Part 9 (1/2)

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 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 till it came to that totally unfamiliar thing these seven years, a stand-up collar. A s.h.i.+ningly 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 shutupness 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 acc.u.mulated 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, 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!”

”n.o.body, 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 s.n.a.t.c.hed 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 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----”