet as much
+for Wallis as for Allan. She left them adoring the dog with that
+reverent emotion which only very ugly bull-dogs can wake in a man's
+breast, and flitted out, happy over the success of her new toy for
+Allan.
+
+"Take him out when he gets too much for Mr. Allan," she managed to say
+softly to Wallis as she passed him. But, except for a run or so for his
+health, Wallis and Allan between them kept the dog in the bedroom most
+of the day. Phyllis, in one of her flying visits, found the little
+fellow, tired with play, dog-biscuits, and other attentions, snuggled
+down by his master, his little crumpled black muzzle on the pillow close
+to Allan's contented, sleeping face. She felt as if she wanted to cry.
+The pathetic lack of interests which made the coming of a new little dog
+such an event!
+
+Before she hung one more picture, before she set up even a book from the
+boxes which had been her father's, before she arranged one more article
+of furniture, she telephoned to the village for the regular delivery of
+four daily papers, and a half-dozen of the most masculine magazines she
+could think of on the library lists. She had never known of Allan's
+doing any reading. That he had cared for books before the accident, she
+knew. At any rate, she was resolved to leave no point uncovered that
+might, just possibly _might_, help her Allan just a little way to
+interest in life, which she felt to be the way to recovery. He liked
+being told stories to, any way.
+
+"Do you think Mr. Allan will feel like coming into the living-room
+to-day?" she asked Wallis, meeting him in the hall about two o'clock.
+
+"Why, he's dressed, ma'am," was Wallis's astonishing reply, "and him and
+the pup is having a fine game of play. He's got more use of that hand
+an' arm, ma'am, than we thought."
+
+"Do you think he'd care to be wheeled into the living-room about four?"
+asked Phyllis.
+
+"For tea, ma'am?" inquired Wallis, beaming. "I should think so, ma'am.
+I'll ask, anyhow."
+
+Phyllis had not thought of tea--one does not stop for such leisurely
+amenities in a busy public library--but she saw the beauty of the idea,
+and saw to it that the tea was there. Lily-Anna was a jewel. She built
+the fire up to a bright flame, and brought in some daffodils from the
+garden without a word from her mistress. Phyllis herself saw that the
+victrola was in readiness, and cleared a space for the couch near the
+fire. There was quite a festal feeling.
+
+The talking-machine was also a surprise for Allan. Phyllis thought
+afterward that she should have saved it for another day, but the
+temptation to grace the occasion with it was too strong. She and Allan
+were as excited over it as a couple of children, and the only drawback
+to Allan's enjoyment was that he obviously wanted to take the records
+out of her unaccustomed fingers and adjust them himself. He knew how, it
+appeared, and Phyllis naturally didn't. However, she managed to follow
+his directions successfully. She had bought recklessly of rag-time
+discs, and provided a fair amount of opera selections. Allan seemed
+equally happy over both. After the thing had been playing for
+three-quarters of an hour, and most of the records were exhausted,
+Phyllis rang for tea. It was getting a little darker now, and the
+wood-fire cast fantastic red and black lights and shadows over the room.
+It was very intimate and thrilling to Phyllis suddenly, the fire-lit
+room, with just their two selves there. Allan, on his couch before the
+fire, looked bright and contented. The adjustable couch-head had been
+braced to such a position that he was almost sitting up. The bull-dog,
+who had lately come back from a long walk with the gratified outdoor
+man, snored regularly on the rug near his master, wakening enough to bat
+his tail on the floor if he was referred to. The little tea-table was
+between Allan and Phyllis, crowned with a bunch of apple-blossoms, whose
+spring-like scent dominated the warm room. Phyllis, in her green gown,
+her cheeks pink with excitement, was waiting on her lord and master a
+little silently.
+
+Allan watched her amusedly for awhile--she was as intent as a good child
+over her tea-ball and her lemon and her little cakes.
+
+"Say something, Phyllis," he suggested with the touch of mischief she
+was not yet used to, coming from him.
+
+"This is a serious matter," she replied gravely. "Do you know I haven't
+made tea--afternoon tea, that is--for so long it's a wonder I know which
+is the cup and which is the saucer?"
+
+"Why not?" he asked idly, yet interestedly too.
+
+"I was otherwise occupied. I was a Daughter of Toil," explained Phyllis
+serenely, setting down her own cup to relax in her chair, hands behind
+her head; looking, in her green gown, the picture of graceful, strong,
+young indolence. "I was a librarian--didn't you know?"
+
+"No. I wish you'd tell me, if you don't mind," said Allan. "About you, I
+mean, Phyllis. Do you know, I feel awfully married to you this
+afternoon--you've bullied me so much it's no wonder--and I really ought
+to know about my wife's dark past."
+
+Phyllis's heart beat a little faster. She, too, had felt "awfully
+married" here alone in the fire-lit living-room, dealing so intimately
+and gayly with Allan.
+
+"There isn't much to tell," she said soberly.
+
+"Come over here closer," commanded Allan the spoilt. "We've both had all
+the tea we want. Come close by the couch. I want to see you when you
+talk."
+
+Phyllis did as he ordered.
+
+"I was a New England country minister's daughter," she began. "New
+England country ministers always know lots about Greek and Latin and how
+to make one dollar do the work of one-seventy-five, but they never have
+any dollars left when the doing's over. Father and I lived alone
+together always, and he taught me things, and I petted him--fathers need
+it, specially when they have country congregations--and we didn't bother
+much about other folks. Then he--died. I was eighteen, and I had six
+hundred dollars. I couldn't do arithmetic, because Father had always
+said it was left out of my head, and I needn't bother with it. So I
+couldn't teach. Then they said, 'You like books, and you'd better be a
+librarian.' As a matter of fact, a librarian never gets a chance to
+read, but you can't explain that to the general public. So I came to the
+city and took the course at library school. Then I got a position in the
+Greenway Branch--two years in the circulating desk, four in the
+cataloguing room, and one in the Children's Department. The short and
+simple annals of the poor!"
+
+"Go on," said Allan.
+
+"I believe it's merely that you like the sound of the human voice," said
+Phyllis, laughing. "I'm going to go on with the story of the Five Little
+Pigs--you'll enjoy it just as much!"
+
+"Exactly," said Allan. "Tell me what it was like in the library,
+please."
+
+"It was rather interesting," said Phyllis, yielding at once. "There are
+so many different things to be done that you never feel any monotony, as
+I suppose a teacher does. But the hours are not much shorter than a
+department store's, and it's exacting, on-your-feet work all the time. I
+liked the work with the children best. Only--you never have any time to
+be anything but neat in a library, and you do get so tired of being just
+neat, if you're a girl."
+
+"And a pretty one," said Allan. "I don't suppose the ugly ones mind as
+much."
+
+It was the first thing he had said about her looks. Phyllis's ready
+color came into her cheeks. So he thought she was pretty!
+
+"Do you--think I'm pretty?" she asked breathlessly. She couldn't help
+it.
+
+"Of course I do, you little goose," said Allan, smiling at her.
+
+Phyllis plunged back into the middle of her story:
+
+"You see, you can't sit up nights to sew much, or practise doing your
+hair new ways, because you need all your strength to get up when the
+alarm-clock barks next morning. And then, there's always the
+money-worry, if you have nothing but your salary. Of course, this last
+year, when I've been getting fifty dollars a month, things have been all
+right. But when it was only thirty a month in the Circulation--well,
+that was pretty hard pulling," said Phyllis thoughtfully. "But the
+worst--the worst, Allan, was waking up nights and wondering what would
+happen if you broke down for a long time. Because you _can't_ very well
+save for sickness-insurance on even fifty a month. And the work--well,
+of course, most girls' work is just a little more than they have the
+strength for, always. But I was awfully lucky to get into children's
+work. Some of my imps, little Poles and Slovaks and Hungarians mostly,
+are the cleverest, most affectionate babies----"
+
+She began to tell him stories of wonderful ten-year-olds who were
+Socialists by conviction, and read economics, and dazed little atypical
+sixteen-year-olds who read Mother Goose, and stopped even that because
+they got married.
+
+"You poor little girl!" said Allan, unheeding. "What brutes they were to
+you! Well, thank Heaven, that's over now!"
+
+"Why, Allan!" she said, laying a soothing hand on his. "Nobody was a
+brute. There's never more than one crank-in-authority in any library,
+they say. Ours was the Supervisor of the Left Half of the Desk, and
+after I got out of Circulation I never saw anything of her."
+
+Allan burst into unexpected laughter. "It sounds like a Chinese title of
+honor," he explained. "'Grand Warder of the Emperor's Left
+Slipper-Rosette,' or something of the sort."
+
+"The Desk's where you get your books stamped," she explained, "and the
+two shifts of girls who attend to that part of the work each have a
+supervisor--the Right and Left halves. The one that was horrid had
+favorites, and snapped at the ones that weren't. I wasn't under her,
+though. My Supervisor was lovely, an Irishwoman with the most florid
+hats, and the kindest, most just disposition, and always laughing. We
+all adored her, she was so fair-minded."
+
+"You think a good deal about laughing," said Allan thoughtfully. "Does it
+rank as a virtue in libraries, or what?"
+
+"You have to laugh," explained Phyllis. "If you don't see the laugh-side
+of things, you see the cry-side. And you can't afford to be unhappy if
+you have to earn your living. People like brightness best. And it's more
+comfortable for yourself, once you get used to it."
+
+"So that was your philosophy of life," said Allan. His hand tightened
+compassionately on hers. "You _poor_ little girl!... Tell me about the
+cry-side, Phyllis."
+
+His voice was very moved and caressing, and the darkness was deepening
+as the fire sank. Only an occasional tongue of flame glinted across
+Phyllis's silver slipper-buckle and on the seal-ring Allan wore. It was
+easy to tell things there in the perfumed duskiness. It was a great many
+years since any one had cared to hear the cry-side. And it was so dark,
+and the hand keeping hers in the shadows might have been any kind,
+comforting hand. She found herself pouring it all out to Allan, there
+close by her; the loneliness, the strain, the hard work, the lack of all
+the woman-things in her life, the isolation and dreariness at night, the
+over-fatigue, and the hurt of watching youth and womanhood sliding away,
+unused, with nothing to show for all the years; only a cold hope that
+her flock of little transient aliens might be a little better for the
+guidance she could give them--
+
+
+   Years hence in rustic speech a phrase,
+   As in rude earth a Grecian vase.
+
+
+And then, that wet, discouraged day in February, and the vision of Eva
+Atkinson, radiantly fresh and happy, kept young and pretty by unlimited
+money and time.
+
+"Her children were so pretty," said Phyllis wistfully, "and mine, dear
+little villains, were such dirty, untaught, rude little things--oh, it
+sounds snobbish, but I'd have given everything I had to have a dainty,
+clean little _lady_-child throw her arms around me and kiss me, instead
+of my pet little handsome, sticky Polish Jewess. Up at home everything
+had been so clean and old and still that you always could remember it
+had been finished for three hundred years. And Father's clean, still old
+library----"
+
+Phyllis did not know how she was revealing to Allan the unconscious
+motherhood in her; but Allan, femininely sensitive to unspoken things
+from his long sojourn in the dark--Allan did. It was the mother-instinct
+that she was spending on him, but mother-instinct of a kind he had never
+known before; gayly self-effacing, efficient, shown only in its results.
+And she could never have anything else to spend it on, he thought. Well,
+he was due to die in a few years.... But he didn't want to. Living was
+just beginning to be interesting again, somehow. There seemed no
+satisfactory solution for the two of them.... Well, he'd be unselfish
+and die, any way. Meanwhile, why not be happy? Here was Phyllis. His
+hand clasped hers more closely.
+
+"And when Mr. De Guenther made me that offer," she murmured, coloring in
+the darkness, "I was tired and discouraged, and the years seemed so
+endless! It didn't seem as though I'd be harming any one--but I wouldn't
+have done it if you'd said a word against it--truly I wouldn't, dear."
+
+The last little word slipped out unnoticed. She had been calling her
+library children "dear" for a year now, and the word slipped out of
+itself. But Allan liked it.
+
+"My poor little girl!" he said. "In your place I'd have married the
+devil himself--up against a life like that."
+
+"Then--then you don't--mind?" asked Phyllis anxiously, as she had asked
+before.
+
+"No, indeed!" said Allan, with a little unnecessary firmness. "I _told_
+you that, didn't I? I like it."
+
+"So you did tell me," she said penitently.
+
+"But supposing De Guenther hadn't picked out some one like you----"
+
+"That's just what I've often thought myself," said Phyllis naively. "She
+might have been much worse than I.... Oh, but I was frightened when I
+saw you first! I didn't know what you'd be like. And then, when I looked
+at you----"
+
+"Well, when you looked at me?" demanded Allan.
+
+But Phyllis refused to go on.
+
+"But that's not all," said Allan. "What about--men?"
+
+"What men?" asked Phyllis innocently.
+
+"Why, men you were interested in, of course," he answered.
+
+"There weren't any," said Phyllis. "I hadn't any place to meet them, or
+anywhere to entertain them if I had met them. Oh, yes, there was one--an
+old bookkeeper at the boarding-house. All the boarders there were old.
+That was why the people at home had chosen it. They thought it would be
+safe. It was all of that!"
+
+"Well, the bookkeeper?" demanded Allan. "You're straying off from your
+narrative. The bookkeeper, Phyllis, my dear!"
+
+"I'm telling you about him," protested Phyllis. "He was awfully cross
+because I wouldn't marry him, but I didn't see any reason why I should.
+I didn't like him especially, and I would probably have gone on with my
+work afterwards. There didn't seem to me to be anything to it for any
+one but him--for of course I'd have had his mending and all that to do
+when I came home from the library, and I scarcely got time for my own.
+But he lost his temper fearfully because I didn't want to. Then, of
+course, men would try to flirt in the library, but the janitor always
+made them go out when you asked him to. He loved doing it.... Why,
+Allan, it must be seven o'clock! Shall I turn on more lights?"
+
+"No.... Then you were quite as shut up in your noisy library as I was in
+my dark rooms," said Allan musingly.
+
+"I suppose I was," she said, "though I never thought of it before. You
+mustn't think it was horrid. It was fun, lots of it. Only, there wasn't
+any being a real girl in it."
+
+"There isn't much in this, I should think," said Allan savagely,
+"except looking after a big doll."
+
+Phyllis's laugh tinkled out. "Oh, I _love_ playing with dolls," she said
+mischievously. "And you ought to see my new slippers! I have pink ones,
+and blue ones, and lavender and green, all satin and suede. And when I
+get time I'm going to buy dresses to match. And a banjo, maybe, with a
+self-teacher. There's a room upstairs where nobody can hear a thing you
+do. I've wanted slippers and a banjo ever since I can remember."
+
+"Then you're fairly happy?" demanded Allan suddenly.
+
+"Why, of course!" said Phyllis, though she had not really stopped to ask
+herself before whether she was or not. There had been so many exciting
+things to do. "Wouldn't you be happy if you could buy everything you
+wanted, and every one was lovely to you, and you had pretty clothes and
+a lovely house--and a rose-garden?"
+
+"Yes--if I could buy everything I wanted," said Allan. His voice dragged
+a little. Phyllis sprang up, instantly penitent.
+
+"You're tired, and I've been talking and talking about my silly little
+woes till I've worn you out!" she said. "But--Allan, you're getting
+better. Try to move this arm. The hand I'm holding. There! That's a lot
+more than you could do when I first came. I think--I think it would be a
+good plan for a masseur to come down and see it."
+
+"Now look here, Phyllis," protested Allan, "I like your taste in houses
+and music-boxes and bull-dogs, but I'll be hanged if I'll stand for a
+masseur. There's no use, they can't do me any good, and the last one
+almost killed me. There's no reason why I should be tormented simply
+because a professional pounder needs the money."
+
+"No, no!" said Phyllis. "Not that kind! Wallis can have orders to shoot
+him or something if he touches your spinal column. All I meant was a man
+who would give the muscles of your arms and shoulders a little exercise.
+That couldn't hurt, and might help you use them. That wouldn't be any
+trouble, would it? _Please!_ The first minute he hurts, you can send him
+flying. You know they call massage lazy people's exercise."
+
+"I believe you're really interested in making me better," said Allan,
+after a long silence.
+
+"Why, of course," said Phyllis, laughing. "That's what I'm here for!"
+
+But this answer did not seem to suit Allan, for some reason. Phyllis
+said no more about the masseur. She only decided to summon him, any way.
+And presently Wallis came in and turned all the lights on.
+
+
+
+
+XIII
+
+
+In due course of time June came. So did the masseur, and more flowered
+frocks for Phyllis, and the wheel-chair for Allan. The immediate effect
+of June was to bring out buds all over the rose-trees; of the flowered
+dresses, to make Phyllis very picturesquely pretty. As for the masseur,
+he had more effect than anything else. It was as Phyllis had hoped: the
+paralysis of Allan's arms had been less permanent than any one had
+thought, and for perhaps the last three years there had been little more
+the matter than entire loss of strength and muscle-control, from long
+disuse. By the time they had been a month in the country Allan's use of
+his arms and shoulders was nearly normal, and Phyllis was having wild
+hopes, that she confided to no one but Wallis, of even more sweeping
+betterments. Allan slept much better, from the slight increase of
+activity, and also perhaps because Phyllis had coaxed him outdoors as
+soon as the weather became warm, and was keeping him there. Sometimes
+he lay in the garden on his couch, sometimes he sat up in the
+wheel-chair, almost always with Phyllis sitting, or lying in her hammock
+near him, and the devoted Foxy pretending to hunt something near by.
+
+There were occasional fits of the old depression and silence, when Allan
+would lie silently in his own room with his hands crossed and his eyes
+shut, answering no one--not even Foxy. Wallis and Phyllis respected
+these moods, and left him alone till they were over, but the adoring
+Foxy had no such delicacy of feeling. And it is hard to remain silently
+sunk in depression when an active small dog is imploring you by every
+means he knows to throw balls for him to run after. For the rest, Allan
+proved to have naturally a lighter heart and more carefree disposition
+than Phyllis. His natural disposition was buoyant. Wallis said that he
+had never had a mood in his life till the accident.
+
+His attitude to his wife became more and more a taking-for-granted
+affection and dependence. It is to be feared that Phyllis spoiled him
+badly. But it was so long since she had been needed by any one person as
+Allan needed her! And he had such lovable, illogical, masculine ways of
+being wronged if he didn't get the requisite amount of petting, and
+grateful for foolish little favors and taking big ones for granted,
+that--entirely, as Phyllis insisted to herself, from a sense of combined
+duty and grateful interest--she would have had her pretty head removed
+and sent him by parcel-post, if he had idly suggested his possible need
+of a girl's head some time.
+
+And it was so heavenly--oh, but it was heavenly there in Phyllis's
+rose-garden, with the colored flowers coming out, and the little green
+caterpillars roaming over the leaves, and pretty dresses to wear, and
+Foxy-dog to play with--and Allan! Allan demanded--no, not exactly
+demanded, but expected and got--so much of Phyllis's society in these
+days that she had learned to carry on all her affairs, even the
+housekeeping, out in her hammock by his wheel-chair or couch. She wore
+large, floppy white hats with roses on them, by way of keeping the sun
+off; but Allan, it appeared, did not think much of hats except as an
+ornament for girls, and his uncovered curly hair was burned to a sort of
+goldy-russet all through, and his pallor turned to a clear pale brown.
+
+Phyllis looked up from her work one of these heavenly last-of-June days,
+and tried to decide whether she really liked the change or not. Allan
+was handsomer unquestionably, though that had hardly been necessary. But
+the resignedly statuesque look was gone.
+
+Allan felt her look, and looked up at her. He had been reading a
+magazine, for Phyllis had succeeded in a large measure in reviving his
+taste for magazines and books. "Well, Phyllis, my dear," said he,
+smiling, "what's the problem now? I feel sure there is something new
+going to be sprung on me--get the worst over!"
+
+"You wrong me," she said, beginning to thread some more pink embroidery
+silk. "I was only wondering whether I liked you as well tanned as I did
+when you were so nice and white, back in the city."
+
+"Cheerful thought!" said Allan, laying down his magazine entirely.
+"Shall I ring for Wallis and some peroxide? As you said the other day,
+'I have to be approved of or I'm unhappy!'"
+
+"Oh, it really doesn't matter," said Phyllis mischievously. "You know, I
+married you principally for a rose-garden, and that's _lovely_!"
+
+"I suppose I spoil the perspective," said Allan, unexpectedly ruffled.
+
+Phyllis leaned forward in her blossom-dotted draperies and stroked his
+hand, that long carven hand she so loved to watch.
+
+"Not a bit, Allan," she said, laughing at him. "You're exceedingly
+decorative! I remember the first time I saw you I thought you looked
+exactly like a marble knight on a tomb."
+
+Allan--Allan the listless, tranced invalid of four months before--threw
+his head back and shouted with laughter.
+
+"I suppose I serve the purpose of garden statuary," he said. "We used to
+have some horrors when I was a kid. I remember two awful bronze deer
+that always looked as if they were trying not to get their feet wet,
+and a floppy bronze dog we called Fido. He was meant for a Gordon
+setter, I think, but it didn't go much further than intention. Louise
+and I used to ride the deer."
+
+His face shadowed a little as he spoke, for nearly the first time, of
+the dead girl.
+
+"Allan," Phyllis said, bending closer to him, all rosy and golden in her
+green hammock, "tell me about--Louise Frey--if you don't mind talking
+about her? Would it be bad for you, do you think?"
+
+Allan's eyes dwelt on his wife pleasurably. She was very real and near
+and lovable, and Louise Frey seemed far away and shadowy in his
+thoughts. He had loved her very dearly and passionately, that
+boisterous, handsome young Louise, but that gay boy-life she had
+belonged to seemed separated now from this pleasant rose-garden, with
+its golden-haired, wisely-sweet young chatelaine, by thousands of black
+years. The blackness came back when he remembered what lay behind it.
+
+"There's nothing much to tell, Phyllis," he said, frowning a little.
+"She was pretty and full of life. She had black hair and eyes and a
+good deal of color. We were more or less friends all our lives, for our
+country-places adjoined. She was eighteen when--it happened."
+
+"Eighteen," said Phyllis musingly. "She would have been just my age....
+We won't talk about it, then, Allan ... Well, Viola?"
+
+The pretty Tuskegee chambermaid was holding out a tray with a card on
+it.
+
+"The doctor, ma'am," she said.
+
+"The doctor!" echoed Allan, half-vexed, half-laughing. "I _knew_ you had
+something up your sleeve, Phyllis! What on earth did you have him for?"
+
+Phyllis's face was a study of astonishment. "On my honor, I hadn't a
+notion he was even in existence," she protested. "He's not _my_ doctor!"
+
+"He must have 'just growed,' or else Lily-Anna's called him in,"
+suggested Allan sunnily. "Bring him along, Viola."
+
+Viola produced him so promptly that nobody had time to remember the
+professional doctor's visits don't usually have cards, or thought to
+look at the card for enlightenment. So the surprise was complete when
+the doctor appeared.
+
+"Johnny Hewitt!" ejaculated Allan, throwing out both hands in greeting.
+"Of all people! Well, you old fraud, pretending to be a doctor! The last
+I heard about you, you were trying to prove that you weren't the man
+that tied a mule into old Sumerley's chair at college."
+
+"I never did prove it," responded Johnny Hewitt, shaking hands
+vigorously, "but the fellows said afterwards that I ought to
+apologize--to the mule. He was a perfectly good mule. But I'm a doctor
+all right. I live here in Wallraven. I wondered if it might be you by
+any chance, Allan, when I heard some Harringtons had bought here. But
+this is the first chance a promising young chickenpox epidemic has given
+me to find out."
+
+"It's what's left of me," said Allan, smiling ruefully. "And--Phyllis,
+this doctor-person turns out to be an old friend of mine. This is Mrs.
+Harrington, Johnny."
+
+"Oh, I'm so glad!" beamed Phyllis, springing up from her hammock, and
+looking as if she loved Johnny. Here was exactly what was
+needed--somebody for Allan to play with! She made herself delightful to
+the newcomer for a few minutes, and then excused herself. They would
+have a better time alone, for awhile, any way, and there was dinner to
+order. Maybe this Johnny Hewitt-doctor would stay for dinner. He should
+if she could make him! She sang a little on her way to the house, and
+almost forgot the tiny hurt it had been when Allan seemed so saddened by
+speaking of Louise Frey. She had no right to feel hurt, she knew. It was
+only to be expected that Allan would always love Louise's memory. She
+didn't know much about men, but that was the way it always was in
+stories. A man's heart would die, under an automobile or anywhere else,
+and all there was left for anybody else was leavings. It wasn't fair!
+And then Phyllis threw back her shoulders and laughed, as she had
+sometimes in the library days, and reminded herself what a nice world it
+was, any way, and that Allan was going to be much helped by Johnny
+Hewitt. That was a cheering thought, anyhow. She went on singing, and
+ordered a beautiful, festively-varied dinner, a very poem of gratitude.
+Then she pounced on the doctor as he was leaving and made him stay for
+it.
+
+Allan's eyes were bright and his face lighted with interest. Phyllis, at
+the head of the table, kept just enough in the talk to push the men on
+when it seemed flagging, which was not often. She learned more about
+Allan, and incidentally Johnny Hewitt, in the talk as they lingered
+about the table, than she had ever known before. She and Allan had lived
+so deliberately in the placid present, with its almost childish
+brightnesses and interests, that she knew scarcely more about her
+husband's life than the De Guenthers had told her before she married
+him. But she could see the whole picture of it as she listened now: the
+active, merry, brilliant boy who had worked and played all day and
+danced half the night; who had lived, it almost seemed to her, two or
+three lives in one. And then the change to the darkened room--helpless,
+unable to move, with the added sorrow of his sweetheart's death, and
+his mother's deliberate fostering of that sorrow. It was almost a shock
+to see him in the wheel-chair at the foot of the table, his face lighted
+with interest in what he and his friend were saying. What if he did care
+for Louise Frey's memory still! He'd had such a hard time that anything
+Phyllis could do for him oughtn't to be too much!
+
+When Dr. Hewitt went at last Phyllis accompanied him to the door. She
+kept him there for a few minutes, talking to him about Allan and making
+him promise to come often. He agreed with her that, this much progress
+made, a good deal more might follow. He promised to come back very soon,
+and see as much of them as possible.
+
+Allan, watching them, out of earshot, from the living-room where he had
+been wheeled, saw Phyllis smiling warmly up at his friend, lingering in
+talk with him, giving him both hands in farewell; and he saw, too,
+Hewitt's rapt interest and long leave-taking. At last the door closed,
+and Phyllis came back to him, flushed and animated. He realized,
+watching her return with that swift lightness of foot her long years of
+work had lent her, how young and strong and lovely she was, with the
+rose-color in her cheeks and the light from above making her hair
+glitter. And suddenly her slim young strength and her bright vitality
+seemed to mock him, instead of being a comfort and support as
+heretofore. A young, beautiful, kind girl like that--it was natural she
+should like Hewitt. And it was going to come natural to Hewitt to like
+Phyllis. He could see that plainly enough.
+
+"Tired, Allan Harrington?" she asked brightly, coming over to him and
+dropping a light hand on his chair, in a caressing little way she had
+dared lately.... Kindness! Yes, she was the incarnation of kindness.
+Doubtless she had spoken to and touched those little ragamuffins she had
+told him of just so.
+
+He had got into a habit of feeling that Phyllis belonged to him
+absolutely. He had forgotten--what was it she had said to him that
+afternoon, half in fun--but oh, doubtless half in earnest!--about
+marrying him for a rose-garden? She had done just that. She had never
+made any secret of it--why, how could she, marrying him before she had
+spoken a half-dozen words to him? But how wonderful she had been to him
+since--sometimes almost as if she cared for him....
+
+He moved ungraciously. "Don't _touch_ me, Phyllis!" he said irritably.
+"Wallis! You can wheel me into my room."
+
+"Oh-h!" said Phyllis, behind him. The little forlorn sound hurt him, but
+it pleased him, too. So he could hurt her, if only by rudeness? Well,
+that was a satisfaction. "Shut the door," he ordered Wallis swiftly.
+
+Phyllis, her hands at her throat, stood hurt and frightened in the
+middle of the room. It never occurred to her that Allan was jealous, or
+indeed that he could care enough for her to be jealous.
+
+"It was talking about Louise Frey," she said. "That, and Dr. Hewitt
+bringing up old times. Oh, _why_ did I ask about her? He was
+contented--I know he was contented! He'd gotten to like having me with
+him--he even wanted me. Oh, Allan, Allan!"
+
+She did not want to cry downstairs, so she ran for her own room. There
+she threw herself down and cried into a pillow till most of the case was
+wet. She was silly--she knew she was silly. She tried to think of all
+the things that were still hers, the garden, the watch-bracelet, the
+leisure, the pretty gowns--but nothing, _nothing_ seemed of any
+consequence beside the fact that--she had not kissed Allan good-night!
+It seemed the most intolerable thing that had ever happened to her.
+
+
+
+
+XIV
+
+
+It was just as well, perhaps, that Phyllis did not do much sleeping that
+night, for at about two Wallis knocked at her door. It seemed like
+history repeating itself when he said: "Could you come to Mr. Allan,
+please? He seems very bad."
+
+She threw on the silk crepe negligee and followed him, just as she had
+done before, on that long-ago night after her mother-in-law had died.
+
+"Did Dr. Hewitt's visit overexcite him, do you think?" he asked as they
+went.
+
+"I don't know, ma'am," Wallis said. "He's almost as bad as he was after
+the old madam died--you remember?"
+
+"Oh, yes," said Phyllis mechanically. "I remember."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Allan lay so exactly as he had on that other night, that the strange
+surroundings seemed incongruous. Just the same, except that his
+restlessness was more visible, because he had more power of motion.
+
+She bent and held the nervously clenching hands, as she had before.
+"What is it, Allan?" she said soothingly.
+
+"Nothing," said her husband savagely. "Nerves, hysteria--any other silly
+womanish thing a cripple could have. Let me alone, Phyllis. I wish you
+could put me out of the way altogether!"
+
+Phyllis made herself laugh, though her heart hurried with fright. She
+had seen Allan suffer badly before--be apathetic, irritable, despondent,
+but never in a state where he did not cling to her.
+
+"I can't let you alone," she said brightly. "I've come to stay with you
+till you feel quieter.... Would you rather I talked to you, or kept
+quiet?"
+
+"Oh, do your wifely duty, whatever it is," he said.... "It was a
+mistake, the whole thing. You've done more than your duty, child,
+but--oh, you'd better go away."
+
+Phyllis's heart turned over. Was it as bad as this? Was he as sick of
+her as this?
+
+"You mean--you think," she faltered, "it was a mistake--our marriage?"
+
+"Yes," he said restlessly. "Yes.... It wasn't fair."
+
+She had no means of knowing that he meant it was unfair to her. She held
+on to herself, though she felt her face turning cold with the sudden
+pallor of fright.
+
+"I think it can be annulled," she said steadily. "No, I suppose it
+wasn't fair."
+
+She stopped to get her breath and catch at the only things that
+mattered--steadiness, quietness, ability to soothe Allan!
+
+"It can be annulled," she said again evenly. "But listen to me now,
+Allan. It will take quite a while. It can't be done to-night, or before
+you are stronger. So for your own sake you must try to rest now.
+Everything shall come right. I promise you it shall be annulled. But
+forget it now, please. I am going to hold your wrists and talk to you,
+recite things for you, till you go back to sleep."
+
+She wondered afterwards how she could have spoken with that hard
+serenity, how she could have gone steadily on with story after story,
+poem after poem, till Allan's grip on her hands relaxed, and he fell
+into a heavy, tired sleep.
+
+[Illustration: "BUT YOU SEE--HE'S--ALL I HAVE ... GOOD-NIGHT, WALLIS"]
+
+She sat on the side of the bed and looked at him, lying still against
+his white pillows. She looked and looked, and presently the tears began
+to slide silently down her cheeks. She did not lift her hands to wipe
+them away. She sat and cried silently, openly, like a desolate, unkindly
+treated child.
+
+"Mrs. Allan! Mrs. Allan, ma'am!" came Wallis's concerned whisper from
+the doorway. "Don't take it as hard as that. It's just a little relapse.
+He was overtired. I shouldn't have called you, but you always quiet him
+so."
+
+Phyllis brushed off her tears, and smiled. You seemed to have to do so
+much smiling in this house!
+
+"I know," she said. "I worry about his condition too much. But you
+see--he's--all I have.... Good-night, Wallis."
+
+Once out of Allan's room, she ran at full speed till she gained her own
+bed, where she could cry in peace till morning if she wanted to, with no
+one to interrupt. That was all right. The trouble was going to be next
+morning.
+
+But somehow, when morning came, the old routine was dragged through
+with. Directions had to be given the servants as usual, Allan's comfort
+and amusement seen to, just as if nothing had happened. It was a perfect
+day, golden and perfumed, with just that little tang of fresh windiness
+that June days have in the northern states. And Allan must not lose
+it--he must be wheeled out into the garden.
+
+She came out to him, in the place where they usually sat, and sank for a
+moment in the hammock, that afternoon. She had avoided him all the
+morning.
+
+"I just came to see if everything was all right," she said, leaning
+toward him in that childlike, earnest way he knew so well. "I don't need
+to stay here if I worry you."
+
+"I'd rather you'd stay, if you don't mind," he answered. Phyllis looked
+at him intently. He was white and dispirited, and his voice was
+listless. Oh, Phyllis thought, if Louise Frey had only been kind enough
+to die in babyhood, instead of under Allan's automobile! What could
+there have been about her to hold Allan so long? She glanced at his
+weary face again. This would never do! What had come to be her dominant
+instinct, keeping Allan's spirits up, emboldened her to bend forward,
+and even laugh a little.
+
+"Come, Allan!" she said. "Even if we're not going to stay together
+always, we might as well be cheerful till we do part. We used to be good
+friends enough. Can't we be so a little longer?" It sounded heartless to
+her after she had said it, but it seemed the only way to speak. She
+smiled at him bravely.
+
+Allan looked at her mutely for a moment, as if she had hurt him.
+
+"You're right," he said suddenly. "There's no time but the present,
+after all. Come over here, closer to me, Phyllis. You've been awfully
+good to me, child--isn't there anything--_anything_ I could do for
+you--something you could remember afterwards, and say, 'Well, he did
+that for me, any way?'"
+
+Phyllis's eyes filled with tears. "You have given me everything
+already," she said, catching her breath. She didn't feel as if she could
+stand much more of this.
+
+"Everything!" he said bitterly. "No, I haven't. I can't give you what
+every girl wants--a well, strong man to be her husband--the health and
+strength that any man in the street has."
+
+"Oh, don't speak that way, Allan!"
+
+She bent over him sympathetically, moved by his words. In another moment
+the misunderstanding might have been straightened out, if it had not
+been for his reply.
+
+"I wish I never had to see you at all!" he said involuntarily. In her
+sensitive state of mind the hurt was all she felt--not the deeper
+meaning that lay behind the words.
+
+"I'll relieve you of my presence for awhile," she flashed back. Before
+she gave herself time to think, she had left the garden, with something
+which might be called a flounce. "When people say things like that to
+you," she said as she walked away from him, "it's carrying being an
+invalid a little _too_ far!"
+
+Allan heard the side-door slam. He had never suspected before that
+Phyllis had a temper. And yet, what could he have said? But she gave him
+no opportunity to find out. In just about the time it might take to
+find gloves and a parasol, another door clanged in the distance. The
+street door. Phyllis had evidently gone out.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Phyllis, on her swift way down the street, grew angrier and angrier. She
+tried to persuade herself to make allowances for Allan, but they refused
+to be made. She felt more bitterly toward him than she ever had toward
+any one in her life. If she only hadn't leaned over him and been sorry
+for him, just before she got a slap in the face like that!
+
+She walked rapidly down the main street of the little village. She
+hardly knew where she was going. She had been called on by most of the
+local people, but she did not feel like being agreeable, or making
+formal calls, just now. And what was the use of making friends, any way,
+when she was going back to her rags, poor little Cinderella that she
+was! Below and around and above everything else came the stinging
+thought that she had given Allan so much--that she had taken so much for
+granted.
+
+Her quick steps finally took her to the outskirts of the village, to a
+little green stretch of woods. There she walked up and down for awhile,
+trying to think more quietly. She found the tide of her anger ebbing
+suddenly, and her mind forming all sorts of excuses for Allan. But that
+was not the way to get quiet--thinking of Allan! She tried to put him
+resolutely from her mind, and think about her own future plans. The
+first thing to do, she decided, was to rub up her library work a little.
+
+It was with an unexpected feeling of having returned to her own place
+that she crossed the marble floor of the village library. She felt as if
+she ought to hurry down to the cloak-room, instead of waiting leisurely
+at the desk for her card. It all seemed uncannily like home--there was
+even a girl inside the desk who looked like Anna Black of her own
+Greenway Branch. Phyllis could hear, with a faint amusement, that the
+girl was scolding energetically in Anna Black's own way. The words
+struck on her quick ears, though they were not intended to carry.
+
+"That's what comes of trusting to volunteer help. Telephones at the last
+moment 'she has a headache,' and not a single soul to look after the
+story-hour! And the children are almost all here already."
+
+"We'll just have to send them home," said the other girl, looking up
+from her trayful of cards. "It's too late to get anybody else, and
+goodness knows _we_ can't get it in!"
+
+"They ought to have another librarian," fretted the girl who looked like
+Anna. "They could afford it well enough, with their Soldiers' Monuments
+and all."
+
+Phyllis smiled to herself from where she was investigating the
+card-catalogue. It all sounded so exceedingly natural. Then that swift
+instinct of hers to help caught her over to the desk, and she heard
+herself saying:
+
+"I've had some experience in story telling; maybe I could help you with
+the story-hour. I couldn't help hearing that your story-teller has
+disappointed you."
+
+The girl like Anna fell on her with rapture.
+
+"Heaven must have sent you," she said. The other one, evidently slower
+and more cautious by nature, rose too, and came toward her. "You have a
+card here, haven't you?" she said. "I think I've seen you."
+
+"Yes," Phyllis said, with a pang at speaking the name she had grown to
+love bearing; "I'm Mrs. Harrington--Phyllis Harrington. We live at the
+other end of the village."
+
+"Oh, in the house with the garden all shut off from the lane!" said the
+girl like Anna, delightedly. "That lovely old house that used to belong
+to the Jamesons. Oh, yes, I know. You're here for the summer, aren't
+you, and your husband has been very ill?"
+
+"Exactly," said Phyllis, smiling, though she wished people wouldn't talk
+about Allan! They seemed possessed to mention him!
+
+"We'll be obliged forever if you'll do it," said the other girl,
+evidently the head librarian. "Can you do it now? The children are
+waiting."
+
+"Certainly," said Phyllis, and followed the younger girl straightway to
+the basement, where, it seemed, the story-hour was held. She wondered,
+as they went, if the girl envied her her expensively perishable summer
+organdie, with its flying sashes and costly accessories; if the girl
+thought about her swinging jewelries and endless leisure with a wish to
+have them for herself. She had wanted such things, she knew, when she
+was being happy on fifty dollars a month. And perhaps some of the women
+she had watched then had had heartaches under their furs....
+
+The children, already sitting in a decorous ring on their low chairs,
+seemed after the first surprise to approve of Phyllis. The librarian
+lingered for a little by way of keeping order if it should be necessary,
+watched the competent sweep with which Phyllis gathered the children
+around her, heard the opening of the story, and left with an air of
+astonished approval. Phyllis, late best story-teller of the Greenway
+Branch, watched her go with a bit of professional triumph in her heart.
+
+She told the children stories till the time was up, and then "just one
+story more." She had not forgotten how, she found. But she never told
+them the story of "How the Elephant Got His Trunk," that foolish,
+fascinating story-hour classic that she had told Allan the night his
+mother had died; the story that had sent him to sleep quietly for the
+first time in years.... Oh, dear, was everything in the world connected
+with Allan in some way or other?
+
+It was nearly six when she went up, engulfed in children, to the
+circulating room. There the night-librarian caught her. She had
+evidently been told to try to get Phyllis for more story-hours, for she
+did her best to make her promise. They talked shop together for perhaps
+an hour and a half. Then the growing twilight reminded Phyllis that it
+was time to go back. She had been shirking going home, she realized now,
+all the afternoon. She said good-by to the night-librarian, and went on
+down the village street, lagging unconsciously. It must have been about
+eight by this time.
+
+It was a mile back to the house. She could have taken the trolley part
+of the way, but she felt restless and like walking. She had forgotten
+that walking at night through well-known, well-lighted city streets, and
+going in half-dusk through country byways, were two different things.
+She was destined to be reminded of the difference.
+
+"Can you help a poor man, lady?" said a whining voice behind her, when
+she had a quarter of the way yet to go. She turned to see a big tramp, a
+terrifying brute with a half-propitiating, half-fierce look on his
+heavy, unshaven face. She was desperately frightened. She had been
+spoken to once or twice in the city, but there there was always a
+policeman, or a house you could run into if you had to. But here, in the
+unguarded dusk of a country lane, it was a different matter. The long
+gold chain that swung below her waist, the big diamond on her finger,
+the gold mesh-purse--all the jewelry she took such a childlike delight
+in wearing--she remembered them in terror. She was no brown-clad little
+working-girl now, to slip along disregarded. And the tramp did not look
+like a deserving object.
+
+"If you will come to the house to-morrow," she said, hurrying on as she
+spoke, "I'll have some work for you. The first house on this street that
+you come to." She did not dare give him anything, or send him away.
+
+"Won't you gimme somethin' now, lady?" whined the tramp, continuing to
+follow. "I'm a starvin' man."
+
+She dared not open her purse and appease him by giving him money--she
+had too much with her. That morning she had received the check for her
+monthly income from Mr. De Guenther, sent Wallis down to cash it, and
+then stuffed it in her bag and forgotten it in the distress of the day.
+The man might take the money and strike her senseless, even kill her.
+
+"To-morrow," she said, going rapidly on. She had now what would amount
+to about three city blocks to traverse still. There was a short way from
+outside the garden-hedge through to the garden, which cut off about a
+half-block. If she could gain this she would be safe.
+
+"Naw, yeh don't," snarled the tramp, as she fled on. "Ye'll set that
+bull-pup o' yours on me. I been there, an' come away again. You just
+gimme some o' them rings an' things an' we'll call it square, me fine
+lady!"
+
+Phyllis's heart stood still at this open menace, but she ran on still. A
+sudden thought came to her. She snatched her gilt sash-buckle--a pretty
+thing but of small value--from her waist, and hurled it far behind the
+tramp. In the half-light it might have been her gold mesh-bag.
+
+"There's my money--go get it!" she gasped--and ran for her life. The
+tramp, as she had hoped he would, dashed back after it and gave her the
+start she needed. Breathless, terrified to death, she raced on, tearing
+her frock, dropping the library cards and parasol she still had held in
+her hand. Once she caught her sash on a tree-wire. Once her slipper-heel
+caught and nearly threw her. The chase seemed unending. She could hear
+the dreadful footsteps of the tramp behind her, and his snarling,
+swearing voice panting out threats. He was drunk, she realized with
+another thrill of horror. It was a nightmare happening.
+
+On and on--she stumbled, fell, caught herself--but the tramp had gained.
+Then at last the almost invisible gap in the hedge, and she fled
+through.
+
+"_Allan! Allan! Allan!_" she screamed, fleeing instinctively to his
+chair.
+
+The rose-garden was like a place of enchanted peace after the terror of
+outside. Her quick vision as she rushed in was of Allan still there,
+moveless in his chair, with the little black bull-dog lying asleep
+across his arms and shoulder like a child. It often lay so. As she
+entered, the scene broke up before her eyes like a dissolving view. She
+saw the little dog wake and make what seemed one flying spring to the
+tramp's throat, and sink his teeth in it--and Allan, at her scream,
+_spring from his chair_!
+
+Phyllis forgot everything at the sight of Allan, standing. Wallis and
+the outdoor man, who had run to the spot at Phyllis's screams, were
+dealing with the tramp, who was writhing on the grass, choking and
+striking out wildly. But neither Phyllis nor Allan saw that. Which
+caught the other in an embrace they never knew. They stood locked
+together, forgetting everything else, he in the idea of her peril, she
+in the wonder of his standing.
+
+"Oh, darling, darling!" Allan was saying over and over again. "You are
+safe--thank heaven you are safe! Oh, Phyllis, I could never forgive
+myself if you had been hurt! Phyllis! Speak to me!"
+
+But Phyllis's own safety did not concern her now. She could only think
+of one thing. "_You can stand! You can stand!_" she reiterated. Then a
+wonderful thought came to her, striking across the others, as she stood
+locked in this miraculously raised Allan's arms. She spoke without
+knowing that she had said it aloud. "_Do you care, too?_" she said very
+low. Then the dominant thought returned. "You must sit down again," she
+said hurriedly, to cover her confusion, and what she had said. "Please,
+Allan, sit down. Please, dear--you'll tire yourself."
+
+Allan sank into his chair again, still holding her. She dropped on her
+knees beside him, with her arms around him. She had a little leisure
+now to observe that Wallis, the ever-resourceful, had tied the tramp
+neatly with the outdoor man's suspenders, which were nearer the surface
+than his own, and succeeded in prying off the still unappeased Foxy, who
+evidently was wronged at not having the tramp to finish. They carried
+him off, into the back kitchen garden. Allan, now that he was certain of
+Phyllis's safety, paid them not the least attention.
+
+"Did you mean it?" he said passionately. "Tell me, did you mean what you
+said?"
+
+Phyllis dropped her dishevelled head on Allan's shoulder.
+
+"I'm afraid--I'm going to cry, and--and I know you don't like it!" she
+panted. Allan half drew, half guided her up into his arms.
+
+"Was it true?" he insisted, giving her an impulsive little shake. She sat
+up on his knees, wide-eyed and wet-cheeked like a child.
+
+"But you knew that all along!" she said. "That was why I felt so
+humiliated. It was _you_ that _I_ thought didn't care----"
+
+Allan laughed joyously. "Care!" he said. "I should think I did, first,
+last, and all the time! Why, Phyllis, child, didn't I behave like a
+brute because I was jealous enough of John Hewitt to throw him in the
+river? He was the first man you had seen since you married
+me--attractive, and well, and clever, and all that--it would have been
+natural enough if you'd liked him."
+
+"Liked him!" said Phyllis in disdain. "When there was you? And I
+thought--I thought it was the memory of Louise Frey that made you act
+that way. You didn't want to talk about her, and you said it was all a
+mistake----"
+
+"I was a brute," said Allan again. "It was the memory that I was about
+as useful as a rag doll, and that the world was full of live men with
+real legs and arms, ready to fall in love with you.
+
+"There's nobody but _you_ in the world," whispered Phyllis.... "But
+you're well now, or you will be soon," she added joyously. She slipped
+away from him. "Allan, don't you want to try to stand again? If you did
+it then, you can do it now."
+
+"Yes, by Jove, I do!" he said. But this time the effort to rise was
+noticeable. Still, he could do it, with Phyllis's eager help.
+
+"It must have been what Dr. Hewitt called neurasthenic inhibition," said
+Phyllis, watching the miracle of a standing Allan. "That was what we
+were talking about by the door that night, you foolish boy!... Oh, how
+tall you are! I never realized you were tall, lying down, somehow!"
+
+"I don't have to bend very far to kiss you, though," suggested Allan,
+suiting the action to the word.
+
+But Phyllis, when this was satisfactorily concluded, went back to the
+great business of seeing how much Allan could walk. He sat down again
+after a half-dozen steps, a little tired in spite of his excitement.
+
+"I can't do much at a time yet, I suppose," he said a little ruefully.
+"Do you mean to tell me, sweetheart--come over here closer, where I can
+touch you--you're awfully far away--do you mean to tell me that all that
+ailed me was I thought I couldn't move?"
+
+"Oh, no!" explained Phyllis, moving her chair close, and then, as that
+did not seem satisfactory, perching on the arm of Allan's. "You'd been
+unable to move for so long that when you were able to at last your
+subconscious mind clamped down on your muscles and was convinced you
+couldn't. So no matter how much you consciously tried, you couldn't make
+the muscles go till you were so strongly excited it broke the
+inhibition--just as people can lift things in delirium or excitement
+that they couldn't possibly move at other times. Do you see?"
+
+"I do," said Allan, kissing the back of her neck irrelevantly. "If
+somebody'd tried to shoot me up five years ago I might be a well man
+now. That's a beautiful word of yours, Phyllis, inhibition. What a lot
+of big words you know!"
+
+"Oh, if you won't be serious!" said she.
+
+"We'll have to be," said Allan, laughing, "for here's Wallis, and, as I
+live, from the direction of the house. I thought they carried our friend
+the tramp out through the hedge--he must have gone all the way around."
+
+Phyllis was secretly certain that Wallis had been crying a little, but
+all he said was, "We've taken the tramp to the lock-up, sir."
+
+But his master and his mistress were not so dignified. They showed him
+exhaustively that Allan could really stand and walk, and Allan
+demonstrated it, and Wallis nearly cried again. Then they went in, for
+Phyllis was sure Allan needed a thorough rest after all this. She was
+shaking from head to foot herself with joyful excitement, but she did
+not even know it. And it was long past dinner-time, though every one but
+Lily-Anna, to whom the happy news had somehow filtered, had forgotten
+it.
+
+"I've always wanted to hold you in my arms, this way," said Allan late
+that evening, as they stood in the rose-garden again; "but I thought I
+never would.... Phyllis, did you ever want me to?"
+
+It was too beautiful a moonlight night to waste in the house, or even on
+the porch. The couch had been wheeled to its accustomed place in the
+rose-garden, and Allan was supposed to be lying on it as he often did in
+the evenings. But it was hard to make him stay there.
+
+"Oh, you _must_ lie down," said Phyllis hurriedly, trying to move out of
+the circle of his arms. "You mustn't stand till we find how much is
+enough.... I'm going to send for the wolfhound next week. You won't mind
+him now, will you?"
+
+"Did you ever want to be here in my arms, Phyllis?"
+
+"Of course not!" said Phyllis, as a modest young person should.
+"But--but----"
+
+"Well, my wife?"
+
+"I've often wondered just where I'd reach to," said Phyllis in a
+rush.... "Allan, _please_ don't stand any longer!"
+
+"I'll lie down if you'll sit on the couch by me."
+
+"Very well," said Phyllis; and sat obediently in the curve of his arm
+when he had settled himself in the old position, the one that looked so
+much more natural for him.
+
+"Mine, every bit of you!" he said exultantly. "Heaven bless that
+tramp!... And to think we were talking about annulments!... Do you
+remember that first night, dear, after mother died? I was half-mad with
+grief and physical pain. And Wallis went after you. I didn't want him
+to. But he trusted you from the first--good old Wallis! And you came in
+with that swift, sweeping step of yours, as I've seen you come fifty
+times since--half-flying, it seemed to me then--with all your pretty
+hair loose, and an angelic sort of a white thing on. I expect I was a
+brute to you--I don't remember how I acted--but I know you sat on the
+bed by me and took both my wrists in those strong little hands of yours,
+and talked to me and quieted me till I fell fast asleep. You gave me the
+first consecutive sleep I'd had in four months. It felt as if life and
+calmness and strength were pouring from you to me. You stayed till I
+fell asleep."
+
+"I remember," said Phyllis softly. She laid her cheek by his, as it had
+been on that strange marriage evening that seemed so far away now. "I
+was afraid of you at first. But I felt that, too, as if I were giving
+you my strength. I was so glad I could! And then I fell asleep, too,
+over on your shoulder."
+
+"You never told me that," said Allan reproachfully. Phyllis laughed a
+little.
+
+"There never seemed to be any point in our conversations where it fitted
+in neatly," she said demurely. Allan laughed, too.
+
+"You should have made one. But what I was going to tell you was--I think
+I began to be in love with you then. I didn't know it, but I did. And it
+got worse and worse but I didn't know what ailed me till Johnny drifted
+in, bless his heart! Then I did. Oh, Phyllis, it was awful! To have you
+with me all the time, acting like an angel, waiting on me hand and foot,
+and not knowing whether you had any use for me or not!... And you never
+kissed me good-night last night."
+
+Phyllis did not answer. She only bent a little, and kissed her husband
+on the lips, very sweetly and simply, of her own accord. But she said
+nothing then of the long, restless, half-happy, half-wretched time when
+she had loved him and never even hoped he would care for her. There was
+time for all that. There were going to be long, joyous years together,
+years of being a "real woman," as she had so passionately wished to be
+that day in the library. She would never again need to envy any woman
+happiness or love or laughter. It was all before her now, youth and joy
+and love, and Allan, her Allan, soon to be well, and loving her--loving
+nobody else but her!
+
+"Oh, I love you, Allan!" was all she said.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's The Rose Garden Husband, by Margaret Widdemer
+
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+Project Gutenberg (https://www.gutenberg.org) public repository for
+eBook #26635 (https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/26635)