Calvary Alley
Copyright© 2024 by Alice Caldwell Hegan Rice
Chapter 26: Between Two Fires
When Mr. Clarke returned from luncheon, it was evident that he was in no mood to encourage a prodigal’s repentance. For half an hour Nance heard his voice rising and falling in angry accusation; then a door slammed, and there was silence. She waited tensely for the next sound, but it was long in coming. Presently some one began talking over the telephone in low, guarded tones, and she could not be sure which of the two it was. Then the talking ceased; the hall door of the inner office opened and closed quietly.
Nance went to the window and saw Mac emerge from the passage below and hurry across the yard to the stables. His cap was over his eyes, and his hands were deep in his pockets. Evidently he had had it out with his father and was going to stay over and meet his difficulties. Her eyes grew tender as she watched him. What a spoiled boy he was, in spite of his five feet eleven! Always getting into scrapes and letting other people get him out! But he was going to face the music this time, and he was doing it for her! If only she hadn’t let him kiss her! A wave of shame made her bury her hot cheeks in her palms.
She was startled from her reverie by a noise at the door. It was Dan
Lewis, looking strangely worried and preoccupied.
“Hello, Nance,” he said, without lifting his eyes. “Did Mr. Clarke leave a telegram for me?”
“Not with me. Perhaps it is on his table. Want me to see?”
“No, I’ll look,” Dan answered and went in and closed the door behind him.
Nance looked at the closed door in sudden apprehension. What was the matter with Dan? What had he found out? She heard him moving about in the empty room; then she heard him talking over the telephone. When he came out, he crossed over to where she was sitting.
“Nance,” he began, still with that uneasy manner, “there’s something I’ve got to speak to you about. You won’t take it amiss?”
“Cut loose,” said Nance, with an attempt at lightness, but her heart began to thump uncomfortably.
“You see,” Dan began laboriously. “I’m sort of worried by some talk that’s been going on ‘round the factory lately. It hadn’t come direct to me until to-day, but I got wind of it every now and then. I know it’s not true, but it mustn’t go on. There’s one way to stop it. Do you know what it is?”
Nance shook her head, and he went on.
“You and I have been making a mess of things lately. Maybe it’s been my fault, I don’t know. You see a fellow gets to know a lot of things a nice girl don’t know. And the carnival ball business—well—I was scared for you, Nance, and that’s the plain truth.”
“I know, Dan,” she said impatiently. “I was a fool to go that time, but I never did it again.”
Dan fingered the papers on the desk.
“I ain’t going to rag about that any more. But I can’t have ‘em saying things about you around the factory. You know how I feel about you—how I always have felt—Nance I want you to marry me.”
Nance flashed a look at him, questioning, eager, uncertain; then her eyes fell. How could she know that behind his halting sentences a paean of love was threatening to burst the very confines of his inarticulate soul? She only saw an awkward young workman in his shirt sleeves, with a smudge across his cheek and a wistful look in his eyes, who knew no more about making love than he knew about the other graces of life.
“I’ve saved enough money,” he went on earnestly, “to buy a little house in the country somewhere. That’s what you wanted, wasn’t it?”
Nance’s glance wandered to the tall gas-pipe that had been their unromantic trysting place. Then she closed her eyes and pressed her fingers against them to keep back the stinging tears. If Dan loved her, why didn’t he say beautiful things to her, why didn’t he take her in his arms as Mac had done, and kiss away all those fears of herself and of the future that crowded upon her? With her head on his shoulder she could have sobbed out her whole confession and been comforted, but now—
“You care for me, don’t you, Nance?” Dan asked with a sharp note of anxiety in his voice.
“Of course I care!” she said irritably. “But I don’t want to get married and settle down. I want to get out and see the world. When you talk about a quiet little house in the country, I want to smash every window in it!”
Dan slipped the worn drawing he had in his hand back into his pocket. It was no time to discuss honeysuckle porches.
“We don’t have to go to the country,” he said patiently. “I just thought it was what you wanted. We can stay here, or we can go to another town if you like. All I want is to make you happy, Nance.”
For a moment she sat with her chin on her palms, staring straight ahead; then she turned toward him with sudden resolution.
“What’s the talk you been hearing about me?” she demanded.
“There’s no use going into that,” he said. “It’s a lie, and I mean to stamp it out if I have to lick every man in the factory to do it.”
“Was it—about Mac Clarke?”
“Who dared bring it to you?” he asked fiercely.
“What are they saying, Dan?”
“That you been seen out with him on the street, that you ride with him after night, and that he comes down here every day at the noon hour to see you.”
“Is that all?”
“Ain’t it enough?”
“Well, it’s true!” said Nance, defiantly. “Every word of it. If anybody can find any real harm in what I’ve done, they are welcome to it!”
“It’s true?” gasped Dan, his hands gripping a chair-back. “And you never told me? Has he—has he made love to you, Nance?”
“Why, he makes love to everybody. He makes love to his mother when he wants to get something out of her. What he says goes in one ear and out the other with me. But I like him and I ain’t ashamed to say so. He’s give me the best time I ever had in my life, and you bet I don’t forget it.”
“Will you answer me one thing more?” demanded Dan, sternly.
“Yes; I ain’t afraid to answer any question you can ask.”
“Was it Clarke that took you to the carnival ball?”
“Him and a fellow named Monte Pearce.”
“Just you three?”
“No; Birdie Smelts was along.”
Dan brushed his hand across his brow as if trying to recall something.
“Birdie come here that day,” he said slowly. “She wanted to see Clarke for a friend of hers. Nance did he—did he ever ask you to kiss him?”
“Yes.”
Dan groaned.
“Why didn’t you tell me all this before, Nance? Why didn’t you give me a chance to put you on your guard?”
“I was on my guard!” she cried, with rising anger. “I don’t need anybody to take care of me!”
But Dan was too absorbed in his own thoughts to heed her.
“It’s a good thing he’s going away in a couple of days,” he said grimly.
“If ever the blackguard writes to you, or dares to speak to you again—”
Nance had risen and was facing him.
“Who’s to stop him?” she asked furiously. “I’m the one to say the word, and not you!”
“And you won’t let me take it up with him?”
“No!”
“And you mean to see him again, and to write to him?”
Nance had a blurred vision of an unhappy prodigal crossing the factory yard. He had kept his part of their compact; she must keep hers.
“I will if I want to,” she said rather weakly.
Dan’s face flushed crimson.
“All right,” he said, “keep it up if you like. But I tell you now, I ain’t going to stay here to see it. I’m going to clear out!”
He turned toward the door, and she called after him anxiously:
“Dan, come back here this minute. Where are you going?”
He paused in the doorway, his jaw set and a steady light in his eyes.
“I am going now,” he said, “to apologize to the man I hit yesterday for telling the truth about you!”
That night Nance shed more tears than she had ever shed in the whole course of her life before; but whether she wept for Mac, or Dan, or for herself, she could not have said. She heard the sounds die out of the alley one by one, the clanging cars at the end of the street became less frequent; only the drip, drip, drip from a broken gutter outside her window, and the rats in the wall kept her company. All day Sunday she stayed in-doors, and came to the office on Monday pale and a bit listless.
To read the complete story you need to be logged in:
Log In or
Register for a Free account
(Why register?)
* Allows you 3 stories to read in 24 hours.