The doorbell cut jaggedly into Jane's exalted mood and she went into the
office and sat down to work on the Merry Christmas sign. She meant to
replace it with a joyful scarlet one, but meanwhile it would keep her
fingers busy and give her an excuse for lingering until Ethel came back
with the news of her confession and its results, and she could be
planning the holiday cheer she meant to make in this melancholy house.
She was still rather startled at her sudden decision but pleased with
herself beyond words. To give up the festive return to the village ...
her Aunt Lydia's damp-eyed delight, the "little gatherings of the young
people" in her honor, the gay and jingling joy of the season ... and stay
in a boarding house and make determined merriment for the Agnes
Chatterton home. Then, tracing a large and ugly M, she laughed aloud. The
truth was, she told herself flatly, she was pleased to the marrow of her
bones to be here instead of there, not only in fresh fields and pastures
thrillingly and picturesquely new, but away from the reckless necessity
for settling the Marty Wetherby matter once and for all. And the big
Irishman seemed almost pathetically pleased at her announcement, and it
was entirely conceivable that Rodney Harrison would provide flesh-pots
and diversions. All in all, she was cannily glad to abide by her hasty
and handsome offer, and she worked steadily at her letters while Mrs.
Richards wrote at her littered desk.
The doorbell rang again and Mrs. Richards peered out into the hall.
"Well, there's Irene, come for Billiken! That doesn't look much as if
Ethel had told him." There was a good deal of triumph in the glance she
flung at Jane. "Well, I can't say I'm surprised; I didn't think she'd
have the courage."
Michael Daragh came in, his face grave. "Here's Irene, come for the
child. I don't like the look of it."
"Well, _I'm_ not surprised," said Mrs. Richards again.
A young woman presented herself at the office door. There was resolute
respectability in her blue serge suit, brushed shiny, too thin for
December wear. She carried a small straw telescope and her voice sounded
capable and firm. "Can I go right up, Mrs. Richards?"
"Why, I suppose you may as well, Irene. You've come for Billiken?"
"Yes. I'm taking her on the night-boat."
"Wait," said the Irishman, as she turned toward the stairs. "Did Ethel
tell him?"
"You mean, did she tell Jerry about--about the baby?" The good sister of
the erring sister flushed painfully. "Not that I've heard of. I guess she
knows better than that."
"There is no 'better than that,'" said Michael Daragh, sternly. "There is
nothing better than the truth." The line of his lean jaw was salient.
"If I can once get her respectably married," said Irene, nippingly, her
small face resolute, "I won't worry about what she tells or doesn't tell.
It's been hard enough on _me_, I can tell you!" She went briskly upstairs
and they heard her firm closing of the door.
"You see?" the matron wanted to know.
"I'm fearing we've lost the fight," said Michael Daragh.
Jane insisted on hope. "Perhaps she did tell him, and everything's all
right, but she had no chance to see Irene and explain! Surely you won't
let her take Billiken until we are sure?"
Then the front door opened quietly and Ethel came in to stand before
them, her tragic and accusing eyes on Jane. "You made me tell," she
said. "_You_ made me!" And when Jane ran to her, questioning, eager, she
pushed her away. "It's you! It's you did it!"
Michael Daragh strode to her and put a steadying arm about her shoulders.
"Child, tell us the way of it."
Her teeth were chattering and her face seemed to grow whiter and whiter.
"I told him. I told him everything. I kept saying to myself over and
over, all the way to the store, just what she told me"--she flung a
bruised and bitter look at Jane--"'I must love him more than I want
him'--and I went straight up to him at his counter, right there in the
daytime. He was selling a necktie to a fat old man with a red neck. It
was a dark blue tie with light blue spots on it." She added the detail
carefully in her spent little voice. "I waited until he was gone and then
I told Jerry. He just looked at me and _looked_ at me, and made me say
it again, and then--then he just walked away without looking back. I had
to go to work, but I watched and watched, and _watched_. He never came
back to his counter. Pretty soon I just got crazy. I went over and
asked. They said he was sick, and gone home." She sagged in Michael
Daragh's hands and he lifted her and carried her into the matron's room,
the matron hurrying beside him.
Then Jane Vail sat alone in the ugly office, contemplating the result of
her eloquence. She could hear Ethel's sobbing and the matron's sharp
treble, and the steady and rhythmic flow of the Irishman's voice. She
rose to follow them, but the closed door halted her. They had wanted her
to do this thing, to do the thing they had failed to do, and she had done
it; and now they shut her away while they strove to heal where she had
hurt.
Why had she done it? Why had she come at all? Why had she mixed and
muddled in this sordid tangle which was none of her bright business? And
why--chief of all whys--had she rashly and sentimentally offered to give
up her holidays at home for the futile endeavor to make Christmas merry
for these miserable girls?
Rage rose in her, rage at herself, rage at the sobbing, tarnished
girlhood in there, at her sharp sister, at the matron, at the zealot who
had dragged her into it all. Let him take Emma Ellis next time. This was
her work, and she--Jane Vail--belonged in the world of clean and pretty
things and in that world she would stay. She decided against undignified
flight; she would wait for Michael Daragh and walk home with him to Mrs.
Hills' boarding house, and she would be very civil about it all, but she
would make it clear, even to an other-worldly settlement worker, that her
brief detour into this sort of thing was finished; that she was on the
highway again, speeding toward the place she had visioned for herself.
Now she drove her mind resolutely away from the Agnes Chatterton Home,
to the Vermont village, then across the sea ... Florence ... the old
palaces ... the Arno ... the little tea room in the Via Tornabuoni where
she went sometimes at this very hour ... little heart-shaped cakes with
green icing--Upstairs three babies began to scream at once, harshly and
hideously, and an opened door somewhere at the rear of the house
confessed to cabbage for dinner, and the present came swiftly and
unbeautifully back. It came back with a bang. Jane resolutely set
herself to think the thing out clearly. If the matron or the Irishman
had persuaded Ethel to divulge her dark young past to her suitor, he
would have repudiated her just the same; therefore she--Jane--might
shake off her mantle of guilty responsibility. And after all, bleak as
life looked to the little creature now, still sobbing stormily in Mrs.
Richards' room, wasn't she safer than she would be married to her Jerry
with that stalking secret?--"Whose happiness resteth upon a lie is as a
spirit in prison." The whole world, the whole godly, gossiping,
ferreting world, would have conspired together to tell him. Now she
climbed nimbly to secure conviction in the eternal justice of things.
The girl had gone gallantly, in garish daylight, holding her happiness
in her hand, and told the truth. Now she was in the dust, but wouldn't
it all come right for her in the end? Wouldn't it _have_ to come right
for her? The sense of helpless misery fell away from her and she was so
confident of coming joy that she started toward the closed door of the
matron's room. No; she would not go in, but she was warm with comfort.
It seemed close and breathless in the office and she went to the street
door and opened it for a swallow of the keen winter air, and stood out
upon the top step, looking down into the dingy thoroughfare. There was a
young man, half a block away, on the opposite side. He was walking
slowly, looking at the numbers on the houses, and presently he looked
across at the Agnes Chatterton Home. Then he stood quite still, staring
at it.
Gladness and certainty rose in Jane and she beckoned to him.
He came over very slowly, and mounted the steps with lagging feet, and he
was still staring, his eyes rather dazed.
"Oh," said Jane, "I think I know who you are!" She was a little
breathless with happy excitement. "Aren't you--I don't know the rest of
your name, but aren't you--Jerry?"
"Yes, ma'am," said the youth. There was a close color harmony about him;
his jubilant cravat picked up the dominant note of his striped silk shirt
and the royal purple of his hose struck it again, an octave lower. The
removal of his velvet hat disclosed wide and flanging ears which gave his
face an expression of quaint comedy, now at variance with his aghast and
solemn look.
Jane's bright presence there on that dreary doorstep, her hailing of him,
her knowledge of his identity, seemed to awake no wonder in him. He
looked as if he had finished with surprise; as if nothing could ever
startle him again.
"I want to see Ethel," he said.
"Yes!" said Jane, gladly. "Come!"
She left him in the correct and cheerless little reception room and flew
up the headlong stairs and into Ethel's room, her face luminous. The good
sister was just finishing her packing of Billiken's belongings into the
telescope and the child, snug in tiny sweater and knitted cap, watched
her absorbedly. Jane caught her up without a word and carried her out of
the room.
"I'm about ready to go," the young woman called after her, sharply.
"Please don't take her things off!"
Jane did not answer her. She sped down the stairs as swiftly and easily
as a person in a dream, and opened the closed door boldly, without even a
knock, and marched in, Billiken in her arms. She felt like an army with
banners.
Ethel's first fury of grief had spent itself and she sat leaning limply
back, her eyes closed, breathing in long, quivering sighs.
"Look," cried Jane, "here's Billiken!"
Billiken flung herself at her mother with a lilting squeal of joy, and
Ethel's eyes opened and narrowed with a cold and appraising scrutiny. Her
hands twisted together in her lap; she seemed to be weighing and
balancing. At length, with a little brooding cry, she caught the baby in
her arms.
Michael Daragh smiled sunnily at Jane, but she had no instant to spare
for him then. She pulled Ethel to her feet. "Come," she said,
imperiously. "Come and bring Billiken!" She led her out of the room.
The matron and the Irishman followed them, wondering.
Jane was guiding the girl, her face buried against the baby's woolen cap.
"Look!" she said again, at the door of the dim reception room.
Ethel halted on the threshold, peering through the gathering winter dusk.
"Oh,--_Jerry_?" she gasped, uncertainly.
The young man from the Gent's Furnishings strode forward to meet her, his
eyes on her blurred and swollen face. "Say, listen," he began, "say,
listen--" Then his gaze dropped to the child in her arms and grew bleak,
and Ethel shrank back and away from him, her eyes wide and terrified.
It seemed to Jane, standing there in the ugly hall of the Agnes
Chatterton Home, between the sharp-visaged matron and the Irishman who
looked like Botticelli's saint, as if all the love and pity in the world
hung by a hair above the pit.
It was a new and unpleasing thing to Billiken, to find cold eyes upon
her, level, unloving, hostile eyes, but she had an antidote. Gazing
blithely back at him with the wide little grin which had earned her the
name of "the God of Things as They Ought to Be," she held out her arms
with a gurgling cry and flung herself at the young man with the gay
cravat as she had flung herself at her mother two minutes before.
The hot color flooded his face, his freckles were drowned in a red sea,
his flanging ears were crimson. Suddenly, gropingly, he reached out for
them both, and got the two of them into his arms. "It'll be O.K.," he
said, huskily, winking hard. "It'll be O.K.! Say, listen, I got it all
figured out! They been wantin' me to go to the Rochester store anyway,
and we don't know a livin' soul there!"
They went away, the other three, and left them there together, and there
were two little dabs of color on the matron's high cheekbones and her
sharp eyes looked oddly dim. "Well," she said, "well--I guess that's
settled right enough. And I guess we've got you to thank for it, Miss
Vail."
"We have, surely, God save you kindly," said Michael Daragh, and his face
had what Jane called its stained-glass-window look.
She felt very flushed and humbled under their beaming approbation.
"There's only her own courage to thank!" But she snatched up a bit of the
despised decoration, her cheeks scarlet. "You know,--I'm so happy--so
gorgeously, dizzily happy--I can hear that magenta-colored paper joy-bell
ring a silvery chime!"