Jane Journeys On Part 14

J. V.

_Sunday Night._

I've been making circus all day, M.D.----

"Tooting joy, tooting hope, w.i.l.l.y wully wah hoo ...

I am the golden dream, Singing science, singing steam-- Listen to the lion roar--"

I've roared myself hoa.r.s.e but I got him to sleep at last. I have figured it out and I see that I can't hear from either you or the Monthly before Wednesday at the earliest, and I won't let myself really look for anything before Friday.

J. V.

Again there came a single line----

_Monday Night._

It's too heart-breaking to write about, M.D., even to you.

_Tuesday Morning._

I've had to stop hating the poor old Deacon altogether; this morning he carried S.A.B.B. upstairs with his own hands and put him on the bed beside the boy.

J. V.

_Tuesday Night._

It's very late, Michael Daragh, but there are things I must tell you before I sleep.

I went for a walk this morning, and when I came back I saw Angelique waving to me from the window. I _knew_, and I ran into the house and upstairs. The Deacon was praying aloud, a terrible, cast-iron prayer, and Angelique was sobbing and S.A.B.B. was whining and s.h.i.+vering. I knelt down beside Dan'l and he opened his eyes. I could just make out the whisper--"My ... letter?"

I jumped up and ran over to his father and took him by the elbow and marched him into my room and shut the door and stood with my back against it. My teeth were chattering so I could hardly speak. "He's dying," I said. "_Now_ will you let me?"

He was shaking, too, but he quavered, "I wunt bear false witness! I wunt take a lie on my soul!"

Then something boiled up and over in my heart, Michael Daragh. I caught hold of him and shook him and I was so strong I scared myself.

"You pitiful, craven-hearted old coward," I said, "all you can think of is your sour old self! If you loved him--if you knew the first faint beginning of love--" I s.n.a.t.c.hed up the letter I had addressed to Dan'l and ran over to the dresser for my purse. "You stay in here with the truth and keep your musty little soul safe! I'm going in there and tell him a beautiful lie!"

But he fumbled some bills from his lean old wallet. "Wait! Here's twenty dollars! I'm a-comin', too!"

We went in together, and he bent over the bed and held the bills close to the boy's eyes. "Look a-here, Dan'l! Look a-here, boy!

Here's your money! Here's your _money_, Dan'l!" (Wasn't it pitiful, Michael? Even then, he still thought the money meant most.)

Dan'l opened his eyes and I said, "You were right all along, Danny!

You were right to trust and believe in him! He _was_ grateful!"--and I held the envelope where he could see it,--the one I had addressed in a silly, flowing screed.

His pinched little face lighted up from within--cheerily, exquisitely, and his chin went up the tiniest fraction in glad pride. "_I_ ...

knew ..." He just barely breathed it, Michael, and then he sort of relaxed all over and gave a long, comfortable sigh, like a tired puppy, and--and went to sleep.

His mother screamed and fell down beside the bed, and the Deacon said, "Loose him an' let him go, Angerleek!"--but he lifted her up and kept his arms around her.

I went away and left them there with Dan'l and S.A.B.B. I had forgotten all about mail time, but I found myself presently at the graveyard corner. It was one of those gentle, warmed-over summer days and the air was mild and filled with little whispers. I was so happy, Michael Daragh, that in my heart I heard the "harpers harping with their harps," but by and by I was aware of a nearer, more intimate sound--not "_klip-klup_" as on other days, but _klipety-klipety-KLIPETY_--a panic of frantic speed.

Down the road they came, Old Lizzie's hoofs scattering dust and pebbles, Uncle Robert leaning far forward, laying on the lash. When he saw me he cried out:--"Oh, it ain't too late? Oh, my dear Lord'n Saviour, it _ain't_ too late?"

Then he handed me a plump registered letter, addressed in a foolish, flowing screed which looked as if it had been done up in curl papers over night, and I began to cry for the first time.

"No," I said, "oh, no, it's not too late!" And I ran up to Dan'l's still little room and gave it to the Deacon and he took it with a great wonder in his ice-blue eyes and slipped it under the cold little claw, beside our merciful lie.

Then I went into my own room, and I noticed for the first time that Uncle Robert had given me two other letters and I stopped crying and stared at them.

One was a very small envelope and the name printed in the corner was that of the brown-gowned magazine on the stern and rock-bound. The other was yours.

J. V.

P.S. Guess which one I opened first, Michael Daragh, Do-er of Miracles?

CHAPTER XI

Jane stayed on at Three Meadows until after the bleak and austere little funeral, and long enough to help Angelique soften the harshly new grave with flowers and st.u.r.dily started plants, and stopped over at Bath and ordered a quaintly simple headstone which would be the Gillespie's pride and solace.

She was very happy on her return journey to New York,--in vastly different mood than the one of nine weeks before. Michael Daragh had written her a brief and beautiful letter, a letter she would always keep, as soon as he had read her story, and the thought of it warmed her like a summer sun, but as she went down the twisting silver river she had a vexed feeling that her postscript had been a bit of foolishness.

"_Guess which one I opened first, Michael Daragh, Do-er of Miracles?_"

Their relations.h.i.+p had s.h.i.+fted in these long weeks; ever since the evening on Riverside Drive when he had sternly recalled her to herself, they had gone by leaps and bounds, by hedge and byway, into a deeper and more intimate friends.h.i.+p, and yet, she told herself, that added line at the end of her letter to him was a High School girlish thing to have done; it presupposed something between them which wasn't there at all.

She had flung it in without weighing it; she had honestly meant at the moment, that his approval of her new and serious story was more precious to her even than the editor's, but ... would Michael Daragh understand it that way?

She did not write him the exact time of her arrival, and it was the merest chance that she found him starting up the steps as her taxicab drew up at Mrs. Hills' door. They went up together and at his first hearty look and word she was able to laugh at herself for having worried an instant.

"It's rare and fine to have you back, Jane Vail," he said, glowing with gladness. "And you were good indeed to be sending me the long story letters all the while. 'Twas like a journey itself, the way I'd be following you up and down on that Island with all the queer folk and sad, and waiting at the graveyard corner for the mail!"

Jane glowed in return. "It's good to be back, Michael Daragh." (The nice, sane, sensible, dependable creature that he was! What a solid comfort it was to have him! This was exactly the way she wanted him to act and to feel and to be, and she wasn't--she was at some pains to a.s.sure herself--in the very least feeling vaguely disappointed or let down by his att.i.tude.) "But it was the best time I ever had,--best in the sense of being the best for me." Generously and sweetly she gave him his due.

"I'm still thanking you, you know, M.D.!"

He nodded gravely. "You've found your way back to the highroad in that tale you were sending me. I'm doubting you'll ever lose it again all the long days of your life."

"I won't" said Jane, stoutly. (Good to be back with him, good to hear his purling brogue and his lyrical construction. He talked like an old song.) The door of the boarding-house opened at their ring and Jane hurried in.

"Here's Mrs. Hills! h.e.l.lo, Mrs. Hills! Here I am!" She embraced the ex-villager warmly and espied Emma Ellis in the shadows of the hall, over her shoulder. "And Miss Ellis! How-do-you-do?"

Miss Ellis did very well, according to her own statement, but it was pathetically clear to one pair of sharp eyes at least that she would have done better if Michael Daragh had not been bringing in Jane's suitcase and handbag and umbrella while a taxi got under way in the street.

"It's so nice to be back with you all," said the returned exile, heartily. The Settlement worker came out into the light and it was to be observed that she was still more pinched and sallow than of yore and Jane's heart melted within her to swift mercy. "I found Michael Daragh on the sidewalk and pressed him into service as porter. Thanks, Michael Daragh. Am I to give you the quarter for your Poor and Needy?"

"You are, indeed," said the Irishman, firmly, taking the stairs two at a bound. "More than that, you'll be giving me for a case I know, with the proud and prosperous look you have on you this day!"