Margaret Widdemer

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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! ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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?" ”

“ 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? ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 [Pg 187] 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?" ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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? ”

“ 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. [Pg 91] 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. ”

“ 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. [Pg 75] 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 [Pg 27] 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ De Guenther! Nobody ever wanted something, any kind of a something, to happen more wildly than the Liberry Teacher did [Pg 28] 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. ”

“ 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 [Pg 177] much helped by Johnny Hewitt. ”

“ 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 [Pg 72] time nor money. Mr. De Guenther had wanted her to take some money in advance, but she had refused. ”

“ 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! ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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? ”

“ 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!" [Pg 128] said Allan. "What the dickens has this girl done to them, to hypnotize them so?" ”

“ 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 [Pg 160] sank. Only an occasional tongue of flame glinted across Phyllis's silver slipper-buckle and on the seal-ring Allan wore. ”

“ There was not one thing in the [Pg 131] 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. ”

“ 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 [Pg 149] 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. ”

“ 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 [Pg 120] him. It's only common humanity. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 [Pg 80] herself to be made a nun, or have a hand or foot cut off, or paying herself away in some awful, irrevocable fashion. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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!" [Pg 62]
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. ”

“ 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. [Pg 191]
"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!" ”