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[Illustration: He was fairly content with what he saw in her face.]
The Wishing-Ring Man
By MARGARET WIDDEMER
TO THE MEMORY OF MY OWN GRANDFATHER
E. S. W.
ONE OF THE DEAREST, BEST AND KINDLIEST OF MEN
CONTENTS
CHAPTER
I. JOY IN AMBER SATIN
II. BY GRACE OF THE WISHING RING
III. PHYLLIS RIDES THROUGH
IV. THE RESCUE OF THE PRINCESS
V. THE SHADOW OF GAIL
VI. ROSE GARDENS AND MEN
VII. A VERY CHARMING GENTLEMAN
VIII. A FOUNTAIN IN FAIRYLAND
IX. THE TANGLED WEB WE WEAVE
X. CLARENCE SWOOPS DOWN
XI. PIRATE COUSINS TO THE RESCUE
XII. DINNER FOR FIVE
XIII. THE SERIOUS BUSINESS OF "IOLANTHE"
XIV. THE SLIGHTLY SURPRISING CLARENCE
XV. THE GIFT OF THE RING
CHAPTER ONE
JOY IN AMBER SATIN
Joy Havenith had no business at all to be curled up on the back
stairs under Great-Grand-Aunt Lucilla's picture. She ought to have
been sliding sweetly up and down the long double parlors with
teacups and cake, and she knew it. But she just didn't care.
As a matter of fact, Aunt Lucilla and the other ancestors ought to
have been in the parlors, too; but Grandfather had ordained
differently. He had gobbled the parlor walls for his autographed
photograph collection, and Grandmother, long before Joy was born or
orphaned, had sorrowfully hung her ancestors-in-law out in the long,
narrow hall, where they were a tight fit. Grandfather was one of the
last survivors of the old school of American poetry. He was tall and
slender, and very gentle and nice, but he always had things the way
he said he wanted them, and he preferred his autographed friends to
his family portraits.
"It's rather a good thing it's so dark out here, Aunt Lucilla," said
Joy to the smiling Colonial lady in the dark corner above her. "You
mayn't much like being where people can't see you--but think how
you'd feel, up garret!"
Aunt Lucilla Havenith, red of lip, flashing of eye, blue and silver
of gown, laughed on down at her great-grand-niece, who was holding a
surreptitious little red candle up to talk to her. Aunt Lucilla,
from all accounts, had had too excellent a time in her life to mind
a little thing like being put in a back hall afterwards. She had
been a belle from her fifteenth year, eloped with her true-love at
sixteen, and gone on being a belle all the rest of her life, in the
intervals of three husbands and ever so many children. She had
managed everything and everybody she came across gaily all her life;
she had been proposed to by practically the whole Society of the
Cincinnati; and had died at eighty-three, a power and a charmer to
the last.
"I don't think you need to mind dark corners one bit," said Joy,
tipping the candle so that the red wax dribbled down on her slim
fingers. "If Rochambeau and Lafayette and all the rest of the people
in the history-books had made a fuss over _me_--"
Joy sat down on the stairs again, on a cushion. Nobody used the back
stairs, fine curly ones that they were, and Joy's cushion, which she
had put there on purpose to be mournful on a fortnight before, was
untouched since last time.
Joy Havenith was nineteen, but you never would have known it. She
had been told so often by her grandparents that she was only a child
yet, that she quite believed it. No, not quite--but enough to make
her a little shy, and have almost the expression and manner still of
a little girl. She had big, black-lashed, kitten-blue eyes, scarlet
lips, and two ropes of bronze hair that she wanted very badly to put
up. It sounds like rather an exciting personality, but Joy was so
young and so shy and so obedient that she was only like a rather
small Blessed Damozel, or some other not-grown-up Rossetti person.
She knew it well, because she had been told so frequently, and she
didn't care about it at all. She leaned her head against the frame
containing Great-Grandfather John Havenith at twenty, and considered
Aunt Lucilla afresh.
"_All_ the people in the history-books!" she said again softly,
but none the less regretfully.
Ordinarily you couldn't ask for a dearer, sweeter child than Joy,
slipping noiselessly up and down the old house in the city, being
just as good as she knew how. She had always been told that she must
be good and obedient and affectionate, and it had never been any
trouble to her, because she was naturally that way. She lived all
alone with Grandfather and Grandmother and Elizabeth the cook, and
did just what Grandfather told her to. So did everybody else. It
wasn't that he was cross, or anything like that. He was more
charming than most people. But he was a Personage; and if you live
with a Personage your own personality gets a bit pushed into the
background, without its being anybody's fault at all.
Joy had been perfectly happy, as far as she knew, until two weeks
before. You can be, you know, if no one tells you you aren't,
especially when you're young.
Grandfather had Afternoons every two weeks, when he sat at the end
of the parlors in a big chair and received his admirers. In his
youth he had looked like Shelley, and he was still tall and slender
and clean-shaven, with straight, abundant white hair, and black
brows and lashes like Joy's. And he had what is called immense
personal charm, and loved his little grand-daughter devotedly. He
simply didn't know she was grown up. For the matter of that, neither
did Joy herself until....
You see, it had been very much like life in a fairy-book. She never
remembered anything but the old house and the old people, and
everybody literary coming and going and telling her how wonderful
Grandfather was: and nothing that concerned _her_ very closely,
at all. She scarcely knew how to treat anybody, except respectfully,
because they had always all been so much older than she was. It was
like living in an enchanted tower. Enchanted towers are very
pleasant places, because you can have all sorts of dreams in them.
Joy hadn't missed anything much, till the thing that happened at the
reception.
Grandfather, in his frock-coat and stock, his white fluffy hair
flying, had been moving up and down the autographed parlors with his
usual dominant charm. Little gray Grandmother, in her gathered,
fichued black silk, was putting lemon or cream in teacups, as people
should prefer. Joy had been walking up and down by Grandfather, as
he liked to have her on reception days. They dressed her, on these
days, in lovely strange frocks, cut medieval fashion, with the ropes
of bronze-gold hair trailing down either side of her vividly
colored, incongruously dreamy little face. According to the way Joy
figured it out, Grandfather had her dress that way, the better to
write poetry about her. She didn't mind. The truth was, she lived so
far inside herself that she didn't care. It was so much easier to do
quickly what you were told, and then go back to the place where you
played by yourself--a fairy country.
This particular reception day was a damp, heavily hot afternoon in
early September. There weren't many people back in the city yet, but
Grandfather always began his "days" as early as he could. He was
fond of having people around him. And even on this very sticky day
people did come. Only two of them were young.
Joy didn't know any young people. Some day she intended to. In her
dream-world she had friends who were young and gay and lovely and
talked to her, and to whom she talked back gaily; but it never
occurred to her to expect anything like that to really happen right
now. The young men and young girls she sometimes crossed she admired
quite happily and remotely, as if they were people from another planet.
It was so that she watched these two people that were young. She
liked watching them so much that presently she escaped from Grandfather,
and slid behind the window-curtains, to be closer to them.
"They feel so lovely and happy," said Joy, warming her little hands
at their happiness.
They were lovers; anybody could see that. And they weren't poets or
anything of the sort; you could see that, too. _She_ was in a
little trim white pongee street suit, with a close little hat above
a little rosy, powdered, cheerful face. _He_ had rather heavy
shoulders and a shock of carefully brushed straight light hair, and
looked about one year out of Harvard. They didn't at all belong with
the middle-aged roomful. As a matter of fact, _her_ mother knew
Mrs. Havenith a little, and so they had dashed in here to save her
suit from the rain. They were sitting and smiling at each other
against a background of Mark Twain's life-sized head in a broad gilt
frame. They faced another life-sized head of Browning, also
autographed, but they liked looking at each other better.
Joy, from her hiding-place, could feel the current of their
happiness and youth, and it made her very warm in her soul, and
comfortable. She listened to them quite unashamedly, as she would
have to a nice play.
"She has wonderful hair, hasn't she?" she heard the girl say.
"Not as lovely as my girl's," the man answered softly.
His girl laughed, a little low pleased laugh. "But you can't see
mine hanging down that way, like a picture," she fenced.
"I'm glad you don't wear it that way," he insisted. "I like you to
look like a real girl, not a movie star or an advertisement."
"Do you suppose she likes it?" asked the girl. "I'd go crazy if I
had to be like that--why, she isn't as old as I am! I suppose they
write poems about her, though," she added, as if that might be a
compensation.
"Oh, if _that's_ all--" began the man, and they both laughed
happily, as at a wonderful joke.
Joy, frozen behind her curtains, heard a little rustle, as if he was
taking her hand, and her protest--
"Oh, Dicky, don't--they'll see us!"
"Not a bit," said he cheerfully. "They're all looking at dear
Grandpapa, the Angora Poet--oldest in captivity to be reading his
own sonnets. Bet you it's about the little girl, poor kid--he seems
to be looking around for her."
"Sonnets? Oh, let's go; the rain's stopped," whispered the girl.
"You were awfully extravagant this afternoon. Now we're going to
take a nice, inexpensive walk up home."
She heard him protesting a little at that; then they slid out
softly, while poor Joy sat behind her curtains, moveless and
aghast.... Oh, was this what she was like ... to real, happy, gay
people her own age? And she had liked the girl so, and been so
glad she had her lover, and that they loved each other! And
Grandfather.... She had never thought whether he wrote poetry about
her or not. She had just taken it for granted. People had to write
about something, and it was just as apt to be you as a public crisis
or a sunset, or anything else useful for the purpose. But they had
_laughed_ about it.... Oh, she did hope it wouldn't be a poem
about her that he was going to read! She felt she couldn't stand it,
if it were. She knew that when she was the subject she was expected
to be in sight, as a sort of outward and visible sign.
"I won't go out into the room!" she said defiantly. "He doesn't
expect the sunsets and public crises to stand up and be looked at
when he reads about them!"
So she stayed just where she was. As she stayed, incongruously, a
joke out of an old Punch came into her head--not at all an esthetic
one. It was a picture of a furious woman brandishing a broom, while
the tips of her husband's boots showed under the bed-foot. The
husband was saying: "Ye may poke at me and ye may threaten me, but
ye canna break my manly sperrit. I willna come out fra under the bed!"
Joy laughed a little, even in her sad state of mind, at the
remembrance. "I willna come out fra under the bed, either," she
decided rather shakily, curling her flowing yellow satin closer
about her, and making herself quite flat against the window-frame.
She tried to stop her ears and not listen, so she wouldn't know
whether the poetry was about her or not. But she had fatally sharp
ears, and Grandfather always practised on her and Grandmother,
adoringly silent at the breakfast table. She would know the poems
apart if she only caught a half word.... And it _was_ about her.
Grandfather's beautiful voice carried as well as it ever had. No
matter how many fingers you had in how many ears, you heard it just
the same. And the poem's name was, "To Joy in Amber Satin."
It was doubtless a very lovely poem, and she'd been as pleased as
anybody when it had sold to the _Century_ for fifty dollars
last week. But it suddenly came over Joy that she wasn't a crisis,
nor yet a sunset, and that people oughtn't to write poetry to their
granddaughters, and then have them wear the clothes that were
written about right in the room with the poem. She knew, too, that
as soon as it was over, purry, nice, prettily dressed ladies would
come and hunt her out and use admiring adjectives on her. She had
never minded it before; she had taken it as a well-behaved little
dog would; as a curious thing people did, which meant that they
wanted to be nice. With this new viewpoint drenching her like cold
water it didn't seem nice a bit.
She pulled the curtain stealthily apart and peeped out. Everything
seemed fairly all right. Between her and Grandfather, a useful
shelter, spread the massive purple-velvet back of Mrs. Harmsworth-Jones,
who always came, and always asked afterwards, "And how is our little
Joy-Flower today?" She was as good as she could be, but she was one
more of the things Joy felt as if she couldn't stand right now.
She tiptoed very carefully indeed past Mrs. Harmsworth-Jones, and
past Grandfather's bronze bust at twenty-five, and almost past the
framed autograph letter of Whittier, on the easel. That was as far
as she got, because there was a nail sticking out at the side of the
Whittier frame, and it caught her by one of the straps that held her
satin panels together across the violet chiffon sidepieces. The
framed letter came down with a clatter, spoiling the last line of
the poem forever; and Joy was caught, for of course every one turned
around to see what the noise was.
Grandfather, who had great presence of mind, read the last four
lines of the poem over again slowly, directly at Joy, who stood like
a wistful little figure out of Fairyland, pressed back against the
easel; her frightened eyes wide, her golden-bronze braids glimmering
in the firelight. It seemed to her that the delivery of those last
four lines was endless.
Yet they were done at last, and still Joy stood motionless. She
really did not know how to run away, because she had never done it.
Before she moved Grandfather had finished his reading and the
people, who had been sitting and standing raptly about, began to
move; all fluttering dresses and perfumes, and little laughters, and
pleasant little speeches to each other. It was a part of the
reception that Joy usually looked forward to happily. She was just
pulling herself together for flight when Mrs. Harmsworth-Jones,
jingling, purple-upholstered and smiling, bore down on her.
"How is our dear little Joy-Flower this afternoon?" she asked as
inevitably as Fate, patting Joy's slim bare arm with one plump,
gloved hand, and beaming. "Oh, dearest child, _do_ you realize
the privilege you have? Think of actually living so close to a poet
that you become a part of his inspiration. Dear little Joy--"
Mrs. Harmsworth-Jones was one of the nicest, kindest, fattest people
that ever lived, and furthermore, she had taken Joy, all by herself,
to a performance of "Pelleas and Melisande" only the spring before.
And though Joy had thought privately that the people sang too long
at a time on one note, and wished Melisande was less athletic-looking,
she had liked it very much, and felt obliged to the lady ever since.
So she really shouldn't have behaved the way she did--if it hadn't
been for the lovers, she doubtless wouldn't have. As it was, she
braced herself against the easel.
"It isn't a privilege a bit," she said defiantly, out of a clear
sky. "It isn't half as much fun as being the kind of girl everybody
else is. I hate wearing moving-picture clothes" [not even in her
excitement could Joy bring herself to say "movies"] "and I hate
never knowing girls and men my own age, and I hate having poems
written to me worse than anything at _all_!"
Poor Mrs. Harmsworth-Jones! She hadn't done a thing. Her own girls
went to fashionable schools and attended sub-deb dances by the score
until they came out, which they did at eighteen each like clockwork.
She couldn't have been expected to see to it for somebody else's
girl, too. Her getting the full blast of it was a quite fortuitous
affair, and Joy always felt, looking back afterwards on her
explosion, that it had been hard on the lady--who was frightened by
it to the point of silence. It must have been very much as if the
sedate full-length of Mr. Shakspere, over in the corner and _not_
autographed, had opened its mouth and begun to recite limericks.
"Why--why!" she said; and that was all she was capable of saying for
the moment. Joy, terrified herself at her deed, turned and fled.
What happened between Mrs. Jones and Grandfather she never knew, and
never asked. She never halted in her flight till she was safe in her
own little eyrie upstairs.
There she stopped before her dresser mirror, and looked at the
flushed, breathless girl in the glass.
"I wonder," Joy said aloud, "what really is the difference between
me and other people?"
She stared into the glass to see if she couldn't find out, leaning
her hands down on the dresser-top. But the pretty white-enamel-framed
mirror showed her just the same Joy as ever. Her heavy bronze-gold
braids swung forward, and their ends coiled down on the dresser-top.
Between them her little pointed face looked straight at her, blue-eyed,
red-lipped, and serious. Its owner eyed it perplexedly awhile,
then gave up the riddle.
"If you look like pictures and poetry you _do_, and that's all
there is to it. I suppose living with Grandfather's had an effect on
me... I wonder..." Joy still stared steadily into the glass--"I
wonder if having somebody in love with me would make a difference.
It's the only thing Grandfather's ever said he was willing to have
happen to me. He's always talking about 'I would give you up
willingly to the first breath of true love....' But there's never
anybody comes to his parties you could love with a pair of tongs...
I wonder if he _would?_ It would have to be love at first
sight, too, I suppose. He doesn't think much of any other kind of
love.... But I'd be dreadfully frightened of him.... I hope he'd
have blond curly hair!"
She lifted herself from her leaning position, and went and curled up
on the side of the bed, the better to think.
"There's no use wondering about a lover," she decided. "Lovers
_never_ come to hear Grandfather read, not unless they come in
pairs to get out of the rain, like the animals in the ark.... Anyway
I don't think I'd want the one today, even if he hadn't been a pair.
But a nice fresh one that didn't belong to anybody else...."
Grandmother, released at last from finding out what people wanted in
their tea, and giving it to them, hurried into the room at this
point, and was very much relieved to find Joy perfectly well to all
appearances, and sitting quietly on the side of the bed gazing off
into space.
"Darling, were you ill?" she panted, sitting down by her. "Your
grandfather was quite disturbed over it, and I was terribly
frightened. We knew something must have happened. What was it,
lambie? Where do you feel badly?"
Joy looked away from the wall, at her grandmother's kind, anxious,
wrinkled little face under the lace lappets. Grandfather liked
Grandmother to wear caps, so she did it; also fichus and
full-skirted silks, whether such were in fashion or no.
"I didn't feel ill one bit," explained Joy deliberately. "Only I'm
tired of being a decoration. I want to be like other people... I
don't want to wear any more clothes like paintings, or ever have any
more poetry written to me. I--oh, Grandmother, everything's going on
and going on, and none of it's happening to _me!_" She looked at
her grandmother appealingly. "And it feels as if it wouldn't ever!"
But Grandmother didn't seem to understand a bit. And yet she must
have been young once--wasn't there that poem of Grandfather's, "To
Myrtilla at Seventeen," to prove it? The one beginning "Sweetheart,
whose shadowed hair!" Why, he must have--yes, he spoke of it in the
poem--Grandfather must have held Grandmother's hand, like the
Dicky-lover today, and even kissed her because he wanted to, not
because it was nine in the morning or ten at night. Those were the
times he kissed her now. Of one thing Joy was certain, Grandmother
had never told Grandfather he must stop. She wouldn't have dared.
"Dear, would you like a hot-water bottle, and your supper in bed?"
inquired Grandmother, breaking in on these meditations.... Oh, it
was a long time since Grandmother had been Myrtilla at seventeen!
Joy looked at her wistfully once more.
"No, thank you, Grandmother," she said decidedly. "I feel very well,
thank you. I'll be down to supper as soon as I've changed my frock."
She felt as if getting off the actual clothes that were in the poem
would be escaping from it a little, and perhaps drawing a little
nearer the having of real things happen to her. Grandmother, nearly
reassured, patted Joy's little slim hand with her own little
wrinkled one, and trotted downstairs to tell Grandfather happily
that Joy would soon be down.
Joy, left alone, pulled off the amber robe, and stood before the
wardrobe in her silk slip, pushing along the hangers to try and find
something practical. It was pretty hard. All her gowns were lovely
loose or draped or girdled things: you could have costumed the whole
cast of two Maeterlinck plays from just those hangers. She was very
tired, suddenly, of all of them. At last she found a green dress
that was the delight of her life, even if it was picturesque,
because it was such a nice, cheerful color, put it on, and went
down. She had tried to fasten her hair up as the lover-girl's had
been fastened, but hers was so curly and heavy and alive and long
that it couldn't be done. She strapped it in desperation around her
head, wished she had some powder, and dashed down the long flights
of stairs just in time to save herself from a second summons. She
wasn't quite satisfied with her own general effect, but it would do
for a beginning.
So, dreamer as she still was, nevertheless the only thing alight and
alive in the old house, she ran down the staircases, past the
statues that stood severely in the niches at the head of each
flight, down finally to the basement dining-room where the three old
people, her grandfather and grandmother and old Elizabeth, were
waiting for her.
They sat at either end of the old mahogany table--that had been
Lucilla Havenith's, too--with supper, plus the sandwiches left over
from the tea, waiting untouched till Joy should come. By the way all
three stopped short when she came in, Joy was sure they had been
wondering what was the matter with her. She sank into her own chair,
and took one of the walnut sandwiches which had been spared by the
reception people. She was still hungry, and proceeded to eat it, at
which Mrs. and Mr. Havenith looked happier.
"You see, Alton, she has an appetite," said Grandmother thankfully.
"Yes, I am glad to see she has," answered Grandfather, as if the
circumstance was gratifying to him also. "I am very much relieved."
Joy felt guilty. When your grandparents were as fond as all that of
you, you really hadn't any right to feel as if you wanted anything
else. She straightened up and smiled gallantly at them, and took
another sandwich by way of proving her health.
"I think I'm all right," she said.
"You were overtired," said Grandmother solicitously--Grandmother,
who had cut all the sandwiches, which Joy had only buttered! "The
day's been oppressive."
So she passed Joy some more of the walnut sandwiches, and smiled to
see that they were being eaten.
"But I am not satisfied, yet," said Grandfather. If Grandfather had
only let well enough--and young girls' whimsies--alone, Joy wouldn't
have been tempted. "What made you rush out that way, Joy--just as I
was finishing the last stanza of the lyric, 'To Joy in Amber Satin,'
too? You couldn't have chosen a worse possible moment. You nearly
spoiled the effect."
Joy threw her head back defiantly. She knew that if Grandmother
didn't understand her appeal, certainly Grandfather wouldn't.
"Grandfather," she said, "do you remember the anecdote you always tell
to small groups of people, the one about the farmer who used to meet
your friend, James Russell Lowell, on his afternoon walk every day,
and say, 'Waal, Mr. Lowell, had a poem yet today?' _I_ had a poem!"
It was a most amazing fish story. Joy hadn't had any such thing as a
poem: nothing at all but a fit of rebellion. But if she wanted to
check her grandfather's inquiries she had taken the most perfect way
known to civilization. He couldn't possibly blame her for bolting if
the poem had to be put down. Nor even for being impolite to Mrs.
Harmsworth-Jones.
"You always say, 'The Muse must out,'" continued Joy defiantly. "Or
would you rather I didn't have any Muse?"
There was only one thing for Grandfather to say, and he said it.
"My dear, if you are really intending to do serious work along that
line nothing should prevent you. I quite understand."
Grandmother looked over at her little girl with a new respect--and
perhaps a new apprehension. One poet in a family is supposed to be
enough, as a rule. And Joy had always been such a good, dear child
to manage.
So no more was said. But Joy wondered if she hadn't let herself in
for something dreadful. Grandfather would certainly expect to see
that poem some day!
Nothing more was said about it for the two weeks that led to
Grandfather's next Afternoon. Joy was delighted to find that her
Muse wasn't asked for, and her grandparents may have been rather
pleased at her continuing to behave as she always had, instead of
saying curious things about wanting to be like other people. She
continued to wear her picture-frocks and do as she was told. Her own
feelings were that she had been naughty, but that she was rather
glad of it.
And so it was that when the reception day came around again, Joy
helped with the sandwiches and sliced the lemons and piled up the
little cakes and dressed herself prettily--and then went and hid at
the foot of the back stairs, with Aunt Lucilla for a companion.
"I hope I shall behave if somebody finds me, and tells me what a
privilege it is to be me," said Joy; "but I doubt it. Because it
isn't. It isn't one bit."
"What isn't?" demanded a man's voice interestedly.
CHAPTER TWO
BY GRACE OF THE WISHING RING
Joy turned her head to look. She was quite sure that the speaker
couldn't see her very well, but she could see him, or the top of
him, perfectly, because he was standing in the crack of a door that
gave on to the back hall; a door few people remembered existed, as a
picture hung on it, and it gave no impression of ever being used. He
was young and broad-shouldered and sure-looking, little as she could
see of him. She could see his face as far down as the eyes, and that
was all. They were pleasant, steel-colored eyes, very amused and
direct, and his hair, in the light of the old-fashioned chandelier
behind him, glittered, fair and a little curlier than he evidently
approved of.
He slipped entirely through the door; at the same moment Joy blew
out the candle she had been holding up to Aunt Lucilla. Then she
laughed, a little shy, pretty laugh. She wished she could light it
again, to look at him, but she remembered that if she did that he
might think she _did_ want to look at him.
"I'm so glad you've come!" she almost said. He seemed like some one
she had been waiting for a long while, some way, instead of the usual
stranger you had to get used to. There was such a breath of freshness
and courage and cheer in just the few words he had spoken and the little
laugh they were borne on, that Joy felt irrationally what a nice world
it was. Then she remembered to reply to what he had said.
"It isn't a privilege, being me," she explained from her shadows.
He looked over to where her voice came from, but there wasn't
anything visible except a little dark heap on the last three stairs.
"I could tell better if I could see you," he stated pleasantly.
"Don't you want to take the hint?"
But Joy, mindful of the hanging braids that would certainly make him
think she was a little girl, would not take it at all. She snuggled
against the wall.
"Oh, you can see me any time," she said carelessly, "but you can
scarcely ever get to talk to me. At least, I heard somebody say so
last month."
She felt quite like somebody else, a gay, teasing, careless sort of
real girl, talking to him here in the dark. She was sure she
wouldn't if the lights were on. She could talk to him as if he were
some one out of a book or a story, so long as he didn't know she
looked like a book-person or a play-person herself.
"Well, anyway, do let me stay here," he begged, doing it. "For the
last hour I haven't felt as if it was much of a privilege to be me,
either. Do you know that feeling of terrible personal unworthiness
you get at a party where everybody knows everybody else and nobody
knows you? I feel like precisely the kind of long, wiggly worm the
little boy ate."
Joy felt very sorry for him; because if she didn't know that feeling
she knew one to match it; having everybody know her and nobody think
of playing with her.... This man was playing with her for a minute,
anyway.
"And I'll always have him to remember," she thought happily, "even
when I'm an old, old lady, writing reminiscences of Grandfather, the
way they all say I should ..." She went off into a little daydream
of writing all this down in her reminiscences, and having him--old,
too, then--write back to her and say that he, also, had always
remembered the time happily, and wondered who she was.... Then she
answered him.
"You know me, anyway--don't say you know no one," she told him.
"Anyway, I'm glad you're talking to me. I'm Joy."
He laughed again, leaning against the door-frame in the thread of light.
"Then you're something I've been looking for a long time," he said.
"I've had friends and success, and good times--but I've never found
Joy till now."
She knew, of course, that he was just being pleasant about her name,
as people were sometimes. But it sounded very lovely to remember.
"I'm Alton Havenith's granddaughter," she explained sedately. And,
with a sudden desire that he should know the worst, she added, "I'm
the one he writes poetry to."
He must have caught a note of regret in her voice--oh, he was a very
wonderful person! for what he said wasn't a bit what Joy expected
even him to say--the "How lovely for you!" that she was braced for.
"Why, you poor kiddie!" said he, "and you ought to be playing tag or
tennis or something. I can't see much of you, except one braid that
the light's on; but you're just a little thing, aren't you?"
Joy did not answer. She looked up at him, as the crack of light
widened behind him, and showed him clearly for a moment. He was so
very handsome, standing there with his brows contracted in a little
frown over his pleasant gray eyes, that Joy felt her heart do a
queer thing, as if it turned over.
He came a little nearer her, and sat down on the floor, below her,
quite naturally.
"And you're awfully lonesome, and you wish something would happen?"
said his kind voice. It was a lovely voice, Joy thought. It was
authoritative, yet with a little caressing note in it, as if he
would look after you very carefully--and you would love it.
"How did you know?" she asked.
"Oh, I just could tell," he said, and it seemed a perfectly clear
explanation. "Well, don't forget that there's lots of time yet. You
just keep on believing things _will_ happen--don't lose heart--and
maybe they will."
Somehow, the way he said it, Joy was sure they would.
"Like a wishing ring?" she asked eagerly.
He laughed.
"You _are_ a kiddie. Why, yes, like a wishing ring, if you like."
Before Joy could answer there came a brisk voice from the door.
"Oh, this is where you've hidden! You may be decorative, Jack, but
as an escort I've known nephews more useful."
Joy looked up and saw a tiny elderly lady, quite a new one, in the
doorway.
"Good-by, Joy," he said in too low a voice for the old lady to hear.
"I'm glad we've met--I can't say I'm glad to have seen you, because
I haven't, you know. But thanks for a human five minutes--and keep
hoping."
He sprang lightly to his feet, opened the door, shut the door--was
gone, and Joy was alone in the dark again.
She smiled up at Aunt Lucilla unseeingly.
"Not even Lafayette could have been as kind as that," she said
proudly, and leaned happily against the wall again.
"Why, Joy, dear, don't you want to come in and see the people?"
Grandmother was asking her solicitously, bending over her. "You
aren't sick again, are you?"
Joy sprang up with a little laugh.
"Not a bit," she assured her. "I'm especially all right. Why,
yes--I'll come in if you want me, of course. The people don't matter."
She threaded her way, behind Grandmother, up and down the parlors
for the next hour, quite happy. She'd had such a wonderful five
minutes in the back hall--why, what difference did it make if Mr.
James Arthur Gosport captured her and told her about his ideas on
universal brotherhood? She didn't have to listen specially, because
she knew just what he was going to tell: the story about how he went
out from his parlor-car and hunted through the day-coach to find a
brake-man, on purpose to tell him how fond he was of him. And how
the brakeman's eyes filled up with tears at being loved, and how Mr.
Gosport had to hurry back to his Pullman in order not to go to
pieces himself.
When Mr. Gosport told this tale--it was one he used in his lectures,
and it always went splendidly--Joy usually had to keep herself from
wondering why he didn't go to pieces anyhow; he was so long and
loosely built you'd think he was merely pinned together. But this
afternoon she smiled at him so brightly that he liked the way he
told the story better than ever. She was really thinking--
"The man she called Jack is built ever so much better than Mr.
Gosport is. _He_ wouldn't just cry over a brakeman. He'd give
him some money or...."
"It is very wonderful to feel that we are all brothers, and that so
little a thing as bringing it home to a train-hand could move him so
profoundly," finished Mr. Gosport, cheered by the success of his
anecdote. "I make it a point never to neglect such little things--"
He was left with a period in mid-air, for Joy, with a flurry of
skirts, was running toward her grandfather. She didn't care a bit
whether men were all brothers or second cousins; she thought maybe
Grandfather would know the real name of the man she had talked to,
the one besides Jack.
"Grandfather, what was the name of the man with curly, fair hair and
big gray eyes, the one who had a little old lady with him?" she
demanded breathlessly, clinging to her grandfather's arm and
interrupting him ruthlessly in the middle of something he was saying
to somebody.
"I haven't the faintest recollection," said Grandfather; and
Grandmother whispered:
"Come away, dear. The lady with him just asked him whether he wrote
under his own name or a nom-de-plume, and you know how irritating
that is."
Joy came obediently away. After all, it didn't matter about Jack's
other name. She knew perfectly well that she should see him again.
Everything was bound to go happily.... And till she saw him again,
she had him to remember.
"I have something pleasant to tell you, dear," said Grandmother,
patting the arm she still held.
"Yes, Grandmother?" she asked, smiling. An hour or so before she
would have been wild to know what it was, but now she was only
serenely glad that it did exist. She knew perfectly well that things
had begun to happen. And now they would go on and on and on till the
fairy-tale ending came. She knew that, too. Somehow, the shut-out
feeling was all gone, ever since the gray-eyed man had sat at her
feet in the hall and given her the wishing ring. The curtain was
up--or, rather, the door was open into things, just as he'd pushed
open the door from her little dark dream-place, the door that had
always been there, but nobody'd thought to use. Of course, things
were going to happen--lovely ones!
"I know I'll like it," she ended, with a happy little laugh.
"You seem better already, dear," said her grandmother happily, and
began: "We have been talking about your health, and we have decided
that you need a change, and some young life. So we are going up to
an inn in the Maine woods for a month or more. There's boating
there, and--and games, I understand, and there's a literary colony
near, so there'll be people for your grandfather. He thinks he may
go on holding small Afternoons. It's a cottage inn."
Joy did not know then what a cottage inn was, but neither did she
care. She clasped her hands happily over the invisible wishing ring.
As Joy helped Grandmother pack, the next week, she wondered a little
about clothes. She did not worry now, because she had a conviction
that if she only knew what she wanted, and hoped as Jack had told
her, she could hope things straight to her. There was a gray taffeta
in a window uptown, together with a big gray chiffon hat, a little
pair of glossy gray strapped slippers, and filmy gray silk
stockings. And the hat, instead of having pink roses on it, as you'd
think a normal hat would, by the mercy of Providence had deep yellow
roses, exactly the color Joy knew she could wear if she got the
chance. The chance, to be sure, was remote. She did not have an
allowance, just money when she asked for it; and her fall wardrobe
had been bought only a few weeks before. Besides the amber satin
that the poetry was about, there were three other frocks, lovely,
artistic, but, Joy was certain, no mortal use for tennis. She didn't
know how to play tennis, but she intended to, just the same.
Now, how, with just seven dollars left from your last birthday's
ten, could you buy a silk frock, with a hat and shoes and stockings
to match? The answer seemed to be that you couldn't, but Joy did not
want to look at it that way yet. And as she gazed around her bedroom
in search of inspiration, her eyes fell on an illuminated sentiment
over her bureau. It had been sent Grandfather by a Western admirer
who had done it by hand herself in three colors, not counting the
gilt. Grandfather had one already, so Joy had helped herself to
this, because it matched the color of her room. She had never read
it before, but, reading it today, it impressed her as excellent
advice to the seeker after fine raiment.
"Let the farmer," Mr. Emerson had said, "give his corn, the miner a
gem, the painter his picture, the poet his poem." Joy did not stop
to wonder (for the Western lady had left it out) on just what
principle these contributions were being made. She didn't care.
"Now, that's the way people earn money," said she practically, and
tried to think what she could do.
Cook--she could make very good things to eat, but Grandmother would
have to know about that, and, besides, it wouldn't be a thing they
would approve of. Sewing--no, you couldn't get much out of that. She
could recite poetry and be decorative, but she gave a little shiver
at the thought. She played and sang as Grandmother had taught
her--harp and piano--and spoke Grandmother's French. She couldn't do
much with _them_.... Oh, she was just decorative! And as she prepared
to be vexed at the idea, suddenly the motto caught her eye again.
"It's a perfectly impossible idea from _their_ standpoint,"
said Joy, with the light of battle in her eye for almost the first
time in her life, "but I simply have to have that gray dress."
She rose and fished the amber satin out of her trunk. She put it on,
put her long coat over it, packed her next most picturesque frock in
a bag, fastened on a hat, and walked out the front door.
Just three blocks away lived a dear, elderly mural decorator who was
always telling her how he wished he had her for a model. She knew he
was making studies now for about a half-mile of walls in a new, rich
statehouse somewhere far away.
She should have been frightened at this, her first adventure, but
she wasn't. She found her heart getting gayer and lighter as she ran
down the steps with her little bag. It was the kind of a day when
all the policemen and street-sweepers and old women selling
shoe-laces look at you pleasantly, and make cheerful remarks to you.
Even the conductor whose street-car she didn't take smiled
pleasantly at her after stopping his car by mistake. It was as
kind-hearted and pleasant-minded a worldful of people as Joy had
ever met, and she was singing under her breath with happiness as she
ran up the steps leading to Mr. Morrow's studio. There wasn't any
particular excuse for her being so light-hearted, excepting that the
street-people had been so friendly minded, and there was such a dear
little breeze with a country smoke-scent on it, and that somewhere
in the world was a tall man with fair hair and a kind, authoritative
voice, who had said wonderful things to her--a man she would meet
again some day, when she was charming and worldly and dressed in a
tailor-made suit.
Mr. and Mrs. Morrow were artists both; and she found them,
blouse-swathed and disheveled, doing charcoal studies in a corner of
the room apiece. Mrs. Morrow kissed Joy, arching over her so that
the smudges on her pinafore wouldn't be transferred. Mr. Morrow came
out of his corner and shook hands with her with less care, so that
his smudges did come off on her. Then they both listened to her
story with the same kindness and interest every one else had shown
her that morning.
"I can sit still or stand still as long as ever you want me to," Joy
explained. "And you said yourself I was decorative, Mr. Morrow; you
know you did!"
"I did, indeed," Mr. Morrow answered promptly, while Mrs. Morrow
asked some more questions.
Joy answered them.
"And I would be able to earn enough money for all those things in
the window by Friday?" she ended.
The Morrows smiled and glanced at each other. Joy did not know, till
some months later, why they smiled. Then they spoke, nearly together.
"Yes, indeed, dear child--quite enough!"
Joy was reassured, because, though she didn't know model-prices, she
had been afraid that it wouldn't be.
Then they gave her some purple draperies--the satins wouldn't do,
after all, it appeared--and arranged her in them. And, to
anticipate, when Joy went out to that statehouse, the next year, she
was able to pick out her own bronze-gold braids and purple royalties
all up and down the frieze.
"By Jove, she _is_ a good model!" said Mr. Morrow after a
couple of hours, pulling at his pointed gray beard and speaking
enthusiastically in his soft artist-voice.
"Splendid!" said untidy, handsome Mrs. Morrow, sitting down on the
model-throne to view her own work the better. "But she must be ready
to drop, aren't you, Joy, dear? You aren't used to it."
But Joy shook her head.
"I'm not tired a bit," she said truthfully. "I just let go all over
and stay that way. It isn't sitting any stiller than I do lots of
days, when Grandfather has me stay close by him, and keep very still
so he can write. Why, it seems downright sinful," she went on
earnestly, "to earn beautiful gray clothes by just sitting still!
But you would have to have somebody, anyway, wouldn't you?"
"Of course we would!" said Mrs. Morrow, picking up her crayon again.
"Indeed, we have to have two most of the time."
They all kept very quiet for a while after that, Joy sitting still
in her robes of state, a slim young Justice presiding over an as yet
undrawn Senate, and the Morrows working hard at her. She had been
posing for another half hour, when there came a whirlwind of steps
up the stairs, and the door banged open.
"Mrs. Morrow, can you let me have some fixative?" called a voice;
and Joy moved her eyes cautiously, and saw a pretty, panting girl in
the doorway. She looked like an artist, too, for she had a smudge of
paint on one vivid cheek, and her black hair was untidily down over
her gipsy eyes.
"Nice model you've got--good skin tints--oh, don't bother about the
fixative if you're working. I see it."
She darted in, past Joy, snatched a bottle half full of something
yellow, and was out again before any one could speak.
"I'm hurrying," she called superfluously back as she fled to the
floor below. "Giving a dance tonight."
Joy, most mousy-quiet in her chair, mentally registered another
requirement toward being the kind of girl she ought to be. There
were such lots of wonderful things to learn!
She went to the Morrows regularly every day after that, six days in
all. She told Grandmother where she was, not what she was doing. It
didn't occur to her that Grandmother would mind, but she thought it
would be pleasanter to surprise her, and say, "See the lovely dress
I earned all myself, posing for the Morrows!"
Meanwhile, Grandmother, pleased at her little girl's brightened face
and general happiness of demeanor, asked no questions.
"You've been one of the best models we ever had, my dear," said Mrs.
Morrow in her deep, unceremonious voice, when the last day came.
"And it occurred to me that you might be too hurried when the last
day came to do your shopping yourself. So I just ran uptown and got
your pretties for you."
It was not for a long time that Joy discovered the regular pay of a
model to be fifty cents an hour, and the sum total of her gray
costume to have been--it was late for summer styles, so they were
marked down--fifty-three dollars and ninety cents. But Mrs. Morrow
had said to Mr. Morrow, who usually saw things as she did, even
before she explained them:
"Alton Havenith would never let that dear little thing have anything
as modish as those clothes. He'd keep her for a living illustration
to his poem-books till he died. And we're making a lot on that
Sagawinna Courthouse thing.... And we haven't any daughter."
And Mr. Morrow, remembering a seven-year-old with blue eyes and
yellow hair, who had never grown old enough to ask for French-heeled
shoes and picture hats, said only, "That's what I thought, too."
Joy, blissfully ignorant that she had been given a good deal of a
present, kissed them both ecstatically on receiving a long, large
pasteboard box, and almost ran home. She was so eager, indeed, to
get upstairs and try on her finery that she quite upset a Neo-Celtic
poet who had come to see if Grandfather would write an article about
him, and was standing on the doorstep on one foot in a dreamy
manner. He was rather small, and so not difficult to fall over. She
did not stop to see if he was injured; she merely recovered herself,
grasped her precious boxes more closely and sped on upstairs,
thinking how pleasant it was that she was no relation to _him_.
To have even fine poetry written about you was bad enough; it must
be much worse if the poetry was bad, too.
When she opened her box she found that Mrs. Morrow had seen and
bought something else for her; a golden-brown wool jersey sweater
suit, with a little brown cap to match.
"Oh, how lovely! I can wear them all day, and the gray things all
night--all evening, I mean," Joy exulted. "And maybe I'll never have
to put on the picture dresses at all!"
She went to sleep that night with the brown suit laid out in its box
across the foot of her bed, below her feet, and the gray chiffon
hat, with its golden yellow roses, on a chair by her, where she
could touch it if she woke in the night and thought she had dreamed
it. She said her prayers almost into it; she was so obliged to the
Lord for the hat and the frocks, and the man who had talked to her
in the dark, that she felt as if she ought to take the hat, at
least, and show it to God while she was praying.
* * * * *