And that's why, Marguerite de Monahan, I want you to buy in with the madam here. Let 'em keep on calling it Troyon's as much as they want, but you're to be a partner on the money I'll give you. If this fairy story lasts, it'll be your own, Mag—a sort of commission you get on my take-off of you. But if anything happens to the world—if it should go crazy, or get sane, and not love Nancy Olden any more, why, here'll be a place for me, too.
Does it look that way? Divil a bit, you croaker! It looks—it looks—listen and I'll tell you how it looks.
It looks as though Gray and the great Gray rose diamond and the three Charities had all become a bit of background for Nance Olden to play upon.
It looks as though the audience likes the sound of my voice as much almost as I do myself; anyway, as much as it does the sight of me.
It looks as though the press, if you please, had discovered a new stage star, for down comes a little reporter to interview me—me, Nancy Olden! Think of that, Mag! I receive him all in my Charity rig, and in Obermuller's office, and he asks me silly questions and I tell him a lot of nonsense, but some truths, too, about the Cruelty. Fancy, he didn't know what the Cruelty was! S. P. C. C., he calls it. And all the time we talked a long-haired German artist he had brought with him was sketching Nance Olden in different poses. Isn't that the limit?
What d'ye think Tom Dorgan'd say to see half a page of Nancy Olden in the X-Ray? Wouldn't his eyes pop? Poor old Tom! ... No danger—they won't let him have the papers.... My old Tommy!
What is it, Mag? Oh, what was I saying? Yes—yes, how it looks.
Well, it looks as though the Trust—yes, the big and mighty T. T.—short for Theatrical Trust, you innocent—had heard of that same Nance Olden you read about in the papers. For one night last week, when I'd just come of and the house was yelling and shouting behind me, Obermuller meets me in the wings and trots me of to his private office.
"What for?" I asked him on the way.
"You'll find out in a minute. Come on."
I pulled up my stocking and followed. You know I wear it in that act without a garter, and it's always coming down the way yours used to, Mag. Even when it doesn't come down I pull it up, I'm so in the habit of doing it.
A little bit of a man, bald-headed, with a dyspeptic little black mustache turned down at the corners, watched me come in. He grinned at my make-up, and then at me.
"Clever little girl," he says through his nose. "How much do you stick Obermuller for?"
"Clever little man," say I, bold as brass and through my own nose; "none of your business."
"Hi—you, Olden!" roared Obermuller, as though I'd run away and he was trying to get the bit from between my teeth. "Answer the gentleman prettily. Don't you know a representative of the mighty T. T. when you see him? Can't you see the Syndicate aureole about his noble brow? This gentleman, Nance, is the great and only Max Tausig. He humbleth the exalted and uplifteth the lowly—or, if there's more money in it, he gives to him that hath and steals from him that hasn't, but would mighty well like to have. He has no conscience, no bowels, no heart. But he has got tin and nerve and power to beat the band. In short, and for all practical purposes for one in your profession, Nancy Olden, he's just God. Down on your knees and lick his boots—Trust gods wear boots, patent leathers—and thank him for permitting it, you lucky baggage!"
I looked at the little man; the angry red was just fading from the top of his cocoanut-shaped bald head.
"You always were a fool, Obermuller," he said cordially. "And you were always over-fond of your low-comedian jokes. If you hadn't been so smart with your tongue, you'd had more friends and not so many enemies in—"
"In the heavenly Syndicate, eh? Well, I have lived without—"
"You have lived, but—"
"But where do I expect to go when I die? Good theatrical managers, Nance, when they die as individuals go to Heaven—they get into the Trust. After that they just touch buttons; the Trust does the rest. Bad ones—the kickers—the Fred Obermullers go to—a place where salaries cease from troubling and royalties are at rest. It's a slow place where—where, in short, there's nothing doing. And only one thing's done—the kicker. It's that place Mr. Tausig thinks I'm bound for. And it's that place he's come to rescue you from, from sheer goodness of heart and a wary eye for all there's in it. Cinch him, Olden, for all the traffic will bear!"
I looked from one to the other—Obermuller, big and savage underneath all his gay talk, I knew him well enough to see that; the little man, his mouth turned down at the corners and a sneer in his eye for the fellow that wasn't clever enough to get in with the push.
"You must not give the young woman the big head, Obermuller. Her own is big enough, I'll bet, as it is. I ain't prepared to make any startling offer to a little girl that's just barely got her nose above the wall. The slightest shake might knock her off altogether, or she mightn't have strength enough in herself to hold on. But we'll give her a chance. And because of what it may lead to, if she works hard, because of the opportunities we can give her, there ain't so much in it in a money way as you might imagine."
Obermuller didn't say anything. His own lips and his own eyes sneered now, and he winked openly at me, which made the little man hot.
"Blast it!" he twanged. "I mean it. If you've got any notion through my coming down to your dirty little joint that we've set our hearts on having the girl, just get busy thinking something else. She may be worth something to you—measured up against the dubs you've got; but to us—"
"To you, it's not so much your not having her as my having her that—" "Exactly. It ain't our policy to leave any doubtful cards in the enemy's hands. He can have the bad ones. He couldn't get the good ones. And the doubtful ones, like this girl Olden—"
"Well, that's just where you're mistaken!" Obermuller thrust his hands deep in his pockets and put out that square chin of his like the fighter he is. "'This girl Olden' is anything but doubtful. She's a big card right now if she could be well handled. And the time isn't so far off when, if you get her, you people will be—"
"Just how much is your interest in her worth?" the little man sneered.
Obermuller glared at him, and in the pause I murmured demurely:
"Only a six-year contract."
Mag, you should have seen 'em jump—both of 'em; the little man with vexation, the big one with surprise.
A contract! Me?—Nance Olden! Why, Mag, you innocent, of course I hadn't. Managers don't give six-year contracts to girl—burglars who've never set foot on the stage.
When the little man was gone, Obermuller cornered me.
"What's your game, Olden?" he cried. "You're too deep for me; I throw up my hands. Come; what've you got in that smart little head of yours? Are you holding out for higher stakes? Do you expect him to buy that great six-year contract and divvy the proceeds with me? Because he will—when once they get their eye on you, they'll have you; and to turn up your nose at their offer if in just the way to make them itch for you. But how the deuce did you find it out? And where do you get your nerve from, anyway? A little beggar like you to refuse an offer from the T. T. and sit hatching your schemes on your little old 'steen dollars a week! ... It'll have to be twice 'steen, now, I suppose?"
"All right, just as you say," I laughed. "But why aren't you in the Trust, Fred Obermuller?"
"Why aren't you in society, Nance?"
"Um!—well, because society's prejudiced against lifting, but the Trust isn't. Do you know that's a great graft, Mr. Obermuller—lifting wholesale? Why don't you get in?"
"Because a Trust is a lot of sailors on a raft who keep their places by kicking off the drowning hands that clutch at it. Can you fancy a fellow like Tausig stooping down to help me tenderly on board to divide the pickings?"
"No, but I can fancy you grappling with him till he'd be glad to take you on rather than be pulled off himself."
"You'd be in with the push, would you, Olden, if you were managing?" he asked with a grin.
"I'd be at the top, wherever that was."
"Then why the deuce didn't you jump at Tausig's offer? Were you really crafty enough—"
"I am artiste, Monsieur Obermuller," I gutturaled like Mademoiselle Picotte, who dances on the wire. "I moost have about me those who arre—who arre congeniale—"
"You monkey!" he laughed. "Then, when Tausig comes to buy your contract—"
"We'll tell him to go to thunder."
He laughed. Say, Mag, that big fellow is like a boy when he's pleased. I guess that's what makes it such fun to please him.
"And I, who admired your business sagacity in holding off, Nance!" he said.
"I thought you admired my take-off! of Mademoiselle Picotte."
"Well?"
"Well, why don't you make use of it? Take me round to the theaters and let me mimic all the swell actors and actresses. I've got more chance with you than with that Trust gang. They wouldn't give me room to do my own stunt; they'd make me fit into theirs. But you—"
"But me! You think you can wind me round your finger?"
"Not—yet."
He chuckled. I thought I had him going. I saw Nance Olden spending her evenings at the big Broadway theaters, when, just at that minute, Ginger, the call-boy, burst in with a note.
Say, Mag, I wouldn't like to get that man Obermuller hopping mad at me, and Nancy Olden's no coward, either. But the way he gritted his teeth at that note and the devil in his eyes when he lifted them from it, made me wonder how I'd ever dared be facetious with him.
I got up to go. He'd forgotten me, but he looked up then.
"That was a great suggestion of yours, Olden, to put Lord Gray on to act himself—great!" His voice shook, he was so angry.
"Well!" I snapped. I wasn't going to let him see that a big man raging could bluff Nance Olden.
What did he mean? Why—just this: there was Lord Harold Gray, the real Lord behind the scenes, bringing the Lady who was really only a chorus girl to the show in his automobile; helping her dress like a maid; holding her box of jewels as he tagged after her like a big Newfoundland; smoking his one cigarette solemnly and admiringly while she was on the stage; poking after her like a tame bear. He's a funny fellow, that Lord Harold. He's a Tom Dorgan, with the brains and the graft and—and the brute, too, Mag, washed out of him; a Tom Dorgan that's been kept dressed in swagger clothes all his life and living at top-notch—a big, clean, handsome, stupid, good-natured, overgrown boy.
Yes, I'm coming to it. When I'd seen him go tagging after her chippy Ladyship behind the scenes long enough, I told Obermuller one day that it was absurd to send the mock Lady out on the boards and keep the live Lord hidden behind. He jumped at the idea, and they rigged up a little act for the two—the Lord and the Lady. Gray was furious when she heard of it—their making use of her Lord in such a way—but Lord Harold just swallowed his big Adam's apple with a gulp or two, and said:
"'Pon honor, it's a blawsted scheme, you know; but I'm jolly sure I'd make a bleddy ass of myself. I cawn't act, you know."
The ninny! You know he thinks Gray really can.
But Obermuller explained to him that he needn't act—just be himself out behind the wings, and lo! Lord Harold was "chawmed."
And Gray?
Why, she gave in at last; pretended to, anyway—sliding out of the Charity sketch, and rehearsing the thing with him, and all that. And—and do you know what she did, Mag? (Nance Olden may be pretty mean, but she wouldn't do a trick like that.) She waited till ten minutes before time for the thing to be put on and then threw a fit.
"She's so ill, her delicate Ladyship! So ill she just can't go on this evening! Wonder how long she thinks such an excuse will keep Lord Harold off when I want him on!" growled Obermuller, throwing her note over to me. He'd have liked to throw it at me if it'd been heavy enough to hurt; he was so thumping mad.
You see, there it was on the program:
The Duke of Portmanteau .... Lord Harold Gray. The Duchess ................ Lady Gray.
No wonder Obermuller was raging. I looked at him. You don't like to tackle a fellow like that when he's dancing hot. And yet you ache to help him and—yes, yourself.
"Lord Harold's here yet, and the jewels?" I asked.
He gave a short nod. He was thinking. But so was I.
"Then all he wants is a Lady?"
"That's all," he said sarcastically.
"Well, what's the matter with me?"
He gasped.
"There's nothing the matter with your nerve, Olden."
"Thank you, so much." It was the way Gray says it when she tries to have an English accent. "Dress me up, Fred Obermuller, in Gray's new silk gown and the Gray jewels, and you'd never—"
"I'd never set eyes on you again."
"You'd never know, if you were in the audience, that it wasn't Gray herself. I can take her off to the life, and if the prompter'll stand by—"
He looked at me for a full minute.
"Try it, Olden," he said.
I did. I flew to Gray's dressing-room. She'd gone home deathly ill, of course. They gave me the best seamstress in the place. She let out the waist a bit and pulled over the lace to cover it. I got into that mass of silk and lace—oh, silk on silk, and Nance Olden inside! Beryl Blackburn did my hair, and Grace Weston put on my slippers. Topham, himself, hung me with those gorgeous shining diamonds and pearls and emeralds, till I felt like an idol loaded with booty. There were so many standing round me, rigging me up, that I didn't get a glimpse of the mirror till the second before Ginger called me. But in that second—in that second, Mag Monahan, I saw a fairy with blazing cheeks and shining eyes, with a diamond coronet in her brown hair, puffed high, and pearls on her bare neck and arms, and emeralds over the waist, and rubies and pearls on her fingers, and sprays of diamonds like frost on the lace of her skirt, and diamond buckles on her very slippers, and the rose diamond, like a sun, outshining all the rest; and—and, Mag, it was me!
How did it go? Well, wouldn't it make you think you were a Lady, sure enough, if you couldn't move without that lace train billowing after you; without being dazzled with diamond-shine; without a truly Lord tagging after you?
He kept his head, Lord Harold did—even if it is a mutton-head. That helped me at first. He was so cold, so stupid, so slow, so good-tempered—so just himself. And after the first plunge—
I tell you, Mag Monahan, there's one thing that's stronger than wine to a woman—it's being beautiful. Oh! And I was beautiful. I knew it before I got that quick hush, with the full applause after it. And because I was beautiful, I got saucy, and then calm, and then I caught Fred Obermuller's voice—he had taken the book from the prompter and stood there himself—and after that it was easy sailing.
He was there yet when the act was over, and I trailed out, followed by my Lord. He let the prompt-book fall from his hands and reached them both out to me.
I flirted my jeweled fan at him and swept him a courtesy.
Cool? No, I wasn't. Not a bit of it. He was daffy with the sight of me in all that glory, and I knew it.
"Nance," he whispered, "you wonderful girl, if I didn't know about that little thief up at the Bronsonia I'd—I'd marry you alive, just for the fun of piling pretty things on you."
"The deuce you would!" I sailed past him, with Topham and my Lord in my wake.
They didn't leave me till they'd stripped me clean. I felt like a Christmas tree the day after. But, somehow, I didn't care.
All books are sourced from Project Gutenberg