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Rose Garden Husband

<h2>III</h2> When Phyllis woke next morning everything in the world had a light-hearted, holiday feeling. Her Sundays, gloriously unoccupied, generally did, but this was extra-special. The rain had managed to clear away every vestige of last week's slush, and had then itself most unselfishly retired down the gutters. The sun shone as if May had come, and the wind, through the Liberry Teacher's window, had a springy, pussy-willowy, come-for-a-walk-in-the-country feel to it. She found that she had slept too late to go to church, and prepared for a joyful dash to the boarding-house bathtub. There might be—who knew but there actually might be—on this day of days, enough hot water for a real bath! "I feel as if everything was going to be lovely all day!" she said without preface to old black Maggie, who was clumping her accustomed bed-making way along the halls, with her woolly head tied up in her Sunday silk handkerchief. Even she looked happier,[Pg 39] Phyllis thought, than she had yesterday. She grinned broadly at Phyllis, leaning smilingly against the door in her kimona. "Ah dunno, Miss Braithways," she said, and entered the room and took a pillow-case-corner in her mouth. "Ah never has dem premeditations!" Phyllis laughed frankly, and Maggie, much flattered at the happy reception of her reply, grinned so widely that you might almost have tied her mouth behind her ears. "You sure is a cheerful person, Miss Braithways!" said Maggie, and went on making the bed. Phyllis fled on down the hall, laughing still. She had just remembered another of old Maggie's compliments, made on one of the rare occasions when Phyllis had sat down and sung to the boarding-house piano. (She hadn't been able to do it long, because the Mental Science Lady on the next floor had sent down word that it stopped her from concentrating, and as she had a very expensive room there was nothing for the landlady to do but make Phyllis[Pg 40] stop.) Phyllis had come out in the hall to find old Maggie listening rapturously. "Oh, Miss Braithways!" she had murmured, rolling her eyes, "you certainly does equalize a martingale!" It had been a compliment Phyllis never forgot. She smiled to herself as she found the bathroom door open. Why, the world was full of a number of things, many of them funny. Being a Liberry Teacher was rather nice, after all, when you were fresh from a long night's sleep. And if that Mental Science Lady wouldn't let her play the piano, why, her thrilling tales of what she could do when her mind was unfettered were worth the price. That story she told so seriously about how the pipes burst—and the plumber wouldn't come, and "My dear, I gave those pipes only half an hour's treatment, and they closed right up!" It was quite as much fun—well, almost as much—hearing her, as it would have been to play. ... All of the contented, and otherwise, elderly people who inhabited the boarding-house with Phyllis appeared to[Pg 41] have gone off without using hot water, for there actually was some. The Liberry Teacher found that she could have a genuine bath, and have enough water besides to wash her hair, which is a rite all girls who work have to reserve for Sundays. This was surely a day of days! She used the water—alas for selfish human nature!—to the last warm drop and went gayly back to her little room with no emotions whatever for the poor other boarders, soon to find themselves wrathfully hot-waterless. And then—she thoughtlessly curled down on the bed, and slept and slept and slept! She wakened dimly in time for the one o'clock dinner, dressed, and ate it in a half-sleep. She went back upstairs planning a trolley-ride that should take her out into the country, where a long walk might be had. And midway in changing her shoes she lay back across the bed and—fell asleep again. The truth was, Phyllis was about as tired as a girl can get. She waked at dusk, with a jerk of terror lest she should have overslept her time for going out. But it was only six. She had a[Pg 42] whole hour to prink in, which is a very long time for people who are used to being in the library half-an-hour after the alarm-clock wakes them. <hr style='width: 45%;' /> 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. She felt contented and belonging even before quick-smiling, slender little Mrs. De Guenther came rustling gently in to greet her. Then followed Mr. De Guenther, pleasant and unperturbed as usual, and after him an agreeable, back-arching gray cat, who had copied his master's walk as exactly as it can be done with four feet.[Pg 43] All four sat amiably about the room and held precise and pleasant converse, something like a cheerful essay written in dialogue, about many amusing, intelligent things which didn't especially matter. The Liberry Teacher liked it. It was pleasant beyond words to sit nestlingly in a pluffy chair, and hear about all the little lightly-treated scholarly day-before-yesterday things her father had used to talk of. She carried on her own small part in the talk blithely enough. She approved of herself and the way she was behaving, which makes very much for comfort. There was only once that she was ashamed of herself, and thought about it in bed afterwards and was mortified; when her eyes filled with quick tears at a quite dry and unemotional—indeed, rather a sarcastic—quotation from Horace on the part of Mr. De Guenther. But she smiled, when she saw that they noticed her. "That's the first time I've heard a Latin quotation since I came away from home," she found herself saying quite simply in explanation, "and Father quoted Horace[Pg 44] so much every day that—that I felt as if an old friend had walked in!" But her hosts didn't seem to mind. Mr. De Guenther in his careful evening clothes looked swiftly across at Mrs. De Guenther in her gray-silk-and-cameo, and they both nodded little satisfied nods, as if she had spoken in a way that they were glad to hear. And then dinner was served, a dinner as different—well, she didn't want to remember in its presence the dinners it differed from; they might have clouded the moment. She merely ate it with a shameless inward joy. It ended, still to a pleasant effortless accompaniment of talk about books and music and pictures that Phyllis was interested in, and had found nobody to share her interest with for so long—so long! She felt happily running though everything the general, easy taking-for-granted of all the old, gentle, inflexible standards of breeding that she had nearly forgotten, down in the heart of the city among her obstreperous, affectionate little foreigners. They had coffee in the long old-fashioned[Pg 45] salon parlor, and then Mr. De Guenther straightened himself, and Mrs. De Guenther folded her veined, ringed old white hands, and Phyllis prepared thrilledly to listen. Surely now she would hear about that Different Line of Work. There was nothing, at first, about work of any sort. They merely began to tell her alternately about some clients of theirs, a Mrs. Harrington and her son: rather interesting people, from what Phyllis could make out. She wondered if she was going to hear that they needed a librarian. "This lady, my client, Mrs. Harrington," continued her host gravely, "is the one for whom I may ask you to consider doing some work. I say may, but it is a practical certainty. She is absolutely alone, my dear Miss Braithwaite, except for her son. I am afraid I must ask you to listen to a long story about them." It was coming! "Oh, but I want to hear!" said Phyllis, with that quick, affectionate sympathy of hers that was so winning, leaning forward and watching them with the lighted look[Pg 46] in her blue eyes. It all seemed to her tired, alert mind like some story she might have read to her children, an Arabian Nights narrative which might begin, "And the Master of the House, ascribing praise unto Allah, repeated the following Tale." "There have always been just the two of them, mother and son," said the Master of the House. "And Allan has always been a very great deal to his mother." "Poor Angela!" murmured his wife. "They are old friends of ours," her husband explained. "My wife and Mrs. Harrington were schoolmates. "Well, Allan, the boy, grew up, dowered with everything a mother could possibly desire for her son, personally and otherwise. He was handsome and intelligent, with much charm of manner." "I know now what people mean by 'talking like a book,'" thought Phyllis irreverently. "And I don't believe any one man could be all that!" "There was practically nothing," Mr. De Guenther went on, "which the poor lad had not. That was one trouble, I imagine. If[Pg 47] he had not been highly intelligent he would not have studied so hard; if he had not been strong and active he might not have taken up athletic sports so whole-heartedly; and when I add that Allan possessed charm, money and social status you may see that what he did would have broken down most young fellows. In short, he kept studies, sports and social affairs all going at high pressure during his four years of college. But he was young and strong, and might not have felt so much ill effects from all that; though his doctors said afterwards that he was nearly at the breaking point when he graduated." Phyllis bent closer to the story-teller in her intense interest. Why, it was like one of her fairy-tales! She held her breath to listen, while the old lawyer went gravely on. "Allan could not have been more than twenty-two when he graduated, and it was a very short while afterwards that he became engaged to a young girl, the daughter of a family friend. Louise Frey was her name, was it not, love?"[Pg 48] "Yes, that is right," said his wife, "Louise Frey." "A beautiful girl," he went on, "dark, with a brilliant color, and full of life and good spirits. They were both very young, but there was no good reason why the marriage should be delayed, and it was set for the following September." A princess, too, in the story! But—where had she gone? "The two of them only," he had said. "It must have been scarcely a month," the story went on—Mr. De Guenther was telling it as if he were stating a case—"nearly a month before the date set for the wedding, when the lovers went for a long automobile ride, across a range of mountains near a country-place where they were both staying. They were alone in the machine. "Allan, of course, was driving, doubtless with a certain degree of impetuosity, as he did most things.... They were on an unfrequented part of the road," said Mr. De Guenther, lowering his voice, "when there occurred an unforeseen wreckage in[Pg 49] the car's machinery. The car was thrown over and badly splintered. Both young people were pinned under it. "So far as he knew at the time, Allan was not injured, nor was he in any pain; but he was held in absolute inability to move by the car above him. Miss Frey, on the contrary, was badly hurt, and in suffering. She died in about three hours, a little before relief came to them." Phyllis clutched the arms of her chair, thrilled and wide-eyed. She could imagine all the horror of the happening through the old lawyer's precise and unemotional story. 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? "And yet," she thought whimsically, "it mightn't be so bad to have one real tragedy to remember, if you haven't anything else! All I'll have to remember when I'm old will be bad little children and good little children, and books and boarding-houses, and the recollection that people said I was a very[Pg 50] worthy young woman once!" But she threw off the thought. It's just as well not to think of old age when all the idea brings up is a vision of a nice, clean Old Ladies' Home. "But you said he was an invalid?" she said aloud. "Yes, I regret to say," answered Mr. De Guenther. "You see, it was found that the shock to the nerves, acting on an already over-keyed mind and body, together with some spinal blow concerning which the doctors are still in doubt, had affected Allan's powers of locomotion." (Mr. De Guenther certainly did like long words!) "He has been unable to walk since. And, which is sadder, his state of mind and body has become steadily worse. He can scarcely move at all now, and his mental attitude can only be described as painfully morbid—yes, I may say very painfully morbid. Sometimes he does not speak at all for days together, even to his mother, or his attendant." "Oh, poor boy!" said Phyllis. "How long has he been this way?"[Pg 51] "Seven years this fall," the answer came consideringly. "Is it not, love?" "Yes," said his wife, "seven years." "Oh!" said the Liberry Teacher, with a quick catch of sympathy at her heart. Just as long as she had been working for her living in the big, dusty library. Supposing—oh, supposing she'd had to live all that time in such suffering as this poor Allan had endured and his mother had had to witness! She felt suddenly as if the grimy, restless Children's Room, with its clatter of turbulent little outland voices, were a safe, sunny paradise in comparison. Mr. De Guenther did not speak. He visibly braced himself and was visibly ill-at-ease. "I have told most of the story, Isabel, love," said he at last. "Would you not prefer to tell the rest? It is at your instance that I have undertaken this commission for Mrs. Harrington, you will remember." It struck Phyllis that he didn't think it was quite a dignified commission, at that. "Very well, my dear," said his wife, and took up the tale in her swift, soft voice.[Pg 52] "You can fancy, my dear Miss Braithwaite, how intensely his mother has felt about it." "Indeed, yes!" said Phyllis pitifully. "Her whole life, since the accident, has been one long devotion to her son. I don't think a half-hour ever passes that she does not see him. But in spite of this constant care, as my husband has told you, he grows steadily worse. And poor Angela has finally broken under the strain. She was never strong. She is dying now—they give her maybe two months more. "Her one anxiety, of course, is for poor Allan's welfare. You can imagine how you would feel if you had to leave an entirely helpless son or brother to the mercies of hired attendants, however faithful. And they have no relatives—they are the last of the family." The listening girl began to see. She was going to be asked to act as nurse, perhaps attendant and guardian, to this morbid invalid with the injured mind and body. <div class="figcenter"> <ANTIMG src="images/illus-055.jpg" width-obs="460" height-obs="600" alt="NO," SAID MRS. DE GUENTHER GRAVELY." title="" /> "NO," SAID MRS. DE GUENTHER GRAVELY. "YOU WOULD NOT. YOU WOULD HAVE TO BE HIS WIFE"</div> "But how would I be any better for him[Pg 53] than a regular trained nurse?" she wondered. "And they said he had an attendant." She looked questioningly at the pair. "Where does my part come in?" she asked with a certain sweet directness which was sometimes hers. "Wouldn't I be a hireling too if—if I had anything to do with it?" "No," said Mrs. De Guenther gravely. "You would not. You would have to be his wife."[Pg 54] <hr style="width: 65%;" /> <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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