At eight o'clock the next evening Aunt Ellen took a quaint old gold ring from a moth-eaten case and gave it to Richard.
"Wear it to-night, nephew," she begged. "Your mother gave it to me.
"Good luck in love she said it brought. She asked me to give it to you when you had found the one you loved."
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Young Rockwall took the ring reverently (虔诚地) and tried it on his smallest finger. It slipped as far as the second joint and stopped.
He took it off and stuffed it into his vest pocket, after the manner of man. And then he 'phoned for his cab.
At the station he captured Miss Lantry out of the gadding mob at eight thirty-two.
"We mustn't keep mamma and the others waiting," said she.
"To Wallack's Theatre as fast as you can drive!" said Richard loyally.
They whirled up Forty-second to Broadway, and then down the white-starred lane (小巷) that leads from the soft meadows of sunset to the rocky hills of morning. {1}
At Thirty-fourth Street young Richard quickly thrust up the trap and ordered the cabman to stop.
"I've dropped a ring," he apologised, as he climbed out. "It was my mother's, and I'd hate to lose it. I won't detain (耽搁) you a minute--I saw where it fell."
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In less than a minute he was back in the cab with the ring.
But within that minute a crosstown car had stopped directly in front of the cab.
The cabman tried to pass to the left, but a heavy express wagon cut him off.
He tried the right, and had to back away from the furniture van that had no business to be there.
He tried to back out, but dropped his reins and swore dutifully.
He was blockaded (阻断) in a tangled mess of vehicles and horses.
One of those street blockades had occurred that sometimes tie up commerce and movement quite suddenly in the big city.
"Why don't you drive on?" said Miss Lantry, impatiently. "We'll be late."
Richard stood up in the cab and looked around.
He saw a congested flood of wagons, trucks, cabs, vans and street cars filling the vast space where Broadway, Sixth Avenue and Thirty-fourth street cross one another as a twenty-six inch maiden fills her twenty-two inch girdle. {2}
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And still from all the cross streets they were hurrying and rattling toward the converging point at full speed, and hurling themselves into the struggling mass, locking wheels and adding their drivers' imprecations to the clamour (喧闹).
The entire traffic of Manhattan seemed to have jammed (使堵塞) itself around them.
The oldest New Yorker among the thousands of spectators that lined the sidewalks had not witnessed a street blockade of the proportions of this one.
"I'm very sorry," said Richard, as he resumed his seat, "but it looks as if we are stuck.
"They won't get this jumble loosened up in an hour. It was my fault. If I hadn't dropped the ring we--"
"Let me see the ring," said Miss Lantry. "Now that it can't be helped, I don't care. I think theatres are stupid, anyway."
At 11 o'clock that night somebody tapped lightly on Anthony Rockwall's door.
"Come in," said Anthony, who was in a red dressing-gown, reading a book of piratical (海盗的) adventures.
Somebody was Aunt Ellen, looking like a grey-haired angel that had been left on earth by mistake.
"They're engaged, Anthony," she said, softly. "She has promised to marry Richard.
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"On their way to the theatre there was a street blockade, and it was two hours before their cab could get out of it.
"And oh, brother Anthony, don't ever boast (夸耀) of the power of money again.
"A little emblem (象征) of true love--a little ring that symbolised unending and unmercenary affection (爱)--was the cause of our Richard finding his happiness.
"He dropped it in the street, and got out to recover it. And before they could continue the blockade occurred.
"He spoke to his love and won her there while the cab was hemmed in. Money is dross (碎屑) compared with true love, Anthony."
"All right," said old Anthony. "I'm glad the boy has got what he wanted. I told him I wouldn't spare any expense in the matter if--"
"But, brother Anthony, what good could your money have done?"
"Sister," said Anthony Rockwall. "I've got my pirate in a devil of a scrape.
"His ship has just been scuttled, and he's too good a judge of the value of money to let drown. I wish you would let me go on with this chapter."
The story should end here. I wish it would as heartily (热切地) as you who read it wish it did. But we must go to the bottom of the well for truth.
The next day a person with red hands and a blue polka-dot necktie, who called himself Kelly, called at Anthony Rockwall's house, and was at once received in the library (书房).
"Well," said Anthony, reaching for his chequebook, "it was a good bilin' of soap. Let's see--you had $5,000 in cash."
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"I paid out $300 more of my own," said Kelly. "I had to go a little above the estimate. I got the express wagons and cabs mostly for $5; but the trucks and two-horse teams mostly raised me to $10.
"The motormen wanted $10, and some of the loaded teams $20. The cops struck me hardest--$50 I paid two, and the rest $20 and $25.
"But didn't it work beautiful, Mr. Rockwall? I'm glad William A. Brady (美国著名的剧院经理) wasn't onto that little outdoor vehicle mob scene.
"I wouldn't want William to break his heart with jealousy. And never a rehearsal (排演), either! The boys was (正确的应该是 were) on time to the fraction of a second.
"It was two hours before a snake could get below Greeley's statue."
"Thirteen hundred--there you are, Kelly," said Anthony, tearing off a check. "Your thousand, and the $300 you were out. You don't despise (看不起) money, do you, Kelly?"
"Me?" said Kelly. "I can lick the man that invented poverty."
Anthony called Kelly when he was at the door.
"You didn't notice," said he, "anywhere in the tie-up, a kind of a fat boy without any clothes on shooting arrows around with a bow, did you?"
"Why, no," said Kelly, mystified (困惑的). "I didn't. If he was like you say, maybe the cops pinched him before I got there."
"I thought the little rascal wouldn't be on hand," chuckled Anthony. "Good-by, Kelly."
