Jane Journeys On

13. Chapter XIII

Jane and the Irishman came into the Settlement one day to find the superintendent red-eyed, with two books on her desk. It was clear that she had been having a luxuriously miserable time. "I've just finished two of the most powerful stories," she said, polishing the precious powder from her nose with a damp handkerchief. "Every girl should read them--and every man;"

"I wonder at you, Emma Ellis," said Michael Daragh, "the way you'll be keening over a printed tale, when you've your heart and head and hands full of real woes about you, surely!"

"Oh, Mr. Daragh, if you'd just sit down and read I and The Narrow Path; Both written anonymously,--and you just feel the human heartthrob in every line."

"I'll not be cluttering my mind with the likes of that, woman dear!"

"I've read them both," said Jane, slipping out of her furs and cuddling into one of the great new chairs, "and I'm afraid I think they're fearful piffle."

"Miss Vail!" Her face snapped back into its old lines. (Miss Vail really mustn't think that because she was so situated, financially, that she could do kind and generous things--which others would do if they could--that her word was law on every subject!)

"I'll have to be reading them, to decide between the two of you," said Michael, lighting his mellowed old pipe.

Miss Ellis winced a little as she looked at her new curtains.

"But it's good for moths," said Jane, catching her eye. "No, Michael, you needn't fuss up your orderly mind with anything so frivolous and distracting. I can tell you the gist of them both in a few well-chosen phrases! The theme of both is that when lovely--and lonely--woman stoops to earning her own living she finds--not too late, but alas, immediately--that men betray! That every prospect pleases and only man is vile! These two heroines set out to make their own way; their faces are their fortune and very nearly their finish! One is a very young girl, the other an unhappy wife, fleeing with, and, one might be pardoned for imagining, protected by, a young child. Each is a pattern of dewy innocence and determined virtue, but no matter where they hie or hide, the villains still pursue."

"Of course," said Miss Ellis in her small, smothered voice, "if you're going to make a joke of it----"

"My dear Miss Ellis, it is a joke! One of them gets no further than the station in her initial flight when she is accosted by a young millionaire--insulted. (If you were a Constant Reader of popular fiction, Michael Daragh, you'd know how difficult it is for millionaires to retain the shreds of human decency.) And that's just the prelude, but it introduces the motif which runs through the entire composition. Staid, middle-aged husbands of friends, editors, business men, authors,--Don Juans all! Rich man, poor man, beggar man, thief, doctor, lawyer, Indian chief, enmesh the road the ladies are to wander in."

"Well," said Michael Daragh, shaking his head, "I'm telling you there's a rare lot of enmeshing, Jane Vail."

Emma Ellis wagged an eager head. "You can't possibly know, in your sheltered life----"

"But I've been about a bit in my day--(didn't I come from my verdant village to the wicked metropolis?)--and I've known men in all ages and stages. My feeling is that these girls must have had a small 'come-hither' in one eye at least, or occasionally men might have passed the butter without a sinister meaning, might have seen them home without attempting to abduct them!"

"You came directly to Mrs. Hills, whom you had known for years," said Emma Ellis. "And you knew that Mr. Harrison who helped you to place your writing, and you had enough money to live on."

"But I've roamed the city alone, all hours of night or day, and I used to go back and forth to boarding-school alone--a day's and a night's journey, and abroad I used to trot off to galleries and museums by myself, and----"

"But you always had your background, Jane Vail, the way you knew how safe you were."

"You can't prove these books are foolish by your experience, Miss Vail." Emma Ellis was glowing from the Irishman's championship.

Jane was still for a moment. "No; I don't suppose I can prove it by any experience I've had in the past," she said, slowly, "but I can prove it by an experience I'm going to have!"

"Now what do you mean by that?" Daragh wanted to know. "Are you telling your fortune?"

Jane sat up straight, warm-cheeked, excited. "No, but I'm going out, alone and unaided, under a neat new name, with some cheap, plain clothes in a cheap, plain trunk, to Chicago, with fifty dollars only between me and the cold world,--and see what I see!"

"Well, now, God save us, but that's the mad plan, surely!"

"It isn't mad at all! I want a little change,--I've been working like a dynamo--and it will be loads of fun and I'll get corking copy out of it."

"It won't be a fair test," the superintendent protested. "You'll be--you, all the time."

"That's very nice of you," Jane gave her her glad boy's grin, "but I won't be. Don't you suppose I have imagination enough to project myself into another type? For a month I'll support myself in any way I can, nursery governess, mother's helper, upstair-work, shop, anything I can get. I'll be that sort of girl, dress, diction, everything. I'll write a truthful bulletin of my luck to you two, but you won't have any address, and no one will know that--let's see ... Edna Miles--isn't that reasonable?--that Edna Miles is the lucky Jane Vail who wrote Cross Your Heart and has a wicked balance in the bank!" She pulled herself up out of the depths of the great chair and put on her furs. "I'm quite keen about it! It's going to be more fun than anything I've ever done. Tell Jane good-by, old dears! You'll hear from Edna Miles before long!"

"Wait a bit till we talk it over," said Daragh. "'Tis a wild plan, I'm telling you, will waste your time and----"

But Jane was out of the door, with only the echo of her laugh behind her.

"I don't think she'll really do it," said Miss Ellis. "When she comes to think it over, and realizes how uncomfortable she'll be----"

"She'll be doing it if she says she will," said the Irishman, gloomily, "and all the king's horses and all the king's men couldn't be stopping her, the way she----"

Jane thrust her bright head in at the door again. "I'll play fair, and I'll prove my point,--that you see pretty much what you look for, that you get pretty nearly what you give, that common or garden kindness is mirrored in kindness, that affection fairly boomerangs back! And after all, you know, the thing that made the lamb love Mary so is the axis on which the world turns! With which pearl of wisdom I give you good-morrow!"

This time she went in earnest, and the Settlement workers were left alone in their transformed parlor to consider the madness or merit of her little plan. Michael saw her at breakfast next morning but she was gayly uncommunicative as to her plans, and that night Mrs. Hills reported that her star boarder (who had the two best and biggest rooms, now, and a dressing-room and bath and her own telephone) had gone west for a month or so for a change.

The first letter came two days later and was addressed to Miss Emma Ellis at the Hope House Settlement, but the salutation was to them both----

DEAR EMMA ELLIS AND MICHAEL DARAGH,

I am writing this on the train as the intelligent readers will gather from the chirography. I have just had my breakfast, and it was funny to study the menu card for inexpensive nourishment with staying powers. I shared a tiny table with a large gentleman whose rubicund neck hung over his collar in back in what was distinctly not the line of beauty, a chatty soul, conversation not at all impeded by food ... needed a few table traffic regulations ... The noble head of the animal to whose tribe he belongs beamed from his lapel and his genial heart from his bright little eyes, and he worried heartily because I didn't "tuck away a regular breakfast."

I had loads of fun getting my adventure trousseau together yesterday! I flatter myself that I quite look the part,--my meek, brown serge and cotton gloves and my oldest shoes and a well-meaning little hat which took more courage than all the rest. I couldn't quite rise--or sink--to a straw suitcase. I have my shabbiest one--without labels! This is a slow, cheap train and my bye-bye box was in the upper flat, and I haven't spent a penny for chocolate or magazines, and I'm actually beginning to be Edna Miles!

Next Morning, Nearly in Chicago.

Last night the beamish Buffalo, who had chatted off and on all day and had worried over my modest luncheon from across the aisle, insisted that dinner was to be not only with but "on" him, but I only consented on the "with" plan, and paid my own little check and tip. He said I was a darned independent little piece but he liked my spunk! He asked me where I was bound and I said--sighing a little for good measure, Emma--that I was going to Chicago to earn my living. Now in I or The Narrow Path he would at once have given me his card and offered to "fix me up with something at the office," but the Buffalo merely said "That so!" mistily through his pie à la mode and that "Chi" was a great little old berg.

Isn't that one-in-the-eye for your theory, at the start?

Time to be brushed off. Edna Miles gives the Ethiopian only a quarter, but she hasn't demanded any service.

JANE, THE HONEST WORKING GIRL.

Same Night, 9.30.

Before I get into my doll's-size bed I'll pen these sleepy lines. My room is just about the dimensions of a bath mat. It contains the aforementioned bed (I shall have to put myself into it with a shoe horn!) an chair, on which I sit, and a bureau. The room must have been built around them ... clearly they didn't come in through the door. My little trunk has to wait outside in the hall like a faithful dog. When I look at my face in the mirror I'm sure that Heaven will protect this particular working girl; that my face will be not my fortune but my defender. It looks as if a nervous student had been practicing facial surgery on me. The carpet is just the color of deviled ham, and on the wall is a shiny, violent-colored picture in a tarnished gilt frame which shows a dangerously fat infant in a crib with a kitten standing on its stomach.

I left the train without incident. I didn't even see the Buffalo to say good-by. In the station I purposely wandered about a bit and asked questions and suddenly a brisk little woman with "Stranger's Friend" on her bonnet dashed up and asked me where I was going. I told her I was alone in her great city, looking for work, and she told me not to worry,--that she would look after me, and she has,--oh, but hasn't she! She thought a minute and then said, "I know of a good Christian room for you." I was so intrigued by the thought of a Christian room that I could hardly wait to see it. (I'm in it. This is it.)

She told me just where to sit and wait for her, and there I dutifully sat, clutching my luggage, and she ran off to telephone and said it was all fixed--the lady would have me, and it would be five dollars a week for room, breakfast and dinner. And she would put me on the right car and tell me just where to get off, and the landlady would direct me to the Employment Agency later. Just as she was seeing me to the street I spied the Buffalo in the offing, waving to me, and I waved back, and he started briskly toward me.

"Who is that man?" the Stranger's Friend wanted to know. I said he was a kind gentleman I had met on the train but I didn't know his name. Well, the next thing I knew she had whirled me cleverly into an eddy of crowd and thence into the Ladies' Waiting-Room and was regarding me sternly. "We will wait here until he goes away. That is the very first thing to remember, my dear. Never talk to strange men!" And I said, "Yes, ma'am, I will," and "No, ma'am, I won't," and presently she reconnoitered and said that the coast was clear, and put me on my car, with minute directions for finding my new home.... It is easy and comforting to believe that there is, literally, no place like home, no other place. I shall call my landlady Mrs. Mussel,--it suits her so perfectly, the way she clings to her drab background, and closes up with a snap at every approach. I daresay she means well. It is necessary to believe that she does. She states that she sets only a plain home table ... and there is a sort of atmospheric menu card--coming events casting their savors before, stale memories of the past....

She marched me straight off to the Intelligence Office. There was nothing for me, but I signed up and am to be there at eight in the morning. And now, unless I stop, I shall fall asleep and out of my chair and dash my brains out on the deviled-ham carpet. The Laboring Classes keep early hours.

G--N--

J.

Thereafter the bulletins came thick and fast to Hope House, always to the two of them together, now addressed to Miss Ellis and then to the Irishman. The second followed swiftly on the heels of the first.

The Next Night.

I went early to the Intelligence Office. (Intelligence!) The other Judy O'Gradys and I sat in waiting while our sisters under the skin, the Colonel's ladies, looked us over. I registered for nursery governess, Mother's Help, second maid, or companion, with Mrs. Mussel and the S.F. for reference, but to-day all the cry for help was for kitchen mechanics!

When I reported my empty net to Mrs. Mussel on returning, she emitted a little desolate cluck. She foresees her Christian room rent overdue, poor thing. The kind little S.F. dropped in and bade me be of good cheer. She's a brick, and I feel so guiltily aware of tricking her.

I tried to lure my landlady out to a movie, but she thriftily refused. She was watching at the window when I came home to-night and just at the steps I dropped my five cents' worth of literature and a man who was passing picked it up for me. He glanced at the page as he handed it back and grinned, "That's a great little old story!" And I agreed cordially, "It sure is!" and thanked him and ran up the steps. I wish you could have seen my landlady's face. I thought at first I would be sent to bed without my supper. When it comes to your sex, Michael Daragh, her slogan is--"Run, daughter, the Indians are upon us!"

G--N--

J.

It was several days, then, before they heard again from her, and Emma Ellis secretly considered that Miss Vail was without doubt giving up and coming home, but Michael Daragh found himself angrily anxious. But the letter was reassuring.

On the Job.

DEAR PEOPLE,

Edna Miles is nursery governess to the two small offspring of Mrs. Arnold Laney, an opulent, hard-finished lady who cleverly found the one pearl in the oyster bed, meaning me, this morning. I dashed thankfully home and almost jolted Mrs. Mussel out of her gloom, bought two gingham dresses for mornings and hied me to my new home. I have a cot in the nursery and one bureau drawer and two hooks in the closet and wrath in my heart, but the kiddies want a story now and I must stop. They are sallow, fretty, plain little things, but I'm conscientiously liking them as hard as ever I can. The work shouldn't be hard, and I have forty a month and three hours every Thursday afternoon and every other Sunday. I don't like my missus very much, but the master of the house is a typical T.B.M., only I should say, from my brief glimpse, that things at home make him tireder than his business does. I eat with the children in the breakfast room and the food is rather awful. However, the game is young. Wish me luck, old dears!

It was eight days before another letter came, and then it was headed----

Back in my Christian Room!

My dears, here I am! I lasted just exactly one week. But I don't care. I didn't wait to be fired--I went off--spontaneous combustion.

I did my honest best at first. It was a horrible house, spilling over with fretful people and fretful things. There wasn't a cool space to hang your eye on anywhere on the walls; you had to make your way through the furniture and bric-a-brac as through traffic. The food, save when there were guests, was wretched. The other servants--a cross cook and a sharp-tongued second-girl--were inefficient and lazy and quarrelsome.

The father was a dim, infrequent person who hardly registered on the family film at all. He looked overworked and underfed and the only time I ever heard him speak with any vigor was the night before I left, when he was vehemently insisting (their room was just across the hall from the nursery) that they simply had to cut down expenses, and she was just as vehemently maintaining that it couldn't be done.

And the children! If any one had told me, eight days ago, that there were two children loose in the land that I could not love, I should have done battle. The boy was the sort of little boy who makes you feel that Herod had the right idea, and the girl was the sort of little girl who makes you feel it was a pity to stop with the slaughter of the male infant.

It was the last day of my week. The youngsters and I had had a bad breakfast and a skimpy, cold luncheon, and I was bidden to dress them in their fussiest best and bring them in at the tag end of Mrs. Laney's bridge afternoon. They were just sitting down to tea as I came in. Tea! I was absolutely hungry after the long succession of miserable meals, ready to recite "Only Three Grains of Corn, Mother," with moving gestures, and the sallow little wretches beside me were clear cases of malnutrition. Well, there were three kinds of delectable sandwiches and consommé with whipped cream and chocolate with whipped cream and an opulent salad and wonderful little cakes--four kinds--and candy and salted nuts. My mouth watered and I know my nostrils quivered. First, I blush to say, I thought of hungry me, and then I thought of the undernourished children, and then I thought of the badly fed and badly cared for and badly treated husband, and I looked over the other eight or ten women and catalogued them at once as Mrs. Laney's type, and suddenly I decided to give myself a treat. I reached calmly over and selected a handful of sandwiches and cakes and gave them to the youngsters and sent them up to the nursery, and then, my dears, with what solid satisfaction you cannot possibly guess, I told my mistress exactly what I thought of her. She was aghast and scared; she thought I was a maniac, a desperate fanatic.

"Edna, Edna," she gasped, "be quiet! My guests--these ladies----"

"Ladies! Ladies!" I pounced on it. "Do you know what 'ladies' means? Of course you don't,--you're much too ignorant. It means--'loaf-givers', providers, dispensers of bounty, care-takers, home-makers. You--all of you--with your lazy, thick bodies trussed into your straight fronts and your fat feet crammed into bursting pumps and your idle hands blazing with jewels" (I know I was bromidic there, but my Phillipic was too swift to be polished) "and your empty heads dyed and marcelled, you're not loaf-givers,--you're not givers at all, you're takers! You're loafers--cumberers of the earth--fat slugs, that's what you are, each and every one of you! You"--I pointed to Mrs. Laney--"you don't even see that your children are properly fed! You don't make home livable, let alone lovable for your husband, and at this moment"--I swept the feast with a fierce and baleful eye--"you're a thief!"

She shrieked at that and all the women got to their feet. It was as if I'd thrown a bomb--and I daresay they thought I might at any instant.

"A thief," I said, "takes what doesn't belong to him, and this doesn't belong to you! You're deep in debts,--bills that your poor, harassed husband cannot pay!"--and before she could emit the furious words on her lips--"Oh, no, you're not going to discharge me! You can't, for I've left already! I wouldn't stay another night in your wretched house, I wouldn't eat another of your wretched meals. You may keep my week's wage. I wish you'd buy the children beefsteak with it but I've no doubt it will go for cocktails and henna!"

Then, while they gasped and jibbered with rage and got behind each other and shook in their bulging pumps, I turned on my heel and made a stunning exit, gathered up my belongings and came away.

There was no welcome on Mrs. Mussel's mat, but I'm still glowing. Aren't you both immensely pleased with me? I am with myself!

J.