Ruth Comfort Mitchell

“ But one humid evening, when all the vigor and backbone seemed to have melted out of the world, Michael Daragh asked her to ride with him on the top of the bus to Grant's Tomb and walk back along the river, and presently they sat down on the damp grass like a shop girl and her gentleman friend and looked off across the river, shining in the moonlight, and after a silence Jane said pleasantly, with her new admixture of aloofness and indulgence, "Well, Michael Daragh, I know you haven't marched me here merely to revel in the beauty of the evening. ”

“ Here was maternity, parenthood, another breed than that of the Teddy-bear's hot, pink nursery.
Jane picked up the baby's stubby little hand and patted it. "Then, why do you?"
Ethel's face flamed, but she looked her inquisitor more fully in the eye than she had done at any time before. "Because—Jerry! Jerry! That's why."
"Oh ... I see. You care more for him than for your baby?"
Now there came into the childish face a look of shrewd and calculating wisdom. "I can—I could—have other babies, but I couldn't ever have another—him!" Strength here, of a sort, it appeared, in this Weak Sister. ”

“ The figure on the couch was relaxing more and more now, and the Irishman sank his voice to a purling murmur of brogue.
Jane found a low chair and propped her elbow on the arm of it and leaned her cheek on her hand and closed her eyes. She did not want to look at young Randal and she found that she could not look at Michael Daragh. She was glad to be in a corner of the little room where the faint light of the lamp did not penetrate; she wished it might have been complete darkness to cover her. She was so unutterably tired ... never in her life had she been so tired. ”

“ The first evening was all Miss Lydia's, save that Sarah was coming over later to stay the night, and again Jane sat in the rosewood and mahogany dining room, served by the middle-aged maid who did not know that there was a servant problem, and ate the reliable stock supper—the three slices of pink boiled ham on the ancient and honorable platter of blue willow pattern ware, the small pot of honey, the two kinds of preserves, the hot biscuit, the delicate cups of not-too-strong, uncolored Japan tea, the sugar cookies, the pale custard. ”

“ Jane swung happily into her fourth year in New York, flying home to Sarah Farraday for Christmas, meeting the young year with high hopes and canny plans, a definite part, now, of the confraternity of ink. Her circle widened and widened; important persons came down from their heights of achievement to make much of her, and the late spring saw the successful launching of another gay little play, and early fall found her deep—head, hands, and heart—in her first serious novel, but she found amazing margins of time for Rodney Harrison, for Hope House, for Michael Daragh. ”

“ 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!" ”

“ The Budders (doesn't Budder sowd as if I ad a code id by ed?) are nice, comfortable creatures,—the sort who are called the salt of the earth but in reality aren't anything so piquant. They're the boiled potatoes and graham bread and rice pudding. You, now, Sally darling, are the angel cake, and there's not half enough of you; I'm the olives and anchovies and caviar ... a little goes a long way ... and Michael Daragh is the rich and creamy milk of human kindness, always being skimmed by a needy, greedy world. ”

“ Jane.
The Silver Gray House,
On the Lifting Hill,
Three Meadows.
I have ceased to reckon time by calendars, Sally dearest, but I think we have been here, Michael Daragh and I, seven or ten days.
Oh, yes, the others are still here,—at least, they are on the island, but we never see them. They come and go like Brownies, like elves, like the "Little People" of Michael's land, bringing our meals and our mail, vanishing silently.... They stand between us and the village and the Deacon and the world. They are our shields and barriers; our sure defense; our shock absorbers. ”

“ Then she hooded her machine, lunched, and gave herself up to an afternoon of vivid living,—a Russian pianist, or an exhibition of vehemently modern pictures screaming their message from quiet walls in a Fifth Avenue Gallery, an hour at Hope House Settlement with Emma Ellis or Michael Daragh, tea and dancing with Rodney Harrison, or dinner and a play with him, or a little session of snug coziness with Mrs. Hetty Hills, giving the exile news of the Vermont village,—nothing was dull or dutiful; the prosiest matters of every day were lined with rose. She dramatized every waking moment. ”

“ Hills! Hello, 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ What's the matter?"
"I don't know, Sally—Yes, I do know! It's—it's Mrs. Wetherby, and every one else! She acts as if—every one acts—" it made her angrier still to feel the color mounting hotly in her cheeks.
"Well, Jane, dear," a faint, sympathetic flush warmed her small, pale face, "isn't that perfectly natural? Of course, I suppose it teases you, but you know how happy every one is about it."
"But there isn't anything to be happy about—yet!"
"Then it's just because you have—have held things off, dear, that's all. And I think Marty has been awfully faithful and patient—for years! ”

“ My trunk is packed with jolly Island clothes; my bag stands ready to close; my sitting room is running over with gifts, little and large, proud and pitiful,—from Marty Wetherby's opulent clock and Rodney Harrison's gorgeous silver service to "Angerleek's" preserves and the hand-painted mustard pot from Ethel and Jerry and Billiken, and a virtuously ugly dusting cap from Mrs. Mussel. If only you were here, Sally dearest! But I know your mother needs you, and it must be a blessed thing to have a mother to need you! ”

“ Rodney Harrison has helped me no end,—trotted me about to all the best places and helped me to study and learn from them, and now I'm ready to begin.
And—heavens—how I adore it, Sally!
It's breaking my iron schedule to write a letter in business hours but I knew you'd love to picture me here, gleefully clicking off dollars and fame. Poor lamb! I wish you were on a job like this, instead of pegging away at your piano. I wish there could be as much fun in your work as mine. Of course, music is the most marvelous thing in the world, but isn't there something of deadly monotony in it? ”

“ If she didn't want to be another Nannie—hot pink nursery in a shining little new house—expensive olive oil—home-coming husband in punning mood—pink celluloid Kewpie—half a dozen of everything in flat silver and two really good rugs to start with—then why couldn't she cast herself serenely for the Sarah Farraday sort of thing, substituting a typewriter for a piano? There was nothing so bleak and dreadful about that; old Sally was busily happy, toiling hopefully for her baby-grand. She was enormously lucky, as a matter of fact, lucky beyond her deserts. ”

“ I don't know as much about loving as you do, Ethel. I've never loved any one—yet. But I know this! Your Jerry may never find out about your trouble, but whether he does or not, you couldn't be happy while you knew you were cheating him,—while you knew you had married him without telling him the thing it's his right to know. Ethel, you've got to love him more than yourself. You've got to love him more than you want him!"
The color ebbed slowly out of Ethel's small face and Billiken began to whimper. Far down the street the inevitable hurdy-gurdy ground out the inevitable "Marseillaise." ”

“ Jane moved ahead of her, her eyes averted, her voice cheerfully commonplace. "Simply torrid up here, isn't it? I'll come some cool morning, and we'll make lists and plans—if my play goes over——"
But before her gay little play had been running three months, picking up speed like a motor as it ran—she had kept her word to Hope House. She became the Lady Bountiful of the bathtubs and linoleums, of the frivolous lay pictures and the autumn shaded lamps, and she wrote impudently to Sarah Farraday that when she looked upon all that she had created she saw that it was very good. ”

“ They set off at once, Jane agreeing pleasantly that it would be better to walk. Michael Daragh had never seen her more alert and alive to the things about her. Nothing escaped her darting glance,—the lyrical, first grass in the Square, the stolid and patient tiredness of an Italian crone on a bench, the pictorial quality of a hurdy-gurdy man, and yet, for all her chattiness, the smart young person beside him seemed leagues upon leagues away from him. ”

“ But Sarah, in the burlapped studio, between piano pupils, was aghast and bitter. "'Going to seek your fortune!' I never heard anything so absurd, Jane! You've got more than most girls right now,—a hundred dollars a month of your very own to do just what you like with, and when your Aunt Lydia—is taken from you, you'll have that adorable old house, jammed full of rosewood and mahogany and willow pattern ware!" ”

“ Even Emma Ellis has undergone a sea change; she's learned to do her hair decently, and I've actually persuaded her that while it's quite right to let her light so shine before men, it's different with her nose, and you can't think what a dusting of flesh-colored powder does for her! And I've got her out of blue serge and white blouses, and into cream and buff and orange and brown, and I daresay Michael Daragh will now fall in love with her excellent qualities and her enhanced appearance, and I shall lose my best friend. ”

“ They went away, the other three, and left them there together, and there were two little dabs of color on the matron's high cheekbones and her sharp eyes looked oddly dim. "Well," she said, "well—I guess that's settled right enough. And I guess we've got you to thank for it, Miss Vail."
"We have, surely, God save you kindly," said Michael Daragh, and his face had what Jane called its stained-glass-window look.
She felt very flushed and humbled under their beaming approbation. "There's only her own courage to thank!" But she snatched up a bit of the despised decoration, her cheeks scarlet. ”

“ The grave Irishman, Michael Daragh, was a constant delight. He was no more aware, she saw clearly, of her as a person, as a woman, than he was of Emma Ellis of the lidlike hats and shabby hair. Nothing that was human was alien to him, certainly, and nothing that was feminine was anything more than merely human to him. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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? ”

“ Fair perished with the lonesomeness, he is. 'I used to know women,' he was telling me, 'pretty women, clever ones; I miss them—the sound of their voices and the look of their white hands and their making tea, and the light, gay talk we'd be having!' Then he sat, limp, with the grit gone out of him. 'Not one of them would come near me, now,' he said. 'Holding their skirts away from me, passing by on the other side.' And then—may the devil fly away with my tongue, Jane Vail—I heard myself saying, 'There's one won't be doing that, lad! ”

“ Coming to-day, Irene is, to carry it off to the place she's found for it—some distant kin down Boston way, long wanting to adopt and never dreaming this child is their own blood."
"Doesn't Ethel care for the baby?"
"There's the heart scald. 'Tis the light of her eyes. But Irene, d'you see, has scared her into feeling sure she'll lose him if she tells. Wait till you see the look she has on her. 'Supping the broth of sorrow with the spoon of grief,' they would be calling it, home in Wicklow." ”

“ People began to sway and mutter, to push and surge. Jane felt herself lifted and swung to her feet on the seat where she had been sitting, and the Irishman's big body was spread like a shield before her. His hands were clamped upon the thin shoulders of the girl in the middy blouse, but he twisted his head to speak to Jane. ”

“ But, seriously, I've been so constantly with Michael Daragh and Rodney in these four years that I know every dip and spur, every line and leaf of their mental scenery; fresh fields and pastures new are what I need. And "one meets so many delightful people in traveling—" as witness the good Budders and their niece, Miss Vail ('sh ... they say she's a writer!)
Something, which is to say, somebody, may turn up at any moment. ”