and he drew her close to him, and kept his arm around her.
"Do I look worried?" she answered simply. "I wasn't thinking about
'Iolanthe' so much. I suppose I'm tired with rehearsals, for it
seems to me as if something I didn't like was going to happen....
John, I never asked you before, but I feel so little and lonesome
tonight, and suddenly far away from everybody. Please say that you
haven't minded all the naughty things I've done--that you like me,
and forgive me, and----"
"Like you and forgive you, foolish child! ... I don't know that I
like you...." He looked down at her, laughingly. "And I have nothing
to forgive you for. Why, Joy, it goes a great deal further than
that. I thought you knew how much I cared for you."
She clung to him, there in her green and white draperies, with her
gold hair falling over them. She could scarcely believe the thing
his words and voice said, but it was there to believe. She gave a
little shiver and clung closer to him.
"You--care?"
"Of course I care!"
He released her enough to lift up her flushed little face, and bend
down and kiss it. "You knew that a long time ago. Kiddie----"
It was just then that the call-bell rang.
She hurried to her place, her heart beating and her cheeks burning
under the rouge. She was nearly sure that she had won--that the
wishing ring had given her what she had asked of it. John had not
said, "You and I are lovers, and we are going to be married" in so
many words--but his voice--and his touch--and his laughing certainty----
She was very happy, so happy that she went through the opera in the
state of some one drugged to ecstasy. She sang and danced and
laughed, and helped Phyllis whenever she could in her difficult task
of assuming a leading part at one day's notice, and felt as if the
play had carried her into a veritable fairyland. Tiddy forgot half
of his lines, the first time he spoke with her, watching her
brilliant eyes and vividness, and she laughed and pulled him
through. She was like a flame throughout the performance. Phyllis
did wonders, considering the short time she had had in which to
prepare, and the performance generally was so good that even the
people who were in it were surprised.
When it was safely over, and the dance was beginning--the dance was
taking place at the Hewitt house--Joy flung herself down for a
moment behind the curtains of the little alcove she knew so well by
now, and caught her breath. She was hiding a little. She still had a
curious reluctance to see Clarence again, and she felt as if she did
not want to see John, either, for a little while. Because the next
time she saw him she would probably know whether she was right or
wrong. She was nearly certain she was right, but there was a little
shivering possibility that she might not be. There was always Gail!...
"Sorcerette, dear!" said Clarence's voice wooingly in the dim doorway.
He had changed back to evening clothes, and looked very handsome, if
a little theatrical, for the black was not quite yet off his brows
and lashes. He, too, looked excited.
"Come out and dance, Joy of my life," he said.
"I'm--I'm waiting for John," she stammered. She still did not want
to go with him.
"John's otherwise engaged," Clarence informed her coolly. "Did you
think Gail intended to go without one kind word the whole evening?
Not so! Come, or I'll think you mean to be highly impolite."
The same reluctance still held Joy's feet, and she did not like the
insinuation, but there really seemed no way out.
"Cheer up, Sorcerette, dear," he said in her ear, as he swept her
away. "'Get happy, chile, ain't you done got me?'"
She did not talk. She did not feel like it. She merely danced
lightly on with Clarence, letting him say what he pleased.
"Do you remember the first time we danced together, Joy, the first
time you ever danced with any one? I have always been so glad I was
the first man you ever danced with."
"Why?" she asked absently. She wanted to get away, to get back to
John Hewitt.
His arms tightened.
"Why? You know perfectly well why. You have got me--do you know it?
From the very first minute I ever saw you."
She smiled up at him, and shook her head.
"You make love beautifully," she heard herself saying coolly. "But
you really shouldn't make it to your host's fiancée in his house. It
isn't done."
"Don't you suppose I know that?" answered Clarence tempestuously.
"Joy Havenith, do you mean to say that you think I'm doing the
ordinary love-making one does in any conservatory?"
She smiled a little. He was more like the Clarence she usually knew,
and she did not take it at all seriously.
"Why, you do it better than most," she said. "Go on. I like it."
If there was one thing she knew well, it was Clarence's love-making.
Indeed, she had come to the point where Clarence's remarks scarcely
constituted love-making at all in her eyes. They were merely his
kind of manners, and she was a little tired of them.
"Good heavens! How on earth am I going to convince you?" she heard
him say, with a little surprise. This was not the kind of thing he
said ordinarily. "Joy, I fell in love with you, the real kind of
love, the first night I saw you. You've known it all along. I wish
you'd stop pretending not to--I'm getting tired of it. I want to
marry you--I'd marry you tonight if you said the word. I'll come
over and get you tomorrow and marry you if you'll let me. I don't
suppose you will. But I do expect to keep on at you till you do....
Good heaven, child, haven't you seen I was in earnest?" he broke off
at the expression of her wide-open eyes.
Joy believed in love at first sight, as she had every personal
reason to, but in spite of Clarence's intensity she was not quite
convinced. She looked up at him. He was white, and his mouth was
tense. And he was holding her like a vise. He was in earnest.
"Maybe--maybe you think you do mean it now." she said breathlessly.
"If you do--I'm sorry for you. It isn't nice to be in love unless
the other person is, too."
"What do you know about it?" he burst out angrily. "You aren't in
love with that virtuous citizen of yours, whether or not he is with
you. Let him go back to Gail. She's been considering one of her tame
cats for a year, and she'd about decided to marry him when you came
along and broke it up. You'd sweep any man off his feet. You and I
belong together, Joy darling. I'm going to marry you, if you were
engaged to the whole College of Surgeons."
"The dance is over," said Joy a little faintly.
"Then come over here where it's quiet. I haven't finished."
"Oh, please no--" cried Joy, freeing herself from his hold eagerly.
This was getting unexpectedly like earnest, and it had been a shock.
She did not want to hear any more about how Clarence felt.
She hurried across the floor without waiting for him, to where Allan
and Phyllis were still standing together. They had stolen a dance
with each other--they danced together altogether too much for
married people, anyway, Mrs. Hewitt said.
The atmosphere of happiness and serenity that was about Phyllis was
something Joy could always rest in thankfully. Her own moods
alternated so that Phyllis' calmness was an especial comfort.
"I--I'm so tired," she said wistfully. "Couldn't we go soon?"
"I should think we could," said Phyllis willingly, while Allan
seconded the motion with joy.
"There's no place like home," he said. "I've been considering the
fact that it was getting on for four, and that I have an appointment
at ten tomorrow, for a half-hour. Go get your wraps, Phyllis, my
darling, and I'll get John, as my share of the bargain. We'll be
awaiting you happily in a dark corner of the porch."
Joy wanted to flee from Clarence. And she looked forward happily to
being with John on the back seat of the motor, and talking over the
evening with him. She would learn, perhaps, just what he had meant
when he had seen her last. Her heart beat hard with the excitement
of the thought. She was nearly sure--dear wishing ring!
She slipped off, after speaking to Mrs. Hewitt, and saw Allan and
John moving off together to the men's cloak-room.
She sang softly to herself as she put on her cloak. She would be
with John again in a moment. He had smiled at her as he passed out
of sight. What were Clarences and such small things? This was a
wonderful world.
She and Phyllis came down the stairs together as unobtrusively as
they could, so as not to betray to the rest that they were going.
She had forgotten about Gail.
But Gail was the first thing she saw--half-lying on a couch in a
dark corner of the hall, holding court with Laura Ward. There were
two or three men around them, and they were laughing and talking
together. Joy waved her hand as they passed, and Gail looked up from
her laughter.
"Farewell, my dears, until tomorrow! Good-by, Joy. It was a well-done
opera, even if I was sitting in the audience being fiendishly jealous....
Oh, I forgot to tell you that I have learned your dark secret, my child!
I think you're the most ingenious little wretch that ever lived. Till
tomorrow! I'm going to give a tea--be prepared!"
She looked at Laura Ward and laughed again.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
THE GIFT OF THE RING
Joy had no idea in the world how she got into the car. John's
guiding hand on her arm probably was all that saved her from
stumbling into the hedge, or trying to walk up a tree, she thought
afterwards. She was on the back seat, finally, with John by her. She
laid her head back with a little tired half-moan, and felt John's
strong, comforting arm drawing her over so that she could rest
against his shoulder.
"You poor little girl, you're all worn out," she heard him say
tenderly. "But I was proud of you, little Joy. I didn't know what a
wonderful person I had found.... Little fairy princess!"
Ten minutes earlier the note of affection and pride in his voice
would have made Joy so deliriously happy that she wouldn't have
known what to do. But ... Gail knew ... Gail knew all about it
all! ... How could men! And she had said she was going to give a tea.
That probably meant that she was going to tell everybody everything,
and laugh about it.
She _was_ tired, and the shock of Gail's words had taken all
the capacity for action out of her. She knew that if she'd had any
proper feelings she would have moved coldly away from John, and
accused him of betraying her to Gail, and demanded why he had done
it. Evidently she had no proper feelings. You can't have, if you
love people hard. She merely lay against John's strong, broad
shoulder that felt so alive and comforting, and thought that this
was the last time she would ever lean against it, or feel, as she
always did when he touched her, as if there was some one who would
look after her, and stand between her and every one else. She could
not talk.
When they reached the Harrington house Allan took the car around to
the garage at the back, himself, and Phyllis said she would stay in
the car with him while he locked the garage. The men began to tease
her for the idea she had offered, but Joy, hearing Phyllis
laughingly defend herself, and explain what she really meant, knew
that it was Phyllis' way of giving John a chance to say good-night
to her alone.
"Dear Phyllis!" she thought, with a gush of gratitude in her heart
that there was one person in the world so unfailingly thoughtful and
honest and dependable. The world did not quite go down in ruins
while Phyllis stood her friend.
"Dear Phyllis!" she heard John's gay voice say, as if in echo of her
own thoughts. "She knew I'd want a chance to see you alone a
minute.... What an awful amount of people too many there are in the
world, aren't there, kiddie? I'm beginning to think with yearning of
Crusoe's isle, and a barbed-wire fence around that."
He drew her into the shadow of the vines on the porch, and took her
in his arms. ... And he had told Gail ... oh, how _could_ men?
For a moment she stood, passive. Then the nearness of him, and the
cruel last-timeness of it all, swept over her again, and she threw
her arms around his neck convulsively, and kissed him over and over
again. She wanted it to remember.
"Good-by, my dearest!" she whispered.
"Not good-by, dear--good-night!" he answered her. "It's a long time
till tomorrow, but thank goodness, it's coming. And all the
tomorrows after that."
"No--" she started to say, when she heard footsteps, and John
released her.
"It's a very dark night," said Allan sadly. "I couldn't see my best
friend, even if he were on my own porch. Coming in, John?"
"Allan, you have the tact of Talleyrand, or whoever it was they used
to kick," responded John amiably. "No, I can't come in. It's at
least four o'clock, and I have to be up at seven tomorrow. I'll drop
in some time in the morning--you won't have a chance to miss me."
He said good-night to them all, and went down from the porch. They
could hear him whistling "With Strephon for Your Foe" joyously down
the path, and, more dimly, down the road that led to his house.
"There goes, I should say, a fairly happy man," remarked Allan to
the world at large. "Now, Joy, if any one asked you, what would you
say made him so contented with life?"
Joy liked Allan's brotherly teasing as a rule, but tonight it seemed
as if she could not answer him, or anybody. She did, not feel as if
she could talk any more, and looked appealingly at Phyllis.
"She's dead to the world, Allan," Phyllis interposed. "And if we
stay down here talking those imps of ours are going to wake up and
demand tribute."
"Great Scott, they are!" said Allan, "and the buns and stuff you
held Mrs. Hewitt up for are in the bottom of the car, locked up in
the garage--where _you_ wanted to be."
"Which is providential," said the children's mother thankfully.
"It's an alibi. They can't get any till tomorrow, no matter how much
we want to give them any."
So they tiptoed up the stairs. Joy turned off into her own room, but
she heard enough to know that no soft-footedness had availed. She
heard Philip's clear, deliberate little voice demanding, "How much
party did you bring me home, Mother?" and the hopeful patter of
Angela's feet.
She shut her door tight before she knew how it turned out. She had a
good deal to do, because she was going to have to take a train that
got her away from Wallraven before John found time from his rounds
to come back next morning. Gail might have told Mrs. Hewitt--any
number of people--by this time. She did not want to see any of them
again. And she loved them all very much.
She took off her frock with slow, careful fingers, and put on a
kimono to pack in. Her trunk was against the wall. As she worked
steadily over the tissue-paper and hangers and things to be folded,
she thought she was beyond feeling anything at all, till she felt
something wet on her face, and found that she was crying silently,
without having known it in the least.
The green and silver frock--the white top-coat--that had burrs on
it, where she had gotten out by the roadside to pick some goldenrod,
and John had not gotten them all quite off--the little blue dress
with the fichu that John had said made her look as if she belonged
in a house instead of a story-book--the gray silk she had loved so,
and worn so hard it was middle-age-looking already--the brown wool
jersey suit she must travel in----
She laid this last across a chair, and tried to go on packing. That
was the frock she had worn when John came to her in the woods, and
was so kind, and so good, and told her he would let her have her
happy month.... Well, she'd had it. And it was worth it--it was
worth anything!
But she put her head down on the side of the trunk and sobbed and
sobbed.
Presently she went on with her packing, and finished it by a little
after four-thirty. The suitcase had to be filled. When it was done
she took a bath and dressed, and lay down on the bed as she was.
There was a train at nine-ten, that got her back home late in the
afternoon, and she was taking no chances.
She slept a little, always with the nine-ten train on her mind, and
finally rose and locked her trunk at half-past seven. She put the
key and her ticket and what money she had in her hand-bag, fastened
on her cap, took her suitcase, and stole downstairs. Nobody was
astir yet but Lily-Anna, and Viola, who was giving the early-waking
Angela her breakfast in an informal way in the corner of the
kitchen.
"Could I have a cup of coffee in a little while now, Lily-Anna?" she
asked the cook, who was making beaten biscuit in an echoing fashion
that would have penetrated any but the thick hundred-year-old walls
of the kitchen.
"Why, Miss Joy--you goin' off on a ride with Dr. Johnny this early?"
inquired Lily-Anna, thinking the natural thing. "Course you can.
I'll make it right now. An' I'll tell Mis' Harrington."
Joy had forgotten Phyllis in her wild desire for flight. But she
remembered now. She would have to call Phyllis and tell her. Indeed,
she would rather tell her herself than have Gail know. She couldn't
go off this way, as if she was taking the silver with her.
She retraced her steps up the stairs, opened the door of Phyllis'
room softly. Phyllis' bed was near the door, and she sat up at the
slight noise. Joy beckoned to her, and she slipped out of bed,
flinging around her a blue kimono that lay across the footboard and
setting her feet noiselessly in slippers as she came out with the
swift, gliding step that was characteristic of her. She gathered
back the loose masses of her amber-colored hair and flung them over
her shoulder, shut the door softly in order not to disturb Allan,
and followed Joy down the hall.
"What is it, dear?" she asked. "Telephone at this unchristian hour?"
"I'm sorry to disturb you," Joy answered, "but I had to. Where can
we go where I can talk to you for half an hour--or maybe ten minutes?"
There was a glowing fire in the living-room, and, of old custom, a
long couch stood before it. Phyllis led the way downstairs to this,
and established Joy on it, drawing a chair up to it herself.
"Now tell me all about it," she said comfortingly. "And lie down,
child--you look dead."
But Joy was too nervous to lie down.
"I have to go away on the nine-ten," she said.... "No, please,
Phyllis, wait till I tell you, and you'll see I do. You would, too."
Phyllis always took the least nerve-wearing way--you could count on
her for that. She listened encouragingly.
"Gail said last night she--she knew my dark secret." Joy began
nervously in the middle. "And you know Gail does tell anything about
anybody she wants to, especially if she thinks it makes a funny
story,--sometimes I think perhaps she likes making people
ridiculous.... She doesn't care about feelings...."
"Why, you poor child, have you a dark secret?" asked Phyllis,
smiling. "Let me hear the worst. I promise to love you still."
"Oh _please_ do!" implored Joy. She dropped her head on the
couch cushions and talked with her face hidden on one arm. "Phyllis,
I--I never was engaged to John!"
The bombshell did not at all have the effect she had expected.
"I'm sorry to contradict you, but you certainly are," said Phyllis
placidly.
"You don't understand," went on Joy, coming out from her shelter.
"Listen."
So she told Phyllis, with both her quivering little hands locked in
one of Phyllis' strong, firm ones, the whole story--the story of the
shut up, youthless life among the people who came to give her
grandfather homage, and regarded her as a plaything or a
stage-property, and of how she had seen the two young lovers one wet
day, and been stirred into a wild rebellion for a youth of her own.
"I understand," said Phyllis here. "You were 'half-sick of shadows.'
I went through that myself. There comes a time when you'd do
_anything_."
"You understand?" asked Joy with wide eyes, "you with a husband that
adores the ground you walk on?"
"I do understand," affirmed Phyllis, with her mind flying back for a
moment to a gray February day in a Philadelphia library--a day that
was eight years old now. "I think I can understand anything you are
going to tell me."
But Joy went on to the day when she had hidden on the stairs to get
away from the people, and John had come in, with the light glinting
on his hair, and catching in the ring on his finger.
"I suppose I fell in love with him then, though I didn't know what
it was," Joy confessed. "And when I met you and Philip and Allan I
loved you all so, too, and it seemed so queer you liked me--just me,
you know, not somebody's granddaughter that he used for trimmings!"
"Who wouldn't?" said Phyllis matter-of-factly. "So far as I can see,
most people are crazy over you."
"And Grandfather wouldn't let me go unless I'd been engaged--or he
said that was the only reason--he thought I couldn't be, of course.
And--and it flew out. And I used John's name when he cornered me,
because I remembered him, and how kind he'd been. And on top of
that----"
"And on top of that John turned up! Good gracious!" said Phyllis.
She could not help a little laugh but her face sobered swiftly.
"_Think_ of that man's cleverness and self-control! Why--why,
Joy, no man would do all that unless he cared for you a little,
anyhow."
"John would," said Joy with conviction. "You know how he is about
honor and courtesy and doing things for people."
Phyllis nodded. That was an incontrovertible fact.
"And he's told Gail," Joy went on. "That's the only secret I ever
had in my life, so it _must_ be that. So I'm going to run away.
I simply can't stay and..."
"Told Gail! Ridiculous!" cried Phyllis. "Unless ... unless----"
"Unless there was some understanding between them before and John
was simply overchivalrous when he helped me," Joy finished steadily.
"Yes, that's the only answer.... I'm going. Please don't forget me."
"You foolish child!"
"There's another reason," Joy added. "Clarence proposed last night.
I'd be almost sure to say 'yes' to save my face about the other
thing, if I stayed, and I might have to marry him if I did.... Queer
that Clarence, that I and everybody knew was just a plain flirt,
should really want to, and John not!" she added absently. "Good-by."
She was off the couch and had hurried out of doors, where Phyllis,
half-clad as she was, could not follow her.
Phyllis rose and went to the door, but the little slim brown figure
was already going swiftly toward the station, her suitcase swinging
in her hand.
It occurred to Phyllis as she walked over to the telephone that
usually crises found her clad in a blue negligee of some sort. Then
she got Dr. Hewitt's number.
"Is that you, John Hewitt?" she called. "Come over to this house
this moment! ... Yes, something serious _has_ happened. And
don't ask for Allan--ask for me. I'll be on the porch waiting for
you if I can. If not, stay there and wait for me. This is
private--and--yes, about Joy! Come!"
Joy got the train with a desolately long interval of waiting at the
station. It was a day-coach. She had all the time in the world to
think things out. Her grandparents were back in the city house, she
knew. They would be glad to see her in their different ways, she
knew that, too. She could drop into her niche noiselessly, with
scarcely a question from Grandfather, and all the lovingness in the
world from Grandmother, except if Grandfather needed attention. The
old gowns were still in her closet.... _When she got home it would
be reception day!_
As this recollection forced itself on her she felt her heart sink
lower than it had been before. All the tormenting memories in the
world--and Grandfather would make her dress and be there....
She clasped her hands involuntarily, and felt on the left one the
pressure of the wishing ring. She had meant to take it off and leave
it with Phyllis, and she had forgotten to.
"There isn't much left to wish," she thought. She clasped her hands
tighter over it. "Nothing much--but to get to sleep for a little
while, and dream it isn't so. I--I suppose I can do that without a
wish."