Miriam Michelson

“ I wanted to kick up my heels as the children were doing in the Square, while the organ ground out, Ain't It a Shame? I actually did a step or two with them, to their delight, and the first thing I knew I felt a bit of a hand in mine like a cool pink snowflake and—
Oh, a baby, Mag! A girl-baby more than a year old and less than two years young; too little to talk; too big not to walk; facing the world with a winning smile and jabbering things in her soft little lingo, knowing that every woman she meets will understand. ”

“ Listen to what I've got to tell you, Mag, listen!
You know where I was coming from yesterday when I passed Troyon's window and grinned up at you, sitting there, framed in bottles of hair tonic, with all that red wig of yours streaming about you?
Yep, from that little, rat-eyed lawyer's office. I was glum as mud. I felt as though Tom and myself were both flies caught by the leg—he by the law and I by the lawyer—in a sticky mess; and the more we flapped our wings and struggled and pulled, the more we hurt and tore ourselves, and the sooner we'd have to give it up. ”

“ I was bitterly disappointed in that girl, Mag! I was altogether mistaken in my diagnosis of her. Hers is only a physical cleverness, a talented dexterity. She had no resource in time of danger but her legs. And legs will not carry a grafter half so far as a good, quick tongue and a steady head.
She halted at a safe distance and glared back at me. Her hostility excited the crowd of children—her push—against me, and the braver ones jeered the things Kitty only looked, while the thrifty ones stooped and gathered up the spoil. ”

“ Oh, the feel of a baby in your arms, Mag! It makes the Cruelty seem a perfectly unreal thing, a thing one should be unutterably ashamed of imagining, of accusing human nature of; a thing only an irredeemably vile thing could imagine. Just the weight of that little body riding like a bonny boat at anchor on your arm, just the cocky little way it sits up, chirping and confident; just the light touch of a bit of a hand on your collar; just that is enough to push down brick walls ”

“ 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. ”

“ It was just three words—of Obermuller's: "Earn it now."
After all, Miss Monahan, this graft of honesty they all preach so much about hasn't anything mysterious in it. All it is, is putting your wits to work according to the rules of the game and not against them. I was driven to it—the thought of big Tom crouching for a spring in the dark cell up yonder sent me whirling out into the thinking place, like the picture of the soul in the big book at Latimer's I read out of. And first thing you know, 'pon honor, Mag, it was as much fun planning how to "earn it now" as any lifting I ever schemed. ”

“ The Cruelty stands just where it did, Mag, when you and I first saw it; most things do in Philadelphia, you know. There's the same prim, official straight up-and-downness about the brick front. The steps don't look so steep now and the building's not so high, perhaps because of a skyscraper or two that've gone up since. But it chills your blood, Maggie darlin', just as it always did, to think what it stands for. Not man's inhumanity to man, but women's cruelty to children! ”

“ As he fell, though, he let out a yell.
"Stop thief! stop thief! Thief! Thief! Thief!"
May you never hear it, Mag, behind you when you've somebody else's diamonds in your pocket. It sounds—it sounds the way the bay of the hounds must sound to the hare. It seems to fly along with the air; at the same time to be behind you, at your side, even in front of you.
I heard it bellowed in a dozen different voices, and every now and then I could hear Moriway as I pelted on—that brassy, cruel bellow of his that made my heart sick. ”

“ 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. ”

“ There's the rub, Mag, as Hamlet says— (I went to see it the other night, so that I could take off the Ophelia—she used to be a good mimic herself, before she tried to be a leading lady.) It spoils you, this sense of safeness that goes with the honesty graft. You lose the quickness of the hunter and the nerve of the hunted. And—worse—you lose your taste for the old risky life. You grow proud and fat, and you love every stick in the dear, quiet little place that's your home—your own home. ”

“ 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 ”

“ He filled my glass for me and helped me again to the salad.
Oh, Mag, it's such fun to be a woman and have a man wait on you like that! It's such fun to be hungry and to sit down to a jolly little table just big enough for two, with carnations nodding in the tall slim vase, with a fat, soft-footed, quick-handed waiter dancing behind you, and something tempting in every dish your eye falls on.
It's a gay, happy, easy world, Maggie darlin'. I vow I can't find a dark corner in it—not to-day.
None but the swellest place in town was good enough, Obermuller had said, for us to celebrate in. ”

“ O Mag, when you're on your way to the place I was bound for, when you know that before you'll set foot in this same bright little room again, the hounds in half a dozen cities will have scratched clean every hiding-place you've had, when your every act will be known and—and—oh, then, you wait, Mag, you wait for anything—anything in the world; even a telephone call that may only be bringing in another wretch like yourself ”

“ If ever you come to lie on your back day and night, year in and year out, and know that never in your life will it be any different, you may take pleasure in a bit of excitement and—and learn to pity the under dog, who, in this case, happened to be a boy that leaped over the gate as though his heart was in his mouth. Just as you would admire the nerve of the young lady that came out of the house a few minutes after in your housekeeper's Sunday gown. ”

“ I used to feel as though I was dancing on a volcano and daring it to explode. The more twistings and turnings there were to the labyrinth, the greater glory it was to get out. Maggie darlin', you have before you a mournful spectacle—the degeneration of Nancy Olden. It isn't that she's lost courage. It's only that she used to be able to think of only one thing, and now—What do you suppose it is, Mag? If you know, don't you dare to tell me.
When we got to the flat Obermuller was already there. At the door I pulled out my key and opened it with a flourish. ”

“ Yes, the Bishop, Mag!
I had just said, "Nance Olden—" To myself I still speak to me as Nancy Olden; it's good for me, Mag; keeps me humble and for ever grateful that I'm so happy. "Nance, you'll never be able to carry all these things and lift your buful train, too. And there's never a hansom round when it's snowing and—"
And then I caught sight of the carriage. Yes, Maggie, the same fat, low, comfortable, elegant, sober carriage, wide and well-kept, with rubber-tired wheels. And the two heavy horses, fat and elegant and sober, too, and wide and well-kept. ”

“ 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. ”

“ It would be a still stupider thief who'd leave a full purse instead of an empty one under his own lounge."
"Yes; and you're not stupid, Miss Olden."
"Thank you. I'm sorry I can't say as much for you."
I couldn't help it. He was such a stupid. The idea of telling me that Fred Obermuller believed me guilty! The idea of thinking me such a fool as to believe that! Such men as that make criminals. They're so fat-witted you positively ache—they so tempt you to pull the wool over their eyes. O Mag, if the Lord had only made men cleverer, there'd be fewer Nancy Oldens. ”

“ Oh, you've heard about Beryl Blackburn. Well—she's—she's just Beryl, you know. She wasn't made to live any different. Some people steal and some drink and some gamble and some... Well, Beryl belongs to the last class. She doesn't pretend to be better than she is. And, just between you and me, Bishop, I've more respect for a girl of that kind than for Grace Weston, whose husband is my leading man, you know. Why, she pulls the wool over his eyes and makes him the laughing-stock of the company. ”

“ It made me so proud, so tipsily vain, that as I leaned forward eagerly talking, I felt that same intoxicating happiness I get on the stage when the audience is all with me, and the two of us—myself and the many-handed, good-natured other fellow over on the other side of the footlights—go careering off on a jaunt of fun and fancy, like two good playmates. ”

“ Obermuller came over to me then, and took my hand for a minute.
"It's a pity they don't know about the Gray rose diamond," he whispered, helping me on with my jacket. "They'd see how silly this little three-hundred dollar business is.... Brace up, Nance Olden!"
Oh, Mag, Mag, to hear a man like that talk to you as though you were his kind, when you have the feel of the coarse prison stripes between your dry, shaking fingers, and the close prison smell is already poisoning your nostrils! ”

“ 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. ”

“ Then the Bishop and I climbed up there to see it and plan about it. But I couldn't really see it, Mag, nor the poor, white-faced, wise-eyed little waifs that have succeeded us, for the tears in my eyes and the ache at my heart and the queer trick the place has of being peopled with you and me, and the boy with the gouged eye, and the cripple, and the rest. ”

“ I must have on that long coat to my heels, of dark, warm red, silk-lined, with the long, incurving back sweep and high chinchilla collar, that Fred ordered made for me the very day we were married. I must be wearing that jolly little, red-cloth toque caught up on the side with some of the fur.
Oh, yes, I knew I was more than a year behind the times when I got them, but a successful actress wears what she pleases, and the rest of the world wears what pleases her, too. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Oh, Mag, can't you see? Don't you understand? I was It. The center of the stage I carried round with me—it was just Nancy Olden. And for ten minutes Nancy had nothing to do but to play with 'em. 'Pon my life, Mag, it's just like stealing; the old graft exactly; it's so fascinating, so busy, and risky, except that they play the game with you and pay you and love you to fool 'em.
When the curtain fell it was different. Grays followed by the Charities, all clean and spick-and-span and—not in it; not even on the edge of it—stormed up to Obermuller standing at the wings. ”

“ Here now, Mag Monahan, don't you get to sneering. She was straight—right on the level, all right. You couldn't listen to that cracked 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 my friend? the dear Bishop's sake, of course,—when a big floor-walker happened to catch sight of us.
"If you'll come with me, Mrs. Van Wagenen, to a dressing-room, I'll arrange your collar for you," I said very loud. And then, in a whisper: "Of course, I understand, but the thing may look different to other people. ”