It was November when Jane made her exodus from the Vermont village and
her entry into New York, and by early summer she had written and sold
three one-act plays for vaudeville which yielded plump little weekly
royalties and gave her a reputation quite out of proportion to her output
and experience. They began to advertise her sketches as "different" and
to build up a vogue. "So and So in a Jane Vail act," said a pretty
billboard, and Rodney Harrison gave himself jocularly proud airs as her
discoverer and sponsor.
"I see clearly," said Jane, "that I must call you my Fairy God-brother!"
"I do not seem to crave the brother effect," said Mr. Harrison
deliberately, before he gave his attention to a hovering head waiter. He
was distinctly what her village called "not a marrying man," but he was
beginning to have his moments of meaningful look and word.
"Well, then," said Jane, after agreeing to alligator pear salad, "shall
we say Fairy God-cousin? That's a gay and pleasing relationship without
undue responsibilities. Will that do?"
"That will do for the present," said Mr. Harrison. He regarded her across
the small table with perfectly apparent satisfaction. Nothing bucolic
here; a dark and gypsy beauty which glowed and kindled beside the fainter
types about them, a wholly modish smartness, an elusive something to
which he could not put a name, which gave him always the sense of glad
pursuit. There had been in his early attitude, as she had divined, just a
trifle of the King and the Beggar Maid, the Town Mouse and the City
Mouse, but that was gone now. She knew his New York very nearly as well
as he did himself and with her increased activities had come decreased
dependence on him. She was either so gayly busy or so busily gay that she
was able to accept only one invitation in four, which made it very
necessary to ask her early and often. He was a wary young man, Rodney
Harrison, urban from head to heel; marriage had not entered into his
calculations. Yet he was aware of his growing fondness and approval, his
growing conviction that domesticity with Jane Vail need not of necessity
be the curbing and cloying thing he had visioned.
It was May when he told her that his mother wanted to come to see her,
and it was the following day that Jane wrote home to tell them she was
coming to Vermont for the summer months. She wasn't quite ready for
Rodney Harrison's mother to call on her; she wanted a little time and a
little perspective, and she knew that the hour had struck for her to go
back and put a firm if mournful period to the affair of Marty Wetherby.
There had been constantly recurring scoldings by mail from Sarah Farraday
and Nannie Slade Hunter, and, while he was the poorest and least
articulate of correspondents, his stammering letters had still achieved a
pathos of their own, and the thing was no longer to be shirked.
So she said good-by at the boarding house to Mrs. Hills and Emma Ellis
and Michael Daragh and at the station to Rodney Harrison; and went back
in smart triumph with a wardrobe trunk full of clever clothes and the
latest shining model in typewriters.
They were out in force to meet her; her Aunt Lydia Vail, happily tearful
and trembling; Nannie Slade Hunter and Edward R. with the amazingly
enlarged and humanized Teddy-bear, in their new roadster; Sarah Farraday,
a little thinner after her hard-driven winter of teaching; and Martin
Wetherby, panting a little even in his thin summer suit, removing his
handsome Panama to mop a steaming brow.
The first evening was all Miss Lydia's, save that Sarah was coming over
later to stay the night, and again Jane sat in the rosewood and mahogany
dining room, served by the middle-aged maid who did not know that there
was a servant problem, and ate the reliable stock supper--the three
slices of pink boiled ham on the ancient and honorable platter of blue
willow pattern ware, the small pot of honey, the two kinds of preserves,
the hot biscuit, the delicate cups of not-too-strong, uncolored Japan
tea, the sugar cookies, the pale custard.
Miss Vail had missed her niece acutely, as she would have missed a lovely
elm from the street or the silhouette of the mountain which she got from
her bedroom window, but she had wanted the dear girl to be happy, and she
clearly was happy, brimmingly, radiantly, and she had gone down to her
twice for merry and bewildered little visits and had come thankfully home
again.
She beamed at her now across the table and insisted, as of old, that she
eat two of the three slices of pink ham shaved to a refined thinness, and
then they went into the pretty parlor and visited cozily until the little
spinster's head began to jerk forward in the pauses, and Sarah Farraday,
who had waited conscientiously until nine o'clock, appeared. Then Miss
Lydia went upstairs to take off her plump, snug things and slip into her
flannelette nightdress--the nights were still what she called "pretty
sharp," and get into bed and "read until she got sleepy."
"Hannah says she sneaks in every night and snaps off the light after
she's sound asleep," said Sarah. "It's a mercy she doesn't have to use a
lamp,--she'd have burnt the house down years ago."
"She 'doesn't sleep,'" said Jane, looking tenderly after her, plodding
plumply up the stairs, "she 'just rests her eyes for a moment.' Sally,
let's go up to my room and have a regular, old-time talk-fest!"
So they went up the narrow stairs with their arms entwined about each
other and took off their dresses and slipped into kimonos and let down
their hair, but they found a strange and baffling constraint.
"Sally, _dear_," Jane determinedly broke the spell, "what's the silly
matter with us?"
The blonde music teacher's eyes filled up with her ready tears.
"It's--you've been away so long, and we've drifted so far apart....
Your life--your wonderful life----"
"Now, Sarah Farraday," her friend pounced upon her, "after the miles upon
miles of letters I've written you, do you dare to feel that you don't know
as much about my life as I do? Viper-that-bites-the-hand-that-writes-to-it!
Why, I could have done another playlet--two--in the time I've taken to
tell you everything!"
"You've been marvelous about letters," Sarah admitted with a grateful
sniff, "but----"
"And what's more--and this admits of no argument--next winter you're
coming down to me for a month of giddy gamboling and to soak your soul in
symphonies and operas!"
Sarah Farraday gave a little gasp and her thin cheeks flushed. "Oh, my
dear, you're a lamb to think of it, but of course I couldn't. It's
wonderful, just even to _think_ about it, but it couldn't possibly
happen."
"Why not?"
"Because," said Sarah, doggedly, "it's much too good to be true."
"Now that," said Jane sternly, "is a wicked and immoral remark! There is
nothing too good to be true, and it's blasphemy to say so."
"Oh, well ... of course, with _you_--" She left her sentence trailing
and let her thin hands fall in her lap limply, palm upward and stared at
Jane. Her dark hair was shimmering and floating about her and her dark
eyes were pools of light. "Janey," she leaned toward her and spoke
wistfully, "are you really as impossibly happy as you look?"
"Happier," said Jane, promptly. She began to brush her dusky mane with
long and sweeping strokes. "Still doing this a hundred and twenty times a
night, Sally, no matter at what scandalous hour I come in."
But the other persisted with sudden sapience. "I mean, are you really as
happy as you act, or are you just--gay?"
"Both," said Jane, stoutly. ("Sixty-two, sixty-three, sixty-four--) I've
had a bright and shining time, work and play, with my feet very much on
the earth,--or the pavements, rather. I'm satisfied, Sally."
"But oh," said Sarah, forlornly, "you said you wouldn't be really 'going
away' from us, but you have! Millions of miles away--a whole world away,
Jane! You've proved your point,--succeeded beyond our wildest dreams----"
"Not beyond _my_ wildest dreams, old dear," said her best friend with
happy impudence. "You were more modest for me than I was for myself!"
"--beyond our wildest dreams," Sarah repeated stubbornly, "and you can
carry on your work just as well here, now, and wouldn't it be the
loveliest, most natural thing in the world for you to stay at home?
Jane--_poor_ old Marty!" She ran to Jane and flung her arms emotionally
about her.
"Sally, there's no more chance----"
But the other cut in, panic-stricken, "Oh,--don't make up your mind
now--to-night! Wait! Just spend the summer in the dear old way, as we've
always done, and see if you don't fit right into your old niche again,
with--with----"
"With a steadily fattening Marty," said Jane, bright-cheeked, "and a hot,
pink nursery with a fat and well-oiled Kewpie?"
"Jane," said Sarah coldly, "there are some things too sacred to----"
"To be anything but decently and sanely frank about," said Jane. "My
child, the story isn't going to have that particular happy ending for
which you pant. You see all my life in a proscribed pattern. Like a
sentimental ballad's second verse ... back to the grassy meadows ...
childhood's happy hours again.... Once again he sang--
"'For you are my li--hittel--sw--heet--heart.'"
"Then," said Sarah with conviction, "it's either the man-you-met-on-the-boat,
or that Irish missionary person!"
Jane laughed. Wasn't it amazing how good old Sally, herself conceived for
celibacy, yearned to mate up every one within her ken! Nature's little
way of evening up, perhaps; if Sarah herself was to carry on the race
chain, was she to make it up by tireless toil in urging others on?
"Sally, Michael Daragh, as I've tried to make clear, is an over-soul. His
large feet lug his large frame about on this terrestrial sphere, but in
reality he isn't here at all. He is quite literally absent from the body
and present with the Lord. As I told you before,--a large body of man
entirely surrounded by conscience. No more aware of me, as a woman, than
he is of Emma Ellis--and you don't get the force of that"--she grinned
shamelessly--"unless you know Emma."
"Then, how about--the other one?"
Jane considered, picking and choosing her words as she loved to do.
"Well, Michael feels I am too much of the world, Rodney that I am too
little; Michael is above me, spiritually speaking, and Rodney is
beneath--which would, of course, make him much the pleasanter person to
live with! Rodney is thoroughly and comfortably this-worldly; Michael
is--other-worldly! This is the truth of the matter, Sally; Rodney
Harrison is keen about my neat little brain and Michael Daragh is gravely
concerned about my soul, but I think neither one is interested in my
heart!"
She sprang to her feet and threw a gorgeous robe about her. "Come along,
Sally! Let's go down and make some chocolate! I've come to crave
nocturnal nourishment, and much as I adore talking about myself I've
really had enough of the topic for to-night. How many pupils have you
now? And how near is the baby-grand?"
* * * * *
She stayed three months at home, tapping briskly at her typewriter in the
mornings and giving her afternoons and evenings to the old innocuous
routine, and it was said of her that she had changed and gotten citified,
of course, but seemed very much interested in everything and everybody,
and many were the placid hours in the pink nursery, the drives with the
Edward R. Hunters in the new roadster, the teas in the burlapped studio
with Sarah Farraday, the meetings of the Ladies' Aid and the Tuesday Club
where she gave gay little talks and readings and vague old ladies asked
her gently if she was still going on with her literary work.
The only radical change was Martin Wetherby, whose case came up for
decision at once, in spite of the sage counsels of the Teddy-bear's
father.
The second evening at home Miss Lydia Vail had risen flutteringly and
left them alone on the porch in the soft dusk, and at once he had plunged
to his doom. There was no serene confidence about him this time, no
snatching her into a short-breathed embrace; he was rather pathetically
humble before her new poise and achievements, pleading, desperate.
"Marty, dear," said Jane unhappily, "I don't want to be unsympathetic,
but indeed I don't think I'm ruining your life! You're so nice and young,
and you're doing famously at the bank! Oh, I know it's just because
you've held to the idea for so long--and so many other people have, and
made it seem--settled. It's just your _habit_--not your heart, that's
aching!"
But in spite of this cheering reassurance she had to admit to Sarah that
Marty continued to droop at the corners, and to have, in spite of the
assistant cashiership, a look of shaken confidence. His mother, that
former arranger of little gatherings for the young people and dispenser
of light refreshments, treated Jane with coolness, and had her adherents
here and there in the village.
Jane went back to New York the first of September and sold immediately
the one-act play she had written during the summer, and was engulfed in
the business of putting it on, and presently Rodney Harrison brought her
a well-known actor from the legitimate who wanted to rest and make a
corpulent salary in the two-a-day, and she succeeded in fitting him to a
sketch. It brought her fresh laurels and a larger audience and a better
royalty, and she told herself stoutly (as Rodney Harrison had first told
her) that it didn't matter in the least that he wanted a good deal of
broad and rather edgy comedy and, failing to get it from her, had put it
in himself, and, therefore, had his name on the program as joint author.
Every one would know that the clean and clever little story was her own
and the edginess his. She took great pains to write this to Sarah and to
repeat it often to herself and she glowed under Rodney Harrison's pride
in her and the cordial respect of the booking offices and the dazzled
admiration of the boarding house.
But one humid evening, when all the vigor and backbone seemed to have
melted out of the world, Michael Daragh asked her to ride with him on the
top of the bus to Grant's Tomb and walk back along the river, and
presently they sat down on the damp grass like a shop girl and her
gentleman friend and looked off across the river, shining in the
moonlight, and after a silence Jane said pleasantly, with her new
admixture of aloofness and indulgence, "Well, Michael Daragh, I know you
haven't marched me here merely to revel in the beauty of the evening.
It's more a case of--'thank you,' said the oysters, 'we've had a pleasant
run!' You may as well begin. I'm feeling very peaceful and very
prosperous. Who is the poor thing you're concerned with now?"
And the big Irishman, a dull flush mounting in his lean cheeks, faced her
squarely. "The poor thing I'm concerned with now, God save you kindly, is
yourself, Jane Vail!"
She hadn't any words in that first dazed moment. She sat staring at him,
her great eyes wide.
"It's yourself, surely," he said, sternly, "the way you've wandered from
the high road and lost yourself in a bog."
She was still too startled and bewildered to be angry. "I haven't the
vaguest idea what you mean. Have you?"
"I have, indeed, Jane Vail. The thing you've just written and sold,
now,--are you proud in your heart of it?"
"Certainly I am," she said stoutly, her voice beginning to warm with
resentment. "It isn't a classic, of course, but it's a thoroughly
workmanlike, snappy little act, sure to get over, and----"
He shook his head. "Lost in the bog you are, and sinking deeper every
day."
"Sinking, my good Michael? If you'll read this week's _Variety_ you'll
find there are those who talk about my phenomenal rise! I loathe saying
things like that about myself, but you make me do it, in decent
self-defense. It's simply that you don't understand these things--that
you're looking at them from the wrong angle." She talked on, angrily,
defensively, but inwardly she was feeling attacked and abused and
crushed. There had been nothing but praise and congratulation and
rejoicing now for ten months, and this shabby settlement worker
dared--"I'm sure you mean to be very kind," her voice was ice and
velvet, "but I'm afraid you've got rather in the way of lecturing young
women, haven't you? And I really think you might save your admonitions
and exhortations for those who need and want them. Personally, I'm
entirely satisfied with the way I'm getting on."
"'Getting on,' yes, God forgive you," he said mournfully, "and that's all
you're doing, Jane Vail!"
"I consider you incapable of judging a matter like this," said Jane with
cool disdain. "You see life always through a stained-glass window and it
gives you distorted values. What do you mean,--only 'getting on'?"
"Wasn't it yourself told me what you said to your friend back in the
village--that you were 'going on'? Woman dear," the purling brogue
dropped an octave, "there's the wide world of difference between the two!
'Getting on' you are surely, the way your name screams from the
billboards and your bank balance fattens like a stalled ox, but are you
'going on,' Jane Vail? Are you 'going on'? Woman, dear," the purling
brogue--"the rare, high places you can climb if you will? Or will you
stop content with the pavement, the likes of you that was made for the
mountain peaks? Are you going on, I say? Answer me, Jane Vail!"
But instead, with flashing eyes and scorching cheeks she took leave of
him, requesting him curtly not to follow, and walked alone to the Drive
and hailed a bus, and sat staring darkly ahead of her as it jolted and
swayed down the long blocks to Washington Square.
When Michael Daragh came down to breakfast next day he found the dining
room in a state of excited conjecture. Miss Vail, dressed for a journey,
had roused Mrs. Hills at six in the morning to say that she was going out
of town for several weeks, and had immediately driven off in a taxi with
her handbag and suitcase, her steamer trunk and her typewriter.