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 Ilooked 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.
