Jane Journeys On Part 7

"Going for eighteen," he had said, but even that had not prepared Jane for the poignant youth of the girl. She looked a child, in her shrunken middy blouse, her fair hair hanging about her eyes. She was sitting on the floor, urging bread and milk on a fat and gurgling baby in a little red chair. She did not look up at first, but went on speaking to the child.

"Please, Billiken, eat for Muddie! Billiken--when it's the last time Muddie'll ever have to feed you? Take it quick or Muddie'll give it to the kitty-cat!"

"Ethel?" Jane closed the door softly and came toward her.

The other eyed her defensively and she tried to tidy her hair with hands that shook. On the left was a tiny, pinhead solitaire.

"I am Michael Daragh's friend, Ethel. He asked me to talk with you."

"Oh, my G.o.d!" Little red spots of rage flamed in her thin cheeks and she struck her hands together. "Can't they leave me alone? I've told 'em I won't talk any more. I've told 'em my mind's made up for keeps. But they keep at me and _keep_ at me!"

Jane stood still. "I know I haven't any right here," she said, distressedly, "and I know you don't want me."

The girl scrambled to her feet and went to the bureau where she stood pulling and patting at her hair. "What'd you come for, then?" She muttered it under her breath, but Jane caught the words.

"Well, if you know Michael Daragh, you must know that when he asks you to do a thing, even a hard one, you--just do it!" Ethel did not comment or turn her head and Jane found the sense of drama which had borne her so buoyantly up the stairs deserting her. She wanted to go out of that drab room and down those drab stairs and out of that drab house forever, but she resolutely forced herself to cross the room and bent down beside the giddy little red chair.

"Why do you call her Billiken?"

"Can't you see?" It was curt and sullen, not at all the tone for an Unfortunate Girl to employ toward a young lady anointed with the oil of joy. "She grins just like the Billikens do. Ever since she was a teenty thing." She gave her caller a long, rebellious stare. "You don't look like a nurse or a Do-gooder."

"I'm not," said Jane promptly. "I'm merely Michael Daragh's fr----" She broke off, catching herself up. Well, now, was she? His friend, after a few weeks of slenderest acquaintance? She had a feeling that the grave Irishman had obeyed the command to come apart and be separate. Rodney Harrison was a warm and tangible friend, but this stern and single-purposed person--"Michael Daragh asked me to talk with you," she said, sitting down beside the baby. "I'd love to feed her. May I?"

"No!" Ethel swooped down on her child, jealously s.n.a.t.c.hing up the bowl.

"Not when it's my last chance!" She leveled a spoonful and held it to the widely grinning Billiken. "Come! Gobble--gobble! Eat for poor Muddie!" A wave of self-pity went visibly over her and she held her head down to keep Jane from seeing her tears.

"I don't see how you can bear to give her up."

"D'you s'pose I want to?" she snarled it, savagely. 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.

"It must be very wonderful to care for any one like that," said Jane, respectfully. The girl looked at her with quick suspicion, but her eyes were entirely honest. "What is he like, this Jerry person?"

Ethel relaxed a little and the tensest lines smoothed out of her face.

"Well ..." she took her time to it, sorting and choosing her words, "he's not good-looking, but he looks--_good_."

Jane nodded understandingly. "I know. I know people like that."

"Handsome men ... you can't trust 'em...." A look of wintry reminiscence came into her eyes for an instant. "I think more of Jerry than--than anybody, ever. I can't remember my folks. They died when I was just a little thing. My sister Irene, well, I guess she meant all right, only, she was so awful proper, always. She was always scared to talk about--things. I never knew _any_thing till I knew--_every_thing!" A small s.h.i.+ver went over her at that and she was still for a moment. "But Jerry!" Her mouth was young and soft again on that word. "He's different from anything I ever thought a man could be. He's almost like a girl, some ways. You know, I mean just as nice and comfortable to talk to and be with." She kept her gaze on Jane's warmly comprehending face, now.

"And he's awful smart, too. The firm wants to send him to the branch store in Rochester and put him in charge of Gent's Furnis.h.i.+ngs. I guess I'd like to live there ... where everybody'd be strange. Jerry, he don't know where I live. I never let him bring me clear home. Mrs.

Richards--she's the matron--she says he'll find out about me some day and hate me, but he won't find out. n.o.body knows except Irene and the people here,--and n.o.body'd be mean enough to just go and tattle to him,--would they?"

"Oh, I don't believe any one would, intentionally. But" (how appeal to a sense of fair play where no fair play had been?) "that isn't what frightens me, Ethel."

"What? You needn't be scared about Billiken. She'll be all right. They're awful nice people, rich and everything, and they're crazy to have her. 'A blue-eyed girl with curly hair and a cheerful disposition,' they says to Irene. And they think her mother's dead."

"I wasn't thinking of Billiken."

"Oh," said Ethel, warily.

"I was thinking of Jerry. If he's as fine as you say he is----"

"He is!"

"Then I think it's pretty mean not to play fair with him, don't you?

Come," said Jane with a brisk heartiness she was far from feeling, "tell him to-day, right now, when you go back."

She shook a stubborn head. "Now you're being just like all the rest of 'em. I thought you sort of--understood."

"I think I do. But I believe you must tell him."

"Well, it's too late now. Irene's coming today to take Billiken. It's all settled and everything. It's too late now, even if I wanted to.

Besides"--she flamed with hot color again--"I couldn't tell him in the daytime ... right there in the store!"

"Oh, Ethel--in anything so big,--something that means your whole life,--time and place can't matter."

The girl began to dab at her eyes with a damp, small wad of blue-bordered handkerchief. "I just couldn't tell him in the daytime. I nearly did, last night. I meant to, 'cross-my-heart,' I did! We went for a walk, and I was just--just sort of beginning when a woman came sneaking by and--said something to him. _You_ know. And he said--'Poor devil!'

That's what he called her. '_Poor devil!_' That's just how he said it."

Now she dropped her inadequate handkerchief and wept convulsively into her hands and a thin shaft of suns.h.i.+ne lighted up the meager solitaire.

Billiken leaned forward, her fat, small face filled with contrition and patted her mother on her bowed head. "Billiken gob--gobble din--din!

Muddie not cly!"

It seemed to Jane that she was marching endlessly round a Jericho with walls that reached to the sky with a flimsy tin toy trumpet in her hands.

How blow a blast to shatter them? "Ethel, the only thing you can bring him is the truth. Are you going to give him a lie for his wedding gift?"

She winced but her mouth was sullen. "You can make me feel terrible, but you can't make me tell."

"No," said Jane, "I can't make you tell. And Mrs. Richards can't make you tell, nor even Michael Daragh. But--your own heart can." She leaned swiftly nearer and put an arm about the flat, little figure. "Ethel, how much do you love him?"

"More'n--_anything_ in the world."

"More than Irene?" The affirming nod was quick and positive. "More than the baby?" Again the nod, slower, but still sure. "But that's not enough, Ethel. You don't know anything about loving unless you love him more than you love yourself."

The girl wriggled out of her clasp and stared at her.

"Do you know what I'm trying to say to you? 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 "Ma.r.s.eillaise." "_La jour de gloire est arrive!_" Was it?