four days' engagement, to make it _quite_ legal--" He bent
toward her, smiling.
"Oh--oh, should we?" stammered Joy, her wild-rose color deepening to
rose-red.
"I really think we should," said John solemnly. It was the nearest
to teasing any one he had come for a long time, and he found himself
rather enjoying it. Besides, in his heart lurked the feeling that
the child ought to realize that she might have let herself in for a
good deal, if she hadn't fallen into merciful hands. He was a little
ashamed of himself at the sweet way she took it. She merely held
herself quite still and serious, and lifted her face a little.
John was a young man who always went through with anything he had
begun, and he bent over and kissed Joy, very lightly.
"I'm sorry," he said.
"I--I didn't mind," said Joy, trying to make him happy, for she saw
he was sorry, though she didn't know why or what for.
"You dear child!" he said. "Well, I won't do it again. I was teasing
you, and I shouldn't. Come, we ought to go now."
She fell into step beside him, still mystified, but very much
obliged to him in general, and they went back to the bungalow and
congratulations side by side.
Meanwhile two very much surprised young people confronted two still
perturbed old ones in the sunset on Phyllis' veranda.
"Now _why_ do you suppose," Allan demanded of the world in
general, "Johnny didn't break the news to us? I've rarely known a
man who liked secrets less. He hasn't even come over and looked
radiant with his mouth shut, as a normal human being would."
Phyllis picked up Angela and gazed over her head as she considered.
She had a way of using Angela as most women do knitting or embroidery:
as something to have in her hands when she wanted to think.
"It was certainly a case of very silent emotion," she said
contemplatively.
"What was there a case of, Mother?" demanded Philip, reappearing,
very dusty, and climbing up on all of her that Angela didn't occupy,
thereby damaging fatally the spotlessness of her crinkled white silk
skirt. "Is it something to eat? Did Johnny bring--"
"Johnny brought the rather surprising news that he and Joy are going
to be married," his mother informed him, kissing the back of his
neck. She spoke to him, as she always did, in a manner entirely
unedited for children. If he didn't always know the long words, as
she said, so much the better--his growing intelligence was stretched
a little hunting them up.
The growing intelligence was certainly excited now.
"Married?" inquired Philip indignantly, voicing the feelings of the
entire party. "Well, I think it would of been politer to have let us
know before they spoke to each other about it!"
It was no time to feed either of the children, and their nurse would
have been horrified, but Allan produced a box of marshmallows from
behind a jardinière before anything more was said.
"Here, my dear son," he said politely. "You deserve them for saying
that. 'Them's our sentiments,' too, only we hadn't quite decided how
to put it. Now go off and die happily, and only give Angela two."
Philip returned thanks automatically, clutched the box and fled
before any one should interfere to revoke this wonderful gift from
Heaven. Angela wriggled her small, blue-overalled body down and went
in passionate pursuit.
"Now, you mustn't worry about it," Phyllis said to Mrs. Havenith,
rising with one of her swift, graceful movements and putting both
arms about the disconsolate old lady. "John Hewitt is one of the
best men I ever knew. He's a rock of defense. Indeed, you may trust
him with Joy. Allan has known him since they were in college
together, and he has been our closest friend since our marriage.
He's--why, he's nearly as nice as Allan, and that's saying all I
_can_ say. Isn't he, Allan?"
"As nice as I am?" said Allan, laughing and coming nearer to them.
"That would be difficult, you know, Phyllis! But, seriously, Mrs.
Havenith," he went on more gravely, "you can trust Hewitt to make
Joy very happy. He's one of the best fellows I ever knew. And he is
amply able to take care of Joy, if that is worrying you."
"He's perfectly adorable to his mother, too," Phyllis interposed;
"and she's that marvelous thing, a mother who wishes her son would
marry. You don't know what a lot there is in that!"
"True," said Allan teasingly, in a tone too low for any one but his
wife to hear; "it can't be carried too far, as I have reason to know."
Phyllis had been rather unusually her mother-in-law's
choice--indeed, the late Mrs. Harrington had done a good deal more
in the business than she had any right to, and only Phyllis' own
sweetness and common sense and the fact that Allan and Phyllis fell
in love after their marriage had justified what old Mrs. Harrington
did in the case. And when it did turn out properly she was not there
to see, having died as soon as she had gotten her son (who was then,
as every one thought, hopelessly paralyzed) safely married.
Phyllis broke off to say swiftly, under her breath, "I'll be even with
you for that, Allan Harrington!" and went on trying to console the
Haveniths; for poor Mr. Havenith sat, dignified and forlorn, trying
to look perfectly omniscient and satisfied and not succeeding a bit.
After repeated assurances the Haveniths seemed a little happier, and
went back to their bungalow to dress for dinner. The Harringtons
sank back in their chairs with a sigh of relief apiece.
"I don't care if Philip eats every marshmallow on earth, I'm not
going to stir till I've talked it over with you, Allan," said his
wife determinedly.
She looked so pretty as she said it that Allan rose from his chair,
tipped her chin back and kissed her.
"So she should gossip if she wanted to," he told her teasingly,
dropping back into his own chair before she could object, if she had
wanted to. "Go on, my dearest; say all the things you wouldn't say
before the Haveniths. I'm perfectly safe."
"Yes, thank goodness, you are," acknowledged his wife. "Telling you
things is like dropping them down a deep black well, which is a
great comfort to a confiding person like myself. Well, then, if you
insist on knowing what my lower nature thinks of this performance,
it's my opinion that Joy and Johnny both ought to have their ears
boxed. I don't believe in corporal punishment as a rule, but if
there ever was a time for it--"
"In Philip's words," suggested her husband, "it would have been
politer to have told us before they made up their minds!"
Phyllis laughed.
"I confess I rather agree with him," she said. "It was a little
shock. Just the same, I never came across any one sweeter or
prettier or more attractive than Joy, and it certainly is a comfort
to know that John's wife will be some one I can be friends with
without a struggle. You never _can_ tell what a man's going to
marry."
Allan arose and walked up and down meditatively, his golden-brown
eyes fixed on the dulling sunset. He had spent several of his years
lying on his back, as the result of an automobile accident in his
early youth, and since he had been given back the use of his limbs he
never kept still unnecessarily. He had arrears to make up, he said.
Phyllis watched him striding back and forth, tall and graceful, and
forgot all about Joy's love-affairs. For the moment, watching his
grace of movement lovingly, she was back in the days that had seemed
so happy then, but were so much less happy than these, when they had
had their first glad certainty that he would entirely recover. It
had taken less than six months from the time he first stood, before
he could walk easily, and another six before he could go back to
horseback--tennis and swimming had been later still. It seemed
sometimes to them both as if it had all been a dream, so active and
untiring he was now.
"Heaven _has_ been good to us," she said irrelevantly, but
earnestly, looking up at him.
"Heaven's been good to me, I know," Allan said tenderly. "I have the
best and sweetest girl in the world to spend my life with me..."
"John would disagree with you," said Phyllis, smiling up at him
nevertheless, and flushing. "Allan, did it strike you that John
would have been just as well pleased if Joy _hadn't_ broken the
news to Grandfather right then?"
"Johnny's like Talleyrand; you'd never know it from his expression
if some one kicked him from behind.... Not that I'd like to be the
kicker."
"So if he looked surprised, which he certainly did," pursued Phyllis
decisively, "he was _quite_ surprised, not to say upset."
"Oh, not as bad as all that," said Allan, who was not given to
analysis. "I say, Phyllis, we really ought to go off and see if the
children aren't dying under a tree somewhere."
"They are not," said the children's mother firmly. "You know Angela
is much more under Philip's thumb than she is yours or mine or
Viola's, and he's a martinet where she's concerned. She'll never get
more than her legal two marshmallows, and a boxful won't hurt
_him_."
"You're such a blessing, Phyllis," he answered irrelevantly. "Before
the children came I used to wonder a little whether they wouldn't
get in the way of my enjoyment of your society; but you didn't die
and turn into a mother one bit. You've just added it on, like a
sensible girl."
"Well, of course I'm attached to the babies," said Phyllis, who
would have died cheerfully for either of them, "but you'd naturally
come first. And they're much happier than if I were one of those
professional mothers who can't discuss anything but croup.... Allan,
it's time we began putting up triumphal arches. Here they are."
Allan began to whistle "Here Comes the Bride" softly and profanely
under his breath, as Joy and John Hewitt neared them, but Phyllis
managed to stop him before he was audible.
"She _is_ a darling, isn't she?" Phyllis whispered, as she
stood on the steps with one hand on Allan's arm. "Look at her,
Allan--she looks like a strong little Rossetti angel! Oh, I'm so
glad it's happened!"
She ran impulsively down the steps to greet them, her hands
outstretched.
"I _am_ so glad!" she said sincerely. "I don't believe anything
nicer could have happened, even if we _weren't_ notified!" She
put one arm around Joy, giving the unoccupied other hand to John
Hewitt. "And I think it's specially nice of you to stay with me
instead of with Mrs. Hewitt, my dear."
Joy looked up at Hewitt appealingly. She was already beginning to
feel that he was to be depended on to see her through things.
"I think Mother will want her innings sooner or later," he said.
"But we haven't really told either of you all about it. You shall
have the whole thrilling tale in the train. Suspend judgment on us
both till then, please."
"Oh, there isn't any judgment," Phyllis answered gaily. "You needn't
try to get out of your engagement on our account, either of you. The
Harrington family registers entire satisfaction, doesn't it, Allan?"
"We're both awfully glad, old man," said Allan for his part.
Joy wondered, her heart beating with excitement, if they would mind
very much when they heard the truth.... But such kind people as the
Harringtons couldn't be very angry!
She was beginning to feel irrevocably engaged.... Never mind--John
Hewitt would see her through. She looked up at him, and he smiled
down on her.
"Let's all have dinner sent over here," suggested Phyllis
brilliantly, "to celebrate. We'll have Viola go over to the hotel
for your grandparents."
But Grandfather, it appeared, had gone to bed to rest from his
excitement, and Grandmother, of course, was staying with him. So the
four of them ate together in the little green living-room of the
bungalow, talking and laughing happily. Joy, between Allan and John,
spoke very little. But she felt so contented and so in the midst of
things that she did not need to talk. She gleamed and shone like a
jewel or a flower, smiling and answering happily when she was
addressed: and John, looking at her, felt that his four days'
protectorate was going to be perfectly simple and easy to endure.
CHAPTER FIVE
THE SHADOW OF GAIL
Joy spent most of the next morning talking to her grandparents--at
least, they talked and she listened. Grandmother, now that the first
shock was over, took the news with the same sweet and patient
acceptance of people's behavior that forty-five years' sojourn among
poets had taught her. The fact that Edith and Grace Carpenter were
John Hewitt's aunt and mother appeared to comfort her a great deal.
It made her feel less that Joy was marrying into a strange tribe.
Joy was pleased that this gave her grandmother relief. It was not
till the day of departure that she discovered what awful thing more
had been the result of the friendship. Indeed, it could have
occurred to nobody, although, as John and she agreed afterwards,
anybody _should_ have seen what was going to happen!
For the remaining days at the mountain inn there was little
excitement. Joy kept close to Phyllis or her grandmother, and John
enjoyed himself in what struck the Harringtons as being rather too
much his usual way. It seemed to them that a little scheming to see
Joy alone would have been more appropriate. But neither Phyllis nor
Allan were given to being relentlessly tactful, or planning
situations for people. They reasoned that if the others really
wanted _tête-à-têtes_ they could manage them without help; and
doubtless would, once they were in the country. So peace and
unruffledness reigned in a way that was most surprising, considering
the real facts of the case. They continued, even in Joy's mind, till
almost the last minute, when she stood on the platform of the resort
station with Phyllis, Allan, John, the children, Viola, and the
bulldog, awaiting their train.
Philip was having to be cheered and distracted: his tender heart was
nearly broken over the fact that his beloved Foxy had to travel in
the baggage-car, when he would have been so much happier in the
bosom of his family. Philip could not be restrained from pleading
the dog's cause at length with a fatherly baggageman whose heart he
had quite won in four minutes.
"He has a green-plush chair at home that he _always_ sits in,
and nobody takes it away from him, not even company," he explained
earnestly. "He isn't used to baggage-cars--truly he isn't. He's a
wonderful-mannered dog. And father says that if he lived up to his
pedigree he wouldn't 'sociate wiv _any_ of us. You can _see_
he doesn't belong in a baggage-car!"
The baggageman, melted by Philip's ardent pleadings, was yielding to
the extent of letting Foxy's family sit with him in relays and cheer
him as much as they liked, when Grandmother dropped her bombshell.
At least, that was what John called it when they talked it over
afterwards. Joy always spoke of it as "the time Grandmother said the
awful thing."
"Good-by, my little girl," she said. "I know Grace Carpenter's boy
can't but be good to you. And, darling--she asked me to keep it for
a surprise--I only heard this morning--but I know surprises aren't
always pleasant--and you're so young, you need to be prepared. Grace
wrote me she was greatly surprised by the news, though I'm sure she
needn't have expected to be told if we weren't--but she was very
sweet about it, and is giving a dance to all the nice people in
Wallraven for you. It's set for the evening after you get there. She
tells me she has arranged the invitations already, in a way that
makes the short notice seem all right. Grace was always so
ingenious.... Oh, there's the train--good-by, darling! Be a good girl!"
Joy was aghast.
"_Grandmother!_" she began. "Oh, Grandmother. I have to tell
you! ... I--oh, John, tell her! I can't go! I--"
She turned to Hewitt despairingly. But he had not been listening: he
had been watching the argument between Philip and the baggageman.
"Hurry, Joy, train's coming," was all he said, and caught her arm,
whisking her aboard.
She pulled back, but that made no difference. He had her established
in a seat, with what Phyllis called his "genial medical relentlessness,"
in spite of her appeals.
"But I _can't_ go!" she protested weakly from her seat, as the
train pulled out of the station.
"But, you see, you have," was John's placidly unanswerable reply, as
he stowed his light overcoat on the rack above them and laid her
coat over that with maddening precision. He smiled at her
protectingly.
"Why, my dear child, what made you lose your nerve that way at the
last minute?"
Then Joy understood that he had not heard the blow fall.
If it had been anybody but John she would have been much more
embarrassed than she was, but by now she had come unconsciously to
feel that when things went wrong John was the natural person to come
to. He could always help her through them.
"Grandmother told me--" she began, then stopped. It was pretty hard
to tell, after all.
"Go on," he told her encouragingly. "Grandmother told you what?"
"She told me that she wrote your mother, and your mother said--she
said she wished we'd told her; but, anyway, she's sent out
invitations for a big party--to meet _me_!"
It all came with a rush. She didn't dare to meet John's eyes after
she had said it.
She heard his long, low whistle of astonishment, scarcely suppressed
in time, and a lower, but quite as fervent, "Great Scott!" and then
silence. It was not for a full minute that she dared look in the
direction of his chair, which he had swung away when she had told
him. She gave one quick glance, then another longer one. She could
not see his face, but his shoulders were shaking.... Had it moved
him so?
Joy was used, at Grandfather's, to hear of people being "moved."
"I didn't think John was the kind of a man to have emotions outside
of him that way," she thought a little disappointedly, "but I
suppose an awful thing like this--"
About then he turned himself toward her. He was laughing!
"Do you think it's funny?" she demanded.
"Funny?" replied John Hewitt, still laughing desperately, and trying
quite as desperately to do it quietly enough to prevent the descent
of the others, wanting to know what he was laughing at. "I think
it's one of the funniest things that ever happened. Talk about
Nemesis--if ever a punishment fitted the crime, this does!"
Joy sighed relievedly. At least, he wasn't being angry about it, and
he might very well have been. She glanced out the window, which,
like the windows of most New England cars in summer, had evidently
been closed ever since John Hancock died, and glued in place. Then
suddenly the thing struck her as funny, too. They were in for it,
and by their own act. She began to laugh with him, quite forgetting
that she had more explanations before her, and as a really honorable
girl had no alternative but going back to Grandmother with her sins
on her head.
"Oh, it _is_ ridiculous," she gasped. "I feel as if I'd
kidnapped you and couldn't dispose of you.... We really must stop
laughing, or the others will come down on us to know what we're
laughing at."
"You won't be able to dispose of me till the visit's over, at any
rate," John answered her, sobering a little. "My mother and your
grandmother have settled that for us effectually."
Joy sat bolt upright and faced him.
"You mean you're going to let it go on?"
"Why, of course I'm going to let it go on," said he
matter-of-factly. "What else can we do about it?"
Joy's heart gave a spring of happiness. She wouldn't miss her visit,
after all!
"We can find out that we don't like each other, and break off the day
you go home. I'll come back from the train very sad," he told her.
"Thank you _very_ much," she said happily. "I thought I was
going to have to confess to every one and go back to Grandmother.
I'm very glad I needn't."
"You poor kiddie!" he said, as he had said the first time he met
her. "Well, on this particular point all you have to do is remember
what Beatrice Fairfax says, 'Never explain and never confess, and
you'll be respected and admired by all.'"
"It sounds like getting admiration and respect under false
pretenses," Joy answered doubtfully. But she dimpled as she said it
and looked up sideways at John under her black eyelashes.
The effect was so unexpected and pretty that it set John wondering
why she didn't do it oftener. Suddenly a probable reason dawned on
him. When John Hewitt discovered anything wrong it was his prompt
habit to right it, and he did so now.
"See here, child, I can't have you being afraid of me," he said
peremptorily. "When I told you I was a trial fiancé, I didn't mean
that I was to be less of a fiancé than a trial. If we're going to be
theoretically engaged for a month, we'll have to be friends, at
least, and friends trust each other, and know they can ask each
other to do anything they want. They know, too, that they never need
be afraid of either being angry at the other."
"Then I'm to take it for granted that you feel as friendly toward me
as I do toward you?" she asked.
"Why, naturally," he answered. "That's friendship."
"It sounds much nicer than anything I ever heard about in my life,"
said Joy enthusiastically. "But--are you sure I'm not the one that's
going to be more of a trial than a fiancé? I--I don't want to be a
bother, you know."
"If you are, I'll tell you," he promised.
"All right," said Joy contentedly, "and I promise not to have my
feelings hurt a bit."
She felt quite unafraid of him by now, as he had intended, for they
had been talking together as if they were exactly the same age--or,
rather, Joy thought, as if nobody had any age at all.
"Do you know," she told him confidentially, "I _did_ want a
lover, back there at home. A real one, I mean. I saw a girl with
one, and you could tell there wasn't anything on earth so nice as
being lovers. But this is lots better--all the nice part of it and
none of the stupid part--for I suppose they were going to be
married."
John looked at her curiously.
"Joy, did you never have a friend of your own age, or any companions
but those old people of yours?"
She shook her head, smiling.
"Never any."
"That accounts for you, I suppose," said he with a sigh, which
puzzled Joy very much. She had accepted as gospel John's order not
to be afraid of him; and she was talking to him as if he were
confidant, father and sister, all in one. That it might be treatment
a very attractive man wasn't used to never dawned on her, because
she had nothing to check up by.
"Do I need accounting for?" she inquired, with another of the
sidelong smiling glances he approved of.
She really wanted to know, but she was so contented with life as it
was then that she did not feel particularly distressed over it. Her
trial lover took another look at her and decided that perhaps she
didn't need to be accounted for, after all. She was wearing the
little golden-brown suit she clung to, with its little cap to match,
and her cheeks were flushed with the heat of that September day. It
was as interesting to watch her develop one and another little way,
he decided, as it would have been to observe an intelligent child.
That there was some slight difference in his mind between her and a
bona fide intelligent child was proved by that fact that he would
just as lief that Philip had not interrupted them just then: though
the interruption was done with all Philip's natural grace.
He was mussed and rather dusty, and the front of his blue Oliver
Twist suit bore an unmistakable paw-mark on its bosom.
"John," he said earnestly, "if you don't hurry, Foxy will have been
alone quite a while. Mother says I mustn't stay wiv him any longer,
and he doesn't seem to think brakemen is people a bit."
Joy gave a little gurgle of laughter. It reminded her of Mr. James
Arthur Gosport and how he loved brakemen. How shocked he would have
been at the pedigreed Foxy! She began to tell John about it, then
stopped herself.
"But you want to go and sit with the dog," she said, as they laughed
over it; for Philip was standing, silent and reproachful, till John
should do his duty by the beloved animal.
"I don't want to a bit," said John frankly, "but I suppose my
reputation with Foxy demands it."
He rose reluctantly, quoting from the "Bab Ballads":
"_My own convenience counts as_ nil:
_It is my duty, and I will!_"