He noticed now, as he glanced at Mrs. Mutrie’s hands, that she wore unusual rings. They were not numerous, but the stones were superb. He ventured to admire the huge solitaire she wore on her left hand, and, as they fell into a talk about jewels, she drew it off to let him see it. She said the diamond had a history. Her father had, bought it from an actor, a tragedian who had met bad business at Omaha, after playing to empty houses at Denver, Topeka, Kansas City, and St. Jo. The money had paid the fares of the company home to New York, a fact which connected the stone with the only real good it had ever done its various owners. The tragedian had won it from a gambler who had killed his man in a quarrel over it; the man who had died for it had bought it at a low price from the absconding clerk of a diamond merchant.
‘It ought to have been smuggled out of the mines by the man who found it at Kimberley, or somewhere, and sold to an I.D.B.,’ she said, ‘to make the story complete. Don’t you think so, Mr. Tarvin?’
She asked all her questions with an arch of the eyebrow, and an engaging smile which required the affirmative readily furnished by Tarvin. He would have assented to an hypothesis denying virtue to the discoveries of Galileo and Newton if Mrs. Mutrie had broached it just then. He sat tense and rigid, full of his notion, watching, waiting, like a dog on the scent.
‘I look into it sometimes to see if I can’t find a picture of the crimes it has seen,’ she said. ‘They’re so nice and shivery, don’t you think so, Mr. Tarvin, particularly the murder? But what I like best about it is the stone itself. It is a beauty, isn’t it? Pa used to say it was the handsomest he’d ever seen, and in a hotel you see lots of good diamonds, you know.’ She gazed a moment affectionately into the liquid depths of the brilliant. ‘Oh, there’s nothing like a beautiful stone—nothing!’ she breathed. Her eyes kindled. He heard for the first time in her voice the ring of absolute sincerity and unconsciousness. ‘I could look at a perfect jewel forever, and I don’t much care what it is, so it is perfect. Pa used to know how I loved stones, and he was always trading them with the people who came to the house. Drummers are great fellows for jewellery, you know, but they don’t always know a good stone from a bad one. Pa used to make some good trades,’ she said, pursing her pretty lips meditatively; ‘but he would never take anything but the best, and then he would trade that, if he could, for something better. He would always give two or three stones with the least flaw in them for one real good one. He knew they were the only ones I cared for. Oh, I do love them! They’re better than folks. They’re always there, and always just so beautiful!’
‘ I think I know a necklace you’d like, if you care for such things,’ said Tarvin quietly.
‘Do you?‘she beamed. ‘Oh, where?’
‘A long way from here.’
‘Oh—Tiffany’s!’ she exclaimed scornfully. ‘I know you!‘she added, with resumed art of intonation.
‘No. Further.’
‘Where?’
‘India.’
She stared at him a moment interestedly. ‘Tell me what it’s like,’ she said. Her whole attitude and accent were changed again. There was plainly one subject on which she could be serious. ‘Is it really good?’
‘It’s the best,’ said Tarvin, and stopped.
‘Well!’ she exclaimed.‘Don’t tantalise me. What is it made of?’
‘Oh, diamonds, pearls, rubies, opals, turquoises, amethysts, sapphires—a rope of them. The rubies are as big as your fist; the diamonds are the size of hens’ eggs. It’s worth a king’s ransom.’
She caught her breath. Then after a long moment, ‘Oh!’ she sighed; and then, ‘Oh!’ she murmured again, languorously, wonderingly, longingly. ‘And where is it?‘she asked briskly, of a sudden.
‘Round the neck of an idol in the province of Rajputana. Do you want it?’ he asked grimly.
She laughed.‘Yes,’ she answered.
‘I’ll get it for you,’ said Tarvin simply.
‘Yes, you will!’ pouted she.
‘I will,’ repeated Tarvin.
She threw back her gay blonde head, and laughed to the painted Cupids on the ceiling of the car. She always threw back her head when she laughed; it showed her throat.
▲▲▲
IV
Your patience, Sirs, the Devil took me up
To the burned mountain over Sicily,
(Fit place for me), and thence I saw my Earth—
Not all Earth’s splendour, ’twas beyond my need;
And that one spot I love—all Earth to me.
And her I love, my Heaven. What said I? …
My love was safe from all the powers of Hell—
For you—e’en you—acquit her of my guilt.
But Sula, nestling by our sail-specked sea,
My city, child of mine, my heart, my home.
Mine and my pride—evil might visit there!
It was for Sula and her naked ports,
Prey to the galleys of the Algerine;
Our city Sula, that I drove my price—
For love of Sula and for love of her.
The twain were woven, gold on sackcloth, twined
Past any sundering—till God shall judge
The evil and the good.
—The Grand–Master’s Defence.
The president engaged rooms at the hotel beside the railroad track at Topaz, and stayed over the next day. Tarvin and Sheriff took possession of him, and showed him the town, and what they called its ‘natural resources.’ Tarvin caused the president to hold rein when he had ridden with him to a point outside the town, and discoursed, in the midst of the open plain, and in the face of the snow-capped mountains, on the reasonableness and necessity of making Topaz the end of a division for the new railroad, and putting the division superintendent, the workshops, and the round-house here.
In his heart he knew the president to be absolutely opposed to bringing the railroad to Topaz at all; but he preferred to assume the minor point. It was much easier, as a matter of fact, to show that Topaz ought to be made a junction, and the end of a division, than it was to show that it ought to be a station on the Three C.’s. If it was anything it would have to be a junction; the difficulty was to prove that it ought to be anything.
Tarvin knew the whole Topaz situation forward and back, as he might have known the multiplication table. He was not president of the board of trade and the head of a land and improvement company, organised with a capital of a million on a cash basis of $2000, for nothing. Tarvin’s company included all the solid men of the town; it owned the open plain from Topaz to the foothills, and had laid it out in streets, avenues, and public parks. One could see the whole thing on a map hung in the company’s office on Connecticut Avenue, which was furnished in oak, floored with mosaic, carpeted with Turkish rugs, and draped with silk. There one could buy town lots at any point within two miles of the town; there, in fact, Tarvin had some town lots to sell. The habit of having them to sell had taught him the worst and the best that could be said about the place; and he knew to an exactitude all that he could make a given man believe about it.
He was aware, for example, that Rustler not only had richer mines in its near neighbourhood than Topaz, but that it