While Jane's astounding utterance seemed to float and echo on the
November night air, Sarah Farraday let herself as stealthily out of her
front door as she had let herself in, and came softly down the steps. "I
didn't wake mother," she said in a whisper. She was in sober, every-day
serge now, and pulling on her second-best cloak. She carried a small bag
and was faintly pink with her haste. There was apprehension in the look
she gave her friend. "Wasn't I quick, Jane?" She had left them alone to
give Martin Wetherby his chance, but ancient girl loyalty had winged her
heels.
"Yes," said Jane, slipping her hand through Sarah's arm. "Sally, I've
just been telling Marty that I'm going away for a while."
"Jane Vail! Going _away_? What for? Where?" She stood still on the
sidewalk, exploding into tiny, staccato sentences.
"To New York," Jane heard herself saying with entire conviction. "I'm
going away to work."
"To _work_?" They were all in the brightness of the street light now, and
Sarah brought her nearsighted gaze close to Jane's glowing face. "Have
you lost your senses?"
"Neither my senses nor my cosy little hundred-a-month," said Jane. "Come
along, people,--it's a scandalous hour." She started briskly up the
silent thoroughfare and the others followed. "No, it's really all quite
sane and simple." (The astounding thing was that she had known it less
than five minutes herself, and now it was a solid and settled fact to
her. Happily, gloriously, she didn't have to choose, after all. She
didn't have to be either a Nannie Slade Hunter or a Sally Farraday; there
was a chance to be something quite fresh and new.) "I'm going to _New
York_ to write. I mean, to see if I can write."
Martin Wetherby, heavily keeping step beside her, not even touching her
arm at crossings, was silent, but her best friend was vocal and vehement.
"Jane Vail! I never heard anything so--so far-fetched in all my life!
Going to _New York_ to write! Can't you write here in your own town, in
your own home? Of course you can. Why,--see what you've accomplished
already."
"I haven't accomplished anything, old dear, except a few papers for the
Tuesday Club and the Ladies' Aid, and----"
"You've had three stories accepted and published and one of them _paid
for_,--I think you've had a _great deal_ of encouragement, don't you,
Martin?"
The stout young man made a husky assent.
"But Sally, you don't realize the interruptions, the distractions----"
"Interruptions! Distractions!" Sarah cut in hotly. "Why, your Aunt Lydia
is perfectly wonderful about not letting you be disturbed! And anyhow--what
about Harriet Beecher Stowe, writing _Uncle Tom's Cabin_ with poverty and
sickness and a debilitating climate and seven children?"
"My good woman," said Jane, cautiously, "it's entirely possible that I
may not have exactly the same urge. I want to find out if I have any at
all." She slipped an arm through Sarah's and through Martin's and gave
each of them a gay little squeeze. "Don't be so horrified, old dears. It
isn't across the world, you know, and I'll be coming home for all
high-days and holidays. After I really get started I daresay I _can_
work at home,--and perhaps, you know, it will be Bo-Peep herself who
comes home, bringing her tales behind her!"
But Sarah Farraday was still protesting in a cross panic when they had
taken leave of a subdued Martin and were creeping upstairs in Miss Lydia
Vail's house.
"Look!" said Jane, nodding at the transom over her aunt's door. "She's
fallen asleep again without turning off her light. You go on, Sally, I'll
be right in."
Miss Lydia was propped up on two pillows, an open book before her on the
patchwork quilt, and her head had sagged forward on the breast of her
blue flannelette nightgown. She was making a low comedy sound which would
have distressed her beyond measure if she had heard it. When Jane took
the book from under her plump hands and gently removed one of the pillows
she came back to consciousness with a jerk.
"I wasn't asleep," she stated with dignity. "Not really asleep; I just
closed my eyes to rest them and sort of lost myself for an instant." Her
eyes narrowed intently. "My dear, what is it? You look--you look queer!
Sort of--excited!" A quick, pink blush mounted over her face. "Jane! Oh,
my _darling_ child--is it--has Martin"--then, disappointedly, as the girl
shook her head,--"Is it just that you've been having a wonderful time?"
"It's just that I've been having a wonderful idea, Aunt Lyddy!" She
patted the pillow. "I'll tell you to-morrow!"
"What, Jane? What _is_ it? I sha'n't sleep a wink if you don't tell me!"
"I'm going away for a while, Aunt Lyddy, dear,--to New York. I want to
see if I can really do something with my writing."
The little spinster paled. "Jane! Going _away_?" Her eyes brimmed up with
sudden tears. "My dearest girl, aren't you happy in your home? I've
tried, oh, how I've tried to take your dear, dead mother's place! But it
seems----"
"Of course I'm happy,--I've always been happy, Aunt Lyddy! Now, we'll
wait till morning and then talk it all over." She pulled up the gay quilt
smoothly, but her aunt sat stiffly upright, her face twisted with alarm.
"My _dear_ child! What _is_ it?"
Jane stood looking down at her for an instant before she stooped and
gathered her into a hearty hug. "It's nothing to be frightened about.
It's just this, Aunt Lyddy; I do want to write, and I don't want to marry
Martin Wetherby!"
* * * * *
In the difficult days which followed she found Sarah Farraday the most
rebellious. Miss Vail had a little creed or philosophy which was as plump
and comfortable as she was herself, and which had helped to make her,
Jane considered, the world's most satisfactory maiden aunt, and after a
few tears and those briskly winked away, she was able to be sure that her
dear girl knew best what was best for herself, _much_ as she would miss
her, _empty_ as the house would be without her. Nannie Slade Hunter,
though she disapproved, was too deeply engulfed in the real business of
life to be much concerned over the vagaries of a just-about-to-be-engaged
girl, and Martin Wetherby, coached, Jane knew, by the sapient father of
the Teddy-bear, was presently able to translate her exodus into something
very soothing to his own piece of mind. Jane could watch his mental
processes as easily as she could watch the activities of a goldfish in a
glass globe; he was concluding that it was the regular old startled fawn
stuff ... he _had_ been rushing her pretty hard ... better let her have a
little time ... play around with this writing game. He'd be Asst. Cashier
(that was the way he visualized it) the first of the year, and that would
be a great time to get things settled.
But Sarah, in the burlapped studio, between piano pupils, was aghast and
bitter. "'Going to seek your fortune!' I never heard anything so absurd,
Jane! You've got more than most girls right now,--a hundred dollars a
month of your very own to do just what you like with, and when your Aunt
Lydia--is taken from you, you'll have that adorable old house, jammed
full of rosewood and mahogany and willow pattern ware!" Wrath rose and
throve in her. "I've sometimes--I'm ashamed to admit it, but it's the
truth--I've sometimes envied you your advantages, Jane,--going away to
that wonderful school, and six months in Europe after you graduated--but
if the result has been to make you dissatisfied with your own home and
your own friends"--she was crying now--"why, then I'm thankful I've
always stayed here, and never known or wanted anything different!"
Jane crossed over to her and put penitent arms about her, and at the
touch Sarah began to cry in earnest.
"Oh, _Jane_! I can't stand it! I can't have you go away! Jane,--for you
to _go away_----"
"Oh, Sally dear," said Jane, patting her, "it isn't really going
away,--geography doesn't matter! It's just--going _on_, Sally! That's
it,--I'm just going on. _And_ on, I hope! And I'll write you miles of
letters."
"Letters!" her friend sniffed. "What are letters?"
"Mine are something rather special, I've been told. I'll write you
everything, Sally,--letters like diaries, letters like stories, letters
like books. Think of all the marvelous things I'll have to write about!
Why, Rodney Harrison thinks my letters from Wetherby Ridge, with
nothing----"
Sarah Farraday jerked away from her, her cheeks suddenly hot, her eyes
accusing. "So, that's it! That's the reason! It's the man you met on the
boat!" She said it with hyphens--"The-man-you-met-on-the-boat!" She knew
his name quite well, but she always spoke of him thus descriptively; it
was her little way of keeping him in his place, which was well outside of
the sacred circle of Wetherby Ridge.
Jane laughed. "Goose! Of course, he's part of the picture, and a very
pleasant part, and it will be very nice to have him meet me and drive me
opulently to Hetty Hills' sedate boarding-house. Aunt Lyddy is so
rejoiced to have me there with some one from the village that I couldn't
refuse, but I suspect it will be a section of the Old People's Home."
"Poor Marty!" said Sarah. "Poor old Marty! After all his years of
devotion----"
"But don't you think he got large chunks of enjoyment out of them?" Her
best friend's earnestness made her flippant, and it was a curious fact
that good old Sally, a predestinate spinster herself, settled on her
moated grange of music teaching, always took a most militant part in
other people's love affairs. In every lovers' quarrel in the village, in
the rare divorces, she had stood fiercely, hot dabs of color on her
cheekbones, for the swain or the husband. "I still contend," she would
say, "that with all his faults, and I'm not denying that he has faults, a
different sort of a woman could have saved him and made something of
him!"
Sarah came to stay the night with her before she was to leave in the
morning, and cried herself to sleep with a thin drizzle of tears which
Jane found at once flattering and touching and irritating, and when at
last the weeper was drawing long and peaceful breaths she slipped out of
bed and flung on her orange-colored kimono and knelt down before the open
window, her shining hair, so darkly brown that it was almost black,
hanging gypsylike about her shoulders. (The greater portion of Sarah's
hair was at rest upon the rosewood bureau top, coiled like a pale snake,
and the remainder was done up on curlers in Topsy twists.)
Over in the east there was the first graying advance of the dawn. (There
had been a "little gathering of the young folks" and then Jane had
finished packing and they had talked for two hours.) Jane felt a little
guilty, and a little foolish--leaping thus into the village spotlight,
sallying forth into the wide world--and a little gay and thrilled. The
morning was coming steadily up the sky; the daily miracle was going on.
And she was going on--_on_! Old Sally's scoldings didn't matter, nor
Marty's smug confidence. She shivered a little but kept her eyes on the
growing glory. She was--going--_on_!
A week later Sarah Farraday tore open the first letter with the New York
postmark.
SALLY DEAR, the typed page began, I meant to write at once, but I've
been settling down so busily! Of course Aunt Lyddy telephoned you of
my safe arrival?--Safe, my dear?--It was positively regal. Visiting
royalty effect. Rodney Harrison met me and I find I had quite
forgotten how very easy to look at he is! He apologized for the taxi
which seemed most opulent to me, because his own speedster was in
the shop, he having "broken a record and some vital organ the night
before, and the mater was using the limousine and the governor was
out of town with the big bus." His pretty plan was for dinner and
the theater and then supper and some dancing, but I thought there
was just the least bit of the King and the Beggar Maid lavishness
about that, so I discreetly revised it to tea.
We purred extravagantly up the Avenue, and how horrified Aunt Lyddy
would be at the taximeter! It makes me think of when we used to play
Hide-and-Seek, "_Twenty-five, thirty, thirty-five, forty, forty-five,
fifty--ready or not you shall be caught_!"
He had brought me a corsage of orchids and lilies-of-the-valley, and
I had to wear it at tea--and the price of that tea, my dear, would
feed a first family in Wetherby Ridge for a day!--and when I came up
here to my room I found three dozen red roses with stems like stilts
and a three-story red satin box of chocolates. Hardly a thrifty
person, this man-I-met-on-the-boat, as you persist in calling him,
Sally, but the last word in Reception Committees! Just as I had
forgotten his charms, so he seemed to have mislaid the memory of
mine, and we really made a very pleasant fuss over each other. Rodney
had several bright and beamish ideas for the next few days, but I
reminded him that while he may be an Idle Rich, I'm a Laboring Class,
and I frugally accepted one invitation out of four. "A Country Mouse
came to visit a Town Mouse--" But I can clearly see that he will
greatly add to the livableness of life.
I have bought myself a second-hand, elderly, but still spry
think-mobile with only a slight inclination to stutter, and a
pompous-looking eraser with a little fringe of black whiskers on its
chin, and I'm beginning to begin, Sally, dear!
It's going to be a marvelous place to work. Nice old Hetty Hills
keeps a really super-boarding house, and the personnel isn't going to
be in the least distracting,--staid, concert-going ladies, some
teachers, a musician or two, a middle-aged bank clerk; only two other
youngish people, both Settlement workers, a man and a woman. Her name
is Emma Ellis and she's only about thirty, but she acts fifty--you
know--shabby hair and dim fingernails and a righteously shining
nose,--and I wish you could see her hat! It looks exactly like the
lid to something. She doesn't like me at all, though I've been
virtuously nice to her. The man is a big, lean Irishman, named
Michael Daragh. Don't you like the sound of that, Sally? It makes me
think of those Yeats and Synge things I was reading up on just before
I left home. He's like a person in a book,--very tall and very thin
and yet he seems like a perfect tower of strength, some way. His hair
is ash blond and his eyes are gray and look straight through you and
for miles beyond you, and he has splashes of good color in his thin,
clear cheeks. He has a quaint, long, Irish, upper lip. I'd describe
him as a large body of man entirely surrounded by conscience. (I'm
describing him so fully to you because it's such good practice for
me, and I know you don't mind.) His clothes are old, but not so much
shabby as mellow, like old, good leather. And such a brogue, Sally!
It could be eaten with a spoon! He asked me at once what I meant to
do (he can't conceive, of course, that one isn't a do-er!), and when
I said that I meant to write, at least, to try, he said:
"'Tis the great gift, surely. When our like"--he looked at Emma
Ellis--"are toiling with our two hands and wishing they were twenty,
yourself can reach the wide world over with your pen." Miss Ellis
didn't seem especially impressed with his figure, but he nodded
gravely and went on. "'Tis a true word. You can span the aching world
with a clean and healing pen." (Isn't that delicious, Sally?) I tried
to explain that I was just starting, that I was afraid I hadn't
anything of especial importance to say, and then he said, very
sternly--and he has the eyes of a zealot and a fighter's jaw--"Let
you be stepping over to the tenements with me and I'll show you tales
you'll dip your pen in tears and blood to tell!"
He's going to be enormously interesting to study.--There--I've just
this instant placed the resemblance that's been teasing me! He's like
the St. Michael in my favorite Botticelli, the one of Tobias led by
the archangels, carrying the fish to heal his father, Tobit, you
know,--there's a tiny copy of it in my room at home. Next time you
stop by to see Aunt Lyddy (you're a lamb to do it so often!) run up
and look at it. I loved it better than any other picture in Florence;
you can't get the lovely old tones from the little brown copy, but
everything else is there--Tobias, carrying his fish in the funny
little strap and handle, utter trust on his lifted face, the
wonderful lines of drapery, the swaying lily, the absurd little dog
with his tasseled tail (I wonder if he was Botticelli's dog?) and
at the side, guarding and guiding, with sword and symbol, stern St.
Michael _Captain-General of the Hosts of Heaven_. This Michael
Daragh is really like him, name and all. Isn't it curious?
Write me soon and much, old dear. My best to every one, and I sent
the Teddy-bear a bib from the proudest baby-shop on the avenue.
Devotedly,
JANE.
P.S. You might ring up Aunt Lyddy and ask her to send me that little
Botticelli picture--my bare walls are rather bleak.