word to word. "...Harrington is a good dancer, isn't he? Phyllis looks
all right, but I fancy she guides hard. Those tall women often do....
Why, anybody with brows and lashes like yours, and hair that color,
combined with that angelic please-guide-me-through-a-hard-world
expression simply shrieks aloud for a name like that. A sorcerette is
a cross between a seraph and a little witch. There's no telling what
she might do to you!"
"Oh!" cooed Joy.
It sounded like a very happy "Oh," and Clarence, experienced
love-pirate though he was, hadn't a way in the world of knowing that
Joy's pleasure came of being still undiscovered, not of his winning
ways.
She danced on with him to the very last note of the record,
enraptured to find that she really could dance, and came back to the
end of the room where Mrs. Hewitt still sat; her eyes starry with
delight.
"Oh, I can dance when I just go where the man takes me!" she cried.
"I never knew I could!"
"You dance very well," said John's quiet voice from behind his
mother's chair. "Will you dance with me now?"
Joy, regarding him, saw that he was vexed. Most people would not
have noticed it, but very few of his moods escaped Joy. He was a
little graver than usual, and his voice was quieter.
"If I can," she answered. "I thought you were dancing this with Miss
Maddox."
"I didn't think it would show proper courtesy to my fiancée to dance
first with some one else," John answered.
Clarence had set the music going again, and was swinging round the
room with Gail. As it began, John, with no more words, drew Joy out
on the floor with him.
She looked up in surprise at his words.
"Why--why, I didn't know I was that much of a fiancée to you. I
thought probably you'd rather be with Gail. And--and I didn't know I
was going to dance anyway. I didn't know I could!"
He looked down at her again, apparently to see whether she was in
earnest, holding her off for a moment as they danced.
She hoped he would deny that he preferred being with Gail, but he
did not.
"We are going through our month of relationship _right_," he
told her definitely, smiling, but looking down at her with the
steady, steel-colored light in his gray eyes that she knew meant "no
appeal." "Gail does not enter into it at all. But I admit that
Rutherford's quickness put me in the wrong."
"If only," thought Joy, acutely conscious of his firm hold, "instead
of laying down the law that way, he would let go and admit that he
was angry!" For he certainly was, and it wasn't at all her fault,
unless going where Clarence took her was a crime. John _hadn't_
thought of dancing first. Was he the kind of person who always
thought he was right even when he knew he wasn't? If so, maybe a
month _was_ long enough.... But the thought of the end of the
month hurt, no matter how unreasonable she tried to think John, and
she threw down her arms--the only way, if she had known, to make
John throw down his.
"Are you angry at me?" she half whispered. "I--please don't be
angry. Nobody ever was, and I don't want to be silly, but I don't
believe I could stand it."
He swept her rhythmically on, but she could feel his arm relax and
hold her more warmly, and his wonderful gray eyes softened again as
they looked into hers.
"Poor little thing! I keep forgetting that you're just a child.
Sometimes you aren't, you know."
"No, sometimes I'm not," Joy echoed. Then she laughed up at him
impishly. "You say this thing is going to be done right?" she
mocked. "Very well, then, when Mr. Rutherford is nice to me you
ought to be nicer. When he sits down close to me and tells me I'm a
sorcerette--"
"A what?" demanded John swiftly. "See here, Joy, I'm practically in
charge of you, and you're very young, you know, and can't be
expected to know much about men. Rutherford is attractive and all
that, but he's a man I wouldn't trust the other side of a biscuit.
Any man can tell you that. Allan--"
"He talks just like a poet," said Joy innocently. How could John
know that this was an insult, not a compliment, in Joy's mind? She
had seen any amount of Clarences--ignoring her, to be sure, but
still saying Clarence things to others in her hearing--all her days.
"That may be," said John. "I'm no judge of poets, and I suppose you
are.... See here, Joy, there's an inhabitant--two of 'em--coming in
the doorway. Mother'll be wanting you to stand in a silly line and
pass people along to her, or away from her, or something. Come here
with me and we'll finish this. You're getting a wrong impression of
what I mean."
Joy found herself being steered masterfully into a little semi-dark
room that opened off the long parlor. John planted her in a low
chair in a corner and pulled up a stool for himself just opposite.
"They won't find us for at least ten minutes, unless we wigwag.
Now--what's a sorcerette?"
His tone, in spite of his carelessness, betrayed a certain anxiety
to learn. Joy answered him with fullness and simplicity.
"A sorcerette is somebody with coloring like mine, and a cross
between a seraph and a little witch," she replied innocently.
"That's what Clarence said. But I _think_ he made up the name
himself," she added conscientiously, as if that would be some help.
John grinned a little in spite of himself.
"I don't like the idea particularly of his making the name up himself,"
he remarked; "but there is something in what Rutherford said!"
"I'm very glad you think so," said Joy with a transparent meekness.
"And now that you've found out, isn't it time you went back to your
duties?"
He looked at her doubtfully, where she sat in the half-light with
her head held high and her hands crossed on her green-and-silver
lap. He could not quite make out her expression.
But he had not much more chance for cross-questioning, because
guests were beginning to come thickly, and his mother was sending
out agonized scouting parties for the feature of the evening.
Phyllis, knowing the rooms of old, discovered her. She swooped down
on the pair, where they were sitting in the little dim room.
"You wretched people, this is no time for that sort of thing!" she
exclaimed, shoving them before her. "Please try to remember that you
will, in all likelihood, spend a lifetime together. Joy, three
severe New England spinsters have already taken Gail Maddox for you.
Hurry!"
The suggestion was quite enough, as Phyllis may have known it would
be. Joy whisked into her place, which was opposite the double doors,
between Mrs. Hewitt and Phyllis, and taking her burden of white
chrysanthemums on one arm, proceeded to be as charming to her future
patients-in-law as she knew how.
Mrs. Hewitt and Phyllis cast glances of astonished admiration at
each other over her head. They neither of them had thought of Joy as
anything but a sweet child, or an affectionate child--a darling, but
shy and unused to the world. But she was managing her share of the
evening's pageant as if she had run a salon for twenty years. It did
not occur to them that the explanation was that she practically had
been brought up in one. She had been a part of the bi-weekly
receptions given to the small and great of the earth by Havenith the
poet ever since she was old enough to come into the parlors and
could be trusted not to cry or snatch cake.
"Good gracious, Joy, _where_ did you learn to drive people
four-in-hand this way?" breathed Phyllis admiringly, in a lull. "I
_know_, if I'd had to talk to two Miss Peabodys and three Miss
Brearleys and a stray Jones _all_ at once, at least five of
them would have hated me forever after. And you kept them going like
a juggler's balls!"
"They're not half as hard as the people at Grandfather's
afternoons," answered Joy. "He had almost every kind of
person--everybody wanted to see him, you know, and he felt it his
duty to gratify as many as he could, he said. Oh, Phyllis,
_ten_ Brearleys and Peabodys are nothing to trying to make
three Celtic poets and a vers-librist talk pleasantly to each
other!"
"You're a darling," said Phyllis irrelevantly.
"I see you've been working virtuously hard," put in Gail pleasantly,
sauntering up. "Now, _I_ gave up being noble-hearted to the
uninteresting some time ago. There's very little in it. I collected
a suitor or so early in the evening, and we've been telling each
other what we really thought of all the worst guests, in the little
room off. You ought to hear John's description of--"
"She shan't--it's not for your young ears," said Clarence
possessively from where he stood, a little behind Gail. Gail had
three men with her--Clarence, John, and a slim youth who looked
younger than he proved to be, and who answered to the name of Tiddy.
All Joy's feelings of triumph and innocent satisfaction in having
won the liking of Mrs. Hewitt's guests faded. She felt as Gail had
made her feel before--foolishly good and ridiculously young and
altogether unsuccessful in life. For a moment the mood held her in a
very crushed state of mind: then she caught Clarence's eyes fixed
upon her with a look of amused admiration. It spurred her.
"I've been doing my duty by my future lord and master," she said
lightly. "But now you put it that way, he doesn't sound like a
worthy cause a bit."
The men laughed, though Joy's words hadn't sounded particularly witty
to herself. "I'm going to abjure duty now," she went on hurriedly.
"The orchestra's playing that thing people can dance me to----"
She held her hand and arm gracefully high, in the old minuet pose,
and laughed up at Clarence. _He_ wasn't supposed to be her
lover, and yet he saw through Gail when John didn't----
"By Jove, I can do the minuet!" he said eagerly. "Can you, Miss Joy?"
She smiled and nodded.
_"Grandma told me all about it,
Taught me so I could not doubt it,"_
she sang softly.
"We'll do it--we'll do it for the happy villagers!" proclaimed Clarence.
"Here, Tiddy, go cut a girl out of the herd, and find Harrington,
too. We're the bell-cows. All you others have to do is to obediently
follow us--the men follow me and the women tag around after Miss
Joy--which last seems wrong, but can't be helped."
"Not at all," said John amiably. "Far be it from me to seem to steal
your thunder, Rutherford, but I, too, was in the village pageant
last year, and I minuet excellently. All my grateful patients said
so. You know, if you led off, they might take you for the man who's
going to marry Miss Havenith."
Clarence couldn't very well do or say anything to his host, but he
looked far from pleased as John took Joy's hand and quietly led her
into line. Tiddy came up just then with a pretty, dark little girl
whom he had selected with great judgment from the guests as being
just of a height between Joy and Gail. He had also enlisted the
orchestra, for it began to play "La Cinquantaine" as they all took
their places facing each other. They were all laughing, even
Clarence. The guests, catching the spirit of the thing, began to
laugh and applaud, and--it seemed like magic that it could be done
so swiftly--formed two more sets in the rest of the room, while the
elders, against the wall, watched approvingly.
"I thought nobody but me danced minuets any more," Joy whispered to
John as, her eyes alight with happiness, she crossed him in the
changes of the lovely old dance.
"There happened to be a historical pageant here last summer," he
explained to her, "and there were eight minuet sets in the
Revolutionary episode, so we had to learn. Mother hounded me into
it. I'm glad now she did."
"Why?" inquired Joy innocently the next time she met him.
"I like to maintain my rights," he answered with a little gleam of
fun in his eyes.
But Joy felt fairly certain that the gleam of fun had behind it a
gleam of decision. Certainly John's motto was, "What's mine's
mine!"--even when it was rented.
They finished to applause, and as the orchestra ended its minuet it
slid on into a modern dance, and so did each of the couples, dancing
on out on the floor.
Joy sank down at the end of the waltz on a seat by the wall, with
John beside her.
He bent over her.
"Having a good time, kiddie?" he asked her gently. She nodded, her
eyes like stars.
"Oh, I'm _people_, at last!" she said with a soft exultance.
"I've always looked on and looked on, like a doll or a mechanical
figure--and I'm real--I'm in the midst of things! And it's all you
and the wishing ring! ... John, did you see? Your people--they really
liked me!"
"Of course they did, you little goosie," he told her, smiling down
at her. "You have more personal charm than almost any girl I ever
knew. I don't know any one who doesn't like you."
"Gail doesn't," Joy ventured.
John shook his head.
"You don't understand Gail," he said. "She's a mighty brilliant
girl. She doesn't often like other girls, I admit that--but she took
to you. I could see it."
"Could you?" flashed Joy. "Men see so much! ... She's beckoning to you."
She flung her head back angrily. Nobody likes to be told she doesn't
understand another girl--and the fact that the girl is mighty
brilliant doesn't make you feel better about it.
"I'll be back in just a moment," said John obliviously, and went
with what seemed to Joy unnecessary docility.
She stood there alone, her hands clasped hard, her head up--to all
appearance a vivid, triumphant little figure. Her heart was beating
like mad and her cheeks burnt. She had just found out something
about herself, something that a wiser, older woman would have known
a long time ago: as long ago as when the Wishing Ring Man stood, the
light glinting on his fair hair and sturdy shoulders, in the opening
of Grandfather's hall door.
She was in love with John--furiously, wildly, heart-breakingly in
love with him. And she was going to have to live close by him for a
month, knowing that, and keeping him from knowing it--and then go
away from him and never see him any more.
"This is our dance, Sorcerette," said Clarence's voice in her ear.
CHAPTER EIGHT
A FOUNTAIN IN FAIRYLAND
Joy had supposed, when she finally went to sleep at three in the
morning, that she would waken with all the excitement gone and
feeling very unhappy. She had always heard that it made you unhappy
to be in love.
Instead, she opened her eyes with the excitement of it all still
pulsing through her. The fact that John was in the world and she
could care for him seemed almost enough to account for the sense of
happiness that possessed her as she pattered over to the window and
looked out. And what little more was needed to account for her
exhilaration could be found in the wonderful September morning
outside. There probably _were_ troubles somewhere or other,
such as darkened city parlors, minor poets, and sophisticated
seekers after John, but somehow she and they didn't connect. The air
was so tingling and sunny, and the garden was so beautiful, and being
young and free and in the country was so heavenly that she dressed
and ran down, and sang along the garden paths as she picked herself
a big bunch of golden chrysanthemums and purple and pink asters.
Nobody else, apparently, was stirring yet. Joy was beginning to feel
hungry, so she strayed into the dining-room, to see whether by any
chance anybody else was down.
Phyllis was just coming into the dining-room, with her son
frolicking about her.
"How do you feel after your triumph last night?" she asked. "Dead;
or do you want another party this morning? I was proud of you, Joy.
Everybody told me how pretty you were, and how charming, and how
intelligent it was of me to be a friend of yours."
Joy flushed with genuine pleasure.
"Oh, was I--did they?" she asked. "Phyllis, it was _lovely!_ ...
And think of being able to dance like that without knowing how!
That was just a plain miracle, if you like!"
"Good-morning, Joy," said Allan, coming in at this point.
He sat down with them and attacked his grapefruit.
"I see I'm two laps behind on breakfast. Philip, you young rascal,
where's my cherry?"
Philip giggled uncontrollably.
"Why, Father, you ate it yourself! _You_ ate it while you said
good-morning to Joy!"
"You seem to have made one fast friend, Joy," pursued Allan,
dismissing the subject of the cherry for later consideration.
"Rutherford confided to me last night that he thought he had been
working too hard; he isn't returning to his native heath for a month
more. His aunt's been pressing him to stay on, and he thinks he
will. He's coming over to see me this morning. He's devoted to me,"
stated Allan sweetly. "There's nothing he needs more than my
friendship. He explained it to me."
Phyllis and he both laughed.
"You always did have winning ways, Allan," said his wife
mischievously. "When is John expected to drop in? He, too, loves
you--don't forget that!"
Allan grinned.
"Poor old Johnny has to look after his patients. He can't very well
snatch a vacation in his own home town. It's a hard world for
gentlemen, Joy!"
Phyllis looked from one to the other of them with an answering light
of mischief in her eyes.
"I suppose John could take anybody he liked to hold the car,
couldn't he?" she said demurely. "In fact--he has!"
"If you mean me," answered Joy, "he was very severe with me
yesterday. John is bringing me up in the way I should go!" The
feeling of vivid excitement was still carrying her along, and she
laughed as she answered them.
Allan looked at her critically.
"H'm!" he said thoughtfully. "I seem to have a feeling that he won't
bring you such an amazing distance, at that--short time as I have
known you. Did you say popovers this morning, Phyllis?"
"Popovers," nodded Phyllis, "and some of Lily-Anna's fresh marmalade."
"An' little dogs!" broke in Philip enthusiastically. "Oh, Father,
don't you just _love_ little dogs?"
His mother tried to look troubled.
"Allan, don't you think you could teach Phil, by precept or example,
that they really are sausages?" she asked. "The other day at Mrs.
Varney's we had them for luncheon, and he said, 'I'd like another
pup, please!' And she was shocked to the heart's core."
"It's such a nice convenient name," pleaded Allan. "Joy, I have to
waste most of the morning talking over the long-distance 'phone to
my lawyer. I shall spend an hour discussing leases, and two more
bullying him and his wife into coming out to visit us. You will
readily see that I can't entertain my new-found soulmate at the same
time. I don't suppose you could offer any suggestions about his
amusement?"
"Solitaire," suggested Joy demurely. "Or you might give him a book
to read."
Allan threw back his head and laughed.
"Excellent ideas, both!" he said, "and truly original. He shall have
his choice!"
"You have the kindest hearts in the world," said Phyllis, summoning
the waitress. "Allan, before you finish that million-dollar
conversation to Mr. De Guenther, please call me. I want to speak to
him a minute, too."
"I'll call you," he promised.
They drifted off, Phyllis to attend to her housekeeping, Allan to
his long-distance leases, and Philip to find Angela, whom he never
forgot for long. She had breakfast with her nurse, and Philip felt
it was time he looked her up. He adored his little sister, and spent
the larger part of his days in teaching her everything he had been
taught, which was sometimes hard on Angela, who obeyed him
implicitly.
As for Joy, she strayed out into the garden again. The feeling of
intense, happy aliveness in a wonderful world was still on her, and
she wanted to be alone to think things out--to think out especially
the thing she had discovered last night--and what to do about it.
It was as warm as June by this time, for the sun was getting higher,
and she went slowly down the paths with the sun shining on her hair
and making it look like fire, breaking, as she went, a few more
flowers to pin in her dress. She had put on one of her old
picture-frocks, a straight dull-cream wool thing that she wore in
the mornings at home, girdled in with a silver cord about the hips.
She fitted the garden exceedingly well, though nothing was further
from her thoughts.
At the far end, among a tangle of roses and beneath a group of
shade-trees, the Harringtons had set a little fountain, a flat,
low-set marble basin with a single jet of water springing high, and
falling almost straight down again. Its purpose was to cool the air
on very hot days, but it always flowed till frost, because it was so
pretty Phyllis never could bear to have it shut off. Joy loved the
half-hidden, lovely place, though she had only had one glimpse of it
before, and she sat down by it and began to try to think things out.
She had a much harder thinking to do than she'd had for a long time.
"A 'hard world for gentlemen'!" meditated Joy, and laughed as she
trailed one hand in the water. "It's a much harder one for ladies,
if Allan but knew it!"
She bent over, half-absently, to watch the water in the basin. It
fascinated her, the flow of it, and it helped her to reason things
out. There were several things that needed reasoning.
To begin with--there was no use saying it wasn't so, for it was--she
was in love with John.... Her heart beat hard as she looked down
into the water and said the words in her mind. It would have been
lovely to do nothing but sit there and think of him. There were so
many different wonderful things he had for her to think about; his
steady eyes that changed from warm-gray to steel-gray, and back, and
could look as if they loved you or hated you or admired you or
fathered you, while the rest of his face told nothing at all; the
little gold glint in his fair hair and the way it curled when it was
damp weather; his square, back-flung shoulders; the strong way he
had of moving you about, as if you were a doll--the way his voice
sounded when she said certain words--
Joy pulled her thoughts from all that by force.
"Clarence Rutherford calls me a sorcerette," she thought, "and I
suppose I must be. This must be being one. But, oh, I _have_ to
think how I can get John to love me back!"
It looked a little hopeless, to think of, at first. He was so old
and wise and strong, compared to her, just a nineteen-year-old girl
who had never had even one lover to practise on! Something Gail had
said the night before came back to her--one of the girl's
half-scornful, half-amused phrases.
"Barring a male flirt or so like Clarence over there," she had
vouchsafed, "men _are_ such simple-minded children of nature!
All you have to do is to treat them like hounds and tell them what
to do, and they'll do it."
Joy could scarcely imagine treating John like a hound. She was too
afraid of him, except once in a while when she had a burst of
daring. But, at any rate, if she went on the principle that John was
simple-minded and could always be depended on to think she felt the
way she acted, things would be lots easier.
"If only I can keep the courage!" she prayed.
But as to details. She would have to let John see enough of her to
want her about. But--not so much that he got tired of it.
"I wonder how much of me would tire him?" she said. Anyway--Joy
dimpled as she thought of it--he seemed to want to be the only one.
He didn't seem to want Clarence around. They all kept telling her
Clarence was a flirt--as if she wanted him to be anything else! It's
a comfort sometimes to know that a man can be depended on not to
have intentions.... Very well, she would try to make John jealous of
Clarence. Not enough to hurt him--it would be dreadful to hurt
him!--but enough to make herself valuable.
"It's going to be very hard," she decided, "because all I want is to
do just as he says and make everything as happy for him as I can.
Oh, dear, why are men like that!"
But she was fairly certain that they were. They were like that in
the books, and Gail had said so. Gail apparently knew.
"It'll be hard," she thought sadly. Then her face brightened. "But
it'll be fun! and if it works I'll be able to be as nice to John as
I want to all the rest of my life, and please him to my heart's
content. Why, it'll be my duty!"
She smiled and fell into another dream about John, leaning over the
fountain, with her copper braids falling across her bosom.
She had forgotten all the outside things, until presently she felt
some one standing near her.
"_Lean down to the water, Melisande, Melisande!_"
the some one sang, in a soft, half-mocking voice.
She turned and looked up.
"How do you do, Mr. Rutherford?" she said sedately.
She had been addressed as "Melisande" too many times, at home with
the poets, to be particularly excited, but even a man of Clarence's
well-known capabilities couldn't be expected to know this. He
disposed himself gracefully along the edge of the fountain. He had a
feline and leisurely grace, in spite of the fact that he wasn't
specially thin, had Clarence, as he very well knew.