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In The Bishop's Carriage
by Miriam Michelson
April, 1996 [Etext #481]
****The Project Gutenberg Etext of In The Bishop's Carriage****
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IN THE BISHOP'S CARRIAGE
By MIRIAM MICHELSON
I.
When the thing was at its hottest, I bolted. Tom, like the
darling he is--(Yes, you are, old fellow, you're as precious to
me as--as you are to the police--if they could only get their
hands on you)--well, Tom drew off the crowd, having passed the
old gentleman's watch to me, and I made for the women's rooms.
The station was crowded, as it always is in the afternoon, and in
a minute I was strolling into the big, square room, saying slowly
to myself to keep me steady:
"Nancy, you're a college girl--just in from Bryn Mawr to meet
your papa. Just see if your hat's on straight."
I did, going up to the big glass and looking beyond my excited
face to the room behind me. There sat the woman who can never
nurse her baby except where everybody can see her, in a railroad
station. There was the woman who's always hungry, nibbling
chocolates out of a box; and the woman fallen asleep, with her
hat on the side, and hairpins dropping out of her hair; and the
woman who's beside herself with fear that she'll miss her train;
and the woman who is taking notes about the other women's rigs.
And--
And I didn't like the look of that man with the cap who opened
the swinging door a bit and peeped in. The women's waiting-room
is no place for a man--nor for a girl who's got somebody else's
watch inside her waist. Luckily, my back was toward him, but just
as the door swung back he might have caught the reflection of my
face in a mirror hanging opposite to the big one.
I retreated, going to an inner room where the ladies were having
the maid brush their gowns, soiled from suburban travel and the
dirty station.
The deuce is in it the way women stare. I took off my hat and
jacket for a reason to stay there, and hung them up as leisurely
as I could.
"Nance," I said under my breath, to the alert-eyed, pug-nosed
girl in the mirror, who gave a quick glance about the room as I
bent to wash my hands, "women stare 'cause they're women.
There's no meaning in their look. If they were men, now,
you might twitter."
I smoothed my hair and reached out my hand to get my hat and
jacket when--when--
Oh, it was long; long enough to cover you from your chin to your
heels! It was a dark, warm red, and it had a high collar of
chinchilla that was fairly scrumptious. And just above it the hat
hung, a red-cloth toque caught up on the side with some of the
same fur.
The black maid misunderstood my involuntary gesture. I had all my
best duds on, and when a lot of women stare it makes the woman
they stare at peacock naturally, and--and--well, ask Tom what he
thinks of my style when I'm on parade. At any rate, it was the
maid's fault. She took down the coat and hat and held them for me
as though they were mine. What could I do, 'cept just slip into
the silk-lined beauty and set the toque on my head? The fool girl
that owned them was having another maid mend a tear in her skirt,
over in the corner; the little place was crowded. Anyway, I had
both the coat and hat on and was out into the big anteroom in a jiffy.
What nearly wrecked me was the cut of that coat. It positively
made me shiver with pleasure when I passed and saw myself in that
long mirror. My, but I was great! The hang of that coat, the
long, incurving sweep in the back, and the high fur collar up to
one's nose--even if it is a turned-up nose--oh!
I stayed and looked a second too long, for just as I was pulling
the flaring hat a bit over my face, the doors swung, as an old
lady came in, and there behind her was that same curious man's
face with the cap above it.
Trapped? Me? Not much! I didn't wait a minute, but threw the
doors open with a gesture that might have belonged to the Queen
of Spain. I almost ran into his arms. He gave an exclamation.
I looked him straight in the eyes, as I hooked the collar close to
my throat, and swept past him.
He weakened. That coat was too jolly much for him. It was for me,
too. As I ran down the stairs, its influence so worked on me that
I didn't know just which Vanderbilt I was.
I got out on the sidewalk all right, and was just about to take a
car when the turnstile swung round, and there was that same man
with the cap. His face was a funny mixture of doubt and
determination. But it meant the Correction for me.
"Nance Olden, it's over," I said to myself.
But it wasn't. For it was then that I caught sight of the
carriage. It was a fat, low, comfortable, elegant, sober
carriage, wide and well-kept, with rubber-tired wheels. And the
two heavy horses were fat and elegant and sober, too, and wide
and well-kept. I didn't know it was the Bishop's then--I didn't
care whose it was. It was empty, and it was mine. I'd rather go
to the Correction--being too young to get to the place you're
bound for, Tom Dorgan--in it than in the patrol wagon. At any
rate, it was all the chance I had.
I slipped in, closing the door sharply behind me. The man on the
box--he was wide and well-kept, too--was tired waiting, I suppose,
for he continued to doze gently, his high coachman's collar
up over his ears. I cursed that collar, which had prevented
his hearing the door close, for then he might have driven off.
But it was great inside: soft and warm, the cushions of dark
plum, the seat wide and roomy, a church paper, some notes for the
Bishop's next sermon and a copy of Quo Vadis. I just snuggled
down, trust me. I leaned far back and lay low. When I did peek
out the window, I saw the man with the brass buttons and the cap
turning to go inside again.
Victory! He had lost the scent. Who would look for Nancy Olden in
the Bishop's carriage?
Now, you know how early I got up yesterday to catch the train
so's Tom and I could come in with the people and be naturally
mingling with them? And you remember the dance the night before?
I hadn't had more than three hours' sleep, and the snug warmth of
that coach was just nuts to me, after the freezing ride into
town. I didn't dare get out for fear of some other man in a cap
and buttons somewhere on the lookout. I knew they couldn't be on
to my hiding-place or they'd have nabbed me before this. After a
bit I didn't want to get out, I was so warm and comfortable--and
elegant. O Tom, you should have seen your Nance in that coat and
in the Bishop's carriage!
First thing I knew, I was dreaming you and I were being married,
and you had brass buttons all over you, and I had the cloak all
right, but it was a wedding-dress, and the chinchilla was a wormy
sort of orange blossoms, and--and I waked when the handle of the
door turned and the Bishop got in.
Asleep? That's what! I'd actually been asleep.
And what did I do now?
That's easy--fell asleep again. There wasn't anything else to do.
Not really asleep this time, you know; just, just asleep enough
to be wide awake to any chance there was in it.
The horses had started, and the carriage was half-way across the
street before the Bishop noticed me.
He was a little Bishop, not big and fat and well-kept like the
rig, but short and lean, with a little white beard and the
softest eye--and the softest heart--and the softest head. Just
listen.
"Lord bless me!" he exclaimed, hurriedly putting on his
spectacles, and looking about bewildered.
I was slumbering sweetly in the corner, but I could see between
my lashes that he thought he'd jumped into somebody else's
carriage.
The sight of his book and his papers comforted him, though, and
before he could make a resolution, I let the jolting of the
carriage, as it crossed the car-track, throw me gently against
him.
"Daddy," I murmured sleepily, letting my head rest on his
little, prim shoulder.
That comforted him, too. Hush your laughing, Tom Dorgan; I mean
calling him "daddy" seemed to kind of take the cuss off the
situation.
"My child," he began very gently.
"Oh, daddy," I exclaimed, snuggling down close to him, "you
kept me waiting so long I went to sleep. I thought you'd never
come."
He put his arm about my shoulders in a fatherly way. You know,
I found out later the Bishop never had had a daughter. I guess he
thought he had one now. Such a simple, dear old soul! Just the
same, Tom Dorgan, if he had been my father, I'd never be doing
stunts with tipsy men's watches for you; nor if I'd had any
father. Now, don't get mad. Think of the Bishop with his gentle,
thin old arm about my shoulders, holding me for just a second as
though I was his daughter! My, think of it! And me, Nance Olden,
with that fat man's watch in my waist and some girl's beautiful
long coat and hat on, all covered with chinchilla!
"There's some mistake, my little girl," he said, shaking me
gently to wake me up, for I was going to sleep again, he feared.
"Oh, I knew you were kept at the office," I interrupted
quickly. I preferred to be farther from the station with that
girl's red coat before I got out. "We've missed our train,
anyway, haven't we? After this, daddy dear, let's not take this
route. If we'd go straight through on the one road, we wouldn't
have this drive across town every time. I was wondering, before
I fell asleep, what in the world I'd do in this big city if you
didn't come."
He forgot to withdraw his arm, so occupied was he by my
predicament.
"What would you do, my child, if you had--had missed your--your
father?"
Wasn't it clumsy of him? He wanted to break it to me gently, and
this was the best he could do.
"What would I do?" I gasped indignantly. "Why, daddy, imagine
me alone, and--and without money! Why--why, how can you--"
"There! there!" he said, patting me soothingly on the shoulder.
That baby of a Bishop! The very thought of Nancy Olden out alone
in the streets was too much for him.
He had put his free hand into his pocket and had just taken out a
bill and was trying to plan a way to offer it to me and reveal
the fact to poor, modest little Nance Olden that he was not her
own daddy, when an awful thing happened.
We had got up street as far as the opera-house, when we were
caught in the jam of carriages in front; the last afternoon opera
of the season was just over. I was so busy thinking what would be
my next move that I didn't notice much outside--and I didn't want
to move, Tom, not a bit. Playing the Bishop's daughter in a
trailing coat of red, trimmed with chinchilla, is just your
Nancy's graft. But the dear little Bishop gave a jump that almost
knocked the roof off the carriage, pulled his arm from behind me
and dropped the ten-dollar bill he held as though it burned him.
It fell in my lap. I jammed it into my coat pocket. Where is it
now? Just you wait, Tom Dorgan, and you'll find out.
I followed the Bishop's eyes. His face was scarlet now. Right
next to our carriage--mine and the Bishop's--there was another;
not quite so fat and heavy and big, but smart, I tell you, with
the silver harness jangling and the horses arching their backs
under their blue-cloth jackets monogrammed in leather. All the
same, I couldn't see anything to cause a loving father to let go
his onliest daughter in such a hurry, till the old lady inside
bent forward again and gave us another look.
Her face told it then. It was a big, smooth face, with
accordion-plaited chins. Her hair was white and her nose was
curved, and the pearls in her big ears brought out every ugly
spot on her face. Her lips were thin, and her neck, hung with
diamonds, looked like a bed with bolsters and pillows piled high,
and her eyes--oh, Tom, her eyes! They were little and very gray,
and they bored their way straight through the windows--hers and
ours--and hit the Bishop plumb in the face.
My, if I could only have laughed! The Bishop, the dear, prim
little Bishop in his own carriage, with his arm about a young
woman in red and chinchilla, offering her a bank-note, and Mrs.
Dowager Diamonds, her eyes popping out of her head at the sight,
and she one of the lady pillars of his church--oh, Tom! it took
all of this to make that poor innocent next to me realize how he
looked in her eyes.
But you see it was over in a minute. The carriage wheels were
unlocked, and the blue coupe went whirling away, and we in the
plum-cushioned carriage followed slowly.
I decided that I'd had enough. Now and here in the middle of all
these carriages was a bully good time and place for me to get
away. I turned to the Bishop. He was blushing like a boy.
I blushed, too. Yes, I did, Tom Dorgan, but it was because I was
bursting with laughter.
"Oh, dear!" I exclaimed in sudden dismay. "You're not my
father."
"No--no, my dear, I--I'm not," he stammered, his face purple
now with embarrassment. "I was just trying to tell you, you poor
little girl, of your mistake and planning a way to help you,
when--"
He made a gesture of despair toward the side where the coupe had
been.
I covered my face with my hands, and shrinking over into the
corner, I cried:
"Let me out! let me out! You're not my father. Oh, let me out!"
"Why, certainly, child. But I'm old enough, surely, to be, and I
wish--I wish I were."
"You do!"
The dignity and tenderness and courtesy in his voice sort of
sobered me. But all at once I remembered the face of Mrs. Dowager
Diamonds, and I understood.
"Oh, because of her," I said, smiling and pointing to the side
where the coupe had been.
My, but it was a rotten bad move! I ought to have been strapped
for it. Oh, Tom, Tom, it takes more'n a red coat with chinchilla
to make a black-hearted thing like me into the girl he thought I
was.
He stiffened and sat up like a prim little school-boy, his soft
eyes hurt like a dog's that's been wounded.
I won't tell you what I did then. No, I won't. And you won't
understand, but just that minute I cared more for what he thought
of me than whether I got to the Correction or anywhere else.
It made us friends in a minute, and when he stopped the carriage
to let me out, my hand was still in his. But I wouldn't go. I'd
made up my mind to see him out of his part of the scrape, and
first thing you know we were driving up toward the Square, if you
please, to Mrs. Dowager Diamonds' house.
He thought it was his scheme, the poor lamb, to put me in her
charge till my lost daddy could send for me. He'd no more idea
that I was steering him toward her, that he was doing the only
thing possible, the only square thing by his reputation, than he
had that Nance Olden had been raised by the Cruelty, and then
flung herself away on the first handsome Irish boy she met.
That'll do, Tom.
Girls, if you could have seen Mrs. Dowager Diamonds' face when
she came down the stairs, the Bishop's card in her hand, and into
the gorgeous parlor, it'd have been as good as a front seat at
the show.
She was mad, and she was curious, and she was amazed, and she was
disarmed; for the very nerve of his bringing me to her staggered
her so that she could hardly believe she'd seen what she had.
"My dear Mrs. Ramsay," he began, confused a bit by his
remembrance of how her face had looked fifteen minutes before,
"I bring to you an unfortunate child, who mistook my carriage
for her father's this afternoon at the station. She is a college
girl, a stranger in town, and till her father claims her--"
Oh, the baby! the baby! She was stiffening like a rod before his
very eyes. How did his words explain his having his arm round the
unfortunate child? His conscience was so clean that the dear
little man actually overlooked the fact that it wasn't my
presence in the carriage, but his conduct there that had excited
Mrs. Dowager Diamonds.
And didn't the story sound thin? I tell you, Tom, when it comes
to lying to a woman you've got to think up something stronger
than it takes to make a man believe in you--if you happen to be
female yourself.
I didn't wait for him to finish, but waltzed right in. I danced
straight up to that side of beef with the diamonds still on it,
and flinging my arms about her, turned a coy eye on the Bishop.
"You said your wife was out of town, daddy," I cried gaily.
"Have you got another wife besides mummy?"
The poor Bishop! Do you think he tumbled? Not a bit--not a bit.
He sat there gasping like a fish, and Mrs. Dowager Diamonds,
surprised by my sudden attack, stood bolt upright, about as
pleasant to hug as--as you are, Tom, when you're jealous.
The trouble with the Bishop's set is that it's deadly slow. Now,
if I had really been the Bishop's daughter--all right, I'll go
on.
"Oh, mummy," I went on quickly. You know how I said it,
Tom--the way I told you after that last row that Dan Christensen
wasn't near so good-looking as you--remember? "Oh, mummy, you
don't know how good it feels to get home. Out there at that awful
college, studying and studying and studying, sometimes I thought
I'd lose my senses. There's a girl out there now suffering from
nervous prostration. She worked so hard preparing for the
mid-years. What's her name? I can't think--I can't think, my
head's so tired. But it sounds like mine, a lot like mine.
Once--I think it was yesterday--I thought it was mine, and I made
up my mind suddenly to come right home and bring it with me. But
it can't be mine, can it? It can't be my name she's got. It can't
be, mummy, say it can't, say it can't!"
Tom, I ought to have gone on the stage. I'll go yet, when you're
sent up some day. Yes, I will. You'll be where you can't stop me.
I couldn't see the Bishop, but the Dowager--oh, I'd got her. Not
so bad an old body, either, if you only take her the right way.
First, she was suspicious, and then she was scared. And then, bit
by bit, the stiffness melted out of her, her arms came up about
me, and there I was, lying all comfy, with the diamonds on her
neck boring rosettes in my cheeks, and she a-sniffling over me
and patting me and telling me not to get excited, that it was all
right, and now I was home mummy would take care of me, she would,
that she would.
She did. She got me on to a lounge, soft as--as marshmallows, and
she piled one silk pillow after another behind my back.
"Come, dear, let me help you off with your coat," she cooed,
bending over me.
"Oh, mummy, it's so cold! Can't I please keep it on?"
To let that coat off me was to give the whole thing away. My rig
underneath, though good enough for your girl, Tom, on a holiday,
wasn't just what they wear in the Square. And, d'ye know, you'll
say it's silly, but I had a conviction that with that coat I
should say good-by to the nerve I'd had since I got into the
Bishop's carriage,--and from there into society. I let her take
the hat, though, and I could see by the way she handled it that
it was all right--the thing; her kind, you know. Oh, the girl I
got it from had good taste, all right.
I closed my eyes for a moment as I lay there and she stood
stroking my hair. She must have thought I'd fallen asleep, for
she turned to the Bishop, and holding out her hand, she said
softly:
"My dear, dear Bishop, you are the best-hearted, the saintliest
man on earth. Because you are so beautifully clean-souled
yourself, you must pardon me. I am ashamed to say it, but I shall
have no rest till I do. When I saw you in the carriage downtown,
with that poor, demented child, I thought, for just a moment--oh,
can you forgive me? It shows what an evil mind I have. But you,
who know so well what Edward is, what my life has been with him,
will see how much reason I have to be suspicious of all men!"
I shook, I laughed so hard. What a corker her Edward must be!
See, Tom, poor old Mrs. Dowager up in the Square having the same
devil's luck with her man as Molly Elliott down in the Alley has
with hers. I wonder if you're all alike. No, for there's the
Bishop. He had taken her hand sympathizingly, forgivingly, but
his silence made me curious. I knew he wouldn't let the old lady
believe for a moment I was luny, if once he could be sure himself
that I wasn't. You lie, Tom Dorgan, he wouldn't! Well--But the
poor baby, how could he expect to see through a game that had
caught the Dowager herself? Still, I could hear him walking
softly toward me, and I felt him looking keenly down at me long
before I opened my eyes.
When I did, you should have seen him jump. Guilty he felt.
I could see the blood rush up under his clear, thin old skin, soft
as a baby's, to find himself caught trying to spy out my secret.
I just looked, big-eyed, up at him. You know; the way Molly's
kid does, when he wakes. I looked a long, long time, as though I
was puzzled.
"Daddy," I said slowly, sitting up. "You--you are my daddy,
ain't you?"
"Yes--yes, of course." It was the Dowager who got between him
and me, hinting heavily at him with nods and frowns. But the dear
old fellow only got pinker in the effort to look a lie and not
say it. Still, he looked relieved. Evidently he thought I was
luny all right, but that I had lucid intervals. I heard him
whisper something like this to the Dowager just before the maid
came in with tea for me.
Yes, Tom Dorgan, tea for Nancy Olden off a silver salver, out of
a cup like a painted eggshell. My, but that almost floored me!
I was afraid I'd give myself dead away with all those little jars
and jugs. So I said I wasn't hungry, though, Lord knows, I hadn't
had anything to eat since early morning. But the Dowager sent the
maid away and took the tray herself, operating all the jugs and
pots for me, and then tried to feed me the tea. She was about as
handy as Molly's little sister is with the baby--but I allowed
myself to be coaxed, and drank it down.
Tea, Tom Dorgan. Ever taste tea? If you knew how to behave
yourself in polite society, I'd give you a card to my friend, the
Dowager, up in the Square.
How to get away! That was the thing that worried me. I'd just
made up my mind to have a lucid interval, when cr-creak, the
front door opened, and in walked--
Tom, you're mighty cute--so cute you'll land us both behind bars
some day--but you can't guess who came in on our little family
party. Yes--oh, yes, you've met him.
Well, the old duffer whose watch was ticking inside my waist
that very minute! Yes, sir, the same red-faced, big-necked fellow
we'd spied getting full at the little station in the country.
Only, he was a bit mellower than when you grabbed his chain.
Well, he was Edward.
I almost dropped the cup when I saw him. The Dowager took it
from me, saying:
"There, dear, don't be nervous. It's only--only--"
She got lost. It couldn't be my daddy--the Bishop was that. But
it was her husband, so who could it be?
"Evening, Bishop. Hello, Henrietta, back so soon from the
opera?" roared Edward, in a big, husky voice. He'd had more
since we saw him, but he walked straight as the Bishop himself,
and he's a dear little ramrod. "Ah!"--his eyes lit up at sight
of me--"ah, Miss--Miss--of course, I've met the young lady,
Henrietta, but hang me if I haven't forgotten her name."
"Miss--Miss Murieson," lied the old lady, glibly. "A--a
relative."
"Why, mummy!" I said reproachfully.
"There--there. It's only a joke. Isn't it a joke, Edward?" she
demanded, laughing uneasily.
"Joke?" he repeated with a hearty bellow of laughter. "Best
kind of a joke, I call it, to find so pretty a girl right in your
own house, eh, Bishop?"
"Why does he call my father `Bishop', mummy?"
I couldn't help it. The fun of hearing the Dowager lie and
knowing the Bishop beside himself with the pain of deception was
too much for me. I could see she didn't dare trust her Edward
with my sad story.
"Ho! ho! The Bishop--that's good. No, my dear Miss Murieson, if
this lady's your mother, why, I must be--at least, I ought to be,
your father. As such, I'm going to have all the privileges of a
parent--bless me, if I'm not."
I don't suppose he'd have done it if he'd been sober, but
there's no telling, when you remember the reputation the Dowager
had given him. But he'd got no further than to put his arm around
me when both the Bishop and the Dowager flew to the rescue. My,
but they were shocked! I couldn't help wondering what they'd have
done if Edward had happened to see the Bishop in the same sort of
tableau earlier in the afternoon.
But I got a lucid interval just then, and distracted their
attention. I stood for a moment, my head bent as though I was
thinking deeply.
"I think I'll go now," I said at length. "I--I don't
understand exactly how I got here," I went on, looking from the
Bishop to the Dowager and back again, "or how I happened to miss
my father. I'm ever--so much obliged to you, and if you will give
me my hat, I'll take the next train back to college."
"You'll do nothing of the sort," said the Dowager, promptly.
"My dear, you're a sweet girl that's been studying too hard. You
must go to my room and rest--"
"And stay for dinner. Don't you care. Sometimes I don't know
how I get here myself." Edward winked jovially.
Well, I did. While the Dowager's back was turned, I gave him the
littlest one, in return for his. It made him drunker than ever.
"I think," said the Bishop, grimly, with a significant glance
at the Dowager, as he turned just then and saw the old cock
ogling me, "the young lady is wiser than we. I'll take her to
the station--"
The station! Ugh! Not Nance Olden, with the red coat still on.
"Impossible, my dear Bishop," interrupted the Dowager. "She
can't be permitted to go back on the train alone."
"Why, Miss--Miss Murieson, I'll see you back all the way to the
college door. Not at all, not at all. Charmed. First, we'll have
dinner--or, first I'll telephone out there and tell 'em you're
with us, so that if there's any rule or anything of that sort--"
The telephone! This wretched Edward with half his wits gave me
more trouble than the Bishop and the Dowager put together. She
jumped at the idea, and left the room, only to come back again to
whisper to me:
"What name, my dear?"
"What name? what name?" I repeated blankly. What name, indeed.
I wonder how "Nance Olden" would have done.
"Don't hurry, dear, don't perplex yourself," she whispered
anxiously, noting my bewilderment. "There's plenty of time, and
it makes no difference--not a particle, really."
I put my hand to my head.
"I can't think--I can't think. There's one girl has nervous
prostration, and her name's got mixed with mine, and I can't--"
"Hush, hush! Never mind. You shall come and lie down in my
room. You'll stay with us to-night, anyway, and we'll have a
doctor in, Bishop."
"That's right," assented the Bishop. "I'll go get him
myself."
"You--you're not going!" I cried in dismay. It was real.
I hated to see him go.
"Nonsense--'phone." It was Edward who went himself to
telephone for the doctor, and I saw my time getting short.
But the Bishop had to go, anyway. He looked out at his horses
shivering in front of the house, and the sight hurried him.
"My child," he said, taking my hand, "just let Mrs. Ramsay
take care of you to-night. Don't bother about anything, but just
rest. I'll see you in the morning," he went on, noticing that I
kind of clung to him. Well, I did. "Can't you remember what I
said to you in the carriage--that I wished you were my daughter.
I wish you were, indeed I do, and that I could take you home with
me and keep you, child."
"Then--to-night--if--when you pray--will you pray for me as if
I was--your own daughter?"
Tom Dorgan, you think no prayers but a priest's are any good,
you bigoted, snickering Catholic! I tell you if some day I cut
loose from you and start in over again, it'll be the Bishop's
prayers that'll do it.
The Dowager and I passed Edward in the ball. He gave me a look
behind her back, and I gave him one to match it. Just practice,
you know, Tom. A girl can never know when she'll want to be
expert in these things.
She made me lie down on a couch while she turned the lamp low,
and then left me alone in a big palace of a bedroom filled with
things. And I wanted everything I saw. If I could, I'd have
lifted everything in sight.
But every minute brought that doctor nearer. Soon as I could be
really sure she was gone, I got up, and, hurrying to the long
French windows that opened on the great stone piazza, I
unfastened them quietly, and inch by inch I pushed them open.
There within ten feet of me stood Edward. No escape that way. He
saw me, and was tiptoeing heavily toward me, when I heard the
door click behind me, and in walked the Dowager back again.
I flew to her.
"I thought I heard some one out there," I said.
"It frightened me so that I got up to look. Nobody could be out
there, could they?"
She walked to the window and put her head out. Her lips
tightened grimly.
"No, nobody could be out there," she said, breathing hard,
"but you might get nervous just thinking there might be. We'll
go to a room upstairs."
And go we did, in spite of all I could plead about feeling well
enough now to go alone and all the rest of it. How was I to get
out of a second or third-story window?
I began to think about the Correction again as I followed her
upstairs, and after she'd left me I just sat waiting for the
doctor to come and send me there. I didn't much care, till I
remembered the Bishop. I could almost see his face as it would
look when he'd be called to testify against me, and I'd be
standing in that railed-in prisoner's pen, in the middle of the
court-room, where Dan Christensen stood when they tried him.
No, I couldn't bear that; not without a fight, anyway. It was
for the Bishop I'd got into this part of the scrape. I'd get out
of it so's he shouldn't know how bad a thing a girl can be.
While I lay thinking it over, the same maid that had brought me
the tea came in. She was an ugly, thin little thing. If she's a
sample of the maids in that house, the lot of them would take the
kink out of your pretty hair, Thomas J. Dorgan, Esquire, late of
the House of Refuge and soon of Moyamensing. Don't throw things.
People in my set, mine and the Dowager's, don't.
She had been sent to help me undress, she said, and make me
comfortable. The doctor lived just around the corner and would be
in in a minute.
Phew! She wasn't very promising, but she was my only chance.
I took her.
"I really don't need any help, thank you, Nora,'; I said,
chipper as a sparrow, and remembering the name the Dowager had
called her by. "Aunt Henrietta is too fussy, don't you think?
Oh, of course, you won't say a word against her. She told me the
other day that she'd never had a maid so sensible and
quick-witted, too, as her Nora. Do you know, I've a mind to play
a joke on the doctor when he comes. You'll help me, won't you?
Oh, I know you will!" Suddenly I remembered the Bishop's bill.
I took it out of my pocket. Yep, Tom, that's where it went. I had
to choose between giving that skinny maid the biggest tip she
ever got in her life--or Nance Olden to the Correction.
You needn't swear, Tom Dorgan. I fancy if I'd got there, you'd
got worse. No, you bully, you know I wouldn't tell; but the
police sort of know how to pair our kind.
In her cap and apron, I let the doctor in and myself out. And I
don't regret a thing up there in the Square except that lovely
red coat with the high collar and the hat with the fur on it. I'd
give--Tom, get me a coat like that and I'll marry you for life.
No, there's one thing I could do better if it was to be done
over again. I could make that dear little old Bishop wish harder
I'd been his daughter.
What am I mooning about? Oh--nothing. There's the
watch--Edward's watch. Take it.
II.
Yes, empty-handed, Tom Dorgan. And I can't honestly say I didn't
have the chance, but--if my hands are empty my head is full.
Listen.
There's a girl I know with short brown hair, a turned-up nose and
gray eyes, rather far apart. You know her, too? Well, she can't
help that.
But this girl--oh, she makes such a pretty boy! And the ladies at
the hotel over in Brooklyn, they just dote on her when she's not
only a boy but a bell-boy. Her name may be Nancy when she's in
petticoats, but in trousers she's Nathaniel--in short, Nat.
Now, Nat, in blue and buttons, with his nails kept better than
most boys', with his curly hair parted in the middle, and with a
gentle tang to his voice that makes him almost girlish--who would
suspect Nat of having a stolen pass-key in his pocket and a
pretty fair knowledge of the contents of almost every top
bureau-drawer in the hotel?
Not Mrs. Sarah Kingdon, a widow just arrived from Philadelphia,
and desperately gone on young Mr. George Moriway, also fresh from
Philadelphia, and desperately gone on Mrs. Kingdon's money.
The tips that lady gave the bad boy Nat! I knew I couldn't make
you believe it any other way; that's why I passed 'em on to you,
Tommy-boy.
The hotel woman, you know, girls, is a hotel woman because she
isn't fit to be anything else. She's lazy and selfish and little,
and she's shifted all her legitimate cares on to the proprietor's
shoulders. She actually--you can understand and share my
indignation, can't you, Tom, as you've shared other things?--she
even gives over her black tin box full of valuables to the hotel
clerk to put in the safe; the coward! But her vanity--ah, there's
where we get her, such speculators as you and myself. She's got
to outshine the woman who sits at the next table, and so she
borrows her diamonds from the clerk, wears 'em like the peacock
she is, and trembles till they're back in the safe again.
In the meantime she locks them up in the tin box which she puts
in her top bureau-drawer, hides the key, forgets where she hid
it, and--O Tom! after searching for it for hours and making
herself sick with anxiety, she ties up her head in a wet
handkerchief with vinegar on it and--rings the bell for the
bell-boy!
He comes.
As I said, he's a prompt, gentle little bell-boy, slight, looks
rather young for his job, but that very youth and innocence of
his make him such a fellow to trust!
"Nat," says Mrs. Kingdon, tearfully pressing half a dollar into
the nice lad's hand, "I--I've lost something and I want you
to--to help me find it."
"Yes'm," says Nat. He's the soul of politeness.
"It must be here--it must be in this room," says the lady,
getting wild with the terror of losing. "I'm
sure--positive--that I went straight to the shoe-bag and slipped
it in there. And now I can't find it, and I must have it before I
go out this afternoon for--for a very special reason. My daughter
Evelyn will be home to-morrow and--why don't you look for it?"
"What is it, ma'am?"
"I told you once. My key--a little flat key that locks--a box
I've got," she finishes distrustfully.
"Have you looked in the shoe-bag, ma'am?"
"Why, of course I have, you little stupid. I want you to hunt
other places where I can't easily get. There are other places I
might have put it, but I'm positive it was in the shoe-bag."
Well, I looked for that key. Where? Where not? I looked under the
rubbish in the waste-paper basket; Mrs. Kingdon often fooled
thieves by dropping it there. I pulled up the corner of the
carpet and looked there--it was loose; it had often been used for
a hiding-place. I looked in Miss Evelyn's boot and in her ribbon
box. I emptied Mrs. Kingdon's full powder box. I climbed ladders
and felt along cornices. I looked through the pockets of Mrs.
Kingdon's gowns--a clever bell-boy it takes to find a woman's
pocket, but even the real masculine ones among 'em are half
feminine; they've had so much to do with women.
I rummaged through her writing-desk, and, in searching a
gold-cornered pad, found a note from Moriway hidden under the
corner. I hid it again carefully--in my coat pocket. A
love-letter from Moriway, to a woman twenty years older than
himself--'tain't a bad lay, Tom Dorgan, but you needn't try it.
At first she watched every move I made, but later, as her
headache grew worse, she got desperate. So then I put my hand
down into the shoe-bag and found the key, where it had slipped
under a fold of cloth.
Do you suppose that woman was grateful? She snatched it from me.
"I knew it was there. I told you it was there. If you'd had any
sense you'd have looked there first. The boys in this hotel are
so stupid."
"That's all, ma'am?"
She nodded. She was fitting the key into the black box she'd
taken from the top drawer. Nat had got to the outside door when
he heard her come shrieking after him.
"Nat--Nat--come back! My diamonds--they're not here. I know I
put them back last night--I'm positive. I could swear to it.
I can see myself putting them in the chamois bag, and--O my God,
where can they be! This time they're gone!"
Nat could have told her--but what's the use? He felt she'd only
lose 'em again if she had 'em. So he let them lie snug in his
trousers pocket--where he had put the chamois bag, when his eyes
lit on it, under the corner of the carpet. He might have passed
it over to her then, but you see, Tom, she hadn't told him to
look for a bag; it was a key she wanted. Bell-boys are so stupid.
This time she followed his every step. He could not put his hand
on the smallest thing without rousing her suspicion. If he
hesitated, she scolded. If he hurried, she fumed. Most unjust, I
call it, because he had no thought of stealing--just then.
"Come," she said at last, "we'll go down and report it at the
desk."
"Hadn't I better wait here, ma'am, and look again?"
She looked sharply at him.
"No; you'd better do just as I tell you."
So down we went. And we met Mr. Moriway there. She'd telephoned
him. The chambermaid was called, the housekeeper, the electrical
engineer who'd been fixing bells that morning, and, as I said, a
bell-boy named Nat, who told how he'd just come on duty when Mrs.
Kingdon's bell rang, found her key and returned it to her, and
was out of the room when she unlocked the box. That was all he
knew.
"Is he telling the truth?" Moriway asked Mrs Kingdon.
"Ye--es, I guess he is; but where are the diamonds? We must have
them--you know--to-day, George," she whispered. And then she
turned and went upstairs, leaving Moriway to do the rest.
"There's only one thing to do, Major," he said to the
proprietor. "Search 'em all and then--"
"Search me? It's an outrage!" cried the housekeeper.
"Search me if ye loike," growled McCarthy, resentfully. "Oi
wasn't there but a minute; the lady herself can tell ye that."
Katie, the chambermaid, flushed painfully, and there were
indignant tears in her eyes, which, I'll tell you in confidence,
made a girl named Nancy uncomfortable.
But the boy Nat; knowing that bell-boys have no rights, said
nothing. But he thought. He thought, Tom Dorgan, a lot of things
and a long way ahead.
The peppery old Major marched us all off to his private office.
Not much, girls, it hadn't come. For suddenly the annunciator
rang out.
Out of the corner of his eye, Nat looked at the bell-boy's bench.
It was empty. There was to be a ball that night, and the bells
were going it over all the place.
"Number Twenty-one!" shouted the clerk at the desk.
But Number Twenty-one didn't budge. His heart was beating like a
hammer, and the ting--ng--ng of that bell calling him rang in his
head like a song.
"Number Twenty-one!" yelled the clerk.
Oh, he's got a devil of a temper, has that clerk. Some day, Tom,
when you love me very much, go up to the hotel and break his face
for me.
"You.--boy--confound you, can't you hear?" he shouted.
That time he caught the Major's ear--the one that wasn't deaf. He
looked from Powers' black face to the bench and then to me. And
all the time the bell kept ringing like mad.
"Git!" he said to the boy. "And come back in a hurry."
Number Twenty-one got--but leisurely. It wouldn't do for a
bell-boy to hurry, particularly when he had such good cause.
Oh, girls, those stone stairs, the servants' stairs at the St.
James! They're fierce. I tell you, Mag, scrubbing the floors at
the Cruelty ain't so bad. But this time I was jolly glad
bell-boys weren't allowed in the elevator. For there were those
diamonds in my pants pocket, and I must get rid of 'em before I
got down to the office again. So I climbed those stairs, and
every step I took my eye was searching for a hiding-place.
I could have pitched the little bag out of a window, but Nancy
Olden wasn't throwing diamonds to the birds, any more than Mag
here is likely to cut off the braids of red hair we used to play
horse with when we drove her about the Cruelty yard.
One flight.
No chance.
Another.
Everything bare as stone and soap could keep it.
The third flight--my knees began to tremble, and not with
climbing. The call came from this floor. But I ran up a fourth
just on the chance, and there in a corner was a fire hatchet
strapped to the wall. Behind that hatchet Mrs. Kingdon's diamonds
might lie snug till evening. I put the ends of my fingers first
in the little crack to make sure the little bag wouldn't drop to
the floor, and then dived into my pocket and--
And there behind me, stealthily coming up the last turn of the
stairs was Mr. George Moriway!
Don't you hate a soft-walking man, Mag? That cute fellow was
cuter than the old Major himself, and had followed me every inch
of the way.
"There's something loose with this hatchet, sir," I said,
innocently looking down at him.
"Oh, there is? What an observing little fellow you are! Never
mind the hatchet; just tell me what number you were sent to
answer."
"Number?" I repeated, as though I couldn't see why he wanted to
know. "Why--431."
"Not much, my boy--331."
"'Scuse me, sir, ain't you mistaken?"
He looked at me for full a minute. I stared him straight in the
eye. A nasty eye he's got--black and bloodshot and cold and full
of suspicion. But it wavered a bit at the end.
"I may be," he said slowly, "but not about the number. Just
you turn around and get down to 331."
"All right, sir. Thank you very much. It might have got me in
trouble. The ladies are so particular about having the bells
answered quick--"
`I guess you'll get in trouble all right," he said and stood
watching--from where he stood he could watch me every inch of the
way--till I got to 331, at the end of the hall, Mrs. Kingdon's
door.
And the goods still on me, Tom, mind that.
My, but Mrs. Kingdon was wrathy when she saw me!
"Why did they send you?" she cried. "Why did you keep me
waiting so long? I want a chambermaid. I've rung a dozen times.
The whole place is crazy about that old ball to-night, and no one
can get decent attention."
"Can't I do what you want, ma'am?" I just yearned to get inside
that door.
"No," she snapped. "I don't want a boy to fasten my dress in
the back--"
"We often do, ma'am," I said softly.
"You do? Well--"
"Yes'm." I breathed again.
"Well--it's indecent. Go down and send me a maid."
She was just closing the door in my face--and Moriway waiting for
me to watch me down again.
"Mrs. Kingdon--"
"Well, what do you want?"
"I want to tell you that when I get down to the office they'll
search me."
She looked at me amazed.
"And--and there's something in my pocket I--you wouldn't like
them to find."
"What in the world--my diamonds! You did take them, you little
wretch?"
She caught hold of my coat. But Lordy! I didn't want to get away
a little bit. I let her pull me in, and then I backed up against
the door and shut it.
`Diamonds! Oh, no, ma'am. I hope I'm not a thief. But--but it
was something you dropped--this."
I fished Moriway's letter out of my pocket and handed it to her.
The poor old lady! Being a bell-boy you know just how old ladies
really are. This one at evening, after her face had been massaged
for an hour, and the manicure girl and the hair-dresser had gone,
wasn't so bad. But to-day, with the marks of the morning's tears
on her agitated face, with the blood pounding up to her temples
where the hair was thin and gray--Tom Dorgan, if I'm a vain old
fool like that when I'm three times as old as I am, just tie a
stone around my neck and take me down and drop me into the
nearest water, won't you?
"You abominable little wretch!" she sobbed. "I suppose you've
told everybody in the office."
"How could I, ma'am?"
"How could you?" She looked up, the tears on her flabby,
flushed cheek.
"I didn't know myself. I can't read writing--"
It was thin, but she wanted to believe it.
She could have taken me in her arms, she was so happy.
"There! there!" she patted my shoulder and gave me a dollar
bill. "I was a bit hasty, Nat. It's only a--a little business
matter that Mr. Moriway's attending to for me. We--we'll finish
it up this afternoon. I shouldn't like Miss Kingdon to know of
it, because--because I--never like to worry her about business,
you know. So don't mention it when she comes to-morrow."
"No'm. Shall I fasten your dress?" I simply had to stay in that
room till I could get rid of those diamonds.
With a faded old blush--the nicest thing about her I'd ever
seen--she turned her back.
"It's dark to-day, ma'am," I coaxed. "Would you mind coming
nearer the window?"
No, she wouldn't mind. She backed up to the corner like a gentle
little lamb. While I hooked with one hand, I dropped the little
bag where the carpet was still turned up, and with the toe of my
shoe spread it flat again.
"You're real handy for a boy," she said, pleased.
"Thank you, ma'am," I answered, pleased myself.
Moriway was still watching me, of course, when I came out, but I
ran downstairs, he following close, and when the Major got hold
of me, I pulled my pockets inside out like a little man.
Moriway was there at the time. I knew he wasn't convinced. But he
couldn't watch a bell-boy all day long, and the moment I was sure
his eyes were off me I was ready to get those diamonds back
again.
But not a call came all that afternoon from the west side of the
house, except the call of those pretty, precious things snug
under the carpet calling, calling to me to come and get them and
drop bell-boying for good.
At last I couldn't stand it any longer. There's only one thing to
do when your chance won't come to you; that is, to go to it. At
about four o'clock I lit out, climbed to the second story and
there--Mag, I always was the luckiest girl at the Cruelty, wasn't
I? Well, there was suite 231 all torn up, plumbers and painters
in there, and nothing in the world to prevent a boy's skinning
through when no one was watching, out of the window and up the
fire-escape.
Just outside of Mrs. Kingdon's window I lay still a minute. I had
seen her and Moriway go out together--she all gay with finery, he
carrying her bag. The lace curtains in 331 were blowing in the
breeze. Cautiously I parted them and looked in. Everything was
lovely. From where I lay I reached down and turned back the flap
of the carpet. It was too easy. Those darling diamonds seemed
just to leap up into my hand. In a moment I had them tucked away
in my pants pocket. Then down the fire-escape and out through
231, where I told the painter I'd been to get a toy the boy in
441 had dropped out of the window.
But he paid no attention to me. No one did, though I felt those
diamonds shining like an X-ray through my very body. I got
downstairs and was actually outside the door, almost in the
street and off to you, when a girl called me.
"Here, boy, carry this case," she said.
Do you know who it was? Oh, yes, you do, a dear old friend of
mine from Philadelphia, a young lady whose taste--well, all
right, I'll tell you: it was the girl with the red coat, and the
hat with the chinchilla fur.
How did they look? Oh, fairly well on a blonde! But to my taste
the last girl I'd seen in the coat and hat was handsomer.
Well, I carried her suit-case and followed her back into the
hotel. I didn't want to a bit, though that coat still--wonder how
she got it back!
She sailed up the hall and into the elevator, and I had to
follow. We got of at the third story, and she brought me right to
the door of 331. And then I knew this must be Evelyn.
"Mrs. Kingdon's out, Miss. She didn't expect you till
to-morrow."
"Did she tell you that? Too bad she isn't at home! She said
she'd be kept busy all day to-day with a business matter, and
that I'd better not get here till to-morrow. But I--"
"Wanted to get here in time for the wedding?" I suggested softly.
You should have seen her jump.
"Wedding! Not--"
"Mrs. Kingdon and Mr. Moriway."
She turned white.
"Has that man followed her here? Quick, tell me. Has she
actually married him?"
"No--not yet. It's for five o'clock at the church on the
corner."
"How do you know?" She turned on me, suddenly suspicious.
"Well--I do know. And I'm the only person in the house that
does."
"I don't believe you."
She took out her key and opened the door, and I followed her in
with the suit-case. But before I could get it set down on the
floor, she had swooped on a letter that was lying in the middle
of the table, had torn it open, and then with a cry had come
whirling toward me.
"Where is this church? Come, help me to get to it before five
and I'll--oh, you shall have anything in the world you want!"
She flew out into the hall, I after her. And first thing you know
we were down in the street, around the corner, and there in front
of the church was a carriage with Moriway just helping Mrs.
Kingdon out.
"Mother!"
At that cry the old lady's knees seemed to crumble under her. Her
poor old painted face looked out ghastly and ashamed from her
wedding finery. But Evelyn in her red coat flew to her and took
her in her arms as though she was a child. And like a child, Mrs.
Kingdon sobbed and made excuses and begged to be forgiven.
I looked at Moriway. It was all the pay I wanted--particularly as
I had those little diamonds.
"You're just in time, Miss Kingdon," he said uneasily, "to
make your mother happy by your presence at her wedding."
"I'm just in time, Mr. Moriway, to see that my mother's not made
unhappy by your presence."
"Evelyn!" Mrs. Kingdon remonstrated.
"Come, Sarah." Moriway offered his arm.
The bride shook her head.
"To-morrow," she said feebly.
Moriway breathed a swear.
Miss Kingdon laughed.
"I've come to take care of you, you silly little mother, dear
. . . . It won't be to-morrow, Mr. Moriway."
"No--not to-morrow--next week," sighed Mrs. Kingdon.
"In fact, mother's changed her mind, Mr. Moriway. She thinks it
ungenerous to accept such a sacrifice from a man who might be her
son--don't you, mother?"
"Well, perhaps, George--" She looked up from her daughter's
shoulder--she was crying all over that precious red coat of
mine--and her eyes lit on me. "Oh--you wicked boy, you told a
lie!" she gasped. "You did read my letter."
I laughed; laughed out loud, it was such a bully thing to watch
Moriway's face.
But that was an unlucky laugh of mine; it turned his wrath on me.
He made a dive toward me. I ducked and ran. Oh, how I ran! But if
he hadn't slipped on the curb he'd have had me. As he fell,
though, he let out a yell.
"Stop thief! stop thief! Thief! Thief! Thief!"
May you never hear it, Mag, behind you when you've somebody
else's diamonds in your pocket. It sounds--it sounds the way the
bay of the hounds must sound to the hare. It seems to fly along
with the air; at the same time to be behind you, at your side,
even in front of you.
I heard it bellowed in a dozen different voices, and every now
and then I could hear Moriway as I pelted on--that brassy, cruel
bellow of his that made my heart sick.
And then all at once I heard a policeman's whistle.
That whistle was like a signal--I saw the gates of the Correction
open before me. I saw your Nance, Tom, in a neat striped dress,
and she was behind bars--bars--bars! There were bars everywhere
before me. In fact, I felt them against my very hands, for in my
mad race I had shot up a blind alley--a street that ended in a
garden behind an iron fence.
I grabbed the diamonds to throw them from me, but I couldn't--I
just couldn't! I jumped the fence where the gate was low, and
with that whistle flying shrill and shriller after me I ran to
the house.
I might have jumped from the frying-pan? Of course, I might. But
it was all fire to me. To be caught at the end is at least no
worse than to be caught at the beginning. Anyhow, it was my one
chance, and I took it as unhesitatingly as a rat takes a leap
into a trap to escape a terrier. Only--only, it was my luck that
the trap wasn't set! The room was empty. I pushed open a glass
door, and fell over an open trunk that stood beside it.
It bruised my knee and tore my hand, but oh!--it was nuts to me.
For it was a woman's trunk filled with women's things.
A skirt! A blessed skirt! And not a striped one. I threw off the
bell-boy's jacket and I got into that dear dress so quick it made
my head swim.
The jacket was a bit tight but I didn't button it, and I'd just
got a stiff little hat perched on my head when I heard the tramp
of men on the sidewalk, and in the dusk saw the cop's buttons at
the gate.
Caught? Not much. Not yet. I threw open the glass doors and
walked out into the garden.
"Miss--Omar--I wonder if it would be Miss Omar?"
You bet I didn't take time to see who it was talking before I
answered. Of course I was Miss Omar. I was Miss Anybody that had
a right to wear skirts and be inside those blessed gates.
"Ah--h! I fancied you might be. I've been expecting you."
It was a lazy, low voice with a laugh in it, and it came from a
wheeled chair, where a young man lay. Sallow he was and slim and
long, and helpless--you could see that by his white hanging
hands. But his voice--it was what a woman's voice would be if she
were a man. It made you perk up and pretend to be somewhere near
its level. It fitted his soft, black clothes and his fine, clean
face. It meant silks and velvets and--
Oh, all right, Tommy Dorgan, if you're going to get jealous of a
voice!
"Excuse me, Mr. Latimer." The cop came in as he spoke, Moriway
following; the rest of the hounds hung about. "There's a
thieving bell-boy from the hotel that's somewhere in your
grounds. Can I come in and get him?"
"In here, Sergeant? Aren't you mistaken?"
"No; Mr. Moriway here saw him jump the gate not five minutes
since."
"Strange, and I here all the time! I may have dozed of, though.
Certainly--certainly. Look for the little rascal. What's he
stolen? Diamonds! Tut! tut! Enterprising, isn't he? . . . Miss
Omar, won't you kindly reach the bell yonder--no, on the table;
that's it--and ring for some one to take the officer about?"
I rang.
Do you know what happened? An electric light strung on the tree
above the table shone out, and there I stood under it with
Moriway's eyes full upon me.
"Great--!" he began.
"Just ring again--" Mr. Latimer's voice came soft as silk.
My fingers trembled so, the bell clattered out of them and fell
jangling to the ground. But it rang. And the light above me went
out like magic. I fell back into a garden chair.
"I beg your pardon, Mr.--was Moriway the name?--I must have
interrupted you, but my eyes are troubling me this evening, and I
can't bear the light. Miss Omar, I thought the housekeeper had
instructed you: one ring means lights, two mean I want Burnett.
Here he comes. . . Burnett, take Sergeant Mulhill through the
place. He's looking for a thief. You will accompany the Sergeant,
Mr.--Moriway?"
"Thank you--no. If you don't mind, I'll wait out here."
That meant me. I moved toward the gate.
"Not at all. Have a seat. Miss Omar, sit down, won't you?" I
sat down.
"Miss Omar reads to me, Mr. Moriway. I'm an invalid, as you see,
dependent on the good offices of my man. I find a woman's voice a
soothing change."
"It must be. Particularly if the voice is pleasing. Miss Omar--I
didn't quite catch the name--"
He waited. But Miss Omar had nothing to say that minute.
"Yes, that's the name. You've got it all right," said Latimer.
"An uncommon name, isn't it?"
"I don't think I ever heard it before. Do you know, Miss Omar,
as I heard your voice just before we got to the gate, it sounded
singularly boyish to me."
"Mr. Latimer does not find it so--do you?" I said as sweet--as
sweet as I could coax. How sweet's that, Tom Dorgan?
"Not at all." A little laugh came from Latimer as though he was
enjoying a joke all by himself. But Moriway jumped with
satisfaction. He knew the voice all right.
"Have you a brother, may I ask?" He leaned over and looked
keenly at me.
"I am an orphan," I said sadly, "with no relatives."
"A pitiful position," sneered Moriway. "You look so much like
a boy I know that--"
"Do you really think so?" So awfully polite was Latimer to such
a rat as Moriway. Why? Well, wait. "I can't agree with you. Do
you know, I find Miss Omar very feminine. Of course, short
hair--"
"Her hair is short, then!"
"Typhoid," I murmured.
"Too bad!" Moriway sneered.
"Yes," I snapped. "I thought it was at the time. My hair was
very heavy and long, and I had a chance to sit in a window at
Troyon's where they were advertising a hair tonic and--"
Rotten? Of course it was. I'd no business to gabble, and just
because you and your new job, Mag, came to my mind at that
minute, there I went putting my foot in it.
Moriway laughed. I didn't like the sound of his laugh.
"Your reader is versatile, Mr. Latimer," he said.
"Yes." Latimer smoothed the soft silk rug that lay over him.
"Poverty and that sort of versatility are often bedfellows, eh?
. . . Tell me, Mr. Moriway, these lost diamonds are yours?"
"No. They belong to a--a friend of mine, Mrs. Kingdon."
"Oh! the old lady who was married this afternoon to a young
fortune-hunter!" I couldn't resist it.
Moriway jumped out of his seat.
"She was not married," he stuttered. "She--"
"Changed her mind? How sensible of her! Did she find out what a
crook the fellow was? What was his name--Morrison?
No--Middleway--I have heard it."
"May I ask, Miss Omar"--I didn't have to see his face; his
voice told how mad with rage he was--"how you come to be
acquainted with a matter that only the contracting parties could
possibly know of?"
"Why, they can't have kept it very secret, the old lady and the
young rascal who was after her money, for you see we both knew of
it; and I wasn't the bride and you certainly weren't the groom,
were you?"
An exclamation burst from him.
"Mr. Latimer," he stormed, "may I see you a moment alone?"
Phew! That meant me. But I got up just the same.
"Just keep your seat, Miss Omar." Oh, that silken voice of
Latimer's! "Mr. Moriway, I have absolutely no acquaintance with
you. I never saw you till to-night. I can't imagine what you may
have to say to me, that my secretary--Miss Omar acts in that
capacity--may not hear."
"I want to say," burst from Moriway, "that she looks the image
of the boy Nat, who stole Mrs. Kingdon's diamonds, that the voice
is exactly the same, that--"
"But you have said it, Mr. Moriway--quite successfully intimated
it, I assure you."
"She knows of my--of Mrs. Kingdon's marriage, that that boy Nat
found out about."
"And you yourself also, as Miss Omar mentioned."
"Myself? Damn it, I'm Moriway, the man she was going to marry.
Why shouldn't I--"
"Ah--h!" Latimer's shoulders shook with a gentle laugh. "Well,
Mr. Moriway, gentlemen don't swear in my garden. Particularly
when ladies are present. Shall we say good evening? Here comes
Mulhill now. . . . Nothing, Sergeant? Too bad the rogue escaped,
but you'll catch him. They may get away from you, but they never
stay long, do they? Good evening--good evening, Mr. Moriway."
They tramped on and out, Moriway's very back showing his rage. He
whispered something to the Sergeant, who turned to look at me but
shook his head, and the gate clanged after them.
A long sigh escaped me.
"Warm, isn't it?" Latimer leaned forward. "Now, would you mind
ringing again, Miss Omar?"
I bent and groped for the bell and rang it twice.
"How quick you are to learn!" he said. "But I really wanted
the light this time. . . . Just light up, Burnett," he called to
the man, who had come out on the porch.
The electric bulb flashed out again just over my head. Latimer
turned and looked at me. When I couldn't bear it any longer, I
looked defiantly up at him.
"Pardon," he said, smiling; nice teeth he has and clear eyes.
"I was just looking for that boyish resemblance Mr. Moriway
spoke of. I hold to my first opinion--you're very feminine, Miss
Omar. Will you read to me now, if you please?" He pointed to a
big open book on the table beside his couch.
"I think--if you don't mind, Mr. Latimer, I'll begin the reading
to-morrow." I got up to go. I was through with that garden now.
"But I do mind!"
Silken voice? Not a bit of it! I turned on him so furious I
thought I didn't care what came of it--when over by the great
gate-post I saw a man crouching--Moriway.
I sat down again and pulled the book farther toward the light.
We didn't learn much poetry at the Cruelty, did we, Mag? But I
know some now, just the same. When I began to read I heard only
one word--Moriway--Moriway--Moriway. But I must have--forgotten
him after a time, and the dark garden with the light on only one
spot, and the roses smelling, and Latimer lying perfectly still,
his face turned toward me, for I was reading--listen, I bet I can
remember that part of it if I say it slow--
Oh, Thou, who Man of baser Earth didst make,
And ev'n with Paradise devise the Snake:
For all the sin wherewith the Face of Man
Is blacken'd--Man's forgiveness give--and take!
--when all at once Mr. Latimer put his hand on the book. I looked
up with a start. The shadow by the gate was gone.
Yon rising Moon that looks for us again---
How oft hereafter will she wax and wane;
How oft hereafter rising look for us
Through this same Garden--and for ONE in vain!
Latimer was saying it without the book and with a queer smile
that made me feel I hadn't quite caught on.
"Thank you, that will do," he went on. "That is enough,
Miss--" He stopped.
I waited.
He did not say "Omar."
I looked him square in the eye--and then I had enough.
"But what in the devil did you make believe for?" I asked.
He smiled.
"If ever you come to lie on your back day and night, year in and
year out, and know that never in your life will it be any
different, you may take pleasure in a bit of excitement and--and
learn to pity the under dog, who, in this case, happened to be a
boy that leaped over the gate as though his heart was in his
mouth. Just as you would admire the nerve of the young lady that
came out of the house a few minutes after in your housekeeper's
Sunday gown."
Yes, grin, Torn Dorgan. You won't grin long.
I put down the book and got up to go.
"Good night, then, and thank you, Mr. Latimer."
"Good night. . . . Oh, Miss--" He didn't say "Omar"--"there
is a favor you might do me."
"Sure!" I wondered what it could be.
"Those diamonds. I've got to have them, you know, to send them
back to their owner. I don't mind helping a--a person who helps
himself to other people's things, but I can't let him get away
with his plunder without being that kind of person myself. So--"
Why didn't I lie? Because there are some people you don't lie to,
Tom Dorgan. Don't talk to me, you bully, I'm savage enough. To
have rings and pins and ear-rings, a whole bagful of diamonds,
and to haul 'em out of your pocket and lay 'em on the table there
before him!
"I wonder," he said slowly, as he put them away in his own
pocket, "what a man like me could do for a girl like you?"
"Reform her!" I snarled. "Show her how to get diamonds honestly."
Say, Tom, let's go in for bigger game.
III.
Oh, Mag, Mag, for heaven's sake, let me talk to you! No, don't
say anything. You must let me tell you. No--don't call the other
girls. I can't bear to tell this to anybody but you.
You know how I kicked when Tom hit on Latimer's as the place we
were to scuttle. And the harder I kicked the stubborner he got,
till he swore he'd do the job without me if I wouldn't come
along. Well--this is the rest of it.
The house, you know, stands at the end of the street. If you
could walk through the garden with the iron fence you'd come
right down the bluff on to the docks and out into East River. Tom
and I came up to it from the docks last night. It was dark and
wet, you remember. The mud was thick on my trousers--Nance
Olden's a boy every time when it comes to doing business.
"We'll blow it all in, Tom," I said, as we climbed. "We'll
spend a week at the Waldorf, and then, Tom Dorgan, we'll go to
Paris. I want a red coat and hat with chinchilla, like that dear
one I lost, and a low-neck satin gown, and a silk petticoat with
lace, and a chain with rhinestones, and--"
"Just wait, Sis, till you get out of this. And keep still."
"I can't. I'm so fidgety I must talk or I'll shriek."
"Well, you'll shut up just the same. Do you hear me?"
I shut up, but my teeth chattered so that Tom stopped at the
gate.
"Look here, Nance, are you going to flunk? Say it now--yes or
no."
That made me mad.
"Tom Dorgan," I said, "I'll bet your own teeth chattered the
first time you went in for a thing like this. I'm all right.
You'll squeal before I do."
"That's more like. Here's the gate. It's locked. Come, Nance."
With a good, strong swing he boosted me over, handed me the bag
of tools and sprang over himself. . . . He looked kind o'
handsome and fine, my Tom, as he lit square and light on his feet
beside me. And because he did, I put my arm in his and gave it a
squeeze.
Oh, Mag, it was so funny, going through Latimer's garden! There
was the garden table where I had sat reading and thinking he took
me for Miss Omar. There was the bench where that beast Moriway
sat sneering at me. The wheeled chair was gone. And it was so
late everything looked asleep. But something was left behind that
made me think I heard Latimer's slow, silken voice, and made me
feel cheap--turned inside out like an empty pocket--a dirty,
ragged pocket with a seam in it.
"You'll stay here, Nancy, and watch," Tom whispered. "You'll
whistle once if a cop comes inside the gate, but not before he's
inside the gate. Don't whistle too soon--mind that--nor too loud.
I'll hear ye all right. And I'll whistle just once if--anything
happens. Then you run--hear me? Run like the devil--"
"Tommy--"
"Well, what?"
"Nothing--all right." I wanted to say good-by--but you know
Tom.
Mag, were you ever where you oughtn't to be at midnight--alone?
No, I know you weren't. 'Twas your ugly little face and your hair
that saved you--the red hair we used to guy so at the Cruelty.
I can see you now--a freckle-faced, thin little devil, with the
tangled hair to the very edge of your ragged skirt, yanked in
that first day to the Cruelty when the neighbors complained your
crying wouldn't let 'em sleep nights. The old woman had just
locked you in there, hadn't she, to starve when she lit out.
Mothers are queer, ain't they, when they are queer. I never
remember mine.
Yes, I'll go on.
I stood it all right for a time, out there alone in the night.
But I never was one to wait patiently. I can't wait--it isn't in
me. But there I had to stand and just--God!--just wait.
If I hadn't waited so hard at the very first I wouldn't 'a' given
out so soon. But I stood so still and listened so terribly hard
that the trees began to whisper and the bushes to crack and
creep. I heard things in my head and ears that weren't sounding
anywhere else. And all of a sudden--tramp, tramp, tramp--I heard
the cop's footsteps.
He stopped over there by the swinging electric light above the
gate. I crouched down behind the iron bench.
And my coat caught a twig on a bush and its crack--ck was like a
yell.
I thought I'd die. I thought I'd scream. I thought I'd run.
I thought I'd faint. But I didn't--for there, asleep on a rug that
some one had forgotten to take in, was the house cat. I gave her
a quick slap, and she flew out and across the path like a flash.
The cop watched her, his hand on the gate, and passed on.
Mag Monahan, if Tom had come out that minute without a bean and
gone home with me, I'd been so relieved I'd never have tried
again. But he didn't come. Nothing happened. Nights and nights
and nights went by, and the stillness began to sound again. My
throat went choking mad. I began to shiver, and I reached for the
rug the cat had lain on.
Funny, how some things strike you! This was Latimer's rug. I had
noticed it that evening--a warm, soft, mottled green that looked
like silk and fur mixed. I could see the way his long, white
hands looked on it, and as I touched it I could hear his voice--
Oh, Thou, who Man of baser Earth didst make,
And ev'n with Paradise devise the Snake:
For all the Sin wherewith the Face of Man
Is blacken'd--Man's forgiveness give--and take!
Ever hear a man like that say a thing like that? No? Well,
it's--it's different. It's as if the river had spoken--or a
tree--it's so--it's so different.
That saved me--that verse that I remembered. I said it over and
over and over again to myself. I fitted it to the ferry whistles
on the bay--to the cop's steps as they passed again--to the roar
of the L-train and the jangling of the surface cars.
And right in the middle of it--every drop of blood in my body
seemed to leak out of me, and then come rushing back to my
head--I heard Tom's whistle.
Oh, it's easy to say "run," and I really meant it when I
promised Tom. But you see I hadn't heard that whistle then. When
it came, it changed everything. It set the devil in me loose.
I felt as if the world was tearing something of mine away from me.
Stand for it? Not Nance Olden.
I did run--but it was toward the house. That whistle may have
meant "Go!" To me it yelled "Come!"
I got in through the window Tom had left open. The place was
still quiet. Nobody inside had heard that whistle so far as I
could tell.
I crept along--the carpets were thick and soft and silky as the
rug I'd had my hands buried in to keep 'em warm.
Along a long hall and through a great room, whose walls were
thick with books, I was making for a light I could see at the
back of the house. That's where Tom Dorgan must be and where I
must be to find out--to know.
With my hands out in front of me I hurried, but softly, and just
as I had reached the portieres below which the light streamed, my
arms closed about a thing--cold as marble, naked--I thought it
was a dead body upright there, and with a cry, I pitched forward
through the curtains into the lighted room.
"Nance!--you devil!"
You recognize it? Yep, it was Tom. Big Tom Dorgan, at the foot of
Latimer's bed, his hands above his head, and Latimer's gun aimed
right at his heart.
Think of the pluck of that cripple, will you?
His eyes turned on me for just a second, and then fixed
themselves again on Tom. But his voice went straight at me, all
right.
"You are something of a thankless devil, I must admit,
Miss--Omar," he said.
I didn't say anything. You don't say things in answer to things
like that. You feel 'em.
Ashamed? What do I care for a man with a voice like that! . . .
But you should have heard how Tom's growl sounded after it.
"Why the hell didn't you light out?"
"I couldn't, Tom. I just--couldn't," I sobbed.
"There seems invariably to be a misunderstanding of signals
where Miss Omar is concerned. Also a disposition to use strong
language in the lady's presence. Don't you, young man!"
"Don't you call me Miss Omar!" I blazed, stamping my foot.
He laughed a contemptuous laugh.
I could have killed him then, I hated him so. At least, I thought
I could; but just then Tom sent a spark out of the corner of his
eye to me that meant--it meant--
You know, Mag, what it would have meant to Latimer if I had done
what Tom's eye said.
I thought at first I had done it--it passed through my mind so
quick; the sweet words I'd say--the move I'd make--the quick
knocking-up of the pistol, and then--
It was that--that sight of Tom, big Tom Dorgan, with rage in his
heart and death in his hand, leaping on that cripple's body--it
made me sick!
I stood there gasping--stood a moment too long. For the curtains
were pushed aside, and Burnett, Latimer's servant, and the cop
came in.
Tom didn't fight; he's no fool to waste himself.
But I--well, never mind about me. I caught a glimpse of a crazy
white face on a boy's body in the great glass opposite and heard
my own voice break into something I'd never heard before.
Tom stood at last with the handcuffs on.
"It's your own fault, you damned little chump!" he said to me,
as they went out.
You lie, Mag Monahan, he's no such thing! He may be a hard man to
live with, but he's mine--my Tom--my Tom!
What? Latimer?
Well, do you know, it's funny about him. He'd told the cop that
I'd peached--peached on Tom! So they went off without me.
Why?
That's what he said himself when we were alone.
"In order to insure for myself another of your most interesting
visits, I suppose, Miss--not Omar? All right. . . . Tell me, can
I do nothing for you? Aren't you sick of this sort of life?"
"Get Tom out of jail."
He shook his head.
"I'm too good a friend of yours to do you such a turn."
"I don't want any friend that isn't Tom's."
He threw the pistol from him and pulled himself up, till he sat
looking at me.
"In heaven's name, what can you see in a fellow like that?"
"What's that to you?" I turned to go.
"To me? Things of that sort are nothing, of course, to me--me,
that `luckless Pot He marr'd in making.' But, tell me--can a girl
like you tell the truth? What made you hesitate when that fellow
told you with his eyes to murder me?"
"How did you know?"
"How? The glass. See over yonder. I could watch every expression
on both your faces. What was it--what was it, child, that made
you--oh, if you owe me a single heart-beat of gratitude, tell me
the truth!"
"You've said it yourself."
"What?"
"That line we read the other night about `the luckless Pot'."
His face went gray and he fell back on his pillows. The strenuous
life we'd been leading him, Tom and I, was too much for him, I
guess.
Do you know, I really felt sorry I'd said it. But he is a
cripple. Did he expect me to say he was big and strong and
dashing--like Tom?
I left him there and got out and away. But do you know what I
saw, Mag, beside his bed, just as Burnett came to put me out?
My old blue coat with the buttons--the bell-boy's coat I'd left
in the housekeeper's room when I borrowed her Sunday rig. The
coat was hanging over a chair, and right by it, on a table, was
that big book with a picture covering every page, still open at
that verse about
Through this same Garden--and for ONE in vain!
IV.
No--no--no! No more whining from Nance Olden. Listen to what I've
got to tell you, Mag, listen!
You know where I was coming from yesterday when I passed Troyon's
window and grinned up at you, sitting there, framed in bottles of
hair tonic, with all that red wig of yours streaming about you?
Yep, from that little, rat-eyed lawyer's office. I was glum as
mud. I felt as though Tom and myself were both flies caught by
the leg--he by the law and I by the lawyer--in a sticky mess; and
the more we flapped our wings and struggled and pulled, the more
we hurt and tore ourselves, and the sooner we'd have to give it
up.
Oh, that wizen-faced little lawyer that lives on the Tom Dorgans
and the Nance Oldens, who don't know which way to turn to get the
money! He looks at me out of his red little eyes and measures in
dollars what I'd do for Tom. And then he sets his price a notch
higher than that.
When I passed the big department store, next to Troyon's, I was
thinking of this, and I turned in there, just aching for some of
the boodle that flaunts itself in a poor girl's face when she's
desperate, from every silk and satin rag, from every lace and
jewel in the place.
The funny part of it is that I didn't want it for myself, but for
Tom. 'Pon my soul, Mag, though I would have filled my arms with
everything I saw, I wouldn't have put on one thing of all the
duds; just hiked off to soak 'em and pay the lawyer. I might have
been as old and ugly and rich as the yellow-skinned woman
opposite me, who was turning over laces on the middle counter,
for all these things meant to me--with Tom in jail.
I was thinking this as I looked at her, when all at once I saw--
You know it takes a pretty quick touch, sharp eyes and good nerve
to get away with the goods in a big shop like that. Or it takes
something altogether different. It was the different way she did
it. She took up the piece of lace--it was a big collar, fine like
a cobweb picture in threads,--you can guess what it must have
been worth if that old sinner, Mother Douty, gave me fifteen
dollars for it. She took it up in a quick, eager way, as though
she'd found just what she wanted. Then she took out a lace sample
from her gold-linked purse and held them both up close to her
blinky little eyes, looking at it through a gold lorgnette with
emeralds in the handle; pulling it and feeling it with the air of
one who knows a fine thing when she sees it, and just what makes
it fine. Then she rustled off to the door to examine it closely
in the light, and--Mag Monahan, she walked right out with it!
At least, she'd got beyond the inner doors when I tapped her on
the shoulder.
"I beg pardon, madam." My best style, Mag.
She pulled herself up haughtily and blinked at me. She was a
little, thin mummy of a woman, just wrapped away in silks and
velvets, but on the inside of that nervous, little old body of
hers there must have been some spring of good material that
wasn't all unwound yet.
She stood blinking at me without a word.
"That lace. You haven't paid for it," I said.
Her short-sighted eyes fell from my face to the collar she held
in her hand. Her yellow face grew ghastly.
"Oh, mercy! You--you don't--"
"I am a detective for the store, and--"
"But--"
"Sh! We don't like any noise made about these things, and you
yourself wouldn't enjoy--"
"Do you know who I am, young woman?" She fumbled in her satchel
and passed a card to me.
Glory be! Guess, Mag. Oh, you'd never guess, you dear old Mag!
Besides, you haven't got the acquaintance in high society that
Nance Olden can boast.
| ------------------------------- |
Mrs. MILLS D. VAN WAGENEN
| ------------------------------- |
Oh--Mag! Shame on you not to know the name even of the Bishop of
the great state of--yes, the lean, short little Bishop with a
little white beard, and the softest eye and the softest heart and--
my very own Bishop, Nancy Olden's Bishop. And this was his wife.
Tut--tut, Mag! Of course not. A bishop's wife may be a kleptomaniac;
it's only Cruelty girls that really steal from stores.
"I've met the Bishop, Mrs. Van Wagenen." I didn't say how--
she wouldn't appreciate that story.
"And he was once very kind to me. But he would be the first to
tell me to do my duty now. I'll do it as quietly as I can for his
sake. But you must come with me or I must arrest--"
She put up a shaking hand. Dear little old guy!
"Don't--don't say it! It's all a mistake, which can be rectified
in a moment. I've been trying to match this piece of lace for
years. I got it at Malta when--when Mills and I--on our
honeymoon. When I saw it there on the counter I was so
delighted--I never thought--I intended taking it to the light to
be sure the pattern was the same, my eyesight is so wretched--and
when you spoke to me it was the first inkling I had that I had
really taken it without paying! You certainly understand," she
pleaded in agitation. "I have no need to steal--you must know
that--oh, that I wouldn't--that--I couldn't--If you will just let
me pay you--"
Here now, Mag Monahan, don't you get to sneering. She was
straight--right on the level, all right. You couldn't listen to
that cracked little voice of hers a minute without being sure of
it.
I was just about to permit her graciously to pay me the
money,--for my friend? the dear Bishop's sake, of course,--when a
big floor-walker happened to catch sight of us.
"If you'll come with me, Mrs. Van Wagenen, to a dressing-room,
I'll arrange your collar for you," I said very loud. And then,
in a whisper: "Of course, I understand, but the thing may look
different to other people. And that big floor-walker there gets a
commission from the newspapers every time he tells them--"
She gave a squawk for all the world like a dried-up little hen
scuttling out of a yellow dog's way, and we took the elevator to
the second floor.
The minute I closed the door of the little fitting-room she held
out the lace to me.
"I have changed my mind," she said, "and shall give you the
lace back. I will not keep it. I can not--I can not bear the
sight of it. It terrifies me and shocks me. I can take no
pleasure in it. Besides--besides, it will be discipline for me to
do without it now that I have found it after all these years.
Every day I shall look at the place in my collection which it
would have occupied, and I shall say to myself: `Maria Van
Wagenen, take warning. See to what terrible straits a worldly
passion may bring one; what unconscious greed may do!' I shall
give the money to Mills for charity and I will never--never fill
that place in my collection."
"What good will that do?" I asked, puzzled, while I folded the
collar up into a very small package.
"You mean that I ought to submit to the exposure--that I deserve
the lesson and the punishment--not for stealing, but for being
absorbed in worldly things. Perhaps you are right. It certainly
shows that you have at some time been under Mills' spiritual
care, my dear. I wonder if he would insist--whether I ought--yes,
I suppose he would. Oh!"
A saleswoman's head was thrust in the door. "Excuse me," she
said, "I thought the room was empty."
"We've just finished trying on," I said sweetly.
"Don't go!" The Bishop's wife turned to her, her little
fluttering hands held out appealingly. "And do not misunderstand
me. The thing may seem wrong in your eyes, as this young woman
says, but if you will listen patiently to my explanations I am
sure you will see that it was a mere eager over-sight--the fault
of absent-mindedness, hardly the sin of covetousness, and surely
not a crime. I am making this confession--"
The tender conscience of the dear, blameless little soul! She was
actually giving herself away. Worse--she was giving me away, too.
But I couldn't stand that. I saw the saleswoman's puzzled
face--she was a tall woman with a big bust, big hips and the big
head all right, and she wore her long-train black rig for all the
world like a Cruelty girl who had stolen the matron's skirt to
"play lady" in. I got behind little Mrs. Bishop, and looking
out over her head, I tapped my forehead significantly.
The saleswoman tumbled. That was all right. But so did the
Bishop's wife; for she turned and caught me at it.
"You shall not save me from myself and what I deserve," she cried.
"I am perfectly sane and you know it, and you are doing me no favor
in trying to create the contrary impression. I demand an--"
"An interview with the manager," I interrupted. "I'm sure Mrs.
Van Wagenen can see the manager. Just go with the lady, Mrs. Van
Wagenen, and I'll follow with the goods."
She did it meek as a lamb, talking all the time, but never
beginning at the beginning--luckily for me. So that I had time to
slip from one dressing-room to the next, with the lace up my
sleeve, out to the elevator, and down into the street.
D'ye know what heaven must be, Mag? A place where you always get
away with the swag, and where it's always just the minute after
you've made a killing.
Cocky? Well, I should say I was. I was drunk enough with success
to take big chances. And just while I was wishing for something
really big to tackle, it came along in the shape of that big
floor-walker!
He was without a hat, and his eyes looked fifty ways at once.
But you've got to look fifty-one if you want to catch Nance Olden.
I ran up the stairs of the first flat-house and rang the bell.
And as I sailed up in the elevator I saw the big floor-walker
hurry past; he'd lost the scent.
The boy let me off at the top floor, and after the elevator had
gone down I walked up to the roof. It was fine 'way up there, so
still and high, with the lights coming out down in the town. And
I took out my pretty lace collar and put it around my neck,
wishing I could keep it and wishing that I had, at least, a glass
to see myself in it just once, when my eye caught the window of
the next house.
It would do for a mirror all right, for the dark green shade was
down. But at sight of the shade blowing in the wind I forgot all
about the collar.
It's this way, Mag, when they press you too far; and that little
rat of a lawyer had got me most to the wall. I looked at the
window, measuring the little climb it would be for me to get to
it,--the house next door was just one story higher than the one
where I was, so its top story was on a level with the roof nearly
where I stood. And I made up my--mind to get what would let Tom
off easy, or break into jail myself.
And so I didn't care much what I might fall into through that
window. And perhaps because I didn't care, I slipped into a dark
hall, and not a thing stirred; not a footstep creaked. I felt
like the Princess--Princess Nancy Olden--come to wake the
Sleeping Beauty; some dude it'd be that would have curly hair
like Tom Dorgan's, and would wear clothes like my friend
Latimer's, over in Brooklyn.
Can you see me there, standing on one leg like a stork, ready to
lie or to fly at the first sound?
Well, the first sound didn't come. Neither did the second. In
fact, none of 'em came unless I made 'em myself.
Softly as Molly goes when the baby's just dropped off to sleep, I
walked toward an open door. It was a parlor, smelly with tobacco,
and with lots of papers and books around. And nary a
he-beauty--nor any other kind.
I tried the door of a room next to it. A bedroom. But no Beauty.
Silly! Don't you tumble yet? It was a bachelor's apartment, and
the Bachelor Beauty was out, and Princess Nancy had the place all
to herself.
I suppose I really ought to have left my card--or he wouldn't
know who had waked him--but I hadn't intended to go calling when
I left home. So I thought I'd look for one of his as a
souvenir--and anything else of his I could make use of.
There were shirts I'd liked for Tom, dandy colored ones, and
suits with checks in 'em and without. But I wanted something easy
and small and flat, made of crackly printed yellow or green
paper, with numbers on it.
How did I know he had anything like that? Why, Mag, Mag Monahan,
one would think you belonged to the Bishop's set, you're so
simple!
I had to turn on the electric light after a bit--it got so dark.
And I don't like light in other people's houses when they're not
at home, and neither am I. But there was nothing in the bedroom
except some pearl studs. I got those and then went back to the
parlor.
The desk caught my eye. Oh, Mag, it had the loveliest pictures on
it--pictures of swell actresses and dancers. It was mahogany,
with lots of little drawers and two curvy side boxes. I pulled
open all the drawers. They were full of papers all right, but
they were printed, cut from newspapers, and all about theaters.
"You can't feed things like this, Nance, to that shark of a
lawyer," I said to myself, pushing the box on the side
impatiently.
And then I giggled outright.
Why?
Just 'cause--I had pushed that side box till it swung aside on
hinges I didn't know about, and there, in a little secret nest,
was a pile of those same crisp, crinkly paper things I'd been
looking for. 20--40--60--110--160--210--260--310!
Three hundred and ten dollars, Mag Monahan. Three hundred and
ten, and Nance Olden!
"Glory be!" I whispered.
"Glory be damned!" I heard behind me.
I turned. The bills just leaked out of my hand on to the floor.
The Bachelor Beauty had come home, Mag, and nabbed the poor
Princess, instead of her catching him napping.
He wasn't a beauty either--a big, stout fellow with a black
mustache. His hand on my shoulder held me tight, but the look in
his eyes behind his glasses held me tighter. I threw out my arms
over the desk and hid my face.
Caught! Nancy Olden, with her hands dripping, and not a lie in
her smart mouth!
He picked up the bills I had dropped, counted them and put them
in his pocket. Then he unhooked a telephone and lifted the stand
from his desk.
"Hello! Spring 3100--please. Hello! Chief's office? This is
Obermuller, Standard Theater. I want an officer to take charge of
a thief I've caught in my apartments here at the Bronsonia. Yes,
right on the corner. Hold him till you come? Well--rather!"
He put down the 'phone. I pulled the pearl studs out of my
pocket.
"You might as well take these, too," I said.
"So thoughtful of you, seeing that you'd be searched! But I'll
take 'em, anyway. You intended them for--Him? You didn't get
anything else?"
I shook my head as I lay there.
"Hum!" It was half a laugh, and half a sneer. I hated him for
it, as he sat leaning back on the back legs of his chair, his
thumbs in his arm-holes. I felt his eyes--those smart, keen eyes,
burning into my miserable head. I thought of the lawyer and the
deal he'd give poor Tom, and all at once--
You'd have sniffled yourself, Mag Monahan. There I was--caught.
The cop'd be after me in five minutes. With Tom jugged, and me in
stripes--it wasn't very jolly, and I lost my nerve.
"Ashamed--huh?" he said lightly.
I nodded. I was ashamed.
"Pity you didn't get ashamed before you broke in here."
"What the devil was there to be ashamed of?"
The sting in his voice had cured me. I never was a weeper. I sat
up, my face blazing, and stared at him. He'd got me to hand over
to the cop, but he hadn't got me to sneer at.
I saw by the look he gave me, that he hadn't really seen me till
then.
"Well," he answered, "what the devil is there to be ashamed of
now?"
"Of being caught--that's what."
"Oh!"
He tilted back again on his chair and laughed softly.
"Then you're not ashamed of your profession?"
"Are you of yours?"
"Well--there's a slight difference."
"Not much, whatever it may be. It's your graft--it's
everybody's--to take all he can get, and keep out of jail. That's
mine, too."
"But you see I keep out of jail."
"I see you're not there--yet."
"Oh, I think you needn't worry about that. I'll keep out, thank
you; imprisonment for debt don't go nowadays."
"Debt?"
"I'm a theatrical manager, my girl, and I'm not on the inside:
which is another way of saying that a man who can't swim has
fallen overboard."
"And when you do go down--"
"A little less exultation, my dear, or I might suppose you'd be
glad when I do."
"Well, when you know yourself going down for the last time, do
you mean to tell me you won't grasp at a straw like--like this?"
I nodded toward the open window, and the desk with all its papers
tumbling out.
"Not much." He shook his head, and bit the end of a cigar with
sharp, white teeth. "It's a fool graft. I'm self-respecting. And
I don't admire fools." He lit his cigar and puffed a minute,
taking out his watch to look at it, as cold-bloodedly as though
we were waiting, he and I, to go to supper together. Oh, how I
hated him!
"Honesty isn't the best policy," he went on; "it's the only
one. The vain fool that gets it into his head--or shall I say her
head? No? Well, no offense, I assure you--his head then, that
he's smarter than a world full of experience, ought to be put in
jail--for his own protection; he's too big a jay to be left out
of doors. For five thousand years, more or less, the world has
been putting people like him behind bars, where they can't make
asses of themselves. Yet each year, and every day and every hour,
a new ninny is born who fancies he's cleverer than all his
predecessors put together. Talk about suckers! Why, they're
giants of intellect compared to the mentally lop-sided that five
thousand years of experience can't teach. When the
criminal-clown's turn comes, he hops, skips and jumps into the
ring with the old, old gag. He thinks it's new, because he
himself is so fresh and green. `Here I am again,' he yells, `the
fellow that'll do you up. Others have tried it. They're dead in
jail or under jail-yards. But me--just watch me!' We do, and
after a little we put him with his mates and a keeper in a barred
kindergarten where fools that can't learn, little moral cripples
of both sexes, my dear, belong. Bah!" He puffed out the smoke,
throwing his head back, in a cloud toward the ceiling.
I sprang from my seat and faced him. I was tingling all through.
I didn't care a rap what became of me for just that minute.
I forgot about Tom. I prayed that the cop wouldn't come for a
minute yet--but only that I might answer him.
"You're mighty smart, ain't you? You can sit back here and sneer
at me, can't you? And feel so big and smart and triumphant!
What've you done but catch a girl at her first bungling job! It
makes you feel awfully cocky, don't it? `What a big man am I!'
Bah!" I blew the smoke up toward the ceiling from my mouth, with
just that satisfied gall that he had had; or rather, I pretended
to. He let down the front legs of his chair and began to stare at
me.
"And you don't know it all, Mr. Manager, not you. Your
clown-criminal don't jump into the ring because he's so full of
fun he can't stay out. He goes in for the same reason the real
clown does--because he gets hungry and thirsty and sleepy and
tired like other men, and he's got to fill his stomach and cover
his back and get a place to sleep. And it's because your kind
gets too much, that my kind gets so little it has to piece it out
with this sort of thing. No, you don't know it quite all.
"There's a girl named Nancy Olden that could tell you a lot,
smart as you are. She could show you the inside of the Cruelty,
where she was put so young she never knew that children had
mothers and fathers, till a red-haired girl named Mag Monahan
told her; and then she was mighty glad she hadn't any. She
thought that all little girls were bloodless and dirty, and all
little boys were filthy and had black purple marks where their
fathers had tried to gouge out their eyes. She thought all women
were like the matron who came with a visitor up to the bare room,
where we played without toys--the new, dirty, newly-bruised ones
of us, and the old, clean, healing ones of us--and said, `Here,
chicks, is a lady who's come to see you. Tell her how happy you
are here.' Then Mag's freckled little face, her finger in her
mouth, looked up like this. She was always afraid it might be her
mother come for her. And the crippled boy jerked himself this
way--I used to mimic him, and he'd laugh with the rest of
them--over the bare floor. He always hoped for a penny. Sometimes
he even got it.
"And the boy with the gouged eye--he would hold his pants up
like this. He had just come in, and there was nothing to fit him.
And he'd put his other hand over his bad eye and blink up at her
like this. And the littlest boy--oh, ha! ha! ha!--you ought have
seen that littlest boy. He was in skirts, an old dress they'd
given me to wear the first day I came; there were no pants small
enough for him. He'd back up into the corner and hide his
face--like this--and peep over his shoulder; he had a squint that
way, that made his face so funny. See, it makes you laugh
yourself. But his body--my God!--it was blue with welts! And
me--I'd put the baby down that'd been left on the door-steps of
the Cruelty, and I'd waltz up to the lady, the nice, patronizing,
rich lady, with her handkerchief to her nose and her lorgnette to
her eyes--see, like this. I knew just what graft would work her.
I knew what she wanted there. I'd learned. So I'd make her a
curtsy like this, and in the piousest sing-song I'd--"
There was a heavy step out in the hall--it was the policeman! I'd
forgot while I was talking. I was back--back in the empty garret,
at the top of the Cruelty. I could smell the smell of the poor,
the dirty, weak, sick poor. I could taste the porridge in the
thick little bowls, like those in the bear story Molly tells her
kid. I could hear the stifled sobs that wise, poor children
give--quiet ones, so they'll not be beaten again. I could feel
the night, when strange, deserted, tortured babies lie for the
first time, each in his small white cot, the new ones waking the
old with their cries in a nightmare of what had happened before
they got to the Cruelty. I could see the world barred over, as I
saw it first through the Cruelty's barred windows, and as I must
see it again, now that--
"You see, you don't know it quite all--yet, Mr. Manager!"
I spat it out at him, and then walked to the cop, my hands ready
for the bracelets.
"But there's one thing I do know!" He's a big fellow but quick
on his feet, and in a minute he was up and between me and the
cop. "And there isn't a theatrical man in all America that knows
it quicker than Fred Obermuller, that can detect it sooner and
develop it better. And you've got it, girl, you've got it! . . .
Officer, take this for your trouble. I couldn't hold the fellow,
after all. Never mind which way he went; I'll call up the office
and explain."
He shut the door after the cop, and came back to me. I had fallen
into a chair. My knees were weak, and I was trembling all over.
"Have you seen the playlet Charity at the Vaudeville?" he
roared at me.
I shook my head.
"Well, it's a scene in a foundling asylum. Here's a pass. Go up
now and see it. If you hurry you'll get there just in time for
that act. Then if you come to me at the office in the morning at
ten, I'll give you a chance as one of the Charity girls. Do you
want it?"
God, Mag! Do I want it!
V.
Do you remember Lady Patronesses' Day at the Cruelty, Mag?
Remember how the place smelt of cleaning ammonia on the bare
floors? Remember the black dresses we all wore, and the white
aprons with the little bibs, and the oily sweetness of the
matron, and how our faces shone and tingled from the soap and the
rubbing? Remember it all?
Well, who'd 'a' thought then that Nance Olden ever would make use
of it--on the level, too!
Drop the Cruelty, and tell you about the stage? Why, it's bare
boards back there, bare as the Cruelty, but oh, there's something
that you don't see, but you feel it--something magic that makes
you want to pinch yourself to be sure you're awake. I go round
there just doped with it; my face, if you could see it, must look
like Molly's kid's when she is telling him fairy stories.
I love it, Mag! I love it!
And what do I do? That's what I was trying to tell you about the
Cruelty for. It's in a little act that was made for Lady Gray,
that there are four Charity girls on the stage, and I'm one of
'em.
Lady Gray? Why, Mag, how can you ever hope to get on if you don't
know who's who? How can you expect me to associate with you if
you're so ignorant? Yes--a real Lady, as real as the wife of a
Lord can be. Lord Harold Gray's a sure enough Lord, and she's his
wife but--but a chippy, just the same; that's what she is, in
spite of the Gray emeralds and that great Gray rose diamond she
wears on the tiniest chain around her scraggy neck. Do you know,
Mag Monahan, that this Lady Harold Gray was just a chorus
girl--and a sweet chorus it must have been if she sang
there!--when she nabbed Lord Harold?
You'd better keep your eye on Nancy Olden, or first thing you
know she'll marry the Czar of Russia--or Tom Dorgan, poor fellow,
when he gets out! . . . Well, just the same, Mag, if that
white-faced, scrawny little creature can be a Lady, a girl with
ten times her brains, and at least half a dozen times her good
looks--oh, we're not shy on the stage, Mag, about throwing
bouquets at ourselves!
Can she act? Don't be silly, Mag! Can't you see that Obermuller's
just hiring her title and playing it in big letters on the bills
for all it's worth? She acts the Lady Patroness, come to look at
us Charity girls. She comes on, though, looking like a fairy
princess. Her dress is just blazing with diamonds. There's the
Lady's coronet in her hair. Her thin little arms are banded with
gold and diamonds, and on her neck--O Mag, Mag, that rose diamond
is the color of rose-leaves in a fountain's jet through which the
sun is shining. It's long--long as my thumb--I swear it is,
Mag--nearly, and it blazes, oh, it blazes--
Well, it blazes dollars into Obermuller's box all right, for the
Gray jewels are advertised in the bill with this one at the head
of the list, the star of them all.
You see it's this way: Lord Harold Gray's bankrupt. He's poor
as--as Nance Olden. Isn't that funny? But he's got the family
jewels all right, to have as long as he lives. Nary a one can he
sell, though, for after his death, they go to the next Lord Gray.
So he makes 'em make a living for him, and as they can't go on
and exhibit themselves, Lady Gray sports 'em--and draws down two
hundred dollars a week.
Yep--two hundred.
But do you know it isn't the two hundred dollars a week that
makes me envy her till I'm sick; it's that rose diamond. If you
could only see it, Mag, you'd sympathize with me, and understand
why my fingers just itched for it the first night I saw her come
on.
'Pon my soul, Mag, the sight of it blazing on her neck dazzled me
so that it shut out all the staring audience that first night,
and I even forgot to have stage fright.
"What's doped you, Olden?" Obermuller asked when the curtain
went down, and we all hurried to the wings.
I was in the black dress with the white-bibbed apron, and I
looked up at him still dazed by the shine of that diamond and my
longing for it. You'd almost kill with your own hands for a
diamond like that, Mag!
"Doped? Why--what didn't I do?" I asked him.
"That's just it," he said, looking at me curiously; but I could
feel his disappointment in me.
"You didn't do anything--not a blasted thing more than you were
told to do. The world's full of supers that can do that."
For just a minute I forgot the diamond.
"Then--it's a mistake? You were wrong and--and I can't be an
actress?"
He threw back his head before he answered, puffing a mouthful of
smoke up at the ceiling, as he did the night he caught me. The
gesture itself seemed to remind him of what had made him think in
the first place he could make an actress of me. For he laughed
down at me, and I saw he remembered.
"Well," he said, "we'll wait and see. . . I was mistaken,
though, sure enough, about one thing that night."
I looked up at him.
"You're a darn sight prettier than I thought you were. The gold
brick you sold me isn't all--"
He put out his hand to touch my chin. I side-stepped, and he
turned laughing to the stage.
But he called after me.
"Is a beauty success going to content you, Olden?"
"Well, we'll wait and see," I drawled back at him in his own
throaty bass.
Oh, I was drunk, Mag, drunk with thinking about that diamond!
I didn't care even to please Obermuller. I just wanted the feel of
that diamond in my hand. I wanted it lying on my own neck--the
lovely, cool, shining, rosy thing. It's like the sunrise, Mag,
that beauty stone. It's just a tiny pool of water blushing.
It's--
How to get it! How to get away with it! On what we'd get for that
diamond, Tom and I--when his time is up--could live for all our
lives and whoop it up besides. We could live in Paris, where
great grafters live and grafting pays--where, if you've got wit
and fifty thousand dollars, and happen to be a "darn sight
prettier," you can just spin the world around your little
finger!
But, do you know, even then I couldn't bear to think of selling
the pretty thing? It hurt me to think of anybody having it but
just Nance Olden.
But I hadn't got it yet.
Gray has a dressing-room to herself. And on her table--which is a
big box, open end down--just where the three-sided big mirror can
multiply the jewels and make you want 'em three times as bad, her
big russia-leather, silver-mounted box lies open, while she's
dressing and undressing. Other times it's locked tight, and his
Lordship himself has it tight in his own right hand, or his
Lordship's man, Topham, has it just as tight.
How to get that diamond! There was a hard nut for Nance Olden's
sharp teeth to crack. I only wanted that--never say I'm greedy,
Mag--Gray could keep all the rest of the things--the pigeon in
rubies and pearls, the tiara all in diamonds, the chain of
pearls, and the blazing rings, and the waist-trimming all of
emeralds and diamond stars. But that diamond, that huge rose
diamond, I couldn't, I just couldn't let her have it.
And yet I didn't know the first step to take toward getting it,
till Beryl Blackburn helped me out. She's one of the Charities,
like me--a tall bleached blonde with a pretty, pale face and
gold-gray eyes. And, if you'd believe her, there's not a man in
the audience, afternoon or evening, that isn't dead-gone on her.
"Guess who's my latest," she said to me this afternoon, while
we four Charities stood in the wings waiting. "Topham--old
Topham!"
It all got clear to me then in a minute.
"Topham--nothing!" I sneered. "Beryl Big-head, Topham thinks
of only one thing--Milady's jewel-box. Don't you fool yourself."
"Oh, does he, Miss! Well, just to prove it, he let me try on the
rose diamond last night. There!"
"It's easy to say so but I don't see the proof. He'd lose his
job so quick it'd make his head spin if he did it."
"Not if he did, but if they knew he did. You'll not tell?"
"Not me. Why would I? I don't believe it, and I wouldn't expect
anybody else to. I don't believe you could get Topham to budge
from his chair in Gray's dressing-room if you'd--"
"What'll you bet?"
"I'll bet you the biggest box of chocolate creams at Huyler's."
"Done! I'll send for him to-night, just before Gray and her Lord
come, and you see--"
"How'll I see? Where'll I be?"
"Well, you be waiting in the little hall, right of Gray's
dressing-room at seven-thirty to-night and--you might as well
bring the creams with you."
Catch on, Mag? At seven-thirty in the evening I was waiting; but
not in the little hall of Gray's dressing-room. I hadn't gone
home at all after the afternoon performance--you know we play at
three, and again at eight-thirty. I had just hidden me away till
the rest were gone, and as soon as the coast was clear I got into
Gray's dressing-room, pushed aside the chintz curtains of the big
box that makes her dressing-table--and waited.
Lord, how the hours dragged! I hadn't had anything to eat since
lunch, and it got darker and darker in there, and hot and close
and cramped. I put in the time, much as I could, thinking of Tom.
The very first thing I'd do after cashing in, would be to get up
to Sing Sing to see him. I'm crazy to see him. I'd tell him the
news and see if he couldn't bribe a guard, or plan some scheme
with me to get out soon.
Afraid--me? What of? If they found me under that box I'd just
give 'em the Beryl story about the bet. How do you know they
wouldn't believe it? . . . Oh, I don't care, you've got to take
chances, Mag Monahan, if you go in for big things. And this was
big--huge. Do you know how much that diamond's worth? And do you
know how to spend fifty thousand?
I spent it all there--in the box--every penny of it. When I got
tired spending money I dozed a bit and, in my dream, spent it
over again. And then I waked and tried to fancy new ways of
getting rid of it, but my head ached, and my back ached, and my
whole body was so strained and cramped that I was on the point of
giving it all up when--that blessed old Topham came in.
He set the big box down with a bang that nearly cracked my head.
He turned on the lights, and stood whistling Tommy Atkins. And
then suddenly there came a soft call, "Topham! Topham!"
I leaned back and bit my fingers till I knew I wouldn't shriek.
The Englishman listened a minute. Then the call came again, and
Topham creaked to the door and out.
In a twinkling I was out, too, you bet.
Mag! He hadn't opened the box at all! There it stood in the
middle of the space framed by the three glasses. I pulled at the
lid. Locked! I could have screamed with rage. But the sound of
his step outside the door sobered me. He was coming back. In a
frantic hurry I turned toward the window which I had unlocked
when I came in four hours ago. But I hadn't time to make it.
I heard the old fellow's hand on the door, and I tumbled back into
the box in such a rush that the curtains were still waving when
he came in.
Slowly he began to place the jewels, one by one, in the order her
Ladyship puts them on. We Charity girls had often watched him
from the door--he never let one of us put a foot inside. He was
method and order itself. He never changed the order in which he
lifted the glittering things out, nor the places he put them back
in. I put my hand up against the top of the box, tracing the spot
where each piece would be lying. Think, Mag, just half an inch
between me and quarter of a million!
Oh, I was sore as I lay there! And I wasn't so cock-sure either
that I'd get out of it straight. I tried the Beryl story lots of
ways on myself, but somehow, every time I fancied myself telling
it to Obermuller, it got tangled up and lay dumb and heavy inside
of me.
But at least it would be better to appear of my own will before
the old Englishman than be discovered by Lord Gray and his Lady.
I had my fingers on the curtains, and in another second I'd been
out when--
"Miss Beryl Blackburn's compliments, Mr. Topham, and would you
step to the door, as there's something most important she wants
to tell you."
Oh, I loved every syllable that call-boy spoke! There was a
giggle behind his voice, too; old Topham was the butt of every
joke. The first call, which had fooled me, must have been from
some giddy girl who wanted to guy the old fellow. She had fooled
me all right. But this--this one was the real article.
There was a pause--Topham must be looking about to be sure things
were safe. Then he creaked to the door and shut it carefully
behind him.
It only took a minute, but in that minute--in that minute, Mag, I
had the rose diamond clutched safe in my fingers; I was on the
top of the big trunk and out of the window.
Oh, the feel of that beautiful thing in my hand! I'd 'a' loved it
if it hadn't been worth a penny, but as it was I adored it.
I slipped the chain under my collar, and the diamond slid down my
neck, and I felt its kiss on my skin. I flew down the black
corridor, bumping into scenery and nearly tripping two stage
carpenters. I heard Ginger, the call-boy, ahead of me and dodged
behind some properties just in time. He went whistling past and I
got to the stage door.
I pulled it open tenderly, cautiously, and turned to shut it
after me.
And--
And something held it open in spite of me.
No--no, Mag, it wasn't a man. It was a memory. It rose up there
and hit me right over the heart--the memory of Nancy Olden's
happiness the first time she'd come in this very door, feeling
that she actually had a right to use a stage: entrance, feeling
that she belonged, she--Nancy--to this wonderland of the stage!
You must never tell Tom, Mag, promise! He wouldn't see. He
couldn't understand. I couldn't make him know what I felt any
more than I'd dare tell him what I did.
I shut the door.
But not behind me. I shut it on the street and--Mag, I shut for
ever another door, too; the old door that opens out on Crooked
Street. With my hand on my heart, that was beating as though it
would burst, I flew back again through the black corridor,
through the wings and out to Obermuller's office. With both my
hands I ripped open the neck of my dress, and, pulling the chain
with that great diamond hanging to it, I broke it with a tug, and
threw the whole thing down on the desk in front of him.
"For God's sake!" I yelled. "Don't make it so easy for me to
steal!"
I don't know what happened for a minute. I could see his face
change half a dozen ways in as many seconds. He took it up in his
fingers at last. It swung there at the end of the slender little
broken chain like a great drop of shining water, blushing and
sparkling and trembling.
His hands trembled, too, and he looked up at last from the
diamond to my face.
"It's worth at least fifty thousand, you know--valued at that."
I didn't answer.
He got up and came over to where I had thrown myself on a bench.
"What's the matter, Olden? Don't I pay you enough?"
"I want to see Tom," I begged. "It's so long since he--He's up
at--at--in the country."
"Sing Sing?"
I nodded.
"You poor little devil!"
That finished me. I'm not used to being pitied. I sobbed and
sobbed as though some dam had broken inside of me. You see, Mag,
I knew in that minute that I'd been afraid, deathly afraid of
Fred Obermuller's face, when it's scornful and sarcastic, and of
his voice, when it cuts the flesh of self-conceit off your very
bones. And the contrast--well, it was too much for me.
But something came quick to sober me.
It was Gray. She stormed in, followed by Lord Harold and Topham,
and half the company.
"The diamond, the rose diamond!" she shrieked. "It's gone! And
the carpenters say that new girl Olden came flying from the
direction of my dressing-room. I'll hold you responsible--"
"Hush-sh!" Obermuller lifted his hands and nodded over toward me.
"Olden!" she squealed. "Grab her, Topham. I'll bet she stole
that diamond, and she can't have got rid of it yet."
Topham jumped toward me, but Obermuller stopped him.
"You'd win only half your bet, my Lady," Obermuller said
softly. "She did get hold of the Gray rose, worth fifty thousand
dollars, in spite of all your precautions--"
The world seemed to fall away from me. I looked up at him.
I couldn't believe he'd go back on me.
"--And she brought it straight to me, as I had asked her to, and
promised to raise her salary if she'd win out. For I knew that
unless I proved to you it could be stolen, you'd never agree to
hire a detective to watch those things, which will get us all
into trouble some day. Here! Scoot out o' this. It's nearly time
for your number."
He passed the diamond over to her, and they all left the office.
So did I; but he held out his hand as I passed. "It goes--that
about a raise for you, Olden. Now earn it."
Isn't he white, Mag--white clean through, that big fellow
Obermuller?
VI.
I got into the train, Mag, the happiest girl in all the country.
I'd a big basket of things for Tom. I was got up in my Sunday
best, for I wanted to make a hit with some fellow with a key up
there, who'd make things soft and easy for my Tommy.
I had so much to tell him. I knew just how I'd take off every
member of the company to amuse him. I had memorized every joke
I'd heard since I'd got behind the curtain--not very hard for me;
things always had a way of sticking in my mind. I knew the newest
songs in town, and the choruses of all the old ones. I could show
him the latest tricks with cards--I'd got those at first hand
from Professor Haughwout. You know how great Tom is on tricks.
I could explain the disappearing woman mystery, and the mirror
cabinet. I knew the clog dance that Dewitt and Daniels do. I had
pictures of the trained seals, the great elephant act,
Mademoiselle Picotte doing her great tight-rope dance, and the
Brothers Borodini in their pyramid tumbling.
Yes, it was a whole vaudeville show, with refreshments between
the acts, that I was taking up to Tom Dorgan. I don't care much
for a lot of that truck--funny, isn't it, how you get to turn up
your nose at the things you'd have given a finger for once upon a
time? But Tom--oh, I'd got everything pat for him--my big,
handsome Tom Dorgan in stripes--with his curls all shaved
off--ugh!
I'd got just so far in my thoughts, sitting there in the train,
when I gave a shiver. I thought for a minute it was at the idea
of my Tom with one of those bare, round convict-heads on him,
that look like fat skeleton faces. But it wasn't. It was--
Guess, Mag.
Moriway.
Both of us thought the same thing of each other for the first
second that our eyes met. I could see that. He thought I was
caught at last. And I thought he'd been sharp once too often.
And, Mag, it would be hard to say which of us would have been
happier if it had been the truth. Oh, to meet Moriway, bound sure
enough for Sing Sing!
He got up and came over to me, smiling wickedly. Se took the seat
behind me, and leaning forward, said softly:
"Is Miss Omar engaged to read to some invalid up at Sing Sing?
And for how long a term--I should say, engagement?"
I'd got through shivering by then. I was ready for him. I turned
and looked at him in that very polite, distant sort o' way Gray
uses in her act when the Charity superintendent speaks to her.
It's the only decent thing she does; chances are that that's how
Lord Gray's mother looks at her.
"You know my sister, Mr.--Mr.--" I asked humbly.
He looked at me, perplexed for just a second.
"Sister be hanged!" he said at last. "I know you, Nat, and I'm
glad to my finger-tips that you've got it in the neck, in spite
of all your smartness."
"You're altogether wrong, sir," I said very stately, but hurt a
bit, you know. "I've often been taken for my sister, but
gentlemen usually apologize when I explain to them. It's hard
enough to have a sister who--" I looked up at him tearfully,
with my chin a-wabble with sorrow.
He grinned.
"Liars should have good memories," he sneered. "Miss Omar said
she was an orphan, you remember, and had not a relative in the
world."
"Did she say that? Did Nora say that?" I exclaimed piteously.
"Oh, what a little liar she is! I suppose she thought it made
her more interesting to be so alone, more appealing to
kind-hearted gentlemen like yourself. I hope she wasn't
ungrateful to you, too, as she was to that kind Mr. Latimer,
before he found her out. And she had such a good position there,
too!"
I wanted to look at him, oh, I wanted to! But it was my role to
sit there with downcast eyes, just--the picture of holy grief.
I was the good one--the good, shocked sister, and though I wasn't a
bit afraid of anything he could do to me, or any game he could
put up, I yearned to make him believe me--just because he was so
suspicious, so wickedly smart, so sure he was on.
But his very silence sort of told me he almost believed, or that
he was laying a trap.
"Will you tell me," he said, "how you--your sister got Latimer
to lie for her?"
"Mr. Latimer--lie! Oh, you don't know him. He expected a lady to
read to him that very evening. He had never seen her, and when
Nora walked into the garden--"
"After getting a skirt somewhere."
"Yes--the housekeeper's, it happened to be her evening out--why,
he just naturally supposed Nora was Miss Omar."
"Ah! then her name isn't Omar. What might it be?"
"I'd rather not tell--if you don't mind."
"But when Latimer found out she had the diamonds--he did find
out?"
"She confessed to him. Nora's not really so bad a girl as--"
"Very interesting! But it doesn't happen to be Latimer's
version. And you say Latimer wouldn't lie."
I got pale--but the paleness was on the inside of me. Think I was
going to flinch before a chump like Moriway, even if I had walked
straight into his trap?
"It isn't?" I exclaimed.
"No. Latimer's note to Mrs. Kingdon said the diamonds were found
in the bell-boy's jacket the thief had left behind him."
"Well! It only shows what a bad habit lying is. Nora must have
fibbed to me, for the pure pleasure of fibbing. I'll never dare
to trust her again. Do you believe then that she didn't have
anything to do with the hotel robbery? I do hope so. It's one
less sin on her wicked head. It's hard, having such a girl in the
family!" Oh, wasn't I grieved!
He looked me straight in the eye. I looked at him. I was
unutterably sad about that tough sister of mine, and I vow I
looked holy then, though I never did before and may never again.
"Well, I only saw her in the twilight," he said slowly,
watching my face all the time. "You two sisters are certainly
miraculously alike."
The train was slowing down, and I got up with my basket. I stood
right before him, my full face turned toward him.
"Are we?" I asked simply. "Don't you think it's more the
expression than anything else, and the voice? Nora's really much
fairer than I am. Good-by."
He watched me as I went out. I felt his eyes on the back of my
jacket, and I was tempted to turn at the door and make a face at
him. But I knew something better and safer than that. I waited
till the train was just pulling out, and then, standing below his
window, I motioned to him to raise it.
He did.
"I thought you were going to get out here," I called. "Are you
sure you don't belong in Sing Sing, Mr. Moriway?"
I can see his face yet, Mag, and every time I think of it, it
makes me nearly die of laughing. He had actually been fooled
another time. It was worth the trip up there, to make a guy of
him once more.
And whether it was or not, Mag, it was all I got, after all.
For--would you believe Tom Dorgan would turn out such a sorehead?
He's kicked up such a row ever since he got there, that it's the
dark cell for him, and solitary confinement. Think of it--for
Tom!
I begged, I bluffed, I cried, I coaxed, but many's the Nance
Olden that has played her game against the rules of Sing Sing,
and lost. They wouldn't even let me leave the things for him, or
give him a message from me. And back to the station I had to
carry the basket, and all the schemes I had to make old Tom
Dorgan grin.
All the way back I had him in my mind. He's a tiger--Tom--when
he's roused. I could see him, shut up there by himself, with not
a soul to talk to, with not a human eye to look into, with not a
thing on earth to do--Tom, who's action itself! He never was much
of a thinker, and I never saw him read even a newspaper. What
would he do to kill the time? Can't you see him there, at bay,
back on his haunches, cursing and cursed, alone in the
everlasting black silence?
I saw nothing else. Wherever I turned my eyes, that terrible
picture was before me. And always it was just on the verge of
becoming something else--something worse. He could throttle the
world with his bare hands, if it had but one neck, in the mood he
must be in now.
It was when I couldn't bear it a moment longer that I set my mind
to find something else to think of.
I found it, Mag. Do you know what it was? It was just three
words--of Obermuller's: "Earn it now."
After all, Miss Monahan, this graft of honesty they all preach so
much about hasn't anything mysterious in it. All it is, is
putting your wits to work according to the rules of the game and
not against them. I was driven to it--the thought of big Tom
crouching for a spring in the dark cell up yonder sent me
whirling out into the thinking place, like the picture of the
soul in the big book at Latimer's I read out of. And first thing
you know, 'pon honor, Mag, it was as much fun planning how to
"earn it now" as any lifting I ever schemed. It's getting the
best of people that always charmed me--and here was a way to fool
'em according to law.
So busy I was making it all up, that the train pulled into the
station before I knew it. I gave a last thought to that poor old
hyena of a Tom, and then put him out of my mind. I had other fish
to fry. Straight down to Mother Douty I went with my basket.
"A fool girl, mother, on her way up to Sing Sing, lost her
basket, and Nance Olden found it; it ought to be worth a good
deal."
She grinned. You couldn't make old Douty believe that the Lord
himself wouldn't steal if He got a chance. And she knows the
chances that come butting up against Nancy Olden.
Why did I lie to her? Not for practice, I assure you. She'd have
beaten me down to the last cent if she thought it was mine, but
she always thinks there'll be a find for her in something that's
stolen. So I let her think I'd stolen it in the railway station,
and we came to terms.
With what she gave me I bought a wig. Mag, I want you some day,
when you can get off, to come and see that wig. I shouldn't
wonder but you'd recognize it. It's red, of very coarse hair, but
a wonderful color, and so long it--yes, it might be your own, Mag
Monahan, it's so much like it. I went to the theater and got my
Charity rig, took it home, and sat for hours there just looking
at 'em both. When evening came I was ready to "earn it now."
You see, Obermuller had given me the whole day to be away, and
neither Gray nor the other three Charities expected me back.
I had to do it on the sly, you sassy Mag! Yes, it was partly
because I love to cheat, but more because I was bound to have my
chance once whether anybody else enjoyed it or not.
I came to the theater in my Charity rig and the wig. It looked as
if I'd slept in it, and it came down to the draggled hem of the
skirt. All the way there I walked like you, Mag. Once, when a
newsboy grinned at me and shouted "Carrots!" I grinned
back--your own, old Cruelty grin, Mag. I vow I felt so much like
you--as you used to be--that when I lurched out on the stage at
last, stumbling over my shoe laces and trying to push the hair
out of my eyes, you'd have sworn it was little Mag Monahan I
making her debut in the Cruelty room.
Oh, Mag, Mag, you darling Mag! Did you ever hear a whole house, a
great big theater full of a peevish vaudeville audience, just
rise at you, give one roar of laughter they hadn't expected at
all to give, and then settle down to giggle at every move you
made?
Girl alive, I just had 'em! They couldn't take their eyes off me.
If I squirmed, they howled. If I stood on one foot, scratching
the torn leg of my stocking with the other--you know, Mag!--they
yelled. If I grinned, they just roared.
Oh, Mag, can't you see? Don't you understand? I was It. The
center of the stage I carried round with me--it was just Nancy
Olden. And for ten minutes Nancy had nothing to do but to play
with 'em. 'Pon my life, Mag, it's just like stealing; the old
graft exactly; it's so fascinating, so busy, and risky, except
that they play the game with you and pay you and love you to fool
'em.
When the curtain fell it was different. Grays followed by the
Charities, all clean and spick-and-span and--not in it; not even
on the edge of it--stormed up to Obermuller standing at the
wings.
"I'll quit the show here and now," she squawked. "It's a
shame, a beastly shame. How dare you play me such a trick, Fred
Obermuller? I never was treated so in my life--to have that dirty
little wretch come tumbling on like that, without even so much as
your telling me you'd made up all this new business for her! It's
indecent, anyway. Why, I lost my cue. There was a gap for a full
minute. The whole act was such a ghastly failure that I--"
"That you'd better go out now and make your prettiest bow, Gray.
Phew! Listen to the house roar. That's what I call applause. Go
on now."
She went.
Me? I didn't say a word. I looked at Obermuller and--and I just
did like this. Yes, winked, Mag Monahan. I was so crazily happy I
had to, didn't I?
But do you know what he did? Do you know what he did?
Well, I suppose I am screaming and the Troyons will put me out,
but--he just--winked--back!
And then Gray came trailing back into the wings, and the
shrieking and thumping and whistling out in front just went
on--and on--and on--and on. Um! I just listened and loved
it--every thump of it. And I stood there like a demure little
kitten; or more like Mag Monahan after she'd had a good licking,
and was good and quiet. And I never so much as budged till
Obermuller said:
"Well, Nance, you have earned it. The gall of you! But it only
proves that Fred Obermuller never yet bought a gold brick. Only,
let me in on your racket next time. There, go on--take it. It's
yours."
Oh, to have Fred Obermuller say things like that to you!
He gave me a bit of a push. 'Twas just a love-pat. I stumbled out
on to the stage.
VII.
And that's why, Marguerite de Monahan, I want you to buy in with
the madam here. Let 'em keep on calling it Troyon's as much as
they want, but you're to be a partner on the money I'll give you.
If this fairy story lasts, it'll be your own, Mag--a sort of
commission you get on my take-off of you. But if anything happens
to the world--if it should go crazy, or get sane, and not love
Nancy Olden any more, why, here'll be a place for me, too.
Does it look that way? Divil a bit, you croaker! It looks--it
looks--listen and I'll tell you how it looks.
It looks as though Gray and the great Gray rose diamond and the
three Charities had all become a bit of background for Nance
Olden to play upon.
It looks as though the audience likes the sound of my voice as
much almost as I do myself; anyway, as much as it does the sight
of me.
It looks as though the press, if you please, had discovered a new
stage star, for down comes a little reporter to interview me--me,
Nancy Olden! Think of that, Mag! I receive him all in my Charity
rig, and in Obermuller's office, and he asks me silly questions
and I tell him a lot of nonsense, but some truths, too, about the
Cruelty. Fancy, he didn't know what the Cruelty was! S. P. C. C.,
he calls it. And all the time we talked a long-haired German
artist he had brought with him was sketching Nance Olden in
different poses. Isn't that the limit?
What d'ye think Tom Dorgan'd say to see half a page of Nancy
Olden in the X-Ray? Wouldn't his eyes pop? Poor old Tom! . . . No
danger--they won't let him have the papers. . . . My old Tommy!
What is it, Mag? Oh, what was I saying? Yes--yes, how it looks.
Well, it looks as though the Trust--yes, the big and mighty T.
T.--short for Theatrical Trust, you innocent--had heard of that
same Nance Olden you read about in the papers. For one night last
week, when I'd just come of and the house was yelling and
shouting behind me, Obermuller meets me in the wings and trots me
of to his private office.
"What for?" I asked him on the way.
"You'll find out in a minute. Come on."
I pulled up my stocking and followed. You know I wear it in that
act without a garter, and it's always coming down the way yours
used to, Mag. Even when it doesn't come down I pull it up, I'm so
in the habit of doing it.
A little bit of a man, bald-headed, with a dyspeptic little black
mustache turned down at the corners, watched me come in. He
grinned at my make-up, and then at me.
"Clever little girl," he says through his nose. "How much do
you stick Obermuller for?"
"Clever little man," say I, bold as brass and through my own
nose; "none of your business."
"Hi--you, Olden!" roared Obermuller, as though I'd run away and
he was trying to get the bit from between my teeth. "Answer the
gentleman prettily. Don't you know a representative of the mighty
T. T. when you see him? Can't you see the Syndicate aureole about
his noble brow? This gentleman, Nance, is the great and only Max
Tausig. He humbleth the exalted and uplifteth the lowly--or, if
there's more money in it, he gives to him that hath and steals
from him that hasn't, but would mighty well like to have. He has
no conscience, no bowels, no heart. But he has got tin and nerve
and power to beat the band. In short, and for all practical
purposes for one in your profession, Nancy Olden, he's just God.
Down on your knees and lick his boots--Trust gods wear boots,
patent leathers--and thank him for permitting it, you lucky
baggage!"
I looked at the little man; the angry red was just fading from
the top of his cocoanut-shaped bald head.
"You always were a fool, Obermuller," he said cordially. "And
you were always over-fond of your low-comedian jokes. If you
hadn't been so smart with your tongue, you'd had more friends and
not so many enemies in--"
"In the heavenly Syndicate, eh? Well, I have lived without--"
"You have lived, but--"
"But where do I expect to go when I die? Good theatrical
managers, Nance, when they die as individuals go to Heaven--they
get into the Trust. After that they just touch buttons; the Trust
does the rest. Bad ones--the kickers--the Fred Obermullers go
to--a place where salaries cease from troubling and royalties are
at rest. It's a slow place where--where, in short, there's
nothing doing. And only one thing's done--the kicker. It's that
place Mr. Tausig thinks I'm bound for. And it's that place he's
come to rescue you from, from sheer goodness of heart and a wary
eye for all there's in it. Cinch him, Olden, for all the traffic
will bear!"
I looked from one to the other--Obermuller, big and savage
underneath all his gay talk, I knew him well enough to see that;
the little man, his mouth turned down at the corners and a sneer
in his eye for the fellow that wasn't clever enough to get in
with the push.
"You must not give the young woman the big head, Obermuller. Her
own is big enough, I'll bet, as it is. I ain't prepared to make
any startling offer to a little girl that's just barely got her
nose above the wall. The slightest shake might knock her off
altogether, or she mightn't have strength enough in herself to
hold on. But we'll give her a chance. And because of what it may
lead to, if she works hard, because of the opportunities we can
give her, there ain't so much in it in a money way as you might
imagine."
Obermuller didn't say anything. His own lips and his own eyes
sneered now, and he winked openly at me, which made the little
man hot.
"Blast it!" he twanged. "I mean it. If you've got any notion
through my coming down to your dirty little joint that we've set
our hearts on having the girl, just get busy thinking something
else. She may be worth something to you--measured up against the
dubs you've got; but to us--"
"To you, it's not so much your not having her as my having her
that--"
"Exactly. It ain't our policy to leave any doubtful cards in
the enemy's hands. He can have the bad ones. He couldn't get the
good ones. And the doubtful ones, like this girl Olden--"
"Well, that's just where you're mistaken!" Obermuller thrust
his hands deep in his pockets and put out that square chin of his
like the fighter he is. " `This girl Olden' is anything but
doubtful. She's a big card right now if she could be well
handled. And the time isn't so far off when, if you get her, you
people will be--"
"Just how much is your interest in her worth?" the little man
sneered.
Obermuller glared at him, and in the pause I murmured demurely:
"Only a six-year contract."
Mag, you should have seen 'em jump--both of 'em; the little man
with vexation, the big one with surprise.
A contract! Me?--Nance Olden! Why, Mag, you innocent, of course I
hadn't. Managers don't give six-year contracts to girl--burglars
who've never set foot on the stage.
When the little man was gone, Obermuller cornered me.
"What's your game, Olden?" he cried. "You're too deep for me;
I throw up my hands. Come; what've you got in that smart little
head of yours? Are you holding out for higher stakes? Do you
expect him to buy that great six-year contract and divvy the
proceeds with me? Because he will--when once they get their eye
on you, they'll have you; and to turn up your nose at their offer
if in just the way to make them itch for you. But how the deuce
did you find it out? And where do you get your nerve from,
anyway? A little beggar like you to refuse an offer from the T.
T. and sit hatching your schemes on your little old 'steen dollars
a week! . . . It'll have to be twice 'steen, now, I suppose?"
"All right, just as you say," I laughed. "But why aren't you
in the Trust, Fred Obermuller?"
"Why aren't you in society, Nance?"
"Um!--well, because society's prejudiced against lifting, but
the Trust isn't. Do you know that's a great graft, Mr.
Obermuller--lifting wholesale? Why don't you get in?"
"Because a Trust is a lot of sailors on a raft who keep their
places by kicking off the drowning hands that clutch at it. Can
you fancy a fellow like Tausig stooping down to help me tenderly
on board to divide the pickings?"
"No, but I can fancy you grappling with him till he'd be glad to
take you on rather than be pulled off himself."
"You'd be in with the push, would you, Olden, if you were
managing?" he asked with a grin.
"I'd be at the top, wherever that was."
"Then why the deuce didn't you jump at Tausig's offer? Were you
really crafty enough--"
"I am artiste, Monsieur Obermuller," I gutturaled like
Mademoiselle Picotte, who dances on the wire. "I moost have
about me those who arre--who arre congeniale--"
"You monkey!" he laughed. "Then, when Tausig comes to buy your
contract--"
"We'll tell him to go to thunder."
He laughed. Say, Mag, that big fellow is like a boy when he's
pleased. I guess that's what makes it such fun to please him.
"And I, who admired your business sagacity in holding off,
Nance!" he said.
"I thought you admired my take-off! of Mademoiselle Picotte."
"Well?"
"Well, why don't you make use of it? Take me round to the
theaters and let me mimic all the swell actors and actresses.
I've got more chance with you than with that Trust gang. They
wouldn't give me room to do my own stunt; they'd make me fit into
theirs. But you--"
"But me! You think you can wind me round your finger?"
"Not--yet."
He chuckled. I thought I had him going. I saw Nance Olden
spending her evenings at the big Broadway theaters, when, just at
that minute, Ginger, the call-boy, burst in with a note.
Say, Mag, I wouldn't like to get that man Obermuller hopping mad
at me, and Nancy Olden's no coward, either. But the way he
gritted his teeth at that note and the devil in his eyes when he
lifted them from it, made me wonder how I'd ever dared be
facetious with him.
I got up to go. He'd forgotten me, but he looked up then.
"That was a great suggestion of yours, Olden, to put Lord Gray
on to act himself--great!" His voice shook, he was so angry.
"Well!" I snapped. I wasn't going to let him see that a big man
raging could bluff Nance Olden.
What did he mean? Why--just this: there was Lord Harold Gray, the
real Lord behind the scenes, bringing the Lady who was really
only a chorus girl to the show in his automobile; helping her
dress like a maid; holding her box of jewels as he tagged after
her like a big Newfoundland; smoking his one cigarette solemnly
and admiringly while she was on the stage; poking after her like
a tame bear. He's a funny fellow, that Lord Harold. He's a Tom
Dorgan, with the brains and the graft and--and the brute, too,
Mag, washed out of him; a Tom Dorgan that's been kept dressed in
swagger clothes all his life and living at top-notch--a big,
clean, handsome, stupid, good-natured, overgrown boy.
Yes, I'm coming to it. When I'd seen him go tagging after her
chippy Ladyship behind the scenes long enough, I told Obermuller
one day that it was absurd to send the mock Lady out on the
boards and keep the live Lord hidden behind. He jumped at the
idea, and they rigged up a little act for the two--the Lord and
the Lady. Gray was furious when she heard of it--their making use
of her Lord in such a way--but Lord Harold just swallowed his big
Adam's apple with a gulp or two, and said:
"'Pon honor, it's a blawsted scheme, you know; but I'm jolly
sure I'd make a bleddy ass of myself. I cawn't act, you know."
The ninny! You know he thinks Gray really can.
But Obermuller explained to him that he needn't act--just be
himself out behind the wings, and lo! Lord Harold was
"chawmed."
And Gray?
Why, she gave in at last; pretended to, anyway--sliding out of
the Charity sketch, and rehearsing the thing with him, and all
that. And--and do you know what she did, Mag? (Nance Olden may be
pretty mean, but she wouldn't do a trick like that.) She waited
till ten minutes before time for the thing to be put on and then
threw a fit.
"She's so ill, her delicate Ladyship! So ill she just can't go
on this evening! Wonder how long she thinks such an excuse will
keep Lord Harold off when I want him on!" growled Obermuller,
throwing her note over to me. He'd have liked to throw it at me
if it'd been heavy enough to hurt; he was so thumping mad.
You see, there it was on the program:
THE CLEVER SKETCH ENTITLED
THEATRICAL ARISTOCRACY.
The Duke of Portmanteau . . . . Lord Harold Gray.
The Duchess . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Lady Gray.
The celebrated Gray jewels, including the great Rose Diamond,
will be worn by Lady Gray in this number.
* * * * * * * * * *
No wonder Obermuller was raging. I looked at him. You don't like
to tackle a fellow like that when he's dancing hot. And yet you
ache to help him and--yes, yourself.
"Lord Harold's here yet, and the jewels?" I asked.
He gave a short nod. He was thinking. But so was I.
"Then all he wants is a Lady?"
"That's all," he said sarcastically.
"Well, what's the matter with me?"
He gasped.
"There's nothing the matter with your nerve, Olden."
"Thank you, so much." It was the way Gray says it when she
tries to have an English accent. "Dress me up, Fred Obermuller,
in Gray's new silk gown and the Gray jewels, and you'd never--"
"I'd never set eyes on you again."
"You'd never know, if you were in the audience, that it wasn't
Gray herself. I can take her off to the life, and if the
prompter'll stand by--"
He looked at me for a full minute.
"Try it, Olden," he said.
I did. I flew to Gray's dressing-room. She'd gone home deathly
ill, of course. They gave me the best seamstress in the place.
She let out the waist a bit and pulled over the lace to cover it.
I got into that mass of silk and lace--oh, silk on silk, and
Nance Olden inside! Beryl Blackburn did my hair, and Grace Weston
put on my slippers. Topham, himself, hung me with those gorgeous
shining diamonds and pearls and emeralds, till I felt like an
idol loaded with booty. There were so many standing round me,
rigging me up, that I didn't get a glimpse of the mirror till the
second before Ginger called me. But in that second--in that
second, Mag Monahan, I saw a fairy with blazing cheeks and
shining eyes, with a diamond coronet in her brown hair, puffed
high, and pearls on her bare neck and arms, and emeralds over the
waist, and rubies and pearls on her fingers, and sprays of
diamonds like frost on the lace of her skirt, and diamond buckles
on her very slippers, and the rose diamond, like a sun,
outshining all the rest; and--and, Mag, it was me!
How did it go? Well, wouldn't it make you think you were a Lady,
sure enough, if you couldn't move without that lace train
billowing after you; without being dazzled with diamond-shine;
without a truly Lord tagging after you?
He kept his head, Lord Harold did--even if it is a mutton-head.
That helped me at first. He was so cold, so stupid, so slow, so
good-tempered--so just himself. And after the first plunge--
I tell you, Mag Monahan, there's one thing that's stronger than
wine to a woman--it's being beautiful. Oh! And I was beautiful.
I knew it before I got that quick hush, with the full applause
after it. And because I was beautiful, I got saucy, and then
calm, and then I caught Fred Obermuller's voice--he had taken the
book from the prompter and stood there himself--and after that it
was easy sailing.
He was there yet when the act was over, and I trailed out,
followed by my Lord. He let the prompt-book fall from his hands
and reached them both out to me.
I flirted my jeweled fan at him and swept him a courtesy.
Cool? No, I wasn't. Not a bit of it. He was daffy with the sight
of me in all that glory, and I knew it.
"Nance," he whispered, "you wonderful girl, if I didn't know
about that little thief up at the Bronsonia I'd--I'd marry you
alive, just for the fun of piling pretty things on you."
"The deuce you would!" I sailed past him, with Topham and my
Lord in my wake.
They didn't leave me till they'd stripped me clean. I felt like a
Christmas tree the day after. But, somehow, I didn't care.
VIII.
Is that you, Mag? Well, it's about time you came home to look
after me. Fine chaperon you make, Miss Monahan! Why, didn't I
tell you the very day we took this flat what a chaperon was, and
that you'd have to be mine? Imagine Nancy Olden without a
chaperon--Shocking!
No, 'tisn't late. Sit down, Maggie, there, and let me get the
stool and talk to you. Think of us two--Cruelty girls, both of
us--two mangy kittens deserted by the old cats in a city's
alleys, and left mewing with cold and hunger and dirt, out in the
wet--think of us two in our own flat, Mag!
I say, it makes me proud of us! There are times when I look at
every stick of furniture we own, and I try to pretend to it all
that I'm used to a decent roof over my head, and a dining-room,
kitchen, parlor, bedroom and bath. Oh, and I forgot the telephone
the other tenant left here till its lease is up. But at other
times I stand here in the middle of it and cry out to it, in my
heart:
"Look at me, Nancy Olden, a householder, a rent-payer, the head
of the family, even if it's only a family of two and the other
one Mag! Look at me, with my name in the directory, a-paying milk
bills and meat bills and bread bills! Look at me with a place of
my own, where nobody's right's greater than my own; where no one
has a right but me and Mag; a place where--where there's nothing
to hide from the police!"
There's the rub, Mag, as Hamlet says--(I went to see it the other
night, so that I could take off the Ophelia--she used to be a
good mimic herself, before she tried to be a leading lady.) It
spoils you, this sense of safeness that goes with the honesty
graft. You lose the quickness of the hunter and the nerve of the
hunted. And--worse--you lose your taste for the old risky life.
You grow proud and fat, and you love every stick in the dear,
quiet little place that's your home--your own home. You love it
so that you'd be ashamed to sneak round where it could see
you--you who'd always walked upright before it with the step of
the mistress; with nothing in the world to be ashamed of; nothing
to prevent your staring each honest dish-pan in the face! 1>
And, Mag, you try--if you're me--to fit Tom Dorgan in here--Tom
Dorgan in stripes and savage sulks still--all these months--kept
away from the world, even the world behind bars! Maggie, don't
you wish Tom was a ventriloquist or--or an acrobat or--but this
isn't what I had to tell you.
Do you know what a society entertainer is, Miss Monahan? No?
Well, look at me. Yes, I'm one. Miss Nance Olden, whose services
are worth fifty dollars a night--at least, they were one night.
Ginger brought me the note that made me a society entertainer. It
was from a Mrs. Paul B. Gates, who had been "charmed by your
clever impersonations, Miss Olden, and write to know if you have
the leisure to entertain some friends at my house on Thursday of
this week."
Had I the leisure--well, rather! I showed the note to Gray, just
to make her jealous. (Oh, yes, she goes on all right in the act
with Lord Harold every night. Catch her letting me wear those
things of hers twice!) Well, she just turned up her nose.
"Of course, you won't accept?" she said.
"Of course, I will."
"Oh! I only thought you'd feel as I should about appearing
before a lot of snobs, who'll treat you like a servant and--"
"Who'll do nothing of the sort and who'll pay you well for it,"
put in Obermuller. He had come up and was reading the note I had
handed to him. "You just say yes, Nance," he went on, after
Gray had bounced of to her dressing-room. "It isn't such a bad
graft and--and this is just between us two, mind--that little
beggar, Tausig, has begun his tricks since you turned his offer
down. They can make things hot for me, and if they do, it won't
be so bad for you to go in for this sort of thing--unless you go
over to the Trust--"
I shook my head.
"Well, this thing will be an ad for you, besides,--if the papers
can be got to notice it. They're coy with their notices, confound
them, since Tausig let them know that big Trust ads don't appear
in the same papers that boom anti-Trust shows!"
"How long are you going to stand it, Mr. O?"
"Just as long as I can't help myself; not a minute longer."
"There ought to be a way--some way--"
"Yes, there ought, but there isn't. They've got things down to a
fine point, and the fellow they don't fear has got to fear them.
. . . I'll put your number early to-night, so that you can get
off by nine. Good luck, Nance."
At nine, then, behold Nancy Olden in her white muslin dress,
long-sleeved and high-necked, and just to her shoe-tops, with a
big white muslin sash around her waist. Oh, she's no baby, is
Nance, but she looks like one in this rig with her short hair--or
rather, like a school-girl; which makes the stunts she does in
mimicking the corkers of the profession all the more surprising.
"We're just a little party," said Mrs. Paul Gates, coming into
the bedroom where I was taking of my wraps. "And I'm so glad you
could come, for my principal guest, Mr. Latimer, is an invalid,
who used to love the theaters, but hasn't been to one since his
attack many years ago. I count on your giving him, in a way, a
condensed history in action of what is going on on the stage."
I told her I would. But I didn't just know what I was saying.
Think of Latimer there, Maggie, and think of our last meeting! It
made me tremble. Not that I fancied for a moment he'd betray me.
The man that helps you twice don't hurt you the third time. No,
it wasn't that; it was only that I longed to do well--well before
him, so that--
And then I found myself in an alcove off the parlors, separated
from them by heavy curtains. It was such a pretty little red
bower. Right behind me was the red of the Turkish drapery of a
cozy corner, and just as I took my place under the great
chandelier, the servants pulled the curtains apart and the lights
went out in the parlors.
In that minute I got it, Mag--yes, stage fright. Got it bad.
I suppose it was coming to me, but Lordy! I hadn't ever known
before what it was. I could see the black of the men's clothes in
the long parlors in front of me, and the white of the women's
necks and arms. There were soft ends of talk trailing after the
first silence, and everything was so strange that I seemed to
hear two men's voices which sounded familiar--Latimer's silken
voice, and another, a heavy, coarse bass, that was the last to be
quieted.
I fancied that when that last voice should stop I could begin,
but all at once my mind seemed to turn a somersault, and, instead
of looking out upon them, I seemed to be looking in on myself--to
see a white-faced little girl in a white dress, standing alone
under a blaze of light in a glare of red, gazing fearfully at
this queer, new audience.
Fail? Me? Not Nancy, Maggie. I just took me by the shoulders.
"Nancy Olden, you little thief!" I cried to me inside of me.
"How dare you! I'd rather you'd steal the silver on this woman's
dressing-table than cheat her out of what she expects and what's
coming to her."
Nance really didn't dare. So she began.
The first one was bad. I gave 'em Duse's Francesca. You've never
heard the wailing music in that woman's voice when she says:
"There is no escape, Smaragdi.
You have said it;
The shadow is a glass to me, and God
Lets me be lost."
I gave them Duse just to show them how swell I was myself; which
shows what a ninny I was. The thing the world loves is the
opposite of what it is. The pat-pat-pat of their gloves came in
to me when I got through. They were too polite to hiss. But it
wasn't necessary. I was hissing myself. Inside of me there was a
long, nasty hiss-ss-ss!
I couldn't bear it. I couldn't bear to be a failure with Latimer
listening, though out there in that queer half-light I couldn't
see him at all, but could only make out the couch where I knew he
must be lying.
I just jumped into something else to retrieve myself. I can do
Carter's Du Barry to the Queen's taste, Maggie. That rotten voice
of hers, like Mother Douty's, but stronger and surer; that rocky
old face pretending to look young and beautiful inside that
talented red hair of hers; that whining "Denny! Denny!" she
squawks out every other minute. Oh, I can do Du Barry all right!
They thought I could, too, those black and white shadows out
there on the other side of the velvet curtains. But I cared less
for what they thought than for the fact that I had drowned that
sputtering hiss-ss-ss inside of me, and that Latimer was among
them.
I gave them Warfield, then; I was always good at taking off the
sheenies in the alley behind the Cruelty--remember? I gave them
that little pinch-nosed Maude Adams, and dry, corking little Mrs.
Fiske, and Henry Miller when he smooths down his white breeches
lovingly and sings Sally in our Alley, and strutting old
Mansfield, and--
Say, isn't it funny, Mag, that I've seen 'em all and know all
they can do? They've been my college education, that crowd. Not a
bad one, either, when you come to think of what I wanted from it.
They pulled the curtains down at the end and I went back to the
bedroom. I had my hat and jacket on when Mrs. Gates and some of
the younger ladies came to see me there, but I caught no glimpse
of Latimer. You'd think--wouldn't you--that he'd have made an
opportunity to say just one nice word to me in that easy, soft
voice of his? I tried to believe that perhaps he hadn't really
seen me, lying down, as he must have been, or that he hadn't
recognized me, but I knew that I couldn't make myself believe
that; and the lack of just that word from him spoiled all my
satisfaction with myself, and I walked out with Mrs. Gates
through the hall and past the dining-room feeling as hurt as
though I'd deserved that a man like Latimer should notice me.
The dining-room was all lighted, but empty--the colored, shaded
candlesticks glowing down on the cut glass and silver, on
delicate china and flowers. The ladies and gentlemen hadn't come
out to supper yet; at least, only one was there. He was standing
with his back to me, before the sideboard, pouring out a glass of
something from a decanter. He turned at the rustle of my starched
skirt, and, as I passed the door, he saw me. I saw him, too, and
hurried away.
Yes, I knew him. Just you wait.
I got home here earlier than I'd expected, and I'd just got off
my hat and jacket and put away that snug little check when there
came a ring at the bell.
I thought it was you, Mag--that you'd forgotten your key. I was
so sure of it that I pulled the door open wide with a flourish
and--
And admitted--Edward!
Yes, Edward, husband of the Dowager. The same red-faced,
big-necked old fellow, husky-voiced with whisky now, just as he
was before. He must have been keeping it up steadily ever since
the day out in the country when Tom lifted his watch. It'll take
more than one lost watch to cure Edward.
"I--followed you home, Miss Murieson," he said, grabbing me by
the hand and pushing the door closed behind him. "Or is it Miss
Murieson? Which is your stage name, and which your real one? And
have you really learned to remember it? For my part, any old name
will smell as sweet, now that I'm close to the rose."
I jerked my hand away from him.
"I didn't ask you to call," I said, haughty as the Dowager
herself was when first I saw her in her gorgeous parlor, the
Bishop's card in her hand.
"No, I noticed that," he roared jovially. "You skinned out the
front door the moment you saw me. All that was left to me was to
skin after."
"Why?"
"Why!" He slapped his leg as though he'd heard the best joke in
the world. "To renew our acquaintance, of course. To ask you if
you wouldn't like me to buy you a red coat and hat like the one
you left behind you that day over in Philadelphia, when you cut
your visit so short. To insist upon my privilege of relationship.
To call that wink you gave me in the hall that day, you little
devil. Now, don't look at me like that. I say, let's be friends;
won't you?"
"Not for a red coat trimmed with chinchilla," I cried.
He got between me and the door.
"Prices gone up?" he inquired pleasantly. "Who's bulling the stock?"
"Never you mind, so long as his name isn't Ramsay."
"But why shouldn't his name be Ramsay?" he cooed.
"Just because it isn't. I'm expecting a friend. Hadn't you
better go home to Mrs. Dowager Diamonds?"
"Bully! Is that what you call her? No, I'll stay and meet your friend."
"Better not."
"Oh, I'm not afraid. Does he know as much about you as I do?"
"More."
"About your weakness for other girls' coats?"
"Yes."
You do know it all, don't you? And yet you care for me, Maggie
Monahan!
I retreated before him into the dining-room. What in the world to
do to get rid of him!
"I think you'd better go home, Mr. Ramsay," I said again,
decidedly. "If you don't, I'll have to call the janitor to put
you out."
"Call, sweetheart. He'll put you out with me; for I'll tell him
a thing or two about you, and we'll go and find a better place
than this. Stock can't be quoted so high, after all, if this is
the best prospectus your friend can put up. . . . Why don't you
call?"
I looked at him. I was thinking.
"Well?" he demanded.
"I've changed my mind."
Oh, Mag, Mag, did you ever see the man--ugly as a cannibal he may
be and old as the cannibal's great-grandfather--that couldn't be
persuaded he was a lady-killer?
His manner changed altogether. He plumped down on the lounge and
patted the place beside him invitingly, giving me a wink that was
deadly.
"But, Mrs. Dowager!" I exclaimed coquettishly.
"Oh, that's all right, little one! She hasn't even missed me
yet. When she's playing Bridge she forgets even to be jealous."
"Playing Bridge," I murmured sweetly, "'way off in
Philadelphia, while you, you naughty man--"
Oh, he loved that!
"Not so naughty as--as I'd like to be," he belllowed, heavily
witty. "And she isn't 'way off in Philadelphia either. She's
just round the corner at Mrs. Gates', and--what's the matter?"
"Nothing--nothing. Did she recognize me?"
"Oh, that's what scared you, is it? She didn't recognize you.
Neither did I, till I got that second glimpse of you with your
hat and jacket on. But even if she had--ho! ho! ho! I say; do you
know, you couldn't convince the Bishop and Henrietta, if you'd
talk till doomsday, that that red coat and hat we advertised
weren't taken by a little girl that was daffy. Fact; I swear it!
They admit you took the coat, you little witch, but it was when
you were out of your mind--of course--of course! `The very fact
that she left the coat behind her and took nothing else from the
house shows a mind diseased,' insisted Henrietta. Of course--of
course! `And her coming for no reason at all to your house,' adds
the Bishop. . . . Say, what was the reason?"
Maggie, I'll tell you a hard thing: it isn't when people think
worse of you than you are, but better, that you feel most
uncomfortable. I got pale and sick inside of me at the thought of
my poor little Bishop. I loved him for believing me straight
and--
"I've been dying of curiosity to know what was in your wise
little head that day," he went on. "Oh, it was wise all right;
that wink you gave me was perfectly sane; there was method in
that madness of yours."
"I will tell you, Mr. Ramsay," I said sweetly, "at supper."
"Supper!"
"Yes, the supper you're going to get for me."
His bellowing laughter filled the place. Maggie, our little flat
and our few things don't go well with sounds like that.
"Oh, you're all alike, you women!" he roared. "All right,
supper it is. Where shall we go--Rector's?"
I pouted.
"It's so much more cozy right here," I said. "I'll telephone.
There's Brophy's, just round the corner, and they send in the
loveliest things."
"Oh, they do! Well, tell 'em to begin sending."
I thought he'd follow me out in the hall to the 'phone, but he
was having some trouble in pulling out his purse--to count out
his money, I suppose. I got Central and asked for the number. Oh,
yes, I knew it all right; I had called up that same number once,
already, to-day. Brophy's? Why, Maggie Monahan, you ought to know
there's no Brophy's. At least none that I ever heard about.
With my hand over the mouthpiece, so that nobody heard but
Edward, I ordered a supper fit for a king--or a chorus girl! What
didn't I order! Champagne, broiled lobster, crab meat, stuffed
pimentoes, kirschkaffee--everything I'd ever heard Beryl
Blackburn tell about.
"Say, say," interrupted Edward, coming out after me. "That's
enough of that stuff. Tell him to send in a Scotch and soda
and--what--"
For at that moment the connection was made and I cut in sweetly
with:
"Mrs. Edward Ramsay?--just a minute."
Mag, you should have seen the man's face! It was red, it was
white; it was furious, it was frightened.
I put my hand a moment over the mouthpiece and turned on him
then. "I've got her on the 'phone at Mrs. Gates' house. Shall I
tell your wife where you are, Edward? . . . Just a moment, Mrs.
Ramsay, hold the wire; some one wants to speak with you."
"You little devil!" His voice was thick with rage.
"Yes, you called me that some time ago, but not in that tone.
Quick, now--the door or . . . Waiting, Mrs. Ramsay?"
He moved toward the door.
"How'll I know you won't tell her when I'm gone?" he growled.
"Merely by my saying that I won't," I answered curtly. "You're
in no position to dictate terms; I am."
But I could, without leaving the 'phone, latch the chain on the
door behind him, leaving it half open. So he must have heard the
rest.
"Yes, Mrs. Ramsay, waiting?" I croaked like the driest kind of
hello-girl. "I was mistaken. It was a message left to be
delivered to you--not some one wanting to speak with you. Who am
I? Why, this is Central. Here is the message: `Will be with you
in half an hour.' Signed `Edward.' . . .
Yes, that's right. Thank you. Good night."
I hung up, gave the door a touch that shut it in his face and
went back into the dining-room to throw open the windows. The
place smelled of alcohol; the moral atmosphere left behind by
that bad old man sickened me.
I leaned out and looked at the stars and tried to think of
something sweet and wholesome and strengthening.
"Ah, Nance," I cried to myself with a sob--I had pretended to
take it lightly enough when he was here, but now--"if you had
heard of a girl who, like yourself this evening, unexpectedly met
two men she had known, and the good man ignored her and the bad
one followed her--oh, Nancy--what sort of girl would you think
she was at heart? What sort of hope could you imagine her
treasuring for her own future? And what sort of significance
would you attach to--"
And just then the bell rang again.
This time I was sure it was you. And, O Maggie, I ran to the door
eager for the touch of your hand and the look in your eyes. I was
afraid to be alone with my own thoughts. I was afraid of the
conclusion to which they were leading me. Maggie, if ever a girl
needed comfort and encouragement and heartening, I did then.
And I got it, dear.
For there was a man at the door, with a great basket of
azaleas--pale, pink earth-stars they are, the sweet, innocent
things--and a letter for me. Here it is. Let me read it to you.
"My dear Miss Omar:
Once on a time there was a Luckless Pot, marred in the making,
that had the luck to be of service to a Pipkin.
It was a saucy Pipkin, though a very winning one, and it had all
the health and strength the poor Pot lacked--physically.
Morally--morally, that young Pipkin was in a most unwholesome
condition. Already its fair, smooth surface was scratched and
fouled. It was unmindful of the treasure of good it contained,
and its responsibility to keep that good intact. And it seemed
destined to crash itself to pieces among pots of baser metal.
What the Luckless Pot did was little--being ignorant of the art
by which diamonds may be attained easily and honestly--but it
gave the little Pipkin a chance.
What the Pipkin did with that chance the Pot learned to-night,
with such pleasure and satisfaction as made it impossible for him
not to share it with her. So while he sent Burnett out to the
conservatory to cut azaleas, he wrote her a note to try to convey
to her what he felt when, in that nicely polished, neatly
decorated and self-respecting Vessel on exhibition in Mrs. Gates'
red room, he recognized the poor little Pipkin of other days.
The Pot, as you know, was a sort of stranded bit of clay that had
never filled the use for which pots are created. He had little
human to interest him. The fate of the Pipkin, therefore, he had
often pondered on; and, in spite of improbabilities, had had
faith in a certain quality of brave sincerity the little thing
showed; a quality that shone through acquired faults like a star
in a murky sky.
This justification of his faith in the Pipkin may seem a small
matter to make so much of. And yet the Pot--that sleeps not well
o' nights, as is the case with damaged pots--will take to bed
with him to-night a pretty, pleasant thought due just to this.
But do not think the Pot an idealist. If he were, he might have
been tempted to mistake the Pipkin for a statelier, more
pretentious Vessel--a Vase, say, all graceful curves and embossed
sides, but shallow, perhaps, possibly lacking breadth. No, the
Pipkin is a pipkin, made of common clay--even though it has the
uncommon sweetness and strength to overcome the tendencies of
clay--and fashioned for those common uses of life, deprivation of
which to anything that comes from the Potter's hands is the most
enduring, the most uncommon sorrow.
O pretty little Pipkin, thank the Potter, who made you as you
are, as you will be--a thing that can cheer and stay men's souls
by ministering to the human needs of them. For you, be sure, the
Potter's `a good fellow and 'twill all be well.'
For the Pot--he sails shortly, or rather, he is to be carted
abroad by some optimistic friends whose hopes he does not
share--to a celebrated repair shop for damaged pots. Whether he
shall return, patched and mended into temporary semblance of a
useful Vessel; whether he shall continue to be merely the same
old Luckless Pot, or whether he shall return at all, O Pipkin,
does not matter much.
But it has been well that, before we two behind the veil had
passed, we met again, and you left me such a fragrant memory.
LATIMER."
* * * * * * * * * *
O Maggie, Maggie, some day I hope to see that man and tell him
how sorely the Pipkin needed the Pot's letter!
IX.
It's all come so quick, Maggie, and it was over so soon that I
hardly remember the beginning.
Nobody on earth could have expected it less than I, when I came
off in the afternoon. I don't know what I was thinking of as I
came into my dressing-room, that used to be Gray's--the sight of
him seemed to cut me off from myself as with a knife--but it
wasn't of him.
It may have been that I was chuckling to myself at the thought of
Nancy Olden with a dressing-room all to herself. I can't ever
quite get used to that, you know, though I sail around there with
all the airs of the leading lady. Sometimes I see a twinkle in
Fred Obermuller's eye when I catch him watching me, and goodness
knows he's been glum enough of late, but it wasn't--
Yes, I'm going to tell you, but--it's rattled me a bit, Maggie.
I'm so--so sorry, and a little--oh, just a little, little bit
glad!
I'd slammed the door behind me--the old place is out of repair
and the door won't shut except with a bang--and I had just
squatted down on the floor to unbutton my high shoes, when I
noticed the chintz curtains in front of the high dressing-box
waver. They must have moved just like that when I was behind them
months--it seems years--ago. But, you see, Topham had never
served an apprenticeship behind curtains, so he didn't suspect.
"Lordy, Nancy," I laughed to myself, "some one thinks you've
got a rose diamond and--"
nd at that moment he parted the curtains and came out.
Yes--Tom--Tom Dorgan.
My heart came beating up to my throat and then, just as I thought
I should choke, it slid down to my boots, sickening me. I didn't
say a word. I sat there, my foot in my lap, staring at him.
Oh, Maggie-girl, it isn't good to get your first glimpse after
all these months of the man you love crouched like a big bull in
a small space, poking his close-cropped black head out like a
turtle that's not sure something won't be thrown at it, and then
dragging his big bulk out and standing over you. He used to be
trim--Tom--and taut, but in those shapeless things, the old
trousers, the dirty white shirt, and the vest too big for him--
"Well," he said, "why don't you say something?"
Tom's voice--Mag, do you remember, the merry Irish boy's voice,
with its chuckles like a brook gurgling as it runs?
No--'tisn't the same voice. It's--it's changed, Maggie. It's
heavy and--and coarse--and--brutal. That's what it is. It sounds
like--like the knout, like--
"Nance--what in hell's--"
"I think I'm--frightened, Tom."
"Oh, the ladyfied airs of her! Ain't you going to faint, Miss
Olden?"
I got up.
"No--no. Sit down, Tom. Tell me about it. How--how did you get
here?"
He went to the door, opened it a bit and looked out cautiously.
Mag--Mag--it hurt me--that. Why, do you suppose?
"You're sure nobody'll come in?" he asked.
I turned the key in the lock, forgetting that it didn't really
lock.
"Oh, yes, I'm sure," I said. "Why?"
"Why! You have got slow. Just because I didn't say good-by to
them fellows up at the Pen, and--"
"Oh! You've escaped!"
"That's what. First jail-break in fifteen years. What d'ye think
of your Tommy, old girl, eh? Ain't he the gamest? Ain't you proud
of him?"
My God, Mag! Proud of him. He didn't know--he couldn't
see--himself. He, shut in like a wild beast, couldn't see what
this year has done for him. Oh, the change--the change in him! My
boy Tommy, with the gay, gallus manner, and the pretty, jolly
brogue, and the laughing mouth under his brown mustache. And this
man--his face is old, Mag, old--oh!--and hard--and--and tough,
cheap and tough. There's something in his eyes now and about his
shaven mouth--oh, Maggie, Maggie!
"Look here, Nance." He caught me by the shoulders, knocking up
my chin so that he could look down squarely at me. "What's your
graft? What's it to be between us? What've ye been doing all this
time? Out with it! I want to know."
I shook myself free and faced him.
"I've been--Tom Dorgan, I've been to hear the greatest actors
and actresses in the world say and do the finest things in the
world. I've watched princesses and kings--even if they're only
stage ones. I've read a new book every night--a great picture
book, in which the pictures move and speak--that's the stage, Tom
Dorgan. Much of it wasn't true, but a girl who's been brought up
by the Cruelty doesn't have to be told what's true and what's
false. I've met these people and lived with them--as one does who
thinks the same thoughts and feels what others feel. I know the
world now, Tom Dorgan, the real world of men and women--not the
little world of crooks, nor yet the littler one of fairy stories.
I've got a glimpse, too, of that other world where all the
scheming and lying and cheating is changed as if by magic into
something that deceives all right, but doesn't hurt. It's the
world of art and artists, Tom Dorgan, where people paint their
lies, or write them, or act them; where they lift money all right
from men's pockets, but lift their souls and their lives, too,
away from the things that trouble and bore and--and degrade.
"You needn't sneer; it's made a different Nance out of me, Tom
Dorgan. And, oh, but I'm sorry for the pert little beggar we both
knew that lied and stole and hid and ran and skulked! She was
like a poor little ignorant traveler in a great country where
she'd sized up the world from the few fool crooks she was thrown
in with. She--"
"Aw, cut it!"
"Tom--does--doesn't it mean anything to you? Can't it mean lots
to both of us now that--"
"Cut it, I tell you! Think I killed one guard and beat the other
till I'd broke every bone in his body to come here and listen to
such guff? You've been having a high old time, eh, and you never
give a thought to me up there! I might 'a' rotted in that black
hole for all you'd care, you--"
"Don't! I did, Tom; I did." I was shivering at the name, but I
couldn't bear his thinking that way of me. "I went up once, but
they wouldn't let me see you. I wrote you, but they sent back the
letters. Mag went up, too, but had to come back. And that time I
brought you--"
My voice trailed off. In that minute I saw myself on the way up
to Sing Sing with the basket and all my hopes and all my schemes
for amusing him.
And this is what I'd have seen if they'd let me in--this big,
gruff, murdering beast!
Oh, yes--yes--beast is what he is, and it didn't make him look it
less that he believed me and--and began to think of me in a
different way.
"I thought you wouldn't go back on a feller, Nance. That's why I
come straight to you. It was my game to have you hide me for a
day or two, till you could make a strike somewhere and we'd light
out together. How're ye fixed? Pretty smart, eh? You look it, my
girl, you look--My eye, Nance, you look good enough to eat, and
I'm hungry for you!"
Maggie, if I'd had to die for it I couldn't have moved then.
You'd think a man would know when the woman he's holding in his
arms is fainting--sick at the touch of him. A woman would. It
wasn't my Tom that I'd known, that I'd worked with and played
with and--It was a great brute, whose mouth--who had no eyes, no
ears, no senses but--ah! . . .
He laughed when I broke away from him at last. He laughed! And I
knew then I'd have to tell him straight in words.
"Tom," I gasped, "you can have all I've got; and it's plenty
to get you out of the way. But--but you can't have--me--any more.
That's--done!"
Oh, the beast in his face! It must have looked like that when the
guard got his last glimpse of it.
"You're kiddin' me?" he growled.
I shook my head.
Then he ripped it out. Said the worst he could and ended with a
curse! The blood boiled in me. The old Nance never stood that;
she used to sneer at other women who did.
"Get out of here!" I cried. "Go--go, Tom Dorgan. I'll send
every cent I've got to you to Mother Douty's within two hours,
but don't you dare--"
"Don't YOU dare, you she-devil! Just make up your mind to drop
these newfangled airs, and mighty quick. I tell you you'll come
with me 'cause I need you and I want you, and I want you now. And
I'll keep you when once I get you again. We'll hang together. No
more o' this one-sided lay-out for me, where you get all the soft
and it's me for the hard. You belong to me. Yes, you do. Just
think back a bit, Nance Olden, and remember the kind of customer
I am. If you've forgot, just let me remind you that what I know
would put you behind bars, my lady, and it shall, I swear, if
I've got to go to the Chair for it!"
Tom! It was Tom talking that way to me. I couldn't bear it.
I made a rush for the door.
He got there, too, and catching me by the shoulder, he lifted his
fist.
But it never fell, Mag. I think I could kill a man who struck me.
But just as I shut my eyes and shivered away from him, while I
waited for the blow, a knock came at the door and Fred Obermuller
walked in.
"Eh? Oh! Excuse me. I didn't know there was anybody else. Nance,
your face is ghastly. What's up?" he said sharply.
He looked from me to Tom--Tom, standing off there ready to spring
on him, to dart past him, to fly out of the window--ready for
anything; only waiting to know what the thing was to be.
My senses came back to me then. The sight of Obermuller, with
those keen, quick eyes behind his glasses, his strong, square
chin, and the whole poise of his head and body that makes men
wait to hear what he has to say; the knowledge that that man was
my friend, mine--Nancy Olden's--lifted me out of the mud I'd sunk
back in, and put my feet again on a level with his.
"Tom," I said slowly, "Mr. Obermuller is a friend of mine.
No--listen! What we've been talking about is settled. Don't bring
it up again. It doesn't interest him and it can't change me; I
swear to you, it can't; nothing can. I'm going to ask Mr.
Obermuller to help you without telling him just what the scrape
is, and--and I'm going to be sure that he'll do it just because
he--"
"Because you've taken up with him, have you?" Tom shouted
savagely. "Because she's your--"
"Tom!" I cried.
"Tom--oh, yes, now I remember." Obermuller got between us as he
spoke. "Your friend up--in the country that you went to see and
couldn't. Not a very good-looker, your friend, Nance.
But--farming, I suppose, Mr.--Tom?--plays the deuce with one's
looks. And another thing it does: it makes a man forget sometimes
just how to behave in town. I'll be charmed, Mr. Tom, to oblige a
friend of Miss Olden's; but I must insist that he does not talk
like a--farmer."
He was quite close to Tom when he finished, and Tom was glaring
up at him. And, Mag, I didn't know which one I was most afraid
for. Don't you look at me that way, Mag Monahan, and don't you
dare to guess anything!
"If you think," growled Tom, "that I'm going to let you get
off with the girl, you're mighty--"
"Now, I've told you not to say that. The reason I'll do the
thing she's going to ask of me--if it's what I think it is--is
because this girl's a plucky little creature with a soul big
enough to lift her out of the muck you probably helped her into.
It's because she's got brains, talent, and a heart. It's
because--well, it's because I feel like it, and she deserves a
friend."
"You don't know what she is." It was a snarl from Tom. "You
don't--"
"Oh, yes, I do; you cur! I know what she was, too. And I even
know what she will be; but that doesn't concern you."
"The hell it don't!"
Obermuller turned his back on him. I was dumb and still. Tom
Dorgan had struck me after all.
"What is it you want me to do, Nance?" Obermuller asked.
"Get him away on a steamer--quick," I murmured--I couldn't look
him in the face--"without asking why, or what his name is."
He turned to Tom. "Well?"
"I won't go--not without her."
"Because you're so fond of her, eh? So fond, your first thought
on quitting the--country was to come here to get her in trouble.
If you've been traced--"
"Ah! You wouldn't like that, eh?" sneered Tom. "Would you?"
"Well, I've had my share of it. And she ain't. Still--I . . .
Just what would it be worth to you to have me out of the way?"
"Oh, Tom--Tom--" I cried.
But Obermuller got in front of me.
"It would be worth exactly one dollar and seventy-five cents.
I think it will amount to about that for cab-hire. I guess the cars
aren't any too safe for you, or it might be less. It may amount
to something more before I get you shipped before the mast on the
first foreign-bound boat. But what's more important," he added,
bringing his fist down with a mighty thump on the table, "you
have just ten seconds to make up your mind. At the end of that
time I'll ring for the police."
* * * * * * * * * * *
I went down to the boat to see it sail, Mag, at seven this
morning. No, not to say good-by to him. He didn't know I was
there. It was to say good-by to my old Tommy; the one I loved.
Truly I did love him, Mag, though he never cared for me. No, he
didn't. Men don't pull down the women they love; I know that now.
If Tom Dorgan had ever cared for me he wouldn't have made a thief
of me. If he'd cared, the last place on earth he'd have come to,
when he knew the detectives would be on his track, would have
been just the first place he made for. If he'd cared, he--
But it's done, Mag. It's all over. Cheap--that's what he is, this
Tom Dorgan. Cheaply bad--a cheap bully, cheap-brained. Remember
my wishing he'd have been a ventriloquist? Why, that man that
tried to sell me to Obermuller hasn't sense enough to be a good
scene-shifter. Oh--
The firm of Dorgan & Olden is dissolved, Mag. The retiring
partner has gone into the theatrical business. As for Dorgan--the
real one, poor fellow! jolly, handsome, big Tom Dorgan--he died.
Yes, he died, Maggie, and was buried up there in the prison
graveyard. A hard lot for a boy; but it's not the worst thing
that can happen to him. He might become a man; such a man as that
fellow that sailed away before the mast this morning.
X.
There I was seated in a box all alone--Miss Nancy Olden, by
courtesy of the management, come to listen to the leading lady
sing coon-songs, that I might add her to my collection of
take-offs.
She's a fat leading lady, very fair and nearly fifty, I guess.
But she's got a rollicking, husky voice in her fat throat that's
sung the dollars down deep into her pockets. They say she's
planted them deeper still--in the foundations of apartment
houses--and that now she's the richest roly-poly on the Rialto.
Do you know, Maggie darlin', what I was saying to myself there in
the box, while I watched the stage and waited for Obermuller? He
said he'd drop in later, perhaps.
"Nance," I said, "I kind of fancy that apartment sort of idea
myself. They tell you, Nancy, that when you've got the artistic
temperament, that that's all you'll ever have. But there's a
chance--one in a hundred--for a body to get that temperament
mixed with a business instinct. It doesn't often happen. But when
it does the result is--dollars. It may be, Nance--I shrewdly
suspect it is a fact that you've got that marvelous mixture. Your
early successes, Miss Olden, in another profession that I needn't
name, would encourage the idea that you're not all heart and no
head. I think, Nance, I shall have you mimic the artists during
working hours and the business men when you're at play. I fancy
apartment houses. They appeal to me. We'll call one `The Nancy'
and another `Olden Hall' and another . . . "
"What'll I call the third apartment house, Mr. O?" I asked
aloud, as I heard the rings on the portiere behind me click.
He didn't answer.
Without turning my head I repeated the question.
And yet--suddenly--before he could have answered, I knew
something was wrong.
I turned. And in that moment a man took the seat beside me and
another stood facing me, with his back against the portieres.
"Miss Olden?" the man beside me asked.
"Yes."
"Nance Olden, the mimic, who entertains at private houses?"
I nodded.
"You--you were at Mrs. Paul Gates' just a week ago, and you gave
your specialties there?"
"Yes--yes, what is it you want?"
He was a little man, but very muscular. I could note the play of
his muscles even in the slight motion he made as he turned his
body so as to get between me and the audience, while he leaned
toward me, watching me intently with his small, quick, blue eyes.
"We don't want to make any scene here," he said very low. "We
want to do it up as quietly as we can. There might be some
mistake, you know, and then you'd be sorry. So should we. I hope
you'll be reasonable and it'll be all the better for you
because--"
"What are you talk--what--" I looked from him to the other
fellow behind us.
He leaned a bit farther forward then, and pulling his coat partly
open, he showed me a detective's badge. And the other man quickly
did the same.
I sat back in my chair. The fat star on the stage, with her big
mouth and big baby-face, was doing a cake-walk up and down close
to the footlights, yelling the chorus of her song.
I'll never mimic that song, Mag, although I can see her and hear
it as plain as though I'd listened and watched her all my life.
But there's no fun in it for me. I hate the very bars the
orchestra plays before she begins to sing. I can't bear even to
think of the words. The whole of it is full of horrible
things--it smells of the jail--it looks like stripes--it . . .
"You're not going to faint?" asked the man, moving closer to me.
"Me? I never fainted in my life. . . Where is he now--Tom
Dorgan?"
"Tom Dorgan!"
"Yes. I was sure I saw him sail, but, of course, I was mistaken.
He has sent you after me, has he? I can hardly believe it of
Tom--even--even yet."
"I don't know anything that connects you with Dorgan. If he was
in with you on this, you'd better remember, before you say
anything more, that it'll all be used against you."
The curtain had gone down and gone up again. I was watching the
star. She has such a boyish way of nodding her head, instead of
bowing, after she waddles out to the center; and every time she
wipes her lips with her lace handkerchief, as though she'd just
taken one of the cocktails she makes in the play with all the
skill of a bartender. I found myself doing the same thing--wiping
my lips with that very same gesture, as though I had a fat, bare
forearm like a rolling-pin--when all at once the thought came to
me: "You needn't bother, Nancy. It's all up. You won't have any
use for it all."
"Just what is the charge?" I asked, turning to the man beside me.
"Stealing a purse containing three hundred dollars from Mrs.
Paul Gates' house on the night of April twenty-seventh."
"What!"
It was Obermuller. He had pushed the curtains aside; the crashing
of the orchestra had prevented our hearing the clatter of the
rings. He had pushed by the man standing there, had come in
and--he had heard.
"Nance!" he cried. "I don't believe a word of it. He turned in
his quick way to the men. "What are your orders?"
"To take her to her flat and search it."
Obermuller came over to me then, and took my hand for a minute.
"It's a pity they don't know about the Gray rose diamond," he
whispered, helping me on with my jacket. "They'd see how silly
this little three-hundred dollar business is. . . . Brace up,
Nance Olden!"
Oh, Mag, Mag, to hear a man like that talk to you as though you
were his kind, when you have the feel of the coarse prison
stripes between your dry, shaking fingers, and the close prison
smell is already poisoning your nostrils!
"I don't see--" my voice shook--"how you can believe--in me."
"Don't you?" he laughed. "That's easy. You've got brains,
Nance, and the most imbecile thing you could do just now, when
your foot is already on the ladder, would be just this--to get
off in order to pick up a trinket out of the mud, when there's a
fortune up at the top waiting for you. Clever people don't do
asinine things. And other clever people know that they don't.
You're clever, but so am I--in my weak, small way. Come along,
little girl."
He pulled my hand in his arm and we walked out, followed by the
two men.
Oh, no! It was all very quiet and looked just like a little
theater party that had an early supper engagement. Obermuller
nodded to the manager out in the deserted lobby, who stopped us
and asked me what I thought of the star.
You'll think me mad, Mag. Those fellows with the badges were sure
I was, but Obermuller's eyes only twinkled, and the manager's
grin grew broad when, catching up the end of my skirt and
cake-walking up and down, I sang under my breath that coon-song
that was trailing over and over through my head.
"Bravo! bravo!" whispered the manager, hoarsely, clapping his
hands softly.
I gave one of those quick, funny, boyish nods the star inside
affects and wiped my lips with my handkerchief.
That brought down my house. Even the biggest fellow with the
badge giggled recognizingly, and then put his hand quickly in
front of his mouth and tried to look severe and official.
The color had come back to Obermuller's face; it was worth
dancing for--that.
"Be patient, Mag; let me tell it my way."
There wasn't room in the coupe waiting out in front for more than
two. So Obermuller couldn't come in it. But he put me in--Mag,
dear, dear Mag--he put me in as if I was a lady--not like Gray; a
real one. A thing like that counts when two detectives are
watching. It counted afterward in the way they treated me.
The big man climbed up on the seat with the driver. The blue-eyed
fellow got in and sat beside me, closing the door.
"I'll be out there almost as soon as you are," Obermuller said,
standing a moment beside the lowered window.
"You good fellow!" I said, and then, trying to laugh: "I'll do
as much for you some day."
He shook his fist laughingly at me, and I waved my hand as we
drove of.
"You know, Miss, there may be some mistake about this," said
the man next to me, "and--"
"Yes, there may be. In fact, there is."
"I'm sure I'll be very glad if it is a mistake. They do
happen--though not often. You spoke of Dorgan--"
"Did I?"
"Yes, Tom Dorgan, who busted out of Sing Sing the other day."
"Surely you're mistaken," I said, smiling right into his blue
eyes. "The Tom Dorgan I mentioned is a sleight-of-hand performer
at the Vaudeville. Ever see him?"
"N--no."
"Clever fellow. You ought to. Perhaps you don't recognize him
under that name. On the bills he's Professor Haughwout. Stage
people have so many names, you know."
"Yes, so have--some other people."
I laughed, and he grinned back at me.
"Now that's mean of you," I said; "I never had but one. It was
all I needed."
It flashed through me then what a thing like this might do to a
name. You know, Mag, every bit of recognition an actress steals
from the world is so much capital. It isn't like the old graft
when you had to begin new every time you took up a piece of work.
And your name--the name the world knows--and its knowing it makes
it worth having like everything--that name is the sum of every
scheme you've planned, of every time you've got away with the
goods, of every laugh you've lifted, of every bit of cleverness
you've thought out and embodied, of everything that's in you, of
everything you are.
But I didn't dare think long of this. I turned to him.
"Tell me about this charge," I said. "Where was the purse?
Whose was it? And why haven't they missed it till after a week?"
"They missed it all right that night, but Mrs. Gates wanted it
kept quiet till the servants had been shadowed and it was
positively proved that they hadn't got away with it."
"And then she thought of me?"
"And then she thought of you."
"I wonder why?"
"Because you were the only person in that room except Mrs.
Gates, the lady who lost the purse, Mrs. Ramsay, and--eh?"
"N--nothing. Mrs. Ramsay, you said?"
"Yes."
"Not Mrs. Edward Ramsay, of Philadelphia?"
"Oh, you know the name?"
"Oh, yes, I know it."
"It was printed, you know, in gold lettering on the inside flap
and--"
"I don't know."
"Well, it was, and it contained three hundred dollars, Mrs.
Ramsay says. She had slipped it under the fold of the spread at
the top of the bed in the room where you took off your things in
Mrs. Gates' presence, and put them on again when no one else was
there."
"And you mean to tell me that this is all?" I raged at him;
"that every bit of evidence you have to warrant your treating an
innocent girl like--"
"You didn't behave like a very innocent girl, if you'll
remember," he said dryly, "when I first came into the box. In
fact, if that fellow hadn't just come in then I believe you'd 'a'
confessed the whole job. . . . 'Tain't too late," he added.
I didn't answer. I put my head back against the cushions and
closed my eyes. I could feel the scrutiny of his blue eyes on my
naked face--your face is so unprotected with the eyes closed;
like a fort whose battery is withdrawn. But I was tired--it tires
you when you care. A year ago, Mag, this sort of thing--the risk,
the nearness to danger, the chances one way or the other--would
have intoxicated me. I used to feel as though I was dancing on a
volcano and daring it to explode. The more twistings and turnings
there were to the labyrinth, the greater glory it was to get out.
Maggie darlin', you have before you a mournful spectacle--the
degeneration of Nancy Olden. It isn't that she's lost courage.
It's only that she used to be able to think of only one thing,
and now--What do you suppose it is, Mag? If you know, don't you
dare to tell me.
When we got to the flat Obermuller was already there. At the door
I pulled out my key and opened it with a flourish.
"Won't you come in, gentlemen, and spend the evening?" I asked.
They followed me in. First to the parlor. The two fellows threw
off their coats and searched that through and through--not a
drawer did they miss, not a bit of furniture did they fail to
move. Obermuller and I sat there guying them as they pried about
in their shirt-sleeves. That Trust business has taken the life
out of him of late. All their tricks, all their squeezings, their
cheatings, their bossing and bragging and bullying have got on to
his nerves till he looks like a chained bear getting a drubbing.
And he swears that they're in a conspiracy to freeze him and a
few others like him out; he believes there's actually a paper in
existence that would prove it. But this affair of the purse
seemed to excite him till he behaved like a bad school-boy.
And I? Well, Nance Olden was never far behind at the Cruelty when
there was anything going on. We trailed after them, and when
they'd finished with the bedrooms--yours and mine--I asked the
big fellow to come into the kitchen with Mr. O. and me, while the
blue-eyed detective tackled the dining-room, and I'd get up a
lunch for us all.
Mag, you should have seen Fred Obermuller with a big apron on
him, dressing the salad while I was making sandwiches. The
Cruelty taught me how to cook, even if it did teach me other
things. You wouldn't have believed that the Trust had got him by
the throat, and was choking the last breath out of him. You
wouldn't have believed that our salaries hadn't been paid for
three weeks, that our houses were dwindling every night, that--
I was thinking about it all there in the back of my head, trying
to see a way out of it--you know if there is such an agreement as
Obermuller swears there is, it's against the law--while we
rattled on, the two of us, like a couple of children on a picnic,
when I heard a crash behind me.
The salad bowl had slipped from Obermuller's fingers. He stood
with his back turned to me, his eyes fixed upon that searching
detective.
But he wasn't searching any more, Mag. He was standing still as
a pointer that's scented game. He had moved the lounge out from
the wall, and there on the floor, spread open where it had
fallen, lay a handsome elephant-skin purse, with gold corners.
From where I stood, Mag, I could read the plain gold lettering on
the dark leather. I didn't have to move. It was plain
enough--quite plain.
Mrs. EDWARD RAMSAY
Hush, hush, Mag; if you take on so, how can I tell you the rest?
Obermuller got in front of me as I started to walk into the
dining-room. I don't know what his idea was. I don't suppose he
does exactly--if it wasn't to spare me the sight of that damned
thing.
Oh, how I hated it, that purse! I hated it as if it had been
something alive that could be glad of what it had done. I wished
it was alive that I could tear and rend it and stamp on it and
throw it in a fire, and drag it out again, with burned and
bleeding nails, to tear it again and again. I wanted to fall on
it and hide it; to push it far, far away out of sight; to stamp
it down--down into the very bottom of the earth, where it could
feel the hell it was making for me.
But I only stood there, stupidly looking at it, having pushed
past Obermuller, as though I never wanted to see anything else.
And then I heard that blue-eyed fellow's words.
"Well," he said, pulling on his coat as though he'd done a good
day's work, "I guess you'd just better come along with me."
XI.
"Don't you think you'd better get out of this?" I asked
Obermuller, as he came into the station a few minutes after I got
there.
"No."
"I do."
"Because?"
"Because it won't do you any good to have your name mixed up
with a thing like this."
"But it might do you some good."
I didn't answer for a minute after that. I sat in my chair, my
eyes bent on the floor. I counted the cracks between the chair
and the floor of the office where the Chief was busy with another
case. I counted them six times, back and forth, till my eyes were
clear and my voice was steady.
"You're awfully good," I said, looking up at him as he stood by
me. "You're the best fellow I ever knew. I didn't know men could
be so good to women. . . But you'd better go--please. It'll be
bad enough when the papers get hold of this, without having them
lump you in with a bad lot like me."
He put his hand on my shoulder and gave it a quick little shake.
"Don't say that about yourself. You're not a bad lot."
"But--you saw the purse."
"Yes, I saw it. But it hasn't proved anything to me but this:
you're innocent, Nance, or you're crazy. If it's the first, I
want to stand by you, little girl. If it's the second--good God!
I've got to stand by you harder than ever."
Can you see me sitting there, Mag, in the bright, bare little
room, with its electric lights, still in my white dress and big
white hat, my pretty jacket fallen on the floor beside me?
I could feel the sharp blue eyes of that detective Morris feeding
on my miserable face. But I could feel, too, a warmth like wine
poured into me from that big fellow's voice.
I put my hand up to him and he took it.
"If I'm innocent and can prove it, Fred Obermuller, I'll get
even with you for--for this."
"Do you want to do something for me now?"
"Do I?"
"Well, if you want to help me, don't sit there looking like the
criminal ghost of the girl I know."
The blood rushed to my face. Nance Olden, a sniveling coward! Me,
showing the white feather--me, whimpering like a whipped
puppy--me--Nance Olden!
"You know," I smiled up at him, "I never did enjoy getting
caught."
"Hush! But that's better. . . . Tell me now--"
A buzzer sounded. The blue-eyed detective got up and came over to
me.
"Chief's ready," he said. "This way."
They stopped Obermuller at the door. But he pushed past them.
"I want to say just a word to you, Chief," he said. "You
remember me. I'm Obermuller, of the Vaudeville. If you'll send
those fellows out and let me speak to you just a moment, I'll
leave you alone with Miss Olden."
The Chief nodded to the blue-eyed detective, and he and the other
fellow went out and shut the door behind them.
"I want simply to call your attention to the absurdity and
unreasonableness of this thing," Obermuller said, leaning up
against the Chief's desk, while he threw out his left hand with
that big open gesture of his, "and to ask you to bear in mind,
no matter what appearances may be, that Miss Olden is the most
talented girl on the stage to-day; that in a very short time she
will be at the top; that just now she is not suffering for lack
of money; that she's not a high-roller, but a determined,
hard-working little grind, and that if she did feel like taking a
plunge, she knows that she could get all she wants from me
even--"
"Even if you can't pay salaries when they're due, Obermuller."
The Chief grinned under his white mustache.
"Even though the Trust is pushing me to the wall; going to such
lengths that they're liable criminally as well as civilly, if I
could only get my hands on proof of their rascality. It's true I
can't pay salaries always when they're due, but I can still raise
a few hundred to help a friend. And Miss Olden is a friend of
mine. If you can prove that she took this money, you prove only
that she's gone mad, but you don't--"
"All right, Obermuller. You're not the lawyer for the defense.
That'll come later--if it does come. I'll be glad to bear in mind
all you've said, and much that you haven't."
"Thank you. Good night. . . . I'll wait for you, Nance,
outside."
"I'm going to ask you a lot of questions, Miss Olden," the old
Chief said, when we were alone. "Sit here, please. Morris tells
me you've got more nerve than any woman that's ever come before
me, so I needn't bother to reassure you. You don't look like a
girl that's easily frightened. I have heard how you danced in the
lobby of the Manhattan, how you guyed him at your flat, and were
getting lunch and having a regular picnic of a time when--"
"When he found that purse."
"Exactly. Now, why did you do all that?"
"Why? Because I felt like it. I felt gay and excited and--"
"Not dreaming that that purse was sure to be found?"
"Not dreaming that there was such a purse in existence except
from the detective's say--so, and never fancying for an instant
that it would be found in my flat."
"Hm!" He looked at me from under his heavy, wrinkled old lids.
You don't get nice eyes from looking on the nasty things in this
world, Mag.
"Why," I cried, "what kind of a girl could cut up like that
when she was on the very edge of discovery?"
"A very smart girl--an actress; a good one; a clever thief who's
used to bluffing. Of course," he added softly, "you won't
misunderstand me. I'm simply suggesting the different kinds of
girl that could have done what you did. But, if you don't mind,
I'll do the questioning. Nance Olden," he turned suddenly on me,
his manner changed and threatening, "what has become of that
three hundred dollars?"
"Mr. Chief, you know just as much about that as I do."
I threw up my head and looked him full in the face. It was over
now--all the shivering and trembling and fearing. Nance Olden's
not a coward when she's fighting for her freedom; and fighting
alone without any sympathizing friend to weaken her.
He returned the look with interest.
"I may know more," he said insinuatingly.
"Possibly." I shrugged my shoulders.
No, it wasn't put on. There never yet was a man who bullied me
that didn't rouse the fighter in me. I swore to myself that this
old thief-catcher shouldn't rattle me.
"Doesn't it occur to you that under the circumstances a full
confession might be the very best thing for you? I shouldn't
wonder if these people would be inclined to be lenient with you
if you'd return the money. Doesn't it occur--"
"It might occur to me if I had anything to confess--about this
purse."
"How long since you've seen Mrs. Edward Ramsay?" He rushed the
question at me.
I jumped.
"How do you know I've ever seen her?"
"I do know you have."
"I don't believe you."
"Thank you; neither do I believe you, which is more to the
point. Come, answer the question: how long is it since you have
seen the lady?"
I looked at him. And then I looked at my glove, and slowly pulled
the fingers inside out, and then--then I giggled. Suddenly it
came to me--that silly, little insane dodge of mine in the
Bishop's carriage that day; the girl who had lost her name; and
the use all that affair might be to me if ever--
"I'll tell you if you'll let me think a minute," I said
sweetly. "It--it must be all of fifteen months."
"Ah! You see I did know that you've met the lady. If you're wise
you'll draw deductions as to other things I know that you don't
think I do. . . . And where did you see her?"
"In her own home."
"Called there," he sneered, "alone?"
"No," I said very gently. "I went there, to the best of my
recollection, with the Bishop--yes, it was the Bishop, Bishop Van
Wagenen."
"Indeed!"
I could see that he didn't believe a word I was saying, which
made me happily eager to tell him more.
"Yes, we drove up to the Square one afternoon in the Bishop's
carriage--the fat, plum-colored one, you know. We had tea
there--at least, I did. I was to have spent the night, but--"
"That's enough of that."
I chuckled. Yes, Mag Monahan, I was enjoying myself. I was having
a run for my money, even if it was the last run I was to have.
"So it's fifteen months since you've seen Mrs. Ramsay, eh?"
"Yes."
He turned on me with a roar.
"And yet it's only a week since you saw her at Mrs. Gates'."
"Oh, no."
"No? Take care!"
"That night at Mrs. Gates' it was dark, you know, in the front
room. I didn't see Mrs. Ramsay that night. I didn't know she was
there at all till--"
"Till?"
"Till later I was told."
"Who told you?"
"Her husband."
He threw down his pencil.
"Look here, this is no lark, young woman, and you needn't
trouble yourself to weave any more fairy tales. Mr. Ramsay is in
a--he's very ill. His own wife hasn't seen him since that night,
so you see you're lying uselessly."
"Really!" So Edward didn't go back to Mrs. Gates' that night.
Tut! tut! After his telephone message, too!
"Now, assuming your innocence of the theft, Miss Olden, what is
your theory; how do you account for the presence of that purse in
your flat?"
"Now, you've hit the part of it that really puzzles me. How do
you account for it; what is your theory?"
He got to his feet, pushing his chair back sharply.
"My theory, if you want to know it, is that you stole the purse;
that your friend Obermuller believes you did; that you got away
with the three hundred, or hid it away, and--"
"And what a stupid thief I must be, then, to leave the empty
purse under my lounge!"
"How do you know it was empty?" he demanded sharply.
"You said so. . . Well, you gave me to understand that it was,
then. What difference does it make? It would be a still stupider
thief who'd leave a full purse instead of an empty one under his
own lounge."
"Yes; and you're not stupid, Miss Olden."
"Thank you. I'm sorry I can't say as much for you."
I couldn't help it. He was such a stupid. The idea of telling me
that Fred Obermuller believed me guilty! The idea of thinking me
such a fool as to believe that! Such men as that make criminals.
They're so fat-witted you positively ache--they so tempt you to
pull the wool over their eyes. O Mag, if the Lord had only made
men cleverer, there'd be fewer Nancy Oldens.
The Chief blew a blast at his speaking-tube that made his purple
cheeks seem about to burst. My shoulders shook as I watched him,
he was so wrathy.
And I was still laughing when I followed the detective out into
the waiting-room, where Obermuller was pacing the floor. At the
sight of my smiling face he came rushing to me.
"Nance!" he cried.
"Orders are, Morris," came in a bellow from the Chief at his
door, "that no further communication be allowed between the
prisoner and--"
Phew! All the pertness leaked out of me. Oh, Mag, I don't like
that word. It stings--it binds--it cuts.
I don't know what I looked like then; I wasn't thinking of me.
I was watching Obermuller's face. It seemed to grow old and thin
and haggard before my eyes, as the blood drained out of it. He
turned with an exclamation to the Chief and--
And just then there came a long ring at the telephone.
Why did I stand there? O Mag, when you're on your way to the
place I was bound for, when you know that before you'll set foot
in this same bright little room again, the hounds in half a dozen
cities will have scratched clean every hiding-place you've had,
when your every act will be known and--and--oh, then, you wait,
Mag, you wait for anything--anything in the world; even a
telephone call that may only be bringing in another wretch like
yourself; bound, like yourself, for the Tombs.
The Chief himself went to answer it.
"Yes--what?" he growled. "Well, tell Long Distance to get
busy. What's that? St. Francis--that's the jag ward, isn't it?
Who is it? Who? Ramsay!"
I caught Obermuller's hand.
"I don't hear you," the Chief roared. "Oh--yes? Yes, we've got
the thief, but the money--no, we haven't got the money. The deuce
you say! Took it yourself? Out of your wife's purse--yes. . . .
Yes. But we've got the--What? Don't remember where you--"
"Steady, Nance," whispered Obermuller, grabbing my other hand.
I tried to stand steady, but everything swayed and I couldn't
hear the rest of what the Chief was saying, though all my life
seemed condensed into a listening. But I did hear when he jammed
the receiver on the hook and faced us.
"Well, they've got the money. Ramsay took the purse himself,
thinking it wasn't safe there under the spread where any servant
might be tempted who chanced to uncover it. You'll admit the
thing looked shady. The reason Mrs. Ramsay didn't know of it is
because the old man's just come to his senses in a hospital and
been notified that the purse was missing."
"I want to apologize to you, Chief," I mumbled.
"For thinking me stupid? Oh, we were both--"
"No, for thinking me not stupid. I am stupid--stupid--stupid.
The old fellow I told you about, Mr. O., and the way I telephoned
him out of the flat that night--it was--"
"Ramsay!"
I nodded, and then crumbled to the floor.
It was then that they sent for you, Mag.
Why didn't I tell it straight at the first, you dear old Mag?
Because I didn't know the straight of it, then, myself. I was so
heavy-witted I never once thought of Edward. He must have taken
the bills out of the purse and then crammed them in his pocket
while he was waiting there on the lounge and I was pretending to
telephone and--
But it's best as it is--oh, so best! Think, Mag! Two people who
knew her--who knew her, mind--believed in Nancy Olden, in spite
of appearances: Obermuller, while we were in the thick of it,
and; you, you dear girl, while I was telling you of it.
XII.
When Obermuller sent for me I thought he wanted to see me about
that play he's writing in which I'm to star--when the pigs begin
to fly.
Funniest thing in the world about that man, Mag. He knows he
can't get bookings for any play on earth; that if he did they'd
be canceled and any old excuse thrown at him, as soon as Tausig
heard of it and could put on the screws. He knows that there
isn't an unwatched hole in theatrical America through which he
can crawl and pull me and the play in after him. And yet he just
can't let go working on it. He loves it, Mag; he loves it as
Molly loved that child of hers that kept her nursing it all the
years of its life, and left her feeling that the world had been
robbed of everything there was for a woman to do when it died.
Obermuller has told me all the plot. In fact, he's worked it out
on me. I know it as it is, as he wanted it to be, and as it's
going to be. He tells me he's built it up about me; that it will
fit me as never a comedy fitted a player yet, and that we'll make
such a hit--the play and I together--that . . .
And then he remembers that there's no chance; not the ghost of
one; and he falls to swearing at the Trust.
"Don't you think, Mr. O.," I said, as he began again when I
came into his office, "that it might be as well to quit cursing
the Syndicate till you've got something new to say or something
different to rail about? It seems to me a man's likely to get
daffy if he keeps harping on--"
"Oh, I've got it all right, Nance, be sure of that! I've got
something different to say of them and something new to swear
about. They've done me up; that's all. Just as they've fixed
Iringer and Gaffney and Howison."
"Tell me."
He threw out his arms and then let them fall to his side.
"Oh, it's easy," he cried, "so easy that I never thought of
it. They've just bought the Vaudeville out of hand and served
notice on me that when my lease expires next month they'll not be
able to renew it, `unfortunately'! That's all. No; not quite. In
order to kill all hope of a new plan in me they've just let it
get to be understood that any man or woman that works for
Obermuller needn't come round to them at any future time."
"Phew! A blacklist."
"Not anything so tangible. It's just a hint, you know, but it
works all right. It works like--"
"What are you going to do; what can you do?"
"Shoot Tausig or myself, or both of us."
"Nonsense!"
"Yes, of course, it's nonsense, or rather it's only what I'd
like to do. . . . But that's not the question. Never mind about
me. It's what are you going to do?"
He looked straight at me, waiting. But I didn't answer. I was
thinking.
"You don't realize, Nance, what those fellows are capable of.
When Gaffney told me, before he gave up and went West, that there
was a genuine signed conspiracy among them to crush out us
independents, I laughed at him. `It's a dream, Gaffney,' I said.
`Forget it.' `It's no dream, as you'll find out when your turn
comes in time,' he shouted. `It's a fact, and what's more,
Iringer once taxed Tausig to his face with it; told him he knew
there was such a document in existence, signed by the great
Tausig himself, by Heffelfinger of the Pacific circuit; by Dixon
of Chicago, and Weinstock of New Orleans, binding themselves to
force us fellows to the wall, and specifying the per cent. of
profit each one of 'em should get on any increase of business; to
blacklist every man and woman that worked for us; to buy up our
debts and even bring false attachments, when--'"
"Now, weren't there enough real debts to satisfy 'em? They're
hard to please, if you haven't creditors enough to suit 'em!"
He looked grim, but he didn't speak.
"I don't believe it, anyway, Mr. O; and 'tisn't good for you to
keep thinking about just one thing. You'll land where Iringer
did, if you don't look out. How did he know about it, anyway?"
"There was a leak in Tausig's office. Iringer used to be in with
them, and he had it from a clerk who--but never mind that. It's
the blacklisting I'm talking about now. Gray's just been in to
see me, to let me know that she quits at the end of the season.
And his Lordship, too, of course. You're not burdened with a
contract, Nance. Perhaps you'd better think it over seriously for
a day or two and decide if it wouldn't be best--"
"I don't have to," I interrupted then.
"Nance!" he cried, jumping up, as though he'd been relieved of
half his troubles.
"I don't have to think it over," I went on slowly, not looking
at the hand he held out to me. "It doesn't take long to know
that when you're between the devil and the deep sea, you'd better
try--the devil rather than be forced out into the wet."
"What?--you don't mean--"
I knew he was looking at me incredulously, but I just wouldn't
meet his eye.
"My staying with you will do you no good--" was hurrying now to
get it over with--"and it would do me a lot of harm. I think
you're right, Mr. Obermuller; I'd better just go over to where
it's warm. They'll be glad to get me and--and, to tell the truth,
I'll be glad to get in with the Syndicate, even if I can't make
as good terms as I might have by selling that contract,
which--like the famous conspiracy you're half mad about--never
existed."
He sat down on the edge of the desk. I caught one glimpse of his
face. It was black; that was enough for me. I turned to go.
"Ah, but it did, Miss Olden, it did!" he sneered.
"I won't believe it on the word of a man that's been in the
lunatic asylum ever since he lost his theater."
"Perhaps you'll believe it on mine."
I jumped. "On yours!"
"Didn't that little bully, when he lost his temper that day at
the Van Twiller, when we had our last fight--didn't he pull a
paper out of his box and shake it in my face, and--"
"But--you could have them arrested for conspiracy and--"
"And the proof of it could be destroyed and then--but I can't
see how this interests you."
"No--no," I said thoughtfully. "I only happened to lump it in
with the contract we haven't--you and I. And as there's no
contract, why there's no need of my waiting till the end of the
season."
"Do you mean to say you'd--you'd--"
"If 'twere done, 'twere better it'd be done--quickly," I said
Macbethically.
He looked at me. Sitting there on his desk, his clenched fist on
his knee, he looked for a moment as though he was about to fly at
me. Then all of a sudden he slipped into his chair, leaned back
and laughed.
It wasn't a pleasant laugh, Mag. No--wait. Let me tell you the
rest.
"You are so shrewd, Olden, so awfully shrewd! Your eye is so
everlastingly out for the main chance, and you're still so young
that I predict a--a great future for you. I might even suggest
that by cultivating Tausig personally--"
"You needn't."
"No, you're right; I needn't. You can discount any suggestion I
might make. You just want to be the first to go over, eh? To get
there before Gray does--to get all there is in it for the first
rebel that lays down his arms; not to come in late when
submission is stale--and cheap. Don't worry about terms, you poor
little babe in the woods. Don't--" His own words seemed to choke
him.
"Don't you think--" I began a bit unsteadily.
"I think--oh, what a fool I've been!"
That stiffened me.
"Of course, you have," I said cordially. "It's silly to fight
the push, isn't it? It's only the cranks that get cocky and think
they can upset the fellows on top. The thing to do is to find out
which is the stronger--if you're a better man than the other
fellow, down him. If he's the champion, enlist under him. But be
in it. What's the use of being a kicker all your life? You only
let some one else come in for the soft things, while you stay
outside and gnaw your finger-nails and plot and plan and starve.
You spend your life hoping to live to-morrow, while the Tausigs
are living high to-day. The thing to do is to be humble if you
can't be arrogant. If they've got you in the door, don't curse,
but placate them. Think of Gaffney herding sheep out in Nevada;
of Iringer in the asylum; of Howison--"
"Admirable! admirable!" he interrupted sarcastically. "The
only fault I have to find with your harangue is that you've
misconceived my meaning entirely. But I needn't enlighten you.
Good morning, Miss Olden--good-by."
He turned to his desk and pulled out some papers. I knew he
wasn't so desperately absorbed in them as he pretended to be.
"Won't you shake hands," I asked, "and wish me luck?"
He put down his pen. His face was white and hard, but as he
looked at me it gradually softened.
`I suppose--I suppose, I am a bit unreasonable just this
minute," he said slowly. "I'm hard hit and--and I don't just
know the way out. Still, I haven't any right to--to expect more
of you than there is in you, you poor little thing! It's not your
fault, but mine, that I've expected--Oh, for God's
sake--Nance--go, and leave me alone!"
I had to take that with me to the Van Twiller, and it wasn't
pleasant. But Tausig received me with open arms.
"Got tired of staying out in the cold--eh?" he grinned.
"I'm tired of vaudeville," I answered. "Can't you give me a
chance in a comedy?"
"Hm! Ambitious, ain't you?"
"Obermuller has a play all ready for me--written for me. He'd
star me fast enough if he had the chance."
"But he'll never get the chance."
"Oh, I don't know."
"But I do. He's on the toboggan; that's where they all get, my
dear, when they get big-headed enough to fight us."
"But Obermuller's not like the others. He's not so easy. And he
is so clever; why, the plot of that comedy is the bulliest
thing--"
"You've read it--you remember it?"
"Oh, I know it by heart--my part of it. You see, he wouldn't
keep away from me while he was thinking of it. He kept consulting
me about everything in it. In a way, we worked over it
together."
The little man looked at me, slowly closing one eye. It is a
habit of his when he's going to do something particularly nasty.
"Then, in a way, as you say, it is part yours."
"Hardly! Imagine Nance Olden writing a line of a play!"
"Still you--collaborated; that's the word. I say, my dear, if I
could read that comedy, and it was--half what you say it is, I
might--I don't promise, mind--but I might let you have the part
that was written for you and put the thing on. Has he drilled you
any, eh? He was the best stage-manager we ever had before he got
the notion of managing for himself--and ruining himself."
"Well, he's all that yet. Of course, he has told me, and we
agreed how the thing should be done. As he'd write, you know,
he'd read the thing over to me, and I--"
"Fine--fine! A reading from that fool Obermuller would be enough
to open the eyes of a clever woman. I'd like to read that
comedy--yes?"
"But Obermuller would never--"
"But Olden might--"
"What?"
"Dictate the plot to my secretary, Mason, in there," he nodded
his head back toward the inner room. "She could give him the
plot and as much of her own part in full as she could remember.
You know Mason. Used to be a newspaper man. Smart fellow, that,
when he's sober. He could piece out the holes--yes?"
I looked at him. The little beast sat there, slowly closing one
eye and opening it again. He looked like an unhealthy little
frog, with his bald head, his thin-lipped mouth that laughed,
while the wrinkles rayed away from his cold, sneering eyes that
had no smile in them.
"I--I wouldn't like to make an enemy of a man like Obermuller,
Mr. Tausig."
"Bah! Ain't I told you he's on the toboggan?"
"But you never can tell with a man like that. Suppose he got
into that combine with Heffelfinger and Dixon and Weinstock?"
"What're you talking about?"
"Well, it's what I've heard."
"But Heffelfinger and Dixon and Weinstock are all in with us;
who told you that fairy story?"
"Obermuller himself."
The little fellow laughed. His is a creaky, almost silent little
laugh; if a spider could laugh he'd laugh that way.
"They're fooling him a bunch or two. Never you mind Obermuller.
He's a dead one."
"Oh, he said that you thought they were in with you, but that
nothing but a written agreement would hold men like that. And
that you hadn't got."
"Smart fellow, that Obermuller. He'd have been a good man to
have in the business if it hadn't been for those independent
ideas he's got. He's right; it takes--"
"So there is an agreement!" I shouted, in spite of myself, as I
leaned forward.
He sat back in his chair, or, rather, he let it swallow him
again.
"What business is that of yours? Stick to the business on hand.
Get to work on that play with Mason inside. If it's good, and we
decide to put it on, we'll pay you five hundred dollars down in
addition to your salary. If it's rot, you'll have your salary
weekly all the time you're at it, just the same as if you were
working, till I can place you. In the meantime, keep your ears
and eyes open and watch things, and your mouth shut. I'll speak
to Mason and he'll be ready for you to-morrow morning. Come round
in the morning; there's nobody about then, and we want to keep
this thing dark till it's done. Obermuller mustn't get any idea
what we're up to. . . . He don't love you--no--for shaking him?"
"He's furious; wouldn't even say good-by. I'm done for with him,
anyway, I guess. But what could I do?"
"Nothing, my dear; nothing. You're a smart little girl," he
chuckled. "Ta-ta!"
XIII.
Just what I'd been hoping for I don't know, but I knew that my
chance had come that morning.
For a week I had been talking Obermuller's comedy to Mason, the
secretary. In the evenings I stood about in the wings and watched
the Van Twiller company in Brambles. There was one fat role in it
that I just ached for, but I lost all that ache and found
another, when I overheard two of the women talking about
Obermuller and me one night.
"He found her and made her," one of 'em said; "just dug her
out of the ground. See what he's done for her; taught her every
blessed thing she knows; wrote her mimicking monologues for her;
gave her her chance, and--and now--Well, Tausig don't pay
salaries for nothing, and she gets hers as regularly as I draw
mine. What more I don't know. But she hasn't set foot on the
stage yet under Tausig, and they say Obermuller--"
I didn't get the rest of it, so I don't know what they say about
Obermuller. I only know what they've said to him about me.
'Tisn't hard to make men believe those things. But I had to stand
it. What could I do? I couldn't tell Fred Obermuller that I was
making over his play, soul and as much body as I could remember,
to Tausig's secretary. He'd have found that harder to believe
than the other thing.
It hasn't been a very happy week for me, I can tell you, Maggie.
But I forgot it all, every shiver and ache of it, when I came
into the office that morning, as usual, and found Mason alone.
Not altogether alone--he had his bottle. And he had had it and
others of the same family all the night before. The poor drunken
wretch hadn't been home at all. He was worse than he'd been that
morning three days before, when I had stood facing him and
talking to him, while with my hands behind my back I was taking a
wax impression of the lock of the desk; and he as unconscious of
it all as Tausig himself.
The last page I had dictated the day before, which he'd been
transcribing from his notes, lay in front of him; the gas was
still burning directly above him, and a shade he wore over his
weak eyes had been knocked awry as his poor old bald head went
bumping down on the type-writer before him.
The thing that favored me was Tausig's distrust of everybody
connected with him. He hates his partners only a bit less than he
hates the men outside the Trust. The bigger and richer the
Syndicate grows, the more power and prosperity it has, the more
he begrudges them their share of it; the more he wants it all for
himself. He is madly suspicious of his clerks, and hires others
to watch them, to spy upon them. He is continually moving his
valuables from place to place, partly because he trusts no man;
partly because he's so deathly afraid his right hand will find
out what his left is doing. He is a full partner of Braun and
Lowenthal--with mental reservations. He has no confidence in
either of them. Half his schemes he keeps from them; the other
half he tells them--part of. He's for ever afraid that the
Syndicate of which he's the head will fall to pieces and become
another Syndicate of which he won't be head.
It all makes him an unhappy, restless little beast; but it helped
me to-day. If it'd been any question of safe combinations and
tangled things like that, the game would have been all up for
Nancy O. But in his official safe Tausig keeps only such papers
as he wants Braun and Lowenthal to see. And in his private desk
in his private office he keeps--
I stole past Mason, sleeping with his forehead on the type-writer
keys--he'll be lettered like the obelisk when he wakes up--and
crept into the next room to see just what Tausig keeps in that
private desk of his.
Oh, yes, it was locked. But hadn't I been carrying the key to it
every minute for the last forty-eight hours? There must be a mine
of stuff in that desk of Tausig's, Mag. The touch of every paper
in it is slimy with some dirty trick, some bad secret, some mean
action. It's a pity that I hadn't time to go through 'em all; it
would have been interesting; but under a bundle of women's
letters, which that old fox keeps for no good reason, I'll bet, I
lit on a paper that made my heart go bumping like a cart over
cobbles.
Yes, there it was, just as Obermuller had vowed it was, with
Tausig's cramped little signature followed by Heffelfinger's,
Dixon's and Weinstock's; a scheme to crush the business life out
of men by the cleverest, up-to-date Trust deviltry; a thing that
our Uncle Sammy just won't stand for.
And neither will Nancy Olden, Miss Monahan.
She grabbed that precious paper with a gasp of delight and closed
the desk.
But she bungled a bit there, for Mason lifted his head and
blinked dazedly at her for a moment, recognized her and shook his
head.
"No--work to-day," he said.
"No--I know. I'll just look over what we've done, Mr. Mason,"
she answered cheerfully.
His poor head went down again with a bob, and she caught up the
type-written sheets of Obermuller's play. She waited a minute
longer; half because she wanted to make sure Mason was asleep
again before she tore the sheets across and crammed them down
into the waste-basket; half because she pitied the old fellow and
was sorry to take advantage of his condition. But she knew a cure
for this last sorry--a way she'd help him later; and when she
danced out into the hall she was the very happiest burglar in a
world chock full of opportunities.
Oh, she was in such a twitter as she did it! All that old delight
in doing somebody else up, a vague somebody whose meannesses she
didn't know, was as nothing to the joy of doing Tausig up. She
was dancing on a volcano again, that incorrigible Nance! Oh, but
such a volcano, Maggie! It atoned for a year of days when there
was nothing doing; no excitement, no risk, nothing to keep a girl
interested and alive.
And, Maggie darlin', it was a wonderful volcano, that ones that
last one, for it worked both ways. It paid up for what I haven't
done this past year and what I'll never do again in the years to
come. It made up to me for all I've missed and all I'm going to
miss. It was a reward of demerit for not being respectable, and a
preventive of further sins. Oh, it was such a volcano as never
was. It was a drink and a blue ribbon in one. It was a bang-up
end and a bully beginning. It was--
It was Tausig coming in as I was going out. Suddenly I realized
that, but I was in such a mad whirl of excitement that I almost
ran over the little fellow before I could stop myself.
"Phew! What a whirlwind you are!" he cried. "Where are you
going?"
"Oh, good morning, Mr. Tausig," I said sweetly. "I never
dreamed you'd be down so early in the morning."
"What're you doing with the paper?" he demanded suspiciously.
My eye followed his. I could have beaten Nancy Olden in that
minute for not having sense enough to hide that precious
agreement, instead of carrying it rolled up in her hand.
"Just taking it home to go over it," I said carelessly, trying
to pass him.
But he barred my way.
"Where's Mason?" he asked.
"Poor Mason!" I said. "He's--he's asleep."
"Drunk again?"
I nodded. How to get away!
"That settles his hash. Out he goes to-day . . . It seems to me
you're in a deuce of a hurry," he added, as I tried to get out
again. "Come in; I want to talk something over with you."
"Not this morning," I said saucily. I wanted to cry. "I've got
an engagement to lunch, and I want to go over this stuff for
Mason before one."
"Hm! An engagement. Who with, now?"
My chin shot up in the air. He laughed, that cold, noiseless
little laugh of his.
"But suppose I want you to come to lunch with me?"
"Oh, thank you, Mr. Tausig. But how could I break my engagement
with--"
"With Braun?"
"How did you guess it?" I laughed. "There's no keeping
anything from you."
He was immensely satisfied with his little self. "I know
him--that old rascal," he said slowly. "I say, Olden, just do
break that engagement with Braun."
"I oughtn't--really."
"But do--eh? Finish your work here and we'll go off together, us
two, at twelve-thirty, and leave him cooling his heels here when
he comes." He rubbed his hands gleefully.
"But I'm not dressed."
"You'll do for me."
"But not for me. Listen: let me hurry home now and I'll throw
Braun over and be back here to meet you at twelve-thirty."
He pursed up his thin little lips and shook his head. But I
slipped past him in that minute and got out into the street.
"At twelve-thirty," I called back as I hurried off.
I got around the corner in a jiffy. Oh, I could hardly walk, Mag!
I wanted to fly and dance and skip. I wanted to kick up my heels
as the children were doing in the Square, while the organ ground
out, Ain't It a Shame? I actually did a step or two with them, to
their delight, and the first thing I knew I felt a bit of a hand
in mine like a cool pink snowflake and--
Oh, a baby, Mag! A girl-baby more than a year old and less than
two years young; too little to talk; too big not to walk; facing
the world with a winning smile and jabbering things in her soft
little lingo, knowing that every woman she meets will understand.
I did, all right. She was saying to me as she kicked out her
soft, heelless little boot:
"Nancy Olden, I choose you. Nancy Olden, I love you. Nancy
Olden, I dare you not to love me. Nancy Olden, I defy you not to
laugh back at me!"
Where in the world she dropped from, heaven knows. The
organ-grinder picked up the shafts of his wagon and trundled it
away. The piccaninnies melted like magic. But that gay little
flirt, about a year and a half old, just held on to my finger and
gabbled--poetry.
I didn't realize just then that she was a lost, strayed or
stolen. I expected every moment some nurse or conceited mamma to
appear and drag her away from me. And I looked down at her--oh,
she was just a little bunch of soft stuff; her face was a
giggling dimple, framed in a big round hat-halo, that had fallen
from her chicken-blond head; and her white dress, with the blue
ribbons at the shoulders, was just a little bit dirty. I like 'em
a little bit dirty. Why? Perhaps because I can imagine having a
little coquette of my own a bit dirty like that, and can't just
see Nance Olden with a spick-and-span clean baby, all feathers
and lace, like a bored little grown-up.
"You're a mouse," I gurgled down at her. "You're a sweetheart.
You're a--"
And suddenly I heard a cry and rush behind me.
It was a false alarm; just a long-legged girl of twelve rushing
round the corner, followed by a lot of others. It hadn't been
meant for me, of course, but in the second when I had remembered
that precious paper and Tausig's rage when he should miss it, I
had pulled my hand away from that bit baby's and started to run.
The poor little tot! There isn't any reason in the world for the
fancies they take any more than for our own; eh, Mag? Why should
she have been attracted to me just because I was so undignified
as to dance with the piccaninnies?
But do you know what that little thing did? She thought I was
playing with her. She gave a crow of delight and came bowling
after me.
That finished me. I stooped and picked her up in my arms,
throwing her up in the air to hear her crow and feel her come
down again.
"Mouse," I said, "we'll just have a little trip together. The
nurse that'd lose you deserves to worry till you're found. The
mother that's lucky enough to own you will be benefited hereafter
by a sharp scare on your account just now. Come on, sweetheart!"
Oh, the feel of a baby in your arms, Mag! It makes the Cruelty
seem a perfectly unreal thing, a thing one should be unutterably
ashamed of imagining, of accusing human nature of; a thing only
an irredeemably vile thing could imagine. Just the weight of that
little body riding like a bonny boat at anchor on your arm, just
the cocky little way it sits up, chirping and confident; just the
light touch of a bit of a hand on your collar; just that is
enough to push down brick walls; to destroy pictures of bruised
and maimed children that endure after the injuries are healed; to
scatter records that even I--I, Nancy Olden--can't believe and
believe, too, that other women have carried their babies, as I
did some other woman's baby, across the Square.
On the other side I set her down. I didn't want to. I was greedy
of every moment that I had her. But I wanted to get some change
ready before climbing up the steps to the L-station.
She clutched my dress as we stood there a minute in a perfectly
irresistible way. I know now why men marry baby-women: it's to
feel that delicious, helpless clutch of weak fingers; the clutch
of dependence, of trust, of appeal.
I looked down at her with that same silly adoration I've seen on
Molly's face for her poor, lacking, twisted boy. At least, I did
in the beginning. But gradually the expression of my face must
have changed; for all at once I discovered what had been done to
me.
My purse was gone.
Yes, Maggie Monahan, clean gone! My pocket had been as neatly
picked as I myself--well, never mind, as what. I threw back my
head and laughed aloud. Nance Olden, the great doer-up, had been
done up so cleverly, so surely, so prettily, that she hadn't had
an inkling of it.
I wished I could get a glimpse of the clever girl that did it. A
girl--of course, it was! Do you think any boy's fingers could do
a job like that and me not even know?
But I didn't stop to wish very long. Here was I with the thing I
valued most in the world still clutched in my hand, and not a
nickel to my name to get me, the paper, and the baby on our way.
It was the baby, of course, that decided me. You can't be very
enterprising when you're carrying a pink lump of sweetness that's
all a-smile at the moment, but may get all a-tear the next.
"It's you for the nearest police station, you young tough!"
I said, squeezing her. "I can't take you home now and
show you to Mag."
But she giggled and gurgled back at me, the abandoned thing, as
though the police station was just the properest place for a
young lady of her years.
It was not so very near, either, that station. My arm ached when
I got there from carrying her, but my heart ached, too, to leave
her. I told the matron how and where the little thing had picked
me up. At first she wouldn't leave me, but--the fickle little
thing--a glass of milk transferred all her smiles and wiles to
the matron. Then we both went over her clothes to find a name or
an initial or a laundry mark. But we found nothing. The matron
offered me a glass of milk, too, but I was in a hurry to be gone.
She was a nice matron; so nice that I was just about to ask her
for the loan of car-fare when--
When I heard a voice, Maggie, in the office adjoining. I knew
that voice all right, and I knew that I had to make a decision
quick.
I did. I threw the whole thing into the lap of Fate. And when I
opened the door and faced him I was smiling.
Oh, yes, it was Tausig.
XIV.
He started as though he couldn't believe his eyes when he saw me.
"The Lord hath delivered mine enemy into my hand," shone in his
evil little face.
"Why, Mr. Tausig," I cried, before he could get his breath.
"How odd to meet you here! Did you find a baby, too?"
"Did I find--" He glared at me. "I find you; that's enough.
Now--"
"But the luncheon was to be at twelve-thirty," I laughed. "And
I haven't changed my dress yet."
"You'll change it all right for something not so becoming if you
don't shell out that paper."
"Paper?"
"Yes, paper. Look here, if you give it back to me this
minute--now--I'll not prosecute you for--for--"
"For the sake of my reputation?" I suggested softly.
"Yes." He looked doubtfully at me, mistrusting the amiable
deference of my manner.
"That would be awfully good of you," I murmured.
He did not answer, but watched me as though he wasn't sure which
way I'd jump the next moment.
"I wonder what could induce you to be so forgiving," I went on
musingly. "What sort of paper is this you miss? It must be
valuable--"
"Yes, it's valuable all right. Come on, now! Quit your fooling
and get down to business. I'm going to have that paper."
"Do you know, Mr. Tausig," I said impulsively, "if I were you,
and anybody had stolen a valuable paper from me, I'd have him
arrested. I would. I should not care a rap what the public
exposure did to his reputation, so long--so long," I grinned
right up at him, "so long as it didn't hurt me, myself, in the
eyes of the law."
Mad? Oh, he was hopping! A German swear-word burst from him.
I don't know what it meant, but I can imagine.
"Look here, I give you one more chance," he squeaked; "if you
don't--"
"What'll you do?"
I was sure I had him. I was sure, from the very whisper in which
he had spoken, that the last thing in the world he wanted was to
have that agreement made public by my arrest. But I tripped up on
one thing. I didn't know there was a middle way for a man with
money.
His manner changed.
"Nance Olden," he said aloud now, "I charge you with stealing
a valuable private paper of mine from my desk. Here, Sergeant!"
I hadn't particularly noticed the Sergeant standing at the other
door with his back to us. But from the way he came at Tausig's
call I knew he'd had a private talk with him, and I knew he'd
found the middle way.
"This girl's taken a paper of mine. I want her searched,"
Tausig cried.
"Do you mean," I said, "that you'll sign your name to such a
charge against me?"
He didn't answer. He had pulled the Sergeant down and was
whispering in his ear. I knew what that meant. It meant a special
pull and a special way of doing things and--
"You'll do well, my girl, to give up Mr. Tausig's property to
him," the Sergeant said stiffly.
"But what have I got that belongs to him?" I demanded.
He grinned and shrugged his big shoulders.
"We've a way of finding out, you know, here. Give it up or--"
"But what does he say I've taken? What charge is there against
me? Have you the right to search any woman who walks in here? And
what in the world would I want a paper of Tausig's for?"
"You won't give it up then?" He tapped a bell.
A woman came in. I had a bad minute there, but it didn't last; it
wasn't the matron I'd brought the baby to.
"You'll take this girl into the other room and search her
thoroughly. The thing we're looking for--" The Sergeant turned
to Tausig.
"A small paper," he said eagerly. "A--a contract--just a
single sheet of legal cap paper it was type-written and signed by
myself and some other gentlemen, and folded twice."
The woman looked at me. She was a bit hard-mouthed, with
iron-gray hair, but her eyes looked as though they'd seen a lot
and learned not to flinch, though they still felt like it. I knew
that kind of look--I'd seen it at the Cruelty.
"What an unpleasant job this of yours is," I said to her,
smiling up at her for all the world as that tike of a baby had
smiled at me, and watching her melt just as I had. "I'll not
make it a bit harder. This thing's all a mistake. Which way? . .
. I'll come back, Mr. Tausig, to receive your apology, but you
can hardly expect me to go to lunch after this."
He growled a wrathful, resenting mouthful. But he looked a bit
puzzled just the same.
He looked more puzzled yet, even bewildered, when we came back
into the main office a quarter of an hour later, the woman and I,
and she reported that no paper of any kind had she found.
Me? Oh, I was sweet amiability personified with the woman and
with the Sergeant, who began to back-water furiously. But with
Tausig--
What? You don't mean to say you're not on, Mag? Oh, dear, dear,
it's well you had that beautiful wig of red hair that puts even
Carter's in the shade; for you'd never have been a success in--in
other businesses I might name.
Bamboozled the woman? Not a bit of it; you can't deceive women
with mouths and eyes like that. It was just that I'd had a flash
of genius in the minute I heard Tausig's voice, and in spite of
my being so sure he wouldn't have me arrested I'd-- Guess, Mag,
guess! There was only one way.
The baby, of course! In the moment I had--it wasn't long--I'd
stooped down, pretending to kiss that cherub good-by, and in a
jiffy I'd pinned that precious paper with a safety-pin to the
baby's under-petticoat, preferring that risk to--
Risk! I should say it was. And now it was up to Nance to make
good.
While Tausig insisted and explained and expostulated and at last
walked out with the Sergeant--giving me a queer last look that
was half-cursing, half-placating--I stood chatting sweetly with
the woman who had searched me.
I didn't know just how far I might go with her. She knew the
paper wasn't on me, and I could see she was disposed to believe I
was as nice as she'd have liked me to be. But she'd had a lot of
experience and she knew, as most women do even without
experience, that if there's not always fire where there is smoke,
it's because somebody's been clever enough and quick enough to
cover the blaze.
"Well, good-by," I said, putting out my hand. "It's been
disagreeable but I'm obliged to you for--why, where's my purse!
We must have left it--" And I turned to go back into the room
where I'd undressed.
"You didn't have any."
The words came clear and cold and positive. Her tone was like an
icicle down my back.
"I didn't have any!" I exclaimed. "Why, I certainly--"
"You certainly had no purse, for I should have seen it and
searched it if you had."
Now, what do you think of a woman like that?
"Nancy Olden," I said to myself, more in sorrow than in anger,
"you've met your match right here. When a woman knows a fact and
states it with such quiet conviction, without the least
unnecessary emphasis and not a superfluous word, 'ware that
woman. There's only one game to play to let you hang round here a
bit longer and find out what's become of the baby. Play it!"
I looked at her with respect; it was both real and feigned.
"Of course, you must be right," I said humbly. "I know you
wouldn't be likely to make a mistake, but, just to convince me,
do you mind letting me go back to look?"
"Not at all," she said placidly. "If I go with you there's no
reason why you should not look."
Oh, Mag, it was hard lines looking. Why?--Why, because the place
was so bare and so small. There were so few things to move and it
took such a short time, in spite of all I could do and pretend to
do, that I was in despair.
"You must be right," I said at length, looking woefully up at
her.
"Yes; I knew I was," she said steadily.
"I must have lost it."
"Yes."
There was no hope there. I turned to go.
"I'll lend you a nickel to get home, if you'll leave me your
address," she said after a moment.
Oh, that admirable woman! She ought to be ruling empires instead
of searching thieves. Look at the balance of her, Mag. My best
acting hadn't shaken her. She hadn't that fatal curiosity to
understand motives that wrecks so many who deal with--we'll call
them the temporarily un-straight. She was satisfied just not to
let me get ahead of her in the least particular. But she wasn't
mean, and she would lend me a nickel--not an emotionally
extravagant ten-cent piece, but just a nickel--on the chance that
I was what I seemed to be.
Oh, I did admire her; but I'd have been more enthusiastic about
it if I could have seen my way clear to the baby and the paper.
I took the nickel and thanked her, but effusiveness left her
unmoved. A wholesome, blue-gowned rock with a neat, full-bibbed
white apron; that's what she was!
And still I lingered. Fancy Nance Olden just heartbroken at being
compelled to leave a police station!
But there was nothing for it. Go, I had to. My head was a-whirl
with schemes coming forward with suggestions and being dismissed
as unsuitable; my thoughts were flying about at such a dizzy rate
while I stood there in the doorway, the woman's patient hand on
the knob and her watchful eyes on me, that I actually--
Mag, I actually didn't hear the matron's voice the first time she
spoke.
The second time, though, I turned--so happy I could not keep the
tremor out of my voice.
"I thought you had gone long ago," she said.
Oh, we were friends, we two! We'd chummed over a baby, which for
women is like what taking a drink together is for men. The
admirable dragon in the blue dress didn't waver a bit because her
superior spoke pleasantly to me. She only watched and listened.
Which puts you in a difficult position when your name's Nance
Olden--you have to tell the truth.
"I've been detained," I said with dignity, "against my wish.
But that's all over. I'm going now. Good-by." I nodded and
caught up my skirt. "Oh!" I paused just as the admirable dragon
was closing the door on me. "Is the baby asleep? I wonder if I
might see her once more."
My heart was beating like an engine gone mad, in spite of my
careless tone, and there was a buzzing in my ears that deafened
me. But I managed to stand still and listen, and then to walk
off, as though it didn't matter in the least to me, while her
words came smashing the hope out of me.
"We've sent her with an officer back to the neighborhood where
you found her. He'll find out where she belongs, no doubt. Good
day."
IV.
Ah me, Maggie, the miserable Nance that went away from that
station! To have had your future in your grasp, like that one of
the Fates with the string, and then to have it snatched from you
by an impish breeze and blown away, goodness knows where!
I don't know just which way I turned after I left that station.
I didn't care where I went. Nothing I could think of gave me any
comfort. I tried to fancy myself coming home to you. I tried to
see myself going down to tell the whole thing to Obermuller. But
I couldn't do that. There was only one thing I wanted to say to
Fred Obermuller, and that thing I couldn't say now.
But Nance Olden's not the girl to go round long like a molting
hen. There was only one chance in a hundred, and that was the one
I took, of course.
"Back to the Square where you found the baby, Nance!" I cried
to myself. "There's the chance that that admirable dragon has
had her suspicions aroused by your connection with the baby,
which she hadn't known before, and has already dutifully notified
the Sergeant. There's the chance that the baby is home by now,
and the paper found by her mother will be turned over to her
papa; and then it's good-by to your scheme. There's the chance
that--"
But in the heart of me I didn't believe in any chance but
one--the chance that I'd find that blessed baby and get my
fingers just once more on that precious paper.
I blew in the A.D's nickel on a cross-town car and got back to
the little Square. There was another organ-grinder there grinding
out coon-songs, to which other piccaninnies danced. But nary a
little white bundle of fluff caught hold of my hand. I walked
that Square till my feet were sore. It was hot. My throat was
parched. I was hungry. My head ached. I was hopeless. And yet I
just couldn't give it up. I had asked so many children and
nurse-maids whether they'd heard of the baby lost that morning
and brought back by an officer, that they began to look at me as
though I was not quite right in my mind. The maids grabbed the
children if they started to come near me, and the children stared
at me with big round eyes, as though they'd been told I was an
ogre who might eat them.
I was hungry enough to. The little fruit-stand at the entrance
had a fascination for me. I found myself there time and again,
till I got afraid I might actually try to get of with a peach or
a bunch of grapes. That thought haunted me. Fancy Nance Olden
starved and blundering into the cheapest and most easily detected
species of thieving!
I suppose great generals in their hour of defeat imagine
themselves doing the feeblest, foolishest things. As I sat there
on the bench, gazing before me, I saw the whole thing--Nancy
Olden, after all her bragging, her skirmishing, her hairbreadth
scapes and successes, arrested in broad daylight and before
witnesses for having stolen a cool, wet bunch of grapes, worth a
nickel, for her hot, dry, hungering throat! I saw the policeman
that'd do it; he looked like that Sergeant Mulhill I met 'way,
'way back in Latimer's garden. I saw the officer that'd receive
me; he had blue eyes like the detective that came for me to the
Manhattan. I saw the woman jailer--oh, she was the A.D, all
right, who'd receive me without the slightest emotion, show me to
a cell and lock the door, as calm, as little triumphant or
affected, as though I hadn't once outwitted that cleverest of
creatures--and outwitted myself in forestalling her. I saw--
Mag, guess what I saw! No, truly; what I really saw? It made me
jump to my feet and grab it with a squeal.
I saw my own purse lying on the gravel almost at my feet, near
the little fruit-stand that had tempted me.
Blank empty it was, stripped clean, not a penny left in it, not a
paper, not a stamp, not even my key. Just the same I was glad to
have it. It linked me in a way to the place. The clever little
girl that had stolen it had been here in this park, on this very
spot. The thought of that cute young Nance Olden distracted my
mind a minute from my worry--and, oh, Maggie darlin', I was
worrying so!
I walked up to the fruit-stand with the purse in my hand. The old
fellow who kept it looked up with an inviting smile. Lord knows,
he needn't have encouraged me to buy if I'd had a penny.
"I want to ask you," I said, "if you remember selling a lot of
good things to a little girl who had a purse this--this
morning?"
I showed it to him, and he turned it over in his crippled old
hands.
"It was full then--or fuller, anyway," I suggested.
"You wouldn't want to get her into trouble--that little girl?"
he asked cautiously.
I laughed. "Not I. I--myself--"
I was going to say--well, you can imagine what I was going to
say, and that I didn't say it or anything like it.
"Well--there she is, Kitty Wilson, over yonder," he said.
I gasped, it was so unexpected. And I turned to look. There on
one of the benches sat Kitty Wilson. If I hadn't been blind as a
bat and full of trouble--oh, it thickens your wits, does trouble,
and blinds your eyes and muffles your ears!--I'd have suspected
something at the mere sight of her. For there sat Kitty Wilson
enthroned, a hatless, lank little creature about twelve, and near
her, clustered thick as ants around a lump of sugar, was a crowd
of children, black and white, boys and girls. For Kitty--that
deplorable Kitty--had money to burn; or what was even more
effective at her age, she had goodies to give away. Her lap was
full of spoils. She had a sample of every good thing the
fruit-stand offered. Her cheeks and lips were smeary with candy.
Her dress was stained with fruit. The crumbs of cake lingered
still on her chin and apron. And Kitty--I love a generous
thief--was treating the gang.
It helped itself from her abundant lap; it munched and gobbled
and asked for more. It was a riot of a high old time. Even the
birds were hopping about as near as they dared, picking up the
crumbs, and the squirrels had peanuts to throw to the birds.
And all on Nancy Olden's money!
I laughed till I shook. It was good to laugh. Nancy Olden isn't
accustomed to a long dose of the doleful, and it doesn't agree
with her. I strolled over to where my guests were banqueting.
You see, Mag, that's where I shouldn't rank with the A.D. I'm
too inquisitive. I want to know how the other fellow in the case
feels and thinks. It isn't enough for me to see him act.
"Kitty," I said--somehow a twelve-year-old makes you feel more
of a grown-up than a twelve-months-old does--"I hope you're
having a good--time, Kitty Wilson, but--haven't you lost
something?"
She was chewing at the end of a long string of black
candy-shoe-strings, all right, the stuff looks like--and she was
eating just because she didn't want to stop. Goodness knows, she
was full enough. Her jaws stopped, though, suddenly, as she
looked from the empty purse in my outstretched hand to me, and
took me in.
Oh, I know that pause intimately. It says: "Wait a minute, till
I get my breath, and I'll know how much you know and just what
lie to tell you."
But she changed her mind when she saw my face. You know, Mag, if
there's a thing that's fixed in your memory it's the face of the
body you've done up. The respectables have their rogues' gallery,
but we, that is, the light-fingered brigade, have got a fools'
gallery to correspond to it.
In which of 'em is my picture? Now, Margaret, that's mean. You
know my portrait hangs in both.
I looked down on the little beggar that had painted me for the
second salon, and lo, in a flash she was on her feet, the lapful
of good things tumbled to the ground, and Kitty was off.
I was bitterly disappointed in that girl, Mag! I was altogether
mistaken in my diagnosis of her. Hers is only a physical
cleverness, a talented dexterity. She had no resource in time of
danger but her legs. And legs will not carry a grafter half so
far as a good, quick tongue and a steady head.
She halted at a safe distance and glared back at me. Her
hostility excited the crowd of children--her push--against me,
and the braver ones jeered the things Kitty only looked, while
the thrifty ones stooped and gathered up the spoil.
"Tell her I wouldn't harm her," I said to one of her
lieutenants.
"She says she won't hurt ye, Kit," the child screamed.
"She dassent," yelled back Kitty, the valiant. "She knows I'd
peach on her about the kid."
"Kid! What kid?" I cried, all a-fire.
"The kid ye swiped this mornin'. Yah! I told the cop what
brought her back how ye took her jest as I--"
"Kitty!" I cried. "You treasure!" And with all my might I ran
after her.
Silly? Of course it was. I might have known what the short skirts
above those thin legs meant. I couldn't come within fifty feet of
her. I halted, panting, and she paused, too, dancing
tantalizingly half a block away.
What to do? I wished I had another purse to bestow on that sad
Kitty, but I had nothing, absolutely nothing, except--all at once
I remembered it--that little pin you gave me for Christmas, Mag.
I took it off and turned to appeal to the nearest one of the
flying body-guard that had accompanied us.
"You run on to her and tell her that if she'll show me the house
where that baby lives I'll give her this pin."
He sped on ahead and parleyed with Kit; and while they talked I
held aloft the little pin so that Kit might see the price.
She hesitated so long that I feared she'd slip through my hands,
but a sudden rival voice piping out, "I'll show ye the house,
Missus," was too much for her.
So, with Kit at a safe distance in advance to guard against
treachery, and a large and enthusiastic following, I crossed the
street, turned a corner, walked down one block and half up
another, and halted before a three-story brownstone.
I flew up the stairs, leaving my escort behind, and rang the
bell. It wasn't so terribly swagger a place, which relieved me
some.
"I want to see the lady whose baby was lost this morning," I
said to the maid that opened the door.
"Yes'm. Who'll I tell her?"
Who? That stumped me. Not Nance Olden, late of the Vaudeville,
later of the Van Twiller, and latest of the police station.
No--not Nance Olden . . . not . . .
"Tell her, please," I said firmly, "that I'm Miss Murieson, of
the X-Ray, and that the city editor has sent me here to see
her."
That did it. Hooray for the power of the press! She showed me
into a long parlor, and I sat down and waited.
It was cool and quiet and softly pretty in that long parlor. The
shades were down, the piano was open, the chairs were low and
softly cushioned. I leaned back and closed my eyes, exhausted.
And suddenly--Mag!--I felt something that was a cross between a
rose-leaf and a snowflake touch my hand.
If it wasn't that delectable baby!
I caught her and lifted her to my lap and hugged the chuckling
thing as though that was what I came for. Then, in a moment, I
remembered the paper and lifted her little white slip.
It was gone, Mag. The under-petticoat hadn't a sign of the paper
I'd pinned to it.
My head whirled in that minute. I suppose I was faint with the
heat, with hunger and fatigue and worry, but I felt myself
slipping out of things when I heard the rustling of skirts, and
there before me stood the mother of my baby.
The little wretch! She deserted me and flew to that pretty mother
of hers in her long, cool white trailing things, and sat in her
arms and mocked at me.
It was easy enough to begin talking. I told her a tale about
being a newspaper woman out on a story; how I'd run across the
baby and all the rest of it.
"I must ask your pardon," I finished up, "for disturbing you,
but two things sent me here--one to know if the baby got home
safe, and the other," I gulped, "to ask about a paper with some
notes that I'd pinned to her skirt."
She shook her head.
It was in that very minute that I noticed the baby's ribbons were
pink; they had been blue in the morning.
"Of course," I suggested, "you've had her clothes changed
and--"
"Why, yes, of course," said baby's mother. "The first thing I
did when I got hold of her was to strip her and put her in a tub;
the second, was to discharge that gossiping nurse for letting her
out of her sight."
"And the soiled things she had on--the dress with the blue
ribbons?"
"I'll find out," she said.
She rang for the maid and gave her an order.
"Was it a valuable paper?" she asked.
"Not--very," I stammered. My tongue was thick with hope and
dread. "Just--my notes, you know, but I do need them. I couldn't
carry the baby easily, so I pinned them on her skirt,
thinking--thinking--"
The maid came in and dumped a little heap of white before me.
I fell on my knees.
Oh, yes, I prayed all right, but I searched, too. And there it
was.
What I said to that woman I don't know even now. I flew out
through the hall and down the steps and--
And there Kitty Wilson corralled me.
"Say, where's that stick-pin?" she cried.
"Here!--here, you darling!" I said, pressing it into her hand.
"And, Kitty, whenever you feel like swiping another purse--just
don't do it. It doesn't pay. Just you come down to the Vaudeville
and ask for Nance Olden some day, and I'll tell you why."
"Gee!" said Kitty, impressed. "Shall--shall I call ye a
hansom, lady?"
Should she! The blessed inspiration of her!
I got into the wagon and we drove down street--to the Vaudeville.
I burst in past the stage doorkeeper, amazed to see me, and
rushed into Fred Obermuller's office.
"There!" I cried, throwing that awful paper on the desk before
him. "Now cinch 'em, Fred Obermuller, as they cinched you.
It'll be the holiest blackmail that ever--oh, and will you pay
for the hansom?"
XVI.
I don't remember much about the first part of the lunch. I was so
hungry I wanted to eat everything in sight, and so happy that I
couldn't eat a thing.
But Mr. O. kept piling the things on my plate, and each time I
began to talk he'd say: "Not now--wait till you're rested, and
not quite so famished."
I laughed.
"Do I eat as though I was starved?"
"You--you look tired, Nance."
"Well," I said slowly, "it's been a hard week."
"It's been hard for me, too; harder, I think, than for you. It
wasn't fair to me to let me--think what I did and say what I did.
I'm so sorry, Nance,--and ashamed. So ashamed! You might have
told me."
"And have you put your foot down on the whole thing; not much!"
He laughed. He's got such a boyish laugh in spite of his chin and
his eye-glasses and the bigness of him. He filled my glass for me
and helped me again to the salad.
Oh, Mag, it's such fun to be a woman and have a man wait on you
like that! It's such fun to be hungry and to sit down to a jolly
little table just big enough for two, with carnations nodding in
the tall slim vase, with a fat, soft-footed, quick-handed waiter
dancing behind you, and something tempting in every dish your eye
falls on.
It's a gay, happy, easy world, Maggie darlin'. I vow I can't find
a dark corner in it--not to-day.
None but the swellest place in town was good enough, Obermuller
had said, for us to celebrate in. The waiters looked queerly at
us when we came in--me in my dusty shoes and mussed hair and old
rig, and Mr. O. in his working togs. But do you suppose we cared?
He was smoking and I was pretending to eat fruit when at last I
got fairly launched on my story.
He listened to it all with never a word of interruption.
Sometimes I thought he was so interested that he couldn't bear to
miss a word I said. And then again I fancied he wasn't listening
at all to me; only watching me and listening to something inside
of himself.
Can you see him, Mag, sitting opposite me there at the pretty
little table, off in a private room by ourselves? He looked so
big and strong and masterful, with his eyes half closed, watching
me, that I hugged myself with delight to think that I--I, Nancy
Olden, had done something for him he couldn't do for himself.
It made me so proud, so tipsily vain, that as I leaned forward
eagerly talking, I felt that same intoxicating happiness I get on
the stage when the audience is all with me, and the two of
us--myself and the many-handed, good-natured other fellow over on
the other side of the footlights--go careering off on a jaunt of
fun and fancy, like two good playmates.
He was silent a minute when I got through. Then he laid his cigar
aside and stretched out his hand to me.
"And the reason, Nance--the reason for it all?"
I looked up at him. I'd never heard him speak like that.
"The reason?" I repeated.
"Yes, the reason." He had caught my hand.
"Why--to down that tiger Trust--and beat Tausig."
He laughed.
"And that was all? Nonsense, Nance Olden, there was another
reason. There are other tiger trusts. Are you going to set up as
a lady-errant and right all syndicate wrongs? No, there was
another, a bigger reason, Nance. I'm going to tell it to
you--what!"
I pulled my hand from his; but not before that fat waiter who'd
come in without our noticing had got something to grin about.
"Beg pardon, sir," he said. "This message must be for you,
sir. It's marked immediate, and no one else--"
Obermuller took it and tore it open. He smiled the oddest smile
as he read it, and he threw back his head and laughed a full,
hearty bellow when he got to the end.
"Read it, Nance," he said, passing it over to me. "They sent
it on from the office."
I read it. "Mr. Fred W. Obermuller, Manager
Vaudeville Theater, New York City, N.Y.:
Dear Obermuller:--I have just learned from your little protegee,
Nance Olden, of a comedy you've written. From what Miss Olden
tells me of the plot and situations of And the Greatest of
These--your title's great--I judge the thing to be something
altogether out of the common; and my secretary and reader, Mr.
Mason, agrees with me that properly interpreted and perhaps
touched up here and there, the comedy ought to make a hit.
Would Miss Olden take the leading role, I wonder?
Can't you drop in this evening and talk the matter over? There's
an opening for a fellow like you with us that's just developed
within the past few days, and--this is strictly confidential--I
have succeeded in convincing Braun and Lowenthal that their
enmity is a foolish personal matter which business men shouldn't
let stand in the way of business. After all, just what is there
between you and them? A mere trifle; a misunderstanding that half
an hour's talk over a bottle of wine with a good cigar would
drive away.
If you're the man I take you for you'll drop in this evening at
the Van Twiller and bury the hatchet. They're good fellows, those
two, and smart men, even if they are stubborn as sin.
Counting on seeing you to-night, my dear fellow,
I am most cordially,
I. M. TAUSIG."
I dropped the letter and looked over at Obermuller.
"Miss Olden," he said severely, coming over to my side of the
table, "have you the heart to harm a generous soul like that?"
"He--he's very prompt, isn't he, and most--"
And then we laughed together.
"You notice the letter was marked personal?" Obermuller said.
He was still standing beside me.
"No--was it?" I got up, too, and began to pull on my gloves;
but my fingers shook so I couldn't do a thing with them.
"Oh, yes, it was. That's why I showed it to you. Nance--Nance,
don't you see that there's only one way out of this? There's only
one woman in the world that would do this for me and that I could
take it from."
I clasped my hands helplessly. Oh, what could I do, Maggie, with
him there and his arms ready for me!
"I--I should think you'd be afraid," I whispered. I didn't dare
look at him.
He caught me to him then.
"Afraid you wouldn't care for an old fellow like me?" he
laughed. "Yes, that's the only fear I had. But I lost it, Nancy,
Nancy Obermuller, when you flung that paper down before me.
That's quite two hours ago--haven't I waited long enough?"
* * * * * * * * * * *
Oh, Mag--Mag, how can I tell him? Do you think he knows that I am
going to be good--good! that I can be as good for a good man who
loves me, as I was bad for a bad man I loved!
XVII.
PHILADELPHIA, January 27.
Maggie, dear:
I'm writing to you just before dinner while I wait for Fred. He's
down at the box-office looking up advance sales. I tell you,
Maggie Monahan, we're strictly in it--we Obermullers. That
Broadway hit of mine has preceded me here, and we've got the
town, I suspect, in advance.
But I'm not writing to tell you this. I've got something more
interesting to tell you, my dear old Cruelty chum.
I want you to pretend to yourself that you see me, Mag, as I came
out of the big Chestnut Street store this afternoon, my arms full
of bundles. I must have on that long coat to my heels, of dark,
warm red, silk-lined, with the long, incurving back sweep and
high chinchilla collar, that Fred ordered made for me the very
day we were married. I must be wearing that jolly little,
red-cloth toque caught up on the side with some of the fur.
Oh, yes, I knew I was more than a year behind the times when I
got them, but a successful actress wears what she pleases, and
the rest of the world wears what pleases her, too. Besides,
fashions don't mean so much to you when your husband tells you
how becoming--but this has nothing to do with the Bishop.
Yes, the Bishop, Mag!
I had just said, "Nance Olden--" To myself I still speak to me
as Nancy Olden; it's good for me, Mag; keeps me humble and for
ever grateful that I'm so happy. "Nance, you'll never be able to
carry all these things and lift your buful train, too. And
there's never a hansom round when it's snowing and--"
And then I caught sight of the carriage. Yes, Maggie, the same
fat, low, comfortable, elegant, sober carriage, wide and
well-kept, with rubber-tired wheels. And the two heavy horses,
fat and elegant and sober, too, and wide and well-kept. I knew
whose it was the minute my eyes lighted on it, and I couldn't--I
just couldn't resist it.
The man on the box-still wide and well-kept--was wide-awake this
time. I nodded to him as I slipped in and closed the door after
me.
"I'll wait for the Bishop," I said, with a red-coated assurance
that left him no alternative but to accept the situation
respectfully.
Oh, dear, dear! It was soft and warm inside as it had been that
long, long-ago day. The seat was wide and roomy. The cushions had
been done over--I resented that--but though a different material,
they were a still darker plum. And instead of Quo Vadis, the
Bishop had been reading Resurrection.
I took it up and glanced over it as I sat there; but, you know,
Mag, the heavy-weight plays never appealed to me. I don't go in
for the tragic--perhaps I saw too much of the real thing when I
was little.
At any rate, it seemed dull to me, and I put it aside and sat
there absent-mindedly dreaming of a little girl-thief that I knew
once when--when the handle of the door turned and the Bishop got
in, and we were off.
Oh, the little Bishop--the contrast between him and the fat,
pompous rig caught me! He seemed littler and leaner than ever,
his little white beard scantier, his soft eye kindlier and his
soft heart {?}
"God bless my soul!" he exclaimed, jumping almost out of his
neat little boots, while he looked sharply over his spectacles.
What did he see? Just a red-coated ghost dreaming in the corner
of his carriage. It made him doubt his eyes--his sanity. I don't
know what he'd have done if that warm red ghost hadn't got tired
of dreaming and laughed outright.
"Daddy," I murmured sleepily.
Oh, that little ramrod of a bishop! The blood rushed up under his
clear, thin, baby-like skin and he sat up straight and solemn and
awful--awful as such a tiny bishop could be.
"I fear, Miss, you have made a mistake," he said primly.
I looked at him steadily.
"You know I haven't," I said gently.
That took some of the starch out of him, but he eyed me
suspiciously.
"Why don't you ask me where I got the coat, Bishop Van
Wagenen?" I said, leaning over to him.
He started. I suppose he'd just that moment remembered my leaving
it behind that day at Mrs. Ramsay's.
"Lord bless me!" he cried anxiously. "You haven't--you haven't
again--"
"No, I haven't." Ah, Maggie, dear, it was worth a lot to me to
be able to say that "no" to him. "It was given to me. Guess
who gave it to me."
He shook his head.
"My husband!"
Maggie Monahan, he didn't even blink. Perhaps in the Bishop's set
husbands are not uncommon, or very likely they don't know what a
husband like Fred Obermuller means.
"I congratulate you, my child, or--or did it--were you--"
"Why, I'd never seen Fred Obermuller then," I cried. "Can't
you tell a difference, Bishop?" I pleaded. "Don't I look like
a--an imposing married woman now? Don't I seem a bit--oh, just a
bit nicer?"
His eyes twinkled as he bent to look more closely at me.
"You look--you look, my little girl, exactly like the pretty,
big-eyed, wheedling-voiced child I wished to have for my own
daughter."
I caught his hand in both of mine.
"Now, that's like my own, own Bishop!" I cried. Mag--Mag, he
was blushing like a boy, a prim, rather scared little school-boy
that somehow, yet--oh, I knew he must feel kindly to me! I felt
so fond of him.
"You see, Bishop Van Wagenen," I began softly, "I never had a
father and--"
"Bless me! But you told me that day you had mistaken me for--for
him."
The baby! I had forgotten what that old Edward told me--that this
trusting soul actually still believed all I'd told him. What was
I to do? I tell you, Mag, it's no light thing to get accustomed
to telling the truth. You never know where it'll lead you. Here
was I--just a clever little lie or two and the dear old Bishop
would be happy and contented again. But no; that fatal habit that
I've acquired of telling the truth to Fred and you mastered
me--and I fell.
"You know, Bishop," I said, shutting my eyes and speaking fast
to get it over--as I imagine you must, Mag, when you confess to
Father Phelan--"that was all a--a little farce-comedy--the whole
business--all of it--every last word of it!"
"A comedy!"
I opened my eyes to laugh at him; he was so bewildered.
"I mean a--a fib; in fact, many of them. I--I was just--it was
long ago--and I had to make you believe--"
His soft old eyes looked at me unbelieving. "You don't mean to
say you deliberately lied!"
Now, that was what I did mean--just what I did mean--but not in
that tone of voice.
But what could I do? I just looked at him and nodded.
Oh, Maggie, I felt so little and so nasty! I haven't felt like
that since I left the Cruelty. And I'm not nasty, Maggie, and I'm
Fred Obermuller's wife, and--
And that put a backbone in me again. Fred Obermuller's wife just
won't let anybody think worse of her than she can help--from
sheer love and pride in that big, clever husband of hers.
"Now, look here, Bishop Van Wagenen," I broke out, "if I were
the abandoned little wretch your eyes accuse me of being I
wouldn't be in your carriage confessing to you this blessed
minute when it'd be so much easier not to. Surely--surely, in
your experience you must have met girls that go wrong--and then
go right for ever and ever, Amen. And I'm very right now.
But--but it has been hard for me at times. And at those
times--ah, you must know how sincerely I mean it--at those times
I used to try to recall the sound of your voice, when you said
you'd like to take me home with you and keep me. If I had been
your daughter you'd have had a heart full of loving care for me.
And yet, if I had been, and had known that benevolent fatherhood,
I should need it less--so much less than I did the day I begged a
prayer from you. But--it's all right now. You don't know--do
you?--I'm Nance Olden."
That made him sit up and stare, I tell you. Even the Bishop had
heard of Nancy Olden. But suddenly, unaccountably, there came a
queer, sad look over his face, and his eyes wouldn't meet mine.
I looked at him puzzled.
"Tell me what it is," I said.
"You evidently forget that you have already told me you are the
wife of Mr.--Mr. Ober--"
"Obermuller. Oh, that's all right." I laughed aloud. I was so
relieved. "Of course I am, and he's my manager, and my
playwright, and my secretary, and--my--my dear, dear boy.
There!" I wasn't laughing at the end of it. I never can laugh
when I try to tell what Fred is to me.
But--funny?--that won him.
"There! there!" he said, patting me on the shoulder. "Forgive
me, my dear. I am indeed glad to know that you are living
happily. I have often thought of you--"
"Oh, have you?"
"Yes--I have even told Mrs. Van Wagenen about you and how I was
attracted to you and believed--ahem!"
"Oh--oh, have you!" I gave a wriggle as I remembered that
Maltese lace Maria wanted and that I--ugh!
But, luckily, he didn't notice. He had taken my hand and was
looking at me over his spectacles in his dear, fatherly old way.
"Tell me now, my dear, is there anything that an old clergyman
can do for you? I have an engagement near here and we may not
meet again. I can't hope to find you in my carriage many more
times. You are happy--you are living worthily, child? Pardon me,
but the stage--"
Oh, the gentle courtesy of his manner! I loved his solicitude.
Father-hungry girls like us, Maggie, know how to value a thing
like that.
"You know," I said slowly, "the thing that keeps a woman
straight and a man faithful is not a matter of bricks and mortar
nor ways of thinking nor habits of living. It's something finer
and stronger than these. It's the magic taboo of her love for him
and his for her that makes them--sacred. With that to guard
them--why--"
"Yes, yes," he patted my hand softly. "Still, the old see the
dangers of an environment that a young and impulsive woman like
you, my dear, might be blind to. Your associates--"
"My associates? Oh, you've heard about Beryl Blackburn.
Well--she's--she's just Beryl, you know. She wasn't made to live
any different. Some people steal and some drink and some gamble
and some . . . Well, Beryl belongs to the last class. She doesn't
pretend to be better than she is. And, just between you and me,
Bishop, I've more respect for a girl of that kind than for Grace
Weston, whose husband is my leading man, you know. Why, she pulls
the wool over his eyes and makes him the laughing-stock of the
company. I can't stand her any more than I can Marie Avon, who's
never without two strings--"
All at once I stopped. But wasn't it like me to spoil it all by
bubbling over? I tell you, Maggie, too much truth isn't good for
the Bishop's set;--they don't know how to digest it.
I was afraid that I'd lost him, for he spoke with a stately
little primness as the carriage just then came to a stop; I had
been so interested talking that I hadn't noticed where we were
driving.
"Ah, here we are!" he said. "I must ask you to excuse me,
Miss--ah, Mrs.--that is--there's a public meeting of the Society
for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children this afternoon that I
must attend. Good-by, then--"
"Oh, are you bound for the Cruelty, too?" I asked. "Why, so am
I. And--yes--yes--that's the Cruelty!"
The Cruelty stands just where it did, Mag, when you and I first
saw it; most things do in Philadelphia, you know. There's the
same prim, official straight up-and-downness about the brick
front. The steps don't look so steep now and the building's not
so high, perhaps because of a skyscraper or two that've gone up
since. But it chills your blood, Maggie darlin', just as it
always did, to think what it stands for. Not man's inhumanity to
man, but women's cruelty to children! Maggie, think of it, if you
can, as though this were the first time you'd heard of such a
thing! Would you believe it?
I waked from that to find myself marching up the stairs behind
the Bishop's rigid little back. Oh, it was stiff and
uncompromising! Beryl Blackburn did that for me. Poor, pretty,
pagan Beryl!
My coming with the Bishop--we seemed to come together,
anyway--made the people think he'd brought me, so I must be just
all right. I had the man bring in the toys I'd got out in the
carriage, and I handed them over to the matron, saying:
"They're for the children. I want them to have them all and now,
please, to do whatever they want with them. There'll always be
others. I'm going to send them right along, if you'll let me, so
that those who leave can take something of their very own with
them--something that never belonged to anybody else but just
themselves, you understand. It's terrible, don't you know, to be
a deserted child or a tortured child or a crippled child and have
nothing to do but sit up in that bare, clean little room upstairs
with a lot of other strangelings--and just think on the cruelty
that's brought you here and the cruelty you may get into when you
leave here. If I'd had a doll--if Mag had only had a set of
dishes or a little tin kitchen--if the boy with the gouged eye
could have had a set of tools--oh, can't you understand--"
I became conscious then that the matron--a new one, Mag, ours is
gone--was staring at me, and that the people stood around
listening as though I'd gone mad.
Who came to my rescue? Why, the Bishop, like the manly little
fellow he is. He forgave me even Beryl in that moment.
"It's Nance Olden, ladies," he said, with a dignified little
wave of his hand that served for an introduction. "She begins
her Philadelphia engagement to-night in And the Greatest of
These."
Oh, I'm used to it now, Maggie, but I do like it. All the
lady-swells buzzed about me, and there Nance stood preening
herself and crowing softly till--till from among the bunch of
millinery one of them stepped up to me. She had a big smooth
face with plenty of chins. Her hair was white and her nose was
curved and she rustled in silk and--
It was Mrs. Dowager Diamonds, alias Henrietta, alias Mrs. Edward
Ramsay!
"Clever! My, how clever!" she exclaimed, as though the sob in
my voice that I couldn't control had been a bit of acting.
She was feeling for her glasses. When she got them and hooked
them on her nose and got a good look at me--why, she just dropped
them with a smash upon the desk.
I looked for a minute from her to the Bishop.
"I remember you very well, Mrs. Ramsay. I hope you haven't
forgotten me. I've often wanted to thank you for your kindness,"
I said slowly, while she as slowly recovered. "I think you'll be
glad to know that I am thoroughly well-cured. Shall I tell Mrs.
Ramsay how, Bishop?"
I put it square up to him. And he met it like the little man he
is--perhaps, too, my bit of charity to the Cruelty children had
pleased him.
"I don't think it will be necessary, Miss Olden," he said
gently. "I can do that for you at some future time."
And I could have hugged him; but I didn't dare.
We had tea there in the Board rooms. Oh, Mag, remember how we
used to peep into those awful, imposing Board rooms! Remember how
strange and resentful you felt--like a poor little red-haired
nigger up at the block--when you were brought in there to be
shown to the woman who'd called to adopt you!
It was all so strange that I had to keep talking to keep from
dreaming. I was talking away to the matron and the Bishop about
the play-room I'm going to fit up out of that bare little place
upstairs. Perhaps the same child doesn't stay there very long,
but there'll always be children to fill it--more's the cruel
pity!
Then the Bishop and I climbed up there to see it and plan about
it. But I couldn't really see it, Mag, nor the poor, white-faced,
wise-eyed little waifs that have succeeded us, for the tears in
my eyes and the ache at my heart and the queer trick the place
has of being peopled with you and me, and the boy with the gouged
eye, and the cripple, and the rest.
He put his gentle thin old arm about my shoulders for a moment
when he saw what was the matter with me. Oh, he understands, my
Bishop! And then we turned to go downstairs.
"Oh--I want--I want to do something for them," I cried. "I
want to do something that counts, that's got a heart in it, that
knows! You knew, didn't you, it was true--what I said downstairs?
I was--I am a Cruelty girl. Help me to help others like me."
"My dear," he said, very stately and sweet, "I'll be proud to
be your assistant. You've a kind, true heart and--"
And just at that minute, as I was preceding him down the narrow
steps, a girl in a red coat trimmed with chinchilla and in a red
toque with some of the same fur blocked our way as she was coming
up.
We looked at each other. You've seen two peacocks spread their
tails and strut as they pass each other? Well, the peacock coming
up wasn't in it with the one going down. Her coat wasn't so fine,
nor so heavy, nor so newly, smartly cut. Her toque wasn't so big
nor so saucy, and the fur on it--not to mention that the
descending peacock was a brunette and . . . well, Mag, I had my
day. Miss Evelyn Kingdon paid me back in that minute for all the
envy I've spent on that pretty rig of hers.
She didn't recognize me, of course, even though the two red
coats were so near, as she stopped to let me pass, that they
kissed like sisters, ere they parted. But, Mag, Nancy Olden never
got haughty that there wasn't a fall waiting for her. Back of
Miss Kingdon stood Mrs. Kingdon--still Mrs. Kingdon, thanks to
Nance Olden--and behind her, at the foot of the steps, was a
frail little old-fashioned bundle of black satin and old lace.
I lost my breath when the Bishop hailed his wife.
"Maria," he said--some men say their wives' first names all the
years of their lives as they said them on their wedding-day--"I
want you to meet Miss Olden--Nance Olden, the comedian. She's the
girl I wanted for my daughter--you'll remember, it's more than a
year ago now since I began to talk about her?"
I held my breath while I waited for her answer. But her poor,
short-sighted eyes rested on my hot face without a sign.
"It's an old joke among us," she said pleasantly, "about the
Bishop's daughter."
We stood there and chatted, and the Bishop turned away to speak
to Mrs. Kingdon. Then I seized my chance.
"I've heard, Mrs. Van Wagenen," I said softly and oh, as nicely
as I could, "of your fondness for lace. We are going abroad in
the spring, my husband and I, to Malta, among other places. Can't
I get you a piece there as a souvenir of the Bishop's kindness to
me?"
Her little lace-mittened, parchment-like hands clasped and
unclasped with an almost childish eagerness.
"Oh, thank you, thank you very much; but if you would give the
same sum to charity--"
"I will," I laughed. She couldn't guess how glad I was to do
this thing. "And I'll spend just as much on your lace and be so
happy if you'll accept it."
I promised Henrietta a box for to-night, Maggie, and one to Mrs.
Kingdon. The Dowager told me she'd love to come, though her
husband is out of town, unfortunately, she said.
"But you'll come with me, won't you, Bishop?" she said, turning
to him. "And you, Mrs. Van?"
The Bishop blushed. Was he thinking of Beryl, I wonder. But I
didn't hear his answer, for it was at that moment that I caught
Fred's voice. He had told me he was going to call for me. I think
he fancied that the old Cruelty would depress me--as dreams of it
have, you know; and he wanted to come and carry me away from it,
just as at night, when I've waked shivering and moaning, I've
felt his dear arms lifting me out of the black night-memory of it.
But it was anything but a doleful Nance he found and hurried down
the snowy steps out to a hansom and off to rehearsal. For the
Bishop had said to me, "God bless you, child," when he shook
hands with both of us at parting, and the very Cruelty seemed to
smile a grim benediction, as we drove off together, on Fred and
NANCY O.
End of The Project Gutenberg Etext of In The Bishop's Carriage