"Tell me what it is," I said.
"You evidently forget that you have already told me you are the wife of
Mr.--Mr. Ober--"
"Obermuller. Oh, that's all right." I laughed aloud. I was so
relieved. "Of course I am, and he's my manager, and my playwright, and
my secretary, and--my--my dear, dear boy. There!" I wasn't laughing at
the end of it. I never can laugh when I try to tell what Fred is to me.
But--funny?--that won him.
"There! there!" he said, patting me on the shoulder. "Forgive me, my
dear. I am indeed glad to know that you are living happily. I have
often thought of you--"
"Oh, have you?"
"Yes--I have even told Mrs. Van Wagenen about you and how I was
attracted to you and believed--ahem!"
"Oh--oh, have you!" I gave a wriggle as I remembered that Maltese lace
Maria wanted and that I--ugh!
But, luckily, he didn't notice. He had taken my hand and was looking
at me over his spectacles in his dear, fatherly old way.
"Tell me now, my dear, is there anything that an old clergyman can do
for you? I have an engagement near here and we may not meet again. I
can't hope to find you in my carriage many more times. You are
happy--you are living worthily, child? Pardon me, but the stage--"
Oh, the gentle courtesy of his manner! I loved his solicitude.
Father-hungry girls like us, Maggie, know how to value a thing like
that.
"You know," I said slowly, "the thing that keeps a woman straight and a
man faithful is not a matter of bricks and mortar nor ways of thinking
nor habits of living. It's something finer and stronger than these.
It's the magic taboo of her love for him and his for her that makes
them--sacred. With that to guard them--why--"
"Yes, yes," he patted my hand softly. "Still, the old see the dangers
of an environment that a young and impulsive woman like you, my dear,
might be blind to. Your associates--"
"My associates? 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. I can't stand her any
more than I can Marie Avon, who's never without two strings--"
All at once I stopped. But wasn't it like me to spoil it all by
bubbling over? I tell you, Maggie, too much truth isn't good for the
Bishop's set;--they don't know how to digest it.
I was afraid that I'd lost him, for he spoke with a stately little
primness as the carriage just then came to a stop; I had been so
interested talking that I hadn't noticed where we were driving.
"Ah, here we are!" he said. "I must ask you to excuse me, Miss--ah,
Mrs.--that is--there's a public meeting of the Society for the
Prevention of Cruelty to Children this afternoon that I must attend.
Good-by, then--"
"Oh, are you bound for the Cruelty, too?" I asked. "Why, so am I.
And--yes--yes--that's the Cruelty!"
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!
Maggie, think of it, if you can, as though this were the first time
you'd heard of such a thing! Would you believe it?
I waked from that to find myself marching up the stairs behind the
Bishop's rigid little back. Oh, it was stiff and uncompromising!
Beryl Blackburn did that for me. Poor, pretty, pagan Beryl!
My coming with the Bishop--we seemed to come together, anyway--made the
people think he'd brought me, so I must be just all right. I had the
man bring in the toys I'd got out in the carriage, and I handed them
over to the matron, saying:
"They're for the children. I want them to have them all and now,
please, to do whatever they want with them. There'll always be others.
I'm going to send them right along, if you'll let me, so that those who
leave can take something of their very own with them--something that
never belonged to anybody else but just themselves, you understand.
It's terrible, don't you know, to be a deserted child or a tortured
child or a crippled child and have nothing to do but sit up in that
bare, clean little room upstairs with a lot of other strangelings--and
just think on the cruelty that's brought you here and the cruelty you
may get into when you leave here. If I'd had a doll--if Mag had only
had a set of dishes or a little tin kitchen--if the boy with the gouged
eye could have had a set of tools--oh, can't you understand--"
I became conscious then that the matron--a new one, Mag, ours is
gone--was staring at me, and that the people stood around listening as
though I'd gone mad.
Who came to my rescue? Why, the Bishop, like the manly little fellow
he is. He forgave me even Beryl in that moment.
"It's Nance Olden, ladies," he said, with a dignified little wave of
his hand that served for an introduction. "She begins her Philadelphia
engagement to-night in And the Greatest of These."
Oh, I'm used to it now, Maggie, but I do like it. All the lady-swells
buzzed about me, and there Nance stood preening herself and crowing
softly till--till from among the bunch of millinery one of them stepped
up to me. She had a big smooth face with plenty of chins. Her hair
was white and her nose was curved and she rustled in silk and--
It was Mrs. Dowager Diamonds, alias Henrietta, alias Mrs. Edward Ramsay!
"Clever! My, how clever!" she exclaimed, as though the sob in my voice
that I couldn't control had been a bit of acting.
She was feeling for her glasses. When she got them and hooked them on
her nose and got a good look at me--why, she just dropped them with a
smash upon the desk.