章节正文
"You'd never know, if you were in the audience, that it wasn't
Gray herself. I can take her off to the life, and if the
prompter'll stand by--"
He looked at me for a full minute.
"Try it, Olden," he said.
I did. I flew to Gray's dressing-room. She'd gone home deathly
ill, of course. They gave me the best seamstress in the place.
She let out the waist a bit and pulled over the lace to cover it.
I got into that mass of silk and lace--oh, silk on silk, and
Nance Olden inside! Beryl Blackburn did my hair, and Grace Weston
put on my slippers. Topham, himself, hung me with those gorgeous
shining diamonds and pearls and emeralds, till I felt like an
idol loaded with booty. There were so many standing round me,
rigging me up, that I didn't get a glimpse of the mirror till the
second before Ginger called me. But in that second--in that
second, Mag Monahan, I saw a fairy with blazing cheeks and
shining eyes, with a diamond coronet in her brown hair, puffed
high, and pearls on her bare neck and arms, and emeralds over the
waist, and rubies and pearls on her fingers, and sprays of
diamonds like frost on the lace of her skirt, and diamond buckles
on her very slippers, and the rose diamond, like a sun,
outshining all the rest; and--and, Mag, it was me!
How did it go? Well, wouldn't it make you think you were a Lady,
sure enough, if you couldn't move without that lace train
billowing after you; without being dazzled with diamond-shine;
without a truly Lord tagging after you?
He kept his head, Lord Harold did--even if it is a mutton-head.
That helped me at first. He was so cold, so stupid, so slow, so
good-tempered--so just himself. And after the first plunge--
I tell you, Mag Monahan, there's one thing that's stronger than
wine to a woman--it's being beautiful. Oh! And I was beautiful.
I knew it before I got that quick hush, with the full applause
after it. And because I was beautiful, I got saucy, and then
calm, and then I caught Fred Obermuller's voice--he had taken the
book from the prompter and stood there himself--and after that it
was easy sailing.
He was there yet when the act was over, and I trailed out,
followed by my Lord. He let the prompt-book fall from his hands
and reached them both out to me.
I flirted my jeweled fan at him and swept him a courtesy.
Cool? No, I wasn't. Not a bit of it. He was daffy with the sight
of me in all that glory, and I knew it.
"Nance," he whispered, "you wonderful girl, if I didn't know
about that little thief up at the Bronsonia I'd--I'd marry you
alive, just for the fun of piling pretty things on you."
"The deuce you would!" I sailed past him, with Topham and my
Lord in my wake.
They didn't leave me till they'd stripped me clean. I felt like a
Christmas tree the day after. But, somehow, I didn't care.
VIII.
Is that you, Mag? Well, it's about time you came home to look
after me. Fine chaperon you make, Miss Monahan! Why, didn't I
tell you the very day we took this flat what a chaperon was, and
that you'd have to be mine? Imagine Nancy Olden without a
chaperon--Shocking!
No, 'tisn't late. Sit down, Maggie, there, and let me get the
stool and talk to you. Think of us two--Cruelty girls, both of
us--two mangy kittens deserted by the old cats in a city's
alleys, and left mewing with cold and hunger and dirt, out in the
wet--think of us two in our own flat, Mag!
I say, it makes me proud of us! There are times when I look at
every stick of furniture we own, and I try to pretend to it all
that I'm used to a decent roof over my head, and a dining-room,
kitchen, parlor, bedroom and bath. Oh, and I forgot the telephone
the other tenant left here till its lease is up. But at other
times I stand here in the middle of it and cry out to it, in my
heart:
"Look at me, Nancy Olden, a householder, a rent-payer, the head
of the family, even if it's only a family of two and the other
one Mag! Look at me, with my name in the directory, a-paying milk
bills and meat bills and bread bills! Look at me with a place of
my own, where nobody's right's greater than my own; where no one
has a right but me and Mag; a place where--where there's nothing
to hide from the police!"
There's the rub, Mag, as Hamlet says--(I went to see it the other
night, so that I could take off the Ophelia--she used to be a
good mimic herself, before she tried to be a leading lady.) It
spoils you, this sense of safeness that goes with the honesty
graft. You lose the quickness of the hunter and the nerve of the
hunted. And--worse--you lose your taste for the old risky life.
You grow proud and fat, and you love every stick in the dear,
quiet little place that's your home--your own home. You love it
so that you'd be ashamed to sneak round where it could see
you--you who'd always walked upright before it with the step of
the mistress; with nothing in the world to be ashamed of; nothing
to prevent your staring each honest dish-pan in the face! 1>
And, Mag, you try--if you're me--to fit Tom Dorgan in here--Tom
Dorgan in stripes and savage sulks still--all these months--kept
away from the world, even the world behind bars! Maggie, don't
you wish Tom was a ventriloquist or--or an acrobat or--but this
isn't what I had to tell you.
Do you know what a society entertainer is, Miss Monahan? No?
Well, look at me. Yes, I'm one. Miss Nance Olden, whose services
are worth fifty dollars a night--at least, they were one night.
Ginger brought me the note that made me a society entertainer. It
was from a Mrs. Paul B. Gates, who had been "charmed by your
clever impersonations, Miss Olden, and write to know if you have
the leisure to entertain some friends at my house on Thursday of
this week."
Had I the leisure--well, rather! I showed the note to Gray, just
to make her jealous. (Oh, yes, she goes on all right in the act
with Lord Harold every night. Catch her letting me wear those
things of hers twice!) Well, she just turned up her nose.
"Of course, you won't accept?" she said.
"Of course, I will."
"Oh! I only thought you'd feel as I should about appearing
before a lot of snobs, who'll treat you like a servant and--"
"Who'll do nothing of the sort and who'll pay you well for it,"
put in Obermuller. He had come up and was reading the note I had
handed to him. "You just say yes, Nance," he went on, after
Gray had bounced of to her dressing-room. "It isn't such a bad
graft and--and this is just between us two, mind--that little
beggar, Tausig, has begun his tricks since you turned his offer
down. They can make things hot for me, and if they do, it won't
be so bad for you to go in for this sort of thing--unless you go
over to the Trust--"
I shook my head.
"Well, this thing will be an ad for you, besides,--if the papers
can be got to notice it. They're coy with their notices, confound
them, since Tausig let them know that big Trust ads don't appear
in the same papers that boom anti-Trust shows!"
"How long are you going to stand it, Mr. O?"
"Just as long as I can't help myself; not a minute longer."
"There ought to be a way--some way--"
"Yes, there ought, but there isn't. They've got things down to a
fine point, and the fellow they don't fear has got to fear them.
. . . I'll put your number early to-night, so that you can get
off by nine. Good luck, Nance."
At nine, then, behold Nancy Olden in her white muslin dress,
long-sleeved and high-necked, and just to her shoe-tops, with a
big white muslin sash around her waist. Oh, she's no baby, is
Nance, but she looks like one in this rig with her short hair--or
rather, like a school-girl; which makes the stunts she does in
mimicking the corkers of the profession all the more surprising.
"We're just a little party," said Mrs. Paul Gates, coming into
the bedroom where I was taking of my wraps. "And I'm so glad you
could come, for my principal guest, Mr. Latimer, is an invalid,
who used to love the theaters, but hasn't been to one since his
attack many years ago. I count on your giving him, in a way, a
condensed history in action of what is going on on the stage."
I told her I would. But I didn't just know what I was saying.
Think of Latimer there, Maggie, and think of our last meeting! It
made me tremble. Not that I fancied for a moment he'd betray me.
The man that helps you twice don't hurt you the third time. No,
it wasn't that; it was only that I longed to do well--well before
him, so that--
And then I found myself in an alcove off the parlors, separated
from them by heavy curtains. It was such a pretty little red
bower. Right behind me was the red of the Turkish drapery of a
cozy corner, and just as I took my place under the great
chandelier, the servants pulled the curtains apart and the lights
went out in the parlors.
In that minute I got it, Mag--yes, stage fright. Got it bad.
I suppose it was coming to me, but Lordy! I hadn't ever known
before what it was. I could see the black of the men's clothes in
the long parlors in front of me, and the white of the women's
necks and arms. There were soft ends of talk trailing after the
first silence, and everything was so strange that I seemed to
hear two men's voices which sounded familiar--Latimer's silken
voice, and another, a heavy, coarse bass, that was the last to be
quieted.
I fancied that when that last voice should stop I could begin,
but all at once my mind seemed to turn a somersault, and, instead
of looking out upon them, I seemed to be looking in on myself--to
see a white-faced little girl in a white dress, standing alone
under a blaze of light in a glare of red, gazing fearfully at
this queer, new audience.
Fail? Me? Not Nancy, Maggie. I just took me by the shoulders.
"Nancy Olden, you little thief!" I cried to me inside of me.
"How dare you! I'd rather you'd steal the silver on this woman's
dressing-table than cheat her out of what she expects and what's
coming to her."
Nance really didn't dare. So she began.
The first one was bad. I gave 'em Duse's Francesca. You've never
heard the wailing music in that woman's voice when she says:
"There is no escape, Smaragdi.
You have said it;
The shadow is a glass to me, and God
Lets me be lost."
I gave them Duse just to show them how swell I was myself; which
shows what a ninny I was. The thing the world loves is the
opposite of what it is. The pat-pat-pat of their gloves came in
to me when I got through. They were too polite to hiss. But it
wasn't necessary. I was hissing myself. Inside of me there was a
long, nasty hiss-ss-ss!
I couldn't bear it. I couldn't bear to be a failure with Latimer
listening, though out there in that queer half-light I couldn't
see him at all, but could only make out the couch where I knew he
must be lying.
I just jumped into something else to retrieve myself. I can do
Carter's Du Barry to the Queen's taste, Maggie. That rotten voice
of hers, like Mother Douty's, but stronger and surer; that rocky
old face pretending to look young and beautiful inside that
talented red hair of hers; that whining "Denny! Denny!" she
squawks out every other minute. Oh, I can do Du Barry all right!
They thought I could, too, those black and white shadows out
there on the other side of the velvet curtains. But I cared less
for what they thought than for the fact that I had drowned that
sputtering hiss-ss-ss inside of me, and that Latimer was among
them.
I gave them Warfield, then; I was always good at taking off the
Gray herself. I can take her off to the life, and if the
prompter'll stand by--"
He looked at me for a full minute.
"Try it, Olden," he said.
I did. I flew to Gray's dressing-room. She'd gone home deathly
ill, of course. They gave me the best seamstress in the place.
She let out the waist a bit and pulled over the lace to cover it.
I got into that mass of silk and lace--oh, silk on silk, and
Nance Olden inside! Beryl Blackburn did my hair, and Grace Weston
put on my slippers. Topham, himself, hung me with those gorgeous
shining diamonds and pearls and emeralds, till I felt like an
idol loaded with booty. There were so many standing round me,
rigging me up, that I didn't get a glimpse of the mirror till the
second before Ginger called me. But in that second--in that
second, Mag Monahan, I saw a fairy with blazing cheeks and
shining eyes, with a diamond coronet in her brown hair, puffed
high, and pearls on her bare neck and arms, and emeralds over the
waist, and rubies and pearls on her fingers, and sprays of
diamonds like frost on the lace of her skirt, and diamond buckles
on her very slippers, and the rose diamond, like a sun,
outshining all the rest; and--and, Mag, it was me!
How did it go? Well, wouldn't it make you think you were a Lady,
sure enough, if you couldn't move without that lace train
billowing after you; without being dazzled with diamond-shine;
without a truly Lord tagging after you?
He kept his head, Lord Harold did--even if it is a mutton-head.
That helped me at first. He was so cold, so stupid, so slow, so
good-tempered--so just himself. And after the first plunge--
I tell you, Mag Monahan, there's one thing that's stronger than
wine to a woman--it's being beautiful. Oh! And I was beautiful.
I knew it before I got that quick hush, with the full applause
after it. And because I was beautiful, I got saucy, and then
calm, and then I caught Fred Obermuller's voice--he had taken the
book from the prompter and stood there himself--and after that it
was easy sailing.
He was there yet when the act was over, and I trailed out,
followed by my Lord. He let the prompt-book fall from his hands
and reached them both out to me.
I flirted my jeweled fan at him and swept him a courtesy.
Cool? No, I wasn't. Not a bit of it. He was daffy with the sight
of me in all that glory, and I knew it.
"Nance," he whispered, "you wonderful girl, if I didn't know
about that little thief up at the Bronsonia I'd--I'd marry you
alive, just for the fun of piling pretty things on you."
"The deuce you would!" I sailed past him, with Topham and my
Lord in my wake.
They didn't leave me till they'd stripped me clean. I felt like a
Christmas tree the day after. But, somehow, I didn't care.
VIII.
Is that you, Mag? Well, it's about time you came home to look
after me. Fine chaperon you make, Miss Monahan! Why, didn't I
tell you the very day we took this flat what a chaperon was, and
that you'd have to be mine? Imagine Nancy Olden without a
chaperon--Shocking!
No, 'tisn't late. Sit down, Maggie, there, and let me get the
stool and talk to you. Think of us two--Cruelty girls, both of
us--two mangy kittens deserted by the old cats in a city's
alleys, and left mewing with cold and hunger and dirt, out in the
wet--think of us two in our own flat, Mag!
I say, it makes me proud of us! There are times when I look at
every stick of furniture we own, and I try to pretend to it all
that I'm used to a decent roof over my head, and a dining-room,
kitchen, parlor, bedroom and bath. Oh, and I forgot the telephone
the other tenant left here till its lease is up. But at other
times I stand here in the middle of it and cry out to it, in my
heart:
"Look at me, Nancy Olden, a householder, a rent-payer, the head
of the family, even if it's only a family of two and the other
one Mag! Look at me, with my name in the directory, a-paying milk
bills and meat bills and bread bills! Look at me with a place of
my own, where nobody's right's greater than my own; where no one
has a right but me and Mag; a place where--where there's nothing
to hide from the police!"
There's the rub, Mag, as Hamlet says--(I went to see it the other
night, so that I could take off the Ophelia--she used to be a
good mimic herself, before she tried to be a leading lady.) It
spoils you, this sense of safeness that goes with the honesty
graft. You lose the quickness of the hunter and the nerve of the
hunted. And--worse--you lose your taste for the old risky life.
You grow proud and fat, and you love every stick in the dear,
quiet little place that's your home--your own home. You love it
so that you'd be ashamed to sneak round where it could see
you--you who'd always walked upright before it with the step of
the mistress; with nothing in the world to be ashamed of; nothing
to prevent your staring each honest dish-pan in the face! 1>
And, Mag, you try--if you're me--to fit Tom Dorgan in here--Tom
Dorgan in stripes and savage sulks still--all these months--kept
away from the world, even the world behind bars! Maggie, don't
you wish Tom was a ventriloquist or--or an acrobat or--but this
isn't what I had to tell you.
Do you know what a society entertainer is, Miss Monahan? No?
Well, look at me. Yes, I'm one. Miss Nance Olden, whose services
are worth fifty dollars a night--at least, they were one night.
Ginger brought me the note that made me a society entertainer. It
was from a Mrs. Paul B. Gates, who had been "charmed by your
clever impersonations, Miss Olden, and write to know if you have
the leisure to entertain some friends at my house on Thursday of
this week."
Had I the leisure--well, rather! I showed the note to Gray, just
to make her jealous. (Oh, yes, she goes on all right in the act
with Lord Harold every night. Catch her letting me wear those
things of hers twice!) Well, she just turned up her nose.
"Of course, you won't accept?" she said.
"Of course, I will."
"Oh! I only thought you'd feel as I should about appearing
before a lot of snobs, who'll treat you like a servant and--"
"Who'll do nothing of the sort and who'll pay you well for it,"
put in Obermuller. He had come up and was reading the note I had
handed to him. "You just say yes, Nance," he went on, after
Gray had bounced of to her dressing-room. "It isn't such a bad
graft and--and this is just between us two, mind--that little
beggar, Tausig, has begun his tricks since you turned his offer
down. They can make things hot for me, and if they do, it won't
be so bad for you to go in for this sort of thing--unless you go
over to the Trust--"
I shook my head.
"Well, this thing will be an ad for you, besides,--if the papers
can be got to notice it. They're coy with their notices, confound
them, since Tausig let them know that big Trust ads don't appear
in the same papers that boom anti-Trust shows!"
"How long are you going to stand it, Mr. O?"
"Just as long as I can't help myself; not a minute longer."
"There ought to be a way--some way--"
"Yes, there ought, but there isn't. They've got things down to a
fine point, and the fellow they don't fear has got to fear them.
. . . I'll put your number early to-night, so that you can get
off by nine. Good luck, Nance."
At nine, then, behold Nancy Olden in her white muslin dress,
long-sleeved and high-necked, and just to her shoe-tops, with a
big white muslin sash around her waist. Oh, she's no baby, is
Nance, but she looks like one in this rig with her short hair--or
rather, like a school-girl; which makes the stunts she does in
mimicking the corkers of the profession all the more surprising.
"We're just a little party," said Mrs. Paul Gates, coming into
the bedroom where I was taking of my wraps. "And I'm so glad you
could come, for my principal guest, Mr. Latimer, is an invalid,
who used to love the theaters, but hasn't been to one since his
attack many years ago. I count on your giving him, in a way, a
condensed history in action of what is going on on the stage."
I told her I would. But I didn't just know what I was saying.
Think of Latimer there, Maggie, and think of our last meeting! It
made me tremble. Not that I fancied for a moment he'd betray me.
The man that helps you twice don't hurt you the third time. No,
it wasn't that; it was only that I longed to do well--well before
him, so that--
And then I found myself in an alcove off the parlors, separated
from them by heavy curtains. It was such a pretty little red
bower. Right behind me was the red of the Turkish drapery of a
cozy corner, and just as I took my place under the great
chandelier, the servants pulled the curtains apart and the lights
went out in the parlors.
In that minute I got it, Mag--yes, stage fright. Got it bad.
I suppose it was coming to me, but Lordy! I hadn't ever known
before what it was. I could see the black of the men's clothes in
the long parlors in front of me, and the white of the women's
necks and arms. There were soft ends of talk trailing after the
first silence, and everything was so strange that I seemed to
hear two men's voices which sounded familiar--Latimer's silken
voice, and another, a heavy, coarse bass, that was the last to be
quieted.
I fancied that when that last voice should stop I could begin,
but all at once my mind seemed to turn a somersault, and, instead
of looking out upon them, I seemed to be looking in on myself--to
see a white-faced little girl in a white dress, standing alone
under a blaze of light in a glare of red, gazing fearfully at
this queer, new audience.
Fail? Me? Not Nancy, Maggie. I just took me by the shoulders.
"Nancy Olden, you little thief!" I cried to me inside of me.
"How dare you! I'd rather you'd steal the silver on this woman's
dressing-table than cheat her out of what she expects and what's
coming to her."
Nance really didn't dare. So she began.
The first one was bad. I gave 'em Duse's Francesca. You've never
heard the wailing music in that woman's voice when she says:
"There is no escape, Smaragdi.
You have said it;
The shadow is a glass to me, and God
Lets me be lost."
I gave them Duse just to show them how swell I was myself; which
shows what a ninny I was. The thing the world loves is the
opposite of what it is. The pat-pat-pat of their gloves came in
to me when I got through. They were too polite to hiss. But it
wasn't necessary. I was hissing myself. Inside of me there was a
long, nasty hiss-ss-ss!
I couldn't bear it. I couldn't bear to be a failure with Latimer
listening, though out there in that queer half-light I couldn't
see him at all, but could only make out the couch where I knew he
must be lying.
I just jumped into something else to retrieve myself. I can do
Carter's Du Barry to the Queen's taste, Maggie. That rotten voice
of hers, like Mother Douty's, but stronger and surer; that rocky
old face pretending to look young and beautiful inside that
talented red hair of hers; that whining "Denny! Denny!" she
squawks out every other minute. Oh, I can do Du Barry all right!
They thought I could, too, those black and white shadows out
there on the other side of the velvet curtains. But I cared less
for what they thought than for the fact that I had drowned that
sputtering hiss-ss-ss inside of me, and that Latimer was among
them.
I gave them Warfield, then; I was always good at taking off the
- audience [´ɔ:diəns]
n.听众；观众；接见 (初中英语单词) - standing [´stændiŋ] n.持续 a.直立的 (初中英语单词)
- glimpse [glimps] n.&v.瞥见 (初中英语单词)
- stupid [´stju:pid] a.愚蠢的；糊涂的 (初中英语单词)
- hunger [´hʌŋgə] n.饥饿；渴望 (初中英语单词)
- pretend [pri´tend] v.假装；借口；妄求 (初中英语单词)
- parlor [´pɑ:lə] n.客厅；起居室 (初中英语单词)
- hunter [´hʌntə] n.猎人；猎狗；猎马 (初中英语单词)
- ashamed [ə´ʃeimd] a.惭愧；不好意思 (初中英语单词)
- mistress [´mistris] n.女主人；情妇；女能手 (初中英语单词)
- savage [´sævidʒ] a.野蛮的 n.蛮人 (初中英语单词)
- entertain [,entə´tein] vt.招待；娱乐；使高兴 (初中英语单词)
- jealous [´dʒeləs] a.妒忌的 (初中英语单词)
- reading [´ri:diŋ] n.(阅)读；朗读；读物 (初中英语单词)
- profession [prə´feʃən] n.职业；声明；表白 (初中英语单词)
- principal [´prinsəpəl] a.主要的 n.负责人 (初中英语单词)
- betray [bi´trei] vt.背叛；辜负；暴露 (初中英语单词)
- fright [frait] n.惊吓；恐怖；怪人 (初中英语单词)
- coarse [kɔ:s] a.粗(糙)的；粗鲁的 (初中英语单词)
- polite [pə´lait] a.有礼貌的；温和的 (初中英语单词)
- failure [´feiljə] n.失败；衰竭；破产 (初中英语单词)
- velvet [´velvit] n.&a.天鹅绒(般的) (初中英语单词)
- ginger [´dʒindʒə] n.姜；精神，元气 (高中英语单词)
- decent [´di:sənt] a.体面的，正派的 (高中英语单词)
- tenant [´tenənt] n.租户，佃户 (高中英语单词)
- hamlet [´hæmlit] n.村庄 (高中英语单词)
- upright [´ʌprait] a.直立的 ad.直立地 (高中英语单词)
- leisure [´leʒə] n.空闲；悠闲；安定 (高中英语单词)
- rotten [´rɔtn] a.腐烂的；腐朽的 (高中英语单词)
- muslin [´mʌzlin] n.平纹细布，薄纱织物 (英语四级单词)
- drapery [´dreipəri] n.布业，布匹，帐帘 (英语四级单词)
- coronet [´kɔrənit] n.(王子戴的)冠；花冠 (英语六级单词)
- taking [´teikiŋ] a.迷人的 n.捕获物 (英语六级单词)
- turkish [´tə:kiʃ] a.&n.土耳其人(语)的 (英语六级单词)
文章标签:名著
章节正文
京公网安备 11011202003401号
