章节正文
now and see it. If you hurry you'll get there just in time for
that act. Then if you come to me at the office in the morning at
ten, I'll give you a chance as one of the Charity girls. Do you
want it?"
God, Mag! Do I want it!
V.
Do you remember Lady Patronesses' Day at the Cruelty, Mag?
Remember how the place smelt of cleaning ammonia on the bare
floors? Remember the black dresses we all wore, and the white
aprons with the little bibs, and the oily sweetness of the
matron, and how our faces shone and tingled from the soap and the
rubbing? Remember it all?
Well, who'd 'a' thought then that Nance Olden ever would make use
of it--on the level, too!
Drop the Cruelty, and tell you about the stage? Why, it's bare
boards back there, bare as the Cruelty, but oh, there's something
that you don't see, but you feel it--something magic that makes
you want to pinch yourself to be sure you're awake. I go round
there just doped with it; my face, if you could see it, must look
like Molly's kid's when she is telling him fairy stories.
I love it, Mag! I love it!
And what do I do? That's what I was trying to tell you about the
Cruelty for. It's in a little act that was made for Lady Gray,
that there are four Charity girls on the stage, and I'm one of
'em.
Lady Gray? Why, Mag, how can you ever hope to get on if you don't
know who's who? How can you expect me to associate with you if
you're so ignorant? Yes--a real Lady, as real as the wife of a
Lord can be. Lord Harold Gray's a sure enough Lord, and she's his
wife but--but a chippy, just the same; that's what she is, in
spite of the Gray emeralds and that great Gray rose diamond she
wears on the tiniest chain around her scraggy neck. Do you know,
Mag Monahan, that this Lady Harold Gray was just a chorus
girl--and a sweet chorus it must have been if she sang
there!--when she nabbed Lord Harold?
You'd better keep your eye on Nancy Olden, or first thing you
know she'll marry the Czar of Russia--or Tom Dorgan, poor fellow,
when he gets out! . . . Well, just the same, Mag, if that
white-faced, scrawny little creature can be a Lady, a girl with
ten times her brains, and at least half a dozen times her good
looks--oh, we're not shy on the stage, Mag, about throwing
bouquets at ourselves!
Can she act? Don't be silly, Mag! Can't you see that Obermuller's
just hiring her title and playing it in big letters on the bills
for all it's worth? She acts the Lady Patroness, come to look at
us Charity girls. She comes on, though, looking like a fairy
princess. Her dress is just blazing with diamonds. There's the
Lady's coronet in her hair. Her thin little arms are banded with
gold and diamonds, and on her neck--O Mag, Mag, that rose diamond
is the color of rose-leaves in a fountain's jet through which the
sun is shining. It's long--long as my thumb--I swear it is,
Mag--nearly, and it blazes, oh, it blazes--
Well, it blazes dollars into Obermuller's box all right, for the
Gray jewels are advertised in the bill with this one at the head
of the list, the star of them all.
You see it's this way: Lord Harold Gray's bankrupt. He's poor
as--as Nance Olden. Isn't that funny? But he's got the family
jewels all right, to have as long as he lives. Nary a one can he
sell, though, for after his death, they go to the next Lord Gray.
So he makes 'em make a living for him, and as they can't go on
and exhibit themselves, Lady Gray sports 'em--and draws down two
hundred dollars a week.
Yep--two hundred.
But do you know it isn't the two hundred dollars a week that
makes me envy her till I'm sick; it's that rose diamond. If you
could only see it, Mag, you'd sympathize with me, and understand
why my fingers just itched for it the first night I saw her come
on.
'Pon my soul, Mag, the sight of it blazing on her neck dazzled me
so that it shut out all the staring audience that first night,
and I even forgot to have stage fright.
"What's doped you, Olden?" Obermuller asked when the curtain
went down, and we all hurried to the wings.
I was in the black dress with the white-bibbed apron, and I
looked up at him still dazed by the shine of that diamond and my
longing for it. You'd almost kill with your own hands for a
diamond like that, Mag!
"Doped? Why--what didn't I do?" I asked him.
"That's just it," he said, looking at me curiously; but I could
feel his disappointment in me.
"You didn't do anything--not a blasted thing more than you were
told to do. The world's full of supers that can do that."
For just a minute I forgot the diamond.
"Then--it's a mistake? You were wrong and--and I can't be an
actress?"
He threw back his head before he answered, puffing a mouthful of
smoke up at the ceiling, as he did the night he caught me. The
gesture itself seemed to remind him of what had made him think in
the first place he could make an actress of me. For he laughed
down at me, and I saw he remembered.
"Well," he said, "we'll wait and see. . . I was mistaken,
though, sure enough, about one thing that night."
I looked up at him.
"You're a darn sight prettier than I thought you were. The gold
brick you sold me isn't all--"
He put out his hand to touch my chin. I side-stepped, and he
turned laughing to the stage.
But he called after me.
"Is a beauty success going to content you, Olden?"
"Well, we'll wait and see," I drawled back at him in his own
throaty bass.
Oh, I was drunk, Mag, drunk with thinking about that diamond!
I didn't care even to please Obermuller. I just wanted the feel of
that diamond in my hand. I wanted it lying on my own neck--the
lovely, cool, shining, rosy thing. It's like the sunrise, Mag,
that beauty stone. It's just a tiny pool of water blushing.
It's--
How to get it! How to get away with it! On what we'd get for that
diamond, Tom and I--when his time is up--could live for all our
lives and whoop it up besides. We could live in Paris, where
great grafters live and grafting pays--where, if you've got wit
and fifty thousand dollars, and happen to be a "darn sight
prettier," you can just spin the world around your little
finger!
But, do you know, even then I couldn't bear to think of selling
the pretty thing? It hurt me to think of anybody having it but
just Nance Olden.
But I hadn't got it yet.
Gray has a dressing-room to herself. And on her table--which is a
big box, open end down--just where the three-sided big mirror can
multiply the jewels and make you want 'em three times as bad, her
big russia-leather, silver-mounted box lies open, while she's
dressing and undressing. Other times it's locked tight, and his
Lordship himself has it tight in his own right hand, or his
Lordship's man, Topham, has it just as tight.
How to get that diamond! There was a hard nut for Nance Olden's
sharp teeth to crack. I only wanted that--never say I'm greedy,
Mag--Gray could keep all the rest of the things--the pigeon in
rubies and pearls, the tiara all in diamonds, the chain of
pearls, and the blazing rings, and the waist-trimming all of
emeralds and diamond stars. But that diamond, that huge rose
diamond, I couldn't, I just couldn't let her have it.
And yet I didn't know the first step to take toward getting it,
till Beryl Blackburn helped me out. She's one of the Charities,
like me--a tall bleached blonde with a pretty, pale face and
gold-gray eyes. And, if you'd believe her, there's not a man in
the audience, afternoon or evening, that isn't dead-gone on her.
"Guess who's my latest," she said to me this afternoon, while
we four Charities stood in the wings waiting. "Topham--old
Topham!"
It all got clear to me then in a minute.
"Topham--nothing!" I sneered. "Beryl Big-head, Topham thinks
of only one thing--Milady's jewel-box. Don't you fool yourself."
"Oh, does he, Miss! Well, just to prove it, he let me try on the
rose diamond last night. There!"
"It's easy to say so but I don't see the proof. He'd lose his
job so quick it'd make his head spin if he did it."
"Not if he did, but if they knew he did. You'll not tell?"
"Not me. Why would I? I don't believe it, and I wouldn't expect
anybody else to. I don't believe you could get Topham to budge
from his chair in Gray's dressing-room if you'd--"
"What'll you bet?"
"I'll bet you the biggest box of chocolate creams at Huyler's."
"Done! I'll send for him to-night, just before Gray and her Lord
come, and you see--"
"How'll I see? Where'll I be?"
"Well, you be waiting in the little hall, right of Gray's
dressing-room at seven-thirty to-night and--you might as well
bring the creams with you."
Catch on, Mag? At seven-thirty in the evening I was waiting; but
not in the little hall of Gray's dressing-room. I hadn't gone
home at all after the afternoon performance--you know we play at
three, and again at eight-thirty. I had just hidden me away till
the rest were gone, and as soon as the coast was clear I got into
Gray's dressing-room, pushed aside the chintz curtains of the big
box that makes her dressing-table--and waited.
Lord, how the hours dragged! I hadn't had anything to eat since
lunch, and it got darker and darker in there, and hot and close
and cramped. I put in the time, much as I could, thinking of Tom.
The very first thing I'd do after cashing in, would be to get up
to Sing Sing to see him. I'm crazy to see him. I'd tell him the
news and see if he couldn't bribe a guard, or plan some scheme
with me to get out soon.
Afraid--me? What of? If they found me under that box I'd just
give 'em the Beryl story about the bet. How do you know they
wouldn't believe it? . . . Oh, I don't care, you've got to take
chances, Mag Monahan, if you go in for big things. And this was
big--huge. Do you know how much that diamond's worth? And do you
know how to spend fifty thousand?
I spent it all there--in the box--every penny of it. When I got
tired spending money I dozed a bit and, in my dream, spent it
over again. And then I waked and tried to fancy new ways of
getting rid of it, but my head ached, and my back ached, and my
whole body was so strained and cramped that I was on the point of
giving it all up when--that blessed old Topham came in.
He set the big box down with a bang that nearly cracked my head.
He turned on the lights, and stood whistling Tommy Atkins. And
then suddenly there came a soft call, "Topham! Topham!"
I leaned back and bit my fingers till I knew I wouldn't shriek.
The Englishman listened a minute. Then the call came again, and
Topham creaked to the door and out.
In a twinkling I was out, too, you bet.
Mag! He hadn't opened the box at all! There it stood in the
middle of the space framed by the three glasses. I pulled at the
lid. Locked! I could have screamed with rage. But the sound of
his step outside the door sobered me. He was coming back. In a
frantic hurry I turned toward the window which I had unlocked
when I came in four hours ago. But I hadn't time to make it.
I heard the old fellow's hand on the door, and I tumbled back into
the box in such a rush that the curtains were still waving when
he came in.
that act. Then if you come to me at the office in the morning at
ten, I'll give you a chance as one of the Charity girls. Do you
want it?"
God, Mag! Do I want it!
V.
Do you remember Lady Patronesses' Day at the Cruelty, Mag?
Remember how the place smelt of cleaning ammonia on the bare
floors? Remember the black dresses we all wore, and the white
aprons with the little bibs, and the oily sweetness of the
matron, and how our faces shone and tingled from the soap and the
rubbing? Remember it all?
Well, who'd 'a' thought then that Nance Olden ever would make use
of it--on the level, too!
Drop the Cruelty, and tell you about the stage? Why, it's bare
boards back there, bare as the Cruelty, but oh, there's something
that you don't see, but you feel it--something magic that makes
you want to pinch yourself to be sure you're awake. I go round
there just doped with it; my face, if you could see it, must look
like Molly's kid's when she is telling him fairy stories.
I love it, Mag! I love it!
And what do I do? That's what I was trying to tell you about the
Cruelty for. It's in a little act that was made for Lady Gray,
that there are four Charity girls on the stage, and I'm one of
'em.
Lady Gray? Why, Mag, how can you ever hope to get on if you don't
know who's who? How can you expect me to associate with you if
you're so ignorant? Yes--a real Lady, as real as the wife of a
Lord can be. Lord Harold Gray's a sure enough Lord, and she's his
wife but--but a chippy, just the same; that's what she is, in
spite of the Gray emeralds and that great Gray rose diamond she
wears on the tiniest chain around her scraggy neck. Do you know,
Mag Monahan, that this Lady Harold Gray was just a chorus
girl--and a sweet chorus it must have been if she sang
there!--when she nabbed Lord Harold?
You'd better keep your eye on Nancy Olden, or first thing you
know she'll marry the Czar of Russia--or Tom Dorgan, poor fellow,
when he gets out! . . . Well, just the same, Mag, if that
white-faced, scrawny little creature can be a Lady, a girl with
ten times her brains, and at least half a dozen times her good
looks--oh, we're not shy on the stage, Mag, about throwing
bouquets at ourselves!
Can she act? Don't be silly, Mag! Can't you see that Obermuller's
just hiring her title and playing it in big letters on the bills
for all it's worth? She acts the Lady Patroness, come to look at
us Charity girls. She comes on, though, looking like a fairy
princess. Her dress is just blazing with diamonds. There's the
Lady's coronet in her hair. Her thin little arms are banded with
gold and diamonds, and on her neck--O Mag, Mag, that rose diamond
is the color of rose-leaves in a fountain's jet through which the
sun is shining. It's long--long as my thumb--I swear it is,
Mag--nearly, and it blazes, oh, it blazes--
Well, it blazes dollars into Obermuller's box all right, for the
Gray jewels are advertised in the bill with this one at the head
of the list, the star of them all.
You see it's this way: Lord Harold Gray's bankrupt. He's poor
as--as Nance Olden. Isn't that funny? But he's got the family
jewels all right, to have as long as he lives. Nary a one can he
sell, though, for after his death, they go to the next Lord Gray.
So he makes 'em make a living for him, and as they can't go on
and exhibit themselves, Lady Gray sports 'em--and draws down two
hundred dollars a week.
Yep--two hundred.
But do you know it isn't the two hundred dollars a week that
makes me envy her till I'm sick; it's that rose diamond. If you
could only see it, Mag, you'd sympathize with me, and understand
why my fingers just itched for it the first night I saw her come
on.
'Pon my soul, Mag, the sight of it blazing on her neck dazzled me
so that it shut out all the staring audience that first night,
and I even forgot to have stage fright.
"What's doped you, Olden?" Obermuller asked when the curtain
went down, and we all hurried to the wings.
I was in the black dress with the white-bibbed apron, and I
looked up at him still dazed by the shine of that diamond and my
longing for it. You'd almost kill with your own hands for a
diamond like that, Mag!
"Doped? Why--what didn't I do?" I asked him.
"That's just it," he said, looking at me curiously; but I could
feel his disappointment in me.
"You didn't do anything--not a blasted thing more than you were
told to do. The world's full of supers that can do that."
For just a minute I forgot the diamond.
"Then--it's a mistake? You were wrong and--and I can't be an
actress?"
He threw back his head before he answered, puffing a mouthful of
smoke up at the ceiling, as he did the night he caught me. The
gesture itself seemed to remind him of what had made him think in
the first place he could make an actress of me. For he laughed
down at me, and I saw he remembered.
"Well," he said, "we'll wait and see. . . I was mistaken,
though, sure enough, about one thing that night."
I looked up at him.
"You're a darn sight prettier than I thought you were. The gold
brick you sold me isn't all--"
He put out his hand to touch my chin. I side-stepped, and he
turned laughing to the stage.
But he called after me.
"Is a beauty success going to content you, Olden?"
"Well, we'll wait and see," I drawled back at him in his own
throaty bass.
Oh, I was drunk, Mag, drunk with thinking about that diamond!
I didn't care even to please Obermuller. I just wanted the feel of
that diamond in my hand. I wanted it lying on my own neck--the
lovely, cool, shining, rosy thing. It's like the sunrise, Mag,
that beauty stone. It's just a tiny pool of water blushing.
It's--
How to get it! How to get away with it! On what we'd get for that
diamond, Tom and I--when his time is up--could live for all our
lives and whoop it up besides. We could live in Paris, where
great grafters live and grafting pays--where, if you've got wit
and fifty thousand dollars, and happen to be a "darn sight
prettier," you can just spin the world around your little
finger!
But, do you know, even then I couldn't bear to think of selling
the pretty thing? It hurt me to think of anybody having it but
just Nance Olden.
But I hadn't got it yet.
Gray has a dressing-room to herself. And on her table--which is a
big box, open end down--just where the three-sided big mirror can
multiply the jewels and make you want 'em three times as bad, her
big russia-leather, silver-mounted box lies open, while she's
dressing and undressing. Other times it's locked tight, and his
Lordship himself has it tight in his own right hand, or his
Lordship's man, Topham, has it just as tight.
How to get that diamond! There was a hard nut for Nance Olden's
sharp teeth to crack. I only wanted that--never say I'm greedy,
Mag--Gray could keep all the rest of the things--the pigeon in
rubies and pearls, the tiara all in diamonds, the chain of
pearls, and the blazing rings, and the waist-trimming all of
emeralds and diamond stars. But that diamond, that huge rose
diamond, I couldn't, I just couldn't let her have it.
And yet I didn't know the first step to take toward getting it,
till Beryl Blackburn helped me out. She's one of the Charities,
like me--a tall bleached blonde with a pretty, pale face and
gold-gray eyes. And, if you'd believe her, there's not a man in
the audience, afternoon or evening, that isn't dead-gone on her.
"Guess who's my latest," she said to me this afternoon, while
we four Charities stood in the wings waiting. "Topham--old
Topham!"
It all got clear to me then in a minute.
"Topham--nothing!" I sneered. "Beryl Big-head, Topham thinks
of only one thing--Milady's jewel-box. Don't you fool yourself."
"Oh, does he, Miss! Well, just to prove it, he let me try on the
rose diamond last night. There!"
"It's easy to say so but I don't see the proof. He'd lose his
job so quick it'd make his head spin if he did it."
"Not if he did, but if they knew he did. You'll not tell?"
"Not me. Why would I? I don't believe it, and I wouldn't expect
anybody else to. I don't believe you could get Topham to budge
from his chair in Gray's dressing-room if you'd--"
"What'll you bet?"
"I'll bet you the biggest box of chocolate creams at Huyler's."
"Done! I'll send for him to-night, just before Gray and her Lord
come, and you see--"
"How'll I see? Where'll I be?"
"Well, you be waiting in the little hall, right of Gray's
dressing-room at seven-thirty to-night and--you might as well
bring the creams with you."
Catch on, Mag? At seven-thirty in the evening I was waiting; but
not in the little hall of Gray's dressing-room. I hadn't gone
home at all after the afternoon performance--you know we play at
three, and again at eight-thirty. I had just hidden me away till
the rest were gone, and as soon as the coast was clear I got into
Gray's dressing-room, pushed aside the chintz curtains of the big
box that makes her dressing-table--and waited.
Lord, how the hours dragged! I hadn't had anything to eat since
lunch, and it got darker and darker in there, and hot and close
and cramped. I put in the time, much as I could, thinking of Tom.
The very first thing I'd do after cashing in, would be to get up
to Sing Sing to see him. I'm crazy to see him. I'd tell him the
news and see if he couldn't bribe a guard, or plan some scheme
with me to get out soon.
Afraid--me? What of? If they found me under that box I'd just
give 'em the Beryl story about the bet. How do you know they
wouldn't believe it? . . . Oh, I don't care, you've got to take
chances, Mag Monahan, if you go in for big things. And this was
big--huge. Do you know how much that diamond's worth? And do you
know how to spend fifty thousand?
I spent it all there--in the box--every penny of it. When I got
tired spending money I dozed a bit and, in my dream, spent it
over again. And then I waked and tried to fancy new ways of
getting rid of it, but my head ached, and my back ached, and my
whole body was so strained and cramped that I was on the point of
giving it all up when--that blessed old Topham came in.
He set the big box down with a bang that nearly cracked my head.
He turned on the lights, and stood whistling Tommy Atkins. And
then suddenly there came a soft call, "Topham! Topham!"
I leaned back and bit my fingers till I knew I wouldn't shriek.
The Englishman listened a minute. Then the call came again, and
Topham creaked to the door and out.
In a twinkling I was out, too, you bet.
Mag! He hadn't opened the box at all! There it stood in the
middle of the space framed by the three glasses. I pulled at the
lid. Locked! I could have screamed with rage. But the sound of
his step outside the door sobered me. He was coming back. In a
frantic hurry I turned toward the window which I had unlocked
when I came in four hours ago. But I hadn't time to make it.
I heard the old fellow's hand on the door, and I tumbled back into
the box in such a rush that the curtains were still waving when
he came in.
- associate [ə´səuʃieit]
v.联合a.同伴的n.伙伴 (初中英语单词) - ignorant [´ignərənt] a.无知的，愚昧的 (初中英语单词)
- chorus [´kɔ:rəs] n.合唱；齐声 v.合唱 (初中英语单词)
- exhibit [ig´zibit] vt.展出 n.展览品 (初中英语单词)
- audience [´ɔ:diəns] n.听众；观众；接见 (初中英语单词)
- curiously [´kjuəriəsli] ad.好奇地；稀奇古怪地 (初中英语单词)
- disappointment [,disə´pɔintmənt] n.失望；挫折 (初中英语单词)
- remind [ri´maind] vt.提醒；使记(想)起 (初中英语单词)
- pigeon [pidʒin] n.鸽子 (初中英语单词)
- waiting [´weitiŋ] n.等候；伺候 (初中英语单词)
- hidden [´hid(ə)n] hide 的过去分词 (初中英语单词)
- charity [´tʃæriti] n.施舍；慈悲；博爱 (高中英语单词)
- cruelty [´kru:əlti] n.残忍；残酷行为 (高中英语单词)
- sweetness [´swi:tnis] n.甜蜜；芳香；亲切 (高中英语单词)
- hurried [´hʌrid] a.仓促的，慌忙的 (高中英语单词)
- actress [´æktris] n.女演员 (高中英语单词)
- sunrise [´sʌnraiz] n.日出，黎明 (高中英语单词)
- ammonia [ə´məuniə] n.阿摩尼亚；氨 (英语四级单词)
- trying [´traiiŋ] a.难堪的；费劲的 (英语四级单词)
- bankrupt [´bæŋkrʌpt] n.破产者 a.破产了的 (英语四级单词)
- mouthful [´mauθful] n.一口；少量 (英语四级单词)
- blessed [´blesid] a.享福的；神圣的 (英语四级单词)
- coronet [´kɔrənit] n.(王子戴的)冠；花冠 (英语六级单词)
- chintz [tʃints] n.&a.擦光印花布(的) (英语六级单词)
- cracked [krækt] a.有裂缝的；碎的；粗哑 (英语六级单词)
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