章节正文
Slowly he began to place the jewels, one by one, in the order her
Ladyship puts them on. We Charity girls had often watched him
from the door--he never let one of us put a foot inside. He was
method and order itself. He never changed the order in which he
lifted the glittering things out, nor the places he put them back
in. I put my hand up against the top of the box, tracing the spot
where each piece would be lying. Think, Mag, just half an inch
between me and quarter of a million!
Oh, I was sore as I lay there! And I wasn't so cock-sure either
that I'd get out of it straight. I tried the Beryl story lots of
ways on myself, but somehow, every time I fancied myself telling
it to Obermuller, it got tangled up and lay dumb and heavy inside
of me.
But at least it would be better to appear of my own will before
the old Englishman than be discovered by Lord Gray and his Lady.
I had my fingers on the curtains, and in another second I'd been
out when--
"Miss Beryl Blackburn's compliments, Mr. Topham, and would you
step to the door, as there's something most important she wants
to tell you."
Oh, I loved every syllable that call-boy spoke! There was a
giggle behind his voice, too; old Topham was the butt of every
joke. The first call, which had fooled me, must have been from
some giddy girl who wanted to guy the old fellow. She had fooled
me all right. But this--this one was the real article.
There was a pause--Topham must be looking about to be sure things
were safe. Then he creaked to the door and shut it carefully
behind him.
It only took a minute, but in that minute--in that minute, Mag, I
had the rose diamond clutched safe in my fingers; I was on the
top of the big trunk and out of the window.
Oh, the feel of that beautiful thing in my hand! I'd 'a' loved it
if it hadn't been worth a penny, but as it was I adored it.
I slipped the chain under my collar, and the diamond slid down my
neck, and I felt its kiss on my skin. I flew down the black
corridor, bumping into scenery and nearly tripping two stage
carpenters. I heard Ginger, the call-boy, ahead of me and dodged
behind some properties just in time. He went whistling past and I
got to the stage door.
I pulled it open tenderly, cautiously, and turned to shut it
after me.
And--
And something held it open in spite of me.
No--no, Mag, it wasn't a man. It was a memory. It rose up there
and hit me right over the heart--the memory of Nancy Olden's
happiness the first time she'd come in this very door, feeling
that she actually had a right to use a stage: entrance, feeling
that she belonged, she--Nancy--to this wonderland of the stage!
You must never tell Tom, Mag, promise! He wouldn't see. He
couldn't understand. I couldn't make him know what I felt any
more than I'd dare tell him what I did.
I shut the door.
But not behind me. I shut it on the street and--Mag, I shut for
ever another door, too; the old door that opens out on Crooked
Street. With my hand on my heart, that was beating as though it
would burst, I flew back again through the black corridor,
through the wings and out to Obermuller's office. With both my
hands I ripped open the neck of my dress, and, pulling the chain
with that great diamond hanging to it, I broke it with a tug, and
threw the whole thing down on the desk in front of him.
"For God's sake!" I yelled. "Don't make it so easy for me to
steal!"
I don't know what happened for a minute. I could see his face
change half a dozen ways in as many seconds. He took it up in his
fingers at last. It swung there at the end of the slender little
broken chain like a great drop of shining water, blushing and
sparkling and trembling.
His hands trembled, too, and he looked up at last from the
diamond to my face.
"It's worth at least fifty thousand, you know--valued at that."
I didn't answer.
He got up and came over to where I had thrown myself on a bench.
"What's the matter, Olden? Don't I pay you enough?"
"I want to see Tom," I begged. "It's so long since he--He's up
at--at--in the country."
"Sing Sing?"
I nodded.
"You poor little devil!"
That finished me. I'm not used to being pitied. I sobbed and
sobbed as though some dam had broken inside of me. You see, Mag,
I knew in that minute that I'd been afraid, deathly afraid of
Fred Obermuller's face, when it's scornful and sarcastic, and of
his voice, when it cuts the flesh of self-conceit off your very
bones. And the contrast--well, it was too much for me.
But something came quick to sober me.
It was Gray. She stormed in, followed by Lord Harold and Topham,
and half the company.
"The diamond, the rose diamond!" she shrieked. "It's gone! And
the carpenters say that new girl Olden came flying from the
direction of my dressing-room. I'll hold you responsible--"
"Hush-sh!" Obermuller lifted his hands and nodded over toward me.
"Olden!" she squealed. "Grab her, Topham. I'll bet she stole
that diamond, and she can't have got rid of it yet."
Topham jumped toward me, but Obermuller stopped him.
"You'd win only half your bet, my Lady," Obermuller said
softly. "She did get hold of the Gray rose, worth fifty thousand
dollars, in spite of all your precautions--"
The world seemed to fall away from me. I looked up at him.
I couldn't believe he'd go back on me.
"--And she brought it straight to me, as I had asked her to, and
promised to raise her salary if she'd win out. For I knew that
unless I proved to you it could be stolen, you'd never agree to
hire a detective to watch those things, which will get us all
into trouble some day. Here! Scoot out o' this. It's nearly time
for your number."
He passed the diamond over to her, and they all left the office.
So did I; but he held out his hand as I passed. "It goes--that
about a raise for you, Olden. Now earn it."
Isn't he white, Mag--white clean through, that big fellow
Obermuller?
VI.
I got into the train, Mag, the happiest girl in all the country.
I'd a big basket of things for Tom. I was got up in my Sunday
best, for I wanted to make a hit with some fellow with a key up
there, who'd make things soft and easy for my Tommy.
I had so much to tell him. I knew just how I'd take off every
member of the company to amuse him. I had memorized every joke
I'd heard since I'd got behind the curtain--not very hard for me;
things always had a way of sticking in my mind. I knew the newest
songs in town, and the choruses of all the old ones. I could show
him the latest tricks with cards--I'd got those at first hand
from Professor Haughwout. You know how great Tom is on tricks.
I could explain the disappearing woman mystery, and the mirror
cabinet. I knew the clog dance that Dewitt and Daniels do. I had
pictures of the trained seals, the great elephant act,
Mademoiselle Picotte doing her great tight-rope dance, and the
Brothers Borodini in their pyramid tumbling.
Yes, it was a whole vaudeville show, with refreshments between
the acts, that I was taking up to Tom Dorgan. I don't care much
for a lot of that truck--funny, isn't it, how you get to turn up
your nose at the things you'd have given a finger for once upon a
time? But Tom--oh, I'd got everything pat for him--my big,
handsome Tom Dorgan in stripes--with his curls all shaved
off--ugh!
I'd got just so far in my thoughts, sitting there in the train,
when I gave a shiver. I thought for a minute it was at the idea
of my Tom with one of those bare, round convict-heads on him,
that look like fat skeleton faces. But it wasn't. It was--
Guess, Mag.
Moriway.
Both of us thought the same thing of each other for the first
second that our eyes met. I could see that. He thought I was
caught at last. And I thought he'd been sharp once too often.
And, Mag, it would be hard to say which of us would have been
happier if it had been the truth. Oh, to meet Moriway, bound sure
enough for Sing Sing!
He got up and came over to me, smiling wickedly. Se took the seat
behind me, and leaning forward, said softly:
"Is Miss Omar engaged to read to some invalid up at Sing Sing?
And for how long a term--I should say, engagement?"
I'd got through shivering by then. I was ready for him. I turned
and looked at him in that very polite, distant sort o' way Gray
uses in her act when the Charity superintendent speaks to her.
It's the only decent thing she does; chances are that that's how
Lord Gray's mother looks at her.
"You know my sister, Mr.--Mr.--" I asked humbly.
He looked at me, perplexed for just a second.
"Sister be hanged!" he said at last. "I know you, Nat, and I'm
glad to my finger-tips that you've got it in the neck, in spite
of all your smartness."
"You're altogether wrong, sir," I said very stately, but hurt a
bit, you know. "I've often been taken for my sister, but
gentlemen usually apologize when I explain to them. It's hard
enough to have a sister who--" I looked up at him tearfully,
with my chin a-wabble with sorrow.
He grinned.
"Liars should have good memories," he sneered. "Miss Omar said
she was an orphan, you remember, and had not a relative in the
world."
"Did she say that? Did Nora say that?" I exclaimed piteously.
"Oh, what a little liar she is! I suppose she thought it made
her more interesting to be so alone, more appealing to
kind-hearted gentlemen like yourself. I hope she wasn't
ungrateful to you, too, as she was to that kind Mr. Latimer,
before he found her out. And she had such a good position there,
too!"
I wanted to look at him, oh, I wanted to! But it was my role to
sit there with downcast eyes, just--the picture of holy grief.
I was the good one--the good, shocked sister, and though I wasn't a
bit afraid of anything he could do to me, or any game he could
put up, I yearned to make him believe me--just because he was so
suspicious, so wickedly smart, so sure he was on.
But his very silence sort of told me he almost believed, or that
he was laying a trap.
"Will you tell me," he said, "how you--your sister got Latimer
to lie for her?"
"Mr. Latimer--lie! Oh, you don't know him. He expected a lady to
read to him that very evening. He had never seen her, and when
Nora walked into the garden--"
"After getting a skirt somewhere."
"Yes--the housekeeper's, it happened to be her evening out--why,
he just naturally supposed Nora was Miss Omar."
"Ah! then her name isn't Omar. What might it be?"
"I'd rather not tell--if you don't mind."
"But when Latimer found out she had the diamonds--he did find
out?"
"She confessed to him. Nora's not really so bad a girl as--"
"Very interesting! But it doesn't happen to be Latimer's
version. And you say Latimer wouldn't lie."
I got pale--but the paleness was on the inside of me. Think I was
going to flinch before a chump like Moriway, even if I had walked
Ladyship puts them on. We Charity girls had often watched him
from the door--he never let one of us put a foot inside. He was
method and order itself. He never changed the order in which he
lifted the glittering things out, nor the places he put them back
in. I put my hand up against the top of the box, tracing the spot
where each piece would be lying. Think, Mag, just half an inch
between me and quarter of a million!
Oh, I was sore as I lay there! And I wasn't so cock-sure either
that I'd get out of it straight. I tried the Beryl story lots of
ways on myself, but somehow, every time I fancied myself telling
it to Obermuller, it got tangled up and lay dumb and heavy inside
of me.
But at least it would be better to appear of my own will before
the old Englishman than be discovered by Lord Gray and his Lady.
I had my fingers on the curtains, and in another second I'd been
out when--
"Miss Beryl Blackburn's compliments, Mr. Topham, and would you
step to the door, as there's something most important she wants
to tell you."
Oh, I loved every syllable that call-boy spoke! There was a
giggle behind his voice, too; old Topham was the butt of every
joke. The first call, which had fooled me, must have been from
some giddy girl who wanted to guy the old fellow. She had fooled
me all right. But this--this one was the real article.
There was a pause--Topham must be looking about to be sure things
were safe. Then he creaked to the door and shut it carefully
behind him.
It only took a minute, but in that minute--in that minute, Mag, I
had the rose diamond clutched safe in my fingers; I was on the
top of the big trunk and out of the window.
Oh, the feel of that beautiful thing in my hand! I'd 'a' loved it
if it hadn't been worth a penny, but as it was I adored it.
I slipped the chain under my collar, and the diamond slid down my
neck, and I felt its kiss on my skin. I flew down the black
corridor, bumping into scenery and nearly tripping two stage
carpenters. I heard Ginger, the call-boy, ahead of me and dodged
behind some properties just in time. He went whistling past and I
got to the stage door.
I pulled it open tenderly, cautiously, and turned to shut it
after me.
And--
And something held it open in spite of me.
No--no, Mag, it wasn't a man. It was a memory. It rose up there
and hit me right over the heart--the memory of Nancy Olden's
happiness the first time she'd come in this very door, feeling
that she actually had a right to use a stage: entrance, feeling
that she belonged, she--Nancy--to this wonderland of the stage!
You must never tell Tom, Mag, promise! He wouldn't see. He
couldn't understand. I couldn't make him know what I felt any
more than I'd dare tell him what I did.
I shut the door.
But not behind me. I shut it on the street and--Mag, I shut for
ever another door, too; the old door that opens out on Crooked
Street. With my hand on my heart, that was beating as though it
would burst, I flew back again through the black corridor,
through the wings and out to Obermuller's office. With both my
hands I ripped open the neck of my dress, and, pulling the chain
with that great diamond hanging to it, I broke it with a tug, and
threw the whole thing down on the desk in front of him.
"For God's sake!" I yelled. "Don't make it so easy for me to
steal!"
I don't know what happened for a minute. I could see his face
change half a dozen ways in as many seconds. He took it up in his
fingers at last. It swung there at the end of the slender little
broken chain like a great drop of shining water, blushing and
sparkling and trembling.
His hands trembled, too, and he looked up at last from the
diamond to my face.
"It's worth at least fifty thousand, you know--valued at that."
I didn't answer.
He got up and came over to where I had thrown myself on a bench.
"What's the matter, Olden? Don't I pay you enough?"
"I want to see Tom," I begged. "It's so long since he--He's up
at--at--in the country."
"Sing Sing?"
I nodded.
"You poor little devil!"
That finished me. I'm not used to being pitied. I sobbed and
sobbed as though some dam had broken inside of me. You see, Mag,
I knew in that minute that I'd been afraid, deathly afraid of
Fred Obermuller's face, when it's scornful and sarcastic, and of
his voice, when it cuts the flesh of self-conceit off your very
bones. And the contrast--well, it was too much for me.
But something came quick to sober me.
It was Gray. She stormed in, followed by Lord Harold and Topham,
and half the company.
"The diamond, the rose diamond!" she shrieked. "It's gone! And
the carpenters say that new girl Olden came flying from the
direction of my dressing-room. I'll hold you responsible--"
"Hush-sh!" Obermuller lifted his hands and nodded over toward me.
"Olden!" she squealed. "Grab her, Topham. I'll bet she stole
that diamond, and she can't have got rid of it yet."
Topham jumped toward me, but Obermuller stopped him.
"You'd win only half your bet, my Lady," Obermuller said
softly. "She did get hold of the Gray rose, worth fifty thousand
dollars, in spite of all your precautions--"
The world seemed to fall away from me. I looked up at him.
I couldn't believe he'd go back on me.
"--And she brought it straight to me, as I had asked her to, and
promised to raise her salary if she'd win out. For I knew that
unless I proved to you it could be stolen, you'd never agree to
hire a detective to watch those things, which will get us all
into trouble some day. Here! Scoot out o' this. It's nearly time
for your number."
He passed the diamond over to her, and they all left the office.
So did I; but he held out his hand as I passed. "It goes--that
about a raise for you, Olden. Now earn it."
Isn't he white, Mag--white clean through, that big fellow
Obermuller?
VI.
I got into the train, Mag, the happiest girl in all the country.
I'd a big basket of things for Tom. I was got up in my Sunday
best, for I wanted to make a hit with some fellow with a key up
there, who'd make things soft and easy for my Tommy.
I had so much to tell him. I knew just how I'd take off every
member of the company to amuse him. I had memorized every joke
I'd heard since I'd got behind the curtain--not very hard for me;
things always had a way of sticking in my mind. I knew the newest
songs in town, and the choruses of all the old ones. I could show
him the latest tricks with cards--I'd got those at first hand
from Professor Haughwout. You know how great Tom is on tricks.
I could explain the disappearing woman mystery, and the mirror
cabinet. I knew the clog dance that Dewitt and Daniels do. I had
pictures of the trained seals, the great elephant act,
Mademoiselle Picotte doing her great tight-rope dance, and the
Brothers Borodini in their pyramid tumbling.
Yes, it was a whole vaudeville show, with refreshments between
the acts, that I was taking up to Tom Dorgan. I don't care much
for a lot of that truck--funny, isn't it, how you get to turn up
your nose at the things you'd have given a finger for once upon a
time? But Tom--oh, I'd got everything pat for him--my big,
handsome Tom Dorgan in stripes--with his curls all shaved
off--ugh!
I'd got just so far in my thoughts, sitting there in the train,
when I gave a shiver. I thought for a minute it was at the idea
of my Tom with one of those bare, round convict-heads on him,
that look like fat skeleton faces. But it wasn't. It was--
Guess, Mag.
Moriway.
Both of us thought the same thing of each other for the first
second that our eyes met. I could see that. He thought I was
caught at last. And I thought he'd been sharp once too often.
And, Mag, it would be hard to say which of us would have been
happier if it had been the truth. Oh, to meet Moriway, bound sure
enough for Sing Sing!
He got up and came over to me, smiling wickedly. Se took the seat
behind me, and leaning forward, said softly:
"Is Miss Omar engaged to read to some invalid up at Sing Sing?
And for how long a term--I should say, engagement?"
I'd got through shivering by then. I was ready for him. I turned
and looked at him in that very polite, distant sort o' way Gray
uses in her act when the Charity superintendent speaks to her.
It's the only decent thing she does; chances are that that's how
Lord Gray's mother looks at her.
"You know my sister, Mr.--Mr.--" I asked humbly.
He looked at me, perplexed for just a second.
"Sister be hanged!" he said at last. "I know you, Nat, and I'm
glad to my finger-tips that you've got it in the neck, in spite
of all your smartness."
"You're altogether wrong, sir," I said very stately, but hurt a
bit, you know. "I've often been taken for my sister, but
gentlemen usually apologize when I explain to them. It's hard
enough to have a sister who--" I looked up at him tearfully,
with my chin a-wabble with sorrow.
He grinned.
"Liars should have good memories," he sneered. "Miss Omar said
she was an orphan, you remember, and had not a relative in the
world."
"Did she say that? Did Nora say that?" I exclaimed piteously.
"Oh, what a little liar she is! I suppose she thought it made
her more interesting to be so alone, more appealing to
kind-hearted gentlemen like yourself. I hope she wasn't
ungrateful to you, too, as she was to that kind Mr. Latimer,
before he found her out. And she had such a good position there,
too!"
I wanted to look at him, oh, I wanted to! But it was my role to
sit there with downcast eyes, just--the picture of holy grief.
I was the good one--the good, shocked sister, and though I wasn't a
bit afraid of anything he could do to me, or any game he could
put up, I yearned to make him believe me--just because he was so
suspicious, so wickedly smart, so sure he was on.
But his very silence sort of told me he almost believed, or that
he was laying a trap.
"Will you tell me," he said, "how you--your sister got Latimer
to lie for her?"
"Mr. Latimer--lie! Oh, you don't know him. He expected a lady to
read to him that very evening. He had never seen her, and when
Nora walked into the garden--"
"After getting a skirt somewhere."
"Yes--the housekeeper's, it happened to be her evening out--why,
he just naturally supposed Nora was Miss Omar."
"Ah! then her name isn't Omar. What might it be?"
"I'd rather not tell--if you don't mind."
"But when Latimer found out she had the diamonds--he did find
out?"
"She confessed to him. Nora's not really so bad a girl as--"
"Very interesting! But it doesn't happen to be Latimer's
version. And you say Latimer wouldn't lie."
I got pale--but the paleness was on the inside of me. Think I was
going to flinch before a chump like Moriway, even if I had walked
- collar [´kɔlə]
n.衣领；(狗等的)项圈 (初中英语单词) - actually [´æktʃuəli] ad.事实上；实际上 (初中英语单词)
- slender [´slendə] a.细长的；微薄的 (初中英语单词)
- stolen [´stəulən] steal 的过去分词 (初中英语单词)
- detective [di´tektiv] n.侦探 a.侦探的 (初中英语单词)
- mystery [´mistəri] n.神秘；秘密；故弄玄虚 (初中英语单词)
- elephant [´elifənt] n.象 (初中英语单词)
- shiver [´ʃivə] v.&n.(使)颤抖；碎片 (初中英语单词)
- polite [pə´lait] a.有礼貌的；温和的 (初中英语单词)
- altogether [,ɔ:ltə´geðə] ad.完全；总而言之 (初中英语单词)
- relative [´relətiv] a.有关系的 n.亲属 (初中英语单词)
- supposed [sə´pəuzd] a.想象的；假定的 (初中英语单词)
- charity [´tʃæriti] n.施舍；慈悲；博爱 (高中英语单词)
- syllable [´siləbəl] n.音节；只言片语 (高中英语单词)
- scenery [´si:nəri] n.舞台布景 (高中英语单词)
- ginger [´dʒindʒə] n.姜；精神，元气 (高中英语单词)
- tenderly [´tendəli] ad.娇嫩地；柔和地 (高中英语单词)
- cautiously [´kɔ:ʃəsli] ad.小心地；谨慎地 (高中英语单词)
- hanging [´hæŋiŋ] n.绞刑 a.悬挂着的 (高中英语单词)
- skeleton [´skelitən] n.骨骼；骷髅 (高中英语单词)
- superintendent [,su:pərin´tendənt, ,sju:-] n.管理人，负责人 (高中英语单词)
- decent [´di:sənt] a.体面的，正派的 (高中英语单词)
- stately [´steitli] a.庄严的，雄伟的 (高中英语单词)
- orphan [´ɔ:fən] n.&a.孤儿 vt.使成孤儿 (高中英语单词)
- invalid [in´vælid] n.病人 a.无效的 (英语四级单词)
- beating [´bi:tiŋ] n.敲；搅打；失败 (英语六级单词)
- scornful [´skɔ:nful] a.轻蔑的，藐视的 (英语六级单词)
- vaudeville [´vɔ:dəvil] n.滑稽通俗喜剧；杂耍 (英语六级单词)
- taking [´teikiŋ] a.迷人的 n.捕获物 (英语六级单词)
- downcast [´daunkɑ:st] a.沮丧的；向下看的 (英语六级单词)
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