The $30,000 Bequest by Mark Twain (top 5 ebook reader TXT) 📖

CHAPTER VII

One Sunday afternoon some time after this they were sailing the

summer seas in their dream yacht, and reclining in lazy luxury under

the awning of the after-deck. There was silence, for each was busy

with his own thoughts. These seasons of silence had insensibly

been growing more and more frequent of late; the old nearness and

cordiality were waning. Sally’s terrible revelation had done its work;

Aleck had tried hard to drive the memory of it out of her mind,

but it would not go, and the shame and bitterness of it were

poisoning her gracious dream life. She could see now (on Sundays)

that her husband was becoming a bloated and repulsive Thing.

She could not close her eyes to this, and in these days she

no longer looked at him, Sundays, when she could help it.

 

But she—was she herself without blemish? Alas, she knew she was not.

She was keeping a secret from him, she was acting dishonorably

toward him, and many a pang it was costing her. SHE WAS BREAKING

THE COMPACT, AND CONCEALING IT FROM HIM. Under strong temptation

she had gone into business again; she had risked their whole

fortune in a purchase of all the railway systems and coal and steel

companies in the country on a margin, and she was now trembling,

every Sabbath hour, lest through some chance word of hers he find

it out. In her misery and remorse for this treachery she could

not keep her heart from going out to him in pity; she was filled

with compunctions to see him lying there, drunk and contented,

and ever suspecting. Never suspecting—trusting her with a perfect

and pathetic trust, and she holding over him by a thread a possible

calamity of so devastating a—

 

“SAY—Aleck?”

 

The interrupting words brought her suddenly to herself. She was

grateful to have that persecuting subject from her thoughts,

and she answered, with much of the old-time tenderness in her tone:

 

“Yes, dear.”

 

“Do you know, Aleck, I think we are making a mistake—that is,

you are. I mean about the marriage business.” He sat up, fat and

froggy and benevolent, like a bronze Buddha, and grew earnest.

“Consider—it’s more than five years. You’ve continued the same

policy from the start: with every rise, always holding on for five

points higher. Always when I think we are going to have some weddings,

you see a bigger thing ahead, and I undergo another disappointment.

I think you are too hard to please. Some day we’ll get left.

First, we turned down the dentist and the lawyer. That was all right—

it was sound. Next, we turned down the banker’s son and the

pork-butcher’s heir—right again, and sound. Next, we turned

down the Congressman’s son and the Governor’s—right as a trivet,

I confess it. Next the Senator’s son and the son of the Vice-President

of the United States—perfectly right, there’s no permanency about

those little distinctions. Then you went for the aristocracy;

and I thought we had struck oil at last—yes. We would make

a plunge at the Four Hundred, and pull in some ancient lineage,

venerable, holy, ineffable, mellow with the antiquity of a hundred

and fifty years, disinfected of the ancestral odors of salt-cod

and pelts all of a century ago, and unsmirched by a day’s work since,

and then! why, then the marriages, of course. But no, along comes

a pair a real aristocrats from Europe, and straightway you throw over

the half-breeds. It was awfully discouraging, Aleck! Since then,

what a procession! You turned down the baronets for a pair

of barons; you turned down the barons for a pair of viscounts;

the viscounts for a pair of earls; the earls for a pair of marquises;

the marquises for a brace of dukes. NOW, Aleck, cash in!—

you’ve played the limit. You’ve got a job lot of four dukes

under the hammer; of four nationalities; all sound in the wind

and limb and pedigree, all bankrupt and in debt up to the ears.

They come high, but we can afford it. Come, Aleck, don’t delay

any longer, don’t keep up the suspense: take the whole lay-out,

and leave the girls to choose!”

 

Aleck had been smiling blandly and contentedly all through this

arraignment of her marriage policy, a pleasant light, as of triumph

with perhaps a nice surprise peeping out through it, rose in her eyes,

and she said, as calmly as she could:

 

“Sally, what would you say to—ROYALTY?”

 

Prodigious! Poor man, it knocked him silly, and he fell over the

garboard-strake and barked his shin on the cat-heads. He was dizzy

for a moment, then he gathered himself up and limped over and sat

down by his wife and beamed his old-time admiration and affection

upon her in floods, out of his bleary eyes.

 

“By George!” he said, fervently, “Aleck, you ARE great—the greatest

woman in the whole earth! I can’t ever learn the whole size of you.

I can’t ever learn the immeasurable deeps of you. Here I’ve been

considering myself qualified to criticize your game. I! Why,

if I had stopped to think, I’d have known you had a lone hand up

your sleeve. Now, dear heart, I’m all red-hot impatience—tell me

about it!”

 

The flattered and happy woman put her lips to his ear and whispered

a princely name. It made him catch his breath, it lit his face

with exultation.

 

“Land!” he said, “it’s a stunning catch! He’s got a gambling-hall,

and a graveyard, and a bishop, and a cathedral—all his very own.

And all gilt-edged five-hundred-percent. stock, every detail of it;

the tidiest little property in Europe. and that graveyard—

it’s the selectest in the world: none but suicides admitted;

YES, sir, and the free-list suspended, too, ALL the time.

There isn’t much land in the principality, but there’s enough:

eight hundred acres in the graveyard and forty-two outside.

It’s a SOVEREIGNTY—that’s the main thing; LAND’S nothing.

There’s plenty land, Sahara’s drugged with it.”

 

Aleck glowed; she was profoundly happy. She said:

 

“Think of it, Sally—it is a family that has never married outside

the Royal and Imperial Houses of Europe: our grandchildren will

sit upon thrones!”

 

“True as you live, Aleck—and bear scepters, too; and handle

them as naturally and nonchantly as I handle a yardstick.

it’s a grand catch, Aleck. He’s corralled, is he? Can’t get away?

You didn’t take him on a margin?”

 

“No. Trust me for that. He’s not a liability, he’s an asset.

So is the other one.”

 

“Who is it, Aleck?”

 

“His Royal Highness

Sigismund-Siegfriend-Lauenfeld-Dinkelspiel-Schwartzenberg

Blutwurst, Hereditary Grant Duke of Katzenyammer.”

 

“No! You can’t mean it!”

 

“It’s as true as I’m sitting here, I give you my word,” she answered.

 

His cup was full, and he hugged her to his heart with rapture, saying:

 

“How wonderful it all seems, and how beautiful! It’s one of the

oldest and noblest of the three hundred and sixty-four ancient

German principalities, and one of the few that was allowed to

retain its royal estate when Bismarck got done trimming them.

I know that farm, I’ve been there. It’s got a rope-walk and a

candle-factory and an army. Standing army. Infantry and cavalry.

Three soldier and a horse. Aleck, it’s been a long wait, and full

of heartbreak and hope deferred, but God knows I am happy now.

Happy, and grateful to you, my own, who have done it all.

When is it to be?”

 

“Next Sunday.”

 

“Good. And we’ll want to do these weddings up in the very regalest

style that’s going. It’s properly due to the royal quality of the

parties of the first part. Now as I understand it, there is only one

kind of marriage that is sacred to royalty, exclusive to royalty:

it’s the morganatic.”

 

“What do they call it that for, Sally?”

 

“I don’t know; but anyway it’s royal, and royal only.”

 

“Then we will insist upon it. More—I will compel it.

It is morganatic marriage or none.”

 

“That settles it!” said Sally, rubbing his hands with delight.

“And it will be the very first in America. Aleck, it will make

Newport sick.”

 

Then they fell silent, and drifted away upon their dream wings

to the far regions of the earth to invite all the crowned heads

and their families and provide gratis transportation to them.