The gaiety, with its flamboyant entrance, round which the lights flared enticingly at night, had always seemed to Nance an earthly paradise into which the financially blessed alone were privileged to enter. At the "Star" there were acrobats and funny Jews with big noses and Irishmen who were always falling down; but the Gaiety was different. Twice Nance had passed that fiery portal, and she knew that once inside, you drifted into states of beatitude, which eternity itself was too short to enjoy. The world ceased to exist for you, until a curtain, as relentless as fate, descended, and you reached blindly for your hat and stumbled down from the gallery to the balcony, and from the balcony to the lobby, and thence out into the garish world, dazed, bewildered, unreconciled to reality, and not knowing which way to turn to go home.
But to-day as she passed the main entrance and made her way through a side-passage to the stage-door, she tingled with a keener thrill than she had ever felt before.
"Is Miss Smelts here?" she asked a man who was going in as she did.
"Smelts?" he repeated. "What does she do?"
"She dances."
He shook his head.
"Nobody here by that name," he said, and hurried on.
Nance stood aside and waited, with a terrible sinking of the heart. She waited a half hour, then an hour, while people came and went. Just as she was about to give up in despair, she saw a tall, handsome girl hurry up the steps and come toward her. She had to look twice before she could make sure that the imposing figure was Birdie.
"Hello, kid," was Birdie's casual greeting. "I forgot all about you. Just as cute looking as ever, eh! Where did you get that hat?"
"Ten-cent store," said Nance, triumphantly.
"Can you beat that?" said Birdie. "You always did have a style about you. But your hair's fixed wrong. Come on down to the dressing-room while I change. I'll do it over before you see Reeser."
Nance followed her across a barn of a place where men in shirt-sleeves were dragging scenes this way and that.
"Mind the steps; they are awful!" warned Birdie, as they descended into a gas-lit region partitioned off into long, low dressing-rooms.
"Here's where I hang out. Sit down and let me dude you up a bit. You always did wear your hair too plain. I'll fix it so's it will make little Peroxide Pierson green with envy."
Nance sat before the mirror and watched Birdie's white fingers roll and twist her shining hair into the elaborate style approved at the moment.
"Gee! it looks like a horse-collar!" she said, laughing at her reflection. "What you going to do to me next?"
"Well, I haven't got much to do on," said Birdie, "but you just wait till I get you over to my room! I could fit you out perfect if you were just a couple of sizes bigger."
She was putting on a pair of bloomers herself as she spoke, and slipping her feet into her dancing slippers, and Nance watched every movement with admiring eyes.
"Come on now," Birdie said hurriedly. "We got to catch Reeser before rehearsal. He's the main guy in this company. What Reeser says goes."
At the head of the steps they encountered a gaunt, raw-boned man, with an angular, expressive face, and an apple in his long neck that would have embarrassed Adam himself.
"Well! Well!" he shouted at them, impatiently, "come on or else go back!Don't stand there in the way."
"Mr. Reeser, please, just a minute," called Birdie, "It's a new girl wants to get in the chorus."
The stage-manager paused and looked her over with a critical eye.
"Can she sing?"
"No," said Nance, "but I can dance. Want to see me?"
"Well, I think I can live a few minutes without it," said Reeser dryly."Ever been on before?"
"No; but everybody's got to start some time." Then she added with a smile, "I wish you'd give me a chance."
"She's a awful cute little dancer," Birdie recommended. "She knows all the steps in the Red-Bird chorus. I taught her when I was here before. If you'd say a word to Mr. Pulatki he might try her out at rehearsal this morning."
Nance held her breath while Reeser's quizzical eyes continued to study her.
"All right!" he said suddenly. "She's pretty young, but we'll see what she can do. Now clear the way. Lower that drop a little, boys. Hurry up with the second set."
The girls scurried away to the wings where they found a narrow space in which Nance was put through the half-forgotten steps.
"It's all in the team work," Birdie explained. "You do exactly what I do, and don't let old Spagetti rattle you. He goes crazy at every rehearsal. Keep time and grin. That's all there is to it"
"I can do it!" cried Nance radiantly. "It's easy as breathing!"
But it proved more difficult than she thought, when in a pair of property bloomers she found herself one of a party of girls advancing, retreating, and wheeling at the arbitrary command of an excitable little man in his shirt-sleeves, who hammered out the time on a rattling piano.
Pulatki was a nervous Italian with long black hair and a drooping black mustache, both of which suffered harsh treatment in moments of dramatic frenzy. His business in life was to make forty lively, mischievous girls move and sing as one. The sin of sins to him, in a chorus girl, was individuality.
"You! new girl!" he screamed the moment he spied Nance, "you are out of ze line. Hold your shoulders stiff, so! Ah,Dio!Can you not move wiz ze rest?"
The girls started a stately number, diagonal from down-stage left toward upper center.
"Hold ze pose!" shouted the director. Then he scrambled up on the stage and seized Nance roughly by the arm. "You are too quick!" he shouted. "You are too restless. We do not want that you do a solo! Can you not keep your person still?"
And to Nance's untold chagrin she found that she could not. The moment the music started, it seemed to get into her tripping feet, her swinging arms, her nodding head; and every extra step and unnecessary gesture that she made evoked a storm from the director.
Just when his irritation was at his height, Reeser joined him from the wings.
"Here's a howdy-do!" he exclaimed. "Flossy Pierson's sprained her ankle."
"Ze leetle bear?" shrieked Pulatki; then he clutched his hair in both hands and raved maledictions on the absent Flossy.
"See here," said Reeser, "this is no time for fireworks. Who in the devil is to take her place?"
"Zere is none," wailed Pulatki. "She make her own part. I cannot teach it."
"It's not the part that bothers me," said Reeser. "It's the costume. We've got to take whoever will fit it. Who's the smallest girl in the chorus?"
The eyes of the two men swept the double column of girls until they rested on the one head that, despite its high coiffure, failed to achieve the average height.
"Come here!" called Reeser to Nance.
"But, no!" protested the director, throwing up his hands. "She is impossible. A cork on ze water! A leaf in ze wind! I cannot teach her. I vill not try!"
"It's too late to get anybody else for to-night," said Reeser, impatiently. "Let her walk through the part, and we'll see what can be done in the morning." Then seeing Nance's indignant eyes on the director, he added with a comical twist of his big mouth, "Want to be a bear?"
"Sure!" said Nance, with spirit, "if the Dago can't teach me to dance, maybe he can teach me to growl."
The joke was lost upon the director, but it put Reeser into such a good humor that he sent her down to the dressing-room to try on the costume. Ten minutes later, a little bear, awkward but ecstatic, scrambled madly up the steps, and an excited voice called out:
"Look, Mr. Reeser, it fits! it fits!"
For the rest of the morning Nance practised her part, getting used to the clumsy suit of fur, learning to adjust her mask so that she could see through the little, round, animal eyes, and keeping the other girls in a titter of amusement over her surreptitious imitation of the irascible Pulatki.
When the rehearsal was over there was much good-natured hustling and raillery as the girls changed into their street costumes. At Birdie's invitation Nance went with her to the rooming-house around the corner, where you had to ring a bell to get in, a convention which in itself spelt elegance, and up one flight, two flights, three flights of carpeted steps to a front-hall bedroom on the fourth floor.
"Gee, it's a mess!" said Birdie, tossing some beribboned lingerie from a chair into an open trunk. "There's a bag of rolls around here some place. We can make some tea over the gas."
Nance darted from one object to another with excited cries of admiration. Everything was sweet and wonderful and perfectly grand! Suddenly she came to a halt before the dresser, in the center of which stood a large, framed photograph.
"That's my High Particular," said Birdie, with an uneasy laugh, "recognize him?"
"It's Mac Clarke!" exclaimed Nance, incredulously, "how on earth did you ever get his picture?"
"He give it to me. How do you reckon? I hadn't laid eyes on him for a couple of years 'til I ran across him in New York about a month ago."
"Where'd you see him?"
"At the theater. He come in with a bunch of other college fellows and recognized me straight off. He stayed in New York two or three days, and maybe we didn't have a peach of a time! Only he got fired from college for it when he went back."
"Where's he now?"
"Here in town. Liable to blow in any minute. If he does, you don't want to let on you ever saw him before. He won't remember you if you don't remind him. He never thinks of anybody twice."
Nance, poring over every detail of the photograph, held her own counsel.She was thinking of the night she had stood in the drug-store door, andhe had kept the motor waiting while he smiled at her over his shoulder.That was a smile that remembered!
"You want to be careful what you say to anybody," Birdie continued, "there ain't any use airing it around where you live, or what you been doing. There ain't a girl in the chorus knows my real name, or where I come from."
The allusion to home stirred Nance's conscience, and reminded her that over there beyond the cathedral spire, dimly visible from the window, lay a certain little alley which still had claims upon her.
"I ain't said a thing to 'em at home about this," she said. "Suppose they don't let me do it?"
"Let nothing!" said Birdie. "Write a note to Mrs. Snawdor, and tell her you are spending the night down-town with me. You'll know by morning whether Reeser is going to take you on or not. If he does, you just want to announce the fact that you are going, and go."
Nance looked at her with kindling eyes. This high-handed method appealed to her. After all wasn't she past eighteen? Birdie hadn't been that old when she struck out for herself.
"What about Miss Bobinet?" she asked ruefully.
"The wiggy old party up in Cemetery Street? Let her go hang. You've swallowed her frizzes long enough."
Nance laughed and gave the older girl's arm a rapturous squeeze. "And you think maybe Mr. Reeser'll take me on?" she asked for the sixteenth time.
"Well, Flossie Pierson has been shipped home, and they've got to put somebody in her place. It's no cinch to pick up a girl on the road, just the right size, who can dance even as good as you can. If Reeser engages you, it's fifteen per for the rest of the season, and a good chance for next."
"All right, here goes!" cried Nance, recklessly, seizing paper and pen.
When the hard rolls and strong tea which composed their lunch had been disposed of, Nance curled herself luxuriously on the foot of the bed and munched chocolate creams, while Birdie, in a soiled pink kimono that displayed her round white arms and shapely throat, lay stretched beside her. They found a great deal to talk about, and still more to laugh about. Nance loved to laugh; all she wanted was an excuse, and everything was an excuse to-day; Birdie's tales of stage-door Johnnies, the recent ire of old Spagetti, her own imitation of Miss Bobinet and the ossified Susan. Nance loved the cozy intimacy of the little room; even the heavy odor of perfumes and cosmetics was strange and fascinating; she thought Birdie was the prettiest girl she had ever seen. A thrilling vista of days like this, spent with her in strange and wonderful cities, opened before her.
"I'll rig you up in some of my clothes, until you get your first pay," Birdie offered, "then we can fit you out right and proper. You got the making of an awful pretty girl in you."
Nance shrieked her derision. Her own charms, compared with Birdie's generous ones, seemed absurdly meager, as she watched the older girl blow rings from the cigarette which she held daintily between her first and second finger.
Nance had been initiated into smoking and chewing tobacco before she was ten, but neither appealed to her. Watching Birdie smoke, she had a sudden desire to try it again.
"Give us a puff, Birdie," she said.
Birdie tossed the box over and looked at her wrist-watch.
"We ought to be fixing something for you to wear to-night," she said. "Like as not Mac and Monte 'll turn up and ask us to go somewhere for supper."
"Who is Monte?" asked Nance with breathless interest.
"He's a fat-headed swell Mac runs with. Spends dollars like nickels. No rarebit and beer for him; it's champagne and caviar every time. You cotton to him, Nance; he'll give you anything you want."
"I don't want him to give me anything," said Nance stoutly. "Time I'm earning fifteen dollars a week, I'll be making presents myself."
Birdie lifted her eyebrows and sighed.
"You funny kid!" she said, "you got a heap to learn."
During the early part of the afternoon the girls shortened one of Birdie's dresses and tacked in its folds to fit Nance's slender figure. Birdie worked in fits and starts; she listened every time anything stopped in the street below, and made many trips to the window. By and by her easy good humor gave place to irritability. At five o'clock she put on her hat, announcing that she had to go over to the drug store to do some telephoning.
"Lock the door," she counseled, "and if anybody knocks while I'm gone, don't answer."
Nance, left alone, sewed on for a while in a flutter of happy thoughts; then she got up and turned her chair so she would not have to crane her neck to see the photograph on the dresser.
"The making of an awful pretty girl!" she whispered; then she got up and went over to the mirror. Pulling out the hairpins that held the elaborate puffs in place, she let her shining mass of hair about her shoulders and studied her face intently. Her mouth, she decided, was too big, her eyes too far apart, her neck too thin. Then she made a face at herself and laughed:
"Who cares?" she said.
By and by it got too dark to sew; the match box refused to be found, and she decided it was time to stop anyhow. She opened the window and, gaily humming the music of the Little Bear dance, leaned across the sill, while the cool evening air fanned her hot cheeks.
Far away in the west, over the housetops, she could see the stately spire of the cathedral, a brown silhouette against a pale, lemon sky. Down below, through the dull, yellow dusk, faint lights were already defining the crisscross of streets. The whispers of the waking city came up to her, eager, expectant, like the subdued murmur of a vast audience just before the curtain ascends. Then suddenly, written on the twilight in letters of fire, came the familiar words, "You get what you pay for."
Nance's fingers ceased to drum on the window-sill. It was the big sign facing Post-Office Square, old Post-Office Square, with its litter of papers, its battered weather kiosk, and the old green bench where she and Dan had sat so many evenings on their way home from the factory. Dan! A wave of remorse swept over her. She had forgotten him as completely as if he had never existed. And now that she remembered what was she to do? Go to him and make a clean breast of it? And run the risk of having him invoke the aid of Mrs. Purdy and possibly of Miss Stanley? Not that she was afraid of their stopping her. She repeated to herself the words of defiance with which she would meet their objections and the scorn which she would fling at their "nice girl jobs." No; it was Dan himself she was afraid of. Her imagination quailed before his strong, silent face, and his deep, hurt eyes. She had always taken Dan's part in everything, and something told her she would take it now, even against herself.
The only safe course was to keep away from him, until the great step was taken, and then write him a nice long letter. The nicest she had ever written to anybody. Dear old Dan—dear, dear old Dan.
A long, low whistle from the sidewalk opposite made her start, and look down. At first no one was visible; then a match was struck, flared yellow for a second, and went out, and again that low, significant whistle. Nance dropped on her knees beside the window and watched. A man's figure emerged from the gloom and crossed the street. A moment later she heard the ringing of the doorbell. Could Dan have heard of her escapade and come after her? But nobody knew where she was; the note to Mrs. Snawdor still lay on the corner of the dresser.
She heard a step on the stairs, then three light taps on the door. She scrambled to her feet before she remembered Birdie's caution, then stood motionless, listening.
Again the taps and, "I say, Bird!" came in a vibrant whisper from without.
It seemed to Nance that whoever it was must surely hear the noisy beating of her heart. Then she heard the steps move away and she sighed with relief.
Birdie, coming in later, dismissed the matter with gay denial.
"One of your pipe-dreams, Nance! It must have been one of the other boarders, or the wash woman. Stop your mooning over there by the window and get yourself dressed; we got just thirty-five minutes to get down to the theater."
Nance shook off her misgivings and rushed headlong into her adventure. It was no time to dream of Dan and the letter she was going to write him, or to worry about a disturbing whistle in the street, or a mysterious whisper on the other side of the door. Wasn't it enough that she, Nance Molloy, who only yesterday was watching funerals crawl by in Cemetery Street, was about to dance to real music, on a real stage, before a great audience? She had taken her first mad plunge into the seething current of life, and in these first thrilling, absorbing moments she failed to see the danger signals that flashed across the darkness.
At a quarter-past eight in the dressing-rooms of the Gaiety, pandemonium reigned. Red birds, fairies, gnomes, will-o'-the-wisps flitted about, begging, borrowing, stealing articles from each other in good-humored confusion. In and out among them darted the little bear, slapping at each passerby with her furry paws, practising steps on her cushioned toes, and rushing back every now and then to Birdie, who stood before a mirror in red tights, with a towel around her neck, putting the final touches on her make-up.
It was hot and stuffy, and the air reeked with grease paint. There was a perpetual chatter with occasional outbursts of laughter, followed by peremptory commands of "Less noise down there!" In the midst of the hub-bub a call-boy gave the signal for the opening number of the chorus; the chatter and giggling ceased, and the bright costumes settled into a definite line as the girls filed up the stairs.
Nance, left alone, sat on a trunk and waited for her turn in a fever of impatience. She caught the opening strains of the orchestra as it swung into the favorite melody of the day; she could hear the thud of dancing feet overhead. She was like a stoker shut up in the hold of the vessel while a lively skirmish is in progress on deck.
As she sat there the wardrobe woman, a matronly-looking, Irish person, came up and ordered her peremptorily to get off the trunk. Nance not only complied, but she offered her assistance in getting it out of the passage.
"May ye have some one as civil as ye are to wait on ye when ye are as old as I am!" said the woman. "It's your first night, eh?"
"Yep. Maybe my last for all I know. They 're trying me out."
"Good luck to ye," said the woman. "Well I mind the night I made me first bow."
"You!"
"No less. I'd a waist on me ye could span wid yer two hands. And legs! well, it ain't fer me to be braggin', but there ain't a girl in the chorus kin stack up alongside what I oncet was! Me an' a lad named Tim Moriarty did a turn called 'The Wearing of the Green,'—'Ryan and Moriarty' was the team. I kin see the names on the bill-board now! We had 'em laughin' an' cryin' at the same time, 'til their tears run into their open mouths!"
"Wisht I could've seen you," said Nance. "I bet it was great."
The wardrobe woman, unused to such a sympathetic listener, would have lingered indefinitely had not a boy handed Nance a box which absorbed all her attention.
"Miss Birdie La Rue," was inscribed on one side of the card that dangled from it on a silver cord, and on the other was scribbled, "Monte and I will wait for you after the show. Bring another girl. M.D.C."
"And I'm the other girl!" Nance told herself rapturously.
There was a flurry in the wings above and the chorus overflowed down the stairs.
"It's a capacity house," gasped Birdie, "but a regular cold-storage plant. We never got but one round. Spagetti is having spasms."
"What's a round?" demanded Nance, but nobody had time to enlighten her.
It was not until the end of the second act that her name was called, and she went scampering up the stairs as fast as her clumsy suit would permit. The stage was set for a forest scene, with gnarled trees and hanging vines and a transparent drop that threw a midnight blue haze over the landscape.
"Crawl up on the stump there!" ordered Reeser, attending to half a dozen things at once. "Put you four paws together. Head up! Hold the pose until the gnomes go off. When I blow the whistle, get down and dance. I'll get the will-o'-the-wisps on as quick as I can. Clear the stage everybody! Ready for the curtain? Let her go!"
Nance, peering excitedly through the little round holes of her mask, saw the big curtain slowly ascend, revealing only a dazzling row of footlights beyond. Then gradually out of the dusk loomed the vast auditorium with its row after row of dim white faces, reaching back and up, up further than she dared lift her head to see. From down below somewhere sounded the weird tinkle of elfin music, and tiptoeing out from every tree and bush came a green-clad gnome, dancing in stealthy silence in the sleeping forest. Quite unconsciously Nance began to keep time. It was such glorious fun playing at being animals and fairies in the woods at night. Without realizing what she was doing, she dropped into what she used to call in the old sweat-shop days, "dancin' settin' down."
A ripple of amusement passed through the audience, and she looked around to see what the gnomes were up to, but they were going off the stage, and the suppressed titter continued. A soft whistle sounded in the wings, and with a furiously beating heart, she slid down from her high stump and ambled down to the footlights.
All might have gone well, had not a sudden shaft of white light shot toward her from the balcony opposite, making a white spot around the place she was standing. She got out of it only to find that it followed her, and in the bewilderment of the discovery, she lost her head completely. All her carefully practised steps and poses were utterly forgotten; she could think of nothing but that pursuing light, and her mad desire to get out of it.
Then something the director had said at the rehearsal flashed across the confusion. "She makes her own part," he had said of Flossy Pierson, and Nance, with grim determination, decided to do the same. A fat man in the left hand box had laughed out when she discovered the spotlight. She determined to make him laugh again. Simulating the dismay that at first was genuine, she began to play tag with the shaft of light, dodging it, jumping over it, hiding from it behind the stump, leading it a merry chase from corner to corner. The fat man grew hysterical. The audience laughed at him, and then it began to laugh at Nance. She threw herself into the frolic with the same mad abandonment with which she used to dance to the hand-organ in front of Slap Jack's saloon. She cut as many fantastic capers as a frisky kitten playing in the twilight; she leapt and rolled and romped, and the spectators, quick to feel the contagion of something new and young and joyful, woke up for the first time during the evening, and followed her pranks with round after round of applause.
When at last the music ceased, she scampered into the wings and sank gasping and laughing into a chair.
"They want you back!" cried Reeser, excitedly beckoning to her. "Go on again. Take the call."
"The what?" said Nance, bewildered. But before she could find out, she was thrust forward and, not being able to see where she was going, she tripped and fell sprawling upon the very scene of her recent triumph.
In the confusion of the moment she instinctively snatched off her mask, and as she did so the sea of faces merged suddenly into one. In the orchestra below, gazing at her with dropped jaw over his arrested fiddle-bow, was old Mr. Demry, with such a comical look of paralyzed amazement on his face that Nance burst into laughter.
There was something in her glowing, childish face, innocent of make-up, and in her seeming frank enjoyment of the mishap that took the house by storm. The man in the box applauded until his face was purple; gloved hands in the parquet tapped approval; the balcony stormed; the gallery whistled.
She never knew how she got off the stage, or whether the director shouted praise or blame as she darted through the wings. It was not until she reached the dressing-room, and the girls crowded excitedly around her that she knew she had scored a hit.
She came on once more at the end of the last act in the grand ballet, where all the dancers performed intricate manoeuvers under changing lights. Every time the wheeling figures brought her round to the footlights, there was a greeting from the front, and, despite warnings, she could not suppress a responsive wag of the head or a friendly wave of the paw.
"She is so fresh, so fresh!" groaned Pulatki from the wings.
"She's alive," said Reeser. "She'll never make a show girl, and she's got no voice to speak of. But she's got a personality that climbs right over the footlights. I'm going to engage her for the rest of the season."
When the play was over, Nance, struggling into Birdie's complicated finery in the dressing-room below, wondered how she could ever manage to exist until the next performance. Her one consolation was the immediate prospect of seeing Mac Clarke and the mysterious Monte to whom Birdie had said she must be nice. As she pinned on a saucy fur toque in place of her own cheap millinery, she viewed herself critically in the glass. Beside the big show girls about her, she felt ridiculously young and slender and insignificant.
"I believe I'll put on some paint!" she said.
Birdie laughed.
"What for, Silly? Your cheeks are blazing now. You'll have time enough to paint 'em when you've been dancing a couple of years."
They were among the last to leave the dressing-room, and when they reached the stage entrance, Birdie spied two figures.
"There they are!" she whispered to Nance, "the fat one is Monte, the other—"
Nance had an irresistible impulse to run away. Now that the time had come, she didn't want to meet those sophisticated young men in their long coats and high hats. She wouldn't know how to act, what to say. But Birdie had already joined them, and was turning to say airily:
"Shake hands with my friend Miss Millay, Mr. Clarke—and, I say, Monte, what's your other name?"
The older of the young men laughed good-naturedly.
"Monte'll do," he said. "I'm that to half the girls in town."
Mac's bright bold eyes scanned Nance curiously. "Where have I seen you before?" he asked instantly.
"Don't you recognize her?" said Monte. "She's the little bear! I'd know that smile in ten thousand!"
Nance presented him with one on the spot, out of gratitude for the diversion. She was already sharing Birdie's wish that no reference be made to Calvary Alley or the factory. They had no place in this rose-colored world.
Monte and the two girls had descended the steps to the street when the former looked over his shoulder.
"Why doesn't Mac come on?" he asked. "Who is the old party he is arguing with?"
"Oh, Lord! It's old man Demry," exclaimed Birdie in exasperation. "He plays in the orchestra. Full of dope half of the time. Why don't Mac come on and leave him?"
But the old musician was not to be left. He pushed past Mac and, staggering down the steps, laid his hand on Nance's arm.
"You must come home with me, Nancy," he urged unsteadily. "I want to talk to you. Want to tell you something."
"See here!" broke in Mac Clarke, peremptorily, "is this young lady your daughter?"
Mr. Demry put his hand to his dazed head and looked from one to the other in troubled uncertainty.
"No," he said incoherently. "I had a daughter once. But she is much older than this child. She must be nearly forty by now, and to think I haven't seen her face for twenty-two years. I shouldn't even know her if I should see her. I couldn't make shipwreck of her life, you know—shipwreck of one you love best in the world!"
"Oh, come ahead!" called Birdie from below. "He don't know what he's babbling about."
But the old man's wrinkled hand still clung to Nance's arm. "Don't go with them!" he implored. "I know. I've seen. Ten years playing for girls to dance. Stage no place for you, Nancy. Come home with me, child. Come!" He was trembling with earnestness and his voice quavered.
"Let go of her arm, you old fool!" cried Mac, angrily. "It's none of your business where she goes!"
"Nor of yours, either!" Nance flashed back instantly. "You keep your hands off him!"
Then she turned to Mr. Demry and patiently tried to explain that she was spending the night with Birdie Smelts; he remembered Birdie—used to live across the hall from him? She was coming home in the morning. She would explain everything to Mrs. Snawdor. She promised she would.
Mr. Demry, partly reassured, relaxed his grasp.
"Who is this young man, Nancy?" he asked childishly. "Tell me his name."
"It's Mr. Mac Clarke," said Nance, despite Birdie's warning glance.
A swift look of intelligence swept the dazed old face; then terror gathered in his eyes.
"Not—not—Macpherson Clarke?" he stammered; then he sat down in the doorway. "O my God!" he sobbed, dropping his head in his hands.
"He won't go home 'til morning!" hummed Monte, catching Birdie by the arm and skipping down the passage. Nance stood for a moment looking down at the maudlin old figure muttering to himself on the door-step; then she, too, turned and followed the others out into the gay midnight throng.
What a radically different place the world seems when one doesn't have to begin the day with an alarm clock! There is a hateful authority in its brassy, peremptory summons that puts one on the defensive immediately. To be sure, Nance dreamed she heard it the following day at noon, and sprang up in bed with the terrifying conviction that she would be late at Miss Bobinet's. But when she saw where she was, she gave a sigh of relief, and snuggled down against Birdie's warm shoulder, and tried to realize what had happened to her.
The big theater, the rows of smiling faces, the clapping hands—surely they must have all been a dream? And Mr. Demry? Why had he sat on the steps and cried into a big starchy handkerchief? Oh, yes; she remembered now, but she didn't like to remember, so she hurried on.
There was a café, big and noisy, with little tables, and a woman who stood on a platform, with her dress dragging off one shoulder, and sang a beautiful song, called "I'm A-wearying for You." Mr. Monte didn't think it was pretty; he had teased her for thinking so. But then he had teased her for not liking the raw oysters, and for saying the champagne made her nose go to sleep. They had all teased her and laughed at everything she said. She didn't care; she liked it. They thought she was funny and called her "Cubby." At least Mr. Monte did. Mr. Mac didn't call her anything. He talked most of the time to Birdie, but his eyes were all forher, with a smile that sort of remembered and sort of forgot, and—
"Say, Birdie!" She impulsively interrupted her own confused reflections."Do you think they liked me—honest?"
"Who?" said Birdie, drowsily, "the audience?"
"No. Those fellows last night. I haven't got any looks to brag on, andI'm as green as a string-bean!"
"That's what tickles 'em," said Birdie. "Besides, you can't ever tell what makes a girl take. You got a independent way of walking and talking, and Monte's crazy 'bout your laugh. But you're a funny kid; you beckon a feller with one hand and slap his face with the other."
"Not unless he gets nervy!" said Nance.
After what euphemistically might be termed a buffet breakfast, prepared over the gas and served on the trunk, Nance departed for Calvary Alley, to proclaim to the family her declaration of independence. She was prepared for a battle royal with all whom it might concern, and was therefore greatly relieved to find only her stepmother at home. That worthy lady surrendered before a gun was fired.
"Ain't that Irish luck fer you?" she exclaimed, almost enviously. "Imagine one of Yager's and Snawdor's childern gittin' on the stage! If Bud Molloy hadn't taken to railroading he could 'a' been a end man in a minstrel show! You got a lot of his takin' ways, Nance. It's a Lord's pity you ain't got his looks!"
"Oh, give me time!" said Nance, whose spirits were soaring.
"I sort 'er thought of joining the ballet onct myself," said Mrs. Snawdor, with a conscious smile. "It was on account of a scene-shifter I was runnin' with along about the time I met your pa."
"You!" exclaimed Nance. "Oh! haven't I got a picture of you dancing. Wait 'til I show you!" And ably assisted by the bolster and the bedspread, she gave a masterly imitation of her stout stepmother that made the original limp with laughter. Then quite as suddenly, Nance collapsed into a chair and grew very serious.
"Say!" she demanded earnestly, "honest to goodness now! Do you think there's any sin in me going on the stage?"
"Sin!" repeated Mrs. Snawdor. "Why, I think it's elegant. I was sayin' so to Mrs. Smelts only yesterday when she was takin' on about Birdie's treatin' her so mean an' never comin' to see her or writin' to her. 'Don't lay it on the stage,' I says to her. 'Lay it on Birdie; she always was a stuck-up piece.'"
Nance pondered the matter, her chin on her palm. Considering the chronic fallibility of Mrs. Snawdor's judgment, she would have been more comfortable if she had met with some opposition.
"Mr. Demry thinks it's wrong," said Nance, taking upon herself the role of counsel for the prosecution. "He took on something fierce when he saw me last night."
"He never knowed what he was doin'," Mrs. Snawdor said. "They tell me he can play in the orchestry, when he's full as a nut."
"And there's Uncle Jed," continued Nance uneasily. "What you reckon he's going to say?"
"You leave that to me," said Mrs. Snawdor, darkly. "Mr. Burks ain't goin' to git a inklin' 'til you've went. There ain't nobody I respect more on the face of the world than I do Jed Burks, but some people is so all-fired good that livin' with 'em is like wearin' new shoes the year round."
"'T ain't as if I was doing anything wicked," said Nance, this time counsel for the defense.
"Course not," agreed Mrs. Snawdor. "How much they goin' to pay you?"
The incredible sum was mentioned, and Mrs. Snawdor's imagination took instant flight.
"You'll be gittin' a autymobile at that rate. Say, if I send Lobelia round to Cemetery Street and git yer last week's pay, can I have it?"
Nance was counting on that small sum to finish payment on her spring suit, but in the face of imminent affluence she could ill afford to be niggardly.
"I'll buy Rosy V. some shoes, an' pay somethin' on the cuckoo clock," planned Mrs. Snawdor, "an' I've half a mind to take another policy on William J. That boy's that venturesome it wouldn't surprise me none to see him git kilt any old time!"
Nance, who had failed to convince herself, either as counsel for the defense or counsel for the prosecution, assumed the prerogative of judge and dismissed the case. If older people had such different opinions about right and wrong, what was the use in her bothering about it? With a shrug of her shoulders she set to work sorting her clothes and packing the ones she needed in a box.
"The gingham dresses go to Fidy," she said with reckless generosity, "the blue skirt to Lobelia, and my Madonna—" Her eyes rested wistfully on her most cherished possession. "I think I'd like Rosy to have that when she grows up."
"All right," agreed Mrs. Snawdor. "There ain't no danger of anybody takin' it away from her."
Nance was kneeling on the floor, tying a cord about her box when she heard steps on the stairs.
"Uncle Jed?" she asked in alarm.
"No. Just Snawdor. He won't ast no questions. He ain't got gumption enough to be curious."
"I hate to go sneaking off like this without telling everybody good-by," said Nance petulantly, "Uncle Jed, and the children, and the Levinskis, and Mr. Demry, and—and—Dan."
"You don't want to take no risks," said Mrs. Snawdor, importantly. "There's a fool society for everything under the sun, an' somebody'll be tryin' to git out a injunction. I don't mind swearin' to whatever age you got to be, but Mr. Burks is so sensitive about them things."
"All right," said Nance, flinging on her hat and coat, "tell 'em how it was when I'm gone. I'll be sending you money before long."
"That's right," whispered Mrs. Snawdor, hanging over the banister as Nance felt her way down the stairs. "You be good to yerself an' see if you can't git me a theayter ticket for to-morrow night. Git two, an' I'll take Mis' Gorman."
Never had Nance tripped so lightly down those dark, narrow stairs—the stairs her feet had helped to wear away in her endless pilgrimages with buckets of coal and water and beer, with finished and unfinished garments, and omnipresent Snawdor babies. She was leaving it all forever, along with the smell of pickled herrings and cabbage and soapsuds. But she was not going to forget the family! Already she was planning munificent gifts from that fabulous sum that was henceforth to be her weekly portion.
At Mr. Demry's closed door she paused; then hastily retracing her steps, she slipped back to her own room and got a potted geranium, bearing one dirty-faced blossom. This she placed on the floor outside his door and then, picking up her big box, she slipped quickly out of the house, through the alley and into the street.
It was late when she got back to Birdie's room, and as she entered, she was startled by the sound of smothered sobbing.
"Birdie!" she cried in sudden alarm, peering into the semi-darkness, "what's the matter? Are you fired?"
Birdie started up hastily from the bed where she had been lying face downward, and dried her eyes.
"No," she said crossly. "Nothing's the matter, only I got the blues."
"The blues!" repeated Nance, incredulously. "What for?"
"Oh, everything. I wish I was dead."
"Birdie Smelts, what's happened to you?" demanded Nance in alarm, sitting by her on the bed and trying to put her arm around her.
"Whoever said anything had happened?" asked the older girl, pushing her away. "Stop asking fool questions and get dressed. We'll be late as it is."
For some time they went about their preparations in silence; then Nance, partly to relieve the tension, and partly because the matter was of vital interest, asked:
"Do you reckon Mr. Mac and Mr. Monte will come again to-night?"
"You can't tell," said Birdie. "What do they care about engagements? We are nothing but dirt to them—just dirt under their old patent-leather pumps!"
This bitterness on Birdie's part was so different from her customary superiority where men were concerned, that Nance gasped.
"If theydocome," continued Birdie vindictively, "you just watch me teach Mac Clarke a thing or two. He needn't think because his folks happen to be swells, he can treat me any old way. I'll make it hot for him if he don't look out, you see if I don't."
Once back at the Gaiety, Nance forgot all about Birdie and her love affairs. Her own small triumph completely engrossed her. A morning paper had mentioned the fantastic dance of the little bear, and had given her three lines all to herself. Reeser was jubilant, the director was mollified, and even the big comedian whose name blazed in letters of fire outside, actually stopped her in the wings to congratulate her.
"Look here, young person," he said, lifting a warning finger, "you want to be careful how you steal my thunder. You'll be taking my job next!"
Whereupon Nance had the audacity to cross her eyes and strike his most famous pose before she dodged under his arm and scampered down the stairs.
It seemed incredible that the marvelous events of the night before could happen all over again; but they did. She had only to imitate her own performance to send the audience into peals of laughter. It would have been more fun to try new tricks, but on this point Pulatki was adamant.
"I vant zat you do ze same act, no more, no less, see?" he demanded of her, fiercely.
When the encore came, and at Reeser's command she snatched off her bear's head and made her funny, awkward, little bow, she involuntarily glanced down at the orchestra. Mr. Demry was not there, but in the parquet she encountered a pair of importunate eyes that set her pulses bounding. They sought her out in the subsequent chorus and followed her every movement in the grand march that followed.
"Mr. Mac's down there," she whispered excitedly to Birdie as they passed in the first figure, but Birdie tossed her head and flirted persistently with the gallery which was quite unused to such marked attention from the principal show girl.
There was no supper after the play that night, and it was only after much persuasion on Mac's part, reinforced by the belated Monte, that Birdie was induced to come out of her sulks and go for a drive around the park.
"Me for the front seat!" cried Nance hoydenishly, and then, as Mac jumped in beside her and took the wheel, she saw her mistake.
"Oh! I didn't know—" she began, but Mac caught her hand and gave it a grateful squeeze.
"Confess you wanted to sit by me!" he whispered.
"But I didn't!" she protested hotly. "I never was in a automobile before and I just wanted to see how it worked!"
She almost persuaded herself that this was true when they reached the long stretch of parkway, and Mac let her take the wheel. It was only when in the course of instruction Mac's hand lingered too long on hers, or his gay, careless face leaned too close, that she had her misgivings.
"Say! this is great!" she cried rapturously, with her feet braced and her eyes on the long road ahead. "When it don't get the hic-cups, it beats a horse all hollow!"
"What do you know about horses?" teased Mac, giving unnecessary assistance with the wheel.
"Enough to keep my hands off the reins when another fellow's driving!" she said coolly—a remark that moved Mac to boisterous laughter.
When they were on the homeward way and Mac had taken the wheel again, they found little to say to each other. Once he got her to light a cigarette for him, and once or twice she asked a question about the engine. In Calvary Alley one talked or one didn't as the mood suggested, and Nance was unversed in the fine art of making conversation. It disturbed her not a whit that she and the handsome youth beside her had no common topic of interest. It was quite enough for her to sit there beside him, keenly aware that his arm was pressing hers and that every time she glanced up she found him glancing down.
It was a night of snow and moonshine, one of those transitorial nights when winter is going and spring is coming. Nance held her breath as the car plunged headlong into one mass of black shadows after another only to emerge triumphant into the white moonlight. She loved the unexpected revelations of the headlights, which turned the dim road to silver and lit up the dark turf at the wayside. She loved the crystal-clear moon that was sailing off and away across those dim fields of virgin snow. And then she was not thinking any longer, but feeling—feeling beauty and wonder and happiness and always the blissful thrill of that arm pressed against her own.
Not until they were nearing the city did she remember the couple on the back seat.
"Wake up there!" shouted Mac, tossing his cap over his shoulder. "Gone to sleep?"
"I am trying to induce Miss Birdie to go to the carnival ball with me to-morrow night," said Monte. "It's going to be no end of a lark."
"Take me, too, Birdie, please!" burst out Nance with such childish vehemence that they all laughed.
"What's the matter with us all going?" cried Mac, instantly on fire at the suggestion. "Mother's having a dinner to-morrow night, but I can join you after the show. What do you say, Bird?"
But Birdie was still in the sulks, and it was not until Mac had changed places with Monte and brought the full battery of his persuasions to bear upon her that she agreed to the plan.
That night when the girls were tucked comfortably in bed and the lights were out, they discussed ways and means.
"I'm going to see if I can't borrow a couple of red-bird costumes offMrs. Ryan," said Birdie, whose good humor seemed completely restored."We'll buy a couple of masks. I don't know what Monte's letting us infor, but I'll try anything once."
"Will there be dancing, Birdie?" asked Nance, her eyes shining in the dark.
"Of course, Silly! Nothing but. Say, what was the matter with you and Mac to-night? You didn't seem to hit it off."
"Oh! we got along pretty good."
"I never heard you talking much. By the way, he's going to take me to-morrow night, and you are going with Monte."
"Any old way suits me!" said Nance, "just so I get there." But she lay awake for a time staring into the dark, thinking things over.
"Does he always call you 'Bird'?" she asked after a long silence.
"Who, Mac? Yes. Why?"
"Oh! Nothing," said Nance.
The next day being Saturday, there were two performances, beside the packing necessary for an early departure on the morrow. But notwithstanding the full day ahead of her, Birdie spent the morning in bed, languidly directing Nance, who emptied the wardrobe and bureau drawers and sorted and folded the soiled finery. Toward noon she got up and, petulantly declaring that the room was suffocating, announced that she was going out to do some shopping.
"I'll come, too," said Nance, to whom the purchasing of wearing apparel was a new and exciting experience.
"No; you finish up here," said Birdie. "I'll be back soon."
Nance went to the window and watched for her to come out in the street below. She was beginning to be worried about Birdie. What made her so restless and discontented? Why wouldn't she go to see her mother? Why was she so cross with Mac Clarke when he was with her and so miserable when he was away? While she pondered it over, she saw Birdie cross the street and stand irresolute for a moment, before she turned her back on the shopping district and hastened off to the east where the tall pipes of the factories stood like exclamation points along the sky-line.
Already the noon whistles were blowing, and she recognized, above the rest, the shrill voice of Clarke's Bottle Factory. How she used to listen for that whistle, especially on Saturdays. Why,thiswas Saturday! In the exciting rush of events she had forgotten completely that Dan would be waiting for her at five o'clock at the foot of Cemetery Street. Never once in the months she had been at Miss Bobinet's had he failed to be there on Saturday afternoon. If only she could send him some word, make some excuse! But it was not easy to deceive Dan, and she knew he would never rest until he got at the truth of the matter. No; she had better take Mrs. Snawdor's advice and run no risks. And yet that thought of Dan waiting patiently at the corner tormented her as she finished the packing.
When the time arrived to report at the theater, Birdie had not returned, so Nance rushed off alone at the last minute. It was not until the first chorus was about to be called that the principal show girl, flushed and tired, flung herself into the dressing-room and made a lightning change in time to take her place at the head of the line.
There was a rehearsal between the afternoon and evening performances, and the girls had little time for confidences.
"Don't ask me any questions!" said Birdie crossly, as she sat before her dressing-table, wearily washing off the make-up of the afternoon in order to put on the make-up of the evening. "I'm so dog tired I'd lots rather be going to bed than to that carnival thing!"
"Don't you back out!" warned Nance, to whom it was ridiculous that any one should be tired under such exhilarating circumstances.
"Oh, I'll go," said Birdie, "if it's just for the sake of getting something decent to eat. I'm sick of dancing on crackers and ice-water."
That night Nance, for the first time, was reconciled to the final curtain. The weather was threatening and the audience was small, but that was not what took the keen edge off the performance. It was the absence in the parquet of a certain pair of pursuing eyes that made all the difference. Moreover, the prospect of the carnival ball made even the footlights pale by comparison.
The wardrobe woman, after much coaxing and bribing, had been induced to lend the girls two of the property costumes, and Nance, with the help of several giggling assistants, was being initiated into the mysteries of the red-bird costume. When she had donned the crimson tights, and high-heeled crimson boots, and the short-spangled slip with its black gauze wings, she gave a half-abashed glance at herself in the long mirror.
"I can't do it, Birdie!" she cried, "I feel like a fool. You be a red bird, and let me be a bear!"
"Don't we all do it every night?" asked Birdie. "When we've got on our masks, nobody 'll know us. We'll just be a couple of 'Rag-Time Follies' taking a night off."
"Don't she look cute with her cap on?" cried one of the girls. "I'd give my head to be going!"
Nance put on a borrowed rain-coat which was to serve as evening wrap as well and, with a kiss all around and many parting gibes, ran up the steps in Birdie's wake.
The court outside the stage entrance was a bobbing mass of umbrellas. Groups of girls, pulling their wraps on as they came, tripped noisily down the steps, greeting waiting cavaliers, or hurrying off alone in various directions.
"That's Mac's horn," said Birdie, "a long toot and two short ones. I'd know it in Halifax!"
At the curbing the usual altercation arose between Mac and Birdie as to how they should sit. The latter refused to sit on the front seat for fear of getting wet, and Mac refused to let Monte drive.
"Oh, I don't mind getting wet!" cried Nance with a fine show of indifference. "That's what a rain-coat's for."
When Mac had dexterously backed his machine out of its close quarters, and was threading his way with reckless skill through the crowded streets, he said softly, without turning his head:
"I think I rather like you, Nance Molloy!"
The tenth annual carnival ball, under the auspices of a too-well-known political organization, was at its midnight worst. It was one of those conglomerate gatherings, made up of the loose ends of the city—ward politicians, girls from the department stores, Bohemians with an unsated thirst for diversion, reporters, ostensibly looking for copy, women just over the line of respectability, sometimes on one side, sometimes on the other, and the inevitable sprinkling of well-born youths who regard such occasions as golden opportunities for seeing that mysterious phantom termed "life."
It was all cheap and incredibly tawdry, from the festoons of paper roses on the walls to the flash of paste jewels in make-believe crowns. The big hall, with its stage flanked by gilded boxes, was crowded with a shifting throng of maskers in costumes of flaunting discord. Above the noisy laughter and popping of corks, rose the blaring strains of a brass band. Through the odor of flowers came the strong scent of musk, which, in turn, was routed by the fumes of beer and tobacco which were already making the air heavy.
On the edge of all this stood Nance Molloy, in that magic hour of her girlhood when the bud was ready to burst into the full-blown blossom. Her slender figure on tiptoe with excitement, her eyes star-like behind her mask, she stood poised, waiting with all her unslaked thirst for pleasure, to make her plunge into the gay, dancing throng. She no longer cared if her skirts were short, and her arms and neck were bare. She no longer thought of how she looked or how she acted. There was no Pulatki in the wings to call her down for extra flourishes; there was no old white face in the orchestra to disturb her conscience. Her chance for a good time had come at last, and she was rushing to meet it with arms outstretched.
"They are getting ready for the grand march!" cried Monte, who, with Mac, represented the "twoDromios." "We separate at the end of the hall, and when the columns line up again, you dance with your vis-à-vis."
"My who-tee-who?" asked Nance.
"Vis-à-vis—fellow opposite. Come ahead!"
Down the long hall swung the gay procession, while the floor vibrated to the rhythm of the prancing feet. The columns marched and countermarched and fell into two long lines facing each other. The leader of the orchestra blew a shrill whistle, and Nance, marking time expectantly, saw one of theDromiosslip out of his place and into the one facing her. The next moment the columns flowed together, and she found herself in his arms, swinging in and out of the gay whirling throng with every nerve tingling response to the summoning music.
Suddenly a tender pressure made her glance up sharply at the white mask of her companion.
"Why—why, I thought it was Mr. Monte," she laughed.
"Disappointed?" asked Mac.
"N-no."
"Then why are you stopping?"
Nance could not tell him that in her world a "High Particular" was not to be trifled with. In her vigil of the night before she had made firm resolve to do the square thing by Birdie Smelts.
"Where are the others?" she asked in sudden confusion.
"In the supper room probably. Aren't you going to finish this with me?"
"Not me. I'm going to dance with Mr. Monte."
"Has he asked you?"
"No; I'm going to ask him." And she darted away, leaving Mac to follow at his leisure.
After supper propriety, which up to now had held slack rein on the carnival spirit, turned her loose. Masks were flung aside, hundreds of toy balloons were set afloat and tossed from hand to hand, confetti was showered from the balcony, boisterous song and laughter mingled with the music. The floor resembled some gigantic kaleidoscope, one gay pattern following another in rapid succession. And in every group the most vivid note was struck by a flashing red bird. Even had word not gone abroad that the girls in crimson and black were from the "Rag Time Follies", Birdie's conspicuous charms would have created instant comment and a host of admirers.
Nance, with characteristic independence, soon swung out of Birdie's orbit and made friends for herself. For her it was a night of delirium, and her pulses hammered in rhythm to the throbbing music. In one day life had caught her up out of an abyss of gloom and swung her to a dizzy pinnacle of delight, where she poised in exquisite ecstasy, fearing that the next turn of the wheel might carry her down again. Laughter had softened her lips and hung mischievous lights in her eyes; happiness had set her nerves tingling and set roses blooming in cheeks and lips. The smoldering fires of self-expression, smothered so long, burst into riotous flame. With utter abandonment she flung herself into the merriment of the moment, romping through the dances with any one who asked her, slapping the face of an elderly knight who went too far in his gallantries, dancing a hornpipe with a fat clown to the accompaniment of a hundred clapping hands. Up and down the crowded hall she raced, a hoydenish little tom-boy, drunk with youth, with freedom, and with the pent-up vitality of years.
Close after her, snatching her away from the other dancers only to have her snatched away from him in turn, was Mac Clarke, equally flushed and excited, refusing to listen to Monte's insistent reminder that a storm was brewing and they ought to go home.
"Hang the storm!" cried Mac gaily. "I'm in for it with the governor, anyhow. Let's make a night of it!"
At the end of a dance even wilder than the rest, Nance found herself withMac at the entrance to one of the boxes that flanked the stage.
"I've got you now!" he panted, catching her wrists and pulling her within the curtained recess. "You've got to tell me why you've been running away from me all evening."
"I haven't," said Nance, laughing and struggling to free her hands.
"You have, too! You've given me the slip a dozen times. Don't you knowI'm crazy about you?"
"Much you are!" scoffed Nance. "Go tell that to Birdie."
"I'll tell it to Birdie and every one else if you like," Mac cried. "It was all up with me the first time I saw you."
With his handsome, boyish face and his frilled shirt, he looked so absurdly like the choir boy, who had once sat on the fence flinging rocks at her, that she threw back her head and laughed.
"You don't even know the first time you saw me," she challenged him.
"Well, I know I've seen you somewhere before. Tell me where?"
"Guess!" said Nance, with dancing eyes.
"Wait! I know! It was on the street one night. You were standing in a drug store. A red light was shining on you, and you smiled at me."
"I smiled at you because I knew you. I'd seen you before that. Once when you didn't want me to. In the factory yard—behind the gas-pipe—"
"Were you the little girl that caught me kissing Bird that day?"
"Yes! But there was another time even before that."
He searched her face quizzically, still holding her wrists.
Nance, no longer trying to free her hands, hummed teasingly, half under her breath:
"Do ye think the likes of yeCould learn to like the likes o' me?Arrah, come in, Barney McKane, out of the rain!"
A puzzled look swept his face; then he cried exultantly:
"I've got it. It was you who let my pigeons go! You little devil! I'm going to pay you back for that!" and before she knew it, he had got both of her hands into one of his and had caught her to him, and was kissing her there in the shadow of the curtain, kissing her gay, defiant eyes and her half-childish lips.
And Nance, the independent, scoffing, high-headed Nance, who up to this time had waged successful warfare, offensive as well as defensive, against the invading masculine, forgot for one transcendent second everything in the world except the touch of those ardent lips on hers and the warm clasp of the arm about her yielding shoulders.
In the next instant she sprang away from him, and in dire confusion fled out of the box and down the corridor.
At the door leading back into the ball-room a group of dancers had gathered and were exchanging humorous remarks about a woman who was being borne, feet foremost, into the corridor by two men in costume.
Nance, craning her neck to see, caught a glimpse of a white face with a sagging mouth, and staring eyes under a profusion of tumbled red hair. With a gasp of recognition she pushed forward and impulsively seized one of the woman's limp hands.
"Gert!" she cried, "what's the matter? Are you hurt?"
The monk gave a significant wink at Mac, who had joined them, and the by-standers laughed.
"She's drunk!" said Mac, abruptly, pulling Nance away. "Where did you ever know that woman?"
"Why, it's Gert, you know, at the factory! She worked at the bench next to mine!"
Her eyes followed the departing group somberly, and she lingered despiteMac's persuasion.
Poor Gert! Was this what she meant by a good time? To be limp and silly like that, with her dress slipping off her shoulder and people staring at her and laughing at her?
"I don't want to dance!" she said impatiently, shaking off Mac's hand.
The steaming hall, reeking with tobacco smoke and stale beer, the men and women with painted faces and blackened eyes leering and languishing at each other, the snatches of suggestive song and jest, filled her with sudden disgust.
"I'm going home," she announced with determination.
"But, Nance!" pleaded Mac, "you can't go until we've had our dance."
But for Nance the spell was broken, and her one idea was to get away.When she found Birdie she became more insistent than ever.
"Why not see it out?" urged Mac. "I don't want to go home."
"You are as hoarse as a frog now," said Monte.
"Glad of it! Let's me out of singing in the choir to-morrow—I mean to-day! Who wants another drink?"
Birdie did, and another ten minutes was lost while they went around to the refreshment room.
The storm was at its height when at four o'clock they started on that mad drive home. The shrieking wind, the wet, slippery streets, the lightning flashing against the blurred wind-shield, the crashes of thunder that drowned all other sounds, were sufficient to try the nerves of the steadiest driver. But Mac sped his car through it with reckless disregard, singing, despite his hoarseness, with Birdie and Monte, and shouting laughing defiance as the lightning played.