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Rose Garden Husband

<h2>X</h2> Allan Harrington lay in his old attitude on his couch in the darkened day-room, his tired, clear-cut face a little thrown back, eyes half-closed. He was not thinking of anything or any one especially; merely wrapped in a web of the dragging, empty, gray half-thoughts of weariness in general that had hung about him so many years. Wallis was not there. Wallis had been with him much less lately, and he had scarcely seen Phyllis for a fortnight; or, for the matter of that, the dog, or any one at all. Something was going on, he supposed, but he scarcely troubled himself to wonder what. The girl was doubtless making herself boudoirs or something of the sort in a new part of the house. He closed his eyes entirely, there in the dusky room, and let the web of dreary, gray, formless thought wrap him again. Phyllis's gay, sweetly carrying voice rang from outside the door: "The three-thirty, then, Wallis, and I[Pg 122] feel as if I were going to steal Charlie Ross! Well——" On the last word she broke off and pushed the sitting-room door softly open and slid in. She walked in a pussy-cat fashion which would have suggested to any one watching her a dark burden on her conscience. She crossed straight to the couch, looked around for the chair that should have been by it but wasn't, and sat absently down on the floor. She liked floors. "Allan!" she said. No answer. "Allan Harrington!" Still none. Allan was half-asleep, or what did instead, in one of his abstracted moods. "All-an Harrington!" This time she reached up and pulled at his heavy silk sleeve as she spoke. "Yes," said Allan courteously, as if from an infinite distance. "Would you mind," asked Phyllis guilelessly, "if Wallis—we—moved you—a little? I can tell you all about everything, unless[Pg 123] you'd rather not have the full details of the plan——" "Anything," said Allan wearily from the depths of his gray cloud; "only don't bother me about it!" Phyllis jumped to her feet, a whirl of gay blue skirts and cheerfully tossing blue feathers. "Good-by, dear Crusader!" she said with a catch in her voice that might have been either a laugh or a sob. "The next time you see me you'll probably hate me! Wallis!" Wallis appeared like the Slave of the Lamp. "It's all right, Wallis," she said, and ran. Wallis proceeded thereupon to wheel his master's couch into the bedroom. "If you're going to be moved, you'd better be dressed a little heavier, sir," he said with the same amiable guilelessness, if the victim had but noticed it, which Phyllis had used from her seat on the floor not long before. "Very well," said Allan resignedly from his cloud. And Wallis proceeded to suit the action to the word. Allan let him go on in unnoticing silence[Pg 124] till it came to that totally unfamiliar thing these seven years, a stand-up collar. A shiningly new linen collar of the newest cut, a beautiful golden-brown knit tie, a gray suit—— "What on earth?" inquired Allan, awakening from his lethargy. "I don't need a collar and tie to keep me from getting cold on a journey across the house. And where did you get those clothes? They look new." Wallis laid his now fully dressed master back to a reclining position—he had been propped up—and tucked a handkerchief into the appropriate pocket as he replied, "Grant & Moxley's, sir, where you always deal." And he wheeled the couch back to the day-room, over to its very door. It did not occur to Allan, as he was being carried downstairs by Wallis and Arthur, another of the servants, that anything more than a change of rooms was intended; nor, as he was carried out at its door to a long closed carriage, that it was anything worse than his new keeper's mistaken idea that drives would be good for him. He was a little irritable at the length and shut[Pg 125]upness of the drive, though, as his cot had been swung deftly from the ceiling of the carriage, he was not jarred. 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. And what he said to Wallis was this: "What the deuce does this tomfoolery mean?" As he spoke he felt the accumulated capacity for temper of the last seven years surging up toward Wallis, and Arthur, and Phyllis, and the carriage-horses, and everything else, down to the two conductors. Wallis seemed rather relieved than otherwise. Waiting for a storm to break is rather wearing. "Well, sir, Mrs. Harrington, she thought,[Pg 126] sir, that—that a little move would do you good. And you didn't want to be bothered, sir——" "Bothered!" shouted Allan, not at all like a bored and dying invalid. "I should think I did, when a change in my whole way of life is made! Who gave you, or Mrs. Harrington, permission for this outrageous performance! It's sheer, brutal, insulting idiocy!" "Nobody, sir—yes, sir," replied Wallis meekly. "Would you care for a drink, sir—or anything?" "No!" thundered Allan. "Or a fan?" ventured Wallis, approaching near with that article and laying it on the coverlid. Allan's hand snatched the fan angrily—and before he thought he had hurled it at Wallis! Weakly, it is true, for it lighted ingloriously about five feet away; but he had thrown it, with a movement that must have put to use the muscles of the long-disused upper arm. Wallis sat suddenly down and caught his breath. "Mr. Allan!" he said. "Do you know what you did then? You threw, and you[Pg 127] haven't been able to use more than your forearm before! Oh, Mr. Allan, you're getting better!" Allan himself lay in astonishment at his feat, and forgot to be angry for a moment. "I certainly did!" he said. "And the way you lost your temper!" went on Wallis enthusiastically. "Oh, Mr. Allan, it was beautiful! You haven't been more than to say snarly since the accident! It was so like the way you used to throw hair-brushes——" But at the mention of his lost temper Allan remembered to lose it still further. 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?" "But I've heard say it's a very pretty place, sir," was all Wallis vouchsafed to this. The De Guenthers were not the only people Phyllis had hypnotized. He gave Allan other details as they went on, however. His clothes and personal belongings were coming on immediately. There were two suit-cases, perhaps he had noticed, in the car with them. The young madam was planning to stay all the summer, he believed. Mrs. Clancy had been left behind to look after the other servants, and he understood that she had seen to the engagement of a fresh staff of servants for the country. And Allan, still awakened by his fit of temper, and fresh from the monotony of his seven years' seclusion, found all the things Wallis could tell him very interesting. <hr style='width: 45%;' /> Phyllis's rose-garden house had, among other virtues, the charm of being near the little station: a new little mission station[Pg 129] which had apparently been called Wallraven by some poetic young real-estate agency, for the surrounding countryside looked countrified enough to be a Gray's Corners, or Smith's Crossing, or some other such placid old country name. There were more trees to be seen in Allan's quick passage from the train to the long old carryall (whose seats had been removed to make room for his cot) than he had remembered existed. There were sleepy birds to be heard, too, talking about how near sunset and their bedtime had come, and a little brook splashed somewhere out of sight. Altogether spring was to be seen and heard and felt, winningly insistent. Allan forgave Wallis, not to speak of Phyllis and the conductors, to a certain degree. He ordered the flapping black oilcloth curtain in front rolled up so he could see out, and secretly enjoyed the drive, unforeseen though it had been. His spine never said a word. Perhaps it, too, enjoyed having a change from a couch in a dark city room. They saw no one in their passage through the long, low old house. Phyllis evidently[Pg 130] had learned that Allan didn't like his carryings about done before people. Wallis seemed to be acting under a series of detailed orders. He and Arthur carried their master to a long, well-lighted room at the end of the house, and deftly transferred him to a couch much more convenient, being newer, than the old one. On this he was wheeled to his adjoining bedroom, and when Wallis had made him comfortable there, he left him mysteriously for a while. It was growing dark by now, and the lights were on. They were rose-shaded, Allan noticed, as the others had been at home. Allan watched the details of his room with that vivid interest in little changes which only invalids can know. There was an old-fashioned landscape story paper on the walls, with very little repeat. Over it, but not where they interfered with tracing out the adventures of the paper people, were a good many pictures, quite incongruous, for they were of the Remington type men like, but pleasant to see nevertheless. The furniture was chintz-covered and gay. 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. "They would be glad if you would have supper with them." "Very well," said Allan amiably, still much to his own surprise. The truth was, he was still enough awake and interested to want to go on having things happen. The room Wallis wheeled him back into was a long, low one, wainscoted and bare-floored. It was furnished with the best imitation Chippendale to be obtained in a hurry, but over and above there were cushioned chairs and couches enough for[Pg 132] solid comfort. There were more cheerful pictures, the Maxfield Parrishes Phyllis had wanted, over the green-papered walls. There was a fire here also. The room had no more period than a girl's sentence, but there was a bright air of welcomeness and informality that was winning. An old-fashioned half-table against the wall was covered with a great many picknicky things to eat. Another table had more things, mostly to eat with, on it. And there were the De Guenthers and Phyllis. On the whole it felt very like a welcome-home. Phyllis, in a satiny rose-colored gown he had never seen before, came over to his couch to meet him. She looked very apprehensive and young and wistful for the rôle of Bold Bad Hypnotist. She bent towards him with her hand out, seemed about to speak, then backed, flushed, and acted as if something had frightened her badly. "Is she as afraid of me as all that?" thought Allan. Wallis must have given her a lurid account of how he had behaved. His quick impulse was to reassure her. "Well, Phyllis, my dear, you certainly[Pg 133] didn't bother me with plans this time!" he said, smiling. "This is a bully surprise!" "I—I'm glad you like it," said his wife shyly, still backing away. "Of course he'd like it," said Mrs. De Guenther's kind staccato voice behind him. "Kiss your husband, and tell him he's welcome home, Phyllis child!" Now, Phyllis was tired with much hurried work, and overstrung. And Allan, lying there smiling boyishly up at her, Allan seen for the first time in these usual-looking gray man-clothes, was like neither the marble Crusader she had feared nor the heartbroken little boy she had pitied. He was suddenly her contemporary, a very handsome and attractive young fellow, a little her senior. From all appearances, he might have been well and normal, and come home to her only a little tired, perhaps, by the day's work or sport, as he lay smiling at her in that friendly, intimate way! It was terrifyingly different. Everything felt different. All her little pieces of feeling for him, pity and awe and friendliness and love of service, seemed to spring suddenly[Pg 134] together and make something else—something unplaced and disturbing. Her cheeks burned with a childish embarrassment as she stood there before him in her ruffled pink gown. What should she do? It was just then that Mrs. 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. The others closed around him then, welcoming him, laughing at the surprise and the way he had taken it, telling him all about it as if everything were as usual and pleasant as possible, and the present state of things had always been a pleasant commonplace. And Wallis began to serve the picnic supper.[Pg 135] <hr style="width: 65%;" /> <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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