"Look here, Nance, are you going to flunk? Say it now--yes or no."
That made me mad.
"Tom Dorgan," I said, "I'll bet your own teeth chattered the first time
you went in for a thing like this. I'm all right. You'll squeal before
I do."
"That's more like. Here's the gate. It's locked. Come, Nance."
With a good, strong swing he boosted me over, handed me the bag of
tools and sprang over himself.... He looked kind o' handsome and fine,
my Tom, as he lit square and light on his feet beside me. And because
he did, I put my arm in his and gave it a squeeze.
Oh, Mag, it was so funny, going through Latimer's garden! There was
the garden table where I had sat reading and thinking he took me for
Miss Omar. There was the bench where that beast Moriway sat sneering
at me. The wheeled chair was gone. And it was so late everything
looked asleep. But something was left behind that made me think I
heard Latimer's slow, silken voice, and made me feel cheap--turned
inside out like an empty pocket--a dirty, ragged pocket with a seam in
it.
"You'll stay here, Nancy, and watch," Tom whispered. "You'll whistle
once if a cop comes inside the gate, but not before he's inside the
gate. Don't whistle too soon--mind that--nor too loud. I'll hear ye
all right. And I'll whistle just once if--anything happens. Then you
run--hear me? Run like the devil--"
"Tommy--"
"Well, what?"
"Nothing--all right." I wanted to say good-by--but you know Tom.
Mag, were you ever where you oughtn't to be at midnight--alone? No, I
know you weren't. 'Twas your ugly little face and your hair that saved
you--the red hair we used to guy so at the Cruelty. I can see you
now--a freckle-faced, thin little devil, with the tangled hair to the
very edge of your ragged skirt, yanked in that first day to the Cruelty
when the neighbors complained your crying wouldn't let 'em sleep
nights. The old woman had just locked you in there, hadn't she, to
starve when she lit out. Mothers are queer, ain't they, when they are
queer. I never remember mine.
Yes, I'll go on.
I stood it all right for a time, out there alone in the night. But I
never was one to wait patiently. I can't wait--it isn't in me. But
there I had to stand and just--God!--just wait.
If I hadn't waited so hard at the very first I wouldn't 'a' given out
so soon. But I stood so still and listened so terribly hard that the
trees began to whisper and the bushes to crack and creep. I heard
things in my head and ears that weren't sounding anywhere else. And
all of a sudden--tramp, tramp, tramp--I heard the cop's footsteps.
He stopped over there by the swinging electric light above the gate. I
crouched down behind the iron bench.
And my coat caught a twig on a bush and its crack--ck was like a yell.
I thought I'd die. I thought I'd scream. I thought I'd run. I thought
I'd faint. But I didn't--for there, asleep on a rug that some one had
forgotten to take in, was the house cat. I gave her a quick slap, and
she flew out and across the path like a flash.
The cop watched her, his hand on the gate, and passed on.
Mag Monahan, if Tom had come out that minute without a bean and gone
home with me, I'd been so relieved I'd never have tried again. But he
didn't come. Nothing happened. Nights and nights and nights went by,
and the stillness began to sound again. My throat went choking mad. I
began to shiver, and I reached for the rug the cat had lain on.
Funny, how some things strike you! This was Latimer's rug. I had
noticed it that evening--a warm, soft, mottled green that looked like
silk and fur mixed. I could see the way his long, white hands looked
on it, and as I touched it I could hear his voice--
Oh, Thou, who Man of baser Earth didst make,
And ev'n with Paradise devise the Snake:
For all the Sin wherewith the Face of Man
Is blacken'd--Man's forgiveness give--and take!
Ever hear a man like that say a thing like that? No? Well, it's--it's
different. It's as if the river had spoken--or a tree--it's so--it's
so different.
That saved me--that verse that I remembered. I said it over and over
and over again to myself. I fitted it to the ferry whistles on the
bay--to the cop's steps as they passed again--to the roar of the
L-train and the jangling of the surface cars.
And right in the middle of it--every drop of blood in my body seemed to
leak out of me, and then come rushing back to my head--I heard Tom's
whistle.
Oh, it's easy to say "run," and I really meant it when I promised Tom.
But you see I hadn't heard that whistle then. When it came, it changed
everything. It set the devil in me loose. I felt as if the world was
tearing something of mine away from me. Stand for it? Not Nance Olden.
I did run--but it was toward the house. That whistle may have meant
"Go!" To me it yelled "Come!"
I got in through the window Tom had left open. The place was still
quiet. Nobody inside had heard that whistle so far as I could tell.
I crept along--the carpets were thick and soft and silky as the rug I'd
had my hands buried in to keep 'em warm.
Along a long hall and through a great room, whose walls were thick with
books, I was making for a light I could see at the back of the house.
That's where Tom Dorgan must be and where I must be to find out--to
know.
With my hands out in front of me I hurried, but softly, and just as I
had reached the portieres below which the light streamed, my arms
closed about a thing--cold as marble, naked--I thought it was a dead
body upright there, and with a cry, I pitched forward through the
curtains into the lighted room.
"Nance!--you devil!"
You recognize it? Yep, it was Tom. Big Tom Dorgan, at the foot of
Latimer's bed, his hands above his head, and Latimer's gun aimed right
at his heart.
Think of the pluck of that cripple, will you?
His eyes turned on me for just a second, and then fixed themselves
again on Tom. But his voice went straight at me, all right.
"You are something of a thankless devil, I must admit, Miss--Omar," he
said.
I didn't say anything. You don't say things in answer to things like
that. You feel 'em.
Ashamed? What do I care for a man with a voice like that! ... But you
should have heard how Tom's growl sounded after it.
"Why the hell didn't you light out?"
"I couldn't, Tom. I just--couldn't," I sobbed.
"There seems invariably to be a misunderstanding of signals where Miss
Omar is concerned. Also a disposition to use strong language in the
lady's presence. Don't you, young man!"
"Don't you call me Miss Omar!" I blazed, stamping my foot.
He laughed a contemptuous laugh.
I could have killed him then, I hated him so. At least, I thought I
could; but just then Tom sent a spark out of the corner of his eye to
me that meant--it meant--
You know, Mag, what it would have meant to Latimer if I had done what
Tom's eye said.
I thought at first I had done it--it passed through my mind so quick;
the sweet words I'd say--the move I'd make--the quick knocking-up of
the pistol, and then--
It was that--that sight of Tom, big Tom Dorgan, with rage in his heart
and death in his hand, leaping on that cripple's body--it made me sick!
I stood there gasping--stood a moment too long. For the curtains were
pushed aside, and Burnett, Latimer's servant, and the cop came in.
Tom didn't fight; he's no fool to waste himself.
But I--well, never mind about me. I caught a glimpse of a crazy white
face on a boy's body in the great glass opposite and heard my own voice
break into something I'd never heard before.
Tom stood at last with the handcuffs on.
"It's your own fault, you damned little chump!" he said to me, as they
went out.
You lie, Mag Monahan, he's no such thing! He may be a hard man to live
with, but he's mine--my Tom--my Tom!
What? Latimer?
Well, do you know, it's funny about him. He'd told the cop that I'd
peached--peached on Tom! So they went off without me.
Why?
That's what he said himself when we were alone.
"In order to insure for myself another of your most interesting visits,
I suppose, Miss--not Omar? All right.... Tell me, can I do nothing
for you? Aren't you sick of this sort of life?"
"Get Tom out of jail."
He shook his head.
"I'm too good a friend of yours to do you such a turn."
"I don't want any friend that isn't Tom's."
He threw the pistol from him and pulled himself up, till he sat looking
at me.
"In heaven's name, what can you see in a fellow like that?"
"What's that to you?" I turned to go.
"To me? Things of that sort are nothing, of course, to me--me, that
'luckless Pot He marr'd in making.' But, tell me--can a girl like you
tell the truth? What made you hesitate when that fellow told you with
his eyes to murder me?"
"How did you know?"
"How? The glass. See over yonder. I could watch every expression on
both your faces. What was it--what was it, child, that made you--oh,
if you owe me a single heart-beat of gratitude, tell me the truth!"
"You've said it yourself."
"What?"
"That line we read the other night about 'the luckless Pot'."
His face went gray and he fell back on his pillows. The strenuous life
we'd been leading him, Tom and I, was too much for him, I guess.
Do you know, I really felt sorry I'd said it. But he is a cripple.
Did he expect me to say he was big and strong and dashing--like Tom?
I left him there and got out and away. But do you know what I saw,
Mag, beside his bed, just as Burnett came to put me out?
My old blue coat with the buttons--the bell-boy's coat I'd left in the
housekeeper's room when I borrowed her Sunday rig. The coat was
hanging over a chair, and right by it, on a table, was that big book
with a picture covering every page, still open at that verse about
Through this same Garden--and for ONE in vain!