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.