It would be the private opinion of Emma Ellis to her dying day that Miss Vail had suppressed a good deal and had embellished a good deal, in that dramatic way of hers. She had written so much fiction and lived so much in her imagination that it was doubtful if she could (with the best intentions) tell the exact and unadorned truth about anything. Besides, even if things had happened exactly as she had chronicled them, it was not a fair test anyway; it was a very different case from those of the heroines in the two stories. Jane Vail knew she was Jane Vail, with an assured position in the literary world and a large income, and that the whole thing was only play-acting after all. But with Mr. Daragh entirely convinced and more maudlinly worshipful than ever, what was the use of saying anything? But she could think .

Jane swung happily into her fourth year in New York, flying home to Sarah Farraday for Christmas, meeting the young year with high hopes and canny plans, a definite part, now, of the confraternity of ink. Her circle widened and widened; important persons came down from their heights of achievement to make much of her, and the late spring saw the successful launching of another gay little play, and early fall found her deep head, hands, and heart in her first serious novel, but she found amazing margins of time for Rodney Harrison, for Hope House, for Michael Daragh.

Sarah Farraday, resigned but never reconciled, shared vicariously in the life-more-abundantly which had come to her best friend, and she always said, with a small sigh, that nothing Jane did or said could ever surprise her again, but she was nevertheless startled, after a long silence, to receive a fat letter bearing a Mexican stamp.

On a Meandering Train, bound, more or less for Guadalajara , it began, and was dated December the seventh.

SALLY DEAR,

You must be thinking me quite mad at last, not hearing from me for
weeks, and then this! Like the old woman in the fairy tale, “Can
this be I?”

I decided all in a wink to fly to California and visit my mother’s cousins, the Budders. I needed a drastic change, Sally. I haven’t had a real play-time for a year, and it’s four years and a month since I left home for New York can you realize it? Four lucky, beautiful, shining years. But oh, I’m tired, old dear! So tired that my brain creaks. I think there comes a time, in creative work, for playing hooky. Write and run away and live to write another day. So I wired the Budders I was coming and took the train the same day, and when I reached San Francisco I found them all packed up for this Mexican trip, indeed, they were sitting on their trunks with a tentative ticket for me in their hands. And I was pleased pink to come. The Budders (doesn’t Budder sowd as if I ad a code id by ed?) are nice, comfortable creatures, the sort who are called the salt of the earth but in reality aren’t anything so piquant. They’re the boiled potatoes and graham bread and rice pudding. You, now, Sally darling, are the angel cake, and there’s not half enough of you; I’m the olives and anchovies and caviar ... a little goes a long way ... and Michael Daragh is the rich and creamy milk of human kindness, always being skimmed by a needy, greedy world.

Behold me, then, ambling through Mexico, a Spanish phrase book in my
lap and peace in my heart.

Adios!

JANE.

P.S. I have just read this over, Sarah. Fiction of purest ray serene. I’m not tired. I don’t need to play. It was a very bad time for me to leave, my work screamed after me all across the continent. I had to fly for my life and liberty.

Sally, friend of my youth, patient receptacle of all my moods and tenses, I was falling in love. At least, I felt myself slipping. All these four years I have intended Michael Daragh to be an interesting character part in my drama of New York, down in the cast as “her best friend.” He is threatening to take the lead, and it isn’t going to do at all. Sally, the man’s goodness is simply ghastly; I couldn’t endure having a husband so incontestibly better than I am. Why, you know that all my life I’ve been “a wonderful influence for good” with man kind! Didn’t I always coax sling shots away from bad little boys and make them sign up for the S.P.C.A.? And wasn’t I always getting bad big boys to smoke less and drink less and pass ex’es and dance with wallflowers and write to their mothers? Really, when I think of the twigs I’ve bent and the trees I’ve inclined, I feel that there should be a tablet erected to me somewhere. But the woman who weds Michael Daragh, I don’t care who she is (lie: I care enormously!) will always be burning incense to him in her lesser soul, always straining on tiptoe to breathe the air in which he lives and moves and has his being.

Michael Daragh, that time he renounced the flesh-pots and “took to bride the Ladye Povertye with perfect blithenesse,” did it so thoroughly that any literal spouse will be only a sort of morganatic wife, anyway. I don’t mean that he might not adore her and be wonderful to her after he’d ministered unto a drove of sticky immigrants and a Settlement full of drab down-and-outs and an Agnes Chatterton Home full of Fallen Sisters, but he would really expect her to prefer having him assist at the arrival of the eleventh little Lascanowitz in a moldy cellar to keeping a birthday dinner date with her.

Now, Sally dear, in these four years since I left my village home (soft chords) I have labored somewhat, and I confess that I have frankly looked forward to matrimony as a sort of glorified vacation. I couldn’t ever give up my work, of course, it wouldn’t give me up and I don’t crave to “sit on a cushion and sew a fine seam and live upon strawberries, sugar and cream” exclusively, but somewhere in the middle ground between that and washing dishes and “feeding the swine,” I did visualize a sort of gracious lady leisure, with a vague, worshipful being in the background making me “take care of myself.”

Therefore, feeling myself melting unduly on the Irish question, I fly
while there is yet time.

Much love, old dear!

JANE.

December 8th.

That was a silly screed, yesterday, Sally dearest, but getting it off my chest was a great relief. And at that it wasn’t a complete confession. There was another reason for a strategic retreat. The other reason was Rodney Harrison. Yes, the House of Harrison has capitulated, handsomely, lavishly, Mater and Pater as well, but I’m very sure that I can never be theirs. Just as I feel that Michael Daragh is too good for me, so do I feel that Rodney Harrison is not quite good enough! I mean by that not quite concerned enough with drying the world’s tears. With as G.B.S. says “a character that needs looking after as much as my own,” I feel I should have some one a little less Philistine than the cheerful Rodney. At any rate, I needed perspective on the whole situation, and who knows but I shall meet my nice new fate on this romantic pilgrimage? (Sounds more like eighteen than twenty-eight, doesn’t it?) But, seriously, I’ve been so constantly with Michael Daragh and Rodney in these four years that I know every dip and spur, every line and leaf of their mental scenery; fresh fields and pastures new are what I need. And “one meets so many delightful people in traveling ” as witness the good Budders and their niece, Miss Vail (’sh ... they say she’s a writer !)

Something, which is to say, some_body_, may turn up at any moment.

Yours, Micawber-ing,

J.

P.S. I trust you won’t expect to glean any useful information or statistics about Mexico from these chronicles? The Budders are deep in histories and guidebooks but I know not whether the Chichimecs were people or pottery and I hope I never shall!

P.S. II. Cousin Dudley, having just returned from the smoker, reports
chatting with a most interesting young civil engineer

December 9th.

We are now so late, Sally dear, that we have lost all social standing; we slink into sidings and wait in shame for prompt and proper trains to bustle by. But I don’t mind. At this rate I shall be able to converse rippingly in Spanish by the time we reach Guadalajara. Cousin Dudley knows a professor person there who will help us to plan our trip.

Spanish is deliciously easy. It seems rather silly to make it a
regular study in our schools.

I adore the stations, especially at night, black velvet darkness studded with lanterns and torches and little leaping fires; old blind minstrels whining their ballads; the mournful voices of the sweetmeat venders chanting “ Dulce de Morelia! ” “ Cajeta de Celaya! ” These candies, by the way, are the most

December 11th.

Alas, muy Sally mia , when I meant to add a few paragraphs to this letter diary every day! I was interrupted just there by Cousin Dudley who came in with his civil engineer, and there hasn’t seemed to be any spare time since. (How is that for a demonstration of Mr. Burroughs’ well-known theory about folding your hands and waiting and having your own come to you?)

He is an extremely civil engineer and very easy to look at. He has close-cropped, bronzy brown hair and gentian-blue eyes and his skin is burned to a glowing copper luster. He is just idling about, slaying time during a vacation too brief to warrant his going home to Virginia, and he shows strong symptoms of willingness to act as guide, philosopher and friend to wandering Touri. We are actually going to reach Guadalajara tomorrow! Some one must be giving us a tow.

Adios, muy amiga mia!

JUANA.

P.S. The C.E. is going to hear my Spanish lesson now.

P.S. II. Isn’t NETZAHUALCOYOTL a cunning word?

Guadalajara,
December 12th.

QUERIDA SARITA,

We sight-saw all morning in this lovely, languid, ladylike city, and this afternoon we called on Cousin Dudley’s friend, Professor Morales and his family. They were expecting us and as our coche drew up at the curb, the door flew open and el profesor flew out, seized Cousin Ada’s hand, held it high, and led her into the house, minuet fashion. The senora , a mountainous lady with a rather striking mustache and the bosom of her black gown sprinkled with a snow fall of powder which couldn’t find even standing room on her face, conducted Cousin Dudley in the same manner, and I fell to the lot of a beautiful youth.

The sala was crazy with what-nots and knick-knacks and bamboo furniture and running over with people plump, furrily powdered senoritas with young mustaches, cherubs with gazelle eyes and weak-coffee-colored skin, and the oldest woman ever seen out of a pyramid.

There was an agonizing time getting us all introduced and a still more agonizing time of stage wait afterward. Then Cousin Dudley (I thirsted for his gore) said chirpily, “My niece has learned to speak Spanish, you know.”

My dear, it made the Tower of Babel seem like “going into the silence.” Everybody in that room talked to me at once. In my frantic boast and foolish word about the easiness of Spanish it had never occurred to me that people would talk to me ! If the fiends had only held their tongues and let me ask them to have the kindness to do me the favor to show me which way was the cathedral, or whether it was the silk handkerchief of the rich Frenchman which the young lady’s old sick father required, all would have been well, but instead a madhouse!

Then came rescue. The sweetest, softest pussy willow of a girl with a delicious accent said, “So deed I also feel, in the conevent, when they all at once spik inglés !” She was in pearl gray, no powder, no mustache, slim as a reed. Her gentle name is Maria de Guadalupe Rosalia Merced Castello, but they call her “Lupe” ("Loopie,” Sally, not Loop!) She is a penniless orphan, just visiting her kin at present, but lives with an uncle in Guanajuato (where delves my C.E. at his mine) and she is in disgrace because of an undesirable love affair, so the senora told Cousin Ada. They are taking us to the Plaza to-night, and meanwhile we sup.

Delightedly,

JANE.

P..30 P.M. The Plaza is still the parlor in Guadalajara and it’s enchanting! The staid background of the chaperones in coches , the slow procession of youths and maidens, two and two, boys in one line, girls in another, the eager, forward looks, the whisper at passing, the note slipped from hand to hand, the backward glances, all classes, and over all, through all, the pleading, pulsing call of the music.

Sarah, never did you make melody like that, decent New Englander that you are! It’s so poignantly searching-sweet, so sin vergüenza (without shame!) El profesor had them play La Golondrina , their national anthem, really, which means merely The Swallow, to start with, but everything else a hungry heart can pack into it. Lupe and I walked together and she was pouring out her dewy young confidences before we’d been twice round the circle. Montagues and Capulets ! The rich uncle who has reared her is the bitterest enemy of her Emilo’s papa who is a general of revolutionary tendencies. “Me,” she said with a shrug, “I can never marry! Vestire los santos! ” (Which means, “I shall dress the saints!” Old maids having unlimited time for church work!)

Buenas noches ,

J.

December 14th.

DEAREST SALLY,

The loveliest idea came and sat on my chest in the pearly dawn! I’m going to take Maria de Guadalupe Rosalia Merced Castello with me on this tour as Spanish teacher! She accepted with tears of joy and the Morales family bore up bravely. They will be frankly glad of a few nights’ sleep, Lupe’s gallants come nightly to “make a serenade,” not a lone guitar but the tenor from the opera house and a piano trundled through the streets. The more costly the musical ingredients, the greater the swain’s devotion!

To-day we went with various members of the Morales clan to visit the Hospicio (see the Budders for dates and data!). I only remember a girl of twelve who sat by herself in the playground, the small, cameo, clear face with its sorrowing eyes, the pathetic arrogance in the lift of the chin, her withdrawal from the other noisy little orphans. I knew she must have a story, and when I asked the pretty sister in charge, she burst into eager narrative.

Twelve years ago, approximately, a young physician was called at night to the peon quarter, and to his amazement found that his patient was a lady, a girl whose patrician manner was proof against all her terror and suffering. She utterly refused to look at her child and threatened to smother it if he left it within her reach. He took it to the Hospicio to be cared for temporarily, and a few days later, going as usual to attend the young mother, he found her vanished. There was a lavish fee left for him, and a note, bidding him insolently to banish the whole matter from his memory. The neighbors knew only that they had heard a coche in the dead of night. The child, whom they named in their mournful fashion Dolores Tristeza sorrows and sadness was always the doctor’s protegee. One day he came in great excitement to tell the pretty sister the sequel. He had been summoned the night before to the bedside of a dying man, one of the great names of the city. The family was grouped about the father and among the weeping daughters he espied his mysterious patient! Afterward, when he was leaving, she looked him squarely in the eye and said, “You are a newcomer in Guadalajara? You must be, for I have never seen you before !” He told no one but the sister at the Hospicio and not even to her did he divulge the name, but two days later, in a lonely suburb of the city, he was shot and killed.

Sarah, doesn’t that make your scalp creep? Dolores Tristeza! “Sorrows and Sadness!” I dashed out and bought her a gorgeous doll and she gave me a gracious smile but she was not at all overcome. She clearly feels her quality. Loads of people have wanted to adopt her but she would never go with them.

And to-morrow we are off to Queretaro to drop a silent tear on
Maximilian’s dressy little tomb, the Budders, Lupe, the C.E. and I.
We are gathering as we roll!

Adios, querida mia!

J.

Queretaro.

I’ve paid proper tribute to that poor pawn of Empire who lived so poorly and who died so well, but the real zest of this journey is Lupe! Fresh every hour! Her mental processes are delicious. I was lamenting her frank delight in bull-fights and she said, “Oh, the firs’ time I see horse keel,’ I am ver ’ seek. Now they keel four, seven, eleven horse,’ I like ver ’ moach!” When I tried to make her realize the enormity of her taste, she turned on me like a flash “But you American girl, you go see you’ brawther get keel’ in football game!”

“Pussy willow,” I said, “it’s not a parallel case. Our brothers are free agents, they adore doing it. They’re toiling and sweating and praying for the chance perhaps for years, and they’re heroes, and thousands are making the welkin ring with their names!”

She shrugged. “Oh eef you care more for some ol’ horse than you’
brawther ”

The C.E. (although he could dispense with her society very
cheerfully) helps me to understand her, and through her, Mexico,
this sad, bad, pitiful, charming, lovable, hateful land!

Lupe’s Emilio is by way of being a poet, it seems, and he has sent her a little song, which we have translated, and I put it into rhyme, and the C.E. who has a very decorative voice indeed hums it to a lonesome little tune distantly related to La Golondrina. Here it is:

“Thro’ the uncolored years before I knew you
My days were just a string of wooden beads;
I told them dully off, a weary number ...
The silly cares, the foolish little needs.

“But now and evermore, because I’ve known you,
They’ve turned to precious pearls and limpid jade,
Clear amethysts as deep as seas eternal,
And heart’s-blood rubies that will never fade.

“You never knew, and now you never will know;
Some joys are given; mine were only lent.
You see, I do not reckon years or distance;
Somewhere I know you are ; I am content.

“I do not need your pity or your presence
To bridge the widening gulf of now and then;
It is enough for me to know my jewels
Can never turn to wooden beads again.”

Of course, to be tiresomely exact, he’s always known her, and she is entirely aware of his devotion, and he can reckon the time and distance quite easily with the aid of a time-table, but, as the C.E. says, “it listens well.”

Off to La Ciudad de Mexico in the morning!

Con todo mi corazón ,

JANE.

P.S. I might remark in passing that it’s a perfectly good corazón
again, sane and sound and whole, and summons only dimly a memory of
New York....

Mexico City.

SARAH, my dear, I’ve given up trying to date my letters. I’ve lost count of time. We’ve been here for many golden days and silver nights, in a land of warm eyes and soft words, where péons take off their sombreros and step aside to let my Grace pass, and Murillo beggar boys are named “Florentino Buenaventura, awaiting your commands!”

We sight-see so ardently that lazy little Lupe says she is “tired until her bones!” and when she surrenders, we go on alone, the C.E. and I. (Oh, yes, the Budders are still with us, but they are keener on facts than fancies, and we deign but seldom to go with them and improve our minds.) Yesterday, however, we consented to see Diaz’ model prison. My dear, after seeing how the people live at large, one is convinced that here the wages of sin are sanitation and education. I should think ex-convicts would be hugely in demand for all sorts of positions. In the parlor we were fascinated with a display of the skulls of prisoners who had been executed there. I saw one small, round, innocent-looking one which couldn’t possibly have ever contained a harsh thought, I was sure, and I indignantly read the tag to see what he had been martyred for. Sarah, the busy boy had done twenty-one ladies to death!

We listen to melting music in the Alameda, we ride in the fashion parade in the Calle San Francisco, we drive out along the beautiful Paseo de la Reforma and drink chocolate in the shadow of the Castle of Chapultepec chocolate made with cinnamon and so rich and sweet it almost bends the spoon to stir it. Miss Vail remembers with difficulty that she is the heir of all the ages in the foremost files of time, a self-supporting young business woman who beats bright thoughts from a typewriter four earnest hours per diem ... or that she was....

Hoy to-day, is very satisfying; I forget ayer yesterday;
Manana to-morrow, may never come!

Juana.

Christmas Eve, Cuernavaca.

Felisces Pascuas , Sally dear! You in the snow and I in fairyland! It’s a comic opera Christmas here, but a very fetching one, the pretty processions of singing children through the streets, the gay, grotesque pinatis huge paper dolls filled with dulces , the childish and merry little people, the color, the music, the smile and the sob of it all!

I wish I could have little Dolores Tristeza with me. I sent her a box
of delights.

My pussy willow girl is star-eyed over a telegram and my much more than civil engineer has told me what he wants for Christmas. If he had told me on Fifth Avenue or at home, on Wetherby Ridge, I should have said at once that I was sorry, and I liked him immensely, and so on, but but here, in Cuernavaca, in the Borda Gardens, beside the crumbling pinky palace, where the ghosts of Maximilian and Carlotta walk at the full of the moon, when he told me that all his days were wooden beads before I came, and I don’t know, Sally! I don’t know! New York seems very far away ... Rodney Harrison and my St. Michael seem palely unreal.... Can it be possible, in these gay little weeks, that, as Lupe would say, “I have arrive’” to love this boy?

Distractedly,

JANE.