All this discussion came because of the date, which was February fourteenth. Much had happened since Christmas week, and this day we all sat in the living-room reviewing things.
Evelyn was hemming5 napkins, and Herbert sat on a foot-rest at her feet, muttering things like “Beautiful hands!” or “Did she prick6 her sweet finger!” which everybody heard, but had to pretend they didn’t. (That’s a funny sentence, but I haven’t time to alter it.) Amy and Willy were doing a picture puzzle, S. K. was sitting idle, and I was trying to address post-cards to people at home. Personally, I don’t like them, but the people to whom I was going to send them did. I could take part in all the talk, inasmuch as I only wrote, “Wish you were here,” and, “This is a picture of Grant’s tomb,” or, “The Woolworth Tower,” or whatever it was. Of course, it said what the picture was, in print; but people always do explain again in writing on post-cards, I suppose because it fills up space. Even real writers always use a great deal of explaining to do that, I have noticed.
Willy would leave the table now and again to read my messages, all of which were almost the same, in a different voice. He made it deeply dramatic, or Miss Hooper-high, and Amy giggled7 awfully8. She laughs at anything he says; and he says she has more perception and appreciation9 of true humour than any woman he has ever met--which is what men always do say when women laugh at their jokes.
The fifth time he made a tour to the desk he picked up a card I had addressed to Colonel Sephus I. Lemley, who did detective work in Baltimore in 1892. He has been resting since then, and his wife takes in sewing. He explained that the business world was not a fit place for a Southern gentleman. Willy told about how he acts when he gets drunk. On one occasion he painted the entire house with apple butter (his wife had just made five crocks), and it was in fly season, too. And on another he sawed out the lower panel of the front door, and then he got down on his hands and knees and stuck his head through the hole and barked at everyone who passed. That was really very funny, because he has a little goatee which wags when he talks, and to see his head, topped by a wide-brimmed felt hat, and bottomed by wiggling fluff, to see this sticking through a hole in the door and hear him say, “Bow, wow!” in a high falsetto, was enough to make you yell. For three days he honestly thought he was Miss Hooper’s dog, Rover. His wife was visiting in a near town. When she is at home she tactfully restrains him, with a broom, the neighbours say, and it is noticeable that he stands in front of the Mansion10 House after these attacks, instead of occupying one of the rocking-chairs which trail all over the porch and half across the sidewalk.
But to get back. After Willy told of him, he said he should have been on the job. And I agreed. “No six weeks to find out what started it, if Sephus had humped!” he stated, surely. I nodded, for Colonel Lemley’s own tales of his achievements made Sherlock Holmes’ affairs look as exciting as the woven mats you do in the first year of school.
After I wrote for perhaps fifteen more minutes I finished my work and went over to sit by S. K., who was on the davenport before the fire. I had on a lovely bunch of violets he had sent me, and I was enjoying them a lot, also the prospect11 for the evening, which was a theatre party, which S. K. was giving because Evelyn and Herbert are engaged. People seem to do things like that for engaged people, quite as if they need cheering up. And I was to wear a new dress, which was pink and fluffy12 and, I must admit, becoming.
“You are going to sit next to me, to-night,” said S. K.
I said I hoped so, and then I was quiet, for I was thinking how very much S. K. had done to make my New York life happy and to smooth out, and erase13, my troubles.
The bracelet14 business had made me half sick. It had been so crawly. And it all happened because a little coquette, who was the Spanish girl we saw photographed in the Sunday paper, and the one who muttered pretty Spanish admirations over the bracelet (one of the people who stays at the Mansion told me of those), had made her lover a test. I think she did it in joke, but he took it seriously because he was so very much in love. Of course, he was Vicente Alcon y Rodriguez, and it happened this way:
He had met her somewhere on a business trip. I suppose he had letters of introduction which admitted him almost anywhere, since he has a great deal of money and is of great importance in the business world of Cuba. And, like a good many Latin men, he fell in love with her immediately, and wildly so. He called her “orange blossom,” and “white, sweet heart of the rose” (that is, in notes), and he threatened to kill himself if she didn’t love him, but he didn’t. And she didn’t love him; she only laughed. That is, at first.
I think she was capricious and liked to feel her power, for she played with him. One day being kind, and the next day scorning, as only her race can scorn. . . . S. K. told me the story, and he put in trimmings, as he always does. And I am repeating in part from the tale that he related. . . .
Each day this man who had so much money--but not the love he wanted more than all of the world--would send her mountains of flowers, or a strange string of beads15, or candied fruits from the Orient, or candies from our States. S. K. said he was a good lover, and he sounded so. I became very much interested, and I did not see how Marguerita Angela Blanco y Chiappi could help liking16 it, but sometimes she didn’t. One morning she threw all of his flowers out on the street, and then she called to him (he was lurking17 around on the other side of the way; they act that way more there than here), and she said: “The scent19 in all of its heaviness is wearisome!” And rumour20 states that he tore his hair, but I think S. K. put that in for a nice touch, because he had it clipped so short I don’t see how he could get a decent hold.
Well, things went on in that way. She would soften21, only to harden. And he would become elated, only to taste the depth of despair. It was very romantic. And then--Marguerita’s father had a mission to perform in the United States; she came along, and of course Vicente Alcon y Rodriguez trailed at a respectful distance (but he didn’t stay so), which is the paper-chase manner in which some South American and Cuban courtships come off.
Their pictures were taken together at the Jumel Mansion, and so evidently she was a little kinder to him then. And that was the day she paused before the bracelet and said, “Es incomparable lindo y yo lo deseo!” and she said it with hunger floating on her liquid voice.
“Would that I could give it to you!” whispered Vicente Alcon y Rodriguez.
“You can give me nothing I want!” he was answered, and after this pleasant speech the little se?orita shrugged22 her shoulders.
S. K. said he clenched23 his hands, glared ahead, and then said: “A copy? A good copy, Fairest Angel of Heaven?”
And she said, “A copy? Bah!” and her lips curled. I didn’t see why he loved her after that, but S. K. said she stimulated24 his interest by acting25 that way. But that I wasn’t to try it on him, since his interest didn’t need stimulating26. Then Marguerita looked mischievous27 and said: “The man who would get for me this original, I would give the gift of my love. . . . But it is a poor thing, my little heart, and perhaps not worth the effort to get?”
He said: “You cast me to the depths. . . . How can I live? . . . For this, you ask the impossible!”
And again she shrugged her shoulders.
“Why ask the possible?” she said, “since that I could get myself?” Then S. K. said Vicente went out, sat down on the green bench that faces the side gate, held his head in his hands, and stared unseeingly at the gravel28 at his feet. He said they both enjoyed acting that way and being miserable29, as a good many people do.
And Marguerita laughed in her tinkling30 way, not seeming to care how unhappy she had made him. Just before they started back to The Biltmore, he spoke31 to her again. “You meant that?” he said fiercely.
“But certainly,” she replied. “I have said, my heart in exchange for that bracelet!” And then they all got in motors and started off for lunch.
Well, Vicente was determined32 to get that bracelet, and he set out to do it. Somehow he got into communication with Debson, offered him twenty-five thousand dollars if he got the bracelet and delivered it into his, Vicente Alcon y Rodriguez’s hands, and then he sailed off on another chase, for Marguerita and her papa had started home again.
So much is simple, and the rest is only the result of the start.
Debson heard me tell the tale of my bracelet that day I first visited the Mansion. Getting the one in the case was not an easy affair, for the place is well guarded, and so--he naturally decided33 to get mine. It was he who chased me, dodging34 behind things when I turned, and even sitting on the kerb at the last with his cup for pennies, and telling me that he was blind! . . . He had, of course, visited the Mansion often in different disguise, hoping each time to have the opportunity. And, of course, he began to lurk18 around our apartment-house after he knew what was in my possession.
He had a brother who worked with him; they had an idea that confusion of evidence made evidence weak, and so there were two blind men around the Mansion that Sunday, and no two people agreed about where they had seen the shambling figure. It wasn’t a bad idea, for during the investigation35 of that particular event the police had been so tried by different stories of where people had seen this old man that they brushed aside any mention of him, and muttered of “crowd hysteria.” It was the brother of Debson who knocked S. K. down because he had seen me give the bracelet into S. K.’s keeping. It was he who was the old Italian woman that day and who suddenly shed his shawl and skirts and was again the blind man shuffling36 up the steps. That was after he stuffed his woman-duds in a basket of soiled clothes which some neglectful small boy had left for a moment on the sidewalk while he went up to join the crowd around Sammy.
That was clever, I think, for when the washwoman returned the things washed, the Italian garb37 was probably sent back to her with a word that it did not belong in that particular laundry, and she, the washwoman, was, I suppose, glad enough to keep the garments and say no more.
Meanwhile, that same afternoon, Debson had seen me give the bracelet to the keeper--probably he peered through a window, or half hid behind a big pillar outside--and it was he who attacked him, after the crowd had gone out to see what had happened to S. K.; and he who, with tears running down his face, called for help--since getting away was dangerous. It all seems very simple--now--and makes us seem great fools.
When S. K. advertised for a servant, Debson applied38 for the position, and fortune favoured him, since I often went to see S. K. and talked all my troubles over with him.
He used a long rod with a hook on top of it to get upstairs, since the back entrances were too public for his late night visits, and he could come in this way under the dark of the court. For people kept their shades down in their court windows. Other windows are too close to do otherwise. He made those tapping noises that night everyone was frightened and Uncle Archie fell over the pedestal, and it was only coincidence that made them tap in three in that way.
He also made violent love to Jane, thinking perhaps that he could get her help, or that in that way his visits to our apartment would be accounted for. But it was not my bracelet, but Evelyn’s, she wore that night he took her to the ball. And she wore it because he had talked so much of how greatly a bracelet “enhanced the fair roundness of a woman’s arm. . . .” Jane admitted that statement “got her,” and it must have, for she remembered it absolutely correctly. Evelyn at that time sometimes substituted her bracelet for mine, because the Tiffany mark made her story of its being real a lie; and she, at that time, wanted the real one.
Jane told me lots about it. “It was that romantic, miss,” she said, “to hear a tap, and then to lean from the window, and to see him coming hand over hand up that there rod with the hook on top. And it used to turn me sick like, to think that he might fall, but he never did--worse luck!” And then she sniffed39.
He had a very hard time, for I hid my bracelet often and Evelyn took it too, and it seemed that every time he called it was out. . . . Of course, he had come up that night that we had the detectives waiting, for he thought it was his last chance, and of course it was he whom I followed down the fire-escape. He expected to bag the bracelet easily that night that he was caught. He was going to get it in some way, and he had been sure that would be easy; then lower it to his brother, who would, if possible, take it off; if not, throw it, as he did, in the coal cellar.
I found out everything and began to believe S. K.’s remark about sanity40 and logical reasons for all events. I even found out about Jane’s blushes and the ice-pick. It seemed she used to give Debson suppers when he came up, and she gave him a very nice grape juice that aunt had got for Evelyn. It was that that made her so anxious to speak of thefts as borrowing. . . . And again there was coincidence in the hurt hands. All but Debson’s had happened from innocent causes. His came from my mouse-trap, but to throw people off the scent he deliberately41 broke that Stiegel glass.
Of course, I was shadowed and followed, and it was Debson’s brother who pulled me from my mount on Riverside Drive. . . . Two men who are very intent on getting anything can think lots of ways to get it, and--twenty-five thousand dollars is quite an incentive42. I felt sorry for the men--I couldn’t help it--and for Vicente Alcon y Rodriguez, for I was afraid Marguerita would never marry him.
I wrote Se?or Vicente Alcon y Rodriguez and told him how sorry I was and that I would give him my bracelet if my mother had not owned and worn it, and that I hoped perhaps Se?orita Blanco y Chiappi could get one made like it. And I explained about how nice Evelyn’s was. I really wanted to send my bracelet to Se?or Alcon y Rodriguez, but S. K., who occasionally gives me orders quite as if he had every right to, would not permit it.
“Nonsense!” he said. “She’s only tiring him out. After he begins to gasp43 and shows signs of giving up, she’ll pull him in the boat. I know ’em!” which I considered cynical44. But she did. Just that very thing happened, and I got a piece of wedding cake. They were married January twentieth after an engagement of two days. He answered my note most courteously45 and apologized at length. And she added a little line.
“I have capitulated,” she acknowledged, in a very shaded, elaborate writing. “It is useless to allow innocent childs to be stabbed in back because of my light mention of a bracelet, and because of his great urgency I have achieved for myself the married state. We are happy and wish you the same.”
And then she said she kissed my feet, which is very polite Spanish, and signed herself undyingly and affectionately mine.
Se?or Vicente gave S. K.’s words backing when he wrote: “I was willing to give up. All was despair. I vowed46 I would not request again, when lo! she softened47 and turned to me the glory of her love.”
I was glad it ended that way.
“What are you thinking of?” asked S. K. that afternoon of February fourteenth when we were all together and yet--all sort of paired off in the living-room. I told him.
“You like to see people love the people who love them,” I said. “Now Evelyn has answered the right call, and I think Amy is going to.”
“Pshaw!” said S. K. “You don’t mean those kids----” He didn’t finish his sentence, but he meant that Amy and Willy weren’t old enough to do anything but all the latest waltz and fox steps.
“I’m sure they’re going to throw into it,” I said. “Somehow--I feel it. They slam each other now, and disagree terribly, but he has unexpected moments of patience with her, and when he has those I can see that he likes her lots.”
“What sort?” asked S. K., looking at them. They were doing a one-step, and Amy said Willy did it all wrong, and Willy said no Northerner could dance. What with the victrola and their quarrelling, we could shout anything and not be heard.
I told him. “He is trying to explain baseball to her,” I said, “since you said you’d take us all to all the games. And after he finished yesterday she said: ‘I don’t think it’s polite or nice for the man with the stick to wave it in front of the man with the little thing like a dish-drain over his face!’ She saw a game last year, and that’s all she got out of it!” And I went on to explain how well Willy played and how he would usually greet that sort of a remark.
S. K. laughed and after a little more watching them agreed.
“Then,” I went on, “I asked her last night whether she was going to marry the broker48, and she clasped her hands, stared ahead, and whispered: ‘What a child I was!’?”
S. K. laughed some more. Then he sobered.
“So,” he said, “you like to see the ‘fellow get the girl’?”
I said I thought everyone was disappointed in books or life, if he didn’t.
Then he mentioned a subject that he hadn’t touched for ages and didn’t mean to then. I think it slipped out. And I found I didn’t mind, but really liked it.
“Do you think,” he asked in an undertone, “that this fellow is going to get her?”
“Oh, S. K.,” I answered, as I slipped my hand in his, “I know he is! And you do too! How can you help it?”
“Dear child!” said S. K. “My dear child!” He said it in that tight way in which people speak when they care very much, and he pressed my hand between both of his.
“What are you talking of over there?” asked Evelyn, looking up from her work. And I gave an answer which did not surprise her, for everyone did talk of them a great deal--if not exactly the sort S. K. and I had touched that day.
“We’re discussing mysteries,” said I.
“Right,” added S. K., looking down at me. And then Ito came in, trundling a tea-waggon ahead of him. I saw that he had Aunt Penelope’s best service on it, little cakes in paper cases, and big pink roses on the napkins. It looked pretty, festive49 and good.
“It is day of love,” said Ito. “We have fancy tea!”
THE END
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entirely
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| ad.全部地，完整地；完全地，彻底地 | |
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monk
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| n.和尚，僧侣，修道士 | |
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monastery
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| n.修道院，僧院，寺院 | |
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fumbling
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| n. 摸索,漏接 v. 摸索,摸弄,笨拙的处理 | |
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hemming
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| 卷边 | |
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prick
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| v.刺伤，刺痛，刺孔；n.刺伤，刺痛 | |
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giggled
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| v.咯咯地笑( giggle的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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awfully
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| adv.可怕地，非常地，极端地 | |
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appreciation
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| n.评价；欣赏；感谢；领会，理解；价格上涨 | |
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mansion
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| n.大厦，大楼；宅第 | |
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prospect
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| n.前景，前途；景色，视野 | |
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fluffy
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| adj.有绒毛的，空洞的 | |
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erase
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| v.擦掉；消除某事物的痕迹 | |
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bracelet
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| n.手镯，臂镯 | |
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beads
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| n.（空心）小珠子( bead的名词复数 )；水珠；珠子项链 | |
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liking
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| n.爱好；嗜好；喜欢 | |
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lurking
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| 潜在 | |
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lurk
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| n.潜伏，潜行；v.潜藏，潜伏，埋伏 | |
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scent
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| n.气味，香味，香水，线索，嗅觉；v.嗅，发觉 | |
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rumour
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| n.谣言，谣传，传闻 | |
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soften
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| v.(使)变柔软；(使)变柔和 | |
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shrugged
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| vt.耸肩（shrug的过去式与过去分词形式） | |
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clenched
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| v.紧握，抓紧，咬紧( clench的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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stimulated
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| a.刺激的 | |
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acting
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stimulating
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| adj.有启发性的，能激发人思考的 | |
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mischievous
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| adj.调皮的，恶作剧的，有害的，伤人的 | |
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gravel
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| n.砂跞；砂砾层；结石 | |
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miserable
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| adj.悲惨的，痛苦的；可怜的，糟糕的 | |
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tinkling
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| n.丁当作响声 | |
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spoke
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| n.（车轮的）辐条；轮辐；破坏某人的计划；阻挠某人的行动 v.讲，谈（speak的过去式）；说；演说；从某种观点来说 | |
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determined
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| adj.坚定的；有决心的 | |
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decided
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| adj.决定了的，坚决的；明显的，明确的 | |
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dodging
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| n.避开，闪过，音调改变v.闪躲( dodge的现在分词 )；回避 | |
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investigation
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| n.调查，调查研究 | |
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shuffling
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| adj. 慢慢移动的, 滑移的 动词shuffle的现在分词形式 | |
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garb
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| n.服装，装束 | |
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applied
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| adj.应用的；v.应用，适用 | |
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sniffed
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| v.以鼻吸气，嗅，闻( sniff的过去式和过去分词 )；抽鼻子（尤指哭泣、患感冒等时出声地用鼻子吸气）；抱怨，不以为然地说 | |
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sanity
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| n.心智健全，神智正常，判断正确 | |
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deliberately
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| adv.审慎地；蓄意地；故意地 | |
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incentive
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| n.刺激；动力；鼓励；诱因；动机 | |
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gasp
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| n.喘息，气喘；v.喘息；气吁吁他说 | |
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cynical
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| adj.(对人性或动机)怀疑的，不信世道向善的 | |
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courteously
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| adv.有礼貌地，亲切地 | |
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vowed
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| 起誓，发誓（vow的过去式与过去分词形式） | |
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softened
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| （使）变软( soften的过去式和过去分词 )； 缓解打击； 缓和； 安慰 | |
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broker
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| n.中间人，经纪人；v.作为中间人来安排 | |
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festive
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| adj.欢宴的，节日的 | |
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