It's all come so quick, Maggie, and it was over so soon that I hardly remember the beginning.
Nobody on earth could have expected it less than I, when I came off in the afternoon. I don't know what I was thinking of as I came into my dressing-room, that used to be Gray's—the sight of him seemed to cut me off from myself as with a knife—but it wasn't of him.
It may have been that I was chuckling to myself at the thought of Nancy Olden with a dressing-room all to herself. I can't ever quite get used to that, you know, though I sail around there with all the airs of the leading lady. Sometimes I see a twinkle in Fred Obermuller's eye when I catch him watching me, and goodness knows he's been glum enough of late, but it wasn't—
Yes, I'm going to tell you, but—it's rattled me a bit, Maggie. I'm so—so sorry, and a little—oh, just a little, little bit glad!
I'd slammed the door behind me—the old place is out of repair and the door won't shut except with a bang—and I had just squatted down on the floor to unbutton my high shoes, when I noticed the chintz curtains in front of the high dressing-box waver. They must have moved just like that when I was behind them months—it seems years—ago. But, you see, Topham had never served an apprenticeship behind curtains, so he didn't suspect.
"Lordy, Nancy," I laughed to myself, "some one thinks you've got a rose diamond and—"
And at that moment he parted the curtains and came out.
Yes—Tom—Tom Dorgan.
My heart came beating up to my throat and then, just as I thought I should choke, it slid down to my boots, sickening me. I didn't say a word. I sat there, my foot in my lap, staring at him.
Oh, Maggie-girl, it isn't good to get your first glimpse after all these months of the man you love crouched like a big bull in a small space, poking his close-cropped black head out like a turtle that's not sure something won't be thrown at it, and then dragging his big bulk out and standing over you. He used to be trim—Tom—and taut, but in those shapeless things, the old trousers, the dirty white shirt, and the vest too big for him—
"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 coarse—and—brutal. That's what it is. It sounds like—like the knout, like—
"Nance—what in hell'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 nobody'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 God, 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 shivering 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 shivered 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 glasses, 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 scrape 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.
"Tom—oh, yes, now I remember." Obermuller got between us as he spoke. "Your friend up—in the country that you went to see and couldn't. Not a very good-looker, your friend, Nance. But—farming, I suppose, Mr.—Tom?—plays the deuce with one's looks. And another thing it does: it makes a man forget sometimes just how to behave in town. I'll be charmed, Mr. Tom, to oblige a friend of Miss Olden's; but I must insist that he does not talk like a—farmer."
He was quite close to Tom when he finished, and Tom was glaring up at him. And, Mag, I didn't know which one I was most afraid for. Don't you look at me that way, Mag Monahan, and don't you dare to guess anything!
"If you think," growled Tom, "that I'm going to let you get off with the girl, you're mighty—"
"Now, I've told you not to say that. The reason I'll do the thing she's going to ask of me—if it's what I think it is—is because this girl's a plucky little creature with a soul big enough to lift her out of the muck you probably helped her into. It's because she's got brains, talent, and a heart. It's because—well, it's because I feel like it, and she deserves a friend."
"You don't know what she is." It was a snarl from Tom. "You don't—"
"Oh, yes, I do; you cur! I know what she was, too. And I even know what she will be; but that doesn't concern you."
"The hell it don't!"
Obermuller turned his back on him. I was dumb and still. Tom Dorgan had struck me after all.
"What is it you want me to do, Nance?" Obermuller asked.
"Get him away on a steamer—quick," I murmured—I couldn't look him in the face—"without asking why, or what his name is."
He turned to Tom. "Well?"
"I won't go—not without her."
"Because you're so fond of her, eh? So fond, your first thought on quitting the—country was to come here to get her in trouble. If you've been traced—"
"Ah! You wouldn't like that, eh?" sneered Tom. "Would you?"
"Well, I've had my share of it. And she ain't. Still—I ... Just what would it be worth to you to have me out of the way?"
"Oh, Tom—Tom—" I cried.
But Obermuller got in front of me.
"It would be worth exactly one dollar and seventy-five cents. I think it will amount to about that for cab-hire. I guess the cars aren't any too safe for you, or it might be less. It may amount to something more before I get you shipped before the mast on the first foreign-bound boat. But what's more important," he added, bringing his fist down with a mighty thump on the table, "you have just ten seconds to make up your mind. At the end of that time I'll ring for the police."
I went down to the boat to see it sail, Mag, at seven this morning. No, not to say good-by to him. He didn't know I was there. It was to say good-by to my old Tommy; the one I loved. Truly I did love him, Mag, though he never cared for me. No, he didn't. Men don't pull down the women they love; I know that now. If Tom Dorgan had ever cared for me he wouldn't have made a thief of me. If he'd cared, the last place on earth he'd have come to, when he knew the detectives would be on his track, would have been just the first place he made for. If he'd cared, he—
But it's done, Mag. It's all over. Cheap—that's what he is, this Tom Dorgan. Cheaply bad—a cheap bully, cheap-brained. Remember my wishing he'd have been a ventriloquist? Why, that man that tried to sell me to Obermuller hasn't sense enough to be a good scene-shifter. Oh—
The firm of Dorgan & Olden is dissolved, Mag. The retiring partner has gone into the theatrical business. As for Dorgan—the real one, poor fellow! jolly, handsome, big Tom Dorgan—he died. Yes, he died, Maggie, and was buried up there in the prison graveyard. A hard lot for a boy; but it's not the worst thing that can happen to him. He might become a man; such a man as that fellow that sailed away before the mast this morning.
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