In the Bishop's Carriage Part 21

"Well," he said, "why don't you say something?"

Tom's voice--Mag, do you remember, the merry Irish boy's voice, with its chuckles like a brook gurgling as it runs?

No--'tisn't the same voice. It's--it's changed, Maggie. It's heavy and--and coa.r.s.e--and--brutal. That's what it is. It sounds like--like the knout, like--

"Nance--what in h.e.l.l's--"

"I think I'm--frightened, Tom."

"Oh, the ladyfied airs of her! Ain't you going to faint, Miss Olden?"

I got up.

"No--no. Sit down, Tom. Tell me about it. How--how did you get here?"

He went to the door, opened it a bit and looked out cautiously.

Mag--Mag--it hurt me--that. Why, do you suppose?

"You're sure n.o.body'll come in?" he asked.

I turned the key in the lock, forgetting that it didn't really lock.

"Oh, yes, I'm sure," I said. "Why?"

"Why! You have got slow. Just because I didn't say good-by to them fellows up at the Pen, and--"

"Oh! You've escaped!"

"That's what. First jail-break in fifteen years. What d'ye think of your Tommy, old girl, eh? Ain't he the gamest? Ain't you proud of him?"

My G.o.d, Mag! Proud of him. He didn't know--he couldn't see--himself.

He, shut in like a wild beast, couldn't see what this year has done for him. Oh, the change--the change in him! My boy Tommy, with the gay, gallus manner, and the pretty, jolly brogue, and the laughing mouth under his brown mustache. And this man--his face is old, Mag, old--oh!--and hard--and--and tough, cheap and tough. There's something in his eyes now and about his shaven mouth--oh, Maggie, Maggie!

"Look here, Nance." He caught me by the shoulders, knocking up my chin so that he could look down squarely at me. "What's your graft? What's it to be between us? What've ye been doing all this time? Out with it! I want to know."

I shook myself free and faced him.

"I've been--Tom Dorgan, I've been to hear the greatest actors and actresses in the world say and do the finest things in the world. I've watched princesses and kings--even if they're only stage ones. I've read a new book every night--a great picture book, in which the pictures move and speak--that's the stage, Tom Dorgan. Much of it wasn't true, but a girl who's been brought up by the Cruelty doesn't have to be told what's true and what's false. I've met these people and lived with them--as one does who thinks the same thoughts and feels what others feel. I know the world now, Tom Dorgan, the real world of men and women--not the little world of crooks, nor yet the littler one of fairy stories. I've got a glimpse, too, of that other world where all the scheming and lying and cheating is changed as if by magic into something that deceives all right, but doesn't hurt. It's the world of art and artists, Tom Dorgan, where people paint their lies, or write them, or act them; where they lift money all right from men's pockets, but lift their souls and their lives, too, away from the things that trouble and bore and--and degrade.

"You needn't sneer; it's made a different Nance out of me, Tom Dorgan.

And, oh, but I'm sorry for the pert little beggar we both knew that lied and stole and hid and ran and skulked! She was like a poor little ignorant traveler in a great country where she'd sized up the world from the few fool crooks she was thrown in with. She--"

"Aw, cut it!"

"Tom--does--doesn't it mean anything to you? Can't it mean lots to both of us now that--"

"Cut it, I tell you! Think I killed one guard and beat the other till I'd broke every bone in his body to come here and listen to such guff?

You've been having a high old time, eh, and you never give a thought to me up there! I might 'a' rotted in that black hole for all you'd care, you--"

"Don't! I did, Tom; I did." I was s.h.i.+vering at the name, but I couldn't bear his thinking that way of me. "I went up once, but they wouldn't let me see you. I wrote you, but they sent back the letters.

Mag went up, too, but had to come back. And that time I brought you--"

My voice trailed off. In that minute I saw myself on the way up to Sing Sing with the basket and all my hopes and all my schemes for amusing him.

And this is what I'd have seen if they'd let me in--this big, gruff, murdering beast!

Oh, yes--yes--beast is what he is, and it didn't make him look it less that he believed me and--and began to think of me in a different way.

"I thought you wouldn't go back on a feller, Nance. That's why I come straight to you. It was my game to have you hide me for a day or two, till you could make a strike somewhere and we'd light out together.

How're ye fixed? Pretty smart, eh? You look it, my girl, you look--My eye, Nance, you look good enough to eat, and I'm hungry for you!"

Maggie, if I'd had to die for it I couldn't have moved then. You'd think a man would know when the woman he's holding in his arms is fainting--sick at the touch of him. A woman would. It wasn't my Tom that I'd known, that I'd worked with and played with and--It was a great brute, whose mouth--who had no eyes, no ears, no senses but--ah!...

He laughed when I broke away from him at last. He laughed! And I knew then I'd have to tell him straight in words.

"Tom," I gasped, "you can have all I've got; and it's plenty to get you out of the way. But--but you can't have--me--any more. That's--done!"

Oh, the beast in his face! It must have looked like that when the guard got his last glimpse of it.

"You're kiddin' me?" he growled.

I shook my head.

Then he ripped it out. Said the worst he could and ended with a curse!

The blood boiled in me. The old Nance never stood that; she used to sneer at other women who did.

"Get out of here!" I cried. "Go--go, Tom Dorgan. I'll send every cent I've got to you to Mother Douty's within two hours, but don't you dare--"

"Don't YOU dare, you she-devil! Just make up your mind to drop these newfangled airs, and mighty quick. I tell you you'll come with me 'cause I need you and I want you, and I want you now. And I'll keep you when once I get you again. We'll hang together. No more o' this one-sided lay-out for me, where you get all the soft and it's me for the hard. You belong to me. Yes, you do. Just think back a bit, Nance Olden, and remember the kind of customer I am. If you've forgot, just let me remind you that what I know would put you behind bars, my lady, and it shall, I swear, if I've got to go to the Chair for it!"

Tom! It was Tom talking that way to me. I couldn't bear it. I made a rush for the door.

He got there, too, and catching me by the shoulder, he lifted his fist.

But it never fell, Mag. I think I could kill a man who struck me. But just as I shut my eyes and s.h.i.+vered away from him, while I waited for the blow, a knock came at the door and Fred Obermuller walked in.

"Eh? Oh! Excuse me. I didn't know there was anybody else. Nance, your face is ghastly. What's up?" he said sharply.

He looked from me to Tom--Tom, standing off there ready to spring on him, to dart past him, to fly out of the window--ready for anything; only waiting to know what the thing was to be.

My senses came back to me then. The sight of Obermuller, with those keen, quick eyes behind his gla.s.ses, his strong, square chin, and the whole poise of his head and body that makes men wait to hear what he has to say; the knowledge that that man was my friend, mine--Nancy Olden's--lifted me out of the mud I'd sunk back in, and put my feet again on a level with his.

"Tom," I said slowly, "Mr. Obermuller is a friend of mine. No--listen!

What we've been talking about is settled. Don't bring it up again. It doesn't interest him and it can't change me; I swear to you, it can't; nothing can. I'm going to ask Mr. Obermuller to help you without telling him just what the sc.r.a.pe is, and--and I'm going to be sure that he'll do it just because he--"

"Because you've taken up with him, have you?" Tom shouted savagely.

"Because she's your--"

"Tom!" I cried.