20. Chapter XX
(TELEGRAM)
New York, N.Y.
4--10.
MISS SARAH FARRADAY,
VALLEY VIEW,
VERMONT.
Engaged.
JANE VAIL.
(TELEGRAM)
New York, N.Y.
4--11.
MISS SARAH FARRADAY,
VALLEY VIEW,
VERMONT.
Michael Daragh, of course, you goose.
JANE VAIL.
New York,
April Twelfth.
SALLY DARLING,
Thanks for your two wires, though the first one--"So happy, but who is it?" was a bit feeble-minded, you must admit. Could you imagine me marrying any one in the wide world
but Michael Daragh? Haven't I always intended to (no matter what I may have babbled of a man-I-met-on-the-boat, or of an extremely civil engineer!) from the first instant I set my wishful eye on his zealot's brow and his fighter's jaw and heard the burbling brogue that might be eaten with a spoon?
It's taken me four years and a subway accident, but I consider the time wholly well spent. I'm snugly and securely engaged to marry Michael Daragh and he's entirely resigned to it. In fact, one might even go so far as to say, without undue exaggeration, that he is pleased!
(I'll wager you dashed right down to the Woman's Exchange and got towels! Aren't you glad V. is such a nice, easy letter to embroider?)
That subway affair was ghastly, useful as it did prove to me. We thought surely our hour had struck, but we behaved with Early Christian Martyr fortitude and much more sprightly cheer, and when Michael Daragh thought the end had come he staged a love scene which made all the love scenes I ever wrote and all the love scenes I ever read sound like time-tables or statistics! Months of misunderstanding were explained away in minutes; he honestly believed me to be secretly engaged to Rodney Harrison (there I see the fine Italian hand of Emma Ellis, poor thing, oh,
poor thing--to want Michael Daragh and not to have him!) and he still more honestly believed that I lived and moved and had my brilliant being in a world too far removed from his shabby and cumbered one, and that he was only my more or less valued but humble friend--oh, miles of that sort of piffle! Well, when we were safe in the upper air again, he basely tried to repudiate me,--handsome speeches about not shadowing my bright life and all that--very fetching as literature but not at all satisfying to a young woman who had just achieved a betrothal after long and earnest endeavor! I foiled him! You can't think how brazen I was. I was still a bit hazy with smoke and exhaustion, and I honestly believe if he hadn't given in I'd have screamed for a policeman!
But once he gave up the fruitless struggle, he began to have a very good time indeed. I will even go so far as to state that he hugs his chains.
Yours in "a fine, dizzy, muddle-headed joy,"
JANE.
New York.
April Eighteenth.
SALLY MACHREE,
(See how Irish she is already!) The first towel has come and makes me feel such a housekeeper! You're a lamb, but you'll finish life with a tin cup and a "Pity the Blind" sign if you go on making "stitches as fine as a fairy's first tooth."
We are to be married (see how calmly and steadily she sets down that astounding word?) in June, and domesticity has descended upon me. I read only women's magazines, household departments only, I read recipes and memorize them, I haunt linen shops and furniture stores. But, oh, I need a mother and a sister or two, and you'll simply have to come down to me for a month. Can't you? Of course you can. Your mother will feed the piano. I must have you.
I've found a house in West Ninth Street, near the blessed old Square, close enough to the Brevoort when the kitchen is bolsheviking. It is deliciously old with high ceilings and haughty chandeliers and austere marble mantels, and all sorts of inconveniences which I picturesquely adore, but which will leave the noble army of labor quite cold. I shall make the drawing-room very English, part of my precious rosewood and mahogany sent down from Valley View (though I shall keep that house largely as it is) and cunning Kensington curtains and little pots of ivy, and "set-pieces" of bead work, and that dear, dim portrait of great-grandmother Vail in cap and ringlets. The dining room will be sober, too, but there's a nook just off it which I shall use for a breakfast room, looking out into the prim, Prunella scrap of garden, and that I will make giddy-gay with chintz and Minton. There'll be a remote workroom for me, far upstairs, and a friendly brown study where Michael Daragh's lame dogs may come to be helped over their stiles.
Sarah, I'm as domestic as a setting hen! I foresee I shall be a living version of Mr. Solomon's lady of the Proverb--
working willingly with my hands, rising while it is yet night. (M.D. keeps fearfully early hours)--
My candle going not out by night (candles will be perfect in that house!). My husband shall, indeed,
be known in the gates, but he won't
sitteth there, for home will be far too attractive. Nine to one, as always, I'll ply my trade, but before and after office hours I'll be
looketh-ing
well to the ways of my household and
eateth-ing not the bread of idleness (except at tea!).
Many daughters have done virtuously but I shall excel them all. I admit it.
JANE.
P.S. Michael Daragh is beamish with bliss. He's done himself out in purple and fine linen and yet manages, miraculously, not to look in the least like other men, and he doesn't even stoop any more. Sally, you know when he was in Ireland we all--especially Emma Ellis and the romantic music students--conjectured as to what he was when he was at home, and cast him for many fetching rôles, from a sacrificial younger son to a Sin-eater, and always a belted earl at the very least. He has told me all about himself now, naturally, and it would be a blow to Emma E. and the little music makers, so I mercifully mean never to let them know. He hasn't any immediate family, and was brought up by an uncle who had a large and prosperous wholesale grocery business in Cork! (Could anything be less lyrical, I ask you?) He wanted M.D. to go into the business after he had finished college, and M.D., quite naturally, being M.D., wouldn't and they quarreled, and M.D. came over here with just his small income from his father's small estate, and went into settlement work. He was called home to the uncle's death-bed, but the uncle, contrary to the best literary precedents, hadn't softened to any extent worth mentioning, and died as crabbed as he had lived, greatly annoyed, no doubt, to realize that his demise released certain decent little incomes from the main family estate to the stubborn nephew, but immensely pleased with himself for making his fortune over to outsiders. So, my other-worldly spouse will have a comfortable income after all, but he may divide it with dope-fiends and Fallen Sisters and their ilk to his heart's content since my royalties, like snowballs, gather as they roll!
Sally, you must come down and stay with me. "Please, pretty please!"
JANE.
New York City,
May Twentieth.
Dearest Sally,
I'm distressed beyond words that your mother is still so wretched, and I see, of course, that you cannot leave her yet. But she must hurry and be well enough to let you come for the wedding,--middle or end of June.
A rather startling thing has happened. I have
a letter from Profesor Morales in Guadalajara, saying that--after all the tangling up of the red tape in the various revolutionary merry-go-rounds--things are in order at last, and little Dolores Tristeza starts me-ward as soon as a suitable traveling companion can be found. I must admit I'm a little aghast. Six months ago, I yearned to have her as a prop for my spinsterhood, but that Dark Age is about to be folded by. Of course I must stand by what I've said, and I want to, but I've answered
Señor Morales, explaining my approaching marriage and that I would send for Dolores in the early fall (perhaps Michael Daragh and I can go and get her!) and inclosing a fat check for her maintenance in the meantime.
But isn't it rather a comedy situation? A big little daughter suddenly bestowed upon a busy bride-elect! But she is an angel, and I'll adore having her, just as soon as I get used to the idea again.
Love and warmest wishes to your mother, and I'm sending her some books.
Devotedly,
JANE.
New York City,
May Twenty-seventh.
OLD DEAR,
So glad your mother is even a wee bit better! House and clothes are coming on famously but I'm rather rebellious at not having more of M. D.'s time. My life work will be to drag him down from his pinnacle of selflessness! His chief concern just now is for his brilliant young dope fiend, and I really shouldn't begrudge M.D. to him, for if we hadn't had supper with him that night, and gone uptown in the subway, who knows if I'd ever have won my elusive swain? Randal is doing fairly well, as regards the drug, and making some corking sketches for our joint calendar, but he needs a world of cheering and chumminess and countenance.
But one would like a little less of him, a little more of one's lover.
Rather crossly,
J.
Friday Morning.
Sally, dear, another letter has come from Mexico, and Dolores Tristeza is on her way! A highly proper geologist was returning to New York, and they dared not miss so excellent an opportunity of sending her.
And she'll be here day after to-morrow! I find myself rather gasping! I must telephone the steamship office, and I'll close this later.
Next Evening.
She will arrive on the
Pearl of Peru at about three P.M. to-morrow, and M.D. is going with me to meet her. He is dear about it all, and so am I, now that I've got my breath! I'm remembering what a dewy-eyed little dove of a thing she is. A few days of happy holiday for her, and then the mildest and gayest school I can find, one where they have no stuffy rules about not letting the pupils come home for week-ends.
The
Profesor explained that the
Hospicio had fallen on evil days during the revolution and the children are now cared for in private families. The three different households which had been sheltering Dolores had been obliged from various circumstances to give her up, and Señor Morales regretted the limitations of his own establishment.
Poor, pitiful little creature ... little "Sorrows and Sadness!" I must pledge myself to make her over into Joys and Gladness--
Alegrías y Felicidad, if I remember my Spanish at all.
I'm ashamed of those mean moments at first when I didn't want her!
Penitently,
JANE.
P.S. I mean to have her call me Aunt Jane, which will be "
Tia Juana." Isn't that charming? I really don't care to be called "Mother" just now by a twelve-year-old daughter. It's--a bit un-bridal.
Sunday Night.
MY DEAR SARAH,
I wasn't up to writing you yesterday--I'm not really able to, now, but I'll try to tap you out a few feeble lines....
Oh, yes, she came. She's here! As some of my vaude-villains would say--I'll say she is!
M.D. and I met the steamer, the
Pearl of Peru. Gentle, innocent-sounding name, isn't it? Sounds as if it might fitly convoy the dewy-eyed dove of my dreams.... It took a long time to dock and all the passengers were at the rail. I looked in vain for my daughter-to-be, but I was particularly struck by a sad, broken-looking, elderly man whose eager eyes raked the wharf. He turned to ask a question of a large girl beside him, a creature clad in strident hues, furrily powdered, bearing a caged parrot in one hand, a shivering, hairless, Mexican dog under her arm, a cigarette in her mouth. Her gaze became riveted upon me. She emitted a piercing shriek of joy.
"
Madre virgen de mi alma!"
Then, in order that all persons present on shipboard and on the wharf might have the benefit of her remark, she translated it--"Virgin Mother of my soul!"--and every one at once laid by all other preoccupations and gave himself whole-heartedly to looking and listening.
I have never seen a more radiant expression of joy and release than that which overspread the countenance of the geologist at sight of me, and even at that instant I began to understand his emotion. It seemed an hour before the gangplank was put down. Dolores Tristeza held the parrot up so that she might see me. "Behold the virgin mother of my soul!"
"Shut your ugly mouth!" shrieked the sweet bird, happily in Spanish.
"See, little mother mine," called Dolores, shaking the cage, "Santa Catalina, the parrot of a thousand pretty talents! And here"--she held up the hairless, squirming canine--"behold little José-María, joy of my orphan heart!" I got as close to her as possible and besought her to moderate her transports until she had landed, and I was amazed and aghast and horrified at the size of her. "But, how you've grown, Dolores!" I stammered.
She chuckled gleefully. "They lied to thee at the
Hospicio, Madrecita. I was not twelve years but past fourteen! They desired, naturally, to keep me with them in the juvenile department. Thus am I loved wherever I go! Dost thou not burn to fold me to thy breast?"
What I burned to do at that instant was to turn the
Pearl of Peru about and send her speeding swiftly back across the foam.
"So, now I am more than fourteen years and a half, large of my age, beautiful as all may see, of a wisdom to astonish you. In one year more, thou shalt find me a husband. Many
novios have I had already! Four serenades were made to me the night before I left Guadalajara, and on the boat--" She turned to the elderly gentleman with a complacent and pitying smile. "But"--she took account for the first time of Michael Daragh--"
quién es el hombrón?" (Who is the big man?) "
Tu novio?"
I admitted that he was my betrothed.
"
No es tu esposo?" she quivered with tentative rage.
I assured her that he was not yet my husband.
"Very well, then," she said in English, "we shall see. Only, I warn thee, if when thy children come, thou lovest them more than me, I will burn out their eyes with red-hot curling irons!" (Her English is heavily accented but perfectly--horribly--understandable.)
A merciful Providence let down the gangplank and she flung herself, her shrieking, cursing parrot, her shivering dog, into my arms. Santa Catalina's seed and water cups were emptied on my frock; José-María set his little dagger teeth in my sleeve; a fierce scent assailed my nostrils; a shower of powder frosted my shoulder.
I freed myself to speak to the geologist who seemed eager to be on his way. "I am very grateful to you," I said, mendaciously. "I hope it has not been too much trouble."
"I got her here, didn't I?" he said with an air of weary pride. He looked so haggard that my heart smote me. "
Señor Morales should not have burdened you. You look ill and----"
"I was a well, strong man when I left Vera Cruz," he said darkly. "I wish you luck, Miss Vail." He took one step and halted. "Do you believe in corporal punishment?"
"Mercy, no! It's a relic of barbarism. No one does, now!"
"You will," he said, earnestly, "you will! Corporal punishment?--My God,--
capital;"
"Farewell, old camel," Dolores called, kindly, after his retreating figure. "Go with God!"
"Michael Daragh," I whispered, when we at last were packed into the taxi, "couldn't we stop at some school on the way home and leave her?"
"Not in those clothes, woman dear,--not with those animals."
"
Cuidado, Hombrón!" said my dewy-eyed dove. "If you seek to turn from me the heart of my virgin mother (she pronounces it veergeen mawther), I will not let her marry with you, and you will be old sour face
soltero, and she will dress the saints! But," she went on indulgently, "if you are good to me, I am good to you! See,--I kiss up to God!"--and she wafted a heavily scented kiss toward the ceiling of the taxicab.
Desperately,
JANE.