Calvary Alley Part 37

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 s.h.i.+ning 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 s.h.i.+rt 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 antic.i.p.ation 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 gla.s.ses; then he laid a kindly hand on her shoulder.

"I congratulate him on this part of it. You make a first cla.s.s 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, splas.h.i.+ng 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!"

CHAPTER XXIII

CALVARY CATHEDRAL

"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 inst.i.tution 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 Dan Lewis 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 was.h.i.+n' '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!"