If only you can come, best of friends!
Happily,
JANE.
_The Day!_
MY DEAREST SALLY,
"I must be making haste, I have no time to waste-- This is--this is my wedding morning!"
But my haste is done. I am radiantly ready now, and there are seven still and shining hours ahead.
My trunk is packed with jolly Island clothes; my bag stands ready to close; my sitting room is running over with gifts, little and large, proud and pitiful,--from Marty Wetherby"s opulent clock and Rodney Harrison"s gorgeous silver service to "Angerleek"s" preserves and the hand-painted mustard pot from Ethel and Jerry and Billiken, and a virtuously ugly dusting cap from Mrs. Mussel. If only you were here, Sally dearest! But I know your mother needs you, and it must be a blessed thing to have a mother to need you!
Sally, I"m feeling very proud and very humble, very----
_Later._
Just as I wrote that, Michael Daragh came, white, tight-lipped, more than ever like the Botticelli St. Michael; he was the "Captain-General of the Hosts of Heaven." All he needed was a sword.
"Woman, dear," he said, "I"ve the sad, terrible news will be breaking your heart."
"Have you decided not to marry me?" I asked, facetiously, but I didn"t feel in the least humorous.
""Tis my lad," he said, "Randal. She"s thrown him over, that girl.
Destroyed he is with grief and shame, bound again for the black pit."
I tried to comfort him. I said I was sure the boy was too firmly on his feet to slip now, but he knew better, or worse, and he said he dared not leave him for an hour, and then, Sarah, I began to see what it meant, and it turned me to iron and ice.
"You mean," I said, "you want to postpone our marriage?"
"Never that, Acushla, but--couldn"t we be taking him with us? "Tis the wild thing to be asking you, but after all, woman dear, we"ve the whole of our lives ahead, and for him it means all the world! Say we"ll be taking him!"
Now, Sarah Farraday, I ask you, as a reasonable human being, what you think of that? _To take a dope fiend with us on our honeymoon!_
I seemed to see the future in one blinding flash--always our own rights, our own happiness, relentlessly pushed aside. I"m glad I can"t remember all I said, but I shall remember the look on his face as long as I live. But I was right--I was right. He belongs in a painted picture, St. Michael, not in a warm, vital, human world.
So, it isn"t my wedding morning after all.
J.
_Three P.M._
I"m putting a special delivery stamp on this, Sally dear, so you"ll get it before the other one.
I relented in sackcloth and ashes and shame, of course, and telephoned to tell him so, but I couldn"t get him because he was on his way here to tell me _he_ would yield, that he wouldn"t ask me to take Randal with us. Then we had another moving scene, reversed this time, I pleading penitently to take him. M.D. said he had had a good talk with the poor lad, and he had sworn to brace up alone.
I shall always be glad I yielded, but I know now _just_ how Abraham felt when he found the ram caught in the bushes! And I"ll always be glad that for once M.D. chose happiness for himself.
Very shakily, but gratefully,
JANE.
_Midnight, On the Boston Boat._
My dear, do you remember a silly song of our childhood with a refrain like this--
"I"m not blessed with surplus wealth, b.u.mp tiddy ump b.u.mp, b.u.mp tiddy ump b.u.mp,-- Off on a honeymoon all by myself, b.u.mp tiddy ump b.u.mp bay!"
Well, my dear Sarah, that is exactly the sort of wedding journey which has fallen to me.
We were married. Yes, I"m very clear about that. Dolores, my dewy-eyed dove, stood with me, and Randal, ghastly and trembling, by Michael Daragh. The solemn old minister knotted us securely. Michael kissed me. (I"m very clear about that, too.)
Suddenly, like a cyclone, like a typhoon, Dolores Tristeza cast herself upon me. "Virgin mawther of my soul," she howled, "do not leave me! I keel myself! _Ella de la barba_ ees nawthing to me!
Do not leave me to die with these so ugly strangers! _No tengo mas amiga que tu!_" (Thou art my only friend!)
She was working up into a frenzy which made all her earlier efforts sound like lullabies with the soft pedal on, and she was shaking herself into convulsions and crying real tears. "Behold," she sobbed, "_las lagrimas de la huerfanita_!" (The tears of the little orphan!)
I counted ten. Then I turned to my new husband.
"Michael Daragh," I said, meekly, "will you take Randal with you and let me take Dolores with me?"
I wish you could have seen people"s faces as we went off in a groaning taxi, ourselves, our luggage, Randal, white and protesting, Dolores, tearful but triumphant, Jose-Maria, snapping and snarling, Santa Catalina, strongly urging every one to shut his ugly mouth for the love of all the saints.
Sally, you"ve read a hundred stories, haven"t you, which went like this--the ceremony, the good wishes, the rice, the old shoes, then--"he jerked down the curtain of the cab window,"--"Alone at last," he murmured, "my _wife_!" "He folded her in his arms."
I think Michael Daragh"s feeling was that we were not _entirely_ alone, and that it was a rather large order to fold in his arms a swearing parrot, a shivering, hairless dog, a robust Mexican orphan, a bride and a dope fiend, for he made not the first gesture of the above ritual.
It is after midnight. Dolores is asleep here in my stateroom, a smile of seraphic peace on her face, but in the room next door I hear the steady murmur of M.D."s voice reading to poor Randal, who cannot sleep, who has tried to jump overboard. Michael dares not leave him for an instant, even to tell me good-night.
Sally, it _is_ really funny, but I have to keep a.s.suring and reminding myself that it is.
JANE.
_Morning, At Three Meadows._
SALLY, MY DEAR,
Once again I crept up a river of mother-of-pearl in the gauzy dawn to this island sanctuary. The Deacon met us, amazed at our number, and led us to the silver gray house just beyond theirs on a little, lifting hill, where "Angerleek" will "do for us."
Morning brought counsel. While my husband (carelessly said--just like that!) while my husband looked after luggage I talked to Randal, sane again, haggard, abased. "My dear boy," I said, "_you_ aren"t going to be in the way at all! You"ll look after yourself and be company for Michael when he wants good man-talk. It"s this demon-child.
If--_do_ you suppose you could look after her for me!"