"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, G.o.d 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-gla.s.s 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.

CHAPTER IX

Nevertheless, when Emma Ellis came in to luncheon, a little early, the third day following, she espied at Michael Daragh's place a letter with a Boston postmark, addressed in a firm, small hand she knew. She was the only person in the room and she had time to examine it thoroughly, even as to thickness, before Mrs. Hills came in. It happened that there were mail deliveries just before the three meal times and it was the boarding-house keeper's guileless custom to sort and distribute letters at the table, thus saving a wearisome climb and much pedestrianism through long halls.

"Well, I've got a line from Jane and I'm free to say I'm relieved. I was afraid she was sick or something, rushing off like that, rousing me out of a sound sleep at six in the morning, just saying she was going out of town. _I_ supposed, of course, she was going home to her Aunt Lydia Vail."

"Didn't she?"

"No, she didn't." Mrs. Hills took the note out of her ap.r.o.n pocket and consulted it. "No, she's going to Maine. Foot'n alone. Says she needs quiet for some special work."

"Mr. Daragh has something from her, too." Emma Ellis stood behind the Irishman's chair, her pale eyes lapping up the inscription.

"No!" said Mrs. Hills, advancing with interest, frank and unashamed. "You don't say! Well, he has! Sure's you're a foot high! Well, now, that beats me!"

Emma Ellis tucked in her lips in a way she had before making a certain type of remark. "It is rather strange.... They were out walking in the evening, and in the morning she left, precipitately."

"'Tis kinder queer," Mrs. Hills clucked. "Couldn't have quarreled or anything--never paid enough attention to each other for that."

"Oh," said Emma Ellis in a hushed voice, "don't you think Miss Vail has always devoted a great deal of attention to Mr. Daragh?"

"Well, Jane's a great one to make up to folks and be friendly; always was, as a child. I can remember her, four years old, after her folks died and she came to live with Miss Lydia. Wasn't afraid of anything or anybody, ever. Used to slip out and run off down Main Street after a peddler or a gypsy or anybody she took a fancy to. But--" she came back into the present--"Mr. Daragh's been kinder queer these last two, three days. But then, far's that goes, he's always queer. Oddest mortal I ever met up with in all my born days. Odder'n Adam's off ox."

"If it is odd," said the Settlement worker, dull color flooding her sallow skin, "for a man to turn his back on greed and gain and devote his life to altruism----"

"Now, now," said the boarding-house keeper, pacifically, "you've no call to take me up like that. Land knows I set a great store by Mr. Daragh, if he is Irish as the pigs. Never had a human being under my roof that was easier to suit and made less fuss, but he's _queer_ and I'd say it on my dying bed!"

The other woman stood looking down at Jane Vail's pretty letter which managed, in spite of the plain, creamy envelope and the many alien hands through which it had pa.s.sed, to retain a startling individuality, and she spoke in the little smothered voice which was her proclamation of intense feeling. "If--_she_--with the life she leads--has--has disturbed Mr.

Daragh----"

"Now, then, you look here," said the Vermont villager with sudden sharpness, "I guess her life is about as important as anybody else's I might name! I guess if Mr. Daragh's 'disturbed,' as you call it, it's no worse for him than it's been for others. My land, Jane Vail could of had her choice of the town, where she comes from. There's _four_ wanted her, to my certain knowledge, and they say Martin Wetherby (Wetherby Ridge is named for his family--they go back to Revolutionary days) never _will_ get over it. And I guess that Mr. Harrison that rolls up here in taxis and limousines is sitting up and taking notice, sure's gun's iron! And if Mr. Michael Daragh----"

"Sh ..." said Emma Ellis.

The big Irishman came into the room, graver even than usual, but his eyes lighted warmly at sight of the missive at his place. He nodded to the watching women, tore it open and read it swiftly, and as he read the gladness spread and deepened in his face.

"_I_ had a letter from Jane, too," said Mrs. Hills, seating herself.

"Going to Maine for some special work she's got to do."

"Yes," said Michael Daragh. "Special work, indeed." He folded the letter and put it back in his pocket, and the table filled up with the other members of the household, the music students and the school teachers and the elderly concert-going ladies in their staid silks ... all the sound and sensible persons whom the missing boarder made so drab and colorless by her glowing presence. He smiled sunnily at Emma Ellis and was astonished to see tears in her light eyes, but he was used to tears and woes and secret sorrows, so he smiled again and more convincingly and went st.u.r.dily on with his meal. When he was alone in his bare and austere room on the top floor he took out Jane's letter and read it again, slowly and with thankful care.

I've decided to forgive you, Michael Daragh, it began, but it takes a bit of doing! It's easy enough to forgive any one for being in the wrong; that's a really pleasant and soothing sensation; but to pardon you for being in the right--that's taken me all these hours! I said that you always saw life through a stained-gla.s.s window and that it gave you distorted values, didn't I? That was temper, pure and simple. You were perfectly right to wail like one of your own Banshees because the likes of me--once content when the pale shadow of Pegasus pa.s.sed her by--is become an ink-spattered, carbon-grimed gold digger! Ten months ago, shivering and quivering over "ONE CROWDED HOUR," I cowered back in my semi-occasional taxicab and watched the meter with a creeping scalp.... Now I can ride from Yonkers to the Square and admire the scenery all the way. But this isn't what I intended to do. It's been warm, human, jolly sort of work, knitting up the spatted broker in the box to the newsboy in the gallery and I've adored it, but I've lost my way, Michael Daragh. It isn't what I intended to do; it isn't what I intended to be; the dew is drying on my dreams and my soul shrieks S.O.S.!

For the first time in my snug, smug life I've had large chunks of truth told me; I didn't like it. I don't _enjoy_ it even yet, but I've arrived at the decent stage of grat.i.tude, Michael Daragh. Thank you--and good-by. Shall I send you bulletins of my pilgrim progress?

I'm off to a lean, clean island in Maine, to live on eight dollars a week and snare back the thing I lost.

JANE VAIL.

Thereafter, Mrs. Hills and Emma Ellis were to see and to marvel over the creamy buff envelopes which came to the Irishman, now thin, now thick, postmarked in Maine, often only two or three days apart, never less frequently than once a week. The boarding-house keeper had her own pleasant little note, occasionally, and Emma Ellis had three conscientious picture postcards, but it was to Michael Daragh that the letters came in a steady stream.

"Mark my words," said Mrs. Hills, "there's nothing in it. My land, he's as offhand about 'em as if they were circulars, and I don't believe he answers one in six."

"Yet she continues to write him constantly," said Emma Ellis.

"Well, if she does, it's _her_ business, that's all I've got to say,"

said the older woman, dangerously. "Jane Vail never ran after anybody yet and I don't believe she's going to begin now. He says--and _she_ says--she's doing some special work, and I suppose maybe he's advising her about it."

"I've never understood before that Mr. Daragh was a literary authority,"

said the Settlement worker in her little, smothered voice.

"Well, I'm free to say it beats me. But all I know is, Jane Vail's n.o.body's fool."

And Michael Daragh, meanwhile, read his letters in his room, monklike in its simplicity, three times, and then he tore them up, quickly, the line of his lean jaw salient. The second one to come had been dated at six in the morning, on the wharf at Bath, and ran--

I'm shivering, Michael Daragh,--shivering in September! The incredible freshness of this morning, the bracing miracle of cold! I left Boston on the night boat and the stewardess rapped me firmly up at three-thirty to see the sun rise. I stayed stubbornly in my berth, at first, but presently a length of Quaker gray sky interlined with faintest rose brought me to my elbow and then to the window. The little steamer was feeling her cautious way up a river of dull silver between banks of taupe and mauve. After a moment I could pick up objects here and there in somber silhouette--a windmill, a battered barn, crude landings reaching out to graze the boat. In that tremulous moment before the break of day, sh.o.r.e and stream and sky melted and ran together in the liquid pattern of an abalone sh.e.l.l.

Then, suddenly, the sun shot up over the rim of the world, "out of the gates of the day," a clear persimmon, gorgeous as a Chinese lantern, and the realm of faery warmed into reality,--river and river banks, houses and little hummocky hills.

I must walk now to keep warm. There is a young old woman in shabby corduroy footing it briskly to and fro, who may be going to take my toy steamer,--tossing a mane of smoke and champing its bit at the upper wharf--and I'm going to speak to her.

_7 A.M. Going up the River._

She was taking the down boat, but she gave her valuable experience to me. She asked me for which island I was heading, and when I said I didn't know,--that I meant to line them up and say,--"My-mother-told-me-to-take-_this_,--" she said,--"Oh, then do take Three Meadows!" She has been there all summer, and she thinks I can board at the same place--with Angelique Larideau Gillespie, "Mis' Deac'n Gillespie." She is Canadian-French and the only woman on the island who can cook any other way than frying. The bad little hotel is closing. She was so merry and footloose and free, Michael!

That's exactly the sort of old maid I mean to be----

"_Love of roving foot and joy of roving eye_----"

We have been wriggling up a cunning little river, b.u.mping into clumsy landings here and there and now the porter-purser-steward- newsagent-cabin-boy-and-guide says the next one is mine.

Wish me luck, Michael Daragh!

J. V.