The Wishing-Ring Man Part 37

"Don't stop for me, Clarence," Gail ordered. "On with the dance, let Joy be unrefined. That is, if she can. I know you're hungering to lash your wretched infant-school forward."

Clarence remarked that she was plucky, patted her shoulder, and went thankfully off to put his chorus through an evolution or so while he could.

John, meanwhile, with Phyllis' help, took off the pretty pink satin slipper, with its rosette, and the pink silk stocking, and found that Gail's ankle was badly sprained. They did it up properly, and Phyllis took Gail home.

"Now what shall we do?" demanded Clarence at the end of the act, pushing the Lord Chancellor's wig to one side, and staring around him.

"What about Gail's guest, the one that's coming down tomorrow?"

offered Tiddy.

"We have her cast, anyway," Clarence answered dolefully.

"She's played Celia, the one that's a sort of lieutenant-fairy, before, and I remember the time I had getting her to memorize her words--not a long part at all. She could no more play Phyllis than I can."

"Were you talking about the part, or about me?"' asked Phyllis Harrington, coming in again.

"How is Gail?" asked everybody.

"Ask John," said Phyllis. "Her ankle seems to be hurting her badly, poor girl. I hope it will be all right tomorrow night. I made her go to bed, and her mother is sworn to make her stay there. I'll go through her part for her now, Clarence, if it will be any help."

Clarence stared at her.

"Can you?" he asked.

"Well, I know the words," said Phyllis. "And I don't think she will be able to rehea.r.s.e again. It will be as much as she can do to get up tomorrow night and go through it."

John shook his head. "I'm afraid she won't be able to do even that,"

he said.

"Then you'll have to take the part, Phyllis!" said Clarence with a sudden decision. "Never mind dressing now. Take your hat off and see what you can do."

"Understand, I'm only holding it," said Phyllis, but she would have been more than human if she had not flushed a little with pleasure at the idea.

They began rehearsals again, and this time the opera went through with scarcely a hitch. The little chorus girls had come to adore Phyllis by this time, the boys were fond of her--there was scarcely one of the cast whom she had not helped over or through or under some one of the little hitches incident to private theatricals--and the whole cast was on its tiptoes to see her through. There was a new feeling in the thing, that Clarence noticed directly.

"By Jove, we ought to have insisted on her doing it from the first,"

he told Tiddy, his lieutenant, under his breath. "I could have gotten twice as much work out of 'em.'

"Who'd have broken the news to Cousin?" he wanted to know.

Clarence eyed him with the detached interest that was his, and meditated with a certain amus.e.m.e.nt on the changeableness of college boys. Two weeks before Tiddy would have lowered his voice in reverence at Gail's name. Then he glanced across at Joy, sitting close by Phyllis in her gauzes, with her wonderful bronze-gold hair hanging around her like a mantle, and conceded within himself that it was not so surprising after all.

Sure enough, Gail was unable to bear much weight on her foot by the next day. She insisted on being dressed and driven down to the hurried last rehearsal on the afternoon of the performance. But she could not walk without support.

"You'll have to take it, Phyllis," she conceded. "I shall look as beautiful as I can, and sit in the audience and hate you."

"You ought to," said Phyllis mournfully. "I know if it were I in your place, I couldn't bear to come down and look at you."

"I have to, anyway, on account of Laura," said Gail. Miss Ward had come, and was at that moment getting out of her wraps preparatory to meeting the cast and rehearsing.

As Phyllis left her to go into the dressing-room and introduce the stranger, whom she had met, to the others, she heard Joy cry out in surprise.

"Why, I know you--at least I've seen you, only you don't remember me," Joy was saying impulsively.

Laura Ward, in the act of slipping off her coat, stopped in surprise.

"Why, I have seen _you_" she said. "Where was it?"

"I was posing for the Morrows," explained Joy. "You ran in and got some fixative. They had me for their mural decorations----"

_"Joy!"_ called somebody in the tone of imperative need which is almost as summoning as a telephone bell, and Joy dashed off, holding up her green water-weeds with one hand and her draperies with the other. The meeting with Laura Ward seemed a pleasant sort of crowning to the day. She was the very same vivid, gipsy-looking girl who had dashed into the Morrow studio for a moment, and who had seemed to stand, to Joy then, for all the kinds of girl she had wanted to be and couldn't. And now she seemed just a pleasant person like oneself. Joy had caught up to her. It was like an omen.

"What is it?" she called dutifully as she ran.

She found no opportunity to see more of Miss Ward. She wanted to, for she was sure she was going to like her. She had always wanted to.

"It's a good audience," breathed Clarence over her shoulder, as they looked through peep-holes in the curtain. "All the sisters and cousins and aunts have turned up. I say, Joy, the Fairy Queen was good for ten tickets at least. There's a row of her dear ones right across from aisle to aisle."

The moment of the play had come all too swiftly, and in ten nerve-shattering minutes the curtain would go up. Ten minutes after that Joy would be rising out of a trap-door, in the character of a fairy who had spent the last twenty years at the bottom of a stream; incidentally she would be acting for the first time in her life.

There was enough to be excited over; and yet it was none of these things that excited her--it was the curious note in Clarence Rutherford's voice as he spoke his trivial words in her ear.

She moved away from him automatically. She was a little tired, tonight, of his persistent flirtation. It was all very well for a while, but surely--surely, she thought, it was time he'd had enough of it; and she went back off the stage, looking, though she scarcely acknowledged it to herself, for John. She felt as if she wanted to see as much of him as she could.

He ought to have been in his dressing-room, but he was not. He was looking for her, she almost thought, for he came quickly toward her with his face lighted.

"I'm so glad I found you before the thing commenced, kiddie," he said. "I just wanted to tell you that you're not to be frightened.

Do you hear? I forbid you to be frightened." He smiled down at her protectingly. "You say you always do as I tell you--so you must this time. I know you're going to make a howling success of the opera....

My dear, _don't_ look so worried about it all!"

They were in a little dim pa.s.sage where no one was likely to come, 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 a.s.suming 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.