The Wishing-Ring Man Part 8

Grandmother was coming forward now, to speak to him, where he stood, straight and dignified and handsome, with the little girl still on one arm.

"You are my old friend Grace Carpenter's son, as I was just telling Mr. Havenith. Edith Carpenter's nephew.... I--I am glad you are a friend's son," Grandmother finished tremulously.

John set Angela down and took Grandmother's hand, saying something to her gently--Joy never knew what. She had stood enough.

Phyllis felt Joy's hand pull out of hers. The inn-cottages were all built alike, so Joy knew perfectly well how to bolt through the front door, through the living-room to the back door and away.

Viola, mending a little sock, caught a glimpse of flying skirts and flying braids.

"Them red-haired folks certainly is tempestuous, but they's gitters," she remarked to herself philosophically, and went on with her mending.

Outside, Phyllis looked at Allan and Allan looked at Phyllis. There didn't seem much to say about it. At last Allan spoke, in a way that he and Phyllis agreed afterwards was painfully inadequate, but was all he could think of to say.

"Ah--would you like to put away your suitcase, old man?" he inquired. "You must be tired of--of seeing it there."

Phyllis gurgled under her breath, but every one else was deadly serious. n.o.body seemed to see anything funny about the offer.

"Thank you very much," John responded solemnly. "Yes, thank you, Harrington, I believe I would."

He bent over and picked it up, and followed his host inside.

Neither of them said anything as they went upstairs.

"Here's your room," Allan offered, showing it politely.

"So it is," murmured John in a quite expressionless voice, looking at it without seeming to know how to enter.

"It's to live in, you know," Allan suggested.

At this broad hint John went in and put his suitcase on the bed. He still appeared to be in more or less of a trance-state.

"If we'd known, we'd have tied a little white ribbon here and there, and arranged a rice-cascade--a shower, isn't it? or something,"

continued his host, amiably. "Awfully sorry, old chap, but you shouldn't have been so darn secretive. But we'll do our best--"

John awoke at this, and caught up a small pink pincus.h.i.+on which sat in the mathematical middle of his dresser, and threw it. It didn't hit Allan, because he dodged.

"That's one of Phyllis' favorite pincus.h.i.+ons," he warned John from outside the door. "I say, Johnny, this isn't any way to repay hospitality."

He went on down the stair, and John could see his shoulders shaking.

"They've both got too confounded much sense of humor," said John bitterly.

But he went out and picked up the pincus.h.i.+on just the same, and addressed himself to the methodical unpacking of his suitcase.

"Oh, I forgot! Congratulations!" Allan called cheerily up from the stair-foot.

John, casting collars automatically from suitcase to dresser-top, growled.

"Congratulations! I need prayers more!" he said under his breath.

"But--poor little thing! I might as well have stepped on a kitten! ... I certainly did tell her to hope for better things and they'd come.... I didn't know I was going to be one of 'em!"

Then, as he continued to unpack he grinned in spite of himself, for into his mind came a poem of Guiterman's he'd read lately, about an agnostic Brahmin who didn't believe in prayer, and came inadvertently on a tiger praying for a meal in the jungle:

_"The trustful Tiger closed his prayer-- Behold--a Brahmin trembling there!

The Brahmin never scoffed a whit.

The Prayer had answer_.--He _was_ It."

"I wonder," mused John, "whether she's a kitten, or a tiger? Anyway, _I_ was _It_! ... I can't stand any more of anything just now.

I'll get out till dinner-time!"

He tiptoed downstairs, and in his turn slid out the back door. The Haveniths were still talking to the Harringtons on the front veranda, he noted with a certain pleasure in their durance, and Phyllis' back looked polite but tired. He headed for the adjacent woods, diving into the leafy coolness with a feeling of escape. The wood blew cool and a little moist, and fragrant with far-off wood-smoke, and there was a feeling of solitude that he liked. He sighed with relief as he rounded the turn in the wood-path.

And there before him, at the foot of her great oak, stood Joy, not expecting him in the least. She uttered a little cry at sight of him, and turned to run away. Then she thought better of it, and stood her ground. Just what John might be going to do or say to her she did not know, but she thought he was ent.i.tled to do almost anything, and stood prepared for it, her face buried in her hands.

John had been a little irritated at the sight of her, but her evident terror moved him, as it had before. He was, through and through, the best type of physician; a man whose first and ruling impulse was always to help and heal, whether it was body or soul, or only feelings. Joy, standing with her face hidden, felt him laying his hands, smooth and strong, over hers.

"Aren't you even going to look at the fiance you've picked out?" she heard him say half-amusedly. "Why, I'm not going to hurt you, child."

He took her hands down. She let him, and raised her eyes to his kindly, wise steel-gray ones. He seemed to be regarding her in a friendly fas.h.i.+on, and she dared to look at him friendlily, too--even to smile a little. He brought to her the same sense of brightness and well-being that she had experienced before, and her heart felt lighter, though by every law of reason she should have been more ashamed than ever, confronted with him, there alone.

"Of course you won't hurt me," she said. "But--well, when you steal anybody's name and get engaged to it, they have a right to be cross.

You can be, if you want to, and I won't say a word. I know very well I deserve it!"

John Hewitt _had_ intended to be cross--very cross indeed; but with Joy's kitten-blue eyes fixed trustfully on his he found it difficult even to be stern. He made an attempt, nevertheless.

"Don't you know that a little girl like you isn't old enough to be engaged to be married?" he told her severely. He sat down on a heap of brown and scarlet leaves, the better to show Joy the error of her ways. "What made you think of it at all?"

Joy smiled. She was quite at ease now, with the curious feeling of ease and happiness he always gave her, and she answered him calmly, drawing a heavy copper plait forward over each shoulder.

"It's these that have made you think so all along. I'm nineteen."

John sat back a little, with both hands clasped over one gray-clad knee, and looked at her again in the light of that.

"It's hard to realize, I know," she said apologetically. She lifted the wonderful braids and bound them crownwise around her head, tying the ends together behind as if they were pieces of ribbon, and tucking them under with a comb, from behind one ear. She anch.o.r.ed them in front with the other comb, and smiled flas.h.i.+ngly at him again. "Now it seems real, doesn't it? And now I'll tell you all about it--that is, if you have the time."

He looked again at the lovely, earnest little face under the crown of hair, and nodded gravely. She was not like any girl he had ever known.... She was like the girls you imagined might exist, sometimes, and wondered if you'd like them, after all, if they did.

He wanted her to go on, at least, and felt stealing over him a conviction that she couldn't have done so particularly wrong.

Joy felt the lessened severity of his att.i.tude, and took courage from it as she began.

"You remember that day you came to Grandfather's? You remembered my name, so I'm sure you do remember the rest. Well, that day I was especially unhappy because--well, it's hard to explain the because.

Things were just as good as they always had been, really; only that day I couldn't stand them any more. You know things _can_ be that way."

She looked at him expectantly, and he nodded again.

"It was a forlorn little life for a child like you--oh, I keep forgetting!"

He laughed.