responded Tiddy enthusiastically. "I'll get the griddle. I've
learned where everything grows."
He produced it accordingly, and watched Joy, as did the others,
entranced, while she mixed and cut out biscuits, and baked them in
the griddle scone-fashion.
They made it a triumphal procession after that, with the biscuits
borne high by Tiddy before Joy, who came in carrying the steak,
followed by Clarence and John with a dish of canned vegetables
apiece. It was far from being the dinner Joy had planned, but the
biscuits were greatly admired, and every one was happy. That is, Joy
was, and apparently the men were. Joy was so pleased to think that
she had been able to straighten out things, and get them a good
dinner, that she forgot to think about Gail at all. She sat in the
tall armchair at the head of the table where John had placed her,
and poured coffee in big cups, to be taken with the dinner, with
flushed cheeks and a gay heart.
"But what I want to know is," demanded Clarence, "why nobody's ever
seen that frock before."
"I have," John answered from the foot. "Joy had that on the very
first time I saw her, amber beads and crown and all. I never thought
then I'd see her making my biscuits in it."
"It's an allegory," said Clarence. "Man captures the beautiful
princess of his dream, and sets her to drudging in his kitchen. _I_
think there is something sad but sweet, as Shaw would say, about it."
"But I wanted to make the biscuits!" cried Joy before she thought.
"If I hadn't there wouldn't have been any for dinner--and you
_had_ to have dinner."
"They didn't at all," said Gail. "You spoil men. If you always say,
'But he has to have it!' and then go tearing around getting it for
him, why----"
She shrugged her shoulders.
"There are excellent biscuits a half-mile away, at the baker's in
the village, and a motor-car outside."
Joy laughed blithely.
"But you see, I'm not used to a motor-car. I'm not motor-people at
all.... Well, I suppose when you live with a poet you get in the
habit of feeling you must do what people want of you. Grandfather
was so great, you see, we felt it was--well, only polite. At least
Grandmother brought me up that way."
"I--I say! Was your grandfather _the_ Alton Havenith!"
exclaimed Tiddy, opening his eyes widely. "The one in all the
readers and cram-books and anthologies?"
"Is." corrected Joy. "He's quite alive. Yes, that's Grandfather--and
this is one of my dresses for his receptions," she added as an
afterthought.
"Good _gracious!_" breathed Tiddy reverently. They were at the
canned peaches and pound-cake by this time. "I--I suppose you
couldn't say any of his things?" he ended diffidently. He was
evidently a worshiper.
Joy felt quite herself by now, the old self-possessed Joy of the
salon and recitations.
"Well, not over the dessert," she said, laughing. "But as soon as
dinner is over, if you want me to. There's one I say to a harp.
There's a harp here."
"Can you play a harp, too?" demanded Clarence, "as well as make
biscuits? See here, Tiddy, you forget your position in life. You're
a cook. Get thee to the kitchen, while Joy entertains us, who are
the real quality folks."
"Nonsense," smiled John. "We'll leave things as they are--can't we, Joy?"
He led the way into the parlor and uncovered the harp for her. No
one would have guessed by his demeanor that this was the first sign
he had had of Joy's accomplishment--he was as matter-of-fact as
possible about it. Only once he smiled across at her secretly, as if
they had something private between them, as she asked him which
thing he thought she had better say to begin with, and named one
immediately.
She flung back the chiffon that trailed down one slim, round arm,
and, after a little preliminary tuning, began to play. It was "To
Myrtilla at Seventeen" that John had suggested, and harp-music went
well with it. Then she went on to more. She had never thought that
Grandfather would help her this way!
They kept her at the harp most of the evening. From Grandfather's
poems she slid to some of Grandmother's old songs, plaintive old
things of Civil War days. She was earnestly trying to make her
guests and John's have as good a time as lay in her power, and she
never thought about Gail, quiet and quite out of the center of the
stage, at all.
Tiddy, rapt and worshipful, clung close to her till the evening was
over.
"I say," he told her when the others were going, "you--do you know,
you're wonderful! I--do you mind if I come over tomorrow? There's a
lot of things I'd like to ask you about Alton Havenith. I--could I?"
"Why, of course," said Joy, with her usual eager desire to do
anything nice she could for people.
He thanked her fervently, and went with obvious reluctance. Gail was
a little silent, even for her, who only talked when she chose. And
at last Joy and John were alone. She felt a little shy of him.
"I must go clear up," she said presently, as he did not speak,
moving toward the dining-room.
"You must not," he told her, with the affectionate note in his voice
she loved to hear. "I want to stay here and appreciate my princess a
little, and I can't do it well when she's away--or I don't want to.
Sit down, Joy. I scarcely ever see anything of you any more.... Dear
child, why on earth did you let Gail rampage all over the house this
way? You could have had a maid in from the village."
"But she said she was going to--and I thought you knew!" cried Joy,
her heart leaping up.
"Oh, you mean she took possession?" he said. "I see. That is like
Gail. Well--don't let her, next time, my dear."
"I'd much, much rather not!" said Joy enthusiastically, "but she
said she'd made it all right with your mother, and----"
"Oh, in that case," said John, "all right." Then he dismissed the
subject, looking into the fire. "I find out some new thing about you
every day, kiddie," he said. "I'm afraid I must seem like a rather
quiet and unaccomplished person to you,--compared to other men."
"You mean because I ran off with Clarence," said Joy with remorseful
directness, and her usual child-likeness. "I _was_ cross because
you liked Gail."
He laughed. "And _I_ was cross because you liked Clarence.
Shall we both reform a bit, little girl?"
"Oh, yes!" replied Joy radiantly. "Only I haven't much to reform
about," she added thoughtfully. "Except he's kind to me, and he
understands things sometimes you don't...."
John sighed a little. "I see. Yes, he's that sort. Well, try to make
me understand, dear, won't you? ... I want to."
She slipped her hand impulsively in his as she did sometimes.
"Then that's all right," he said contentedly.
But the most all right thing, to Joy's unregenerate heart, was next
morning, when she went up to pay her usual morning visit to Mrs. Hewitt.
"Joy, will you tell me," demanded the lady, "what you meant by
telling Gail you wanted her to do the housekeeping?"
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
THE SERIOUS BUSINESS OF "IOLANTHE"
There was no use having it out with Gail. Joy was not one of those
nerve-shaking people who insist on having things out, anyhow. She
was perfectly content with things as they were.
The weather settled down to be legitimate October weather, a little
early: crisply lovely outdoors, and of the temperature to be an
excuse for fires indoors at night. Tiddy transferred his allegiance,
still a little shyly, to Joy. The change was good for him, because
they were, after all, very much of an age. They got to be excellent
friends. Also Joy kept him at his studies in a fashion that was, for
her, quite severe: he had asked her if she wouldn't, and she did.
She went off for tramps with him when John was otherwise employed,
which seemed to please John, and prevented her from having Clarence
too much underfoot.
Gail referred to Tiddy's desertion with her usual note of indolent
amusement--it did not occur to Joy till years later that Gail might
occasionally pretend a superiority to such things as annoy other
girls--and summoned another man from the city for week-ends. Tiddy
was indigenous to the soil. This, as Clarence, with _his_ amiable
superiority, said, was so much to the good, for when you come to
amateur theatricals every man is a man. Clarence was working with an
industry nobody would ever have suspected in him, over "Iolanthe."
It was easy enough to collect the principals. With a certain amount
of nobility of character, Clarence assigned himself the part of
_Lord Chancellor_, remarking that he could make a fool of
himself rather better than most men he knew. Incidentally he played
opposite to Joy, who refused flatly to take the leading part of
_Phyllis_, and was therefore cast for _Iolanthe_. They found
a suitable and sufficiently stalwart _Fairy Queen_ in the
neighborhood, and made Gail's weekend man _Private Willis_, because
two rehearsals a week were enough for that part, and he was the tallest
man, nearly, that any one had ever seen. He was six feet three and
a half, which is about two and a half inches more than is necessary
for beauty and suitability, to quote Clarence again; but quite what
they wanted just here.
"But where on earth to get a chorus!" wailed Clarence, after a
rehearsal in the big Hewitt parlor. They were keeping it more or
less a family affair. The Harringtons had returned, bringing the De
Guenthers with them in triumph. Mrs. De Guenther was a dear little
old lady who took a deep interest in the whole scheme, and was of
great use in the costuming. Mr. De Guenther, scholarly, soft-voiced,
and courteously precise, was also allowed to be present at
rehearsals; not because of the costuming, but because he remembered
performances at the Savoy when he was a young man in London, and
could coach them in the business.
"With a whole village full of people, I should think you could!"
said Gail. "The trouble with you is, Clarry, you're lazy." She
leaned back herself in a long chair as she said it, looking the
personification of indolence.
"Of course I could!" he said scornfully. "My good girl, have you
seen the worthy New Englanders in this village? There are some of
the most beautiful characters, hereabouts, I was told when I went
seeking for chorus-ladies, that ever existed. But they are far from
being worn on the outside."
"Laura Ward is coming down over that week, to stay with me," Gail
offered.
"Yes, and Laura Ward has played _Celia_, and is going to have
to do it again," stated Clarence. "We can't waste a good dancer like
that on the chorus."
John, who was _Lord Mountararat_, one of _Phyllis'_ two
suitors from the House of Lords, was looking out of the window
absently, humming under his breath one of his songs:
_"It seems that she's a fairy
From Andersen's lib_rary
_And we took her for
The proprietor
Of a Ladies' Semi_nary!"
One of the unaccountable silences which sometimes fall made every
absently-sung word quite audible. As he ended Clarence sprang at him
in what would have been a wild embrace if he had not ducked in time.
"Here, don't let your troubles drive you crazy, Rutherford," John
protested, holding him off with a strong hand.
"They haven't!" proclaimed Clarence. "But 'them beautiful words!'
See here, you dwellers in this happy vale, isn't there a girls'
school somewhere adjacent? Why don't we bribe the teachers by making
it a benefit for whatever they want--a stained glass window to their
founder, or a new laboratory or something--and lift those girls
bodily, as a chorus?"
They had been seeking painfully for some worthy object to give the
opera for, and so far hadn't been able to find a thing. So his
project was greeted joyfully.
"John, as usual, will have to go ask," suggested Allan. "Johnny, old
boy, what _would_ we do without your reputation? You physish at
that school, and I hear they kiss your very shadow."
"It's probably all they get a chance at," Gail kindly helped John out.
John, who was wildly adored, as a matter of fact, by most of the
fifteen-year-olds of the school, said "Nonsense!" sternly.
"Oh, do!" begged Tiddy. Tiddy was _Strephon_, the leading
juvenile, "a fairy down to his waist," and was passionately anxious
to have the whole thing go through. "If you will _I'll_ go and
see what I can yank out of my old prep school. There ought to be
enough boys with changed voices and long legs----"
"Harold Gray, you are inspired!" said Gail, for once shaken out of
her indolence. _She_ had taken unto herself the part of _Phyllis_
and was also anxious for the success of "Iolanthe." "And I myself will
go with you. I'll go work my rabbit's foot on the masters. There's
one over there who has already known my fatal charm."
"You mean the rabbit's foot, or----"
"I mean that one of the masters is in love with me. The classical
master. We'll work him," stated Gail brutally.
"If you can make him sell you sixteen boys into slavery your fatal
charm has been some use for once," said Clarence, unruffled.
Phyllis and John, who were the most serious-minded of the roomful,
saw breakers ahead, but they said nothing.
"My dear, I _don't_ think the way Miss Maddox talks is nice,"
whispered Mrs. De Guenther, who had taken to Joy as all old ladies
did.
"Don't worry, dear," murmured Phyllis from the other side of her.
"Other people don't, either. But nobody takes her seriously."
It was a light in Joy's mind on Gail. Nobody took her seriously. She
was just a reckless, erratic creature who said and did as she pleased,
and paid the penalty. Joy never felt so in awe of Gail again.
"It is a very modern school," said Phyllis to the company in her
sweet, carrying voice. "The teachers are quite in favor of esthetic
dancing, I know, and I am sure if you had two or three of the teachers
in it, too, to look after the girls, there would be no difficulty.
I will go and ask, if you like. We need a _Leila_ and _Fleta_."
"Oh, say, Mrs. Harrington, I thought you were going to be one of
those, at least!" protested Tiddy, to whom it seemed a shame that
Phyllis' golden loveliness should be wasted. Allan was _Lord
Tolloller_, the other suitor, but Phyllis preferred, she said, to
be generally useful. She was practically understudy to every one in
the place, having a quick memory and a good ear, and spent her time,
besides, hearing parts. Her real reason for not wanting to play was
that she was afraid the De Guenthers would be left too much to
themselves if she was tied up to rehearsals. Clarence worked every
one mercilessly.
She shook her head good-naturedly.
"I shall probably have to take the leading man's part on the night,"
she told him. "Oh, I forgot it was you, Tiddy--I beg your pardon.
Well, Clarence's, then. And until that awful moment, let me be happy
in obscurity!"
Joy, who had _Iolanthe's_ long, hard part to learn, and was
delighted with the idea, fixed her eyes on the opposite wall and
tried to remember what she had to say first. She was staying on by
special permission, for the opera. Mrs. Hewitt herself had written
Grandmother. Grandfather, very much pleased at the idea that Joy had
inherited another form of his own talent, had said she could stay
the full week of the performance. As they planned to give it on a
Tuesday night, this was almost a week to the good.
"Then it's settled that Mrs. Harrington and Gail, with as many more
as are needed, go chorus-hunting tomorrow," said Clarence with
finality. "Now we'll start that 'When darkly looms the day' duet.
Tiddy, Joy! Look interested, please. Bang the piano, if you don't
mind, Mrs. Harrington. Now!"
Joy and Tiddy accordingly burst into song, assisted by Allan and
John. Mrs. Hewitt, who had to be very stealthy about coming in,
because she had been put out several times for talking in the middle
of some exciting moment, slid into a chair beside the De Guenthers,
and behaved nobly. She was quite able to be around now, and Joy was
beginning to feel that she ought to accede to Phyllis' requests to
go back and stay with them a while. The children demanded her daily.
"I do hope the gate receipts will be more than the expenses,"
Clarence said hopefully in a resting-space. "The last time I got up
anything like this we cleared just two dollars. We'd formally
dedicated it to a Home for the Aged, in the blessed hope that the
directresses would sell tickets enough to fill the hall. But they
didn't. They took our two dollars away from us just the same. I
always begrudged them that two-spot."
"If you have the girls' school in it that can't happen," Gail
reminded him. "They're little demons at ticket-selling."
So next day Phyllis took Joy with her, and also the De Guenthers as
an evidence of deep respectability, and they drove over to the
school, and actually secured the co-operation of the girls and their
teachers. The thing was being so hurried through, as amateur
theatricals should be to go well, that the whole thing would be over
in two and a half weeks more. As Phyllis was personally very much
liked by the principal, there was very little trouble made about it.
Indeed, the teachers planned to take notes and borrow costumes, and
give the thing themselves as a commencement entertainment the next
June, if it proved possible.
The boys were rather harder to get, but here, too, they succeeded,
finally. And "Iolanthe" went prosperously on.
In a couple more days Phyllis, who really could get almost anything
she wanted from almost anybody, if she took the trouble, coaxed Joy
back from Mrs. Hewitt.
"You'll have her most of the rest of your natural life," she
pleaded. "And I saw her first. I think I ought to have her now."
So Mrs. Hewitt reluctantly gave her up, and she went back to the
Harrington house.
She saw scarcely less of John, because he continued to come
regularly to see them in the mornings on his way home, and generally
got in a little visit in the afternoons, not counting the fact that
he took her on his rounds with him three days out of five. And then,
of course, there were the rehearsals.
"My dear," he remonstrated with her, as they were on their way home
from one of these, "I don't want to seem to scold you, but you
shouldn't let young Gray put his arm around you the way he does."
"Put his arm around me?" demanded Joy, quite honestly surprised.
"Why, what do you mean? Oh--the rehearsals! Why--why, John! You and
Allan have to put your arms around Gail every little while, and so
does everybody else. And I'm supposed to be _Strephon's_ mother.
People have to, in theatricals."
"Clarence seems to think so," said John dryly, and Joy turned her
head to look at him more closely in the moonlight.
"And now Clarence! Little Philip Harrington does, too, and I suppose
you'll be telling me to have him stop next!"
But at the scorn in her voice John only became firmer.
"Gail Maddox is entirely different," he explained. It seemed to Joy
that if he had offered her that explanation once he had a hundred
times.
"Gail is not different," said Joy firmly. "Anyway, Tiddy is just a baby."
John could not help laughing.
"He's not the only one who is just a baby," he said. "You little
goose, he's three or four years older than you ... and heaven knows
how much younger than I am." The thought of that, for some strange
reason, worked a change in his mind. "Never mind me, little girl. I
suppose I'm unreasonable."
"Well, yes, I think you are," said Joy honestly. Then she laughed.
It was very comfortable to have John jealous, even if it _was_
silly of him. "All right, John, hereafter I will wear a wire cage
whenever I have any scenes with Tiddy."
"Better wear it when you have scenes with Clarence," said John rather
sharply. "And let me tell you, a man that will try to steal----"
"Oh, nonsense!" said Joy calmly again. "First you say that Clarence
is toying with me, then you say he's trying to steal me. Now it
stands to reason he can't do both."
She was so practical about it that John stopped in spite of himself.
"I'm afraid I'm too much given to thinking people want to steal
you," he said a little soberly.
Joy wondered for the thousandth time about the nature of men....
Sometimes she almost thought she had made John care a good deal for
her. And then again, when he rose up and defended Gail, she quite
thought she hadn't. But as for Clarence, all that was very foolish.
From the time she had seen him every one in the village who had come
near her, it seemed to her, had carefully made it plain that
Clarence was a male flirt, a love pirate, a gay deceiver, a trifler,
a person with no intentions--anything but a man who was in love with
her. He had practically said so himself, as far as she could
remember. And she had been very pleased with the idea, and enjoyed
his behavior--happy in the belief that everything he said had a
stout string to it--very much. Even John admitted that he was
amusing, and certainly he was good-looking and clever.
But she smiled up at John.
"It is very nice of you to feel that way," she said. "I appreciate it."
"You annoying little person!" he replied, half-laughing. "Joy, if I
hadn't learned that you were one of the most honest, straightforward
girls in the world, sometimes I would think you were a good deal of
a coquette."
"We're here," said Joy irrelevantly for an answer. She still wished
she knew more about men.
Phyllis' remark about being useful seemed to be in a fair way to be
fulfilled. Allan threatened to put out a sign, he said, on the front
gate, "No coaching done between twelve and three A.M." Finally he
did discover an excellent scheme, which consisted of making the
house and garden look deserted, and locking himself and Phyllis in
the library most of the day.
"It's rather pleasant," he informed her. "Since I developed this
plan I'm really getting more of your uninterrupted society than I
have since this terrible "Iolanthe" devastated the village.... Just
why did it happen, Phyllis--have you any idea?"
"Speak lower," said Phyllis. "I'm perfectly certain I heard footsteps."
"Probably a deputation from Miss Addams' school, to ask you whether
the right or left foot comes first," her husband answered her quite
accurately.
"But, Allan dear," protested Phyllis, "you know perfectly well that
if I don't go out and stem the tide they will find Joy, and tear the
child away from the first moment she's had with John alone since I
don't know when."
"This is the first moment I've had alone with you since I don't know
when," he answered, unmoved, coming over and putting both arms
around her, to draw her resolutely away from the door. "And if you
will consider carefully, my darling, you will remember that Joy is
much younger than either of us, and hence has many more years to
spend with John than you have with me. Now cease to be a slave to
duty, or whatever it is, and come sit on the arm of my chair."
"You'll never grow up!" said Phyllis protestingly; but she ceased to
be a slave to duty immediately, and sat on the arm of his chair until
he pulled her down on his lap, which he did almost on the spot.
Meanwhile Joy, walking up and down in the garden paths and
memorizing her part, had been found by John, who was trying to lure
her off for a ride.
"Nobody can find us on a galloping car," he said persuasively.
But Joy was more steadfast than Phyllis.
"I expect Tiddy over to rehearse with me," she said. "He will be
here in about five minutes. You know that 'Good morrow, good mother'
thing that he has to do prancing in and playing on a pipe. And none
of us can make out what a pipe is. Tiddy says if there's no further
light on it by next rehearsal he's going to use a meerschaum."
"You might let me rehearse with you," grumbled John. "Every time I
come near I find you dancing hand-in-hand with Tiddy or Clarence or
Mrs. Beeson" (Mrs. Beeson was the gigantic Fairy Queen) "or sewing
on some wild thing for some seminary child."
"Some of those seminary children are only a year younger than I am,"
she reminded him. "But if you would like to rehearse your part with
me you'll have to go find Allan. All your scenes are with him."
"Allan has a well-trained wife and a lock on his door," said John,
who didn't in the least need to rehearse. "I have neither. Mother
has made our house a happy hunting-ground, and at this moment Gail
and Tiddy and Clarence are putting the Chorus of Peers through its
paces. They aren't properly hand-picked. One of 'em squeaks."
"They had to pick him, because he was so grand and tall," Joy
explained. "He isn't supposed to sing. I suppose he got carried away."
"Suppose you get carried away," coaxed John, returning to the charge.