The Wishing-Ring Man | Page 5

upstairs.
There she stopped before her dresser mirror, and looked at the flushed, breathless girl in the glass.
"I wonder," Joy said aloud, "what really is the difference between me and other people?"
She stared into the glass to see if she couldn't find out, leaning her hands down on the dresser-top. But the pretty white-enamel-framed mirror showed her just the same Joy as ever. Her heavy bronze-gold braids swung forward, and their ends coiled down on the dresser-top. Between them her little pointed face looked straight at her, blue-eyed, red-lipped, and serious. Its owner eyed it perplexedly awhile, then gave up the riddle.
"If you look like pictures and poetry you do, and that's all there is to it. I suppose living with Grandfather's had an effect on me... I wonder..." Joy still stared steadily into the glass--"I wonder if having somebody in love with me would make a difference. It's the only thing Grandfather's ever said he was willing to have happen to me. He's always talking about 'I would give you up willingly to the first breath of true love....' But there's never anybody comes to his parties you could love with a pair of tongs... I wonder if he would? It would have to be love at first sight, too, I suppose. He doesn't think much of any other kind of love.... But I'd be dreadfully frightened of him.... I hope he'd have blond curly hair!"
She lifted herself from her leaning position, and went and curled up on the side of the bed, the better to think.
"There's no use wondering about a lover," she decided. "Lovers never come to hear Grandfather read, not unless they come in pairs to get out of the rain, like the animals in the ark.... Anyway I don't think I'd want the one today, even if he hadn't been a pair. But a nice fresh one that didn't belong to anybody else...."
Grandmother, released at last from finding out what people wanted in their tea, and giving it to them, hurried into the room at this point, and was very much relieved to find Joy perfectly well to all appearances, and sitting quietly on the side of the bed gazing off into space.
"Darling, were you ill?" she panted, sitting down by her. "Your grandfather was quite disturbed over it, and I was terribly frightened. We knew something must have happened. What was it, lambie? Where do you feel badly?"
Joy looked away from the wall, at her grandmother's kind, anxious, wrinkled little face under the lace lappets. Grandfather liked Grandmother to wear caps, so she did it; also fichus and full-skirted silks, whether such were in fashion or no.
"I didn't feel ill one bit," explained Joy deliberately. "Only I'm tired of being a decoration. I want to be like other people... I don't want to wear any more clothes like paintings, or ever have any more poetry written to me. I--oh, Grandmother, everything's going on and going on, and none of it's happening to me!" She looked at her grandmother appealingly. "And it feels as if it wouldn't ever!"
But Grandmother didn't seem to understand a bit. And yet she must have been young once--wasn't there that poem of Grandfather's, "To Myrtilla at Seventeen," to prove it? The one beginning "Sweetheart, whose shadowed hair!" Why, he must have--yes, he spoke of it in the poem--Grandfather must have held Grandmother's hand, like the Dicky-lover today, and even kissed her because he wanted to, not because it was nine in the morning or ten at night. Those were the times he kissed her now. Of one thing Joy was certain, Grandmother had never told Grandfather he must stop. She wouldn't have dared.
"Dear, would you like a hot-water bottle, and your supper in bed?" inquired Grandmother, breaking in on these meditations.... Oh, it was a long time since Grandmother had been Myrtilla at seventeen! Joy looked at her wistfully once more.
"No, thank you, Grandmother," she said decidedly. "I feel very well, thank you. I'll be down to supper as soon as I've changed my frock."
She felt as if getting off the actual clothes that were in the poem would be escaping from it a little, and perhaps drawing a little nearer the having of real things happen to her. Grandmother, nearly reassured, patted Joy's little slim hand with her own little wrinkled one, and trotted downstairs to tell Grandfather happily that Joy would soon be down.
Joy, left alone, pulled off the amber robe, and stood before the wardrobe in her silk slip, pushing along the hangers to try and find something practical. It was pretty hard. All her gowns were lovely loose or draped or girdled things: you could have costumed the whole cast of two Maeterlinck plays from just those hangers. She was very tired, suddenly, of all of them.