章节正文
dollars what I'd do for Tom. And then he sets his price a notch
higher than that.
When I passed 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 passed 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
passion 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--"
The tender conscience of the dear, blameless little soul! She was
actually giving herself away. Worse--she was giving me away, too.
But I couldn't stand that. I saw the saleswoman's puzzled
face--she was a tall woman with a big bust, big hips and the big
head all right, and she wore her long-train black rig for all the
world like a Cruelty girl who had stolen the matron's skirt to
"play lady" in. I got behind little Mrs. Bishop, and looking
out over her head, I tapped my forehead significantly.
The saleswoman tumbled. That was all right. But so did the
Bishop's wife; for she turned and caught me at it.
"You shall not save me from myself and what I deserve," she cried.
"I am perfectly sane and you know it, and you are doing me no favor
in trying to create the contraryimpression. I demand an--"
"An interview with the manager," I interrupted. "I'm sure Mrs.
Van Wagenen can see the manager. Just go with the lady, Mrs. Van
Wagenen, and I'll follow with the goods."
She did it meek as a lamb, talking all the time, but never
beginning at the beginning--luckily for me. So that I had time to
slip from one dressing-room to the next, with the lace up my
sleeve, out to the elevator, and down into the street.
D'ye know what heaven must be, Mag? A place where you always get
away with the swag, and where it's always just the minute after
you've made a killing.
Cocky? Well, I should say I was. I was drunk enough with success
to take big chances. And just while I was wishing for something
really big to tackle, it came along in the shape of that big
floor-walker!
He was without a hat, and his eyes looked fifty ways at once.
But you've got to look fifty-one if you want to catch Nance Olden.
I ran up the stairs of the first flat-house and rang the bell.
And as I sailed up in the elevator I saw the big floor-walker
hurry past; he'd lost the scent.
The boy let me off at the top floor, and after the elevator had
gone down I walked up to the roof. It was fine 'way up there, so
still and high, with the lights coming out down in the town. And
I took out my pretty lace collar and put it around my neck,
wishing I could keep it and wishing that I had, at least, a glass
to see myself in it just once, when my eye caught the window of
the next house.
It would do for a mirror all right, for the dark green shade was
down. But at sight of the shade blowing in the wind I forgot all
about the collar.
It's this way, Mag, when they press you too far; and that little
rat of a lawyer had got me most to the wall. I looked at the
window, measuring the little climb it would be for me to get to
it,--the house next door was just one story higher than the one
where I was, so its top story was on a level with the roof nearly
where I stood. And I made up my--mind to get what would let Tom
off easy, or break into jail myself.
And so I didn't care much what I might fall into through that
window. And perhaps because I didn't care, I slipped into a dark
hall, and not a thing stirred; not a footstep creaked. I felt
like the Princess--Princess Nancy Olden--come to wake the
Sleeping Beauty; some dude it'd be that would have curly hair
like Tom Dorgan's, and would wear clothes like my friend
Latimer's, over in Brooklyn.
Can you see me there, standing on one leg like a stork, ready to
lie or to fly at the first sound?
Well, the first sound didn't come. Neither did the second. In
fact, none of 'em came unless I made 'em myself.
Softly as Molly goes when the baby's just dropped off to sleep, I
walked toward an open door. It was a parlor, smelly with tobacco,
and with lots of papers and books around. And nary a
he-beauty--nor any other kind.
I tried the door of a room next to it. A bedroom. But no Beauty.
Silly! Don't you tumble yet? It was a bachelor's apartment, and
the Bachelor Beauty was out, and Princess Nancy had the place all
to herself.
I suppose I really ought to have left my card--or he wouldn't
know who had waked him--but I hadn't intended to go calling when
I left home. So I thought I'd look for one of his as a
souvenir--and anything else of his I could make use of.
There were shirts I'd liked for Tom, dandy colored ones, and
suits with checks in 'em and without. But I wanted something easy
and small and flat, made of crackly printed yellow or green
paper, with numbers on it.
How did I know he had anything like that? Why, Mag, Mag Monahan,
one would think you belonged to the Bishop's set, you're so
higher than that.
When I passed 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 passed 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
passion 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--"
The tender conscience of the dear, blameless little soul! She was
actually giving herself away. Worse--she was giving me away, too.
But I couldn't stand that. I saw the saleswoman's puzzled
face--she was a tall woman with a big bust, big hips and the big
head all right, and she wore her long-train black rig for all the
world like a Cruelty girl who had stolen the matron's skirt to
"play lady" in. I got behind little Mrs. Bishop, and looking
out over her head, I tapped my forehead significantly.
The saleswoman tumbled. That was all right. But so did the
Bishop's wife; for she turned and caught me at it.
"You shall not save me from myself and what I deserve," she cried.
"I am perfectly sane and you know it, and you are doing me no favor
in trying to create the contraryimpression. I demand an--"
"An interview with the manager," I interrupted. "I'm sure Mrs.
Van Wagenen can see the manager. Just go with the lady, Mrs. Van
Wagenen, and I'll follow with the goods."
She did it meek as a lamb, talking all the time, but never
beginning at the beginning--luckily for me. So that I had time to
slip from one dressing-room to the next, with the lace up my
sleeve, out to the elevator, and down into the street.
D'ye know what heaven must be, Mag? A place where you always get
away with the swag, and where it's always just the minute after
you've made a killing.
Cocky? Well, I should say I was. I was drunk enough with success
to take big chances. And just while I was wishing for something
really big to tackle, it came along in the shape of that big
floor-walker!
He was without a hat, and his eyes looked fifty ways at once.
But you've got to look fifty-one if you want to catch Nance Olden.
I ran up the stairs of the first flat-house and rang the bell.
And as I sailed up in the elevator I saw the big floor-walker
hurry past; he'd lost the scent.
The boy let me off at the top floor, and after the elevator had
gone down I walked up to the roof. It was fine 'way up there, so
still and high, with the lights coming out down in the town. And
I took out my pretty lace collar and put it around my neck,
wishing I could keep it and wishing that I had, at least, a glass
to see myself in it just once, when my eye caught the window of
the next house.
It would do for a mirror all right, for the dark green shade was
down. But at sight of the shade blowing in the wind I forgot all
about the collar.
It's this way, Mag, when they press you too far; and that little
rat of a lawyer had got me most to the wall. I looked at the
window, measuring the little climb it would be for me to get to
it,--the house next door was just one story higher than the one
where I was, so its top story was on a level with the roof nearly
where I stood. And I made up my--mind to get what would let Tom
off easy, or break into jail myself.
And so I didn't care much what I might fall into through that
window. And perhaps because I didn't care, I slipped into a dark
hall, and not a thing stirred; not a footstep creaked. I felt
like the Princess--Princess Nancy Olden--come to wake the
Sleeping Beauty; some dude it'd be that would have curly hair
like Tom Dorgan's, and would wear clothes like my friend
Latimer's, over in Brooklyn.
Can you see me there, standing on one leg like a stork, ready to
lie or to fly at the first sound?
Well, the first sound didn't come. Neither did the second. In
fact, none of 'em came unless I made 'em myself.
Softly as Molly goes when the baby's just dropped off to sleep, I
walked toward an open door. It was a parlor, smelly with tobacco,
and with lots of papers and books around. And nary a
he-beauty--nor any other kind.
I tried the door of a room next to it. A bedroom. But no Beauty.
Silly! Don't you tumble yet? It was a bachelor's apartment, and
the Bachelor Beauty was out, and Princess Nancy had the place all
to herself.
I suppose I really ought to have left my card--or he wouldn't
know who had waked him--but I hadn't intended to go calling when
I left home. So I thought I'd look for one of his as a
souvenir--and anything else of his I could make use of.
There were shirts I'd liked for Tom, dandy colored ones, and
suits with checks in 'em and without. But I wanted something easy
and small and flat, made of crackly printed yellow or green
paper, with numbers on it.
How did I know he had anything like that? Why, Mag, Mag Monahan,
one would think you belonged to the Bishop's set, you're so
- lawyer [´lɔ:jə]
n.律师；法学家 (初中英语单词) - altogether [,ɔ:ltə´geðə] ad.完全；总而言之 (初中英语单词)
- collar [´kɔlə] n.衣领；(狗等的)项圈 (初中英语单词)
- pardon [´pɑ:dən] n.&vt.原谅；饶恕；赦免 (初中英语单词)
- nervous [´nə:vəs] a.神经的；神经过敏的 (初中英语单词)
- detective [di´tektiv] n.侦探 a.侦探的 (初中英语单词)
- acquaintance [ə´kweintəns] n.相识；熟人，相识的人 (初中英语单词)
- bishop [´biʃəp] n.主教 (初中英语单词)
- appreciate [ə´pri:ʃieit] v.评价；珍惜；感激 (初中英语单词)
- whisper [´wispə] v.耳语 n.低语；沙沙声 (初中英语单词)
- discipline [´disiplin] n.纪律；训练 (初中英语单词)
- collection [kə´lekʃən] n.收集；征收；募捐 (初中英语单词)
- submit [səb´mit] vt.使服从；使忍受 (初中英语单词)
- thrust [θrʌst] v.&n.猛推；冲；刺；挤进 (初中英语单词)
- conscience [´kɔnʃəns] n.良心；道德心 (初中英语单词)
- stolen [´stəulən] steal 的过去分词 (初中英语单词)
- forehead [´fɔrid] n.额，前部 (初中英语单词)
- contrary [´kɔntrəri] a.相反的 n.相反 (初中英语单词)
- impression [im´preʃən] n.印刷；印象；效果 (初中英语单词)
- interview [´intəvju:] n.&vt.接见；会见；交谈 (初中英语单词)
- manager [´mænidʒə] n.经理；管理人；干事 (初中英语单词)
- standing [´stændiŋ] n.持续 a.直立的 (初中英语单词)
- parlor [´pɑ:lə] n.客厅；起居室 (初中英语单词)
- apartment [ə´pɑ:tmənt] n.一套房间 (初中英语单词)
- princess [,prin´ses] n.公主；王妃；亲王夫人 (初中英语单词)
- cruelty [´kru:əlti] n.残忍；残酷行为 (高中英语单词)
- counter [´kauntə] n.计算者；柜台；计算机 (高中英语单词)
- agitation [,ædʒi´teiʃən] n.鼓动；摇动；焦虑 (高中英语单词)
- elevator [´eliveitə] n.电梯；升降机 (高中英语单词)
- unconscious [ʌn´kɔnʃəs] a.无意识的；不觉察的 (高中英语单词)
- charity [´tʃæriti] n.施舍；慈悲；博爱 (高中英语单词)
- patiently [´peiʃəntli] ad.有耐心地；坚韧地 (高中英语单词)
- perfectly [´pə:fiktli] ad.理想地；完美地 (高中英语单词)
- tackle [´tækəl] n.用具；装置 vt.处理 (高中英语单词)
- footstep [´futstep] n.足迹，脚步声 (高中英语单词)
- bachelor [´bætʃələ] n.未婚男子；学士 (高中英语单词)
- cobweb [´kɔbweb] n.蜘蛛网；蛛丝 (英语四级单词)
- sinner [´sinə] n.罪人 (英语四级单词)
- trying [´traiiŋ] a.难堪的；费劲的 (英语四级单词)
- graciously [´greiʃəsli] ad.仁慈地，和蔼庄重地 (英语四级单词)
- warning [´wɔ:niŋ] n.警告；前兆 a.预告的 (英语四级单词)
- worldly [´wə:ldli] a.现世的；世俗的 (英语四级单词)
- haughtily [´hɔ:tili] ad.傲慢地，高傲地 (英语六级单词)
- taking [´teikiŋ] a.迷人的 n.捕获物 (英语六级单词)
- cracked [krækt] a.有裂缝的；碎的；粗哑 (英语六级单词)
- blameless [´bleimlis] a.无可责难的 (英语六级单词)
- calling [´kɔ:liŋ] n.点名；职业；欲望 (英语六级单词)
文章标签:名著
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