The Oval Diamond

Summary

A glinting shard of African earth—a lozenge-shaped diamond whose facets seem to inhale sunlight—falls into calloused hands, then becomes the axis on which a dozen lives pivot like dizzy moths. From the ochre dust of a Transvaal mine it travels, stitched into the hem of a dead man’s coat, across storm-grey Atlantic swells, through Ellis Island’s iron-cage corridors, only to land inside a walled Long Island garden where a girl in mourning white paces like a caged lark. Every gate clang, every footfall on the gravel, every hush of silk against boxwood hedges vibrates with the knowledge that the jewel is somewhere near, beating like a second heart. Step-brothers, claim-jumping miners, a moonstruck boy who vaults stone parapets to court a stranger—each believes possession will transmute blood into gold. Yet the diamond itself, passed like a baton in a relay of greed, seems to mock its would-be owners: it slips from locked drawers, rolls out of shoe soles, hides inside a paste replica, and finally boards a north-bound Pullman as both bait and promise. When the train’s rear platform ejects a false stone into night air, the real gem—still warm from a bridegroom’s breast pocket—remains, winking at the cosmic joke that fortune, like love, favors only those willing to gamble the thing they covet most.

Synopsis

The story is centered about an oval diamond, a priceless gem, found by a South African miner on his claim. His possession of it has aroused the envy of his stepbrother, Major Dennison, his former partner, and the latter's son, Arthur Dennison, and of four miners who owned adjacent claims. To escape their plotting to gain possession of the stone, the owner and his daughter, Sylvia, left for America. Shortly after their arrival in the United States, however. Major Dennison and his son had effected an automobile accident with the taxicab in which Mr. Daunt and his daughter were riding, had killed his stepbrother, and had escaped with diamond. Later, on her search for the gem, Sylvia had gone to her uncle's house where she had been imprisoned and restrained from going beyond the high walls which enclosed the plane. All this had happened before the beginning of the play. Things of importance for Sylvia do not begin to happen until the entrance of Robert Ledyard, impressionable youth, over the garden wall. On a trip south, Robert discovers that there is something mysterious and unfathomable about the house next to the one in which his uncle, whom he is visiting, lives. To further his suspicions, he discovers a very hampered and unhappy looking girl in the enclosed yard. Feeling certain that she is in trouble, he throws a note to her in which he offers his services, and asks her to nod her head if he can be of assistance. Hardly waiting for a reply, he follows his note over the garden wall, and learns the story of her distress. The complications which follow with the return of Major Dennison and his son before Robert has time to return to his uncle's house, start Robert's fight for the possession of the oval diamond. Robert escapes, eludes now Major Dennison and his son, and later the four miners, who, too, have come to America determined to possess the diamond. He finds the diamond a thousand times and loses it again. It travels through hundreds of hands during the brief five thousand feet of its existence, but in the end it comes back to stay in the hands which own it. Sylvia marries Robert. They start north on their wedding trip. In his pocket the young bridegroom carries a small package which he carefully guards, feeling nervously now and again, to see that he has not lost it. Following them is a mysterious character who watches and shakes his head shrewdly as he sees the evident feeling of insecurity which possesses Robert. As the young bride and groom sit on the rear platform of the train the stranger appears before them, removes his mustache, and demands at the point of the pistol, that Robert hand over the small package in his pocket. It is Colby, one of the miners. Knowing that resistance is futile, the young man hands over his guarded package, and the thief drops from the speeding train. After he had gone, the young husband laughs, and pulls from an inside pocket the real diamond. The one he had given to Colby was paste.