Calvary Alley

Chapter XIV. Idleness

When one has a famishing thirst for happiness, one is apt to gulp down diversions wherever they are offered. The necessity of draining the dregs of life before the wine is savored does not cultivate a discriminating taste. Nance saw in Birdie Smelts her one chance of escape from the deadly monotony of life, and she seized it with both hands. Birdie might not be approved of her seniors, but she was a disturbingly important person to her juniors. To them it seemed nothing short of genius for a girl, born as they were in the sordid environs of Calvary Alley, to side-step school and factory and soar away into the paradise of stage-land. When such an authority gives counsel, it is not to be ignored. Birdie's advice had been to quit the factory, and Nance had taken the plunge without any idea of what she was going to put in its place.

For some reason best known to herself, she never mentioned that episode in the factory yard to either Birdie or Dan Lewis. There were many things about Birdie that she did not like, and she knew only too well what Miss Stanley would have said. But then Miss Stanley wouldn't have approved of Mr. Demry and his dope, or Mrs. Snawdor and her beer, or Mag Gist, with her loud voice and coarse jokes. When one lives in Calvary Alley, one has to compromise; it is seldom the best or the next best one can afford, even in friends.

When Mrs. Snawdor heard that Nance had quit work, she was furious. Who was Nance Molloy, she wanted to know, to go and stick up her nose at a glass factory? There wasn't a bloomin' thing the matter with Clarke's. She'd begun in a factory an' look at her! What was Nance a-goin' to do? Run the streets with Birdie Smelts? It was bad enough, God knew, to have Snawdor settin' around like a tombstone, an' Fidy a-havin' a fit if you so much as looked at her, without havin' Nance eatin' 'em out of house an' home an' not bringin' in a copper cent. If she stayed at home, she'd have to do the work; that was all there was to it!

"Anybody'd think jobs happened around as regerlar as the rent man," she ended bitterly. "You'll see the day when you're glad enough to go back to the factory."

Before the month was over, Nance began to wonder if Mrs. Snawdor was right. With unabating zeal she tramped the streets, answering advertisements, applying at stores, visiting agencies. But despite the fact that she unblushingly recommended herself in the highest terms, nobody seemed to trust so young and inexperienced an applicant.

Meanwhile Birdie Smelts's thrilling prospect of joining her company at an early date threw other people's sordid possibilities into the shade. Every night she practised gymnastics and dance steps, and there being no room in the Smelts' flat, she got into the habit of coming up to Nance's room.

One of the conditions upon which Nance had been permitted to return to Calvary Alley, was that she should not sleep in the same bed with Fidy Yager, a condition which enraged Mrs. Snawdor more than all the rest.

"Annybody'd think Fidy's fits was ketchin'," she complained indignantly to Uncle Jed.

"That there front room of mine ain't doin' anybody no good," suggested Uncle Jed. "We might let Nance have that."

So to Nance's great joy she was given a big room all to herself. The slat bed, the iron wash-stand, the broken-legged chair, and the wavy mirror were the only articles that Mrs. Snawdor was willing to part with, but Uncle Jed donated a battered stove, which despite its rust-eaten top and sagging door, still proclaimed itself a "Little Jewel".

No bride, adorning her first abode, ever arranged her possessions with more enthusiasm than did Nance. She scrubbed the rough floor, washed the windows, and polished the "Little Jewel" until it shone. The first money she could save out of her factory earnings had gone to settle that four-year-old debt to Mr. Lavinski for the white slippers; the next went for bedclothes and cheese-cloth window curtains. Her ambition was no longer for the chintz hangings and gold-framed fruit pieces of Mrs. Purdy's cottage, but looked instead toward the immaculate and austere bedroom of Miss Stanley, with its "Melodonna" over the bed and a box of blooming plants on the window-sill.

Such an ideal of classic simplicity was foredoomed to failure. Mrs. Snawdor, like nature, abhorred a vacuum. An additional room to her was a sluice in the dyke, and before long discarded pots and pans, disabled furniture, the children's dilapidated toys, and, finally, the children themselves were allowed to overflow into Nance's room. In vain Nance got up at daybreak to make things tidy before going to work. At night when she returned, the washing would be hung in her room to dry, or the twins would be playing circus in the middle of her cherished bed.

"It's lots harder when you know how things ought to be, than when you just go on living in the mess, and don't know the difference," she complained bitterly to Birdie.

"I've had my fill of it," said Birdie, "I kiss my hand to the alley for good this time. What do you reckon the fellers would think of me if they knew I hung out in a hole like this?"

"Does he know?" asked Nance in an unguarded moment.

"Who?"

"Mac Clarke."

Birdie shot a glance of swift suspicion at her.

"What's he got to do with me?" she asked coldly.

"Ain't he one of your fellers?"

"Well, if he is, it ain't anybody's business but mine." Then evidently repenting her harshness, she added, "I got tickets to a dance-hall up-town to-night. I'll take you along if you want to look on. You wouldn't catch me dancing with any of those roughnecks."

Nance found looking on an agonizing business. Not that she wanted to dance with the roughnecks any more than Birdie did. Their common experience at Forest Home had given them certain standards of speech and manner that lifted them just enough above their kind to be scornful. But to sit against the wall watching other people dance was nothing short of agony to one of Nance's temperament.

"Come on and have a try with me, Birdie," she implored. "I'll pay the dime." And Birdie, with professional disdain, condescended to circle the room with her a few times.

That first dance was to Nance what the taste of blood is to a young tiger. For days after she could think of nothing else.

"Never you mind," Birdie promised her. "When I get back on the road, I'm going to see what I can do for you. Somebody's always falling out of the chorus, and if you keep up this practising with me, you'll be dancing as good as any of 'em. Ask old man Demry; he played in the orchestra last time we was at the Gaiety."

But when Nance threw out a few cautious remarks to Mr. Demry, she met with prompt discouragement:

"No, no, my dear child," he said uneasily. "You must put that idea out of your head. The chorus is no place for a nice girl."

"That's what Dan says about the factory, and what Mrs. Snawdor says about housework, and what somebody says about everything I start to do. Looks like being a nice girl don't pay!"

Mr. Demry took her petulant little chin in his thin old hand, and turned her face up to his.

"Nancy," he said, "these old eyes have seen a good deal over the fiddle strings. I would rather see you go back to the glass factory, bad as it is, than to go into the chorus."

"But I do dance as good as some of the girls, don't I, Mr. Demry?" she teased, and Mr. Demry, whose pride in an old pupil was considerable, had to acknowledge that she did.

Uncle Jed's attitude was scarcely more encouraging.

"No; I wouldn't be willin' to see you a playactor," he said, "walkin' round in skin tights, with your face all painted up."

Nance knew before asking that Dan would disapprove, but she couldn't resist mentioning the matter to him.

"That Birdie Smelts has been putting notions in your head," he said sternly. "I wish you'd quit runnin' with girls older than you. Besides, Birdie ain't your kind."

"I'd like to know why?" Nance challenged him in instant loyalty to her friend. "Besides, who else have I got to run with? Maybe you think it ain't stupid drudging around home all day and never having a cent to call my own. I want to get out and do something."

Dan looked down at her in troubled silence.

"Mrs. Purdy's always asking me why I don't bring you to some of the meetings at the church. They have real nice socials."

"I don't want to pray and sing silly old hymns!" cried Nance. "I want to dance."

"I don't believe in dancing," said Dan, firmly; then with a side-glance at her unhappy face, he added, "I can't take you to the swimming school, because they don't allow girls, but I might take you to the new skating-rink some Saturday."

In an instant Nance was all enthusiasm.

"Will you, Dan? I'm just crazy about skating. We used to do it out at the home. You ought to see Birdie and me do a Dutch roll. Say, let's take her along. What do you say?"

Dan was not at all in favor of it, but Nance insisted.

"I think we ought to be nice to Birdie on account of Mr. Smelts' stiff leg. Not that it ever did him any good when it was limber, but I always feel mean when I see it sticking out straight when he sits down."

This was a bit of feminine wile on Nance's part, and it had the desired effect. Dan, always vulnerable when his sympathy was roused, reluctantly included Birdie in the invitation.

On the Saturday night appointed, the three of them set out for the skating rink. Dan, with his neck rigid in a high collar and his hair plastered close to his head, stalked somberly beside the two girls, who walked arm in arm and giggled immoderately at each other's witticisms.

"Wake up, Daniel!" said Birdie, giving his hat a tilt. "We engaged you for a escort, not a pallbearer."

The rink was in an old armory, and the musicians sat at one end of the room on a raised platform under two drooping flags. It was dusty and noisy, and the crowd was promiscuous, but to Nance it was Elysium. When she and Birdie, with Dan between them, began to circle the big room to the rhythm of music, her joy was complete.

"Hullo! Dan Lewis is carrying two," she heard some one say as they circled past the entrance. Glancing back, she saw it was one of the boys from the factory. A sudden impulse seized her to stop and explain the matter to him, but instead she followed quite a contrary purpose and detaching herself from her companions, struck out boldly for herself.

Before she had been on the floor ten minutes people began to watch her. Her plain, neat dress setting off her trim figure, and her severe, black sailor hat above the shining bands of fair hair, were in sharp contrast to the soiled finery and draggled plumes of the other girls. But it was not entirely her appearance that attracted attention. It was a certain independent verve, a high-headed indifference, that made her reject even the attentions of the rink-master, a superior person boasting a pompadour and a turquoise ring.

No one could have guessed that behind that nonchalant air Nance was hiding a new and profoundly disturbing emotion. The sight of Birdie, clinging in affected terror to Dan Lewis, filled her with rage. Couldn't Dan see that Birdie was pretending? Didn't he know that she could skate by herself quite as well as he could? Never once during the evening did Dan make his escape, and never once did Nance go to his rescue.

When they were taking off their skates to go home, Birdie whispered to her:

"I believe I got old slow-coach going. Watch me make him smoke up for a treat!"

"No, you sha'n't," Nance said. "Dan's spent enough on us for one night."

"Another quarter won't break him," said Birdie. "I'm as dry as a piece of chalk."

Ten minutes later she landed the little party in a drug store and entered into a spirited discussion with the soda-water boy as to the comparative merits of sundry new drinks.

"Me for a cabaret fizz," she said. "What'll you have, Nance?"

"Nothing," said Nance, sullenly, turning and taking up her stand at the door.

"What do you want, Dan?" persisted Birdie, adding, with a mischievous wink at the white-coated clerk, "Give him a ginger ale; he needs stimulating."

While Birdie talked for the benefit of the clerk, and Dan sat beside her, sipping his distasteful ginger, Nance stood at the door and watched the people pouring out of the Gaiety Theater next door. Ordinarily the bright evening wraps, the glimpses of sparkling jewels, the gay confusion of the scene would have excited her liveliest interest, but to-night she was too busy hating Birdie Smelts to think of anything else. What right had she to monopolize Dan like that and order him about and laugh at him? What right had she to take his arm when they walked, or put her hand on his shoulder as she was doing this minute?

Suddenly Nance started and leaned forward. Out there in the crowded street a tall, middle-aged man, with grizzled hair and mustache, was somewhat imperiously making way for a pretty, delicate-looking lady enveloped in white furs, and behind them, looking very handsome and immaculate in his evening clothes, walked Mac Clarke.

Nance's eager eyes followed the group to the curbing; she saw the young man glance at her with a puzzled expression; then, as he stood aside to allow the lady to enter the motor, he looked again. For the fraction of a second their eyes held each other; then an expression of amused recognition sprang into his face, and Nance met it instantly with a flash of her white teeth.

The next instant the limousine swallowed him; a door slammed, and the car moved away. But Nance, utterly forgetful of her recent discomfort, still stood in the door of the drug store, tingling with excitement as she watched a little red light until it lost itself in the other moving lights on the broad thoroughfare.