The Rose-Garden Husband Part 4

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 princ.i.p.al 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 cla.s.sing 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 att.i.tude 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 grat.i.tude. 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. "n.o.body will know what I have on, any more than they do now."

Mrs. De Guenther gave a scandalized little cry. Her att.i.tude 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 n.o.body 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 pa.s.sed 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.