章节正文
outside and gnaw your finger-nails and plot and plan and starve.
You spend your life hoping to live to-morrow, while the Tausigs
are living high to-day. The thing to do is to be humble if you
can't be arrogant. If they've got you in the door, don't curse,
but placate them. Think of Gaffney herding sheep out in Nevada;
of Iringer in the asylum; of Howison--"
"Admirable! admirable!" he interrupted sarcastically. "The
only fault I have to find with your harangue is that you've
misconceived my meaning entirely. But I needn't enlighten you.
Good morning, Miss Olden--good-by."
He turned to his desk and pulled out some papers. I knew he
wasn't so desperately absorbed in them as he pretended to be.
"Won't you shake hands," I asked, "and wish me luck?"
He put down his pen. His face was white and hard, but as he
looked at me it gradually softened.
`I suppose--I suppose, I am a bit unreasonable just this
minute," he said slowly. "I'm hard hit and--and I don't just
know the way out. Still, I haven't any right to--to expect more
of you than there is in you, you poor little thing! It's not your
fault, but mine, that I've expected--Oh, for God's
sake--Nance--go, and leave me alone!"
I had to take that with me to the Van Twiller, and it wasn't
pleasant. But Tausig received me with open arms.
"Got tired of staying out in the cold--eh?" he grinned.
"I'm tired of vaudeville," I answered. "Can't you give me a
chance in a comedy?"
"Hm! Ambitious, ain't you?"
"Obermuller has a play all ready for me--written for me. He'd
star me fast enough if he had the chance."
"But he'll never get the chance."
"Oh, I don't know."
"But I do. He's on the toboggan; that's where they all get, my
dear, when they get big-headed enough to fight us."
"But Obermuller's not like the others. He's not so easy. And he
is so clever; why, the plot of that comedy is the bulliest
thing--"
"You've read it--you remember it?"
"Oh, I know it by heart--my part of it. You see, he wouldn't
keep away from me while he was thinking of it. He kept consulting
me about everything in it. In a way, we worked over it
together."
The little man looked at me, slowly closing one eye. It is a
habit of his when he's going to do something particularly nasty.
"Then, in a way, as you say, it is part yours."
"Hardly! Imagine Nance Olden writing a line of a play!"
"Still you--collaborated; that's the word. I say, my dear, if I
could read that comedy, and it was--half what you say it is, I
might--I don't promise, mind--but I might let you have the part
that was written for you and put the thing on. Has he drilled you
any, eh? He was the best stage-manager we ever had before he got
the notion of managing for himself--and ruining himself."
"Well, he's all that yet. Of course, he has told me, and we
agreed how the thing should be done. As he'd write, you know,
he'd read the thing over to me, and I--"
"Fine--fine! A reading from that fool Obermuller would be enough
to open the eyes of a clever woman. I'd like to read that
comedy--yes?"
"But Obermuller would never--"
"But Olden might--"
"What?"
"Dictate the plot to my secretary, Mason, in there," he nodded
his head back toward the inner room. "She could give him the
plot and as much of her own part in full as she could remember.
You know Mason. Used to be a newspaper man. Smart fellow, that,
when he's sober. He could piece out the holes--yes?"
I looked at him. The little beast sat there, slowly closing one
eye and opening it again. He looked like an unhealthy little
frog, with his bald head, his thin-lipped mouth that laughed,
while the wrinkles rayed away from his cold, sneering eyes that
had no smile in them.
"I--I wouldn't like to make an enemy of a man like Obermuller,
Mr. Tausig."
"Bah! Ain't I told you he's on the toboggan?"
"But you never can tell with a man like that. Suppose he got
into that combine with Heffelfinger and Dixon and Weinstock?"
"What're you talking about?"
"Well, it's what I've heard."
"But Heffelfinger and Dixon and Weinstock are all in with us;
who told you that fairy story?"
"Obermuller himself."
The little fellow laughed. His is a creaky, almost silent little
laugh; if a spider could laugh he'd laugh that way.
"They're fooling him a bunch or two. Never you mind Obermuller.
He's a dead one."
"Oh, he said that you thought they were in with you, but that
nothing but a written agreement would hold men like that. And
that you hadn't got."
"Smart fellow, that Obermuller. He'd have been a good man to
have in the business if it hadn't been for those independent
ideas he's got. He's right; it takes--"
"So there is an agreement!" I shouted, in spite of myself, as I
leaned forward.
He sat back in his chair, or, rather, he let it swallow him
again.
"What business is that of yours? Stick to the business on hand.
Get to work on that play with Mason inside. If it's good, and we
decide to put it on, we'll pay you five hundred dollars down in
addition to your salary. If it's rot, you'll have your salary
weekly all the time you're at it, just the same as if you were
working, till I can place you. In the meantime, keep your ears
and eyes open and watch things, and your mouth shut. I'll speak
to Mason and he'll be ready for you to-morrow morning. Come round
in the morning; there's nobody about then, and we want to keep
this thing dark till it's done. Obermuller mustn't get any idea
what we're up to. . . . He don't love you--no--for shaking him?"
"He's furious; wouldn't even say good-by. I'm done for with him,
anyway, I guess. But what could I do?"
"Nothing, my dear; nothing. You're a smart little girl," he
chuckled. "Ta-ta!"
XIII.
Just what I'd been hoping for I don't know, but I knew that my
chance had come that morning.
For a week I had been talking Obermuller's comedy to Mason, the
secretary. In the evenings I stood about in the wings and watched
the Van Twiller company in Brambles. There was one fat role in it
that I just ached for, but I lost all that ache and found
another, when I overheard two of the women talking about
Obermuller and me one night.
"He found her and made her," one of 'em said; "just dug her
out of the ground. See what he's done for her; taught her every
blessed thing she knows; wrote her mimicking monologues for her;
gave her her chance, and--and now--Well, Tausig don't pay
salaries for nothing, and she gets hers as regularly as I draw
mine. What more I don't know. But she hasn't set foot on the
stage yet under Tausig, and they say Obermuller--"
I didn't get the rest of it, so I don't know what they say about
Obermuller. I only know what they've said to him about me.
'Tisn't hard to make men believe those things. But I had to stand
it. What could I do? I couldn't tell Fred Obermuller that I was
making over his play, soul and as much body as I could remember,
to Tausig's secretary. He'd have found that harder to believe
than the other thing.
It hasn't been a very happy week for me, I can tell you, Maggie.
But I forgot it all, every shiver and ache of it, when I came
into the office that morning, as usual, and found Mason alone.
Not altogether alone--he had his bottle. And he had had it and
others of the same family all the night before. The poor drunken
wretch hadn't been home at all. He was worse than he'd been that
morning three days before, when I had stood facing him and
talking to him, while with my hands behind my back I was taking a
wax impression of the lock of the desk; and he as unconscious of
it all as Tausig himself.
The last page I had dictated the day before, which he'd been
transcribing from his notes, lay in front of him; the gas was
still burning directly above him, and a shade he wore over his
weak eyes had been knocked awry as his poor old bald head went
bumping down on the type-writer before him.
The thing that favored me was Tausig's distrust of everybody
connected with him. He hates his partners only a bit less than he
hates the men outside the Trust. The bigger and richer the
Syndicate grows, the more power and prosperity it has, the more
he begrudges them their share of it; the more he wants it all for
himself. He is madly suspicious of his clerks, and hires others
to watch them, to spy upon them. He is continually moving his
valuables from place to place, partly because he trusts no man;
partly because he's so deathly afraid his right hand will find
out what his left is doing. He is a full partner of Braun and
Lowenthal--with mental reservations. He has no confidence in
either of them. Half his schemes he keeps from them; the other
half he tells them--part of. He's for ever afraid that the
Syndicate of which he's the head will fall to pieces and become
another Syndicate of which he won't be head.
It all makes him an unhappy, restless little beast; but it helped
me to-day. If it'd been any question of safe combinations and
tangled things like that, the game would have been all up for
Nancy O. But in his official safe Tausig keeps only such papers
as he wants Braun and Lowenthal to see. And in his private desk
in his private office he keeps--
I stole past Mason, sleeping with his forehead on the type-writer
keys--he'll be lettered like the obelisk when he wakes up--and
crept into the next room to see just what Tausig keeps in that
private desk of his.
Oh, yes, it was locked. But hadn't I been carrying the key to it
every minute for the last forty-eight hours? There must be a mine
of stuff in that desk of Tausig's, Mag. The touch of every paper
in it is slimy with some dirty trick, some bad secret, some mean
action. It's a pity that I hadn't time to go through 'em all; it
would have been interesting; but under a bundle of women's
letters, which that old fox keeps for no good reason, I'll bet, I
lit on a paper that made my heart go bumping like a cart over
cobbles.
Yes, there it was, just as Obermuller had vowed it was, with
Tausig's cramped little signature followed by Heffelfinger's,
Dixon's and Weinstock's; a scheme to crush the business life out
of men by the cleverest, up-to-date Trust deviltry; a thing that
our Uncle Sammy just won't stand for.
And neither will Nancy Olden, Miss Monahan.
She grabbed that precious paper with a gasp of delight and closed
the desk.
But she bungled a bit there, for Mason lifted his head and
blinked dazedly at her for a moment, recognized her and shook his
head.
"No--work to-day," he said.
"No--I know. I'll just look over what we've done, Mr. Mason,"
she answered cheerfully.
His poor head went down again with a bob, and she caught up the
type-written sheets of Obermuller's play. She waited a minute
longer; half because she wanted to make sure Mason was asleep
again before she tore the sheets across and crammed them down
into the waste-basket; half because she pitied the old fellow and
was sorry to take advantage of his condition. But she knew a cure
You spend your life hoping to live to-morrow, while the Tausigs
are living high to-day. The thing to do is to be humble if you
can't be arrogant. If they've got you in the door, don't curse,
but placate them. Think of Gaffney herding sheep out in Nevada;
of Iringer in the asylum; of Howison--"
"Admirable! admirable!" he interrupted sarcastically. "The
only fault I have to find with your harangue is that you've
misconceived my meaning entirely. But I needn't enlighten you.
Good morning, Miss Olden--good-by."
He turned to his desk and pulled out some papers. I knew he
wasn't so desperately absorbed in them as he pretended to be.
"Won't you shake hands," I asked, "and wish me luck?"
He put down his pen. His face was white and hard, but as he
looked at me it gradually softened.
`I suppose--I suppose, I am a bit unreasonable just this
minute," he said slowly. "I'm hard hit and--and I don't just
know the way out. Still, I haven't any right to--to expect more
of you than there is in you, you poor little thing! It's not your
fault, but mine, that I've expected--Oh, for God's
sake--Nance--go, and leave me alone!"
I had to take that with me to the Van Twiller, and it wasn't
pleasant. But Tausig received me with open arms.
"Got tired of staying out in the cold--eh?" he grinned.
"I'm tired of vaudeville," I answered. "Can't you give me a
chance in a comedy?"
"Hm! Ambitious, ain't you?"
"Obermuller has a play all ready for me--written for me. He'd
star me fast enough if he had the chance."
"But he'll never get the chance."
"Oh, I don't know."
"But I do. He's on the toboggan; that's where they all get, my
dear, when they get big-headed enough to fight us."
"But Obermuller's not like the others. He's not so easy. And he
is so clever; why, the plot of that comedy is the bulliest
thing--"
"You've read it--you remember it?"
"Oh, I know it by heart--my part of it. You see, he wouldn't
keep away from me while he was thinking of it. He kept consulting
me about everything in it. In a way, we worked over it
together."
The little man looked at me, slowly closing one eye. It is a
habit of his when he's going to do something particularly nasty.
"Then, in a way, as you say, it is part yours."
"Hardly! Imagine Nance Olden writing a line of a play!"
"Still you--collaborated; that's the word. I say, my dear, if I
could read that comedy, and it was--half what you say it is, I
might--I don't promise, mind--but I might let you have the part
that was written for you and put the thing on. Has he drilled you
any, eh? He was the best stage-manager we ever had before he got
the notion of managing for himself--and ruining himself."
"Well, he's all that yet. Of course, he has told me, and we
agreed how the thing should be done. As he'd write, you know,
he'd read the thing over to me, and I--"
"Fine--fine! A reading from that fool Obermuller would be enough
to open the eyes of a clever woman. I'd like to read that
comedy--yes?"
"But Obermuller would never--"
"But Olden might--"
"What?"
"Dictate the plot to my secretary, Mason, in there," he nodded
his head back toward the inner room. "She could give him the
plot and as much of her own part in full as she could remember.
You know Mason. Used to be a newspaper man. Smart fellow, that,
when he's sober. He could piece out the holes--yes?"
I looked at him. The little beast sat there, slowly closing one
eye and opening it again. He looked like an unhealthy little
frog, with his bald head, his thin-lipped mouth that laughed,
while the wrinkles rayed away from his cold, sneering eyes that
had no smile in them.
"I--I wouldn't like to make an enemy of a man like Obermuller,
Mr. Tausig."
"Bah! Ain't I told you he's on the toboggan?"
"But you never can tell with a man like that. Suppose he got
into that combine with Heffelfinger and Dixon and Weinstock?"
"What're you talking about?"
"Well, it's what I've heard."
"But Heffelfinger and Dixon and Weinstock are all in with us;
who told you that fairy story?"
"Obermuller himself."
The little fellow laughed. His is a creaky, almost silent little
laugh; if a spider could laugh he'd laugh that way.
"They're fooling him a bunch or two. Never you mind Obermuller.
He's a dead one."
"Oh, he said that you thought they were in with you, but that
nothing but a written agreement would hold men like that. And
that you hadn't got."
"Smart fellow, that Obermuller. He'd have been a good man to
have in the business if it hadn't been for those independent
ideas he's got. He's right; it takes--"
"So there is an agreement!" I shouted, in spite of myself, as I
leaned forward.
He sat back in his chair, or, rather, he let it swallow him
again.
"What business is that of yours? Stick to the business on hand.
Get to work on that play with Mason inside. If it's good, and we
decide to put it on, we'll pay you five hundred dollars down in
addition to your salary. If it's rot, you'll have your salary
weekly all the time you're at it, just the same as if you were
working, till I can place you. In the meantime, keep your ears
and eyes open and watch things, and your mouth shut. I'll speak
to Mason and he'll be ready for you to-morrow morning. Come round
in the morning; there's nobody about then, and we want to keep
this thing dark till it's done. Obermuller mustn't get any idea
what we're up to. . . . He don't love you--no--for shaking him?"
"He's furious; wouldn't even say good-by. I'm done for with him,
anyway, I guess. But what could I do?"
"Nothing, my dear; nothing. You're a smart little girl," he
chuckled. "Ta-ta!"
XIII.
Just what I'd been hoping for I don't know, but I knew that my
chance had come that morning.
For a week I had been talking Obermuller's comedy to Mason, the
secretary. In the evenings I stood about in the wings and watched
the Van Twiller company in Brambles. There was one fat role in it
that I just ached for, but I lost all that ache and found
another, when I overheard two of the women talking about
Obermuller and me one night.
"He found her and made her," one of 'em said; "just dug her
out of the ground. See what he's done for her; taught her every
blessed thing she knows; wrote her mimicking monologues for her;
gave her her chance, and--and now--Well, Tausig don't pay
salaries for nothing, and she gets hers as regularly as I draw
mine. What more I don't know. But she hasn't set foot on the
stage yet under Tausig, and they say Obermuller--"
I didn't get the rest of it, so I don't know what they say about
Obermuller. I only know what they've said to him about me.
'Tisn't hard to make men believe those things. But I had to stand
it. What could I do? I couldn't tell Fred Obermuller that I was
making over his play, soul and as much body as I could remember,
to Tausig's secretary. He'd have found that harder to believe
than the other thing.
It hasn't been a very happy week for me, I can tell you, Maggie.
But I forgot it all, every shiver and ache of it, when I came
into the office that morning, as usual, and found Mason alone.
Not altogether alone--he had his bottle. And he had had it and
others of the same family all the night before. The poor drunken
wretch hadn't been home at all. He was worse than he'd been that
morning three days before, when I had stood facing him and
talking to him, while with my hands behind my back I was taking a
wax impression of the lock of the desk; and he as unconscious of
it all as Tausig himself.
The last page I had dictated the day before, which he'd been
transcribing from his notes, lay in front of him; the gas was
still burning directly above him, and a shade he wore over his
weak eyes had been knocked awry as his poor old bald head went
bumping down on the type-writer before him.
The thing that favored me was Tausig's distrust of everybody
connected with him. He hates his partners only a bit less than he
hates the men outside the Trust. The bigger and richer the
Syndicate grows, the more power and prosperity it has, the more
he begrudges them their share of it; the more he wants it all for
himself. He is madly suspicious of his clerks, and hires others
to watch them, to spy upon them. He is continually moving his
valuables from place to place, partly because he trusts no man;
partly because he's so deathly afraid his right hand will find
out what his left is doing. He is a full partner of Braun and
Lowenthal--with mental reservations. He has no confidence in
either of them. Half his schemes he keeps from them; the other
half he tells them--part of. He's for ever afraid that the
Syndicate of which he's the head will fall to pieces and become
another Syndicate of which he won't be head.
It all makes him an unhappy, restless little beast; but it helped
me to-day. If it'd been any question of safe combinations and
tangled things like that, the game would have been all up for
Nancy O. But in his official safe Tausig keeps only such papers
as he wants Braun and Lowenthal to see. And in his private desk
in his private office he keeps--
I stole past Mason, sleeping with his forehead on the type-writer
keys--he'll be lettered like the obelisk when he wakes up--and
crept into the next room to see just what Tausig keeps in that
private desk of his.
Oh, yes, it was locked. But hadn't I been carrying the key to it
every minute for the last forty-eight hours? There must be a mine
of stuff in that desk of Tausig's, Mag. The touch of every paper
in it is slimy with some dirty trick, some bad secret, some mean
action. It's a pity that I hadn't time to go through 'em all; it
would have been interesting; but under a bundle of women's
letters, which that old fox keeps for no good reason, I'll bet, I
lit on a paper that made my heart go bumping like a cart over
cobbles.
Yes, there it was, just as Obermuller had vowed it was, with
Tausig's cramped little signature followed by Heffelfinger's,
Dixon's and Weinstock's; a scheme to crush the business life out
of men by the cleverest, up-to-date Trust deviltry; a thing that
our Uncle Sammy just won't stand for.
And neither will Nancy Olden, Miss Monahan.
She grabbed that precious paper with a gasp of delight and closed
the desk.
But she bungled a bit there, for Mason lifted his head and
blinked dazedly at her for a moment, recognized her and shook his
head.
"No--work to-day," he said.
"No--I know. I'll just look over what we've done, Mr. Mason,"
she answered cheerfully.
His poor head went down again with a bob, and she caught up the
type-written sheets of Obermuller's play. She waited a minute
longer; half because she wanted to make sure Mason was asleep
again before she tore the sheets across and crammed them down
into the waste-basket; half because she pitied the old fellow and
was sorry to take advantage of his condition. But she knew a cure
- humble [´hʌmbəl]
a.谦卑的 vt.贬抑 (初中英语单词) - ambitious [æm´biʃəs] a.有雄心的；热望的 (初中英语单词)
- writing [´raitiŋ] n.书写；写作；书法 (初中英语单词)
- reading [´ri:diŋ] n.(阅)读；朗读；读物 (初中英语单词)
- opening [´əupəniŋ] n.开放；开端 a.开始的 (初中英语单词)
- combine [kəm´bain] v.(使)结合；联合企业 (初中英语单词)
- spider [´spaidə] n.蜘蛛；三角架 (初中英语单词)
- agreement [ə´gri:mənt] n.同意；一致；协议 (初中英语单词)
- swallow [swɔləu] n.燕子 v.吞，咽；淹没 (初中英语单词)
- meantime [´mi:ntaim] n.&ad.其间；同时 (初中英语单词)
- furious [´fjuəriəs] a.狂怒的；猛烈的 (初中英语单词)
- shiver [´ʃivə] v.&n.(使)颤抖；碎片 (初中英语单词)
- altogether [,ɔ:ltə´geðə] ad.完全；总而言之 (初中英语单词)
- impression [im´preʃən] n.印刷；印象；效果 (初中英语单词)
- prosperity [prɔ´speriti] n.繁荣；成功；幸运 (初中英语单词)
- partly [´pɑ:tli] ad.部分地；不完全地 (初中英语单词)
- partner [´pɑ:tnə] n.伙伴 v.同....合作 (初中英语单词)
- mental [´mentl] a.精神的；心理的 (初中英语单词)
- unhappy [ʌn´hæpi] a.不幸的；不快乐的 (初中英语单词)
- restless [´restləs] a.没有休息的 (初中英语单词)
- sleeping [´sli:piŋ] n.&a.睡着(的) (初中英语单词)
- forehead [´fɔrid] n.额，前部 (初中英语单词)
- bundle [´bʌndl] n.包，捆；包袱(裹) (初中英语单词)
- scheme [ski:m] n.计划；阴谋，诡计 (初中英语单词)
- advantage [əd´vɑ:ntidʒ] n.优势；利益 (初中英语单词)
- desperately [´despəritli] ad.绝望地；拼命地 (高中英语单词)
- comedy [´kɔmidi] n.喜剧；喜剧场面 (高中英语单词)
- regularly [´regjuləli] ad.有规律地；经常地 (高中英语单词)
- unconscious [ʌn´kɔnʃəs] a.无意识的；不觉察的 (高中英语单词)
- distrust [dis´trʌst] n.&vt.不信任，怀疑 (高中英语单词)
- suspicious [sə´spiʃəs] a.可疑的，多疑的 (高中英语单词)
- continually [kən´tinjuəli] ad.不断地，频繁地 (高中英语单词)
- signature [´signətʃə] n.签名；盖章 (高中英语单词)
- enlighten [in´laitn] vt.启发，开导 (英语四级单词)
- unreasonable [ʌn´ri:zənəbl] a.不合理的；荒唐的 (英语四级单词)
- arrogant [´ærəgənt] a.傲慢的；自大的 (英语六级单词)
- asylum [ə´sailəm] n.避难所，收容所 (英语六级单词)
- taking [´teikiŋ] a.迷人的 n.捕获物 (英语六级单词)
- syndicate [´sindikit] n.理事会 (英语六级单词)
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章节正文
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