DAN
The shrill whistle that at noon had obtruded its discord into Nance
Molloy's thoughts had a very different effect on Dan Lewis, washing his
hands under the hydrant in the factory yard. _He_ had not forgotten that
it was Saturday. Neither had Growler, who stood watching him with an
oblique look in his old eye that said as plain as words that he knew what
momentous business was brewing at five o'clock.
It was not only Saturday for Dan, but the most important Saturday that
ever figured on the calendar. In his heroic efforts to conform to Mrs.
Purdy's standard of perfection he had studied the advice to young men in
the "Sunday Echo." There he learned that no gentleman would think of
mentioning love to a young lady until he was in a position to marry her.
To-day's pay envelope would hold the exact amount to bring his bank
account up to the three imposing figures that he had decided on as the
minimum sum to be put away.
As he was drying his hands on his handkerchief and whistling softly
under his breath, he was summoned to the office.
For the past year he had been a self-constituted buffer between Mr.
Clarke and the men in the furnace-room, and he wondered anxiously what
new complication had arisen.
"He's got an awful grouch on," warned the stenographer as Dan passed
through the outer office.
Mr. Clarke was sitting at his desk, tapping his foot impatiently.
"Well, Lewis," he said, "you've taken your time! Sit down. I want to
talk to you."
Dan dropped into the chair opposite and waited.
"Is it true that you have been doing most of the new foreman's work for
the past month?"
"Well, I've helped him some. You see, being here so long, I know the
ropes a bit better than he does."
"That's not the point. I ought to have known sooner that he could not
handle the job. I fired him this morning, and we've got to make some
temporary arrangement until a new man is installed."
Dan's face grew grave.
"We can manage everything but the finishing room. Some of the girls have
been threatening to quit."
"What's the grievance now?"
"Same thing--ventilation. Two more girls fainted there this morning. The
air is something terrible."
"What do they think I am running?" demanded Mr. Clarke, angrily, "a
health resort?"
"No, sir," said Dan, "a death trap."
Mr. Clarke set his jaw and glared at Dan, but he said nothing. The
doctor's recent verdict on the death of a certain one-eyed girl, named
Mag Gist, may have had something to do with his silence.
"How many girls are in that room now?" he asked after a long pause.
Dan gave the number, together with several other disturbing facts
concerning the sanitary arrangements.
"Well, what's to be done?" demanded Mr. Clarke, fiercely. "We can't
get out the work with fewer girls, and there is no way of enlarging
that room."
"Yes, sir, there is," said Dan. "Would you mind me showing you a way?"
"Since you are so full of advice, go ahead."
With crude, but sure, pencil strokes, Dan got his ideas on paper. He had
done it so often for his own satisfaction that he could have made them
with his eyes shut. Ever since those early days when he had seen that
room through Nance Molloy's eyes, he had persisted in his efforts to
better it.
Mr. Clarke, with his fingers thrust through his scanty hair, watched him
scornfully.
"Absolutely impractical," he declared. "The only feasible plan would be
to take out the north partition and build an extension like this."
"That couldn't be done," said Dan, "on account of the projection."
Whereupon, such is the power of opposition, Mr. Clarke set himself to
prove that it could. For over an hour they wrangled, going into the
questions of cost, of time, of heating, of ventilation, scarcely looking
up from the plans until a figure in a checked suit flung open the door,
letting in a draught of air that scattered the papers on the desk.
"Hello, Dad," said the new-comer, with a friendly nod to Dan, "I'm sorry
to disturb you, but I only have a minute."
"Which I should accept gratefully, I suppose, as my share of your busy
day?" Mr. Clarke tried to look severe, but his eyes softened.
"Well, I just got up," said Mac, with an ingratiating smile, as he
smoothed back his shining hair before the mirror in the hat-rack.
"Running all night, and sleeping half the day!" grumbled Mr. Clarke. "By
the way, what time did you get in last night?"
Mac made a wry face.
"_Et tu, Brute?_" he cried gaily. "Mother's polished me off on that
score. I have not come here to discuss the waywardness of your prodigal
son. Mr. Clarke, I have come to talk high finance. I desire to
negotiate a loan."
"As usual," growled his father. "I venture to say that Dan Lewis here,
who earns about half what you waste a year, has something put away."
"But Dan's the original grinder. He always had an eye for business. Used
to win my nickel every Sunday when we shot craps in the alley back of the
cathedral. Say, Dan, I see you've still got that handsome thoroughbred
cur of yours! By George, that dog could use his tail for a jumping rope!"
Dan smiled; he couldn't afford to be sensitive about Growler's beauty.
"Is that all, Mr. Clarke?" he asked of his employer.
"Yes. I'll see what can be done with these plans. In the meanwhile you
try to keep the girls satisfied until the new foreman comes. By the way I
expect you'd better stay on here to-night."
Dan paused with his hand on the door-knob. "Yes, sir," he said in evident
embarrassment, "but if you don't mind--I 'd like to get off for a couple
of hours this afternoon."
"Who's the girl, Dan?" asked Mac, but Dan did not stop to answer.
As he hurried down the hall, a boy appeared from around the corner and
beckoned to him with a mysterious grin.
"Somebody's waiting for you down in the yard."
"Who is he?"
"'T ain't a he. It's the prettiest girl you ever seen!"
Dan, whose thoughts for weeks had been completely filled with one
feminine image, sprang to the window. But the tall, stylish person
enveloped in a white veil, who was waiting below, in no remote way
suggested Nance Molloy.
A call from a lady was a new experience, and a lively curiosity seized
him as he descended the steps, turning down his shirt sleeves as he went.
As he stepped into the yard, the girl turned toward him with a quick,
nervous movement.
"Hello, Daniel!" she said, her full red lips curving into a smile. "Don't
remember me, do you?"
"Sure, I do. It's Birdie Smelts."
"Good boy! Only now it's Birdie La Rue. That's my stage name, you know. I
blew into town Thursday with 'The Rag Time Follies.' Say, Dan, you used
to be a good friend of mine, didn't you?"
Dan had no recollection of ever having been noticed by Birdie, except on
that one occasion when he had taken her and Nance to the skating-rink.
She was older than he by a couple of years, and infinitely wiser in the
ways of the world. But it was beyond masculine human nature not to be
flattered by her manner, and he hastened to assure her that he had been
and was her friend.
"Well, I wonder if you don't want to do me a favor?" she coaxed. "Find
out if Mac Clarke's been here, or is going to be here. I got to see him
on particular business."
"He's up in the office now," said Dan; then he added bluntly "Where did
you ever know Mac Clarke?"
Birdie's large, white lids fluttered a moment.
"I come to see him for a friend of mine," she said.
A silence fell between them which she tried to break with a rather shame
faced explanation.
"This girl and Mac have had a quarrel. I'm trying to patch it up. Wish
you'd get him down here a minute."
"It would be a lot better for the girl," said Dan, slowly, "if you didn't
patch it up."
"What do you mean?"
Dan looked troubled.
"Clarke's a nice fellow all right," he said, "but when it comes to
girls--" he broke off abruptly. "Do you know him?"
"I've seen him round the theater," she said.
"Then you ought to know what I mean."
Birdie looked absently across the barren yard.
"Men are all rotten," she said bitterly, then added with feminine
inconsistency, "Go on, Dan, be a darling. Fix it so I can speak to him
without the old man catching on."
Strategic manoeuvers were not in Dan's line, and he might have refused
outright had not Birdie laid a white hand on his and lifted a pair of
effectively pleading eyes. Being unused to feminine blandishments, he
succumbed.
Half an hour later a white veil fluttered intimately across a broad,
checked shoulder as two stealthy young people slipped under the window of
Mr. Clarke's private office and made their way to the street.
Dan gave the incident little further thought. He went mechanically about
his work, only pausing occasionally at his high desk behind the door to
pore over a sheet of paper. Had his employer glanced casually over his
shoulder, he might have thought he was still figuring on the plans of the
new finishing room; but a second glance would have puzzled him. Instead
of one large room there were several small ones, and across the front was
a porch with wriggly lines on a trellis, minutely labeled, "honeysuckle."
At a quarter of five Dan made as elaborate a toilet as the washroom
permitted. He consumed both time and soap on the fractious forelock, and
spent precious moments trying to induce a limp string tie to assume the
same correct set that distinguished Mac Clarke's four-in-hand.
Once on his way, with Growler at his heels, he gave no more thought to
his looks. He walked very straight, his lips twitching now and then into
a smile, and his gaze soaring over the heads of the ordinary people whom
he passed. For twenty-one years the book of life had proved grim
reading, but to-day he had come to that magic page whereon is written in
words grown dim to the eyes of age and experience, but perennially
shining to the eyes of youth: "And then they were married and lived
happily ever after."
"Take care there! Look where you are going!" exclaimed an indignant
pedestrian as he turned the corner into Cemetery Street.
"Why, hello, Bean!" he said in surprise, bringing his gaze down to a
stout man on crutches. "Glad to see you out again!"
"I ain't out," said the ex-foreman. "I'm all in. I've got rheumatism in
every corner of me. This is what your old bottle factory did for me."
"Tough luck," said Dan sympathetically, with what attention he could
spare from a certain doorway half up the square. "First time you've
been out?"
"No; I've been to the park once or twice. Last night I went to a show."
He was about to limp on when he paused. "By the way, Lewis, I saw an old
friend of yours there. You remember that Molloy girl you used to run with
up at the factory?"
Dan's mouth closed sharply. Bean's attitude toward the factory girls was
an old grievance with him and had caused words between them on more than
one occasion.
"Well, I'll be hanged," went on Bean, undaunted, "if she ain't doing a
turn up at the Gaiety! She's a little corker all right, had the whole
house going."
"You got another guess coming your way," said Dan, coldly, "the young
lady you're talking about's not on the stage. She's working up here in
Cemetery Street. I happen to be waiting for her now."
Bean whistled.
"Well, the drinks are on me. That girl at the Gaiety is a dead ringer to
her. Same classy way of handling herself, same--" Something in Dan's eyes
made him stop. "I got to be going," he said. "So long."
Dan waited patiently for ten minutes; then he looked at his watch. What
could be keeping Nance? He whistled to Growler, who was making life
miserable for a cat in a neighboring yard, and strolled past Miss
Bobinet's door; then he returned to the corner. Bean's words had fallen
into his dream like a pebble into a tranquil pool. What business had Bean
to be remembering the way Nance walked or talked. Restlessly, Dan paced
up and down the narrow sidewalk. When he looked at his watch again, it
was five-thirty.
Only thirty more minutes in which to transact the most important
business of his life! With a gesture of impatience he strode up to Miss
Bobinet's door and rang the bell.
A wrinkled old woman, with one hand behind her ear, opened the door
grudgingly.
"Nance Molloy?" she quavered in answer to his query. "What you want
with her?"
"I'd like to speak with her a minute," said Dan.
"Are you her brother?"
"No."
"Insurance man?"
"No."
The old woman peered at him curiously.
"Who be you?" she asked.
"My name's Lewis."
"Morris?"
"No, Lewis!" shouted Dan, with a restraining hand on Growler, who was
sniffing at the strange musty odors that issued from the half-open door.
"Well, she ain't here," said the old woman. "Took herself off last
Wednesday, without a word to anybody."
"Last Wednesday!" said Dan, incredulously. "Didn't she send any word?"
"Sent for her money and said she wouldn't be back. You dog, you!" This to
Growler who had insinuated his head inside the door with the fixed
determination to run down that queer smell if possible.
Dan went slowly down the steps, and Growler, either offended at having
had the door slammed in his face, or else sensing, dog-fashion, the
sudden change in his master's mood, trotted soberly at his heels. There
was no time now to go to Calvary Alley to find out what the trouble was.
Nothing to do but go back to the factory and worry through the night,
with all sorts of disturbing thoughts swarming in his brain. Nance had
been all right the Saturday before, a little restless and discontented
perhaps, but scarcely more so than usual. He remembered how he had
counseled patience, and how hard it had been for him to keep from telling
her then and there what was in his heart. He began to wonder uneasily if
he had done right in keeping all his plans and dreams to himself. Perhaps
if he had taken her into his confidence and told her what he was striving
and saving for, she would have understood better and been happy in
waiting and working with him. For the first time he began to entertain
dark doubts concerning those columns of advice to young men in the
"Sunday Echo."
Once back at the factory, he plunged into his work with characteristic
thoroughness. It was strangely hot and still, and somewhere out on the
horizon was a grumbling discontent. It was raining hard at eleven o'clock
when he boarded a car for Butternut Lane, and by the time he reached the
Purdy's corner, the lightning was playing sharply in the northwest.
He let himself in the empty house and felt his way up to his room, but he
did not go to bed. Instead, he sat at his table and with stiff awkward
fingers wrote letter after letter, each of which he tossed impatiently
into the waste-basket. They were all to Nance, and they all tried in vain
to express the pent-up emotion that had filled his heart for years.
Somewhere down-stairs a clock struck one, but he kept doggedly at his
task. Four o'clock found him still seated at the table, but his tired
head had dropped on his folded arms, and he slept.
Outside the wind rose higher and higher, and the lightning split the
heavens in blinding flashes. Suddenly a deafening crash of thunder shook
the house, and Dan started to his feet. A moment later the telephone
bell rang.
Half dazed, he stumbled down-stairs and took up the receiver.
"Hello, hello! Yes, this is Dan Lewis. What? I can't hear you. Who?" Then
his back stiffened suddenly, and his voice grew tense, "Nance! Where are
you? Is he dead? Who's with you? Don't be scared, I'm coming!" and,
leaving the receiver dangling on the cord, he made one leap for the door.