In the Bishop's Carriage Part 10

"That line we read the other night about 'the luckless Pot'."

His face went gray and he fell back on his pillows. The strenuous life we'd been leading him, Tom and I, was too much for him, I guess.

Do you know, I really felt sorry I'd said it. But he is a cripple.

Did he expect me to say he was big and strong and dashing--like Tom?

I left him there and got out and away. But do you know what I saw, Mag, beside his bed, just as Burnett came to put me out?

My old blue coat with the b.u.t.tons--the bell-boy's coat I'd left in the housekeeper's room when I borrowed her Sunday rig. The coat was hanging over a chair, and right by it, on a table, was that big book with a picture covering every page, still open at that verse about

Through this same Garden--and for ONE in vain!

IV.

No--no--no! No more whining from Nance Olden. Listen to what I've got to tell you, Mag, listen!

You know where I was coming from yesterday when I pa.s.sed Troyon's window and grinned up at you, sitting there, framed in bottles of hair tonic, with all that red wig of yours streaming about you?

Yep, from that little, rat-eyed lawyer's office. I was glum as mud. I felt as though Tom and myself were both flies caught by the leg--he by the law and I by the lawyer--in a sticky mess; and the more we flapped our wings and struggled and pulled, the more we hurt and tore ourselves, and the sooner we'd have to give it up.

Oh, that wizen-faced little lawyer that lives on the Tom Dorgans and the Nance Oldens, who don't know which way to turn to get the money!

He looks at me out of his red little eyes and measures in dollars what I'd do for Tom. And then he sets his price a notch higher than that.

When I pa.s.sed the big department store, next to Troyon's, I was thinking of this, and I turned in there, just aching for some of the boodle that flaunts itself in a poor girl's face when she's desperate, from every silk and satin rag, from every lace and jewel in the place.

The funny part of it is that I didn't want it for myself, but for Tom.

'Pon my soul, Mag, though I would have filled my arms with everything I saw, I wouldn't have put on one thing of all the duds; just hiked off to soak 'em and pay the lawyer. I might have been as old and ugly and rich as the yellow-skinned woman opposite me, who was turning over laces on the middle counter, for all these things meant to me--with Tom in jail.

I was thinking this as I looked at her, when all at once I saw--

You know it takes a pretty quick touch, sharp eyes and good nerve to get away with the goods in a big shop like that. Or it takes something altogether different. It was the different way she did it. She took up the piece of lace--it was a big collar, fine like a cobweb picture in threads,--you can guess what it must have been worth if that old sinner, Mother Douty, gave me fifteen dollars for it. She took it up in a quick, eager way, as though she'd found just what she wanted.

Then she took out a lace sample from her gold-linked purse and held them both up close to her blinky little eyes, looking at it through a gold lorgnette with emeralds in the handle; pulling it and feeling it with the air of one who knows a fine thing when she sees it, and just what makes it fine. Then she rustled off to the door to examine it closely in the light, and--Mag Monahan, she walked right out with it!

At least, she'd got beyond the inner doors when I tapped her on the shoulder.

"I beg pardon, madam." My best style, Mag.

She pulled herself up haughtily and blinked at me. She was a little, thin mummy of a woman, just wrapped away in silks and velvets, but on the inside of that nervous, little old body of hers there must have been some spring of good material that wasn't all unwound yet.

She stood blinking at me without a word.

"That lace. You haven't paid for it," I said.

Her short-sighted eyes fell from my face to the collar she held in her hand. Her yellow face grew ghastly.

"Oh, mercy! You--you don't--"

"I am a detective for the store, and--"

"But--"

"Sh! We don't like any noise made about these things, and you yourself wouldn't enjoy--"

"Do you know who I am, young woman?" She fumbled in her satchel and pa.s.sed a card to me.

Glory be! Guess, Mag. Oh, you'd never guess, you dear old Mag!

Besides, you haven't got the acquaintance in high society that Nance Olden can boast.

+--------------------------------+ Mrs. MILLS D. VAN WAGENEN +--------------------------------+

Oh--Mag! Shame on you not to know the name even of the Bishop of the great state of--yes, the lean, short little Bishop with a little white beard, and the softest eye and the softest heart and--my very own Bishop, Nancy Olden's Bishop. And this was his wife.

Tut--tut, Mag! Of course not. A bishop's wife may be a kleptomaniac; it's only Cruelty girls that really steal from stores.

"I've met the Bishop, Mrs. Van Wagenen." I didn't say how--she wouldn't appreciate that story.

"And he was once very kind to me. But he would be the first to tell me to do my duty now. I'll do it as quietly as I can for his sake. But you must come with me or I must arrest--"

She put up a shaking hand. Dear little old guy!

"Don't--don't say it! It's all a mistake, which can be rectified in a moment. I've been trying to match this piece of lace for years. I got it at Malta when--when Mills and I--on our honeymoon. When I saw it there on the counter I was so delighted--I never thought--I intended taking it to the light to be sure the pattern was the same, my eyesight is so wretched--and when you spoke to me it was the first inkling I had that I had really taken it without paying! You certainly understand,"

she pleaded in agitation. "I have no need to steal--you must know that--oh, that I wouldn't--that--I couldn't--If you will just let me pay you--"

Here now, Mag Monahan, don't you get to sneering. She was straight--right on the level, all right. You couldn't listen to that cracked little voice of hers a minute without being sure of it.

I was just about to permit her graciously to pay me the money,--for my friend? the dear Bishop's sake, of course,--when a big floor-walker happened to catch sight of us.

"If you'll come with me, Mrs. Van Wagenen, to a dressing-room, I'll arrange your collar for you," I said very loud. And then, in a whisper: "Of course, I understand, but the thing may look different to other people. And that big floor-walker there gets a commission from the newspapers every time he tells them--"

She gave a squawk for all the world like a dried-up little hen scuttling out of a yellow dog's way, and we took the elevator to the second floor.

The minute I closed the door of the little fitting-room she held out the lace to me.

"I have changed my mind," she said, "and shall give you the lace back.

I will not keep it. I can not--I can not bear the sight of it. It terrifies me and shocks me. I can take no pleasure in it.

Besides--besides, it will be discipline for me to do without it now that I have found it after all these years. Every day I shall look at the place in my collection which it would have occupied, and I shall say to myself: 'Maria Van Wagenen, take warning. See to what terrible straits a worldly pa.s.sion may bring one; what unconscious greed may do!' I shall give the money to Mills for charity and I will never--never fill that place in my collection."

"What good will that do?" I asked, puzzled, while I folded the collar up into a very small package.

"You mean that I ought to submit to the exposure--that I deserve the lesson and the punishment--not for stealing, but for being absorbed in worldly things. Perhaps you are right. It certainly shows that you have at some time been under Mills' spiritual care, my dear. I wonder if he would insist--whether I ought--yes, I suppose he would. Oh!"

A saleswoman's head was thrust in the door. "Excuse me," she said, "I thought the room was empty."

"We've just finished trying on," I said sweetly.

"Don't go!" The Bishop's wife turned to her, her little fluttering hands held out appealingly. "And do not misunderstand me. The thing may seem wrong in your eyes, as this young woman says, but if you will listen patiently to my explanations I am sure you will see that it was a mere eager over-sight--the fault of absent-mindedness, hardly the sin of covetousness, and surely not a crime. I am making this confession--"