Joy. "And I have heaps to learn, and any amount more to sew."
"Nevertheless--" said John, and suddenly laughed and tried to pick
her up. He was very strong, and she was light and little, but she
resisted valiantly. They were laughing and struggling like a couple
of children, when they heard footsteps, and shamefacedly composed
themselves to look very civilized. The choruses were all over the
village at all times of the day and night after study hours, and
John specially had to look after his decorum in their presence. But
it was only Philip.
"Seems to me it would be pleasanter," he remarked without preface,
"if Angela and I had parts in this play. Angela thinks so, too."
"Where is Angela?" asked Joy idly.
"I put her up a tree," said Philip. "She's playing she's a little
birdie. You haven't got any candy that we could play was worms, have
you, Johnny?" he finished insinuatingly.
But John and Joy had heard a wail in the direction whence Philip had
come, and neither of them stopped to reply. Angela alone and up a
tree was a picture that had appalling possibilities, and she was
certainly crying as if the worst of them had happened.
The wails seemed to come from the little pleasance where the
fountain was, and Joy, as she ran, had a vision of a tree which
Philip did climb with a ladder, and which he was quite capable of
making Angela climb, too. The drop from his favorite limb was quite
six feet.
Joy reached the pleasance first. It was Angela who was shrieking,
but the worst had not quite happened. She had wriggled herself out
of the safe crotch where Philip had put her, and it was Heaven's
mercy that she had not fallen. But her frock was a stout blue
gingham, fortunately, and a projecting branch-stump was thrust
through it, holding her in a horizontal position along the bough.
She was crying and wriggling, and in another minute or so she might
have fallen to the ground. There was a slight chance that she would
have struck on the fountain.
Joy was up the ladder and had the child in her arms in a moment. She
held her till John, reaching up from below, relieved her of the
burden, and set Angela on the grass, where she continued to cry.
"Such a lot of crying about just a little hole in your frock!"
remarked Philip to Angela. "I should think you'd be ashamed!"
At which Angela stopped crying.
"_Big_ hole!" she said defensively, with a gulped-down sob, and
began smoothing it down, where she sat on the grass.
"Angela, Angela! Oh, Angela, is my baby hurt?" cried Phyllis, flying
in from the garden path outside. She had heard the child cry, from
where she and Allan were in the living-room, and with a mother's
instinct had fled out and down to where the child was. Allan was
hurrying behind her, but before he could catch her she had caught
her foot on the root that stood out of the ground in a loop, and
fallen headlong, striking her head on the edge of the marble basin.
She lay, white and still, where she had fallen. Allan was at her
side in a moment, begging her to speak to him.
"Is she dead, John?" he demanded passionately of John, kneeling
beside her. "Good God, man, can't you speak--is she dead?"
"She's stunned," John answered. "I think that's all."
"Her heart is beating," said her husband, with his hand on it. "I--I
think it is. Oh, Phyllis, darling, won't you speak to me?"
Joy put her hand quietly on his shoulder.
"Allan," she said, "John can't do anything as long as you won't let
him get near Phyllis. He can help quicker than you can."
Allan shivered a little, then raised Phyllis so that her head rested
on his knee, and John could get at her.
"Do something quickly, John," he said. "I shall go crazy if she lies
that way much longer. It's the first time I ever asked her for
anything that she didn't give it to me--" his throat caught.
"She'll be all right in a minute, old fellow. Don't take it that
way," John reassured him. "Joy, dear, run to the house and get some
brandy and spirits of ammonia, and a spoon. Hurry."
Joy sped back to the house, and got the things from Lily-Anna, who
unlocked and found with quick, capable hands, though she was
evidently trying not to cry as she did it.
"Jus' a natural-born angel," she said. "Here, hurry back, Miss Joy.
Yas, that kind's too good to live. I might a' knowed it long ago.
There's everything, child. Now go on!"
It had seemed forever to Joy, but John assured her that she had been
very swift. They forced a little of the stimulant through Phyllis'
teeth, and presently her color began to come back.
"There, she's coming round, Allan," said John. "You see there was no
need to be so worried."
"It wasn't you," said Allan briefly, then straightway forgot
everything else, as Phyllis' eyes opened.
"I'm dizzy," she said faintly. Then she saw Allan's face over hers,
and farther away the others, grave and anxious, and she smiled.
"Why, Allan, you poor boy, I've worried you to death. I'm--sorry--dear."
Her breath came a little hard for a moment, for it had been a bad
fall; but she was nearly all right again in a few minutes more, and
laughing.
"Allan, if you don't stop looking as if the world had come to an
end, I shall faint again, whether I want to or not," she said. "You
foolish man, didn't you ever see anything like that before?"
"The world nearly did come to an end," said Allan in a low voice.
She made no answer to this in words, but Joy saw her catch Allan's
hand and hold it hard for a moment before the men helped her to rise
to her feet. She was perfectly able to walk, she declared, after
standing a moment and recovering from the dizziness that came over
her for a moment when she got up. She went back to the house with
Allan's arm around her, and the children, whom nobody had as yet
taken time to scold, following, awestruck and very meek, at a safe
distance behind.
"He _did_ act as if the world had come to an end," mused Joy
aloud. "I was frightened for a minute, though."
"You didn't show it. You were very brave and clear-headed," John
told her comfortingly.... "I don't know that I'd have behaved very
differently in his place. As he said, it wasn't I."
"Oh, was that what he meant?" said Joy. "I didn't quite know."
"Thank heaven it wasn't!" said John.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
THE SLIGHTLY SURPRISING CLARENCE
Phyllis was perfectly all right the next day. She stayed in the
hammock because Allan made her, and she confessed to a shadow of a
headache, but altogether, she said, her accident was worth much less
fuss than was made over it. The rehearsals swept relentlessly on,
past all stemming. Clarence was getting thinner under the strain,
which was very becoming, and pleased him exceedingly.
Joy, too, was a little affected by the current of things. In all
Clarence's off moments he was either with her or trying to be, and
she could not at all make him out. If he had been anybody else she
would have thought he was very much in earnest about trying to make
her marry him. But, then, John, when she came to think of it, could
have been described the same way. A bit of Gail's careless wisdom,
dropped one day at rehearsal, gave her a clue to things. Gail had
been stating to one of the teachers, who played _Fleta_, one of
the leaders of the chorus, that she'd had four proposals that
summer. Gail's attitude of cynical frankness about her desire to
collect scalps was something to make the average person gasp. She
really meant it. She was, as Joy had discovered by this time, quite
without malice--also quite without considerateness.
"It isn't difficult," said Gail to the stiffening teacher.
"Competition is the soul of trade. If I can give the poor souls an
idea that other men want me--quite flaunt them, you know--they all
come bounding up to want me, too. It's very cheering, don't you
think, to have a faithful hound or so about?"
Fortunately the teacher was called away by the exigencies of her
part, just at that moment. Joy, who was not easily shocked by Gail,
having spent nearly four weeks in her immediate vicinity now,
lingered. She had an inquiring mind.
"Do you think that really is true, Gail, or were you just trying to
shock Miss Archinard?" she asked.
Gail laughed, her peculiar short, low laugh, that, like everything
she said and did, had something a little mocking in it. It was
curiously at variance with her boyishness. You could not say she was
masculine, but there was a something stripped away from her which
most people class as feminineness. Joy wondered if it was softness
she missed--pity, perhaps, or tenderness. She was, at least, brilliant
to the last degree when she talked, though it was a perfectly useless
brilliance. Gail's life had no other end than amusing herself with
whatever persons or things came her way. If they could be laughed
at or employed in her service that was all she wanted.
"Shocking Miss Archinard is a pathetic sort of performance," said
Gail. "Any child can do it. You doubtless do yourself. Joy, she
probably thinks your coloring too vivid for ladylikeness. Why, I'm
perfectly willing to shock her--it's more interesting than talking
to her as an equal--but I merely told the truth. You never in the
world would have robbed me of the faithful Tiddy who now crawls at
your feet, if he hadn't seen John and Clarence running frantically
in your direction."
That principle, it dawned on Joy, could be extended. Probably John
and Clarence kept each other interested. There was a great deal to
learn about men, but on the other hand, there seemed to be a few
broad elementary rules to follow--if you were the kind of person who
could be cold-blooded enough to follow them.
"But don't you ever feel badly when you think how they get hurt?"
she asked Gail a little timidly.
"Everybody gets hurt once or twice that way," said Gail placidly. "I
might as well have the satisfaction of doing it as some other girl."
She looked reflectively across at her week-end man, who was just now
wrestling with his solo, and obviously wanted to get back to her.
"Besides--if you don't hurt _you_ get hurt.... Oh, I was a
good, sweet, unselfish, considerate young thing once. I wasted much
valuable time trying to be as nice as I could be.... Then _I_
got hurt, and I decided that there wasn't anything in this
consideration game. People seem to like me just as well now I'm
perfectly selfish as they did when I wasn't."
She laughed a little again, and lifted an eyebrow imperceptibly
toward Private Willis, who promptly lost a bar of his solo.
It was a difficult statement to correct without being rude. Joy let
it go. For the first time in her acquaintance with Gail she had the
key. She felt sorry for Gail for a moment--for that far-off childish
Gail who had been so badly hurt that she hadn't ever dared let
herself feel again. She did not know such a great deal about living
herself, but she felt that Gail was wrong--that it was better to let
things come to you and hurt you, if they would, and go on living,
being a complete human being, no matter what happened to you.
Then Gail spoke again, and Joy discovered that it was difficult to
go on being sorry for her--for the present her, that is.
"When you go back to your well-known grandparents," she stated with
a frankness which had ceased to mislead Joy, "I shall make a final
effort to ensnare John. He doesn't approve of me, but that will make
life still more exciting. You don't mind, my child, do you?"
Joy laughed.
"You may have him--if you can get him!" she answered very gallantly
considering the circumstances.
What Gail said showed her something with a certainty which had been
lacking before. John had never belonged to Gail. If Joy herself
hadn't been so entirely in love with John she might have been made
surer of him. But it is very hard to be positive of getting anything
you want too intensely.
As she rested silent a moment John himself came up beside her.
"Tired, kiddie?" he said with the affectionate note in his voice
that he always had when he used the little name he had for her. "You
should have farmed out that sewing."
"Do you mean to say you took a bundle of those gauze frocks to do,
Joy?" demanded Gail.
Joy nodded. Gail made her feel, as usual, as if she had been silly
and imposed upon. The seminary girls were crowding their time as it
was to get in the rehearsals, and the Principal had stated with
finality that it would be impossible to give them time extra to work
on their costumes. The mothers of some of them had been written home
to and had responded, but some others of the girls had no one who
could or would do the sewing, so Joy had volunteered, together with
Phyllis, to run up the five or six of them that had to be done. She
_was_ a little tired.
"I shall come over tomorrow morning and hide them," John threatened.
But he smiled approvingly at her as he said it, and she knew that he
liked her having done it. She knew well enough the long hours he
spent with his charity patients, and all the things he did for the
people in the village--things he never spoke of.
She thought with a pang that was not a selfish one of John's lot, if
he did finally marry Gail. She did not think he could be happy with
a girl who would never try to make him so. His mother's affection
for him was irresponsible enough, but it was very real and selfless.
You couldn't imagine Gail married to John.
"It'll be too late to hide them," she answered him brightly, coming
out of her muse with an effort. "They're all done. There wasn't much
work on them, comparatively."
_"Good morrow, good mother,
Good mother, good morrow!
By some means or other,
Pray banish your sorrow!"_
sang Tiddy, frisking gently up to her. "It's our turn next, Joy.
Clarence says he thinks we ought to emigrate in a body to the Opry
House, and go through this thing _right_."
John moaned.
"Clarence is always having unnecessary thoughts of that sort. To
hear him talk, you would think we had spent the last two weeks going
through it wrong."
"So we have," said Clarence. "Come now--all out. We are going over
to rehearse on the august boards of the opera house, and then we are
going home for brief bites, and then we are going back for a dress
rehearsal. Tomorrow night is the night, and may the Lord have mercy
on your souls!"
At this reminder Clarence's weary company bestirred itself. The
principals had been rehearsing, as usual, at the Hewitt house. They
were to meet the chorus, it appeared, at the village opera house,
and go through the whole thing there with the orchestra of tomorrow
night; a kind-hearted orchestra which was willing to rehearse twice.
"Why any of us ever began this thing, I _don't_ see," growled
John, as he deftly captured Joy, having made a neat flank movement
which prevented Clarence from getting her. "Do you know, Joy"--he
was putting her cloak on for her in the hall by this time--"I've
seen about half as much of you as I would if I hadn't been lured
into this. The rest of this week, after tomorrow night, you are
going to have to spend exclusively in spoiling me. I'm twice as
deserving as a high-school girl, and three times as deserving as
Clarence and Tiddy. And I've more right to you, besides."
"If you want rights, sometimes you have to take them," said Joy
demurely.
He laughed.
"Is that a suggestion? If so, it's an excellent one. Consider
yourself thoroughly taken. You are not to be discovered in corners
with Clarence, nor showing Tiddy how his steps should go."
But Joy only laughed.
There was little time for discussion after that. They rehearsed
steadily, with the frenzied feeling of unpreparedness that only
amateurs can fully know, till it was more than time for the "brief
bite" of Clarence's description. Then the choruses were shepherded
over to the Hewitt house and the Maddox house respectively, and fed,
Clarence and Tiddy standing over them to see that no time was wasted.
Then they went back, and went through the whole opera. The audience
consisted of a few carefully chosen relatives who had insisted on
being there, including the Harrington children. Phyllis was letting
them see the dress rehearsal instead of the real performance,
because the latter was to end with a dance, and there would have
been some difficulty in tearing Philip away while things were still
going on. The dress rehearsal promised to be over by nine-thirty,
for they had started at six, and were sweeping through without a
break, happily unconscious that Clarence intended them to do it all
over again with all the mistakes severely corrected, as soon as they
had ended the final chorus.
"Gail, that isn't the way to do it," Clarence called to her sharply,
as she danced in with the minimum of effort, in the "Good morrow,
good mother" song that she had with Joy and Tiddy, respectively
_Iolanthe_ and _Strephon_. "Pick up your feet. You'll be down
over that garland in the corner if you don't look out."
"I'll pick them up tomorrow night," said Gail, pausing to answer
him. "No use putting all this work on rehearsal."
She was undoubtedly right. And undoubtedly the garland had no
business to swing so loose, as Clarence himself afterwards admitted.
But the fact remained. As Gail stepped reluctantly back, and
recommenced her song, her high-heeled slipper caught in the swinging
garland, and she came down flat, with the ankle badly turned under her.
The opera stopped short while the others crowded around her and
tried to find out how badly she was hurt. She sat up straight and
tried to smile-Gail disliked having or showing feelings of any
sort--but she was white with the pain, and when she tried to stand
on the ankle it hurt her, as she admitted.
They carried her off the stage in a chair, and John, who was donning
his robes in the other dressing-room, was hurried over to see how
badly she was hurt.
"Don't stop for me, Clarence," Gail ordered. "On with the dance, let
Joy be unrefined. That is, if she can. I know you're hungering to
lash your wretched infant-school forward."
Clarence remarked that she was plucky, patted her shoulder, and went
thankfully off to put his chorus through an evolution or so while he
could.
John, meanwhile, with Phyllis' help, took off the pretty pink satin
slipper, with its rosette, and the pink silk stocking, and found
that Gail's ankle was badly sprained. They did it up properly, and
Phyllis took Gail home.
"Now what shall we do?" demanded Clarence at the end of the act,
pushing the Lord Chancellor's wig to one side, and staring around him.
"What about Gail's guest, the one that's coming down tomorrow?"
offered Tiddy.
"We have her cast, anyway," Clarence answered dolefully.
"She's played Celia, the one that's a sort of lieutenant-fairy, before,
and I remember the time I had getting her to memorize her words--not
a long part at all. She could no more play Phyllis than I can."
"Were you talking about the part, or about me?"' asked Phyllis
Harrington, coming in again.
"How is Gail?" asked everybody.
"Ask John," said Phyllis. "Her ankle seems to be hurting her badly,
poor girl. I hope it will be all right tomorrow night. I made her go
to bed, and her mother is sworn to make her stay there. I'll go
through her part for her now, Clarence, if it will be any help."
Clarence stared at her.
"Can you?" he asked.
"Well, I know the words," said Phyllis. "And I don't think she will
be able to rehearse again. It will be as much as she can do to get
up tomorrow night and go through it."
John shook his head. "I'm afraid she won't be able to do even that,"
he said.
"Then you'll have to take the part, Phyllis!" said Clarence with a
sudden decision. "Never mind dressing now. Take your hat off and see
what you can do."
"Understand, I'm only holding it," said Phyllis, but she would have
been more than human if she had not flushed a little with pleasure
at the idea.
They began rehearsals again, and this time the opera went through
with scarcely a hitch. The little chorus girls had come to adore
Phyllis by this time, the boys were fond of her--there was scarcely
one of the cast whom she had not helped over or through or under
some one of the little hitches incident to private theatricals--and
the whole cast was on its tiptoes to see her through. There was a
new feeling in the thing, that Clarence noticed directly.
"By Jove, we ought to have insisted on her doing it from the first,"
he told Tiddy, his lieutenant, under his breath. "I could have
gotten twice as much work out of 'em.'
"Who'd have broken the news to Cousin?" he wanted to know.
Clarence eyed him with the detached interest that was his, and
meditated with a certain amusement on the changeableness of college
boys. Two weeks before Tiddy would have lowered his voice in
reverence at Gail's name. Then he glanced across at Joy, sitting
close by Phyllis in her gauzes, with her wonderful bronze-gold hair
hanging around her like a mantle, and conceded within himself that
it was not so surprising after all.
Sure enough, Gail was unable to bear much weight on her foot by the
next day. She insisted on being dressed and driven down to the
hurried last rehearsal on the afternoon of the performance. But she
could not walk without support.
"You'll have to take it, Phyllis," she conceded. "I shall look as
beautiful as I can, and sit in the audience and hate you."
"You ought to," said Phyllis mournfully. "I know if it were I in
your place, I couldn't bear to come down and look at you."
"I have to, anyway, on account of Laura," said Gail. Miss Ward had
come, and was at that moment getting out of her wraps preparatory to
meeting the cast and rehearsing.
As Phyllis left her to go into the dressing-room and introduce the
stranger, whom she had met, to the others, she heard Joy cry out in
surprise.
"Why, I know you--at least I've seen you, only you don't remember
me," Joy was saying impulsively.
Laura Ward, in the act of slipping off her coat, stopped in surprise.
"Why, I have seen _you_" she said. "Where was it?"
"I was posing for the Morrows," explained Joy. "You ran in and got
some fixative. They had me for their mural decorations----"
_"Joy!"_ called somebody in the tone of imperative need which
is almost as summoning as a telephone bell, and Joy dashed off,
holding up her green water-weeds with one hand and her draperies
with the other. The meeting with Laura Ward seemed a pleasant sort
of crowning to the day. She was the very same vivid, gipsy-looking
girl who had dashed into the Morrow studio for a moment, and who had
seemed to stand, to Joy then, for all the kinds of girl she had
wanted to be and couldn't. And now she seemed just a pleasant person
like oneself. Joy had caught up to her. It was like an omen.
"What is it?" she called dutifully as she ran.
She found no opportunity to see more of Miss Ward. She wanted to,
for she was sure she was going to like her. She had always wanted to.
"It's a good audience," breathed Clarence over her shoulder, as they
looked through peep-holes in the curtain. "All the sisters and
cousins and aunts have turned up. I say, Joy, the Fairy Queen was
good for ten tickets at least. There's a row of her dear ones right
across from aisle to aisle."
The moment of the play had come all too swiftly, and in ten
nerve-shattering minutes the curtain would go up. Ten minutes after
that Joy would be rising out of a trap-door, in the character of a
fairy who had spent the last twenty years at the bottom of a stream;
incidentally she would be acting for the first time in her life.
There was enough to be excited over; and yet it was none of these
things that excited her--it was the curious note in Clarence
Rutherford's voice as he spoke his trivial words in her ear.
She moved away from him automatically. She was a little tired,
tonight, of his persistent flirtation. It was all very well for a
while, but surely--surely, she thought, it was time he'd had enough
of it; and she went back off the stage, looking, though she scarcely
acknowledged it to herself, for John. She felt as if she wanted to
see as much of him as she could.
He ought to have been in his dressing-room, but he was not. He was
looking for her, she almost thought, for he came quickly toward her
with his face lighted.
"I'm so glad I found you before the thing commenced, kiddie," he
said. "I just wanted to tell you that you're not to be frightened.
Do you hear? I forbid you to be frightened." He smiled down at her
protectingly. "You say you always do as I tell you--so you must this
time. I know you're going to make a howling success of the opera....
My dear, _don't_ look so worried about it all!"