THE GEWGAW
THE iron doors of the auction-room were closed tightly as the valves of an oyster shell; the forward rush of a smartly attired throng awaited their rolling back in the polished steel grooves. It was to be a woman’s field day; the contents of a notable jewel casket were to be dispersed under the hammer. And thebonne-moucheof the occasion—a superb blue diamond of sixty-five carats, a gem worthy to rank among the historic stones of the world, fit to be counted among the treasures of a Sultan or to blaze upon the bosom of an Empress—was discussed by watering mouths. Some of them were old and some of them were young, but all were tinted with the newest shade in lip bloom, and all wore the same expression of almost sensual desire. Paradise plumes fought together as wonderfully hatted heads bent and swayed and nodded in animated discussion. The stone had brought a hundred thousand louis and the Grand Monarque’s own patent of nobility to the Portuguese adventurer who had stolen it from a Hindu temple midway in the seventeenth century. It had gleamed between the wicked, white breasts of the Duchesse de Berry, the shameless daughter of the Régent d’Orleans, at that final supper on the Terrace of Meudon. It had been seized by the Revolutionists in the stormy days of 1792, and had mysteriously vanished from the Garde Meuble, to reappear in the taloned clutches of a London money lender and gem dealer, notorious as a rogue among the spendthrift fine gentlemenof White’s and Crockford’s. And it had been bought by a big banker, and bid for by a Tsar, and sold to a great Tory nobleman, and left as an heirloom, and given to an Italian opera singer, and got back by arbitration and made a ward in Chancery, and sold in Paris by sanction of the Court; and now the woman who had bought and owned and worn it—sometimes as the swinging central stone of a tiara, at other times as the pendant to a matchless collar of black pearls—was dead, and Briscoe’s famous auction-room, which is the chief clearing-place of the world, was about to witness a new record in progressive bidding.
The live women who had known and envied the dead owner of the blue diamond clustered thick about the iron doors, and loaded the atmosphere of the crowded place with their perfumes, and chattered like the inmates of the parrot house at the Zoological Gardens. Not one of them but would have given her soul in exchange for even a lesser jewel if Satan had appeared at her elbow and suggested the exchange. He did come to one of them. She was a pretty woman, still almost young; she was beautifully dressed in painted silken muslin, and wore a whole king bird of Paradise in her Paris hat. The bronze-gold wires of the wonderful tail, tipped with vivid emerald at the ends, curved and sprang about the wearer’s well-waved and well-dressed head like living snakes of incredible slenderness. The rich red plumage of the dead creature’s head and throat gleamed like rubies; the delicate feather tufts that sprang from beneath the wings quivered with her every movement; the orange bill held a seed, cunningly placed; the cobalt-blue legs were perched upon a rose stem. To insure such beauty in the plumage the skin must be torn from the living bird. Any woman might be happy in possessingsuch a hat; but this one was miserable.... She wanted the big blue diamond.... And this urbane, polished person, elegantly attired, had told her that, if she chose, it might be hers in exchange for a possession only half believed in—to wit, the woman’s soul—disposed of to a personage held, until that psychological moment, to be non-existent.
This was not the devil of St. Dunstan, with horns and a tail, or the cloaked and ribald wine seller of St. Anthony, or the lubberly fiend of Luther, or the clawed and scaly tempter of Bunyan. Nor did this personage bear the least resemblance to the swaggering, scarlet-and-black, sinister Mephistopheles of Goethe, as represented by the late Sir Henry Irving—upon whom be the Peace of Heaven!—but the woman entertained no doubt that it was the very devil himself. In this urbane and polished gentleman in the light gray, tight-waisted frock-coat and trousers of Bond Street cut, from beneath whose snowy, polished double collar flowed a voluminous cascade of pearl-colored cravat pinned with a small but perfect pigeon’s-blood ruby; whose lapel bore a mauve orchid, whose immaculate white spats, perfectly polished patent boots, slender watch-chain, jade-headed walking stick, and pale buff gloves, betokened the most studied refinement and the most elegant taste, the daughter of Eve recognized the hereditary enemy of the Human Race.
She did not scream or turn ghastly with mortal fear; her Crême Magnolia and Rose Ninon were quite too thick for that. But her heart gave a sickening jolt, and fear immeasurable paralyzed her faculties, and her veins ran liquid ice—or was it liquid fire?—and for one swooning instant, under the regard of those intolerably mocking, unspeakably hateful eyes, the life in herseemed to dwindle to a mere pin’s point of consciousness. But she revived and rallied, and the terror passed.
“Come!� he said, “you do not fear me—we have been friends too long; and to me, who know the world so well, and to you, who know it and are of it, there is nothing so undesirable as to create a scene.� His voice was polished, gracious. It caressed like the touch of velvet, even if it crisped the nerves as velvet does. “You know me.... I know you, and how your heart is set upon this jewel that is to be sold to-day. Rest easy! Though you have with you in that gold chain purse-bag notes for fifteen thousand pounds, ten thousand of it raised by what rigorous moralists ... those unpleasant persons! ... might call unlawful means....�
“Hush!� she cried, trembling, unable to remove her eyes from that face—long, oval, benevolent—with wide, arched brows and features exquisitely regular, framed in long waving hair—dark auburn mingled with gray—which fell nearly to his collar and mingled with a curling beard of natural growth. She trembled as the thought shot through her that it caricatured a Face that hung, pictured with a Crown of Thorns, above the cot in her child-daughter’s nursery; and her thought was mirrored in those intolerable eyes, and the sculpturesque lips smiled in impious mockery.
“Ah, yes! It seems to you I bear some likeness to—shall I say a distant—or an estranged Friend of yours.... But I have many other faces, and you have ... other friends. Do not be afraid, or waste time in denying, the money is only borrowed; you are your young daughter’s mother, as well as trustee and executor under her father’s will.... And, surely, you may borrow the ten thousand pounds at a pinch for an investment? Besides, you will put it back before any unpleasant inquiriesare made by your fellow-guardian and co-trustee. The manager of the Bank was quite deceived by the second signature upon the deed of withdrawal, so admirably counterfeited, so.... No, no, I do not wish to alarm you! Be quite at ease upon this matter, really so innocent and easily explained away. But with regard to your project of buying the Blue Diamond—you have no chance of carrying out your plan, not the faintest. Between those sedate persons already assembled by high privilege behind these shut iron doors an understanding has already been arrived at. The Diamond will be put up to public auction and actively bid for, it is true; but the Diamond is already bought and sold.� His tone was of the gentlest sympathy, but the mockery in his glance and the gibing irony of his dreadful smile were to the baffled woman like white-hot irons laid upon a bleeding wound. “Mr. Ulysses Wanklyn, whose great duel with Mr. Cupid Bose at the De Lirecourt sale over that Régence commode of marqueterie thrilled all London, will be the winner of the treasure at ninety-four thousand guineas. Paragraphs in the afternoon papers—most excellent publications I find them, and supremely useful—will refer to the coup as ‘the climax of screeching finance,’ and ‘the hall-mark on an enhanced standard of jewel-values.’ And Messrs. Moreen and Blant, who will retire, ostensibly beaten, from the field after a bid of eighty-eight thousand, will be condoled with by writers who are quite aware that Wanklyn, Bose, Moreen, Blant, and half a dozen others constitute the Blue Diamond Purchasing Syndicate, capital ninety-four thousand guineas.�
The wearer of the king bird of Paradise caught a sharp breath, and bit her sensuous, scarlet-dyed underlip fiercely. Stung to desperate courage by baffled desireand the thwarted jewel-lust that had robbed even her child and made of her a forger, she even dared to question....
“If that is so,� she said, with angry, dark eyes and a rebelliously-heaving bosom, “why did you whisper to me just now that I could have the Diamond for my own if I gave you ... as the people do in the old German legends ... my Soul in exchange for it?�
He smiled, and caressed the strange, orchidaceous flower he wore with perfectly-gloved fingers.
“Have you not heard me called the Father of Lies ... the Arch-Deceiver?�
Rage intolerable possessed and rent her. She said hoarsely, and in tones unlike her own:
“You can give me the Blue Diamond, and I will have it—at your price!�
“You are really a woman of excellent sense,� he said—and she was afraid to look because she knew how he was smiling. “Present good for future gain!... Doubtless you will recall the quotation, but so uncertain a futurity is well bartered for such a jewel as they have in there. Think—you will snatch it from the great dealers—from the private connoisseurs. You will hold and display and flaunt it in the face of society. You will be beautiful—wearing it! You should be envied, wearing it! You may be happy—doubtless you will be so! And now, just as a mere form, prick your left wrist slightly with this diamond-pointed pencil and inscribe your name upon a leaf of these ebony tablets. First, though, be pleased to remove that ... ahem!... miniature religious symbol from your golden chain. The Crucifix means nothing to you—you do not even remove it when you draw your wedded lover to your embrace—but I am an old-fashioned personage, and my prejudice extends backover nineteen hundred years—to the reign of Herod Antipas, and is practically unalterable. So ... thanks! That will serve me excellently!�
From the woman’s hand something fell with a golden tinkle to the parqueted floor. A surge of the crowd drove her forward, her French heel crushed what she had dropped. The diamond pencil pricked the white wrist between the buttons of her dainty glove; she withdrew it, a little scarlet bead glistening on the shining point, and hesitated, only an instant, looking at the offered tablets of ebony and gold.
“Come, sign!... It will be over in an instant, and, believe me, you will feel far more comfortable afterward!� She remembered that her dentist had employed the same phrases only a day or two before in persuading her to consent to the removal of a decayed incisor. That tooth’s successor—a perfect, polished example of human ivory—gleamed as her lips drew back in a nervous laugh provoked by the absurdity of the analogy. She scrawled her signature, and the promise was fulfilled. She was calm—at ease—had no more worrying doubts and silly scruples. He wore no indiscreet expression of proprietorship; his lips did not even smile. And if there was mocking triumph in his eyes, his discreetly dropped lids concealed it.... He bowed profoundly as he took the ebony tablets, and then he lifted his gloved left hand and laid a finger on the iron doors. And they rolled apart, revealing the great safe with many patent locks, and the auctioneer at his desk, and the clerk at his; and the chosen already in their seats, and the elaborate preparations for the elaborate farce that was to be played, all ready. A savage rage boiled up in her as she looked at the smug faces of the secret Syndicate, actors well-versed in their separate parts. But the pressure of thechattering, screaming, perfumed crowd behind her carried her over the threshold, and her companion too. Packed tightly as sardines in the confined space about the rostrum, Society waited the great event. And a bunch of master-keys was produced by the senior partner of Briscoe’s, and with much juggling of patent locks the great safe gave up the big, square jewel-case containing the famous collection, and a sibilant “Ss’s!� of indrawn breaths greeted the lifting of its lid.
“Do not look at me! Listen—and look at the jewels,� whispered the smooth, caressing voice in the ear of the woman who had just signed away her soul in exchange for the sensation of the day. And as a giant commissionaire bearing pearl ropes and tiaras, bracelets and rings and necklaces, nervously paraded up and down the central aisle left for his convenience, and the chattering and screaming of the society cockatoos redoubled, in envious admiration of each swaggering, glittering, covetable gewgaw, the devil told the woman very plainly how the thing was to be done.
“The stone that I shall give you is an exact replica in a newly-invented paste of the stone that is the price of what I have bought from you. When the commissionaire brings round the Blue Diamond, touch the jewel boldly—take it in your hand, as it is permissible to do—and substitute the paste. Have no fear! I will undertake that the act is undetected. Thenceforth wear your prize undismayed; boast of it as you will. The one—the only—drawback to your perfect happiness must be that society will believe your jewel to be false, while you have the exquisite joy of knowing it to be genuine. So takethis, and act as I have counseled. Two hours to wait before you can dare to escape with it, for the Blue Diamond will be the last lot of the day. But what aretwo hours, even spent in a vitiated atmosphere, with such a prize your own, hidden in your glove or in your hand? A mere nothing! And here comes the commissionaire with the Diamond.... Only an alumina in hexagonal arrangement crystallized in the cooling of this planet you call ‘the World’ as arrogantly as though there were no others, and yet how unique, how exquisite! See how the violet rays leap from the facets, even the noblest sapphire looks cold and pale beside the glorious gem. Murder has been committed for its shining sake over and over again in ages of which your history has no cognizance. It has purchased the faith of Emperors and the oaths of Kings. Rivers of blood have flowed because of it. Peerless women have laid down their honor to gain it. And it will be yours ... yours! Quick, the commissionaire is coming. School your hand to steadiness; no need to hide your lust, for all faces wear the same look here. Only be quick, and have no fear!�
The eyes of the commissionaire were fastened upon the woman’s white, ringed, well-manicured hand, as in its turn it lifted the Blue Diamond—slightly set in platinum as a pendant—from its pale green velvet bed. But yet she effected the exchange. The substituted paste jewel was borne on—the paroquets and cockatoos chattered and screamed as loudly over the false stone as they had over the real, which lay snugly hidden in the thief’s fair bosom. The syndicate of dealers played out their farce to its end, and Mr. Ulysses Wanklyn, to the infinite chagrin of Mr. Cupid Bose, and the gnashing discomfiture of Messrs. Moreen and Blant, secured the paste diamond at ninety-four thousand pounds. And amidst cries and congratulations the day ended. And the woman, with her price in her bosom, escaped into the open air, and signaled to the chauffeur waiting with hermotor-brougham and drove home. Fear and triumph filled her. When would the theft be discovered? How soon would voices in the streets begin to clamor of the stolen gem? How should she who had stolen it ever dare to wear or to vaunt it, with Scotland Yard—with the detective eyes of all the world upon her? She had been befooled, duped, defrauded; she moaned as she bit her lace handkerchief through.... She reached her dainty boudoir just in time to have hysterics behind its locked and bolted doors. And when she had quieted herself with ether and red lavender, she drew the Blue Diamond from its hiding-place, and it gleamed in her palm with a diabolical splendor, as though the stone were sentient, and knew what it had cost. Could the great dealers be deceived—a probability quite impossible—she would be at liberty to wear this joy, this glory, to see its myriad splendors reflected in envious eyes. She kissed it as she had never kissed her child or any of her lovers—with passion, until its sharp facets cut her lips. And, as she kissed it, her quick ears were alert to catch the shoutings of the newsmen in the streets. But there were none. She dined in her boudoir, and slept, with the aid of veronal; and in the morning’s newspaper there was not a wail, not a word! She gave the king bird of Paradise hat to her maid—she was so pleased, so thankful! The afternoon papers, and those of the next day and the next, were dumb upon the subject of the daring theft of the big Blue Diamond from Briscoe’s famous auction-room. She grew more and more secure. And one never-to-be-forgotten night she put on a Paquin gown and went to a great reception at a ducal house with the Blue Diamond as pendant to her pearl-and-brilliant collar. She counted on the cockatoos screeching, but they did not screech. The eyes that dwelt on theBlue Diamond were astonished, surprised, covertly amused, contemptuous.
“That is for luck, I suppose, dear?� cooed one of her intimate friends. “I mean that large blue crystal you are wearing.... I bought some last winter at a jeweler’s in the bazaar at Rangoon—they find them with moonstones and olivines and those other things in thedébrisat the Ruby Mines, I understood. I must have mine mounted. By the way, do you know that——� (she mentioned the name of a great financier of cosmopolitan habits and international fame) “has bought the Blue Diamond from Ulysses Wanklyn for a hundred and ten thousand pounds:She�—her voice dropped a little as she referred to a lady upon whom the great financier was reputed to have bestowed his plutocratic affections—“will be here to-night. Probably she will wear it! They say she was absolutely determined on his getting it for her, and so....À porte basse, passant courbé, especially when the circumstances are pretty.Whatdo you say? You heard it had been discovered by the dealers that the Blue Diamond had been found to be false ... a paste imitation, or a cut crystal like that thing you are wearing? Oh, my dear, how quite too frightfully absurd acanard! As though Ulysses Wanklyn and Cupid Bose and Blant, and all the other connoisseurs, could be deceived! What a very remarkable-looking man that is who is bowing to you!... The graceful person with the Apostolic profile and the beautiful silky beard�—and the intimate friend gave a little shudder. “And the extraordinary eyes that give one a crispation of the nerves?...�
It was he—her Purchaser—moving suddenly toward her through the throng of naked backs and bare bosoms.
“I hope,� he said, and bowed and smiled, “that youare satisfied with the result of our ... negotiations the other day?� Then, as the fashionable crowd parted and the Great Financier walked through the rooms, his imperious mistress upon his arm, her husband looking amiable behind them, he added, indicating the swinging central pendant of the lady’s superb diamond tiara, with a wave of a slender white-gloved hand, “My substitute was convincing, you think; you suppose it has deceived even the experts? Not in the least—the substitution of the paste stone for the Blue Diamond was discovered as soon as the public had quitted the auction-room. But Messrs. Wanklyn and Bose and my other very good friends who lay down the law in jewels as in other things, to Society, agreed not to lose by the fraud. The paste has thecachetof their approval, and has been sold for a great sum. ‘What water!’ the world is crying. ‘What luster!’ ‘How superb a gem!’ While you, my poor friend, who display upon your bosom the real stone, have merely been credited with a meretricious taste for wearing Palais Royal jewelry. Pardon! I have not deceived you—or not in the way you imagine.... I said the Blue Diamond should be yours.... It is! I said you should be envied; you should, certainly. It is a thousand pities you are only sneered at. I said you might be happy.... It is most regrettable that you do not find the happiness you looked for.Au revoir, dear lady,au revoir!�
She felt indisposed, and went home....