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.