It worked like a charm. They got away. I leaned from Lupe's balcony in the fragrant dusk and listened to their footfalls dying away. The C.E., shrouded to his eyes, looked up and whispered that "Emily's"

_charro_ trousers had nearly ruined everything at the last moment; he had needed vaseline and a shoehorn and a special supplication to St. James to get them on. We giggled like sixteen-year-olds. The C.E. said--

"Lettice, Lettice, let down your golden hair, That I may climb by a golden stair!"

I was so pleased with him for remembering his fairy-tales. I was so pleased with him and so fond of him and so happy over my _novios_ that I couldn't keep my beautiful plan a secret any longer. I told him what I had decided about Dolores Tristeza.

My dear! I wish you could have heard him! He was another person entirely. He said it was the maddest, wildest, most sickly sentimental, impractical thing he'd ever heard! He raved on and on, always coming back to the point of her clouded parentage. I told him he was perfectly mid-Victorian,--that any one living in the present century knows that there are no illegitimate _children_--just illegitimate fathers and mothers! But it never budged him. He was, for the first time, a most uncivil engineer. "Besides," I said, "beauty and wit is the love child's portion!"

It must have been funny, really, raging at each other in whispers. He began to burble about heredity and I told him I was planning an environment that would bleach out the heredity of the Piper Family, and he said that it couldn't be done, and I said that he was a pagan-suckled-in-a-creed-outworn, and just then the train whistled--the signal for what was to have been our melting moment, and we were both so mad we were fairly jibbering! And at that very instant old Cristina came running to tell us to fly at once, as Don Diego had decided to have Emilio arrested!

Before we could spread a wing, a little guard of opera bouffe soldiers was rounding the corner. I just whispered--"Stick! They'd stop them at Silao!" when they were upon him. He was a brick, I must admit. He just hitched the _serape_ higher and pulled the _sombrero_ lower and trudged away in somber silence. It seemed the only decent and sporting thing for me to stick, too, so I flung on Lupe's cape and covered my face with a _mantilla_ and fled after them. The C.E.

was furious and tried his frantic best to make me go back, but I wouldn't and I whispered to him that I'd never forgive him as long as I lived if he told and spoiled everything. My dear, they took us to that horrible prison ... with the bloodstains on the floor! The man at the desk was nearly asleep. He scribbled something in his Dream Book and produced a key three feet long at least, unlocked a door, pushed us in, and clanged it shut behind us. We were in the main court with the murderers and the newsboys and the sodden drunkards.... A guard with a gun showed us two cells opening off the court. We crouched on stools in the back of one of them and the C.E.

said between his teeth, "Keep that thing over your face and keep _still_!"

Then I stopped admiring myself and realized what I had done and where I was ... a Gringo woman in a Guanajuato prison at night.... But every hour that I stayed there saw my _novios_ nearer to safety, and the Budders wouldn't know and wouldn't worry. Sally, I'm glad I had a firm Vermont Scriptural upbringing! I can always find something, ready to my hand,--a staff to lean on. I thought of a funny one I've always loved--one of the Proverbs, I think----

"_The name of the Lord is a strong tower; the righteous runneth into it and is safe._"

I wasn't very sure I was "a righteous" but I tried valiantly to remember all the worthy actions I had done, and I don't mind telling you they rather piled up,--from Lupe to the bored old bear. I runneth-ed into my tower and felt a good deal safer, I make no doubt, than my poor C.E.

There was a nameless age of black silence, and then there was a crowded hour of glorious life. When I heard the shouts and then the shots I tried to remember Sydney Carton and the French aristocrats taking snuff on the steps of the guillotine, and I tried to think of something handsome and dressy in the way of a farewell speech, in case it might ever be reported in the States. The C.E. was splendid, only, when the great doors clanged open and the mob streamed in calling wildly for Emilio Hernandez, he very naturally failed to hold up his hand and say "Present." We both thought that his hour had struck and you may imagine my horror and remorse. Well, they began a cell-to-cell canva.s.s, but when they flashed the lantern on us they shouted with joyful triumph. They were not executioners but rescuers!

They were revolutionists, come to save Emilio and his papa, the General. That gentleman arrived on the run, panting, demanding his son. Alarums and excursions! Explanations. I think the bitterest moment of the whole hideous time for the poor C.E. was when "Emily's"

papa kissed him!

Sally, I'm running down like a mechanical toy,--I can hardly write another word. I was escorted to my hotel and thence to a dawn train for Guadalajara. The meek C.E. renewed his suit; he said I could adopt the whole _hospicio_ if I wanted to, but I said "_Adios_" and I think in his head, if not his heart, he was rather relieved. Poor, dear, extremely civil engineer! His tastes are simple and his wants are few,--just a limp, lovely lady in the background of his life, waiting prettily for him to come home and tell her what to think.

That man doesn't want a help-meet; he wants a _harim_.

They are unwinding several thousand miles of red tape, but at the end, like the pot of gold and the rainbow, I shall find my Dolores Tristeza, and there will be one pair of mournful eyes the less in this land of smiles and sobs.

_Adios_, poor, pretty, pa.s.sionate, shrugging Mexico! Go with G.o.d!

I'm coming _home_, Sally _mia_!

J.

P.S. The C.E.'s days before he knew me were just a string of wooden beads; afterward, they were a string of fire-crackers!

P.S. II. Michael Daragh is going to be frightfully pleased with me for wiping the orphan's tear; but he'll make me see that there's just as much poetry and more punch in wiping the orphan's nose!

CHAPTER XVII

Once, long ago, coming home from her self-imposed exile to the lean, clean Island in Maine, Jane had dreaded, a little, her re-meeting with Michael Daragh, but on the trip home from Mexico and California she had no such feeling. Doubts were over and done with forever. The flight had been for the purpose of getting perspective; perspective made her grave Irishman, her stern St. Michael, loom up and up until he filled her horizon. Her heart had been allowed to drift with the tide in the lyrical interlude in the lovely, lazy land she had come from, but--save perhaps for certain misty moments--it had insisted on swimming stoutly upstream.

"I am going back to Michael Daragh," she told herself gladly and unashamed, and the rhythm of the train, hurrying across the continent, repeated it in a joyful, endless litany--"Going--back--to--Michael--Daragh!"

Jane leaned back in her quiet compartment (tangible evidence of solid success) and watched the desert miles and the prairie miles sliding away beside her, and warmed her heart and soul with the thought of Michael's face when he should first see her again. Now, when the swift gladness leapt up in his eyes and the color ran up in his thin cheeks and his whole face glowed from within with its stained-gla.s.s-window look, she would not turn away from him, but to him,--gladly, royally, lavishly, with all that she had and all that she was.

She wired Mrs. Hills from Chicago the day but not the hour of her return, but sent no word to Michael Daragh. That would savor of a command, a summons, and she was too happily humble for that. He would know from the boarding-house keeper that she was near, and he would be waiting for her.

Like a timid tourist, she was hatted and veiled and gloved long before they entered the grimy outskirts of the city, and sat, hot-cheeked, breathing fast, on the edge of her seat, far more thrilled and shaken than she had been, four years and more ago, when she made her exodus from the village to the wide world. The narrow strip of mirror between the windows framed her radiant face; now indeed was she _anointed with the oil of joy above her fellows_.

Between a slight delay of the train, and the snail's pace of the taxicab through the traffic, it would be quite six o'clock before she reached Mrs. Hetty Hills' house in Washington Square; he would be absolutely certain to be home.

Everything took on an especial beauty and significance,--the crowded streets, the shop windows, the lights, the people,--her heart went out to all of them--rich man, poor man, beggar man, thief; they were Michael's and they would be hers. He should have that oil of joy for his work, for his high, selfless purposes.

It was hard to wait even an instant to see him, to have him ask, and to answer, but it was wonderful to wait, in faith and utter confidence. The sense of haste and impatience fell away; it must happen as it would, serenely, naturally.

She did not mind that it took her many seconds to find the exact amount and then a lavish tip for her driver, and she noted with satisfaction that the faithful Mabel had seen her from an upper window and would spread the glad tidings.

Mrs. Hetty Hills, a little stouter and grayer and more prosperous than she had been four years earlier, stood in the doorway. "Well, now, I _am_ glad!" she declared. "I'm free to say I thought it was a risk, your traipsing round Mexico with all those revolutions and epidemics and things! My, but you look fine, child! I believe my soul it's done you a world of good! 'Praise to the face is open disgrace,' but you don't look a day over eighteen and I'd swear it on a stack of Bibles!"

"_Nice_ Mrs. Hills," said her star boarder, hugging her heartily. "How are you? And how is everybody?"

"Well, I'm pretty good now," said the ex-villager, earnestly, "but you can tell your folks I was miserable enough a week ago yesterday. I guess if I was the give-up kind I'd have been flat on my back. I don't know when I've ever had such a spell. My throat ached and I could hardly drag one foot after another, and even my eyeb.a.l.l.s----"

"But you're fine now, aren't you? I'm so glad! I'm sure you'd been overdoing. And how is--how are all the others?"

"Oh ... about the same. Mrs. Ramsey doesn't get out to her concerts any more, on account of her leg, and that makes her bluer'n a whetstone, but otherwise I guess we're all pretty much of a muchness. Everybody misses--land t' goodness," she caught herself up, "I guess there _is_ one piece of news! I guess there _is_ one change, sure enough!"

"What?" asked Jane, sitting down suddenly on one of the stiff hall chairs.

"Why, Mr. Daragh! He's gone home to Ireland!"

("You've got to say something! You've got to make a remark!") Jane told herself, fiercely, but it seemed a fearful pause before she heard her voice and it sounded thin and queer. "Oh, is that so? Has he?"

"Yes, went off like a shot! Got a cable from some of his folks. All he said was he was called home. Awful close-mouthed for an Irishman. All the Irish _I_ ever knew before--I think he gave Mabel a note to put in your room. Want I should send her up for it?" asked the landlady eagerly.

"No, thanks," said Jane, very creditably. "There isn't any hurry. And how is Emma Ellis, Mrs. Hills?" She sat chatting for ten minutes by her wrist watch and then took her leisurely way upstairs and then she chatted another five with Mabel before she attacked the mile of mail upon the desk in her sitting room.

It was a brief little note; illness and imminent death in his family--he had time for this line only--and he wanted G.o.d to save her kindly and he was her friend, Michael Daragh. It was the sort of little note, she told herself, that a thoughtful man would write with the good Mabel in the back of his mind. She felt a sense of daze and dizziness and she sat with her hat and cloak on until the dinner gong rent the air, waiting much as Michael Daragh had waited, long ago, when he had listened for the sound of the motor, bearing her uptown with Rodney Harrison, and then had torn up the narrow strip of paper which bore her foolish little postscript.

She took herself resolutely in hand and went briskly down to dinner, and regaled Mrs. Hills and the music students and the teachers and bank clerks and elderly, concert-going ladies (one of whom went no more) with the gay but expurgated text of her conquest of Mexico. There was talk of Michael Daragh, and one of the younger music students ventured, pinkly, the theory that Mr. Daragh had been called home to inherit a t.i.tle.

"Yes," said Jane with quick sympathy, "I shouldn't wonder in the least!

He's always seemed a belted earl sort of person, for all his other-worldly ways, hasn't he?" It was a relief to talk of him lightly and easily like this. "Or a Squire, at any rate! Something picturesque,--something story bookish!"

"Oh," giggled the music student, delighted at her backing, "won't it be thrilling to get a letter with a crest and be told that he'll never be back again?"

"Lord Lovel, he stood at his castle gate, A-combing his milk-white steed,----"

chanted Jane, merrily. "I can quite picture him, can't you? Only the milk-white steed will be immediately hitched to a delivery wagon of his worldly goods, for distribution to the poor. Yes, that is without doubt what has happened! I can see adoring yokels pulling their forelocks to him! He'll fit beautifully into that background!" Thus her tongue, running ripplingly on, while her heart, suddenly released from its numb depression, wired her blithe rea.s.surance. "He's coming back,--coming back to _me_--coming back _soon_!"

The high mood stayed with her, even though the days and weeks slipped by without word from him. She was entirely happy and confident, but she found herself too restless to settle down to her work. She had a sense of excited waiting for something beautiful to happen, and a warm and kindly yearning to make every one else as happy as herself. She went often to Hope House and sparred with Emma Ellis; neither of them had heard from the Irishman, and while Jane was secretly able to interpret this with comfort to herself, the other was not. Miss Ellis leaned romantically toward the theory of the younger music student; Mr. Daragh had probably gone home to inherit property and a.s.sume responsibilities; she had always known there was nothing ordinary about Mr. Daragh; she had always felt that he was a great person, stooping to this life of abnegation.

"But I think," said Jane flippantly, "he's much more likely to have been a Sin-eater!"