8. Chapter VIII
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.