"That settles his hash. Out he goes to-day ... It seems to me you're
in a deuce of a hurry," he added, as I tried to get out again. "Come
in; I want to talk something over with you."
"Not this morning," I said saucily. I wanted to cry. "I've got an
engagement to lunch, and I want to go over this stuff for Mason before
one."
"Hm! An engagement. Who with, now?"
My chin shot up in the air. He laughed, that cold, noiseless little
laugh of his.
"But suppose I want you to come to lunch with me?"
"Oh, thank you, Mr. Tausig. But how could I break my engagement with--"
"With Braun?"
"How did you guess it?" I laughed. "There's no keeping anything from
you."
He was immensely satisfied with his little self. "I know him--that old
rascal," he said slowly. "I say, Olden, just do break that engagement
with Braun." "I oughtn't--really."
"But do--eh? Finish your work here and we'll go off together, us two,
at twelve-thirty, and leave him cooling his heels here when he comes."
He rubbed his hands gleefully.
"But I'm not dressed."
"You'll do for me."
"But not for me. Listen: let me hurry home now and I'll throw Braun
over and be back here to meet you at twelve-thirty."
He pursed up his thin little lips and shook his head. But I slipped
past him in that minute and got out into the street.
"At twelve-thirty," I called back as I hurried off.
I got around the corner in a jiffy. Oh, I could hardly walk, Mag! I
wanted to fly and dance and skip. 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.
I did, all right. She was saying to me as she kicked out her soft,
heelless little boot:
"Nancy Olden, I choose you. Nancy Olden, I love you. Nancy Olden, I
dare you not to love me. Nancy Olden, I defy you not to laugh back at
me!"
Where in the world she dropped from, heaven knows. The organ-grinder
picked up the shafts of his wagon and trundled it away. The
piccaninnies melted like magic. But that gay little flirt, about a
year and a half old, just held on to my finger and gabbled--poetry.
I didn't realize just then that she was a lost, strayed or stolen. I
expected every moment some nurse or conceited mamma to appear and drag
her away from me. And I looked down at her--oh, she was just a little
bunch of soft stuff; her face was a giggling dimple, framed in a big
round hat-halo, that had fallen from her chicken-blond head; and her
white dress, with the blue ribbons at the shoulders, was just a little
bit dirty. I like 'em a little bit dirty. Why? Perhaps because I can
imagine having a little coquette of my own a bit dirty like that, and
can't just see Nance Olden with a spick-and-span clean baby, all
feathers and lace, like a bored little grown-up.
"You're a mouse," I gurgled down at her. "You're a sweetheart. You're
a--"
And suddenly I heard a cry and rush behind me.
It was a false alarm; just a long-legged girl of twelve rushing round
the corner, followed by a lot of others. It hadn't been meant for me,
of course, but in the second when I had remembered that precious paper
and Tausig's rage when he should miss it, I had pulled my hand away
from that bit baby's and started to run.
The poor little tot! There isn't any reason in the world for the
fancies they take any more than for our own; eh, Mag? Why should she
have been attracted to me just because I was so undignified as to dance
with the piccaninnies?
But do you know what that little thing did? She thought I was playing
with her. She gave a crow of delight and came bowling after me.
That finished me. I stooped and picked her up in my arms, throwing her
up in the air to hear her crow and feel her come down again.
"Mouse," I said, "we'll just have a little trip together. The nurse
that'd lose you deserves to worry till you're found. The mother that's
lucky enough to own you will be benefited hereafter by a sharp scare on
your account just now. Come on, sweetheart!"
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; to
destroy pictures of bruised and maimed children that endure after the
injuries are healed; to scatter records that even I--I, Nancy
Olden--can't believe and believe, too, that other women have carried
their babies, as I did some other woman's baby, across the Square.
On the other side I set her down. I didn't want to. I was greedy of
every moment that I had her. But I wanted to get some change ready
before climbing up the steps to the L-station.
She clutched my dress as we stood there a minute in a perfectly
irresistible way. I know now why men marry baby-women: it's to feel
that delicious, helpless clutch of weak fingers; the clutch of
dependence, of trust, of appeal.
I looked down at her with that same silly adoration I've seen on
Molly's face for her poor, lacking, twisted boy. At least, I did in
the beginning. But gradually the expression of my face must have
changed; for all at once I discovered what had been done to me.
My purse was gone.
Yes, Maggie Monahan, clean gone! My pocket had been as neatly picked
as I myself--well, never mind, as what. I threw back my head and
laughed aloud. Nance Olden, the great doer-up, had been done up so
cleverly, so surely, so prettily, that she hadn't had an inkling of it.
I wished I could get a glimpse of the clever girl that did it. A
girl--of course, it was! Do you think any boy's fingers could do a job
like that and me not even know?
But I didn't stop to wish very long. Here was I with the thing I
valued most in the world still clutched in my hand, and not a nickel to
my name to get me, the paper, and the baby on our way.
It was the baby, of course, that decided me. You can't be very
enterprising when you're carrying a pink lump of sweetness that's all
a-smile at the moment, but may get all a-tear the next.
"It's you for the nearest police station, you young tough!" I said,
squeezing her. "I can't take you home now and show you to Mag."
But she giggled and gurgled back at me, the abandoned thing, as though
the police station was just the properest place for a young lady of her
years.
It was not so very near, either, that station. My arm ached when I got
there from carrying her, but my heart ached, too, to leave her. I told
the matron how and where the little thing had picked me up. At first
she wouldn't leave me, but--the fickle little thing--a glass of milk
transferred all her smiles and wiles to the matron. Then we both went
over her clothes to find a name or an initial or a laundry mark. But
we found nothing. The matron offered me a glass of milk, too, but I
was in a hurry to be gone. She was a nice matron; so nice that I was
just about to ask her for the loan of car-fare when--
When I heard a voice, Maggie, in the office adjoining. I knew that
voice all right, and I knew that I had to make a decision quick.
I did. I threw the whole thing into the lap of Fate. And when I
opened the door and faced him I was smiling.
Oh, yes, it was Tausig.