“Certainly not!” said Mrs. Whitney. “You don’t have so many young men callers that I’m going to send the first one flying. Get up and dress as fast as you can. I’ll send Libby up with some hot tea. Drink it while you are dressing, and don’t you dare be long about it either. You’ll be all right when you get downstairs laughing and talking. And anyway, you’ve got to come. I’m not going to have it said that we are giving way to our feelings. They’ll get us into court to testify, perhaps, if we seem to be upset. Where did those pansies come from?” She eyed her stepdaughter sharply.
“Oh, just one of the girls that used to be in my Sunday school class brought them to me,” evaded Joyce.
“How silly! I suppose she thought you were suffering and needed consolation! She probably caught you out in the woods mooning around,” she said contemptuously.
Joyce did not answer. She was slipping into her garments as rapidly as she could.
“Who is downstairs?” she asked presently in a weary voice. Not that she cared.
“Why, that young Corey Watkins,” announced Mrs. Whitney with pride. “It’s nice of him to come. He’s in the bank, isn’t he? I didn’t realize what a good-looking young fellow he is, and so well groomed!”
That was a new phrase Mrs. Whitney had picked up on her visit to her sister.
“Corey Watkins!” said Joyce. “What on earth is he coming here for? I hardly know him at all.”
“Why, he’s probably coming to be kind, or to offer you sympathy. But he made the excuse that he wants you to play over something for him to sing. He says Miss Bright is off visiting her aunt, and he has to sing in church next Sunday. I told him you’d be glad to do it for him. He wants you to try it over with him, and then go down to the church rehearsal and play it there for him. He says he can’t sing with that substitute organist they have.”
Joyce paused in her dressing and looked aghast.
“Well, I certainly will not go down to that rehearsal!” she said almost fiercely. “I’ll play it over for him once, but then I’m done.”
“Now, look here, Joyce. You can’t treat a young man that way! The first really eligible young man that has called on you since you came home from college! And especially at a time like this. It’s very brave for him to come in the face of public opinion. And it will be a good thing for you to go down to that rehearsal in his company. People will see that you are not despised, even if your brother has committed forgery, or burglary or whatever it is.”
Joyce whirled around upon Mrs. Whitney white to the lips, and with blue flames of anger in her eyes. For an instant she felt as if she must rush upon her tormentor and shake her, or throw the hairbrush at her, or something. Then she suddenly realized that fury would get her nowhere and would only do harm, and she laid the hairbrush down on the bureau and tried to speak steadily.
“My brother has not done any of those things, and you shall not talk as if he had. I shall have to tell my father if you say anything like that again. And I’m certain that I do not want anybody to take up for me on any such reason. I do not feel the need of that kind of support. I will go down and play the music over for him, but I will not go with him to the rehearsal. No amount of coaxing or commanding will make me do it.”
“Look here, Joyce, don’t be a fool. You aren’t such a beauty that you can expect to have many more young men come around you, especially now since Jason is under the frown of the town, and you’d better make the best of this perfectly respectable young man. With you plain looks he’s likely all you’ll get, and you want to make the most of your chances, don’t you?”
“Why?” asked Joyce suddenly.
“Well, you don’t want to be a drag on your father all your life, do you?”
An angry flame swept over Joyce’s face and she turned and walked out of the room.
“Well, you needn’t get angry,” pursued Mrs. Whitney’s voice, “I’m only telling you for your own good, and who but I who stand in place of a mother to you, should do it? And a thankless task I have, too!”
But Joyce was walking down the stairs. And not until then, not until it was too late to call her back, did Mrs. Whitney notice that Joyce had put on an old morning dress and that her hair was not arranged in its usual neat order but barely slicked over with a single stroke of the brush and knotted hastily at her neck. Joyce hadn’t taken the slightest trouble to dress up for the young man, and she was marching down and into the front room like an army with banners going into the fray. Her stepmother leaned over the banister full of rage. Such a nice young man he was. So neat! And Joyce going down like that! And horror of horrors, she was wearing bedroom slippers! Had she done that on purpose, or just forgotten them?
She could hear Joyce’s clear voice down there explaining not at all graciously:
“I’m sorry to have kept you waiting, but I had gone to bed with a bad headache. You’ll have to excuse my appearance. I just slipped on something to come down and play your song over for you, since my stepmother seemed to think you were in some distress about it.”
Corey Watkins was a trim, neat young man with an effect of drabness. He had small, hard gray eyes, drabish hair and eyelashes, a neat tight mouth, and a way of setting it that made it appear firmer than it was. He was dapper in the extreme, with close-cut hair, never ruffled from its tight satin smoothness. His face was expressionless.
“Well, I’m sorry you are suffering,” he said stiffly, “but I appreciate your coming down. This really is quite important, and perhaps as Mrs. Whitney suggested, it may do you good to get out of yourself and mingle with people a little while. I thought we’d just try this over here once or twice and then I’d take you down to the rehearsal and let them see that I have my own accompanist.”
“I’ll play it over for you here,” said Joyce firmly, “but I cannot go out anywhere tonight. You’ll have to excuse me. It will be quite impossible. Is this the music?”
She took the sheet of music out of his hand and walked to the piano, sat down, and began to play.
Corey Watkins had a neat, tight, hard voice, too, a high tenor with places in it that sounded as if he had a hot potato in his mouth. After the first playing he opened his small tight mouth and began to sing in a small tight way.
Joyce played on like a robot, scarcely speaking except to correct a note which he had sung wrong.
At last Corey said he thought he had it, and with his hard little glint of a smile tried once more to persuade her to go down to the rehearsal with him.
“I’d like to show them what a really fine accompanist I have secured,” he said with satisfaction. “They were going to force that stranger on me and she can’t play accompaniments properly.”
“It is quite impossible!” said Joyce, lifting tired eyes a trifle haughtily.
“That was so sweet!” burst in Mrs. Whitney in a gushing voice, arriving in the nick of time with a tray of lemonade and cake and planting her substantial body in the doorway as Joyce was leading her would-be caller to the door in spite of himself.
Corey Watkins was not reluctant to sit down for refreshments, although it was little past the usual supper time of the village and he couldn’t have been in need of nourishment.
Joyce paused, hesitated, and was about to beg to be excused, but her stepmother’s stern eyes fixed on her.
“Sit down, Joycie dear,” she said in the tone of an elephant caressing a moth. “Mr. Watkins will want to try the song over again after we are done, before he goes to sing it in public. A little longer won’t hurt you, dear, and I’ve told Aunt Libby to bring you a cup of tea. You’ll feel better after you’ve had it. Perhaps you’ll even feel well enough to go down to the church. You have such a lovely voice, Mr. Watkins, it’s a pity not to be well accompanied. And we’re so proud of our little girl’s playing. It really does help, in singing, don’t you think it does, to have a good accompanist?”
Joyce sat down but she was silent. She didn’t even drink the tea with it came. She sat and listened to her stepmother,
babbling on, and looked coldly at Corey Watkins, and wondered if he would ever go.
She played the song over again perfunctorily after they had finished the lemonade and cake, and then, as Mrs. Whitney had taken herself away on some pretext, she had to walk to the front door to see the young man out.
Corey Watkins stood on the porch for a moment looking down at Joyce.
“I wish to express my sympathy, Miss Joyce, in your trouble,” he said stiltedly, “and to tell you that you have my utmost respect. I shall not let what your brother has done affect my respect for you in the least. I would like to be your friend.”
Joyce drew herself to her slender height and looked at him with fire in her eyes. It was not often Joyce was roused, especially before outsiders, but she was roused now.
“I do not understand you, Corey Watkins,” she said haughtily. “My brother has done nothing to be ashamed of, and I do not need to be commiserated on his account.”
“Ah!” said Corey Watkins sorrowfully. “Then they have not told you. I am sorry that I should have to be the first to mention it. But anyway, Miss Joyce, I want you to know that I am your friend, no matter what your brother has done. I am sorry that you cannot see your way clear to put his trouble aside and come with me where I assure you you will find welcome. Anyone whom I bring is always welcome. But I shall call again when you have had time to become more resigned. Good night!”
He lifted his hat and went neatly down the steps and out to his car. Joyce stood watching him, too angry to make a reply.
After that Joyce spent a good many hours of each day in the woods, and after supper out in the grape arbor from which she could easily flee to the edge of the woodland if she should hear someone coming to call. Joyce did not want to get involved with Corey Watkins, nor to have another altercation with him. The memory of what he said had been with her every hour in the day since he came, and she had been sure from his manner that he meant to come again. Very well, when he did she would not be there!
So she escaped every evening into the twilight, sometimes going over to see Hannah, but not often, because her stepmother seemed to be especially angered if she knew she had been there. She said it would make it bad if there was a trial, to have had the families seeing much of one another, since the two sons were involved in the trouble. So Joyce was careful to go only after dark, and quite unbeknownst to her family.
Three times the quiet persistence of Corey Watkins had brought him to the Whitney house, where each time he had waited for an hour and a half for Joyce’s return, conversing meantime with Mrs. Whitney, getting very well acquainted indeed with the ways of the family and gleaning much knowledge on the side concerning Joyce and her various whims, according to her stepmother.
But Joyce was very wary. She was careful to take a distant survey of the front lawn and drive before returning, and to be sure whether Corey’s car was parked anywhere around. She would not come in until it was gone.
But the third time Corey was wise and came on foot from the village, walking on the grass instead of the drive and coming to the house most quietly. However, Joyce heard voices when she entered cautiously that night and managed to creep up the back stairs without getting caught.
So at last Mrs. Whitney decided to take a hand in the matter and invited Corey to dinner one night.
She didn’t tell her husband until he came home from the village late in the afternoon, and then most adroitly she told Nathan that Corey was interested in Joyce and Joyce always managed to be away when he came to the house, so she had invited him to dinner.
Nathan wasn’t pleased, but as Corey was just driving in there wasn’t much he could do about it except be most surly and ungracious to the young man. However, Corey was thick-skinned, so it didn’t matter. When he decided to do anything he went right ahead regardless of all hindrances, so he walked in and conducted himself with perfect ease in spite of the coldness of father and daughter, acting as if he had a well assured basis to go on in Mrs. Whitney’s alliance, as indeed he really did. Mrs. Whitney was mistress of that house if there ever was one.
Joyce came in at the last moment, through the side entrance. She had been away taking a walk with Rose Allison all the afternoon and hadn’t seen even Aunt Libby, so the guest was an entire surprise to her. As she walked into the dining room and saw who was there a quick flash of indignation swept over her face. But she had control of herself at once, and came in quietly, bowing distantly to Corey, as if disclaiming from the start any idea that he was her guest.
During the meal she was absolutely silent except when a question was directly addressed to her, then she answered quietly and briefly. She was trying during the entire time to think of a way of escape from going into the parlor after supper, but there was no outside possibility that would not involve the escort of Corey Watkins, and she shrank inexpressibly from that.
It was not that she had ever had any very strong prejudice against him. She hadn’t been much in his vicinity because of her years away at college, and the grown-up Corey seemed to her almost as colorless as the small boy Corey she vaguely remembered in her girlhood. But she had been so angered by his calm taking it for granted that Jason was a criminal that she could scarcely bear to look at him.
Nathan Whitney ate his supper in utter silence except to ask for more bread or butter, and when he was done he swung his chair around and enveloped himself in the evening paper, having a feverish manner that denoted unusual nervous excitement. Joyce, as she watched him covertly, wondered if he had heard anything more about Jason. She hoped the visitor would not notice how nervous her father was and report it in the town. If it had been anybody else who was dining with them Joyce would have been mortified at the way her father acted, but since it was this young man with his unusual persistence, she was almost glad of it, though she knew there would be a battle between her father and stepmother as soon as the guest was gone.
Nathan Whitney left them as soon as the meal was over and went, paper and all, to the small room opposite the dining room, which he called his office, shutting himself up there, while Joyce was compelled to drift into the parlor.
Mrs. Whitney had done most of the conversing during supper, and she was full of talk now as she turned on the parlor lights. “Joyce, why don’t you and Mr. Watkins sit on the couch together and look at your college photographs? Now that you have them in an album by themselves they are really well worth looking at. I think seeing pictures of one’s friends is such a good way to get acquainted, don’t you, Mr. Watkins?”
Yes, Corey said he thought it was. He expressed a consuming desire to see the pictures and have Joyce tell him about them.
But Joyce shook her head.
“Sorry,” she said in a tone that showed she wasn’t in the least sorry, “I loaned the book to Rose Allison to copy the head of a fancy picture I had in there. She’s doing a poster for something at the church and the head gave her just the pose she wanted.”
Joyce settled down on a distant chair, as far as possible from the one near which Corey was hovering, and as unrelated to any other chair as it could possibly be in Mrs. Whitney’s parlor, which was literally running over with little fancy chairs bursting in between large overstuffed ones.
“How vexing!” said Mrs. Whitney, looking at Joyce as if she thought she must be lying. “Well, here is the next best thing!” And she hauled out a couple of albums from a shelf in an elaborate cabinet of ornate structure.
“Here!” she cried triumphantly. “This is Jason’s college album. He must have left it down here the night he had those fellows here!” And she smiled sweetly at Joyce. Just as if she didn’t know that Jason never left his things downstairs! Just as if she were not aware that Jason’s personal things like albums were always under lock and key!
Joyce gazed at the big gray book with a college emblem on its cover in horror. How had her stepmother got hold of that book? She knew Jason never left it out. She must have picked and pried until she got the door of his closet open. Jaso
n had always kept that book on the top shelf of his closet!
Suddenly Joyce walked swiftly over and took the book from her stepmother’s hand.
“No!” she said sharply. “Not that book! Jason would not like us to be looking over his personal pictures. He would resent it very much! Suppose he should come walking in here and find us looking through a book that he had locked away. He might come back at any moment, you know.”
She turned protesting eyes toward her stepmother.
“Oh,” laughed Mrs. Whitney, “Jason is scarcely in a position to object to anything we might do.”
“He’ll scarcely come walking in just now anyway, I imagine,” said Corey with a dray cackle that he seemed to think was humor. He turned toward Joyce, but she suddenly whirled around and with the big book clasped in her arms, she ran swiftly up the stairs and hid the book in her own room, coming down with a large portfolio containing a number of brightly illustrated folders of foreign places that a college friend of hers who was traveling abroad had sent her.
“Mr. Watkins isn’t interested in seeing a lot of college people that he doesn’t know, Mother,” said she as she came forward with the substitutes in her hand. “They wouldn’t interest him. But here are some more gorgeous pictures that just came from abroad. I’m sure he’ll like to look at these.” And she smiled gravely as she handed him the folios.
Corey took the portfolio suspiciously and opened it.
“Sit down on the couch, both of you,” urged Mrs. Whitney. “Joyce, you sit down beside him and tell him about them.”
She motioned toward the couch and Corey followed her suggestion, but Joyce went over on the other side of the room and sat down.
“Mr. Watkins doesn’t need to be told about them,” she said coolly. “He probably knows more than I do about every one of those places, and one doesn’t want to be bothered with talk when one has nice interesting pictures to look at.”
“Well, you could enjoy them together, my dear!” gently reproved Mrs. Whitney. She never “my-deared” Joyce except when there was company present. And how Joyce hated this pose of charming companionship for the benefit of others. It didn’t deceive anybody, either. Why would she do it?
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