Part 8 (2/2)
_”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.
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