"I hope," said Emma Ellis, conscientiously, the taut lines of her face loosening a little, "you had a pleasant outing?"

"Yes," said Jane, flippantly, "but my outing was an inning--and I've delved like a riverful of beavers, and I'll be at work at nine to-morrow morning."

"That Mr. Harrison has been 'phoning and _'phoning_," Mrs. Hills announced, complacently. "And he wants you should ring him up the minute you got in--something about this evening, I guess, he was so set on having you get the message."

"That listens alluringly! I'll call him now,--may I?" She shook herself out of her topcoat and fur and sat down at the hall telephone. Mrs. Hills and Miss Ellis discreetly withdrew to the living room, but the low tones of her voice were carrying and it was presently made clear to them that gayety was afoot for the evening, a sort of gayety they two had never known, would never know ... little tables with shaded candles, lights, music, subtle, wheedling music, hovering head-waiters ... the newest play ... then more little tables, more wheedling, coaxing music, more hovering head-waiters, dancing.... The boarding-house keeper told herself, comfortably, that it would never do for _her_, and pushed a tolerant curiosity back into the ragbag of her mind, and the Settlement worker tucked in her lips and reminded herself that there would be undernourished children, _hungry_ children, not a mile from where Miss Vail would be eating out-of-season delicacies, and thanked her G.o.d that she was not as other women.

Michael Daragh came into the room an instant before Jane did. She was flushed and bright-eyed and smiling. "Well! I'll have to _fly_! I won't be here for dinner, Mrs. Hills,--I'm sorry, but it seems this is a rather special party to-night."

"It's your kind of clam chowder, too," said Mrs. Hills, shaking her head.

"Oh, what a shame! But save mine for tomorrow's lunch,--I adore it warmed over! Here, Michael Daragh"--she opened her brown, beaded bag with its high lights of orange and gold--"catch!" She tossed the little suede purse to him. "That's exactly the way I feel to-night, scattering largess to the mult.i.tude, regally pitching purses about! Take what you want--all you want--for that case! I _must_ fly!" She looked at her wrist watch.

"Mrs. Hills, will you let Mabel come and do me up in twenty minutes? See you all at breakfast!" She ran out of the room and they heard her swift feet on the stair.

The boarding-house keeper beamed. Jane Vail was her link with the world.

"I declare, she's a marvel to me! Wouldn't you think she'd be dead on her feet and want to crawl into bed quick's ever she had her supper? She won't close an eye before two o'clock in the morning if she does then, but she'll be down to breakfast, right on the dot, fresh as paint, and out for her walk, rain, hail or snow, and then she'll hammer that typewriter all the forenoon!"

"Of course," said Emma Ellis in her small, smothered voice, "Miss Vail _often_ takes a little nap in the afternoon...."

Mrs. Hills was not to be diverted from her star boarder's glories. "Well, it didn't take that Mr. Rodney Harrison very long to get in action, did it?"

"It did not, indeed," said the Irishman, cheerfully. "How long till dinner, Mrs. Hills? Half an hour? Then I'll be stepping up to my room for a letter is keening to be written."

The two women were silent until they heard him mounting the stairs to the third floor. "You see?" said the elder, triumphantly. "What did I tell you? Not a thing on earth between them! Would she be tearing off with another young man, first evening home? And isn't he cool as a cuc.u.mber?"

Miss Ellis's narrow little face seemed to ease visibly into looser lines and she sighed. "Yes. You were quite right. Mr. Daragh's mind is on higher things."

The other bridled. "Well, I don't know as you've any call to put it just that way. I guess Jane Vail's a high enough thing for any man to think of! And I guess the truth is, Jane Vail's got other fish to fry!"

Jane, meanwhile, into her tub, out of her tub, flinging herself once more into urban silk and fine linen, doing her hair with swift craft, was entirely happy. It was good to have gone away, at Michael Daragh's rousing word, good to have stayed those sober weeks on the lean, clean Island, good to have done good work and to have speeded Dan'l's parting soul; and it was good to be back, to be going presently into the bright warm world with Rodney Harrison; it was best of all to find her big Irishman as she had found him. Her friend. Her _best_ friend ... best for her. It was a solid satisfaction to have him tabulated and pigeonholed at last and for all time. Michael Daragh was her best friend. That was settled. And she had been a vain, light-minded goose to fancy for an instant that he would misinterpret that foolish little postscript on her last letter,--that he would _want_ to misinterpret it. Michael Daragh had clearly obeyed the command to come apart and be separate, and she should never worry for an instant about him again.

And while she flew into her most satisfactory frock and stood still for Mabel's slow hookings and fastenings and then sent her down to tell the gentleman she would be with him in two minutes, her best friend, newly elected to that high estate, sat alone in his room on the third floor, and there was in his thin face none of the calm which had helped Mrs.

Hills to carry her point with Emma Ellis.

There had been a little rite, the evening before, of burning such few letters as he had allowed himself to keep, but he had s.n.a.t.c.hed the last one back from the blaze and cut off the final line, the postscript, with his desk scissors, and put the narrow shred of paper into his wallet. And now, hearing the sound of a taxicab in the street below, he approached his window and looked down through the fast-thickening dusk of the late fall evening. He could not see Jane's exit from the house nor her entrance into the waiting vehicle, but he remained there, his face pressed against the pane, until the machine set noisily forth upon its uptown way. Then he went back to stand before his fire, and he opened his wallet and took out the folded strip of paper and threw it on the coals without reading it again, for he knew it very well by heart, and he was still standing there when the sound of Mabel's vigorous gong summoned him down to dinner.

Rodney Harrison was a trifle annoyed and a trifle amused at Jane's exile, frankly contemptuous of the achievement of a tale in the _New England Monthly_ as compared to vaudeville bill-toppers, wholly glad to have her back. His mother was visiting her people in Boston at the moment, but as soon as she returned, he was very sure, she would want to make that long-delayed call on his young writing friend. As a matter of fact, it was the tale that did it. Mrs. Ormsby Dodd Harrison had not seen her way to the cultivation of a young woman whose end and aim in life was the writing of headline acts for the two-a-day, but a gifted young author who had two charming and thoughtful stories in the brown-gowned magazine that winter and pa.s.sed likewise the sober portals of the other three of the "Big Four," was quite another thing. Before the holidays, in spite of her telescoping activities at that season, Mrs. Harrison motored down to Washington Square and called on Miss Vail at Mrs. Hills' boarding house, and asked her with just the right admixture of formality and cordiality to dine with them one evening quite simply ... just themselves.

But Miss Vail, it appeared, was not only a very hard-working and ambitious young author, but very much feted and dated socially, and in addition, gave generously of her play time to certain worthy settlements and their concomitant affairs, and two more months elapsed before an evening could be arranged.

Jane wrote of the dinner to Sarah Farraday.

A shame, isn't it, Sally, that we can't be frank and honest? You can't think how it would have comforted Rodney's mother in her black hand-run Spanish lace and the Harrison pearls to have me say, "Be of good cheer, dear lady! I neither design nor aspire to marry your son!"

Then she could have removed her invisible armor and laid her polished weapons by and given herself over to the delights of my sprightly chatter. Rodney's the only son and the only child, and one cannot blame her for being a bit choosey! Harrison's pater, however, seemed to think that he could bear up very cheerfully under such a contingency--charmingly cordial, the dear old thing! Rodney won't be nearly so nice at his age because he's come up in a less gracious period.

But at that he'll be very nice! He is now!

CHAPTER XII

Before the end of her second year in New York, many things, grave and gay, came to pa.s.s. Sarah Farraday came down for a fortnight of operas and concerts and went home to spread the marvels of Jane's full and glowing life over the Vermont village; Emma Ellis reluctantly gave up her room at Mrs. Hills' and became resident superintendent of the Hope House Settlement, and Michael Daragh took his noon meal there. Jane went home twice for little visits and found changes even there,--the Teddy-bear, now trudging st.u.r.dily about in rompers, had a small sister, and Nannie Slade Hunter was prettier than ever, if a trifle too rotund, and Edward R., very prosperous and pleased with himself, had bought his wife an electric coupe, in which to take his offspring for a safe and opulent airing. Martin Wetherby, a.s.sistant Cashier, had somehow put youth aside.

His stoutness had closed in on him like an enemy. His mother admitted to Jane that he did not take sufficient exercise. "He doesn't seem to ...

care," she said, and looked pointedly away. To herself she put it dramatically, with great relish; never, to the day of her death, would she forgive the girl who had ruined her son's life. Jane wished with all her good-natured heart that Marty would marry, happily and handsomely--it would be such a relief to have Mrs. Wetherby complacently triumphant instead of heavily reproachful. And even Sarah Farraday never referred to him as other than, "Poor old Marty." Jane had her moments of wishing that they might, in village parlance, "make a match of it," but they were moments only. Sarah was much too fine; she must find Sarah a suitor of parts, somehow, somewhere.

It was during the second of her visits home that Miss Lydia Vail died.

There was no dreariness of illness or misery of suffering; she died exactly as she had lived, plumply and pleasantly, in the plump and pleasant faith that was hers, and Jane left the middle-aged maid in charge of the elm-shaded, green-shuttered house and went back to New York with a grief which was more pensive than poignant. She refused, thereafter, to rent the old home, but loaned it instead, the servant with it, to various and sundry of her city clan,--now the girl who had carried her first playlet to success, now to shabby music students at Mrs. Hills'

whom Sarah Farraday was pledged to regale with tea and cheer in the afternoons, now to sad-eyed women of Michael Daragh's recommendation.

Sometimes she ran up herself with a little house-party,--down-at-the-heel vaudevilleans, elderly, concert-going ladies from the boarding house, Emma Ellis and another settlement worker--and made an expenditure for food and entertainment which secretly scandalized the ancient maid.

She wrote her first slim little novel which was accepted for serial publication and Rodney Harrison insisted that there was the germ of a three-act play in it. She set to work on it and labored harder than ever before in her life, happily, hot-cheeked, shining-eyed, wrote and rewrote and clipped and amplified and smoothed and polished, and one day Sarah Farraday ran over to the Hunter's house with a telegram.

"Nannie! It's accepted! Jane's three-act play is accepted! Did you ever in all your born days see such luck? She just can't fail!" Her earnest, blonde face was a little wistful. "I never knew any human being to have so much!"

Mrs. Edward R. was herding the Teddy-bear into the coupe and she handed little Sarah Anne to her friend. "Get in, Sally dear, and I'll run you home. I'm taking the children over to Mother Hunter's for the day." She steadied Sarah and her burden to a seat and then tucked herself neatly in, and started her bright vehicle competently. "Well, I don't know....

It's all very fine, of course, but I can think of a good deal she hasn't got!"

"Oh, of course ..." said the music teacher. After a moment she sighed.

"Poor old Marty.... Well, we can't lead other people's lives for them, can we?"

"No, we can't," Mrs. Edward R. admitted, contentedly. She bowled Sarah smoothly back to the burlapped studio in time for the eleven-twenty pupil.

Jane, meanwhile, after wiring to Sarah, flew to Michael Daragh with her joyful tidings and lunched with him and Emma Ellis at Hope House. The Irishman, who had read the little play and knew its clean verve and charm, was radiant for her, and the superintendent managed grudging congratulations. They were in the sitting room after the meal, and something seemed to smite Jane, swiftly, with regard to Emma Ellis; her bright eyes traveled over the whole of her,--the shabby hair, the hot and steaming face, the moist fingers with their dull and shapeless nails,--the needlessly cruel ugliness of blouse and skirt and shoes; the utter unloveliness of her. As on the day of her return from Three Meadows, when Emma Ellis had supposed Michael Daragh had met her at the train, again her heart melted to mercy within her. Oh, the poor thing!

The _poor_ thing----

"Miss Ellis, I've taken your chair, haven't I?"

"It doesn't matter where I sit, Miss Vail. This one does well enough for me," she answered, virtuously.

Jane sat down on a footstool near the window. "Do take it--not that there's any cloying luxury, even there! Is it in the const.i.tution of Hope House to have only hideous and uncomfortable furniture?"

"You cannot know much about this sort of work, Miss Vail, or you'd realize that our funds are always limited, and that we must conserve them for necessities." It was a depressingly warm day, and the superintendent felt it and showed it, and she reflected bitterly that Jane Vail was the sort of person who was warm and glowing in January, when normal people were pinched and blue, and cool and crisp in September, when those who had to keep right on working, no matter what the weather was, had pools of perspiration under their eyes and shirtwaists adhering gummily to their backs. And she always wore things in summer which gave out cunning suggestions of shady brooksides, and managed--in that theatrical way of hers--the effect of bringing a breeze in with her.

"I wonder," said Jane, "if my silly little paper people get the breath of life blown into them and my play goes over and I have regal royalties, if I couldn't do something for Hope House?"

"You could, indeed, G.o.d save you kindly for the thought," said Michael Daragh, happily. "If your play'll run to it, you could be buying us two bathtubs and----"

"The linoleum in the kitchen"--Miss Ellis forgot her bitterness for a moment--"is simply in shreds!"