 | I. In The Bishop's Carriage |  |
1. 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
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
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
“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
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
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
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
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 coupé 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 coupé 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 coupé 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
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
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
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
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
“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
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.
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
“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
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
“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
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
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.
| I. In The Bishop's Carriage | |