II

Gibson went back to his mother.

The incident left him apparently unscathed. He showed no signs of

trouble until four years after, when his mother died. Then the two

shocks rolled into one, and for a year Gibson was a wreck.

At last he was told, as he had been told before, to stop work and go

away--anywhere--for a rest. He went to a small seaside town in East

Devon.

The man's nature was so sound that in a month's time he recovered

sufficiently to take an interest in what was going on around him.

He was lodged in one of a row of small houses facing the esplanade.

Each had its own plot of green garden spread before it, and a

flagged pathway leading from the gate to the door. Path and garden

were raised a good half-foot above the level of the sidewalk, and

this half-foot, Gibson observed, was a serious embarrassment to his

next-door neighbors.

Twice a day a bath-chair with an old gentleman in it would emerge

from the doorway of the house next door. It was drawn by two little

ladies, a dark one and a fair one, whom Gibson judged to be the old

gentleman's daughters. He must have weighed considerably, that old

gentleman, and the ladies (especially the dark one) were far too

young and small and tender for such draft-work. Four times a day at

the garden-gate a struggle took place between little ladies and the

bath-chair. Gibson could see them from his window where he lay,

supine in his nervous apathy. Their going out was only less fearful

than their coming in. Going out, it was very hard to prevent the

back wheels from slipping down with a bump on to the pavement and

shaking the old gentleman horribly. Coming in, they risked

overturning him altogether.

You would not have known that there was any struggle going on. The

old gentleman bore himself with so calm and high a heroism; the

little ladies were sustained by so pure a sense of the humors of the

bath-chair. No sharp, irritating cries escaped them. They did

nothing but laugh softly as they pulled and pushed and tugged with

their women's arms, and heaved with delicate shoulders, or hung on,

in their frenzy, from behind while the bath-chair swayed ponderously

and perilously above the footway.

Gibson sometimes wondered whether he oughtn't to rush out and help

them. But he couldn't. He didn't really care.

His landlady told him that the old gentleman was a General

Richardson, that he was paralyzed, that his daughters waited on him

hand and foot, that they were too poor to afford a man-servant to

look after him and push the bath-chair. It wasn't much of a life,

the woman said, for the two young ladies. Gibson agreed that it

wasn't much of a life, certainly.

What pleased him was the fine levity with which they took it. He was

always meeting them in their walks on the esplanade. Sometimes they

would come racing down the wind with the bath-chair, their serge

skirts blown forward, their hair curling over the brims of their

sailor hats. (The dark one was particularly attractive in a high

wind.) Then they would come back much impeded, their skirts wrapped

tight above their knees, their little bodies bent to the storm,

their faces wearing still that invincible gaiety of theirs.

Sometimes, on a gentle incline, they would let the bath-chair run on

a little by itself, till it threatened a dangerous independence,

when they would fly after it at the top of their speed and arrest it

just in time. Gibson could never make out whether they did this for

their own amusement or the old gentleman's. But sometimes, when the

General came careering past him, he could catch the glance of a

bright and affable eye that seemed to call on him to observe the

extent to which an old fellow might enjoy himself yet.

Gibson's lodging gave him endless opportunity for studying the

habits of his little ladies. He learned that they did everything in

turns. They took it in turns to pull the bath-chair and to push it.

They took it in turns to read aloud to the old gentleman, and to put

him to bed at night and get him up in the morning. They took it in

turns to go to church (did they become suddenly serious, he

wondered, there?), and in turns to air themselves on a certain

little plateau on the cliffside.

He was next to find out that they nursed the monstrous ambition of

urging the bath-chair up the hill and landing it on the plateau.

Gibson was sorry for them, for he knew they could never do it. But

such was their determination that each time he encountered them on

the hill they had struggled a little farther up it.

The road had a sort of hump in it just before it forked off on to

the cliff. That baffled them.

At last, as he himself was returning from the plateau, he came upon

the sisters right in the middle of the rise, locked in deadly combat

with the bath-chair. Pressed against it, shoulder to shoulder, they

resisted its efforts to hurl itself violently backward down the

hill. The General, as he clung to the arms of the chair, preserved

his attitude of superb indifference to the event.

Gibson leaped to their assistance. With a threefold prodigious

effort they topped the rise, and in silence, in a sort of solemn

triumph, the bath-chair was wheeled on to the plateau.

He liked the simplicity with which they accepted his aid, and he

liked the way they thanked him, both sisters becoming very grave all

at once. It was the fair one who spoke. The dark one only bowed and

smiled as he lifted his cap and turned away.

"It's all very well," he heard her saying, "but how are we going to

get him down again?"

How were they?

He hung about the cliffside till the time came for them to return,

when he presented himself as if by accident.

"You must allow me," he said, "to see you safe to the bottom of the

hill."

They allowed him.

"You see" (the General addressed his daughters as they paused

halfway), "we've accomplished it, and no bones are broken."

"Yes," said Gibson, "but isn't the expedition just a little

dangerous?"

"Ah," said the General, "I've risked my life too many times to mind

a little danger now."

Gibson's eyebrows said plainly, "It wasn't _your_ life, old boy, I

was thinking of."

The sisters looked away.

"You must never attempt that again," he said gravely, as he parted

from them at the foot of the hill.

Gibson felt that he had done a good morning's work. He had saved the

lives of the three Richardsons, and he had found out that the fair

one's name was Effie, and the dark one's Phoebe.

After that the acquaintance ripened. They exchanged salutes whenever

they met. Then Gibson, moved beyond endurance by their daily strife

with the bath-chair, was generally to be seen at their gateway in

time to help them.

As the days grew longer the Richardsons began to take their tea out

of doors on their grass-plot. And then it seemed to strike them all

at once that the gentleman next door was lonely, and one afternoon

they invited him to tea.

Then Gibson had his tea served on _his_ grass plot, and invited the

Richardsons, and the Richardsons (they were so absurdly grateful)

invited him to supper and to spend the evening. They thanked him for

coming. "It was such a pleasure," Effie said (Effie was the elder),

"such a great pleasure to Father."

Gibson hardly thought his society could be a pleasure to anyone, but

he tried to make himself useful. He engaged himself as the General's

bath-chair man. He bowled him along at the round pace he loved,

while the little ladies, Effie and Phoebe, trotted after them,

friendly and gay.

And he began to go in and out next door as a matter of course, till

it was open to the little sisters to regard him as their own very

valuable property. But they were not going to be selfish about him.

Oh, no! They took him, as they took everything else, in turns. They

tried hard to divide him fairly. If he attached himself to Effie

(the fair one), Effie would grow uneasy, and she would get up and

positively hand him over to Phoebe (the dark one). If Phoebe

permitted herself to talk to him for any while, her eyes would call

to Effie, and when Effie came she would slip away and take up her

sad place by the General's armchair. In their innocent rivalry it

was who could give him more up to the other. And, as Phoebe was

the more determined little person, it was Phoebe who generally had

it her own way. "Father," too, came in for his just share. Gibson

felt that he would not be tolerated on any footing that kept

"Father" out of it. There was also a moment in the evening when he

would be led up to the armchair, and both Effie and Phoebe would

withdraw and leave him to that communion.

There was a third sister he knew now. She was the eldest, and her

name was Mary. She was away somewhere in the north, recovering, he

gathered, from "Father" (of course, they took it in turns to recover

from him), while Father wandered up and down the south coast,

endeavoring, vainly, to recover from himself. They told Gibson that

the one thing that spoiled it all (the joy, they meant, of their

intercourse with him) was the thought that Mary was "missing it."

Had Mary been there she would have had to have her share, her

fourth.

Presently he realized that Phoebe (he supposed because of her

superior determination) had effaced herself altogether. She was

always doing dreary things, he noticed, out of her turn. Then he

perceived a change in her. Little Phoebe, in consequence of all

the dreary things she did, was beginning to grow thin and pale. She

looked as though she wanted more of the tonic air of the cliffside.

She did still take her turn at climbing to the plateau and sitting

there all alone. But that, Gibson reflected, was after all, for

Phoebe, a very dreary thing to do.

One evening he took courage, and asked Phoebe to come for a walk

to the cliffside with him.

Phoebe did not answer all at once. She shrank, he could see, from

the enormity of having him all to herself.

"Go," said Effie, "it will do you worlds of good."

"_You_ go."

Effie laughed and shook her head.

"Come too, then. Mr. Gibson, say she's to come too."

"You know," said Effie, "it's my turn to stay with Father."

She said it severely, as if Phoebe had been trying unfairly to

deprive her of a privilege and a delight. They were delicious,

Phoebe and Effie, but it was Phoebe that he wanted this time.

They set out at a brisk pace that brought the blood to Phoebe's

cheeks and made her prettier than ever. Phoebe, of course, had

done her best to make her prettiness entirely unobtrusive. She wore

a muslin skirt and a tie, and a sailor hat that was not specially

becoming to her small head, and her serge skirt had to be both wide

and short because of pushing the bath-chair about through all kinds

of weather. But the sea wind caught her; it played with her hair;

it blew a little dark curl out of place to hang distractingly over

Phoebe's left ear; it blew the serge skirt tight about her limbs,

and showed him, in spite of Phoebe, how prettily Phoebe was

made.

"Why didn't you back me up?" said Phoebe. "She wanted to come all

the time."

He turned, as he walked, to look at her.

"Why didn't I back you up? Do you really want to know why?"

Whenever he took that tone Phoebe looked solemn and a little

frightened. She was frightened now, too frightened to answer him.

"Because," said he, "I wanted you all to myself."

"Oh----" Phoebe drew a long, terrified breath.

There are many ways of saying "Oh," but Gibson had never, never in

his whole life heard any woman say it as Phoebe said it then. It

meant that she was staggered at anybody's having the temerity to

want anything all to himself.

"Do you think me very selfish?"

Phoebe assured him instantly that that had never been her idea of

him.

"Shall I tell you who is selfish?"

Phoebe's little mouth hardened. She was so dreadfully afraid that

he was going to say "Your father."

"You," he said, "you."

"I'm afraid I am," said she. "It's so hard not to be."

He stood still in his astonishment, so that she had to stand still,

too.

"Of course it's hard not to give up things, when you like giving

them up. But your sister likes giving them up, too, and it's selfish

of you to prevent her, isn't it?"

"Oh, but you don't know what it's been--Effie's life and Mary's."

"And yours----"

"Oh, no, I'm happy enough. I'm the youngest."

"You mean you've had a year or two less of it."

"Yes. They never told me, for fear of making me unhappy, when

Father's illness came."

"How long ago was that?"

"Five years ago. I was at school."

He made a brief calculation. During the two years of his married

life Phoebe had been a child at school.

"And two years," said Phoebe, "is a long time to be happy in."

"Yes," he said, "it's a long time."

"And then," she went on presently, "I'm so much stronger than Effie

and Mary."

"Not strong enough to go dragging that abominable bath-chair about."

"Not strong enough? Look----"

She held out her right arm for him to look at; under her muslin

blouse he saw its tense roundness, and its whiteness through the

slit above her wrist.

His heart stirred in him. Phoebe's arms were beautiful, and they

were strong to help.

"I wish," he said, "I could make it better for you."

"Oh, but you _have_ made it better for us. You can't think what a

difference you've made."

"Have I? Have I?"

"Yes. Effie said so only the other day. She wrote it to Mary. And

Mary says it's a shame she can't be here. It is, you know. It makes

us feel so mean having you all to ourselves like this."

He laughed. He laughed whenever he thought of it. There was nobody

who could say things as Phoebe said them.

"I wish," said she, "you knew Mary. You'd like her so."

"I'm sure I should if she's at all like you."

(Her innocence sheltered him, made him bold.)

"Oh, but she isn't."

And he listened while she gave him a long list of Mary's charms.

(Dear little, tender, unconscious Phoebe.)

"She sounds," he said, "very like you."

"She isn't the least bit like me. You don't know me."

"Don't I?"

"Mary's coming back at the end of the month. Then either I or Effie

will go away. Do you think you'll still be here?"

He seemed to her to answer absently.

"Which of you, did you say, was going away?"

"Well--it's Effie's turn."

"Yes," he said, "I think I shall still be here."

One night, a week later, the two sisters sat talking together long

after "Father" had been put to bed.

"Phoebe," said Effie, "why did you want me to come with you and

Mr. Gibson?"

"Because----" said Phoebe.

"My dear, it's you he likes, not me."

"Don't, Effie."

"But it's true," said Effie.

"How can you tell?" said Phoebe, and she felt perfidious.

"Isn't he always going about with you?"

But Phoebe was ingenious in the destruction of her own joy.

"Oh," said she, "that's his cunning. He likes you dreadfully. He

goes about with me, just to hide it."

"You goose."

"Are you sure, Effie, you don't care?"

"Not a rap."

"You never have? Not in the beginning?"

"Certainly not in the beginning. I only thought he might be nice for

you."

"You didn't even want to divide him?"

Effie shook her head vehemently.

"Well--he's the only thing I ever wanted all to myself. If----" Then

Phoebe looked frightened. "Effie," she said, "he's never said

anything."

"All the same, you _know_."

"Can you know?"

"I think so," said Effie.