Jane Journeys On. Ruth Comfort Mitchell
said Jane, brightly, "we mustn't be late, your mother likes people to be prompt, you know!" She managed to tug her arm away the fraction of an inch.
"She likes you, any old time," he said, blissfully. He always got husky and thick sounding in emotion, Jane reflected, and breathed heavily.
"Aren't we going to stop by for Sally?"
"No; I asked Edward R. and Nannie to pick her up in their little old boat. No, we aren't going to have anybody—but just—us!" He squeezed her arm against him again. "Janey, I guess you know all right how I——"
"Oh!" cried Jane—"here they are, now! Hello, people!"
"Hello yourselves!" said Edward R. Hunter, bringing his machine to a stop beside them. "Want to hop in? Plenty room."
"No, of course they don't want to hop in, goose!" said his wife, reprovingly. "Edward R. Hunter, I wonder at you! Were you never young yourself?"
"Oh, but we do!" Jane was capably opening the front door of the little car. "We're late! I kept Marty waiting! I'm going to ride with the chauffeur, and Marty can sit with the girls. When Mrs. Wetherby says 'eight o'clock' she means it, not quarter past." She was chatty and intensely friendly with them all during the brief drive. She even produced the proper degree of articulate mirth for the young father's painstaking jest about his son's nickname being Teddy b-a-r-e, bear, most of the time.
When they stopped before the Wetherby house Martin was out of the automobile with heavy swiftness and lifted Jane bodily to the sidewalk and hurried her up the walk. "All right for you, girlie," he chuckled, "all right for you! But you just wait! Wait till going home to-night!"
Jane drew Sarah Farraday aside when they were in Mrs. Wetherby's phrase, "taking off their things in the north chamber,"—a solid and dependable-looking room. "Sally, I want you to come home with me and stay over night."
"Oh, Jane, I don't believe I could—not to-night! If I'd known sooner—I haven't anything with me."
"I'll loan you everything you need. Please, Sally! You can telephone your mother now."
"But Edward and Nannie brought me, and it seems sort of——"
"Sally, don't be a nuisance! I want you. I—need you!"
Sarah Farraday peered closely at her through her nearsighted eyes. "Jane! You haven't quarreled with Marty, have you? Oh, Jane!"
"No, but I shall if you don't come home with me!"
Her best friend looked long and anxiously at her and then went with a sigh to telephone her mother, and the evening, which Mrs. Wetherby described as "a little gathering of the young folks," got under way. Jane played cards sedately for the earlier part of it and joined with conscientious liveliness in the games which came later, just before Mrs. Wetherby's conception of "light refreshments" was served—pineapple and banana salad with whipped cream and maraschino cherries on it, three kinds of exceptionally sweet and sticky cake, thick chocolate with melted marshmallows floating on its surface, and large quantities of home-made fudge in crystal bonbon dishes.
To Martin Wetherby, watching her contentedly out of his small, bright eyes, Jane Vail was what he and his mother termed the life of the party, but although she played an unfaltering part in the comedy of, "Well, partner! Didn't you get my signal? Now who's asleep?" and the sprightly games which followed, and exclaimed prettily over the decked supper table, deep under the high-piled masses of her dark hair, dark thoughts were stirring. She seemed to herself to be marching inexorably to the crossroads, which was silly, because she had spent exactly that sort of day and evening hundreds of times before and would again, she told herself impatiently, but the feeling was not to be eluded. She held herself up to her own high scorn. Why this dramatizing of the pleasant and placid course of Wetherby Ridge events? Why shouldn't she do as the other girls of the set had done? Was she, then, so much finer clay? 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. She could be, it appeared, a Nannie or a Sarah, as she chose, and the time for choosing had arrived. And presently the girls were exclaiming that it was twenty minutes past eleven and they really must go, but it was Mrs. Wetherby's fault for always giving them such a perfectly wonderful time that they forgot to watch the clock, and Mrs. Wetherby was beaming back at them and insisting that she had enjoyed it all just as much as they had, and that she hoped she could always keep young at heart.
Sally lagged behind as they went down the steps. "Come along!" Jane called back to her. "I know you'll talk half of what's left of the night, and I want to get you started as soon as possible."
"She going to stay all night with you?" There was sulky surprise in Martin's voice.
"Yes," said Jane. "But isn't 'stay all night' a silly expression? As if she might rise and stalk home in the middle of it! I wonder why we don't say, 'stay over night'?" She ran on, ripplingly, but her escort at one side and Sarah Farraday at the other were maintaining, respectively, a sullen and an uncomfortable silence. When they were passing her own house Sarah broke away from them with a little gasp.
"Oh—do you mind waiting just a minute? I believe I'll just run up and get my things, Jane. You know what a fussbudget I am about my own things. And I'll just slip into another dress so I won't have to put this on for breakfast. It won't take me two minutes—" She flew up the front steps and let herself softly in with her latch key, and instantly ill humor fell from Martin Wetherby.
"Sally's all right," he chuckled. "I'm for Sally!" He swept Jane out of the circle of light from the street lamp, into the black shadow of the Farraday shrubbery, and into a breathless embrace. "You—little—rascal—" he said, huskily, gasping a trifle as he always did in moments of high emotion. "You—little—witch! Now I've got you—and I'm going to keep you! Now I guess you'll listen to what I've got to say and—and answer me!" His broad, warm face was coming inexorably nearer; life—the pleasant and placid pattern of Wetherby Ridge—was coming inexorably nearer; life with melted marshmallows floating on its surface!
"Oh, Marty, please!" She was fatally calm and earnest about it. "I'm so sorry—sorrier than I can tell you—but you mustn't say it! You mustn't make me answer you."
He was busily getting both her cool hands into the hot grasp of one of his own, and the fingers of his other hand, a little moist, were forcing themselves beneath her chin, but there was something in the honest sorriness of her tone which made him pause even in that triumphant and satisfying moment. "Why? You little——"
"Because," said Jane, steadily, "I do like you such a lot, Marty dear, and I wish you wouldn't ask me, and make me tell you that I don't—I can't——"
Then with a swift and amazing sense of rescue, of sanctuary, she heard herself saying, "Besides, you see, I'm going away!"
CHAPTER II
While Jane's astounding utterance seemed to float and echo on the November night air, Sarah Farraday let herself as stealthily out of her front door as she had let herself in, and came softly down the steps. "I didn't wake mother," she said in a whisper. She was in sober, every-day serge now, and pulling on her second-best cloak. She carried a small bag and was faintly pink with her haste. There was apprehension in the look she gave her friend. "Wasn't I quick, Jane?" She had left them alone to give Martin Wetherby his chance, but ancient girl loyalty had winged her heels.
"Yes," said Jane, slipping her hand through Sarah's arm. "Sally, I've just been telling Marty that