Jane Journeys On

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[Illustration: "SAY, GIRLIE, DIDN'T I TELL YOU I'D PUT THE RAISIN IN IT?"]

JANE JOURNEYS ON

BY

RUTH COMFORT MITCHELL

AUTHOR OF
"PLAY THE GAME," ETC.

D. APPLETON AND COMPANY
NEW YORK :: 1922 :: LONDON

COPYRIGHT, 1922, BY

D. APPLETON AND COMPANY

Copyright, 1918, by The International Magazine Co.
Copyright, 1919, by McCall Co., Inc.
Copyright, 1916, 1917, by the Century Co.
Copyright, 1919, by the Crowell Publishing Co.

PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

TO
W. C. MORROW
GUIDE AND FRIEND,
WHO HAS SET SO MANY
OF US ON OUR WAY

Transcriber's Note:

The Table of Contents is not printed in the book but has
been generated here for the convenience of the reader.

CONTENTS

CHAPTER I
CHAPTER II
CHAPTER III
CHAPTER IV
CHAPTER V
CHAPTER VI
CHAPTER VII
CHAPTER VIII
CHAPTER IX
CHAPTER X
CHAPTER XI
CHAPTER XII
CHAPTER XIII
CHAPTER XIV
CHAPTER XV
CHAPTER XVI
CHAPTER XVII
CHAPTER XVIII
CHAPTER XIX
CHAPTER XX
CHAPTER XXI

JANE JOURNEYS ON

CHAPTER I

With but one exception, everybody in the upper layer of life in that
placid Vermont village was sure that Jane Vail was going to marry Martin
Wetherby. The one exception was Jane herself; she was not sure--not
entirely.

There were many sound and sensible reasons why she should, and only two
or three rather inconsequent ones why she should not. To begin with, he
was a Wetherby, and the family went steadily back in an unbroken line to
Colonial days; it was their grave old house with the fanlight over its
dignified door which had given Wetherby Ridge its name. He was doing
remarkably well at the bank; it was conceded that he would be assistant
cashier at the first possible moment; his habits were exemplary and he
was the most carefully dressed young man in the community. His mother
freely admitted at the Ladies' Aid and the Tuesday Club that he was as
perfect a son as any woman ever had, and that he would one day make some
girl a perfect husband.

Jane, after long and rebellious thought, could find nothing to set down
on the other side of the ledger beyond the fact that he was just a little
too good-looking, that he was already beginning, at twenty-six, to put on
the flesh which had always been intended for him, that his hands were
softer than hers, with fingers which widened puffily at the base, and
that she nearly always knew what he was going to say before he said it.

She was twenty-four years old, and the immemorial custom of that village
gave her a scant remaining year in which to make up her mind. All girls
who ran true to pattern were either snugly married or serenely teaching
by the time they were twenty-five, and the choice was not always their
own. There had been more marriageable maidens than eligible youths in the
set, and it was rather, Jane told herself grimly, like a game of Musical
Chairs--a gay, excited scramble, and some one always left out. Now, with
the exodus of a few and the marrying of many, it had narrowed down to
three of them--herself, Martin Wetherby, and Sarah Farraday, who was her
best friend during childhood and girlhood; and Sarah, an earnest, blonde
girl with nearsighted eyes and insistent upper front teeth, had, so to
speak, stopped playing. She had converted her dead father's old stable
into a studio by means of art burlap and framed photographs of famous
composers, and was giving piano lessons daily from ten to four. This left
the field entirely to Jane, and Jane was carrying about with her an
increasing conviction that she was not going to do the thing every one
expected her to do.

It came curiously to a crisis on a mild and unimportant day in November.
Jane spent a footless forenoon in her own room in the green-shuttered,
elm-shaded house where she lived with her adoring Aunt Lydia Vail, trying
to start a story. Miss Vail took great care to tiptoe whenever she passed
her door, and refrained from summoning her to the telephone, but her
pleasant old voice, explaining why her niece could not come, was clearly
audible.

"Yes, dear, she's at home, but she's at work at her writing, and you know
I never disturb her.... Yes, she's been shut away in her room since right
after breakfast.... Yes, it's a new story, but I don't know what it's
about. I'll ask her at dinner.... How's your mother, dear?... Oh, that's
_good_! That's what I always use and it never fails to relieve me. You
give her my love, won't you? I'll have Jane call you up when she comes
out for dinner."

The story simply would not start. It lay inert in the back of her brain,
listening for the telephone and Aunt Lydia's softly padding footfalls,
and at last she gave it up and got out the paper she was to read on "The
Modern Irish Dramatists" before the Tuesday Club that afternoon and went
carefully over its typed pages.

"Oh," said Aunt Lydia at the dinner table, her plump face clouding over,
"I'm _sorry_ the story didn't go well! It wasn't because you were
interrupted, was it, dear? I was especially careful this morning. You
know, I believe, without realizing it, you're just the least mite nervous
about your program. I know I am myself, though I know, of course, you're
going to do just beautifully."

Three and a half hours later, thirty-four matrons and spinsters were
warmly asserting that she had. They smiled up at her where she stood on
the shallow little platform with approval and affection, and the Chairman
of the Program Committee said she was sure they were all deeply indebted
to Miss Vail for a most enlightening little lecture. "I am free to
confess," she said, smiling, "that it is a subject upon which I,
personally, have been ignorant, and I believe many of our club ladies
would say the same."

Jane, looking down into their pleasant, best-family faces knew this was
the fact. The word "Irish" conveyed to most of them only the red-armed
minions in their kitchens; the boys who ran noisily up alleyways with
butchers' parcels; the short-tempered dames in battered hats who came--or
distressingly did not come--to them on Monday mornings, and who
frequently bore away with them bars of perfectly new soap; and the
chuckles and sobs and moonlit whimsies of Yeats and Synge and Lady
Gregory did not, in their minds, connect up at all.

"And now," said the President, in her sweet New England voice, "I know
you will all wish to express your appreciation both to the Chairman of
our Program Committee, who has arranged so many literary treats for us,
and to Miss Vail for her delightful paper by a rising vote of thanks."
Then the thirty-four ladies of the Tuesday Club clutched at their gloves
and handbags and came to their feet with soft rustlings of new foulards
and taffetas and rich old silks, and the President declared the meeting
adjourned but trusted that every one would remain for a cup of tea and a
social hour.

Martin Wetherby's handsome mother took brisk and proprietary charge of
Jane and shared her laurels happily. "Yes, in_deed_," she beamed, her
gray crepe arm through the girl's, "I can tell you, _we're_ pretty proud
of her!" She had clearly cast herself already for the role of adoring and
devoted mother-in-law, and the Tuesday Club was just as clearly taking
the same view of it.

Jane, in her wine-red velvet and her glowing, gipsy beauty against the
sober blacks and grays and faded cheeks of the gathering, looking like a
Kentucky cardinal alighted in a henyard, felt her smile stiffening.
Sudden and inexplicable panic and rebellion descended upon her; it seemed
certain that if she heard Mrs. Wetherby say "proud of this dear girl of
ours" once again she would scream. She disengaged her arm and declined
tea and little frosted cakes.

"I'm so sorry--it looks so tempting, doesn't it?--but I really must fly!"
She looked earnestly at her wrist watch. "This very minute! Thank you all
so much! You've been wonderful--quite turned my head! But I _must_
hurry!"

Out in the quiet, pretty street the sense of pursuit fell away from her
and she was smiling derisively at herself when she reached Sarah
Farraday's house and passed through the side garden to the studio. An
hour with old Sally would be good for her.

Sarah was tenderly dusting her severe-looking upright piano and putting
away a pile of lesson books, and turned gladly to greet her. "Jane, dear!
Why, how did you get away so early? Didn't they serve tea? I was just
_sick_ about not going, but the little Macey girl has had so many
interruptions and is so far behind, and she does want to play at my
recital, so that I felt I couldn't put her off again. How did your paper
go?"

"Oh, well enough. They were very nice about it."

"I know they loved it. I want to read it!" She closed the music cabinet
and came to take the typed manuscript. "Why, _Jane_! What's the matter?"

"I don't know, Sally--Yes, I do know! It's--it's Mrs. Wetherby, and every
one else! She acts as if--every one acts--" it made her angrier still to
feel the color mounting hotly in her cheeks.

"Well, Jane, _dear_," a faint, sympathetic flush warmed her small, pale
face, "isn't that perfectly natural? Of course, I suppose it teases you,
but you know how happy every one is about it."

"But there isn't anything to be happy about--yet!"

"Then it's just because you have--have held things off, dear, that's all.
And I think Marty has been awfully faithful and patient--for _years_!
Ever since you were tiny kiddies!" She looked anxiously at her best
friend's mutinous face. "I'll tell you," she said, brightly, "let's run
around to Nannie's for a moment! She'll just be giving the 'Teddy-bear'
his oil rub. I'll run through the house and get my things--you wait out
in front!"

Nannie Slade Hunter (Mrs. Edward R.) was their second-best friend and
they had been among her bridesmaids two years earlier. A few minutes of
brisk footing through the fading November afternoon delivered them at the
Hunters' new, little house and in the nursery of their little son.
Sarah's knowledge of schedule had been correct. Nannie, in an enveloping
pinafore, her sleeves rolled high, her hands glistening, was anointing
her infant with the most expensive olive oil on the market. The house was
furnace heated and a small electric stove was radiating fierce warmth,
and her cheeks were blazing. Jane and Sarah flung off their wraps and
gave themselves whole-heartedly over to the business of worship and
praise.

Little Mrs. Hunter, on whom matronhood and maternity sat with the effect
of large spectacles on a small child, inquired indulgently into the
activities of her friends. "Paper go nicely, Janey? Sorry I couldn't
go.--Yes, he was his muzzie's lamby-lamby-boy! Yes, he was!--And how many
pupils have you now, Sally?"

"Seventeen," said Sarah, thankfully, "and if everything goes well I'll
have my baby-grand in four years!"

Edward R. Hunter, unmistakable father of the glistening infant, came into
the room as she spoke and at once propounded a conundrum.

"Here's a good one, Jane! What's the difference between Nannie and Sally?
Give it up? Why, Sally'll have a baby-grand, but Nannie has a grand
baby!" The hot and breathless nursery rang with mirth; it seemed to Jane
that the very pink room was growing hotter and hotter, and it smelt
stiflingly of moist varnish and talcum powder and warm olive oil and
expensive soap, and the baby, sitting solemnly erect for his powdering, a
steadying hand at his fat back, looked like a pink celluloid Kewpie
leering at her knowingly. She heard herself saying with unconsidered
mendacity that she had an errand to run for her Aunt Lydia, and that
Sally mustn't hurry away on her account, and presently she was down in
the dim street again, with Edward R.'s jocose reproach that old Marty
Wetherby was fading away to skin and bone echoing in her ears. She went
dutifully for a magazine Miss Vail had mentioned and went home the "long
way 'round," so that she was barely in time for supper, which consisted
of three slices of cold boiled ham, shaved to a refined thinness and
spread upon an ancient and honorable platter of blue willow pattern ware,
hot biscuit, a small pot of honey and two kinds of preserves, delicate
cups of not-too-strong tea, sugar cookies and a pallid custard.

Her aunt was fond and proud over the afternoon's triumph but didn't quite
understand her having gone away so abruptly, and feared that Mrs.
Wetherby had been "just the least mite hurt about it."

"But then," she hastened to add, at Jane's impatient movement, "it'll be
all right, dear! You're going to see her to-night, and I know you
can--sort of smooth it over."

"I was thinking," said her niece, dark eyes on her plate, "that perhaps I
wouldn't go this evening, Aunt Lyddy."

"Not _go_? Not go to Mrs. _Wetherby's_? Why,--_Jane_!" Miss Vail laid
down her fork and stared, her mild eyes wide with astonishment. "You
aren't sick, are you?"

"I think I'm sick of always and always going to the same places with the
same person, and hearing the same people say the same things!" Instantly
she wished she might recall the sharp words, satisfying as they were to
herself, for little Miss Lydia was regarding her much as the aunt of the
wretched girl in the fairy tale might have done,--the girl out of whose
mouth a frog jumped every time she opened it. Indeed, the sentence seemed
actually visible between them, like a squat and ugly small beast on the
shining white cloth. "Sorry, Aunt Lyddy," said Jane, penitently. "I'm a
crosspatch to-night, and I ought to sit by the fire and spin, instead of
gamboling."

Miss Vail's face cleared. "No, indeed, dearie, it'll be much better for
you to go and have a merry time with your young companions. That paper
was a nervous strain, _that's_ all! Now you just eat a good supper and
then run upstairs and make yourself as pretty as you can!" Her plump face
broke up into sly lines and she nodded happily. "Marty'll come for you at
quarter before eight; he telephoned before you got home."

Martin Wetherby was even better than his word, which was one of his most
sterling traits. He arrived at twenty-five minutes before eight and
waited contentedly in converse with her aunt until Jane came down. "I
didn't bring the car," he said. "I thought we'd like to walk." When they
reached the sidewalk he lifted her right forearm in a warm, moist grasp
and held it firmly close against him. "The car's too quick, Janey," he
said, huskily. "Gets us there too soon!"

"Well," said Jane, brightly, "we mustn't be late, your mother likes
people to be prompt, you know!" She managed to tug her arm away the
fraction of an inch.

"She likes _you_, any old time," he said, blissfully. He always got husky
and thick sounding in emotion, Jane reflected, and breathed heavily.

"Aren't we going to stop by for Sally?"

"No; I asked Edward R. and Nannie to pick her up in their little old
boat. No, we aren't going to have anybody--but just--_us_!" He squeezed
her arm against him again. "Janey, I guess you know all right how I----"

"Oh!" cried Jane,--"here they are, now! Hello, people!"

"Hello yourselves!" said Edward R. Hunter, bringing his machine to a stop
beside them. "Want to hop in? Plenty room."

"No, of course they don't want to hop in, goose!" said his wife,
reprovingly. "Edward R. Hunter, I wonder at you! Were you never young
yourself?"

"Oh, but we do!" Jane was capably opening the front door of the little
car. "We're late! I kept Marty waiting! I'm going to ride with the
chauffeur, and Marty can sit with the girls. When Mrs. Wetherby says
'eight o'clock' she means it, not quarter past." She was chatty and
intensely friendly with them all during the brief drive. She even
produced the proper degree of articulate mirth for the young father's
painstaking jest about his son's nickname being Teddy b-a-r-e, bear, most
of the time.

When they stopped before the Wetherby house Martin was out of the
automobile with heavy swiftness and lifted Jane bodily to the sidewalk
and hurried her up the walk. "All right for you, girlie," he chuckled,
"all right for you! But you just wait! Wait till going home to-night!"

Jane drew Sarah Farraday aside when they were in Mrs. Wetherby's phrase,
"taking off their things in the north chamber,"--a solid and
dependable-looking room. "Sally, I want you to come home with me and stay
over night."

"Oh, Jane, I don't believe I could,--not to-night! If I'd known sooner--I
haven't anything with me."

"I'll loan you everything you need. Please, Sally! You can telephone your
mother now."

"But Edward and Nannie brought me, and it seems sort of----"

"Sally, don't be a nuisance! I want you. I--_need_ you!"

Sarah Farraday peered closely at her through her nearsighted eyes. "Jane!
You haven't quarreled with Marty, have you? Oh, Jane!"

"No, but I shall if you don't come home with me!"

Her best friend looked long and anxiously at her and then went with a
sigh to telephone her mother, and the evening, which Mrs. Wetherby
described as "a little gathering of the young folks," got under way. Jane
played cards sedately for the earlier part of it and joined with
conscientious liveliness in the games which came later, just before Mrs.
Wetherby's conception of "light refreshments" was served,--pineapple and
banana salad with whipped cream and maraschino cherries on it, three
kinds of exceptionally sweet and sticky cake, thick chocolate with melted
marshmallows floating on its surface, and large quantities of home-made
fudge in crystal bonbon dishes.

To Martin Wetherby, watching her contentedly out of his small, bright
eyes, Jane Vail was what he and his mother termed the life of the party,
but although she played an unfaltering part in the comedy of, "Well,
_partner_! Didn't you get my signal? _Now_ who's asleep?" and the
sprightly games which followed, and exclaimed prettily over the decked
supper table, deep under the high-piled masses of her dark hair, dark
thoughts were stirring. She seemed to herself to be marching inexorably
to the crossroads, which was silly, because she had spent exactly that
sort of day and evening hundreds of times before and would again, she
told herself impatiently, but the feeling was not to be eluded. She held
herself up to her own high scorn. Why this dramatizing of the pleasant
and placid course of Wetherby Ridge events? Why shouldn't she do as the
other girls of the set had done? Was she, then, so much finer clay? If
she didn't want to be another Nannie--hot pink nursery in a shining
little new house--expensive olive oil--home-coming husband in punning
mood--pink celluloid Kewpie--half a dozen of everything in flat silver
and two _really_ good rugs to start with--then why couldn't she cast
herself serenely for the Sarah Farraday sort of thing, substituting a
typewriter for a piano? There was nothing so bleak and dreadful about
that; old Sally was busily happy, toiling hopefully for her baby-grand.
_She_ was enormously lucky, as a matter of fact, lucky beyond her
deserts. She could be, it appeared, a Nannie or a Sarah, as she chose,
and the time for choosing had arrived. And presently the girls were
exclaiming that it was twenty minutes past eleven and they really _must_
go, but it was Mrs. Wetherby's fault for always giving them such a
perfectly wonderful time that they forgot to watch the clock, and Mrs.
Wetherby was beaming back at them and insisting that she had enjoyed it
all just as much as they had, and that she hoped she could always keep
young at heart.

Sally lagged behind as they went down the steps. "Come along!" Jane
called back to her. "I know you'll talk half of what's left of the night,
and I want to get you started as soon as possible."

"She going to stay all night with you?" There was sulky surprise in
Martin's voice.

"Yes," said Jane. "But isn't 'stay _all_ night' a silly expression? As if
she might rise and stalk home in the middle of it! I wonder why we don't
say, 'stay over night'?" She ran on, ripplingly, but her escort at one
side and Sarah Farraday at the other were maintaining, respectively, a
sullen and an uncomfortable silence. When they were passing her own house
Sarah broke away from them with a little gasp.

"Oh,--do you mind waiting just a minute? I believe I'll just run up and
get my things, Jane. You know what a fussbudget I am about my own things.
And I'll just slip into another dress so I won't have to put this on for
breakfast. It won't take me two _minutes_--" She flew up the front steps
and let herself softly in with her latch key, and instantly ill humor
fell from Martin Wetherby.

"Sally's all right," he chuckled. "I'm for Sally!" He swept Jane out of
the circle of light from the street lamp, into the black shadow of the
Farraday shrubbery, and into a breathless embrace. "You--little--rascal--"
he said, huskily, gasping a trifle as he always did in moments of high
emotion. "You--little--witch! Now I've got you--and I'm going to keep
you! Now I guess you'll listen to what I've got to say and--and answer
me!" His broad, warm face was coming inexorably nearer; life--the
pleasant and placid pattern of Wetherby Ridge--was coming inexorably
nearer; life with melted marshmallows floating on its surface!

"Oh, Marty, please!" She was fatally calm and earnest about it. "I'm so
sorry--sorrier than I can tell you,--but you mustn't say it! You mustn't
make me answer you."

He was busily getting both her cool hands into the hot grasp of one of
his own, and the fingers of his other hand, a little moist, were forcing
themselves beneath her chin, but there was something in the honest
sorriness of her tone which made him pause even in that triumphant and
satisfying moment. "Why? You little----"

"Because," said Jane, steadily, "I do like you such a lot, Marty dear,
and I wish you wouldn't ask me, and make me tell you that I don't--I
can't----"

Then with a swift and amazing sense of rescue, of sanctuary, she heard
herself saying, "Besides, you see, I'm going away!"

CHAPTER II

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.

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