Part 12 (1/2)

”So that was your philosophy of life,” said Allan. His hand tightened compa.s.sionately 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 sank. Only an occasional tongue of flame glinted across Phyllis's silver slipper-buckle and on the seal-ring Allan wore. It was easy to tell things there in the perfumed duskiness. It was a great many years since any one had cared to hear the cry-side. And it was so dark, and the hand keeping hers in the shadows might have been any kind, comforting hand. She found herself pouring it all out to Allan, there close by her; the loneliness, the strain, the hard work, the lack of all the woman-things in her life, the isolation and dreariness at night, the over-fatigue, and the hurt of watching youth and womanhood sliding away, unused, with nothing to show for all the years; only a cold hope that her flock of little transient aliens might be a little better for the guidance she could give them--

Years hence in rustic speech a phrase, As in rude earth a Grecian vase.

And then, that wet, discouraged day in February, and the vision of Eva Atkinson, radiantly fresh and happy, kept young and pretty by unlimited money and time.

”Her children were so pretty,” said Phyllis wistfully, ”and mine, dear little villains, were such dirty, untaught, rude little things--oh, it sounds sn.o.bbish, but I'd have given everything I had to have a dainty, clean little _lady_-child throw her arms around me and kiss me, instead of my pet little handsome, sticky Polish Jewess. Up at home everything had been so clean and old and still that you always could remember it had been finished for three hundred years. And Father's clean, still old library----”

Phyllis did not know how she was revealing to Allan the unconscious motherhood in her; but Allan, femininely sensitive to unspoken things from his long sojourn in the dark--Allan did. It was the mother-instinct that she was spending on him, but mother-instinct of a kind he had never known before; gayly self-effacing, efficient, shown only in its results.

And she could never have anything else to spend it on, he thought. Well, he was due to die in a few years.... But he didn't want to. Living was just beginning to be interesting again, somehow. There seemed no satisfactory solution for the two of them.... Well, he'd be unselfish and die, any way. Meanwhile, why not be happy? Here was Phyllis. His hand clasped hers more closely.

”And when Mr. De Guenther made me that offer,” she murmured, coloring in the darkness, ”I was tired and discouraged, and the years seemed so endless! It didn't seem as though I'd be harming any one--but I wouldn't have done it if you'd said a word against it--truly I wouldn't, dear.”

The last little word slipped out unnoticed. She had been calling her library children ”dear” for a year now, and the word slipped out of itself. But Allan liked it.

”My poor little girl!” he said. ”In your place I'd have married the devil himself--up against a life like that.”

”Then--then you don't--mind?” asked Phyllis anxiously, as she had asked before.

”No, indeed!” said Allan, with a little unnecessary firmness. ”I _told_ you that, didn't I? I like it.”

”So you did tell me,” she said penitently.

”But supposing De Guenther hadn't picked out some one like you----”

”That's just what I've often thought myself,” said Phyllis naively. ”She might have been much worse than I.... Oh, but I was frightened when I saw you first! I didn't know what you'd be like. And then, when I looked at you----”

”Well, when you looked at me?” demanded Allan.

But Phyllis refused to go on.

”But that's not all,” said Allan. ”What about--men?”

”What men?” asked Phyllis innocently.

”Why, men you were interested in, of course,” he answered.

”There weren't any,” said Phyllis. ”I hadn't any place to meet them, or anywhere to entertain them if I had met them. Oh, yes, there was one--an old bookkeeper at the boarding-house. All the boarders there were old.

That was why the people at home had chosen it. They thought it would be safe. It was all of that!”

”Well, the bookkeeper?” demanded Allan. ”You're straying off from your narrative. The bookkeeper, Phyllis, my dear!”

”I'm telling you about him,” protested Phyllis. ”He was awfully cross because I wouldn't marry him, but I didn't see any reason why I should.

I didn't like him especially, and I would probably have gone on with my work afterwards. There didn't seem to me to be anything to it for any one but him--for of course I'd have had his mending and all that to do when I came home from the library, and I scarcely got time for my own.

But he lost his temper fearfully because I didn't want to. Then, of course, men would try to flirt in the library, but the janitor always made them go out when you asked him to. He loved doing it.... Why, Allan, it must be seven o'clock! Shall I turn on more lights?”