Nance sat very straight beside him with her eyes on the road ahead. She hated Birdie for having taken enough wine to make her silly like that; she hated the boys for laughing at her. She saw nothing funny in the fact that somebody had lost the latch-key and that they could only get in by raising the landlady, who was sharp of tongue and free with her comments.
"You girls better come on over to my rooms," urged Monte. "We'll cook your breakfast on the chafing-dish, won't we, Mac?"
"Me for the couch!" said Birdie. "I'm cross-eyed, I'm so sleepy."
"I'm not going," said Nance, shortly.
"Don't be a short-sport, Nance," urged Birdie, peevishly. "It's as good as morning now. We can loaf around Monte's for a couple of hours and then go over to my room and change our clothes in time to get to the station by seven. Less time we have to answer questions, better it'll be for us."
"I tell you I ain't going!" protested Nance, hotly.
"Yes, you are!" whispered Mac softly. "You are going to be a good little girl and do whatever I want you to."
Nance grew strangely silent under his compelling look, and under the touch of his hand as it sought hers in the darkness. Why wasn't she angry with Mr. Mac as she was with the others? Why did she want so much to do whatever he asked her to? After all perhaps there was no harm in going to Mr. Monte's for a little while, perhaps—
She drew in her breath suddenly and shivered. For the first time in her life she was afraid, not of the storm, or the consequences of her escapade, but of herself. She was afraid of the quick, sweet shiver that ran over her whenever Mac touched her, of the strange weakness that came over her even now, as his hands claimed hers.
"Say, I'm going to get out," she said suddenly.
"Stop the car! Don't you hear me? I want to get out!"
"Nonsense!" said Mac, "you don't even know where you are! You are coming with us to Monte's; that's what you are going to do."
But Nance knew more than he thought. In the last flash of lightning she had seen, back of them on the left, startlingly white for the second against the blackness, the spire of Calvary Cathedral. She knew that they were rapidly approaching the railroad crossing where Uncle Jed's signal tower stood, beyond which lay a region totally unfamiliar to her.
She waited tensely until Mac had sped the car across the gleaming tracks, just escaping the descending gates. Then she bent forward and seized the emergency brake. The car came to a halt with a terrific jerk, plunging them all forward, and under cover of the confusion Nance leapt out and, darting under the lowered gate, dashed across the tracks. The next moment a long freight train passed between her and the automobile, and when it was done with its noisy shunting backward and forward, and had gone ahead, the street was empty.
Watching her chance between the lightning flashes, she darted from cover to cover. Once beyond the signal tower she would be safe from Uncle Jed's righteous eye, and able to dash down a short cut she knew that led into the street back of the warehouse and thence into Calvary Alley. If she could get to her old room for the next two hours, she could change her clothes and be off again before any one knew of her night's adventure.
Just as she reached the corner, a flash more blinding than the rest ripped the heavens. A line of fire raced toward her along the steel rails, then leapt in a ball to the big bell at the top of the signal tower. There was a deafening crash; all the electric lights went out, and Nance found herself cowering against the fence, apparently the one living object in that wild, wet, storm-racked night.
The only lights to be seen were the small red lamps suspended on the slanting gates. Nance waited for them to lower when the freight train that had backed into the yards five minutes before, rushed out again. But the lamps did not move.
She crept back across the tracks, watching with fascinated horror the dark windows of the signal tower. Why didn't Uncle Jed light his lantern? Why hadn't he lowered the gates? All her fear of discovery was suddenly swallowed up in a greater fear.
At the foot of the crude wooden stairway she no longer hesitated.
"Uncle Jed!" she shouted against the wind, "Uncle Jed, are you there?"
There was no answer.
She climbed the steep steps and tried the door, which yielded grudgingly to her pressure. It was only when she put her shoulder to it and pushed with all her strength that she made an opening wide enough to squeeze through. There on the floor, lying just as he had fallen, was the old gate-tender, his unseeing eyes staring up into the semi-darkness.
Nance looked at him in terror, then at the signal board and the levers that controlled the gates. A terrible trembling seized her, and she covered her eyes with her hands.
"God tell me quick, what must I do?" she demanded, and the next instant, as if in answer to her prayer, she heard herself gasp, "Dan!" as she fumbled wildly for the telephone.
The shrill whistle that at noon had obtruded its discord into Nance Molloy's thoughts had a very different effect on Dan Lewis, washing his hands under the hydrant in the factory yard.Hehad not forgotten that it was Saturday. Neither had Growler, who stood watching him with an oblique look in his old eye that said as plain as words that he knew what momentous business was brewing at five o'clock.
It was not only Saturday for Dan, but the most important Saturday that ever figured on the calendar. In his heroic efforts to conform to Mrs. Purdy's standard of perfection he had studied the advice to young men in the "Sunday Echo." There he learned that no gentleman would think of mentioning love to a young lady until he was in a position to marry her. To-day's pay envelope would hold the exact amount to bring his bank account up to the three imposing figures that he had decided on as the minimum sum to be put away.
As he was drying his hands on his handkerchief and whistling softly under his breath, he was summoned to the office.
For the past year he had been a self-constituted buffer between Mr. Clarke and the men in the furnace-room, and he wondered anxiously what new complication had arisen.
"He's got an awful grouch on," warned the stenographer as Dan passed through the outer office.
Mr. Clarke was sitting at his desk, tapping his foot impatiently.
"Well, Lewis," he said, "you've taken your time! Sit down. I want to talk to you."
Dan dropped into the chair opposite and waited.
"Is it true that you have been doing most of the new foreman's work for the past month?"
"Well, I've helped him some. You see, being here so long, I know the ropes a bit better than he does."
"That's not the point. I ought to have known sooner that he could not handle the job. I fired him this morning, and we've got to make some temporary arrangement until a new man is installed."
Dan's face grew grave.
"We can manage everything but the finishing room. Some of the girls have been threatening to quit."
"What's the grievance now?"
"Same thing—ventilation. Two more girls fainted there this morning. The air is something terrible."
"What do they think I am running?" demanded Mr. Clarke, angrily, "a health resort?"
"No, sir," said Dan, "a death trap."
Mr. Clarke set his jaw and glared at Dan, but he said nothing. The doctor's recent verdict on the death of a certain one-eyed girl, named Mag Gist, may have had something to do with his silence.
"How many girls are in that room now?" he asked after a long pause.
Dan gave the number, together with several other disturbing facts concerning the sanitary arrangements.
"Well, what's to be done?" demanded Mr. Clarke, fiercely. "We can't get out the work with fewer girls, and there is no way of enlarging that room."
"Yes, sir, there is," said Dan. "Would you mind me showing you a way?"
"Since you are so full of advice, go ahead."
With crude, but sure, pencil strokes, Dan got his ideas on paper. He had done it so often for his own satisfaction that he could have made them with his eyes shut. Ever since those early days when he had seen that room through Nance Molloy's eyes, he had persisted in his efforts to better it.
Mr. Clarke, with his fingers thrust through his scanty hair, watched him scornfully.
"Absolutely impractical," he declared. "The only feasible plan would be to take out the north partition and build an extension like this."
"That couldn't be done," said Dan, "on account of the projection."
Whereupon, such is the power of opposition, Mr. Clarke set himself to prove that it could. For over an hour they wrangled, going into the questions of cost, of time, of heating, of ventilation, scarcely looking up from the plans until a figure in a checked suit flung open the door, letting in a draught of air that scattered the papers on the desk.
"Hello, Dad," said the new-comer, with a friendly nod to Dan, "I'm sorry to disturb you, but I only have a minute."
"Which I should accept gratefully, I suppose, as my share of your busy day?" Mr. Clarke tried to look severe, but his eyes softened.
"Well, I just got up," said Mac, with an ingratiating smile, as he smoothed back his shining hair before the mirror in the hat-rack.
"Running all night, and sleeping half the day!" grumbled Mr. Clarke. "By the way, what time did you get in last night?"
Mac made a wry face.
"Et tu, Brute?" he cried gaily. "Mother's polished me off on that score. I have not come here to discuss the waywardness of your prodigal son. Mr. Clarke, I have come to talk high finance. I desire to negotiate a loan."
"As usual," growled his father. "I venture to say that Dan Lewis here, who earns about half what you waste a year, has something put away."
"But Dan's the original grinder. He always had an eye for business. Used to win my nickel every Sunday when we shot craps in the alley back of the cathedral. Say, Dan, I see you've still got that handsome thoroughbred cur of yours! By George, that dog could use his tail for a jumping rope!"
Dan smiled; he couldn't afford to be sensitive about Growler's beauty.
"Is that all, Mr. Clarke?" he asked of his employer.
"Yes. I'll see what can be done with these plans. In the meanwhile you try to keep the girls satisfied until the new foreman comes. By the way I expect you'd better stay on here to-night."
Dan paused with his hand on the door-knob. "Yes, sir," he said in evident embarrassment, "but if you don't mind—I 'd like to get off for a couple of hours this afternoon."
"Who's the girl, Dan?" asked Mac, but Dan did not stop to answer.
As he hurried down the hall, a boy appeared from around the corner and beckoned to him with a mysterious grin.
"Somebody's waiting for you down in the yard."
"Who is he?"
"'T ain't a he. It's the prettiest girl you ever seen!"
Dan, whose thoughts for weeks had been completely filled with one feminine image, sprang to the window. But the tall, stylish person enveloped in a white veil, who was waiting below, in no remote way suggested Nance Molloy.
A call from a lady was a new experience, and a lively curiosity seized him as he descended the steps, turning down his shirt sleeves as he went. As he stepped into the yard, the girl turned toward him with a quick, nervous movement.
"Hello, Daniel!" she said, her full red lips curving into a smile. "Don't remember me, do you?"
"Sure, I do. It's Birdie Smelts."
"Good boy! Only now it's Birdie La Rue. That's my stage name, you know. I blew into town Thursday with 'The Rag Time Follies.' Say, Dan, you used to be a good friend of mine, didn't you?"
Dan had no recollection of ever having been noticed by Birdie, except on that one occasion when he had taken her and Nance to the skating-rink. She was older than he by a couple of years, and infinitely wiser in the ways of the world. But it was beyond masculine human nature not to be flattered by her manner, and he hastened to assure her that he had been and was her friend.
"Well, I wonder if you don't want to do me a favor?" she coaxed. "Find out if Mac Clarke's been here, or is going to be here. I got to see him on particular business."
"He's up in the office now," said Dan; then he added bluntly "Where did you ever know Mac Clarke?"
Birdie's large, white lids fluttered a moment.
"I come to see him for a friend of mine," she said.
A silence fell between them which she tried to break with a rather shame faced explanation.
"This girl and Mac have had a quarrel. I'm trying to patch it up. Wish you'd get him down here a minute."
"It would be a lot better for the girl," said Dan, slowly, "if you didn't patch it up."
"What do you mean?"
Dan looked troubled.
"Clarke's a nice fellow all right," he said, "but when it comes to girls—" he broke off abruptly. "Do you know him?"
"I've seen him round the theater," she said.
"Then you ought to know what I mean."
Birdie looked absently across the barren yard.
"Men are all rotten," she said bitterly, then added with feminine inconsistency, "Go on, Dan, be a darling. Fix it so I can speak to him without the old man catching on."
Strategic manoeuvers were not in Dan's line, and he might have refused outright had not Birdie laid a white hand on his and lifted a pair of effectively pleading eyes. Being unused to feminine blandishments, he succumbed.
Half an hour later a white veil fluttered intimately across a broad, checked shoulder as two stealthy young people slipped under the window of Mr. Clarke's private office and made their way to the street.
Dan gave the incident little further thought. He went mechanically about his work, only pausing occasionally at his high desk behind the door to pore over a sheet of paper. Had his employer glanced casually over his shoulder, he might have thought he was still figuring on the plans of the new finishing room; but a second glance would have puzzled him. Instead of one large room there were several small ones, and across the front was a porch with wriggly lines on a trellis, minutely labeled, "honeysuckle."
At a quarter of five Dan made as elaborate a toilet as the washroom permitted. He consumed both time and soap on the fractious forelock, and spent precious moments trying to induce a limp string tie to assume the same correct set that distinguished Mac Clarke's four-in-hand.
Once on his way, with Growler at his heels, he gave no more thought to his looks. He walked very straight, his lips twitching now and then into a smile, and his gaze soaring over the heads of the ordinary people whom he passed. For twenty-one years the book of life had proved grim reading, but to-day he had come to that magic page whereon is written in words grown dim to the eyes of age and experience, but perennially shining to the eyes of youth: "And then they were married and lived happily ever after."
"Take care there! Look where you are going!" exclaimed an indignant pedestrian as he turned the corner into Cemetery Street.
"Why, hello, Bean!" he said in surprise, bringing his gaze down to a stout man on crutches. "Glad to see you out again!"
"I ain't out," said the ex-foreman. "I'm all in. I've got rheumatism in every corner of me. This is what your old bottle factory did for me."
"Tough luck," said Dan sympathetically, with what attention he could spare from a certain doorway half up the square. "First time you've been out?"
"No; I've been to the park once or twice. Last night I went to a show." He was about to limp on when he paused. "By the way, Lewis, I saw an old friend of yours there. You remember that Molloy girl you used to run with up at the factory?"
Dan's mouth closed sharply. Bean's attitude toward the factory girls was an old grievance with him and had caused words between them on more than one occasion.
"Well, I'll be hanged," went on Bean, undaunted, "if she ain't doing a turn up at the Gaiety! She's a little corker all right, had the whole house going."
"You got another guess coming your way," said Dan, coldly, "the young lady you're talking about's not on the stage. She's working up here in Cemetery Street. I happen to be waiting for her now."
Bean whistled.
"Well, the drinks are on me. That girl at the Gaiety is a dead ringer to her. Same classy way of handling herself, same—" Something in Dan's eyes made him stop. "I got to be going," he said. "So long."
Dan waited patiently for ten minutes; then he looked at his watch. What could be keeping Nance? He whistled to Growler, who was making life miserable for a cat in a neighboring yard, and strolled past Miss Bobinet's door; then he returned to the corner. Bean's words had fallen into his dream like a pebble into a tranquil pool. What business had Bean to be remembering the way Nance walked or talked. Restlessly, Dan paced up and down the narrow sidewalk. When he looked at his watch again, it was five-thirty.
Only thirty more minutes in which to transact the most important business of his life! With a gesture of impatience he strode up to Miss Bobinet's door and rang the bell.
A wrinkled old woman, with one hand behind her ear, opened the door grudgingly.
"Nance Molloy?" she quavered in answer to his query. "What you want with her?"
"I'd like to speak with her a minute," said Dan.
"Are you her brother?"
"No."
"Insurance man?"
"No."
The old woman peered at him curiously.
"Who be you?" she asked.
"My name's Lewis."
"Morris?"
"No, Lewis!" shouted Dan, with a restraining hand on Growler, who was sniffing at the strange musty odors that issued from the half-open door.
"Well, she ain't here," said the old woman. "Took herself off lastWednesday, without a word to anybody."
"Last Wednesday!" said Dan, incredulously. "Didn't she send any word?"
"Sent for her money and said she wouldn't be back. You dog, you!" This to Growler who had insinuated his head inside the door with the fixed determination to run down that queer smell if possible.
Dan went slowly down the steps, and Growler, either offended at having had the door slammed in his face, or else sensing, dog-fashion, the sudden change in his master's mood, trotted soberly at his heels. There was no time now to go to Calvary Alley to find out what the trouble was. Nothing to do but go back to the factory and worry through the night, with all sorts of disturbing thoughts swarming in his brain. Nance had been all right the Saturday before, a little restless and discontented perhaps, but scarcely more so than usual. He remembered how he had counseled patience, and how hard it had been for him to keep from telling her then and there what was in his heart. He began to wonder uneasily if he had done right in keeping all his plans and dreams to himself. Perhaps if he had taken her into his confidence and told her what he was striving and saving for, she would have understood better and been happy in waiting and working with him. For the first time he began to entertain dark doubts concerning those columns of advice to young men in the "Sunday Echo."
Once back at the factory, he plunged into his work with characteristic thoroughness. It was strangely hot and still, and somewhere out on the horizon was a grumbling discontent. It was raining hard at eleven o'clock when he boarded a car for Butternut Lane, and by the time he reached the Purdy's corner, the lightning was playing sharply in the northwest.
He let himself in the empty house and felt his way up to his room, but he did not go to bed. Instead, he sat at his table and with stiff awkward fingers wrote letter after letter, each of which he tossed impatiently into the waste-basket. They were all to Nance, and they all tried in vain to express the pent-up emotion that had filled his heart for years. Somewhere down-stairs a clock struck one, but he kept doggedly at his task. Four o'clock found him still seated at the table, but his tired head had dropped on his folded arms, and he slept.
Outside the wind rose higher and higher, and the lightning split the heavens in blinding flashes. Suddenly a deafening crash of thunder shook the house, and Dan started to his feet. A moment later the telephone bell rang.
Half dazed, he stumbled down-stairs and took up the receiver.
"Hello, hello! Yes, this is Dan Lewis. What? I can't hear you. Who?" Then his back stiffened suddenly, and his voice grew tense, "Nance! Where are you? Is he dead? Who's with you? Don't be scared, I'm coming!" and, leaving the receiver dangling on the cord, he made one leap for the door.
It seemed an eternity to Dan, speeding hatless, coatless, breathless through the storm, before he spied the red lights on the lowered gates at the crossing. Dashing to the signal tower, he took the steps two at a time. The small room was almost dark, but he could see Nance kneeling on the floor beside the big gatekeeper.
"Dan! Is it you?" she cried. "He ain't dead yet. I can feel him breathing. If the doctor would only come!"
"Who'd you call?"
"The first one in the book, Dr. Adair."
"But he's the big doctor up at the hospital; he won't come."
"He will too! I told him he had to. And the gates, I got 'em down. Don't stop to feel his heart, Dan. Call the doctor again!"
"The first thing to do is to get a light," said Dan. "Ain't there a lantern or something?"
"Strike matches, like I did. They are on the window-sill—only hurry—Dan, hurry!"
Dan went about his task in his own way, taking time to find an oil lamp on the shelf behind the door and deliberately lighting it before he took his seat at the telephone. As he waited for the connection, his puzzled, troubled eyes dwelt not on Uncle Jed, but on the crimson boots and fantastic cap of Uncle Jed's companion.
"Dr. Adair is on the way," he said quietly, when he hung up the receiver, "and a man is coming from the yards to look after the gates. Is he still breathing?"
"Only when I make him!" said Nance, pressing the lungs of the injured man. "There, Uncle Jed," she coaxed, "take another deep breath, just one time. Go on! Do it for Nance. One time more! That's right! Once more!"
But Uncle Jed was evidently very tired of trying to accommodate. The gasps came at irregular intervals.
"How long have you been doing this?" asked Dan, kneeling beside her.
"I don't know. Ever since I came."
"How did you happen to come?"
"I saw the lightning strike the bell. Oh, Dan! It was awful, the noise and the flash! Seemed like I 'd never get up the steps. And at first I thought he was dead and—"
"But who was with you? Where were you going?" interrupted Dan in bewilderment.
"I was passing—I was going home—I—" Her excited voice broke in a sob, and she impatiently jerked the sleeve of her rain-coat across her eyes.
In a moment Dan was all tenderness. For the first time he put his arm around her and awkwardly patted her shoulder.
"There," he said reassuringly, "don't try to tell me now. See! He's breathing more regular! I expect the doctor'll pull him through."
Nance's hands, relieved of the immediate necessity for action, were clasping and unclasping nervously.
"Dan," she burst out, "I got to tell you something! Birdie Smelts has got me a place in the 'Follies.' I been on a couple of nights. I'm going away with 'em in the morning."
Dan looked at her as if he thought the events of the wild night had deprived her of reason.
"You!" he said, "going on the stage?" Then as he took it in, he drew away from her suddenly as if he had received a lash across the face. "And you were going off without talking it over or telling me or anything?"
"I was going to write you, Dan. It was all so sudden."
His eyes swept her bedraggled figure with stern disapproval.
"Were you coming from the theater at this time in the morning?"
Uncle Jed moaned slightly, and they both bent over him in instant solicitude. But there was nothing to do, but wait until the doctor should come.
"Where had you been in those crazy clothes?" persisted Dan.
"I'd been to the carnival ball with Birdie Smelts," Nance blurted out. "I didn't know it was going to be like that, but I might 'a' gone anyway. I don't know. Oh, Dan, I was sick to death of being stuck away in that dark hole, waiting for something to turn up. I told you how it was, but you couldn't see it. I was bound to have a good time if I died for it!"
She dropped her head on her knees and sobbed unrestrainedly, while the wind shrieked around the shanty, and the rain dashed against the gradually lightening window-pane. After a while she flung back her head defiantly.
"Stoplooking at me like that, Dan. Lots of girls go on the stage and stay good."
"I wasn't thinking about the stage," said Dan. "I was thinking about to-night. Who took you girls to that place?"
Nance dried her tears.
"I can't tell you that," she said uneasily.
"Why not?"
"It wouldn't be fair."
Dan felt the hot blood surge to his head, and the muscles of his hands tighten involuntarily. He forgot Uncle Jed; he forgot to listen for the doctor, or to worry about traffic that would soon be held up in the street below. The only man in the world for him at that moment was the scoundrel who had dared to take his little Nance into that infamous dance hall.
Nance caught his arm and, with a quick gesture, dropped her head on it.
"Dan," she pleaded, "don't be mad at me. I promise you I won't go to any more places like that. I knew it wasn't right all along. But I got to go on with the 'Follies,' It's the chance I been waiting for all these months. Maybe it's the only one that'll ever come to me! You ain't going to stand in my way, are you, Dan?"
"Tell me who was with you to-night!"
"No!" she whispered. "I can't. You mustn't ask me. I promise you I won't do it again. I don't want to go away leaving you thinking bad of me."
His clenched hands suddenly began to tremble so violently that he had to clasp them tight to keep her from noticing.
"I better get used to—to not thinking 'bout you at all," he said, looking at her with the stern eyes of a young ascetic.
For a time they knelt there side by side, and neither spoke. For over a year Dan had been like one standing still on the banks of a muddy stream, his eyes blinded to all but the shining goal opposite, while Nance was like one who plunges headlong into the current, often losing sight of the goal altogether, but now and again catching glimpses of it that sent her stumbling, fighting, falling forward.
At the sound of voices below they both scrambled to their feet. Dr. Adair and the man from the yards came hurriedly up the steps together, the former drawing off his gloves as he came. He was a compact, elderly man whose keen observant eyes swept the room and its occupants at a glance. He listened to Nance's broken recital of what had happened, cut her short when he had obtained the main facts, and proceeded to examine the patient.
"The worst injury is evidently to the right arm and shoulder; you'll have to help me get his shirt off. No—not that way!"
Dan's hands, so eager to serve, so awkward in the service, fumbled over their task, eliciting a groan from the unconscious man.
"Let me do it!" cried Nance, springing forward. "You hold him up, Dan, I can get it off."
"It's a nasty job," warned the doctor, with a mistrustful glance at the youthful, tear-stained face. "It may make you sick."
"What if it does?" demanded Nance, impatiently.
It was a long and distressing proceeding, and Dan tried not to look at her as she bent in absorbed detachment over her work. But her steady finger-touch, and her anticipation of the doctor's needs amazed him. It recalled the day at the factory, when she, little more than a child herself, had dressed the wounds of the carrying-in boy. Once she grew suddenly white and had to hurry to the door and let the wind blow in her face. He started up to follow her, but changed his mind. Instead he protested with unnecessary vehemence against her resuming the work, but she would not heed him.
"That's right!" said the doctor, approvingly. "Stick it out this time and next time it will not make you sick. Our next move is to get him home. Where does he live?"
"In Calvary Alley," said Dan, "back of the cathedral."
"Very good," said the doctor, "I'll run him around there in my machine as soon as that last hypodermic takes effect. Any family?"
Dan shook his head.
"He has, too!" cried Nance. "We're his family!"
The doctor shot an amused glance at her over his glasses; then he laid a kindly hand on her shoulder.
"I congratulate him on this part of it. You make a first class little nurse."
"Is he going to get well?" Nance demanded.
"It is too early to say, my dear. We will hope for the best. I will have one of the doctors come out from the hospital every day to see him, but everything will depend on the nursing."
Nance cast a despairing look at the bandaged figure on the floor; then she shot a look of entreaty at Dan. One showed as little response to her appeal as the other. For a moment she stood irresolute; then she slipped out of the room and closed the door behind her.
For a moment Dan did not miss her. When he did, he left Dr. Adair in the middle of a sentence and went plunging down the steps in hot pursuit.
"Nance!" he called, splashing through the mud. "Aren't you going to say good-by?"
She wheeled on him furiously, a wild, dishevelled, little figure, strung to the breaking point:
"No!" she cried, "I am not going to say good-by! Do you suppose I could go away with you acting like that? And who is there to nurse Uncle Jed, I'd like to know, but me? But I want to tell you right now, Dan Lewis, if ever another chance comes to get out of that alley, I'm going to take it, and there can't anybody in the world stop me!"
"I don't take no stock in heaven havin' streets of gold," said Mrs. Snawdor. "It'll be just my luck to have to polish 'em. You needn't tell me if there's all that finery in heaven, they won't keep special angels to do the dirty work!"
She and Mrs. Smelts were scrubbing down the stairs of Number One, not as a matter of cleanliness, but for the social benefit to be derived therefrom. It was a Sunday morning institution with them, and served quite the same purpose that church-going does for certain ladies in a more exalted sphere.
"I hope the Bible's true," said Mrs. Smelts, with a sigh. "Where it says there ain't no marryin' nor givin' in marriage."
"Oh, husbands ain't so worse if you pick 'em right," Mrs. Snawdor said with the conviction of experience. "As fer me, I ain't hesitatin' to say I like the second-handed ones best."
"I suppose they are better broke in. But no other woman but me would 'a' looked at Mr. Smelts."
"You can't tell," said Mrs. Snawdor. "Think of me takin' Snawdor after bein' used to Yager an' Molloy! Why, if you'll believe me, Mr. Burks, lyin' there in bed fer four months now, takes more of a hand in helpin' with the childern than Snawdor, who's up an' around."
"Kin he handle hisself any better? Mr. Burks, I mean."
"Improvin' right along. Nance has got him to workin' on a patent now. It's got somethin' to do with a engine switch. Wisht you could see the railroad yards she's rigged up on his bed. The childern are plumb crazy 'bout it."
"Nance is gittin' awful pretty," Mrs. Smelts said. "I kinder 'lowed DanLewis an' her'd be makin' a match before this."
Mrs. Snawdor gathered her skirts higher about her ankles and transferred her base of operations to a lower step.
"You can't tell nothin' at all 'bout that girl. She was born with the bit 'tween her teeth, an' she keeps it there. No more 'n you git her goin' in one direction than she turns up a alley on you. It's night school now. There ain't a spare minute she ain't peckin' on that ole piece of a type-writer Ike Lavinski loaned her."
"She's got a awful lot of energy," sighed Mrs. Smelts.
"Energy! Why it's somethin' fierce! She ain't content to let nothin' stay the way it is. Wears the childern plumb out washin' 'em an' learnin' 'em lessons, an' harpin' on their manners. If you believe me, she's got William J. that hacked he goes behind the door to blow his nose!"
"It's a blessin' she didn't go off with them 'Follies,'" said Mrs. Smelts. "Birdie lost her job over two months ago, an' the Lord knows what she's livin' on. The last I heard of her she was sick an' stranded up in Cincinnati, an' me without so much as a dollar bill to send her!" And Mrs. Smelts sat down in a puddle of soap-suds and gave herself up to the luxury of tears.
At this moment a door on the third floor banged, and Nance Molloy, a white figure against her grimy surroundings, picked her way gingerly down the slippery steps. Her cheap, cotton skirt had exactly the proper flare, and her tailor-made shirtwaist was worn with the proud distinction of one who conforms in line, if not in material, to the mode of the day.
"Ain't she the daisy?" exclaimed Mrs. Snawdor, gaily, and even Mrs.Smelts dried her eyes, the better to appreciate Nance's gala attire.
"We're too swell to be Methodist any longer!" went on Mrs. Snawdor, teasingly. "We're turned 'Piscopal!"
"You ain't ever got the nerve to be goin' over to the cathedral," Mrs.Smelts asked incredulously.
"Sure, why not?" said Nance, giving her hat a more sophisticated tilt."Salvation's as free there as it is anywhere."
It was not salvation, however, that was concerning Nance Molloy as she took her way jauntily out of the alley and, circling the square, joined the throng of well-dressed men and women ascending the broad steps of the cathedral.
From that day when she had found herself back in the alley, like a bit of driftwood that for a brief space is whirled out of its stagnant pool, only to be cast back again, she had planned ceaselessly for a means of escape. During the first terrible weeks of Uncle Jed's illness, her thoughts flew for relief sometimes to Dan, sometimes to Mac. And Dan answered her silent appeal in person, coming daily with his clumsy hands full of necessities, his strong arms ready to lift, his slow speech quickened to words of hope and cheer. Mac came only in dreams, with gay, careless eyes and empty, useless hands, and lips that asked more than they gave. Yet it was around Mac's shining head that the halo of romance oftenest hovered.
It was not until Uncle Jed grew better, and Dan's visits ceased, that Nance realized what they had meant to her. To be sure her efforts to restore things to their old familiar footing had been fruitless, for Dan refused stubbornly to overlook the secret that stood between them, and Nance, for reasons best known to herself, refused to explain matters.
But youth reckons time by heart-throbs, and during Uncle Jed's convalescence Nance found the clock of life running ridiculously slow. Through Ike Lavinski, whose favor she had won by introducing him to Dr. Adair, she learned of a night school where a business course could be taken without expense. She lost no time in enrolling and, owing to her thorough grounding of the year before, was soon making rapid progress. Every night on her way to school, she walked three squares out of her way on the chance of meeting Dan coming from the factory, and coming and going, she watched the cathedral, wondering if Mac still sang there.
One Sunday, toward the close of summer, she followed a daring impulse, and went to the morning service. She sat in one of the rear pews and held her breath as the procession of white-robed men and boys filed into the choir. Mac Clarke was not among them, and she gave a little sigh of disappointment, and wondered if she could slip out again.
On second thought she decided to stay. Even in the old days when she had stolen into the cathedral to look for nickels under the seats, she had been acutely aware of "the pretties." But she had never attended a service, or seen the tapers lighted, and the vast, cool building, with its flickering lights and disturbing music, impressed her profoundly.
Presently she began to make discoveries: the meek apologetic person tip-toeing about lowering windows was no other than the pompous and lordly Mason who had so often loomed over her as an avenging deity. In the bishop, clad in stately robes, performing mysterious rites before the altar, she recognized "the funny old guy" with the bald head, with whom she had compared breakfast menus on a historical day at the graded school.
So absorbed was she in these revelations that she did not notice that she was sitting down while everybody else was standing up, until a small black book was thrust over her shoulder and a white-gloved finger pointed to the top of the page. She rose hastily and tried to follow the service. It seemed that the bishop was reading something which the people all around her were beseeching the Lord to hear. She didn't wonder that the Lord had to be begged to listen. She wasn't going to listen; that was one thing certain.
Then the organ pealed forth, and voices caught up the murmuring words and lifted them and her with them to the great arched ceiling. As long as the music lasted, she sat spell-bound, but when the bishop began to read again, this time from a book resting on the out-stretched wings of a big brass bird, her attention wandered to the great stained glass window above the altar. The reverse side of it was as familiar to her as the sign over Slap Jack's saloon. From the alley it presented opaque blocks of glass above the legend that had been one of the mysteries of her childhood. Now as she looked, the queer figures became shining angels with lilies in their hands, and she made the amazing discovery that "Evol si dog," seen from the inside, spelled "God is Love."
She sat quite still, pondering the matter. The bishop and the music and even Mac were for the time completely forgotten. Was the world full of things like that, puzzling and confused from the outside, and simple and easy from within? Within what? Her mind groped uncertainly along a strange path. So God was love? Why hadn't the spectacled lady told her so that time in the juvenile court instead of writing down her foolish answer? But love had to do with sweethearts and dime novels and plays on the stage. How could God be that? Maybe it meant the kind of love Mr. Demry had for his little daughter, or the love that Dan had for his mother, or the love she had for the Snawdor baby that died. Maybe the love that was good was God, and the love that was bad was the devil, maybe—
Her struggle with these wholly new and perplexing problems was interrupted by the arrival of a belated worshiper, who glided into the seat beside her and languidly knelt in prayer. Nance's attention promptly leaped from moral philosophy to clothes. Her quick eyes made instant appraisal of the lady's dainty costume, then rested in startled surprise on her lowered profile. The straight delicate features, slightly foreign, the fair hair rippling from the neck, were disconcertingly familiar. But when Nance saw her full face, with the petulant mouth and wrinkled brow, the impression vanished.
After a long time the service came to an end, and just as Nance was waiting to pass out, she heard some one say:
"When do you expect your son home, Mrs. Clarke? We miss him in the choir."
And the fair-haired lady in front of her looked up and smiled, and all her wrinkles vanished as she said:
"We expect him home before next Sunday, if the naughty boy doesn't disappoint us again!"
Nance waited to hear no more, but fled into the sunlight and around the corner, hugging her secret. She was not going to let Mr. Mac see her, she assured herself; she was just going to see him, and hear him sing.
When the next Sunday morning came, it found her once more hurrying up the broad steps of the cathedral. She was just in time, for as she slipped into a vacant pew, the notes of the organ began to swell, and from a side door came the procession of choir boys, headed by Mac Clarke carrying a great cross of gold.
Nance, hiding behind the broad back of the man in front of her, watched the procession move into the chancel, and saw the members of the choir file into their places. She had no interest now in the bishop's robes or the lighted tapers or cryptic inscriptions. Throughout the long service her attention was riveted on the handsome, white-robed figure which sat in a posture of bored resignation, wearing an expression of Christian martyrdom.
When the recessional sounded, she rose with the rest of the congregation, still keeping behind the protecting back of the man in front. But when she saw Mac lift the shining cross and come toward her down the chancel steps at the head of the singing procession, something made her move suddenly to the end of the pew, straight into the shaft of light that streamed through the great west window.
Mac, with his foot on the lowest step, paused for the fraction of a second, and the cross that he held swayed slightly. Then he caught step again and moved steadily forward.
Nance hurried away before the benediction. She was never going to do it again, she promised herself repeatedly. And yet, how wonderful it had been! Straight over the heads of the congregation for their eyes to meet like that, and for him to remember as she was remembering!
For three weeks she kept her promise and resolutely stayed away from the cathedral. One would have to be "goin' on nineteen" and live in Calvary Alley to realize the heroic nature of her moral struggle. Victory might have been hers in the end, had not Dan Lewis for the first time in years, failed one Saturday to spend his half-holiday with her. He had come of late, somber and grimly determined to give her no peace until he knew the truth. But Dan, even in that mood, was infinitely better than no Dan at all. When he sent her word that he was going with some of the men from the factory up the river for a swim, she gave her shoulders a defiant shrug, and set to work to launder her one white dress and stove-polish her hat, with the pleasing results we have already witnessed through the eyes of Mrs. Snawdor and Mrs. Smelts.
There is no place where a flirtation takes quicker root or matures more rapidly than in ecclesiastical soil. From the moment Nance entered the cathedral on that third Sunday, she and Mac were as acutely aware of each other's every move as if they had been alone together in the garden of Eden. At first she tried to avert her eyes, tried not to see his insistent efforts to attract her attention, affected not to know that he was singing to her, and watching her with impatient delight.
Then the surging notes of the organ died away, the bishop ascended the pulpit, and the congregation settled down to hear the sermon. From that time on Nance ceased to be discreet. There was glance for glance, and smile for smile, and the innumerable wireless messages that youth has exchanged since ardent eyes first sought each other across forbidden spaces.
It was not until the end of the sermon that Nance awoke to the fact that it was high time for Cinderella to be speeding on her way. Seizing a moment when the choir's back was turned to the congregation, she slipped noiselessly out of the cathedral and was fleeing down the steps when she came face to face with Monte Pearce.
"Caught at last!" he exclaimed, planting himself firmly in her way. "I've been playing watchdog for Mac for three Sundays. What are you doing in town?"
"In town?"
"Yes; we thought you were on the road with the 'Follies.' When did you get back?"
"You're seeking information, Mr. Monte Carlo," said Nance, with a smile."Let me by. I've got to go home."
"I'll go with you. Where do you live?"
"Under my hat."
"Well, I don't know a nicer place to be." Monte laughed and looked at her and kept on laughing, until she felt herself blushing up to the roots of her hair.
"Honest, Mr. Monte, I got to go on," she said appealingly. "I'm in no end of a hurry."
"I can go as fast as you can," said Monte, his cane tapping each step as he tripped briskly down beside her. "I've got my orders from Mac. I'm to stay with you, if you won't stay with me. Which way?"
In consternation for fear the congregation should be dismissed before she could get away, and determined not to let him know where she lived, she jumped aboard a passing car.
"So be it!" said her plump companion, settling himself comfortably on the back seat beside her. "Now tell your Uncle Monte all about it!"
"There's nothing to tell!" declared Nance, with the blush coming back. She was finding it distinctly agreeable to be out alone like this with a grandly sophisticated young gentleman who wore a light linen suit with shoes to match, and whose sole interest seemed to center upon her and her affairs.
"But you know there is!" he persisted. "What made you give us the shake that night of the ball?"
Nance refused to say; so he changed the subject.
"How's Miss Birdie?"
"Give it up. Haven't seen her since you have."
"What? Didn't you go on with the show that next morning?"
"No."
"And you've been in town all summer?"
She nodded, and her companion gave a low, incredulous whistle.
"Well, I'll be darned!" he said. "And old Mac sending letters and telegrams every few minutes and actually following the 'Follies' to Boston!"
"Birdie was with 'em up to two months ago," said Nance.
"Mac wasn't after Birdie!" said Monte. "He hasn't had but one idea in his cranium since that night of the carnival ball. I never saw him so crazy about a girl as he is about you."
"Yes, he is!" scoffed Nance, derisively, but she let Monte run on at length, painting in burning terms the devastating extent of Mac's passion, his despair at losing her, his delight at finding her again, and his impatience for an interview.
When Monte finished she looked at him sidewise out of her half-closed eyes.
"Tell him I've gone on a visit to my rich aunt out to the sea-shore in Kansas."
"Give him another show," coaxed Monte. "We were all a bit lit up that night at the ball."
"No, we weren't either!" Nance flashed. "I hadn't had a thing, but one glass of beer, and you know it! I hate your old fizz-water!"
"Well, make it up with Mac. He's going back to college next month, and he's wild to see you."
"Tell him I haven't got time. Tell him I'm studying instrumental."
Nance was fencing for time. Her cool, keen indifference gave little indication of the turmoil that was going on within. If she could manage to see Mac without letting him know where she lived, without Dan's finding it out—
The car compassed the loop and started on the return trip.
"Where do we get off?" asked Monte.
"I'm not getting off anywhere until after you do."
"I've got lots of nickels."
"I've got lots of time!" returned Nance, regardless of her former haste.
At Cathedral Square, Monte rang the bell.
"Have it your own way," he said good-naturedly. "But do send a message to Mac."
Nance let him get off the back platform; then she put her head out of the window.
"You tell him," she called, "that he can't kill two birds with one stone!"
The promotion of Uncle Jed from the bed to a pair of crutches brought about two important changes in the house of Snawdor. First, a financial panic caused by the withdrawal of his insurance money, and, second, a lightening of Nance's home duties that sent her once more into the world to seek a living.
By one of those little ironies in which life seems to delight, the only opportunity that presented itself lay directly in the path of temptation. A few days after her interview with Monte Pearce, Dan came to her with an offer to do some office work at the bottle factory. The regular stenographer was off on a vacation, and a substitute was wanted for the month of September.
"Why, I thought you'd be keen about it," said Dan, surprised at her hesitation.
"Oh! I'd like it all right, but—"
"You needn't be afraid to tackle it," Dan urged. "Mr. Clarke's not as fierce as he looks; he'd let you go a bit slow at first."
"He wouldn't have to! I bet I've got as much speed now as the girl he's had. It's not the work."
"I know how you feel about the factory," said Dan, "and I wouldn't want you to go back in the finishing room. The office is different. You take my word for it; it's as nice a place as you could find."
They were standing on the doorless threshold of Number One, under the fan-shaped arch through which the light had failed to shine for twenty years. From the room on the left came the squeak of Mr. Demry's fiddle and the sound of pattering feet, synchronizing oddly with the lugubrious hymn in which Mrs. Smelts, in the room opposite, was giving vent to her melancholy.
Nance, eager for her chance, yearning for financial independence, obsessed by the desire to escape from the dirt and disorder and confusion about her, still hesitated.
"If you're afraid I'm going to worry you," said Dan, fumbling with his cap, "I can keep out of your way all right."
In an instant her impulsive hand was on his arm.
"You shut up, Dan Lewis!" she said sharply. "What makes me want to take the job most is our coming home together every night like we used to."
Dan's eyes, averted until now, lifted with sudden hope.
"But I got a good reason for not coming," she went on stubbornly. "It hasn't got anything to do with you or the work."
"Can't you tell me, Nance?"
The flicker of hope died out of his face as she shook her head. He looked down the alley for a moment; then he turned toward her with decision:
"See here, Nance," he said earnestly, "I don't know what your reason is, but I know that this is one chance in a hundred. I want you to take this job. If I come by for you to-morrow morning, will you be ready?"
Still she hesitated.
"Let me decide it for you," he insisted, "will you, Nance?"
She looked up into his earnest eyes, steadfast and serious as a collie's.
"All right!" she said recklessly, "have it your own way!"
The first day in Mr. Clarke's office was one of high tension. Added to the trepidation of putting her newly acquired business knowledge to a practical test, was the much more disturbing possibility that at any moment Mac might happen upon the scene. Just what she was going to do and say in such a contingency she did not know. Once when she heard the door open cautiously, she was afraid to lift her eyes. When she did, surprise took the place of fear.
"Why, Mrs. Smelts!" she cried. "What on earth are you doing here?"
Birdie's mother, faded and anxious, and looking unfamiliar in bonnet and cape, was evidently embarrassed by Nance's unexpected presence.
"He sent for me," she said, nervously, twitching at the fringe on her cape. "I wrote to his wife, but he sent word fer me to come here an' see him at ten o'clock. Is it ten yet?"
"Mr. Clarke sent foryou?" Nance began incredulously; then remembering that a stenographer's first business is to attend to her own, she crossed the room with quite a professional manner and tapped lightly on the door of the inner office.
For half an hour the usually inaccessible president of the bottle factory and the scrub woman from Calvary Alley held mysterious conclave; then the door opened again, and Mrs. Smelts melted into the outer passage as silently as she had come.
Nance, while frankly curious, had little time to indulge in idle surmise. All her faculties were bent on mastering the big modern type-writer that presented such different problems from the ancient machine on which she had pounded out her lessons. She didn't like this sensitive, temperamental affair that went off half-cocked at her slightest touch, and did things on its own account that she was in the habit of doing herself.
Her first dictation left her numb with terror. She heard Mr. Clarke repeating with lightning rapidity phrases which she scarcely comprehended: "Enclose check for amount agreed upon." "Matter settled once and for all." "Any further annoyance to be punished to full extent of the law."
"Shall I address an envelope?" she asked, glancing at the "Dear Madam" at the top of the page.
"No," said Mr. Clarke, sharply, "I'll attend to that."
Other letters followed, and she was soon taking them with considerable speed. When mistakes occurred they could usually be attributed to the graded school which, during its brief chance at Nance, had been more concerned in teaching her the names and the lengths of the rivers of South America than in teaching her spelling.
At the noon hour Mr. Clarke departed, and she stood by the window eating her lunch and watching the men at work on the new wing. The old finishing room was a thing of the past, and Dan's dream of a light, well-ventilated workroom for the girls was already taking definite form. She could see him now in the yard below, a blue-print in his hand, explaining to a group of workmen some detail of the new building. One old glass-blower, peering at the plan through heavy, steel-rimmed spectacles, had his arm across Dan's shoulder. Nance smiled tenderly. Dear Dan! Everybody liked him—even those older men from the furnace-room who had seen him promoted over their heads. She leaned forward impulsively and called to him.
"Danny!" she cried, "here's an apple. Catch!"
He caught it dexterously in his left hand, gave her a casual nod, then went gravely on with the business in hand. Nance sighed and turned away from the window.
In the afternoon the work went much easier. She was getting used to Mr. Clarke's quick, nervous speech and abrupt manner. She was beginning to think in sentences instead of words. All was going famously when a quick step sounded in the passage without, followed by a gaily whistled tune, and the next instant the door behind her was flung open.
Mr. Clarke went steadily on with his dictation, but the new stenographer ceased to follow. With bent head and lips caught between her teeth, she made futile efforts to catch up, but she only succeeded in making matters worse.
"That will do for this afternoon," said Mr. Clarke, seeing her confusion."Make a clear copy of that last letter and put it on my desk." Then heturned in his chair and glared over his shoulder. "Well, Mac!" he said,"I've waited for you just one hour and thirty-five minutes."
"Dead sorry, Dad. Didn't know it was so late," said the new-comer, blithely. "How long before you are going home?"
"Ten minutes. I've got to go over to the new building first. Don't go until I return. There's something I want to see you about."
Nance heard the door close as Mr. Clarke went out; then she waited in a tremor, half trepidation, half glee, for Mac to recognize her. He was moving about restlessly, first in one office, then in the other, and she could feel his bright inquisitive eyes upon her from different angles. But she kept her face averted, changing her position as he changed his. Presently he came to a halt near her and began softly to whistle the little-bear dance from the "Rag-Time Follies." She smiled before she knew it, and the next instant he was perched on the corner of her desk, demanding rapturously to know what she was doing there, and swearing that he had recognized her the moment he entered the room.
"Let go my hand, Mr. Mac!" she implored in laughing confusion.
"I'm afraid to! You might give me the slip again. I've been scouring the town for you and to think I should find you here!"
"Look out!" warned Nance. "You're upsetting the ink-bottle!"
"What do I care? Gee, this is luck! You ought to see my new racer, a regular peach! Will you come out with me sometime?"
"Will you let me run it?"
"I'll let you do anything you like with anything I've got," he declared with such ardor that she laughed and regretted it the next moment.
"Now look here, Mr. Mac!" she said, severely, "you touch me again, and I quit to-night. See?"
"I'll be good. I'll do anything you say if you'll just stay and play with me."
"Play nothing! I've got work to do."
"Work be hanged! Do you suppose when I haven't seen you for four months that I'm not going to claim my inning?"
"Well, I want to tell you right here," she said, shaking a warning pencil in his face, "that I mean what I say about your behaving yourself."
Mac caught the end of the pencil and held it while their eyes challenged each other.
"So be it!" he said. "I promise to be a model of discretion. Nance, I've been mad about you! Did Monte tell you—"
"Mr. Monte didn't tell me anything I wanted to hear," she said in her cool, keen way, as she got the imperiled ink-well to a place of safety, and straightened the other articles on the desk.
"You wouldn't be so down on a fellow if you knew how hard hit I am," persisted Mac. "Besides, I'm in for an awful row with the governor. You may see my scalp fly past the window in less than ten minutes."
"What's the row about?"
"Same old thing. I am the original devil for getting found out." For the space of a minute he gloomily contemplated a spot in the carpet; then he shrugged his shoulders, rammed his hands in his pockets, and began to whistle.
"The governor'll fork out," he said. "He always does. Say, Nance, you haven't said a word about my moustache."
"Let's see it," said Nance in giggling derision. "Looks like a baby's eyebrow. Does it wash off?"
A step in the hall sent them flying in opposite directions, Nance back to her desk, and Mac into the inner office, where his father found him a moment later, apparently absorbed in a pamphlet on factory inspection.
When Nance started home at six o'clock, she found Dan waiting at his old post beside the gas-pipe.
"It's like old times," he said happily, as he piloted her through the out-pouring throng. "I remember the first night we walked home together. You weren't much more than a kid. You had on a red cap with a tassel to it. Three years ago the tenth of last May. Wouldn't think it, would you?"
"Think what?" she asked absently.
"Tired?" he asked anxiously. "Is the work going to be too heavy?"
She shook her head impatiently.
"No, the work's all right. But—but I wish you hadn't made me come back, Dan."
"Stick it out for a week," he urged, "and then if you want to stop, I won't say a word."
She looked up at him quizzically and gave a short enigmatic laugh.
"That's my trouble," she said, "if I stick it out for a week, I won't be wanting to quit!"