dear, and going on a visit to your prospective people-in-law," she
said. "I couldn't let you go off without me otherwise."
It was too tempting. Before she thought, Joy had spoken.
"If I were, would it be all right?" she asked.
Grandfather answered her, somewhat at length.
"My dear child, you know my feelings about love. I myself married
your grandmother after a two days' courtship, when she was seventeen
and I was twenty-one; and I may say that I have never regretted
it--nor, I hope, has she. If you were affianced, nothing should
cause me to interfere with the course of true love. Your grandmother
and I would let you go to visit his people willingly. Your assurance
that you loved him----"
Joy leaned forward, her eyes blazing with excitement.
"And suppose I told you I was engaged, would you let me go to visit
Phyllis, if she lived near him, and--and his people were so situated
that he couldn't have me?"
Grandfather was perfectly certain that Joy was no more engaged than
old Elizabeth the cook was, and he went on placidly with his
hypothetical case, which was also his hobby.
"If I had met the young man, received him socially, even once, my
child, you may be sure, under those circumstances, you might go. One
has no right to interfere with----"
Grandmother in the background wasn't so sure, her eager little face
said, but she was a very obedient and adoring wife.
Joy interrupted him. He had given her a loophole, and she was
desperate to go. She couldn't wait forever for the lover!
"Grandfather, I--I _am_ engaged! I met him at one of your
receptions, and so did you, _quite_ socially. You--I know you
must have met him, and liked him, too--everybody does."
It was a terrible thing to do, and Joy's heart beat fast. But surely
the Wishing-Ring Man wouldn't mind--he would never know even! And
Grandfather had talked so long about giving her up at sight to that
hypothetical lover, that he might almost have been said to put the
wickedness into her head. And if she waited for a real one she might
wander alone about the parlors till she was an old, old maid with
trailing gray braids.
There was a frozen silence.
"En-gaged?" said Grandfather faintly.
Grandfather had a code all to himself. He didn't know it, being a
man, but he had. It forbade ever being taken by surprise, ever being
at a loss, ever being in the wrong, or ever contradicting himself.
This made for great respect, given to him by the world at large, his
family, and himself; but it put him at a terrible disadvantage in
things like this. He couldn't go back on what the great Alton
Havenith had said for many years. Joy, shivering but desperate, knew
this perfectly well, though she didn't formulate it.
"You always hoped for it," she told him firmly.
"I--I did," said Grandfather with an obvious discomfort, but with
unabated loyalty to himself. Then he snatched at a pretext. Poor
little Grandmother's, hands were opening and shutting, but she was
well trained, and she didn't speak till he was through dealing with
the situation.
"Can your friends vouch for him socially?" Grandfather demanded.
Joy's alert, frightened mind scurried about for a moment, then she
plunged into further fabrications.
"He's--why, Grandfather, he's their closest friend, the one they
call Johnny. He--he lives near them."
Grandfather was entirely what the profane would call up a tree. He
had been giving his consent for some seventeen years. And Joy had
swept the ground from under his feet. He did not in the least
remember meeting this amazing lover at any of his receptions, but
there had been a tradition for many years that he never forgot a
name or a face. Now he _had_ been doing it for two or three
seasons past, but he never admitted it to himself, and nobody else
dared admit it, either.
As for the truth of what Joy said, it did not occur to him to doubt
that. Joy had never told them anything but the truth in her life. As
a matter of fact, there had never been anything for her to deceive
them about. But that did not dawn on him.
There was another frozen silence. Grandfather was checkmated.
Joy had not intended to do it, of set purpose. She respected
Grandfather too thoroughly. But she was struggling for the only
piece of happiness that had ever come her way in the whole of her
placid, tranced little life.
"In that case, my dear," Grandfather pronounced slowly, "I give my
consent. What did you say the young man's name was?"
"John," she said faintly, bending her head, and coloring hotly and
suddenly. She had just remembered that the Wishing-Ring Man's name
really was Jack, and she hadn't meant to use _that_ name. That
was private.
"That makes it a little better," said Grandmother; why, Joy did not
see or know until much too late. "His name is Hewitt. You remember
Mrs. Harrington's discussing him with us, Alton." ... Then all her
obedience to Grandfather did not keep her from putting her arms
around Joy and beginning to cry.
"Oh, my dear, my dearest," she said. "Why didn't you confide in me
about it? You know I would have been so interested!"
Joy had a little lump in her throat, and she almost cried out, "I'm
not, Grandmother!"
But she had all Grandfather's pride, and--and besides, she had gone
this far--how could she go back?
Grandfather interposed, struggling hard with his natural surprise.
"A little emotion is natural in this case, dear Jennie," he said,
"but you must make allowance for a young girl's shyness. The young
man, I trust, will speak to us about it."
How she would explain to Phyllis had not yet occurred to Joy....
There are times when an education in all the best poets is an
everlasting nuisance.
_"Oh, what a tangled web we weave
When first we practise to deceive!"_
danced through Joy's head.... If only those fatal first sentences
hadn't popped out, and if she only hadn't been too proud to take
them back!
Just the same she continued to feel that a month of life off with
gay, kind people her own age was worth almost any price; which was
exceedingly wrong, and got Joy into a fearful mess, as amateur lying
is apt to do. Because Grandfather rose up after this, with what
Phyllis called his Earl of Dorincourt air, and spoke.
"There is no time like the present for the rectifying of an error.
We will go over now, and explain to Mrs. Harrington that when we
refused our consent to this visit we were unaware of all the
circumstances. Come, my love. Come, Joy."
From sheer paralysis of will power Joy let him draw her hand through
his arm in his accustomed way, and march her off towards the
Harrington cottage between himself and Grandmother. She felt like
Mary-Queen-of-Scots being led to execution, and exceedingly
regretful that she had never learned to faint. Suddenly a wonderful
thought came over her.
"Let me run ahead, please, and see if Phyllis is at home," she
asked, and ran ahead of them without waiting for an answer.
It was golden, late afternoon, and she could see Phyllis on her
veranda. She was lying in the hammock with little Angela nestled
beside her, and Philip constructing something monumental with screws
and wires on the floor by them. She had apparently been telling them
a quite unexpurgated edition of Little Red-Riding-Hood, for as Joy
flew up the steps Philip swerved with a startled look.
"Do you think there could be a wolf after Joy?" he inquired of his
mother.
"Phyllis, please, I want to talk to you alone," Joy panted. "I have
to tell you before _they_ get here. And--" she laughed a little
breathlessly--"it isn't fit for the children's ears."
"You don't know what their ears are used to," Phyllis answered
leisurely. "Philip, darling, you can go and hunt for your friend Mr.
Jones on the links, if you want to."
Philip dashed off, grinning happily. He had hopes, which his mother
was not supposed to know (but did), of being allowed to caddy some
glorious day, if he watched his opportunity.
"Oh, Phyllis, I'm in dreadful trouble, and please won't you help
me?" Joy began, flinging herself close to the hammock and clutching
its edge with one nervous hand. "Please help me--"
"Of course," said Phyllis. "What's it about?"
But Joy had delayed her story too long. Before Phyllis had more than
made her rash promise of help the elder Haveniths were upon her.
Phyllis rose to her feet to greet them, with an air of gracious
courtesy which the infant swinging beside her scarcely impaired at all.
"We have brought our little girl over, my dear Mrs. Harrington, to
tell you that we have reconsidered our decision," Mr. Havenith
stated, sweeping his broad Panama from his wonderful white hair.
"The information Joy has brought us--"
He was interrupted by the appearance round the corner of the cottage
of two men. One was Allan Harrington. The other--
"Here's Johnny, Phyllis," Allan called joyously. "His old epidemic's
all over, everybody either killed or cured. He was actually on the
right train, the one he said he'd take."
Joy's heart turned over. This was a doubly dreadful thing she had
brought on herself.
It was the Wishing-Ring Man!
CHAPTER FOUR
THE RESCUE OF THE PRINCESS
For one awful moment nobody spoke. John Hewitt, having no key to the
situation, was quite unembarrassed. So was Angela, who wriggled
herself to earth with a rapturous shriek of "Johnny! Johnny!
Cakies!"
Hewitt gathered up Angela, and, followed by his host, came up the steps,
to where Phyllis stood, tall and gracious, with Joy clinging to her.
"Why, it's little Joy!" he said surprisedly, smiling at her as he
took Phyllis' hand. "Where did you find her, Phyllis?"
Joy clung closer to Phyllis, waiting for the storm to break, for Mr.
Havenith was stepping forward now, holding a courteous, if dazed,
hand to the man his granddaughter had elected as her fiancé. He
spoke before Phyllis could answer.
"And so you are my little girl's betrothed!" he said with rather
stiff courtesy. "Ah--yes. I remember you, sir."
John Hewitt's gray eyes moved from Phyllis, standing there obviously
quite taken by surprise, to Joy, clinging to her burning-cheeked, in
what was quite as obviously an agony of terror. He caught his breath
for a moment, moved forward and opened his lips to speak, then shut
them again firmly and stood still where he was, with the afternoon
sunlight glinting over his fair head, and little Angela's more
golden one, pressed close beside it. As he remained still, his eyes
rested gravely on Joy: the very little princess of the fairytale,
with the dragon imminent at any moment. She looked very piteous and
terrified and small; not more than fifteen, and unbearably afraid of
him, with her black-framed blue eyes fixed on his in an appeal as
agonized as it was unconscious. He caught his breath again, then
turned to answer her grandfather, his decision made.
"I am glad you remember me, sir," he said gravely, "and exceedingly
glad that you are willing Joy should--"
Joy gave a long shudder of relief, and relaxed all over. He was not
going to put her to shame there before all of them. She would have
time to explain. She would not have her visit, but that, even,
seemed a small thing beside the dreadful danger she had just
escaped. She could tell him when they were alone.
Grandmother was coming forward now, to speak to him, where he stood,
straight and dignified and handsome, with the little girl still on
one arm.
"You are my old friend Grace Carpenter's son, as I was just telling
Mr. Havenith. Edith Carpenter's nephew.... I--I am glad you are a
friend's son," Grandmother finished tremulously.
John set Angela down and took Grandmother's hand, saying something
to her gently--Joy never knew what. She had stood enough.
Phyllis felt Joy's hand pull out of hers. The inn-cottages were all
built alike, so Joy knew perfectly well how to bolt through the
front door, through the living-room to the back door and away.
Viola, mending a little sock, caught a glimpse of flying skirts and
flying braids.
"Them red-haired folks certainly is tempestuous, but they's
gitters," she remarked to herself philosophically, and went on with
her mending.
Outside, Phyllis looked at Allan and Allan looked at Phyllis. There
didn't seem much to say about it. At last Allan spoke, in a way that
he and Phyllis agreed afterwards was painfully inadequate, but was
all he could think of to say.
"Ah--would you like to put away your suitcase, old man?" he
inquired. "You must be tired of--of seeing it there."
Phyllis gurgled under her breath, but every one else was deadly
serious. Nobody seemed to see anything funny about the offer.
"Thank you very much," John responded solemnly. "Yes, thank you,
Harrington, I believe I would."
He bent over and picked it up, and followed his host inside.
Neither of them said anything as they went upstairs.
"Here's your room," Allan offered, showing it politely.
"So it is," murmured John in a quite expressionless voice, looking
at it without seeming to know how to enter.
"It's to live in, you know," Allan suggested.
At this broad hint John went in and put his suitcase on the bed. He
still appeared to be in more or less of a trance-state.
"If we'd known, we'd have tied a little white ribbon here and there,
and arranged a rice-cascade--a shower, isn't it? or something,"
continued his host, amiably. "Awfully sorry, old chap, but you
shouldn't have been so darn secretive. But we'll do our best--"
John awoke at this, and caught up a small pink pincushion which sat
in the mathematical middle of his dresser, and threw it. It didn't
hit Allan, because he dodged.
"That's one of Phyllis' favorite pincushions," he warned John from
outside the door. "I say, Johnny, this isn't any way to repay
hospitality."
He went on down the stair, and John could see his shoulders shaking.
"They've both got too confounded much sense of humor," said John
bitterly.
But he went out and picked up the pincushion just the same, and
addressed himself to the methodical unpacking of his suitcase.
"Oh, I forgot! Congratulations!" Allan called cheerily up from the
stair-foot.
John, casting collars automatically from suitcase to dresser-top,
growled.
"Congratulations! I need prayers more!" he said under his breath.
"But--poor little thing! I might as well have stepped on a
kitten! ... I certainly did tell her to hope for better things and
they'd come.... I didn't know I was going to be one of 'em!"
Then, as he continued to unpack he grinned in spite of himself, for
into his mind came a poem of Guiterman's he'd read lately, about an
agnostic Brahmin who didn't believe in prayer, and came
inadvertently on a tiger praying for a meal in the jungle:
_"The trustful Tiger closed his prayer--
Behold--a Brahmin trembling there!
The Brahmin never scoffed a whit.
The Prayer had answer_.--He _was_ It."
"I wonder," mused John, "whether she's a kitten, or a tiger? Anyway,
_I_ was _It_! ... I can't stand any more of anything just now.
I'll get out till dinner-time!"
He tiptoed downstairs, and in his turn slid out the back door. The
Haveniths were still talking to the Harringtons on the front
veranda, he noted with a certain pleasure in their durance, and
Phyllis' back looked polite but tired. He headed for the adjacent
woods, diving into the leafy coolness with a feeling of escape. The
wood blew cool and a little moist, and fragrant with far-off
wood-smoke, and there was a feeling of solitude that he liked. He
sighed with relief as he rounded the turn in the wood-path.
And there before him, at the foot of her great oak, stood Joy, not
expecting him in the least. She uttered a little cry at sight of
him, and turned to run away. Then she thought better of it, and
stood her ground. Just what John might be going to do or say to her
she did not know, but she thought he was entitled to do almost
anything, and stood prepared for it, her face buried in her hands.
John had been a little irritated at the sight of her, but her
evident terror moved him, as it had before. He was, through and
through, the best type of physician; a man whose first and ruling
impulse was always to help and heal, whether it was body or soul, or
only feelings. Joy, standing with her face hidden, felt him laying
his hands, smooth and strong, over hers.
"Aren't you even going to look at the fiancé you've picked out?" she
heard him say half-amusedly. "Why, I'm not going to hurt you, child."
He took her hands down. She let him, and raised her eyes to his
kindly, wise steel-gray ones. He seemed to be regarding her in a
friendly fashion, and she dared to look at him friendlily, too--even
to smile a little. He brought to her the same sense of brightness
and well-being that she had experienced before, and her heart felt
lighter, though by every law of reason she should have been more
ashamed than ever, confronted with him, there alone.
"Of course you won't hurt me," she said. "But--well, when you steal
anybody's name and get engaged to it, they have a right to be cross.
You can be, if you want to, and I won't say a word. I know very well
I deserve it!"
John Hewitt _had_ intended to be cross--very cross indeed; but
with Joy's kitten-blue eyes fixed trustfully on his he found it
difficult even to be stern. He made an attempt, nevertheless.
"Don't you know that a little girl like you isn't old enough to be
engaged to be married?" he told her severely. He sat down on a heap
of brown and scarlet leaves, the better to show Joy the error of her
ways. "What made you think of it at all?"
Joy smiled. She was quite at ease now, with the curious feeling of
ease and happiness he always gave her, and she answered him calmly,
drawing a heavy copper plait forward over each shoulder.
"It's these that have made you think so all along. I'm nineteen."
John sat back a little, with both hands clasped over one gray-clad
knee, and looked at her again in the light of that.
"It's hard to realize, I know," she said apologetically. She lifted
the wonderful braids and bound them crownwise around her head, tying
the ends together behind as if they were pieces of ribbon, and
tucking them under with a comb, from behind one ear. She anchored
them in front with the other comb, and smiled flashingly at him
again. "Now it seems real, doesn't it? And now I'll tell you all
about it--that is, if you have the time."
He looked again at the lovely, earnest little face under the crown
of hair, and nodded gravely. She was not like any girl he had ever
known.... She was like the girls you imagined might exist,
sometimes, and wondered if you'd like them, after all, if they did.
He wanted her to go on, at least, and felt stealing over him a
conviction that she couldn't have done so particularly wrong.
Joy felt the lessened severity of his attitude, and took courage
from it as she began.
"You remember that day you came to Grandfather's? You remembered my
name, so I'm sure you do remember the rest. Well, that day I was
especially unhappy because--well, it's hard to explain the because.
Things were just as good as they always had been, really; only that
day I couldn't stand them any more. You know things _can_ be
that way."
She looked at him expectantly, and he nodded again.
"It was a forlorn little life for a child like you--oh, I keep
forgetting!"
He laughed.
"But even nineteen," he explained, "isn't particularly aged to an
elderly gentleman of thirty-four."
"As old as that?" queried Joy.
She looked at _him_ again in the light of new information, but
she shelved it for the time, and went on with her defense.
"Well, that afternoon, when things were perfectly down to the very
flattest bottom--'and not a ray of hope to gild the gloom'--you
came. And things brightened up. You know you told me that if I hoped
along, things I wanted would come?"
"I do know it!" said John with a fervor she did not understand.
"Well, they did!" she announced, looking at him radiantly, and
pausing a little so he would have time to realize it.
John Hewitt's patients had always told him that just his coming in
made them better, and he had simply accepted the faculty as useful
in his work. But he had never thought that his personality could
affect a perfectly well person. At Joy's tribute, unconsciously
given, his pulse quickened a little. Had he really had this much
power for happiness over the child?...
"Almost right away they brought me to this lovely place," she went
on happily, "and almost right after that I met the Harringtons. It's
all seemed to me because of your wishing ring."
"What wishing ring?" he asked, smiling indulgently at her, as one
does at a child's fancies.
"Don't you remember?" she asked a little forlornly. "Well--you have
such lots of things to remember! You said, 'Just keep on believing
things will come right, don't lose heart, and they will.' I said,
'Like a wishing ring?' and you said, 'Yes.' I've felt as if I wore
one--played I did, I suppose you'd say. I--I suppose I really am not
being grown-up very well, after all.... Well, after I knew Phyllis
the best thing of all happened. She asked me to come stay with her,
and have roses and a moon, and children all day long. But
Grandfather always said I couldn't go under any circumstances but
being engaged.... And I was so wild to go--it just slipped
out--truly it did! And then--the gods overtook me!"
She clasped her hands in her lap, and looked up at him--she had sunk
to the ground when he did, and was also sitting on a leaf-heap. She
tilted her head back against the big tree, and awaited her sentence.
John felt for the moment exactly the mingled pleasure and
embarrassment that a man does who has been adopted by an unusually
nice dog. It is a compliment, but one doesn't know exactly what to
do with the animal. Joy sat and looked at him with what seemed to
him to be a perfect trust that he would be good to her. As a matter
of fact, Joy was merely pleased because he was there and not angry
at her. She did hope a little that he would offer to do the
explaining that they weren't engaged to Grandfather. But she was
quite unprepared for what he said next, after a little silence.
"You're a brave little thing," he told her gently. "You shan't miss
your roses and your moons on my account.... I'll tell you what we'll
do, Joy. We'll stay engaged till we're out of sight of land."
She looked at him with parted lips.
"What--what do you mean?"
"You shall go to Phyllis' just the same, child. We won't even tell
the Harringtons that it isn't true till we're on the train for
Wallraven."
Joy stared at him, incredulous still. She could not speak for a moment.
"Oh!" she said then. "Oh--why, you're the kindest man I ever knew.
But then, I _knew_ you were! Thank you ever so much ... but--are
you sure you don't mind at all?"
"Quite sure," he told her.
"Well--_thank_ you!" said Joy fervently. "And oh, if I ever get
the chance, I promise I'll do something for you you want. Just think
of what you're giving me--a whole month of being just as happy as I
like! We can go back to the bungalows now. I don't mind being
congratulated one bit after this--do you?"
"N-no," said John a little dubiously. Then he laughed. "There's one
thing you've forgotten. There's always a ring when people are
engaged, even for four days."
Joy said nothing to this. She watched him while he slipped a
curious, chased dull gold band with a diamond sunk in it, from his
little finger. "It isn't a conventional solitaire sitting up on
stilts, but it will do, won't it?" he asked.
She held her little slim hand out for it, her face sparkling. His
were the long, slender, square-tipped fingers of the typical
"surgeon's hand," smooth and strong. But Joy's hands were little for
her build, which was not large, and the ring slid down her
engagement finger till she had to anchor it with a little gold band
from the other hand, pushed down over it.
"I'll take very good care of it, and polish it before I give it back
to you," she assured him.
He answered her on a sudden boyish impulse.
"I don't want you to give it back to me. You're to keep it.... It
can be your wishing ring that you said I brought you, Joy."
She smiled down at it, loose on her finger.
"Why, so it is--my wishing ring!" she sighed happily. She turned it
about her finger, and he saw her lips move. She was wishing. He
wondered what, but she did not offer to tell him.
"I wish that he may have the thing he wants the very most in all the
world," she was saying fervently under her breath. When she was done
she rose from the leaves, and he sprang up beside her.