The Wishing-Ring Man Part 40

"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 tr.i.m.m.i.n.gs!"

"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 wis.h.i.+ng 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."

She tried very hard, and she had only had about three hours of sleep that night, not to speak of a most exciting evening before it. She really thought in her heart that she couldn't sleep, but she laid her head back against the hot red velvet of the seat, and actually did sleep dangerously near the time to change cars. She got a chair-car after that, but, having got into the way of it, drowsed again. She woke up from a dream that John was coming down the aisle, only Gail was somewhere outside with a rope around his arms, and was going to pull him back in a minute, to find that she was at the journey's end. She had only her suitcase to gather up. She had not even asked Phyllis to send her trunk. Well, Phyllis would, anyway.

The old house was just the same. She thought irrepressibly, as she came slowly up the steps, about the little boy who ran away from home, and when he came back after four hours, fidgeted a while, and then said off-handedly, "Well, I see you have the same old cat!" She knew exactly how that small boy had felt.

"The same old cats!" she said half-aloud as three plump, velvet-upholstered ladies ambled down the steps, and pa.s.sed her without knowing her. Then she checked her mind in its careering. "I mustn't get Gailish, even if I am unhappy," she reminded herself.

"That's the sort of thing she'd say."

Old Elizabeth was in the hall, in attendance, as usual. Joy flung her arms round her impulsively and kissed her. It was good to see her again, and to know that she didn't know any terrible things about her having commandeered a lover that really belonged to somebody else.

"Oh, Miss Joy, Miss Joy dear!" said old Elizabeth. "How good you got here in time for the reception! And it's good to see you, too. Run up and git into some pretty clothes like your grandpa likes, and go right into the parlor."

Joy smiled a little as she obeyed old Elizabeth. It seemed queer, and yet natural, to come back and slip into her old place as a minor figure in the old unbreakable routine. She had been a real person with a major part to play, all these weeks at Wallraven.... But it was rather a comfort, now, to feel that it didn't matter to anybody what you did, as long as Grandfather was pleased. And she felt as if she was willing to be a whole row of parlor bric-a-brac, she was so meek and so tired and unhappy.

It was the amber satin she had rebelled so against that she took out of her suitcase deliberately and put on. It was tight across the chest, and actually a little short for her--she had _grown_, really grown in the active open-air weeks she had been away. She was tanned, too, she found when the yellow dress was on, and there was a freckle on the back of one little white hand. She braided her hair in the old way and went down to the long parlors, back to the autographed pictures and framed letters, and Grandfather, benignantly great at the end of the room.

Grandmother was very glad to see her. They s.n.a.t.c.hed a minute in a dark corner before they had to go on seeing guests. Joy found herself going up and down the room saying courteous things to people in just the old way. They were not surprised to see her. Perhaps they had scarcely noticed that she had been away.

"It's the same old cat--I've only been away three hours," she reminded herself with a little rueful smile. Then she saw a shy-looking couple over in the corner, and went over, to try to put them at ease.... She wouldn't have thought about people being shy or needing putting at ease before she went away!...

"Something _has_ happened to me," thought Joy. Then she thought what it was. Why, she was doing the way John would have done--thinking about other people's feelings, not her own, for one minute. It felt warm in her heart. She had that for a keepsake from John, anyway.

But she found she was making a mistake to think about John. After a half-hour of moving about the long parlors she fled. The little dark place in the back hall was just the same. Six weeks, naturally, had not altered it.

She sat down on the bottom step in a little heap, with her face in her hands, under Aunt Lucilla's triumphant picture. She remembered it above her, but she did not want to look at it.

"I wish you hadn't egged me on, Aunt Lucilla," she said most unfairly from between her hands.

She did not know how long she had sat there, when she heard a little squeak, and looked up with her heart jumping. It sounded like the squeak doors make that haven't been opened for--say--six weeks or two months....

There in the ray of light from the chandelier in the room behind, the light glinting on his fair curly hair, he stood as he had stood before, the wis.h.i.+ng-ring man.

For a moment Joy thought she was seeing something that wasn't so.

Then she looked down. The ring was on her finger still, not on his.

And he was not a vision. He was a human man, a man she knew and loved. And he did not smile at her this time, as the vision would have done, in a quizzical, stranger-friendly fas.h.i.+on, and stand still. He was over at her side in one swift step, and he had both her hands tight, as if they belonged to him, and he was talking to her in a loving, scolding voice, as people only talk to you when you belong to them and they to you.

"Joy! You very naughty little girl, to run away this way!"

For a minute she only wanted to cling to his hands and tell him how glad--how glad she was to see him, and how nothing else in the whole beautiful world mattered at all. But she remembered she mustn't.

"You told Gail. You might have known she'd shame me before everybody if she could. She doesn't care.... Oh, John, how could you?"

She held on to him hard for comfort even while she was reproaching him.

He looked down at her in the half-light, then, as if he was fairly content with what he saw in her face, closed the door behind him.

They could still see each other enough to talk.

"Next time give me a little more benefit of the doubt, my dear. _I never told Gail anything_!"

When John told you anything it was so. That was all there was to _that_. She gave a gasp of blessed relief.

"But--" she protested. "But Gail knew----"