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?"