University of Virginia Library

13. 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 rôle 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.”

{illust}

“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.