Jane Journeys On

by Ruth Comfort Mitchell

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!