Jane Journeys On | Page 9

just before I left home. He's like a person in a book,--very tall
and very thin and yet he seems like a perfect tower of strength, some
way. His hair is ash blond and his eyes are gray and look straight
through you and for miles beyond you, and he has splashes of good
color in his thin, clear cheeks. He has a quaint, long, Irish, upper lip. I'd
describe him as a large body of man entirely surrounded by conscience.
(I'm describing him so fully to you because it's such good practice for
me, and I know you don't mind.) His clothes are old, but not so much
shabby as mellow, like old, good leather. And such a brogue, Sally! It
could be eaten with a spoon! He asked me at once what I meant to do
(he can't conceive, of course, that one isn't a do-er!), and when I said
that I meant to write, at least, to try, he said:

"'Tis the great gift, surely. When our like"--he looked at Emma
Ellis--"are toiling with our two hands and wishing they were twenty,
yourself can reach the wide world over with your pen." Miss Ellis
didn't seem especially impressed with his figure, but he nodded gravely
and went on. "'Tis a true word. You can span the aching world with a
clean and healing pen." (Isn't that delicious, Sally?) I tried to explain
that I was just starting, that I was afraid I hadn't anything of especial
importance to say, and then he said, very sternly--and he has the eyes of
a zealot and a fighter's jaw--"Let you be stepping over to the tenements
with me and I'll show you tales you'll dip your pen in tears and blood to
tell!"
He's going to be enormously interesting to study.--There--I've just this
instant placed the resemblance that's been teasing me! He's like the St.
Michael in my favorite Botticelli, the one of Tobias led by the
archangels, carrying the fish to heal his father, Tobit, you
know,--there's a tiny copy of it in my room at home. Next time you stop
by to see Aunt Lyddy (you're a lamb to do it so often!) run up and look
at it. I loved it better than any other picture in Florence; you can't get
the lovely old tones from the little brown copy, but everything else is
there--Tobias, carrying his fish in the funny little strap and handle, utter
trust on his lifted face, the wonderful lines of drapery, the swaying lily,
the absurd little dog with his tasseled tail (I wonder if he was
Botticelli's dog?) and at the side, guarding and guiding, with sword and
symbol, stern St. Michael Captain-General of the Hosts of Heaven.
This Michael Daragh is really like him, name and all. Isn't it curious?
Write me soon and much, old dear. My best to every one, and I sent the
Teddy-bear a bib from the proudest baby-shop on the avenue.
Devotedly,
JANE.
P.S. You might ring up Aunt Lyddy and ask her to send me that little
Botticelli picture--my bare walls are rather bleak.
CHAPTER III

Jane settled jubilantly into the new life,--a brisk walk after breakfast, up
the gay Avenue or down the gray streets below the Square, then three
honest hours at the elderly typewriter, writing at top speed ... tearing up
all she had written ... writing slowly, polishing a paragraph with
passionate care, salvaging perhaps a page, perhaps a sentence out of the
morning's toil. 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. She was
going to work, she wrote Sarah.
I have been just marking time before, but now I'm marching, Sally. I
was up at six-thirty, had a cold dip and a laborer's breakfast,--I'm afraid
I haven't any temperament in my appetite, you know--and sped off for
atmosphere and ozone, far below the Square, on a two-mile tramp, and
now I'm about to write. Rodney Harrison, who knows everybody who
is anybody, has introduced me to some vaudeville-powers-that-be and I
am encouraged to try my hand at what they call a sketch--a one-act play.
It seems that they are in need of something a little less thin than the
usual article they've been serving up to their patrons,--more of