Jane Journeys On

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"Edna Miles," she gasped, "my poor child, you can't eat in there!
It's the most expensive place in the city. Besides,--it is half-past
four,--you'll spoil your dinner!"

_Very_ peevishly and hollowly,

JANE.

_Thursday Night. On the Joyful New Job._

Oh, my dear people, but I do believe in Fairies! I've met one
personally! While we sat at melancholy mending this morning, my
doleful landlady and I, after my fruitless tour of the agencies, who
should dash up to our dull door but THE MAIDEN'S DREAM! In his
shining chariot! Mrs. Mussel said, "Edna, you go straight upstairs
and lock yourself in your room and _I'll_ 'tend to him!" But I was at
the door before he had time to ring the bell.

"Great luck," he said, "'fraid you'd be gone. Got a job yet?"

"No."

"Well, I was telling my sister about you, and she thinks she has just
the place for you. Want to hop in the boat and run out to see her now
and talk it over?"

Mrs. Mussel said of course he hadn't any sister, and that I ought to
be ashamed of myself and I would probably never be seen or heard of
again, and she knew he had a poison needle and she rang up the
Stranger's Friend, but before she got her connection I was spinning
up the North Shore. THE MAIDEN'S DREAM lives in a young palace and
Miss Marjorie, his sister, is also Peter Pan's sister. He explained
to me, as we went, that she had been thrown from her horse and would
never walk again, and so she "did things for girls, you know--keeps
her busy----"

She looks exactly like a Fra Angelico angel! She kept me to luncheon
in her room with her--oh, flesh-pots!--hot broth and tiny chops and
pop-overs and magic salad and chocolate and ginger-bread--and told me
about this extraordinary job. Then THE MAIDEN'S DREAM whizzed me home
for my things (I found Mrs. M. and the S.F. holding an agitated
Directors' Meeting), but when the S.F. heard Miss Marjorie's last
name, she beamed and brought me out here.

Miss Marjorie explained that I'm to be more or less of a
maid-companion to my pretty little mistress. She's a limp and lovely
nymph who's quarreled with her husband and is in hiding in this funny
old house which belonged to her family, in a weird neighborhood where
none of her own set would ever discover her. The house is comfortable
enough inside, but the locality is a rather rough one, and there is
not even a telephone. There is a cook and a cleaner-by-the-day, and
the new maid-companion, so she should be reasonably well looked
after.

Whoops, my dears! Fifty dollars a month and almost nothing to do!
This is the Promised Land!

Joyfully,

JANE.

_Monday._

DEAR PEOPLE,

The cook is cross because she drinks and she drinks because she is
cross, and I have persuaded my nymph to let her go and give me a try
at it. The cleaner-by-the-day will do the grubby things and I shall
like it. Time to get luncheon! Wish you might drop in to sample my
fare!

JANE.

P.S. There is the most engaging grocery boy with red hair and a
heart-twisting grin. I'm not sure I wasn't considering him when I
turned kitchen mechanic. Denny Dolan is his name and God loves the
Irish!

J.

_Wednesday._

It's fun, my dears, every inch of it, from my little lady's breakfast
tray to Denny's extra trips with things he "forgot."

She wanted to give me the cook's wages in addition to mine, because
she says I do all the work of both places, but I modestly compromised
on seventy-five and on my first day out I'm going to take Mrs. Mussel
a regal present.

Opulently,

JANE.

_Friday._

MY DEAR PEOPLE,

My nymph is ill and unhappy and grieving for her husband, but she
won't send for him, and it's the time of all times when he should be
with her. I went the five blocks to the drug store and telephoned
Miss Marjorie about her, and she sent the old family doctor, and when
he left her eyes were red, and I suppose he was urging her to make it
up.

She's such a vague, sweet, helpless thing! This dreary neighborhood
is bad for her.

Denny Dolan says "there's a hard-boiled bunch hangin' around here,"
and warns me against venturing out after dark, even to the post-box.

JANE.

P.S. He brought me a paper bag of gum drops to-day!

_A Week Later._

Almost too busy to write, my dears, what with cooking and catering
and maiding and companioning. Besides, I'll have you to know I'm
keeping company! It's walking out with Denny Dolan I am! I get the
cleaning woman to stay with my nymph for an hour, and I'm stepping
out with my young man. Twice to the movies we've been, and had
dripping ice-cream cones afterwards!

So no more at present, for a girl would be thinking of her beau the
way she has no time to be palavering on paper and he waiting in the
alley!

DENNY'S GIRL.

_The Next Night._

I went into town to-day and I met the Buffalo just as I was leaving a
Loop car, and it seemed only the fair and sporting thing to let him
speak to me.

He beamed more beamishly than ever. "Say, listen, girlie," he said,
"I've had the deuce of a time, losin' you every time I find you! Say,
I was startin' to tell you the other day,--the wife gimme fits when I
told her about you. Sure, she did." I stood very still and looked at
him and listened. "Yeah. Calls me a big boob. 'You big boob,' she
says. 'You sleeper! Her tellin' you she was a stranger and all that,
and lookin' for work, an' you never give her my address!' Honest, she
trimmed me for fair. I got to beat it now, but here's her card,
see?--Telephone'n everything, and she wants you to call her up. She
wants to have you out to dinner, Aggie does, and have you meet some
of her lady friends and get you acquainted. Say, ring her up, will
you, sure? Gee, she was some sore at the old man! Bye!"

He leaped into his Express, and vanished, and I could have sat down
in the midst of the scurrying crowd and wept with shame and joy and
gratitude. I rang Aggie up at once, and I could just _see_ her,
from her cozy voice.

How about it, Emma Ellis? Do I score? I'm dining with them soon.

JANE.

P.S.--Do you realize that my month is up? And my point is won? But
I'm going to stay on and see my nymph safely through her dark days.

_A Week Later._

Denny and I went to see "Twin Hearts" this evening and in the
meltingest part of the film he held my hand. I thought it was about
time to unmask, so I said--retrieving my hand--that I wasn't a
regular kitchen mechanic but a volunteer.

"My real job," I said, "is writing. I'm a writer."

"Sure you are!" he chuckled delightedly. "You'n me both! I wrote this
spiel here! I'm Henry W. Dickens!"

I couldn't seem to convince him of anything but that I was "some
little kidder." He undertook to tell the world about that. To-morrow,
in the garish light of day, when he dumps his neat parcels on my
spotless table, I must really explain that----

_The Next Afternoon._

DEAR E.E. AND M.D.,

I'm perished for sleep, but I'll write what I can. Just as I got to
"that" above, my nymph called me. She was ill,--terribly,
terrifyingly ill, and even I saw that there wasn't an instant to
lose. And not a soul to send to the telephone.

I couldn't leave her--but I had to leave her! It didn't enter my head
to be afraid--only of not getting the doctor in time. Denny's
warnings were forgotten. I had done one block of the five when a man
stepped out of a dark hallway, and halted in front of me.

Even then, until he spoke, I wasn't really frightened. But when he
did,--I tell you, Emma Ellis and Michael Daragh, all the horror and
wickedness, all the filth and sin of the world seemed to be closing
in on me, stifling me, blinding me, hobbling my feet. All the windows
about me were blank and black; a block and a half ahead of me was a
blaze of light--Boldini's Saloon--"a rotten bad one," Denny had said.

I ran, oh, how I ran, but he ran, too, faster, faster. I tried to
reach out for something to cling to--for a shield--Just fragments
came--"_angels charge over thee ... snare of the fowler ... terror
by night_...."

We were almost at Boldini's Saloon, and I couldn't run any faster,
and twice he had caught hold of my arm.... Suddenly another fragment
came--"_in all thy ways_ ..." _All!_ I ran through the swinging
doors into the saloon, out of the horrid, dark night into the horrid
light, and I stumbled and went down onto my knees and pulled myself
up by the bar, and I heard my voice--"Men--men--_Please_--I was
going to the drug store to telephone--a woman is sick--a baby--she's
all alone there--and this man--this man--" I hung onto the edge of
the bar and everything spun dizzily round with me, but I saw three
men bolt through the door and fall upon him.

Michael Daragh, I suppose some day I can remember with horror how
they beat him, but I can't now. I can't be sorry for him. I can't be
anything but gloatingly glad. They were drunk, all of them, but when
they finished with him they escorted me to the drug store, one on
each side and one marching on before and banged up the night man and
while I telephoned the doctor they waited for me, and then they took
me home.

I wanted to scream with laughter--they couldn't walk straight, two of
them--and I wanted more to cry,--"_angels charge over thee_--" They
were! I shook hands with them and thanked them, and they mounted
guard outside the house and I flew in to my lady.

Well, presently the doctor came, and then the nurse came, and then
Roderick Frost III came, a frantic young man with penitent eyes, and
presently Roderick Frost _IV_ came, a bad-tempered young tenor who
protested lustily at being born in a spot so far removed from his
own rightful social orbit, and then morning came, and I fell into
bed for three hours of sodden sleep.

Now the haughty chef from the Lake Shore Drive is here, taking royal
charge, and Edna Miles' job is over. I'm going to see little Miss
Marjorie and 'fess up, and take farewell of Mrs. Mussel and my kind
S.F., and then, my dears, I'm coming home,--home with palms of
victory.

Haven't I won, Emma Ellis? Haven't I won, Michael Daragh? Do you dare
to count the one exception that gloriously proved the rule? Didn't my
three unsteady angels more than make up for one poor devil? Nearly
six weeks alone in the wide, cold world, dozens of kindly conductors
and policemen and L guards and clerks and fellow citizens, the kind
little floorwalker and Denny Dolan, and the beamish Buffalo and THE
MAIDEN'S DREAM, and my three avenging knights!

Own up, old dears! Admit you're beaten! I have walked _The Narrow
Path_ and found it clean and safe and good!

Triumphantly--gloatingly--

JANE.

CHAPTER XV

It would be the private opinion of Emma Ellis to her dying day that Miss
Vail had suppressed a good deal and had embellished a good deal, in that
dramatic way of hers. She had written so much fiction and lived so much
in her imagination that it was doubtful if she could (with the best
intentions) tell the exact and unadorned truth about anything. Besides,
even if things had happened exactly as she had chronicled them, it was
not a fair test anyway; it was a very different case from those of the
heroines in the two stories. Jane Vail knew she was Jane Vail, with an
assured position in the literary world and a large income, and that the
whole thing was only play-acting after all. But with Mr. Daragh entirely
convinced and more maudlinly worshipful than ever, what was the use of
saying anything? But she could _think_.

Jane swung happily into her fourth year in New York, flying home to Sarah
Farraday for Christmas, meeting the young year with high hopes and canny
plans, a definite part, now, of the confraternity of ink. Her circle
widened and widened; important persons came down from their heights of
achievement to make much of her, and the late spring saw the successful
launching of another gay little play, and early fall found her
deep--head, hands, and heart--in her first serious novel, but she found
amazing margins of time for Rodney Harrison, for Hope House, for Michael
Daragh.

Sarah Farraday, resigned but never reconciled, shared vicariously in the
life-more-abundantly which had come to her best friend, and she always
said, with a small sigh, that nothing Jane did or said could ever
surprise her again, but she was nevertheless startled, after a long
silence, to receive a fat letter bearing a Mexican stamp.

_On a Meandering Train, bound, more or less for Guadalajara_, it began,
and was dated December the seventh.

SALLY DEAR,

You must be thinking me quite mad at last, not hearing from me for
weeks, and then--this! Like the old woman in the fairy tale,--"Can
this be I?"

I decided all in a wink to fly to California and visit my mother's
cousins, the Budders. I needed a drastic change, Sally. I haven't had
a real play-time for a year, and it's four years and a month since I
left home for New York--can you realize it? Four lucky, beautiful,
shining years. But oh, I'm tired, old dear! So tired that my brain
creaks. I think there comes a time, in creative work, for playing
hooky. Write and run away and live to write another day. So I wired
the Budders I was coming and took the train the same day, and when I
reached San Francisco I found them all packed up for this Mexican
trip,--indeed, they were sitting on their trunks with a tentative
ticket for me in their hands. And I was pleased pink to come. The
Budders (doesn't Budder sowd as if I ad a code id by ed?) are nice,
comfortable creatures,--the sort who are called the salt of the earth
but in reality aren't anything so piquant. They're the boiled
potatoes and graham bread and rice pudding. You, now, Sally darling,
are the angel cake, and there's not half enough of you; I'm the
olives and anchovies and caviar ... a little goes a long way ... and
Michael Daragh is the rich and creamy milk of human kindness, always
being skimmed by a needy, greedy world.

Behold me, then, ambling through Mexico, a Spanish phrase book in my
lap and peace in my heart.

_Adios!_

JANE.

P.S. I have just read this over, Sarah. Fiction of purest ray serene.
I'm not tired. I don't need to play. It was a very bad time for me to
leave,--my work screamed after me all across the continent. I had to
fly for my life and liberty.

Sally, friend of my youth, patient receptacle of all my moods and
tenses, I was falling in love. At least, I felt myself slipping. All
these four years I have intended Michael Daragh to be an interesting
character part in my drama of New York, down in the cast as "her best
friend." He is threatening to take the lead, and it isn't going to do
at all. Sally, the man's goodness is simply ghastly; I couldn't
endure having a husband so incontestibly better than I am. Why, you
know that all my life I've been "a wonderful influence for good" with
_man_kind! Didn't I always coax sling shots away from bad little
boys and make them sign up for the S.P.C.A.? And wasn't I always
getting bad big boys to smoke less and drink less and pass ex'es and
dance with wallflowers and write to their mothers? Really, when I
think of the twigs I've bent and the trees I've inclined, I feel that
there should be a tablet erected to me somewhere. But the woman who
weds Michael Daragh, I don't care who she is (lie: I care
enormously!) will always be burning incense to him in her lesser
soul, always straining on tiptoe to breathe the air in which he lives
and moves and has his being.

Michael Daragh, that time he renounced the flesh-pots and "took to
bride the Ladye Povertye with perfect blithenesse," did it so
thoroughly that any literal spouse will be only a sort of morganatic
wife, anyway. I don't mean that he might not adore her and be
wonderful to her _after_ he'd ministered unto a drove of sticky
immigrants and a Settlement full of drab down-and-outs and an Agnes
Chatterton Home full of Fallen Sisters, but he would really expect
her to _prefer_ having him assist at the arrival of the eleventh
little Lascanowitz in a moldy cellar to keeping a birthday dinner
date with her.

Now, Sally dear, in these four years since I left my village home
(soft chords) I have labored somewhat, and I confess that I have
frankly looked forward to matrimony as a sort of glorified vacation.
I couldn't ever give up my work, of course,--it wouldn't give me
up--and I don't crave to "sit on a cushion and sew a fine seam and
live upon strawberries, sugar and cream" exclusively, but somewhere
in the middle ground between that and washing dishes and "feeding the
swine," I did visualize a sort of gracious lady leisure, with a
vague, worshipful being in the background making me "take care of
myself."

Therefore, feeling myself melting unduly on the Irish question, I fly
while there is yet time.

Much love, old dear!

JANE.

_December 8th._

That was a silly screed, yesterday, Sally dearest, but getting it off
my chest was a great relief. And at that it wasn't a complete
confession. There was another reason for a strategic retreat. The
other reason was Rodney Harrison. Yes, the House of Harrison has
capitulated, handsomely, lavishly, Mater and Pater as well, but I'm
very sure that I can never be theirs. Just as I feel that Michael
Daragh is too good for me, so do I feel that Rodney Harrison is not
quite good enough! I mean by that not quite concerned enough with
drying the world's tears. With--as G.B.S. says--"a character that
needs looking after as much as my own," I feel I should have some one
a little less Philistine than the cheerful Rodney. At any rate, I
needed perspective on the whole situation, and who knows but I shall
meet my nice new fate on this romantic pilgrimage? (Sounds more like
eighteen than twenty-eight, doesn't it?) But, seriously, I've been so
constantly with Michael Daragh and Rodney in these four years that I
know every dip and spur, every line and leaf of their mental scenery;
fresh fields and pastures new are what I need. And "one meets so many
delightful people in traveling--" as witness the good Budders and
their niece, Miss Vail ('sh ... they say she's a _writer_!)

Something, which is to say, some_body_, may turn up at any moment.

Yours, Micawber-ing,

J.

P.S. I trust you won't expect to glean any useful information or
statistics about Mexico from these chronicles? The Budders are deep
in histories and guidebooks but I know not whether the _Chichimecs_
were people or pottery and I hope I never shall!

P.S. II. Cousin Dudley, having just returned from the smoker, reports
chatting with a most interesting young civil engineer----

_December 9th._

We are now so late, Sally dear, that we have lost all social
standing; we slink into sidings and wait in shame for prompt and
proper trains to bustle by. But I don't mind. At this rate I shall be
able to converse rippingly in Spanish by the time we reach
Guadalajara. Cousin Dudley knows a professor person there who will
help us to plan our trip.

Spanish is deliciously easy. It seems rather silly to make it a
regular study in our schools.

I adore the stations, especially at night,--black velvet darkness
studded with lanterns and torches and little leaping fires; old blind
minstrels whining their ballads; the mournful voices of the sweetmeat
venders chanting--"_Dulce de Morelia!_"--"_Cajeta de Celaya!_" These
candies, by the way, are the most----

_December 11th._

Alas, _muy_ Sally _mia_, when I meant to add a few paragraphs to
this letter diary every day! I was interrupted just there by Cousin
Dudley who came in with his civil engineer, and there hasn't seemed
to be any spare time since. (How is that for a demonstration of Mr.
Burroughs' well-known theory about folding your hands and waiting
and having your own come to you?)

He is an _extremely_ civil engineer and very easy to look at. He
has close-cropped, bronzy brown hair and gentian-blue eyes and his
skin is burned to a glowing copper luster. He is just idling about,
slaying time during a vacation too brief to warrant his going home to
Virginia, and he shows strong symptoms of willingness to act as
guide, philosopher and friend to wandering Touri. We are actually
going to reach Guadalajara tomorrow! Some one must be giving us a
tow.

_Adios, muy amiga mia!_

JUANA.

P.S. The C.E. is going to hear my Spanish lesson now.

P.S. II. Isn't NETZAHUALCOYOTL a cunning word?

_Guadalajara,
December 12th._

QUERIDA SARITA,

We sight-saw all morning in this lovely, languid, ladylike city, and
this afternoon we called on Cousin Dudley's friend, Professor
Morales and his family. They were expecting us and as our _coche_
drew up at the curb, the door flew open and _el profesor_ flew out,
seized Cousin Ada's hand, held it high, and led her into the house,
minuet fashion. The _senora_, a mountainous lady with a rather
striking mustache and the bosom of her black gown sprinkled with a
snow fall of powder which couldn't find even standing room on her
face, conducted Cousin Dudley in the same manner, and I fell to the
lot of a beautiful youth.

The _sala_ was crazy with what-nots and knick-knacks and bamboo
furniture and running over with people--plump, furrily powdered
_senoritas_ with young mustaches, cherubs with gazelle eyes and
weak-coffee-colored skin, and the oldest woman ever seen out of a
pyramid.

There was an agonizing time getting us all introduced and a still
more agonizing time of stage wait afterward. Then Cousin Dudley (I
thirsted for his gore) said chirpily, "My niece has learned to speak
Spanish, you know."

My dear, it made the Tower of Babel seem like "going into the
silence." Everybody in that room talked to me at once. In my frantic
boast and foolish word about the easiness of Spanish it had never
occurred to me that people would talk to _me_! If the fiends had
only held their tongues and let _me_ ask _them_ to have the kindness
to do me the favor to show me which way was the cathedral, or
whether it was the silk handkerchief of the rich Frenchman which the
young lady's old sick father required, all would have been well, but
instead--a madhouse!

Then came rescue. The sweetest, softest pussy willow of a girl with a
delicious accent said, "So deed I also feel, in the conevent, when
they all at once spik _ingles_!" She was in pearl gray, no powder,
no mustache, slim as a reed. Her gentle name is Maria de Guadalupe
Rosalia Merced Castello, but they call her "Lupe" ("Loopie," Sally,
not Loop!) She is a penniless orphan, just visiting her kin at
present, but lives with an uncle in Guanajuato (where delves my C.E.
at his mine) and she is in disgrace because of an undesirable love
affair, so the _senora_ told Cousin Ada. They are taking us to the
_Plaza_ to-night, and meanwhile we sup.

Delightedly,

JANE.

P.S. 11.30 P.M. The _Plaza_ is still the parlor in Guadalajara and
it's enchanting! The staid background of the chaperones in _coches_,
the slow procession of youths and maidens, two and two, boys in one
line, girls in another, the eager, forward looks, the whisper at
passing, the note slipped from hand to hand, the backward glances,
all classes, and over all, through all, the pleading, pulsing call
of the music.

Sarah, never did you make melody like that, decent New Englander that
you are! It's so poignantly searching-sweet, so _sin verguenza_
(without shame!) _El profesor_ had them play _La Golondrina_, their
national anthem, really, which means merely The Swallow, to start
with, but everything else a hungry heart can pack into it. Lupe and
I walked together and she was pouring out her dewy young confidences
before we'd been twice round the circle. Montagues and Capulets! The
rich uncle who has reared her is the bitterest enemy of her Emilo's
papa who is a general of revolutionary tendencies. "Me," she said
with a shrug, "I can never marry! _Vestire los santos!_" (Which
means, "I shall dress the saints!" Old maids having unlimited time
for church work!)

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