afraid I'd think life was too short to take all that trouble."
"I'm coming to the conclusion that there's nothing you can't do," he said
irrelevantly. "But I suppose you had a very able godmother--princesses
do, don't they?"
"I have a wishing ring," Joy explained, entering into the play.
"It's very well trained. All I have to do is to tell it things, and
it sees to them immediately."
John went on eating his soup.
"You look as if you wanted to ask it to do something," she pursued.
He looked thoughtful.
"As a matter of fact, I do; but it seems an unfair advantage to take
not only of a docile wishing ring, but of you," he stated.
"Try us and see," invited Joy, ringing, with a visible satisfaction
in things, for the next course.
So John took courage.
"It's socks," he confessed with a boyish shame-facedness. "I--I'd
like to see how you'd look doing them. I can't quite make myself see
you, even now.... I suppose I'm silly--I'd like to see you sitting
under the light in there, sewing for me, just once."
"You mean mending, not sewing," Joy told him cheerfully. However the
wishing ring may have felt about the request, the princess was
frankly delighted, "Have you got many? I do them very fast!"
John still looked doubtful. He still seemed to feel that it was a
mean advantage to take of the most domesticated ring and princess.
"You see," he explained, "Mother's idea is--and it's likely a very
good one--that when socks have holes you throw 'em away and get
more. She doesn't make allowance, though, for one's getting attached
to a pair. And I bought six pairs lately that I liked awfully well,
and I hated to see them die.... They're just little holes."
"I'll get them and do them as soon as we're through dinner," she
promised. "Won't your mother mind?"
"She'll be delighted," John promised sincerely. "But she hasn't
them. I have."
Accordingly, after dinner Joy demanded them, and John produced them,
while she got out her mending-basket, something he had never
suspected her of possessing, he told her.
She sat down under the lamp with her work, tying on the little
sewing-apron Mrs. Hewitt had given her the day before.
"Why, they scarcely have holes at all," she marveled. "I can do lots
more than these."
"There are lots more," said John rather mournfully. But he did not
feel particularly mournful. He was absorbed in the picture she made
sitting there by the lamp, near the fire, her red mouth smiling to
itself a little, and her black lashes shadowing her cheeks as her
hands moved deftly at her work. John himself, on the other side of
the fire, had a paper across his knees, but he forgot to read it,
watching her. She seemed to turn the place into a home, sitting there
quietly happy, swiftly setting her tiny, accurately woven stitches.
John's mother was an adorable playmate, but responsibilities were,
to her, something to laugh about. She had always declared that John
should have been her father, not her son; and he had always tried to
fill the role as best he could. But there had always been things,
though he had never admitted it to himself, that he had missed. It
would have been pleasant to him if there had been some one who
shared his interest in the looks of the place and in the gardens and
orchards that were his special pride. He would have liked to have
his mother care about his patients, to play for him in the evenings,
perhaps, and to think about his tastes in little things. But though
a tall harp stood in a corner of the living-room, and a piano was
somewhere else, they were not often touched. Mrs. Hewitt was
passionately interested in people. She loved traveling and
house-parties and fads of all kinds--but she had no roots to speak
of. John had never felt so much as if his house was his home as he
did tonight, with the cold rain dashing against the windows outside,
and inside the warm light, and the busy girl sitting across from
him, sewing, and smiling to herself.
She looked up, as he glanced across at her contentedly, and spoke.
"I thought you seemed a little down tonight when you came in, John.
How is the little La Guardia girl? You were having something of a
struggle over her treatment the last time I went with you."
"By Jove, you have a memory!" said John, seeming a little startled.
"The child is worse today, and it was on my mind. How on earth did
you guess it, Joy?"
She only laughed softly.
"Don't you suppose I'm interested in your affairs? I don't like you
to be worried. And I knew Giulia La Guardia was the only patient who
wasn't doing well at last accounts. Just what is the trouble?"
John leaned forward and began to tell her about the child. Her blue
eyes glanced up and down, back and forth, from him to her sewing, as
she listened, and occasionally asked a question. They had both
forgotten everything but the room and themselves, when they heard a
genial male voice in the hall.
"No, indeed, my dear girl," it said, "I don't need to be announced
in the very least. I'll go straight in."
And in just as brief a time as it might take an active young man to
shed his overshoes and his raincoat, in walked Clarence Rutherford,
as gay as always, and unusually secure of his welcome.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
PIRATE COUSINS TO THE RESCUE
"Thought I'd drop in and tell you some inspiriting news, it's such a
beastly night," said he with _empressement_. "--Princess Melisande!
What have they been doing to you?" he broke off to ask tenderly under
his breath. "Our little princess turned into a Cinderella!"
His tone was calculated to induce self-pity in the breast of an
oyster. But Joy, though she liked it mildly, did not feel moved to
tears. Clarence was an interruption, even if a flattering one.
"My mother is ill," explained John, when Clarence had greeted him
also in his most setting-at-ease manner. ("Kind of a man who'd try
to make you welcome in your own house!" he growled under his breath.
John also felt interrupted.)
But Clarence established himself friendlily in a third chair, and
told Joy with charming masterfulness that she was to put down her
work immediately and listen to him.
"We're going to get up a Gilbert and Sullivan opera," said he. "Now
it stands to reason that we have to have you. I can tell by the
pretty way you speak you have a good stage delivery, and you have
all sorts of presence. Question is, have you a voice? If so, much
honor shall be yours."
"Well, I've had lessons for years, and they say so," offered Joy
modestly. "It's mezzo-soprano--lyric."
Both men looked at her in surprise. People were always being
surprised at things she knew--as if she had ever done anything in
her life but be trained--for no particular purpose, as it had
seemed. And now everything she knew seemed to be going to be useful,
one way or another. Harp lessons, singing lessons, lessons in the
proper way to speak Grandfather's poetry--there had never seemed to
be any particular point to any of them. And now everything was
falling into line.
"Go on," said Clarence. "But I forgot, you said you couldn't dance."
"Only the kind that people do in--bare feet and Greek draperies, and
I hate that," Joy answered deprecatingly.
"You are a Philistine," said Clarence. "But it's attractive."
"One of Grandfather's friends does it for a living, and taught me, as
a token of affection and esteem, she called it. Would it be any use?"
"Use?" said Clarence rapturously. "You are exactly what the doctor
ordered. If I can stun Gail into submission you shall be our leading
lady, with all the real star parts in your grasp. Rehearsals at ten
sharp, and _I'm_ the director. _Me voici!_"
He rose and made her a deep bow.
He had, apparently, quite forgotten John, who still sat quietly with
his paper across his knees, listening to them.
"And where do I come in?" he asked with a little twinkle in his eyes.
"Oh-oh yes," returned Clarence genially, "my dear fellow, how could
we have forgotten you? Good old John, to want a part!"
He sounded to Joy rather too much as if he was saying, "Good old Fido!"
"It's something like saying it to a large dog with a bite, too," she
meditated naughtily. "Clarence may find that out in a minute."
She went on with her domestic duties, mending the tiny holes in the
socks in her lap, and smiling secretly to herself. It did not occur
to her, but if any one had told her a month before that she would be
sitting alone with two interesting men, watching their relations
becoming more and more strained on her account, she would have
denied it flatly. Now that it was happening it seemed quite natural.
It had doubtless seemed quite natural to Aunt Lucilla.... She darned
on placidly, while Clarence continued his infuriating efforts to put
John at ease.
"There'll be a delightful part for you, old man," he assured his
friend tenderly. "Don't worry about that. You'll have your chance."
The idea of a dominant, large-ideaed, hardworking John Hewitt
hungering for "his chance" in an amateur comic opera struck Joy as
so funny that she couldn't repress a small giggle and a glance
across at him. John caught her look and gave her an answering gleam
of amusement.
"You have the kindest heart in the world, Rutherford," said he
sedately, "and I'll never forget it of you. ... Joy, my dear, would
you mind running upstairs and seeing if Mother needs anything? And
you may put away those socks you've been doing in my top drawer at
the same time."
Joy stiffened a little at the tone of easy authority, and then
caught John's eye again. The amused look was still there--that, and
a look of certainty that she would help him play his hand. He was
getting neatly back at Clarence!
She rose meekly.
"Yes, John," she said in the very tone she would have used if the
alternative had been a beating, and excusing herself to Clarence in
the same meek voice, took herself and her completed work upstairs.
A glance at her room through the crack of the door told Joy that
Mrs. Hewitt was sleeping sweetly. She opened the door of John's room
with a more fearful heart. It seemed a little frightening to go into
his own private room where he lived. She pushed open the door and
tiptoed in.
It was a large room, very orderly, with a faint, fresh smell of
cigars and toilet water about it--the smell that no amount of airing
can ever quite drive out of a man's room. Joy liked it. The dresser,
flanked by a tie-rack, faced her as she came in. She ran to it,
jerked out a drawer and stuffed in the socks hurriedly, and turned
to go down again. In the middle of the room she paused for a moment.
It was all so intimately, dearly John, and she did love John so!...
And what was she, after all, with all her independences and
certainties, but an ignorant, unwise child whom two wise grown men
were using for a pet or a plaything--how could she tell which?
She felt suddenly little and frightened and helpless. The current of
mischief and merriment dropped away from her for a minute, here
where everything, from the class picture on the wall to the pipe on
the bureau, spoke so of John--of what everything about him meant to
her--about what going away from him would mean. She flung herself on
her knees beside the narrow iron cot in the corner, her arms out
over the pillow where his head rested.
"Oh, God, please make it all come straight and right!" she begged.
"I don't suppose I did what I ought to, and maybe I'm not now, but
please do let things come out the way they should! And if you can't
make us both happy, make John--but--oh, God, please try to tuck me
in too--I do want to be happy so!"
She knelt there a little longer, with her arms thrown out over the
pillow. Saying her prayers always comforted her. She waited till she
was quieter. Then she rose resolutely and dried her eyes, and went
downstairs again, to make her report.
She found that Clarence was gone.
"I got rid of him," John explained serenely to her questioning
glance. "You didn't need him particularly, did you, kiddie?"
Joy lifted her eyebrows.
"Not particularly," she replied, "but I should have liked to say
good-night to him."
"I felt exactly that way myself," responded John cheerfully, "so I
did. I was like the man in the Ibsen parody, who said, 'I will not
only make him _feel_, but be at home!'" He paused a moment, and
looked graver. "Come here, kiddie," he said.
Joy had been standing just inside the door all this time, on tiptoe
for flight. She came slowly over in response to his beckoning hand,
and he drew her down to a stool beside him, keeping his arm around her.
"Little girl," he said, "you're young, and you're inexperienced, and
I don't want to see you let Rutherford go too far. I'd rather you
didn't take part in this affair he's getting up."
Joy started back from his encircling arm, and looked at him
reproachfully.
"Oh, John! Why, I want to _dreadfully!_"
"It isn't that I want to take any pleasure away from you," he
explained. "It's simply that the opera would of necessity throw you
into closer contact with Clarence--and I don't think you quite
understand what Clarence is. He is very attractive, but, as I have
told you before, he is not a man I would trust. A man who goes as
deliberately about making women in love with him as he does, with a
frank admission to other men that he collects them, isn't a man I
want you to have much to do with."
Joy moved away from the arm entirely. She felt hurt.
"In other words, you're afraid he'll toy with my young affections?"
she answered flippantly. "Very well--let him try! Goodness knows
he's labeled loudly enough. Every time he comes within a mile
somebody says that about him. Everything about him says it for
itself, for the matter of that. It isn't any secret. Let him toy! It
amuses him and doesn't hurt me."
"If I could be sure it wouldn't hurt you--" said John in a low
voice. "He is very fascinating, Joy."
There was a note of pain in John's voice, but Joy did not heed it.
"_You_ are hurting me!" she said angrily, rising. "How can you----"
She did not finish. She had been going to say, "How can you talk
that way when I belong to you?" but she had not the courage. He
could never know how much she belonged to him. "I very much want to
be in this opera, and I think I shall," she said definitely.
"I have no way of preventing you," he answered coldly.
"But can't you trust me not to be silly?" she asked in a softer
tone. "Oh, John, I'll promise not to let Clarence break my heart. I
promise not to let _anything_ break it. Good-night."
She gathered up her mending-basket, set her chair carefully where it
had belonged, and went slowly out of the room without another word.
She did not know how John would greet her next morning. But he
proved to be no more of a malice-bearing animal than she, and when
she smiled brightly at him over the coffee-cups he smiled back in
quite as friendly a fashion, and they had a very cheerful breakfast
together--so cheerful that John was late getting out on his rounds.
At the door he paused, looking back at her.
"Look here, kiddie, I wasn't fair about that thing last night," he
said. "I've been thinking it over. I haven't a right in the world to
ask you to keep out of something that would give you pleasure. Go on
and play all the parts there are in it if you like. I'll be in it
myself, in the 'nice part' Rutherford is so considerately saving up
for me--" he grinned--"and----"
"And if you see me being swept off my feet you can wave your
handkerchief, or something," ended Joy for him, and they both
laughed. And so peace was restored, and Joy went on about her
morning duties with a happy heart. It seemed to her, as she thought
of him while she worked, that he had been unwontedly tender of her
as he bade her good-by. She could not think why. At any rate she was
very happy, and she sang as she sat at the living-room desk, after
her morning inspection of the ice-box, writing out the list for the
marketing, and the menus for that day's luncheon and dinner.
The maids took a deep interest in her, and if instant obedience and
willing service meant anything, approved of her. This was the day
when she was going to have to get the dinner all herself, and she
was looking forward to it with pleasure. She had never been left to
herself to do anything at home, because Grandmother and old
Elizabeth had seen her toddle into the kitchen and "want to help"
when she was four, and they therefore honestly thought she was four
still where judgment was concerned.
As she sat and hummed to herself and wrote, the telephone rang. She
sprang to it with that unquestioned obedience which telephone-bells
cow us into, and listened. The Harrington children had called her up
a couple of times, and she thought it might be Philip. Or maybe
Clarence. But instead, she heard Gail's slow, assured voice.
"Clarence has been telling me the sad story of your life," she
drawled, "and implores me to rescue you. I'm coming over to do it in
a moment or so--as soon as I can detach Harold Gray from my side....
I've told him he also must devote himself to your service, so expect
him along some time today."
She hung up without waiting for an answer, before Joy could do
anything. She sat back in her chair, staring out the window in
dismay. She had no idea what Clarence might have said about
anything, but she devoutly wished he hadn't said it. She did not
want Gail in her house. She caught herself up. That was the way she
was coming to think of it--her house!
"Well, it isn't," she reminded herself. "After all, I'm a pilgrim
and a stranger, and Gail is an old friend."
She returned to her list and her planning, though the fun was all
out of it; and when Gail arrived a half-hour later, a bunch of
chrysanthemums in her belt and a small grip in her hand, she greeted
her with admirable calm.
She wished for a moment that Clarence had seen fit to come himself.
He might say too familiar things, but at least there was an
undertone of admiration about him very comforting in Gail's
half-scornful presence. Also he sat on Gail occasionally in a calm
and brotherly manner which cheered.
"Poor little Cinderella!" Gail greeted her. "I hear that Mrs. Hewitt
has dropped all the housekeeping on your shoulders, John makes you
do all the sewing--including his clothes, I suppose--and treats you
like a ten-year-old child. Even allowing for Clarence's passionate
transports you seem to be quite painfully noble in your
acquiescence.... I have come to see to this!"
Joy stiffened.
"Thank you, I am perfectly happy," she stated untruthfully. "Won't
you sit down?"
Gail flung her hat and cloak on a distant settee, and dropped her
grip at her feet.
"Not till I go up and see poor dear Mamma Hewitt," she answered.
"Poor darling, she must be lonely!"
She sauntered out of the room, leaving Joy at the desk. She was down
again in a few minutes. Gail never seemed to hurry. She merely got
where she wanted to be with no visible effort. She nodded to Joy as
she entered the room again, and dropped into a morris chair.
"Mrs. Hewitt says I am to go as far as I like," she informed Joy,
half-amusedly. "Mother never seems to want any help at home, thank
goodness, and all I have to do over there is to amuse little friends
who drop in. You get tired of that after awhile. I told Clarence to
send away any suitors who might trail over!"
She flung her arms up over her head and laughed a little to herself,
stretching her whole indolent, graceful body.
"I like new things to amuse myself with," she informed Joy. "Now
you'll send the maids in."
Joy did not like any of this. And she found herself more and more
certain that she did not like Gail Maddox.
"If she has all those lovers," she thought resentfully, like a
child, "why doesn't she stay home and play with them instead of
coming over here where we were perfectly happy without her?"
But she was too proud to do anything about it, so instead of going
up to Mrs. Hewitt's bedroom to appeal to Caesar she went to the
kitchen without further comment, and informed the maids that Mrs.
Hewitt had decided Miss Maddox was to have charge for the day.
The lively chorus of growls with which this was received cheered
Joy's unregenerate heart. She did not stay to either soothe or
encourage the rebellion.
"I've told the maids," she said colorlessly to Gail, returning.
"Good infant," said Gail, and proceeded to gather the flowers out of
the vases where Joy had herself arranged them a half-hour before,
and rearrange them.
Joy watched her for a minute or so. Then--"You aren't going to need
me?" she asked with a misleading quietness. "Because if you aren't
I--I have something to do for a little while."
"Not a bit. Run along," granted Gail. "I'll have some toil ready for
you when you get back, if you like."
Joy was like the lady in the poem, who died in such a hurry.
"She did not stop to don her coat,
She did not stop to smooth her bed."
She fled hatless in the direction of a place that had always meant
soothed feelings and comfort generally, the Harrington house.
Phyllis wouldn't be there, to be sure, but the place would have her
peace and sunniness about it.
The children were ranging up and down the garden paths with squeals
and shouts of happiness which were, apparently, merely because of
life in general. They fell upon her with still wilder shouts; or at
least Philip did, while Angela clung as far up as she could reach.
Joy hugged all the children she could reach with a warm sense of
gratitude to them for wanting her, and (still led by gratitude)
entered enthusiastically into tag herself. It was quite new to her,
because she had never played children's games, but she found that
she liked it exceedingly.... Suppose Gail did go slidingly around
explaining to everybody convincingly that everybody else was in love
with her--suppose it was even true? Why, even then--when you're
young and alive it's fun to go running up and down a garden in the
stimulating October air.
They ended in the big swing. Philip insisted on doing most of the
pushing, because, as he explained, they were all girls and he
wasn't. Joy held little Angela fast, and gave herself up to the
delight of being swung. Philip pushed her higher and higher, till
they were both screaming with pleasure, and, when the swing was at
the top, could see over the tall hedge to the road outside.
There was something chugging inquiringly out there. And it was--it
was, indeed, John's little doctor-car. And it held John, and it was
slowing up. As these facts, one by one, became apparent to Joy and
Angela in their excursions above the hedge, there was great
happiness in the garden.
"I knew he'd come!--He said he'd come!" announced Philip gleefully,
pushing like mad. "He said he would! He's been here every day since
they went. I asked him yesterday"--these sentences were interspersed
with the pantings necessary to pushing a swingful of ladies--"I
asked him whyn't he stay for dinner, and he said--he said he wanted
to go home an' have luncheon wiv Joy. So I s'pose he'll stay today,
long's you're here."
In Joy's naughty mind a Great Idea sprang to birth. Whyn't he stay,
indeed? He didn't know about Gail's coming to brighten his fireside,
and there wasn't any reason why he should.
"He'll stay if I can make him," she told Philip gaily.
In the back of her head--she should unquestionably have had her
hands slapped--there was a beautiful and complete picture of Gail
being insolently alluring to three empty chairs and a luncheon table
and four unoccupied walls.
"See John!" screamed Angela, trying to clap her hands, and having to
be grabbed hastily so she shouldn't fall out of the swing. "Johnny!
Johnny! Come in!"
John looked up in time to see the swing before it went downward
again. He waved his hand as it came up, and the third time it rose
Joy saw the car still, but no John. He was coming in.
He appeared a moment later, striding over the lawn. The children
dashed for him, as usual.
"Johnny, Johnny!" they clamored. "She says you can stay to lunch!
She says she will if you will."
With the way made so easy for her erring feet, what could Joy say
but "Don't you want to?"
She did not insist.
But John accepted on the spot with unsuspecting heartiness, and
Philip solved the last problem by scampering off over the rustling
leaves to telephone that John wouldn't be home for luncheon.
So they had a very merry luncheon, though an occasional whiff of
guilt made Joy fall silent--which was not noticeable, because
Philip's conversation flowed on brightly in all the breaks, and
sometimes when there weren't any.