In the Bishop's Carriage Read online

  IV.

  No--no--no! No more whining from Nance Olden. Listen to what I've gotto tell you, Mag, listen!

  You know where I was coming from yesterday when I passed Troyon'swindow and grinned up at you, sitting there, framed in bottles of hairtonic, with all that red wig of yours streaming about you?

  Yep, from that little, rat-eyed lawyer's office. I was glum as mud. Ifelt as though Tom and myself were both flies caught by the leg--he bythe law and I by the lawyer--in a sticky mess; and the more we flappedour wings and struggled and pulled, the more we hurt and toreourselves, and the sooner we'd have to give it up.

  Oh, that wizen-faced little lawyer that lives on the Tom Dorgans andthe Nance Oldens, who don't know which way to turn to get the money!He looks at me out of his red little eyes and measures in dollars whatI'd do for Tom. And then he sets his price a notch higher than that.

  When I passed the big department store, next to Troyon's, I wasthinking of this, and I turned in there, just aching for some of theboodle that flaunts itself in a poor girl's face when she's desperate,from every silk and satin rag, from every lace and jewel in the place.

  The funny part of it is that I didn't want it for myself, but for Tom.'Pon my soul, Mag, though I would have filled my arms with everything Isaw, I wouldn't have put on one thing of all the duds; just hiked offto soak 'em and pay the lawyer. I might have been as old and ugly andrich as the yellow-skinned woman opposite me, who was turning overlaces on the middle counter, for all these things meant to me--with Tomin jail.

  I was thinking this as I looked at her, when all at once I saw--

  You know it takes a pretty quick touch, sharp eyes and good nerve toget away with the goods in a big shop like that. Or it takes somethingaltogether different. It was the different way she did it. She tookup the piece of lace--it was a big collar, fine like a cobweb picturein threads,--you can guess what it must have been worth if that oldsinner, Mother Douty, gave me fifteen dollars for it. She took it upin a quick, eager way, as though she'd found just what she wanted.Then she took out a lace sample from her gold-linked purse and heldthem both up close to her blinky little eyes, looking at it through agold lorgnette with emeralds in the handle; pulling it and feeling itwith the air of one who knows a fine thing when she sees it, and justwhat makes it fine. Then she rustled off to the door to examine itclosely in the light, and--Mag Monahan, she walked right out with it!

  At least, she'd got beyond the inner doors when I tapped her on theshoulder.

  "I beg pardon, madam." My best style, Mag.

  She pulled herself up haughtily and blinked at me. She was a little,thin mummy of a woman, just wrapped away in silks and velvets, but onthe inside of that nervous, little old body of hers there must havebeen some spring of good material that wasn't all unwound yet.

  She stood blinking at me without a word.

  "That lace. You haven't paid for it," I said.

  Her short-sighted eyes fell from my face to the collar she held in herhand. Her yellow face grew ghastly.

  "Oh, mercy! You--you don't--"

  "I am a detective for the store, and--"

  "But--"

  "Sh! We don't like any noise made about these things, and you yourselfwouldn't enjoy--"

  "Do you know who I am, young woman?" She fumbled in her satchel andpassed a card to me.

  Glory be! Guess, Mag. Oh, you'd never guess, you dear old Mag!Besides, you haven't got the acquaintance in high society that NanceOlden can boast.

  +--------------------------------+ | Mrs. MILLS D. VAN WAGENEN | +--------------------------------+

  Oh--Mag! Shame on you not to know the name even of the Bishop of thegreat state of--yes, the lean, short little Bishop with a little whitebeard, and the softest eye and the softest heart and--my very ownBishop, Nancy Olden's Bishop. And this was his wife.

  Tut--tut, Mag! Of course not. A bishop's wife may be a kleptomaniac;it's only Cruelty girls that really steal from stores.

  "I've met the Bishop, Mrs. Van Wagenen." I didn't say how--shewouldn't appreciate that story.

  "And he was once very kind to me. But he would be the first to tell meto do my duty now. I'll do it as quietly as I can for his sake. Butyou must come with me or I must arrest--"

  She put up a shaking hand. Dear little old guy!

  "Don't--don't say it! It's all a mistake, which can be rectified in amoment. I've been trying to match this piece of lace for years. I gotit at Malta when--when Mills and I--on our honeymoon. When I saw itthere on the counter I was so delighted--I never thought--I intendedtaking it to the light to be sure the pattern was the same, my eyesightis so wretched--and when you spoke to me it was the first inkling I hadthat I had really taken it without paying! You certainly understand,"she pleaded in agitation. "I have no need to steal--you must knowthat--oh, that I wouldn't--that--I couldn't--If you will just let mepay you--"

  Here now, Mag Monahan, don't you get to sneering. She wasstraight--right on the level, all right. You couldn't listen to thatcracked little voice of hers a minute without being sure of it.

  I was just about to permit her graciously to pay me the money,--for myfriend? the dear Bishop's sake, of course,--when a big floor-walkerhappened to catch sight of us.

  "If you'll come with me, Mrs. Van Wagenen, to a dressing-room, I'llarrange your collar for you," I said very loud. And then, in awhisper: "Of course, I understand, but the thing may look different toother people. And that big floor-walker there gets a commission fromthe newspapers every time he tells them--"

  She gave a squawk for all the world like a dried-up little henscuttling out of a yellow dog's way, and we took the elevator to thesecond floor.

  The minute I closed the door of the little fitting-room she held outthe lace to me.

  "I have changed my mind," she said, "and shall give you the lace back.I will not keep it. I can not--I can not bear the sight of it. Itterrifies me and shocks me. I can take no pleasure in it.Besides--besides, it will be discipline for me to do without it nowthat I have found it after all these years. Every day I shall look atthe place in my collection which it would have occupied, and I shallsay to myself: 'Maria Van Wagenen, take warning. See to what terriblestraits a worldly passion may bring one; what unconscious greed maydo!' I shall give the money to Mills for charity and I willnever--never fill that place in my collection."

  "What good will that do?" I asked, puzzled, while I folded the collarup into a very small package.

  "You mean that I ought to submit to the exposure--that I deserve thelesson and the punishment--not for stealing, but for being absorbed inworldly things. Perhaps you are right. It certainly shows that youhave at some time been under Mills' spiritual care, my dear. I wonderif he would insist--whether I ought--yes, I suppose he would. Oh!"

  A saleswoman's head was thrust in the door. "Excuse me," she said, "Ithought the room was empty."

  "We've just finished trying on," I said sweetly.

  "Don't go!" The Bishop's wife turned to her, her little flutteringhands held out appealingly. "And do not misunderstand me. The thingmay seem wrong in your eyes, as this young woman says, but if you willlisten patiently to my explanations I am sure you will see that it wasa mere eager over-sight--the fault of absent-mindedness, hardly the sinof covetousness, and surely not a crime. I am making this confession--"

  The tender conscience of the dear, blameless little soul! She wasactually giving herself away. Worse--she was giving me away, too. ButI couldn't stand that. I saw the saleswoman's puzzled face--she was atall woman with a big bust, big hips and the big head all right, andshe wore her long-train black rig for all the world like a Cruelty girlwho had stolen the matron's skirt to "play lady" in. I got behindlittle Mrs. Bishop, and looking out over her head, I tapped my foreheadsignificantly.

  The saleswoman tumbled. That was all right. But so did the Bishop'swife; for she turned and caught me at it.

  "You shall not save me from myself and what I dese
rve," she cried. "Iam perfectly sane and you know it, and you are doing me no favor intrying to create the contrary impression. I demand an--"

  "An interview with the manager," I interrupted. "I'm sure Mrs. VanWagenen can see the manager. Just go with the lady, Mrs. Van Wagenen,and I'll follow with the goods."

  She did it meek as a lamb, talking all the time, but never beginning atthe beginning--luckily for me. So that I had time to slip from onedressing-room to the next, with the lace up my sleeve, out to theelevator, and down into the street.

  D'ye know what heaven must be, Mag? A place where you always get awaywith the swag, and where it's always just the minute after you've madea killing.

  Cocky? Well, I should say I was. I was drunk enough with success totake big chances. And just while I was wishing for something reallybig to tackle, it came along in the shape of that big floor-walker!

  He was without a hat, and his eyes looked fifty ways at once. Butyou've got to look fifty-one if you want to catch Nance Olden. I ran upthe stairs of the first flat-house and rang the bell. And as I sailedup in the elevator I saw the big floor-walker hurry past; he'd lost thescent.

  The boy let me off at the top floor, and after the elevator had gonedown I walked up to the roof. It was fine 'way up there, so still andhigh, with the lights coming out down in the town. And I took out mypretty lace collar and put it around my neck, wishing I could keep itand wishing that I had, at least, a glass to see myself in it justonce, when my eye caught the window of the next house.

  It would do for a mirror all right, for the dark green shade was down.But at sight of the shade blowing in the wind I forgot all about thecollar.

  It's this way, Mag, when they press you too far; and that little rat ofa lawyer had got me most to the wall. I looked at the window,measuring the little climb it would be for me to get to it,--the housenext door was just one story higher than the one where I was, so itstop story was on a level with the roof nearly where I stood. And Imade up my--mind to get what would let Tom off easy, or break into jailmyself.

  And so I didn't care much what I might fall into through that window.And perhaps because I didn't care, I slipped into a dark hall, and nota thing stirred; not a footstep creaked. I felt like thePrincess--Princess Nancy Olden--come to wake the Sleeping Beauty; somedude it'd be that would have curly hair like Tom Dorgan's, and wouldwear clothes like my friend Latimer's, over in Brooklyn.

  Can you see me there, standing on one leg like a stork, ready to lie orto fly at the first sound?

  Well, the first sound didn't come. Neither did the second. In fact,none of 'em came unless I made 'em myself.

  Softly as Molly goes when the baby's just dropped off to sleep, Iwalked toward an open door. It was a parlor, smelly with tobacco, andwith lots of papers and books around. And nary a he-beauty--nor anyother kind.

  I tried the door of a room next to it. A bedroom. But no Beauty.

  Silly! Don't you tumble yet? It was a bachelor's apartment, and theBachelor Beauty was out, and Princess Nancy had the place all toherself.

  I suppose I really ought to have left my card--or he wouldn't know whohad waked him--but I hadn't intended to go calling when I left home.So I thought I'd look for one of his as a souvenir--and anything elseof his I could make use of.

  There were shirts I'd liked for Tom, dandy colored ones, and suits withchecks in 'em and without. But I wanted something easy and small andflat, made of crackly printed yellow or green paper, with numbers on it.

  How did I know he had anything like that? Why, Mag, Mag Monahan, onewould think you belonged to the Bishop's set, you're so simple!

  I had to turn on the electric light after a bit--it got so dark. And Idon't like light in other people's houses when they're not at home, andneither am I. But there was nothing in the bedroom except some pearlstuds. I got those and then went back to the parlor.

  The desk caught my eye. Oh, Mag, it had the loveliest pictures onit--pictures of swell actresses and dancers. It was mahogany, withlots of little drawers and two curvy side boxes. I pulled open all thedrawers. They were full of papers all right, but they were printed,cut from newspapers, and all about theaters.

  "You can't feed things like this, Nance, to that shark of a lawyer," Isaid to myself, pushing the box on the side impatiently.

  And then I giggled outright.

  Why?

  Just 'cause--I had pushed that side box till it swung aside on hinges Ididn't know about, and there, in a little secret nest, was a pile ofthose same crisp, crinkly paper things I'd been looking for.20--40--60--110--160--210--260--310!

  Three hundred and ten dollars, Mag Monahan. Three hundred and ten, andNance Olden!

  "Glory be!" I whispered.

  "Glory be damned!" I heard behind me.

  I turned. The bills just leaked out of my hand on to the floor.

  The Bachelor Beauty had come home, Mag, and nabbed the poor Princess,instead of her catching him napping.

  He wasn't a beauty either--a big, stout fellow with a black mustache.His hand on my shoulder held me tight, but the look in his eyes behindhis glasses held me tighter. I threw out my arms over the desk and hidmy face.

  Caught! Nancy Olden, with her hands dripping, and not a lie in hersmart mouth!

  He picked up the bills I had dropped, counted them and put them in hispocket. Then he unhooked a telephone and lifted the stand from hisdesk.

  "Hello! Spring 3100--please. Hello! Chief's office? This isObermuller, Standard Theater. I want an officer to take charge of athief I've caught in my apartments here at the Bronsonia. Yes, righton the corner. Hold him till you come? Well--rather!"

  He put down the 'phone. I pulled the pearl studs out of my pocket.

  "You might as well take these, too," I said.

  "So thoughtful of you, seeing that you'd be searched! But I'll take'em, anyway. You intended them for--Him? You didn't get anythingelse?"

  I shook my head as I lay there.

  "Hum!" It was half a laugh, and half a sneer. I hated him for it, ashe sat leaning back on the back legs of his chair, his thumbs in hisarm-holes. I felt his eyes--those smart, keen eyes, burning into mymiserable head. I thought of the lawyer and the deal he'd give poorTom, and all at once--

  You'd have sniffled yourself, Mag Monahan. There I was--caught. Thecop'd be after me in five minutes. With Tom jugged, and me instripes--it wasn't very jolly, and I lost my nerve.

  "Ashamed--huh?" he said lightly.

  I nodded. I was ashamed.

  "Pity you didn't get ashamed before you broke in here."

  "What the devil was there to be ashamed of?"

  The sting in his voice had cured me. I never was a weeper. I sat up,my face blazing, and stared at him. He'd got me to hand over to thecop, but he hadn't got me to sneer at.

  I saw by the look he gave me, that he hadn't really seen me till then.

  "Well," he answered, "what the devil is there to be ashamed of now?"

  "Of being caught--that's what."

  "Oh!"

  He tilted back again on his chair and laughed softly.

  "Then you're not ashamed of your profession?"

  "Are you of yours?"

  "Well--there's a slight difference."

  "Not much, whatever it may be. It's your graft--it's everybody's--totake all he can get, and keep out of jail. That's mine, too."

  "But you see I keep out of jail."

  "I see you're not there--yet."

  "Oh, I think you needn't worry about that. I'll keep out, thank you;imprisonment for debt don't go nowadays."

  "Debt?"

  "I'm a theatrical manager, my girl, and I'm not on the inside: which isanother way of saying that a man who can't swim has fallen overboard."

  "And when you do go down--"

  "A little less exultation, my dear, or I might suppose you'd be gladwhen I do."

  "Well, when you know yourself going down for the last time, do you meanto tell me you won't grasp at a s
traw like--like this?" I nodded towardthe open window, and the desk with all its papers tumbling out.

  "Not much." He shook his head, and bit the end of a cigar with sharp,white teeth. "It's a fool graft. I'm self-respecting. And I don'tadmire fools." He lit his cigar and puffed a minute, taking out hiswatch to look at it, as cold-bloodedly as though we were waiting, heand I, to go to supper together. Oh, how I hated him!

  "Honesty isn't the best policy," he went on; "it's the only one. Thevain fool that gets it into his head--or shall I say her head? No?Well, no offense, I assure you--his head then, that he's smarter than aworld full of experience, ought to be put in jail--for his ownprotection; he's too big a jay to be left out of doors. For fivethousand years, more or less, the world has been putting people likehim behind bars, where they can't make asses of themselves. Yet eachyear, and every day and every hour, a new ninny is born who fancieshe's cleverer than all his predecessors put together. Talk aboutsuckers! Why, they're giants of intellect compared to the mentallylop-sided that five thousand years of experience can't teach. When thecriminal-clown's turn comes, he hops, skips and jumps into the ringwith the old, old gag. He thinks it's new, because he himself is sofresh and green. 'Here I am again,' he yells, 'the fellow that'll doyou up. Others have tried it. They're dead in jail or underjail-yards. But me--just watch me!' We do, and after a little we puthim with his mates and a keeper in a barred kindergarten where foolsthat can't learn, little moral cripples of both sexes, my dear, belong.Bah!" He puffed out the smoke, throwing his head back, in a cloudtoward the ceiling.

  I sprang from my seat and faced him. I was tingling all through. Ididn't care a rap what became of me for just that minute. I forgotabout Tom. I prayed that the cop wouldn't come for a minute yet--butonly that I might answer him.

  "You're mighty smart, ain't you? You can sit back here and sneer atme, can't you? And feel so big and smart and triumphant! What've youdone but catch a girl at her first bungling job! It makes you feelawfully cocky, don't it? 'What a big man am I!' Bah!" I blew thesmoke up toward the ceiling from my mouth, with just that satisfiedgall that he had had; or rather, I pretended to. He let down the frontlegs of his chair and began to stare at me.

  "And you don't know it all, Mr. Manager, not you. Your clown-criminaldon't jump into the ring because he's so full of fun he can't stay out.He goes in for the same reason the real clown does--because he getshungry and thirsty and sleepy and tired like other men, and he's got tofill his stomach and cover his back and get a place to sleep. And it'sbecause your kind gets too much, that my kind gets so little it has topiece it out with this sort of thing. No, you don't know it quite all.

  "There's a girl named Nancy Olden that could tell you a lot, smart asyou are. She could show you the inside of the Cruelty, where she wasput so young she never knew that children had mothers and fathers, tilla red-haired girl named Mag Monahan told her; and then she was mightyglad she hadn't any. She thought that all little girls were bloodlessand dirty, and all little boys were filthy and had black purple markswhere their fathers had tried to gouge out their eyes. She thought allwomen were like the matron who came with a visitor up to the bare room,where we played without toys--the new, dirty, newly-bruised ones of us,and the old, clean, healing ones of us--and said, 'Here, chicks, is alady who's come to see you. Tell her how happy you are here.' ThenMag's freckled little face, her finger in her mouth, looked up likethis. She was always afraid it might be her mother come for her. Andthe crippled boy jerked himself this way--I used to mimic him, and he'dlaugh with the rest of them--over the bare floor. He always hoped fora penny. Sometimes he even got it.

  "And the boy with the gouged eye--he would hold his pants up like this.He had just come in, and there was nothing to fit him. And he'd put hisother hand over his bad eye and blink up at her like this. And thelittlest boy--oh, ha! ha! ha!--you ought have seen that littlest boy.He was in skirts, an old dress they'd given me to wear the first day Icame; there were no pants small enough for him. He'd back up into thecorner and hide his face--like this--and peep over his shoulder; he hada squint that way, that made his face so funny. See, it makes youlaugh yourself. But his body--my God!--it was blue with welts! Andme--I'd put the baby down that'd been left on the door-steps of theCruelty, and I'd waltz up to the lady, the nice, patronizing, richlady, with her handkerchief to her nose and her lorgnette to hereyes--see, like this. I knew just what graft would work her. I knewwhat she wanted there. I'd learned. So I'd make her a curtsy likethis, and in the piousest sing-song I'd--"

  There was a heavy step out in the hall--it was the policeman! I'dforgot while I was talking. I was back--back in the empty garret, atthe top of the Cruelty. I could smell the smell of the poor, thedirty, weak, sick poor. I could taste the porridge in the thick littlebowls, like those in the bear story Molly tells her kid. I could hearthe stifled sobs that wise, poor children give--quiet ones, so they'llnot be beaten again. I could feel the night, when strange, deserted,tortured babies lie for the first time, each in his small white cot,the new ones waking the old with their cries in a nightmare of what hadhappened before they got to the Cruelty. I could see the world barredover, as I saw it first through the Cruelty's barred windows, and as Imust see it again, now that--

  "You see, you don't know it quite all--yet, Mr. Manager!" I spat it outat him, and then walked to the cop, my hands ready for the bracelets.

  "But there's one thing I do know!" He's a big fellow but quick on hisfeet, and in a minute he was up and between me and the cop. "And thereisn't a theatrical man in all America that knows it quicker than FredObermuller, that can detect it sooner and develop it better. Andyou've got it, girl, you've got it! ... Officer, take this for yourtrouble. I couldn't hold the fellow, after all. Never mind which wayhe went; I'll call up the office and explain."

  He shut the door after the cop, and came back to me. I had fallen intoa chair. My knees were weak, and I was trembling all over.

  "Have you seen the playlet Charity at the Vaudeville?" he roared at me.

  I shook my head.

  "Well, it's a scene in a foundling asylum. Here's a pass. Go up nowand see it. If you hurry you'll get there just in time for that act.Then if you come to me at the office in the morning at ten, I'll giveyou a chance as one of the Charity girls. Do you want it?"

  God, Mag! Do I want it!