Jane Journeys On | Page 9

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 a playlet; something, I suppose, to edify the wife of the Tired Business Man after he has enjoyed the Tramp Juggler and the Trained Seals. 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?
But I fly to my toil!
Busily,
JANE.
January Ninth, 8.30 A.M.
It is just one week since I wrote you. I rend my garments, Sarah Farraday, and sit in the dust. That