The Wishing-Ring Man Part 36

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 att.i.tude 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.

"Compet.i.tion 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 cla.s.s 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 circ.u.mstances.

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 Princ.i.p.al 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 rehea.r.s.e 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 princ.i.p.als 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 rehea.r.s.e 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 rehea.r.s.ed 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.