The Classic American Short Story Megapack, Volume 1

by Ambrose Bierce

  After this, I suppose it is unnecessary for me to say, that Betts soon brought the category of possibilities into one of certainty. To own the truth, he carried every thing by his impetuosity, reducing the governess to own that what she admitted she could do so well, she had already done in a very complete and thorough manner. I enjoyed this scene excessively, nor was it over in a minute. Mademoiselle Hennequin used me several times to wipe away tears, and it is strong proof how much both parties were thinking of other matters, that neither discovered who was present at so interesting a tete-a-tete.

  At length came the denouement. After confessing how much she loved Betts, how happy she would be could she be his slave all the days of her life, how miserable she was in knowing that he had placed his affections on her, and how much more miserable she should be, had she learned he had NOT, Mademoiselle Hennequin almost annihilated the young man by declaring that it was utterly impossible for her to consent to become his wife. The reason was the difference in fortune, and the impossibility that she should take advantage of his passion to lead him into a connection that he might afterwards regret. Against this decision, Betts reasoned warmly, but seriously, in vain. Had Mademoiselle Hennequin been an American, instead of a French, girl, her feelings would not have been so sensitive on this point, for, in this great republic, every body but the fortune-hunters, an exceedingly contemptible class, considers a match without money, quite as much a matter of course, as a match with. But, the governess had been educated under a different system, and it struck her imagination as very proper, that she should make both herself and her lover miserable, because he had two hundred thousand dollars, and she had not as many hundreds. All this strangely conflicted with Betts’ preconceived opinion of a French woman’s selfishness, and, while he was disposed to believe his adored perfection, he almost feared it was a trick. Of such contradictory materials is the human mind composed!

  At length the eyes of Betts fell on me, who was still in the hand of Mademoiselle Hennequin, and had several times been applied to her eyes unheeded. It was evident I revived unpleasant recollections, and the young man could not avoid letting an expression escape him, that sufficiently betrayed his feelings.

  “This handkerchief!” exclaimed the young governess—“Ah! it is that of Mademoiselle Julie, which I must have taken by mistake. But, why should this handkerchief awaken any feeling in you, monsieur? You are not about to enact the Moor, in your days of wooing?”

  This was said sweetly, and withal a little archly, for the poor girl was glad to turn the conversation from its harassing and painful points; but Betts was in no humor for pleasantry, and he spoke out in a way to give his mistress some clue to his thoughts.

  “That cursed handkerchief”—it is really indecent in young men to use such improper language, but they little heed what they say when strongly excited—“that cursed handkerchief has given me as much pain, as it appears also to have given you. I wish I knew the real secret of its connection with your feelings; for I confess, like that of Desdemona’s, it has excited distrust, though for a very different cause.”

  The cheeks of Mademoiselle Hennequin were pale, and her brow thoughtful. Still, she had a sweet smile for Betts; and, though ignorant of the nature of his suspicions, which she would have scarcely pardoned, it was her strongest wish to leave no darker cloud between them, than the one she felt it her duty to place there herself. She answered, therefore, frankly and simply, though not without betraying strong emotion as she proceeded.

  “This handkerchief is well known to me,” answered the young French woman; “it revives the recollections of some of the most painful scenes of a life that has never seen much sunshine. You have heard me speak of a grandmother, Mr. Shoreham, who took care of my childhood, and who died in my arms. That handkerchief, I worked for her support in her last illness, and this lace—yes, this beautiful lace was a part of that beloved grandmother’s bridal trousseau. I put it where you see it, to enhance the value of my labors.”

  “I see it all!” exclaimed the repentant Betts—“Feel it all, dearest, dearest Mademoiselle Hennequin; and I hope this exquisite work, this refined taste brought all the comfort and reward you had a right to anticipate.”

  A shade of anguish crossed the face of Adrienne—for it was no other—as she gazed at me, and recalled all the scenes of her sufferings and distress. Then I knew her again, for time and a poor memory, with some development of person, had caused me to forget the appearance of the lovely creature who may be said to have made me what I am; but one glance at her, with that expression of intense suffering on her countenance, renewed all my earlier impressions.

  “I received as much as I merited, perhaps,” returned the meek-minded girl—for she was proud only in insisting on what she fancied right—“and enough to give my venerated parent Christian burial. They were days of want and sorrow that succeeded, during which, Betts, I toiled for bread like an Eastern slave, the trodden-on and abused hireling of a selfish milliner. Accident at length placed me in a family as a governess. This family happened to be acquainted with Madame Monson, and an offer that was brilliant to me, in my circumstances, brought me to America. You see by all this how unfit I am to be your wife, monsieur. You would blush to have it said you had married a French milliner!”

  “But you are not a milliner, in that sense, dearest Adrienne—for you must suffer me to call you by that name—you are a lady reduced by revolutions and misfortunes. The name of Hennequin I know is respectable, and what care I for money, when so much worth is to be found on your side of the scale. Money would only oppress me, under such circumstances.”

  “Your generosity almost overcomes my scruples, but it may not be. The name to which I am entitled is certainly not one to be ashamed of—it is far more illustrious than that of Hennequin, respectable as is the last; but of what account is a name to one in my condition!”

  “And your family name is not Hennequin?” asked the lover, anxiously.

  “It is not. My poor grandmother assumed the name of Hennequin, when we went last to Paris, under an apprehension that the guillotine might follow the revolution of July, as it had followed that of ’89. This name she enjoined it on me to keep, and I have never thought it prudent to change it. I am of the family of de la Rocheaimard.”

  The exclamation which burst from the lips of Betts Shoreham, betokened both surprise and delight. He made Adrienne repeat her declarations, and even desired her to explain her precise parentage. The reader will remember, that there had been an American marriage in Adrienne’s family, and that every relative the poor girl had on earth, was among these distant connections on this side of the Atlantic. One of these relatives, though it was no nearer than a third cousin, was Betts Shoreham, whose great-grandmother had been a bona fide de la Rocheaimard, and who was enabled, at once, to point out to the poor deserted orphan some forty or fifty persons, who stood in the same degree of affinity to her. It is needless to say that this conversation was of absorbing interest to both; so much so, indeed, that Betts momentarily forgot his love, and by the time it had ended, Adrienne was disposed to overlook most of her over scrupulous objections to rewarding that very passion. But the hour admonished them of the necessity of separating.

  “And now, my beloved cousin,” said Betts Shoreham, as he rose to quit the room, seizing Adrienne’s unresisting hand—“now, my own Adrienne, you will no longer urge your sublimated notions of propriety against my suit. I am your nearest male relative, and have a right to your obedience—and I command that you be the second de la Rocheaimard who became the wife of a Shoreham.”

  “Tell me, mon cher cousin,” said Adrienne, smiling through her tears—“were your grand-parents, my good uncle and aunt, were they happy? Was their union blessed?”

  “They were miracles of domestic felicity, and their happiness has passed down in tradition, among all their descendants. Even religion could not furnish them with a cause for misunderstanding. Tha
t example which they set to the last century, we will endeavor to set to this.”

  Adrienne smiled, kissed her hand to Betts, and ran out of the room, leaving me forgotten on the sofa. Betts Shoreham seized his hat, and left the house, a happy man; for, though he had no direct promise as yet, he felt as reasonably secure of success, as circumstances required.

  CHAPTER XVII.

  Five minutes later, Tom Thurston entered, and Julia Monson came down to receive HIM, her pique not interfering, and it being rather stylish to be disengaged on the morning of the day when the household was in all the confusion of a premeditated rout.

  “This is SO good of you, Miss Monson,” said Tom, as he made his bow—I heard it all, being still on the sofa—“This is so good of you, when your time must have so many demands on it.”

  “Not in the least, Mr. Thurston—mamma and the housekeeper have settled every thing, and I am really pleased to see you, as you can give me the history of the new play—”

  “Ah! Miss Monson, my heart—my faculties—my ideas—” Tom was getting bothered, and he made a desperate effort to extricate himself—“In short, my judgment is so confused and monopolized, that I have no powers left to think or speak of plays. In a word, I was not there.”

  “That explains it, then—and what has thus confused your mind, Mr. Thurston?”

  “The approach of this awful night. You will be surrounded by a host of admirers, pouring into your ears their admiration and love, and then what shall I have to support me, but that ‘yes,’ with which you once raised me from the depths of despair to an elevation of happiness that was high as the highest pinnacle of the caverns of Kentucky; raising me from the depths of Chimborazo.”

  Tom meant to reverse this image, but love is proverbially desperate in its figures of speech, and any thing was better than appearing to hesitate. Nevertheless, Miss Monson was too well instructed, and had too much real taste, not to feel surprise at all this extravagance of diction and poetry.

  “I am not certain, Mr. Thurston, that I rightly understand you,” she said. “Chimborazo is not particularly low, nor are the caverns of Kentucky so strikingly elevated.”

  “Ascribe it all to that fatal, heart-thrilling, hope-inspiring ‘yes,’ loveliest of human females,” continued Tom, kneeling with some caution, lest the straps of his pantaloons should give way—“Impute all to your own lucid ambiguity, and to the torments of hope that I experience. Repeat that ‘yes,’ lovely, consolatory, imaginative being, and raise me from the thrill of depression, to the liveliest pulsations of all human acmes.”

  “Hang it,” thought Tom, “if she stand that, I shall presently be ashore. Genius, itself, can invent nothing finer.”

  But Julia did stand it. She admired Tom for his exterior, but the admiration of no moderately sensible woman could overlook rodomontade so exceedingly desperate. It was trespassing too boldly on the proprieties to utter such nonsense to a gentlewoman, and Tom, who had got his practice in a very low school, was doomed to discover that he had overreached himself.

  “I am not certain I quite understand you, Mr. Thurston,” answered the half-irritated, half-amused young lady; “your language is so very extraordinary—your images so unusual—”

  “Say, rather, that it is your own image, loveliest incorporation of perceptible incarnations,” interrupted Tom, determined to go for the whole, and recalling some rare specimens of magazine eloquence—“Talk not of images, obdurate maid, when you are nothing but an image yourself.”

  “I! Mr. Thurston—and of what is it your pleasure to accuse me of being the image?”

  “O! unutterable wo—yes, inexorable girl, your vacillating ‘yes’ has rendered me the impersonation of that oppressive sentiment, of which your beauty and excellence have become the mocking reality. Alas, alas! that bearded men,”—Tom’s face was covered with hair—“Alas, alas! that bearded men should be brought to weep over the contrarieties of womanly caprice.”

  Here Tom bowed his head, and after a grunting sob or two, he raised his handkerchief in a very pathetic manner to his face, and thought to himself—“Well, if she stand that, the Lord only knows what I shall say next.”

  As for Julia, she was amused, though at first she had been a little frightened. The girl had a good deal of spirit, and she had tant soit peu of mother Eve’s love of mischief in her. She determined to “make capital” out of the affair, as the Americans say, in shop-keeping slang.

  “What is the ‘yes,’ of which you speak,” she inquired, “and, on which you seem to lay so much stress?”

  “That ‘yes’ has been my bane and antidote,” answered Tom, rallying for a new and still more desperate charge. “When first pronounced by your rubicund lips, it thrilled on my amazed senses like a beacon of light—”

  “Mr. Thurston—Mr. Thurston—what do you mean?”

  “Ah, d—n it,” thought Tom, “I should have said humid light’—how the deuce did I come to forget that word—it would have rounded the sentence beautifully.”

  “What do I mean, angel of ‘humid light,’” answered Tom, aloud; “I mean all I say, and lots of feeling besides. When the heart is anguished with unutterable emotion, it speaks in accents that deaden all the nerves, and thrill the ears.” Tom was getting to be animated, and when that was the case, his ideas flowed like a torrent after a thunder-shower, or in volumes, and a little muddily. “What do I mean, indeed; I mean to have you,” he thought, “and at least, eighty thousand dollars, or dictionaries, Webster’s inclusive, were made in vain.”

  “This is very extraordinary, Mr. Thurston,” rejoined Julia, whose sense of womanly propriety began to take the alarm; “and I must insist on an explanation. Your language would seem to infer—really, I do not know, what it does not seem to infer. Will you have the goodness to explain what you mean by that ‘yes?’”

  “Simply, loveliest and most benign of your sex, that once already, in answer to a demand of your hand, you deigned to reply with that energetic and encouraging monosyllable, yes—dear and categorical affirmative—” exclaimed Tom, going off again at half-cock, highly impressed with the notion that rhapsody, instead of music, was the food of love—“Yes, dear and categorical affirmative, with what ecstasy did not my drowsy ears drink in the melodious sounds—what extravagance of delight my throbbing heart echo its notes, on the wings of the unseen winds—in short, what considerable satisfaction your consent gave my pulsating mind!”

  “Consent!—Consent is a strong word, Mr. Thurston!”

  “It is, indeed, adorable Julia, and it is also a strong thing. I’ve known terrible consequences arise from the denial of a consent, not half as explicit as your own.”

  “Consequences!—may I ask, sir, to what consequences you allude?”

  “The consequences, Miss Monson—that is, the consequences of a violated troth, I mean—they may be divided into three parts—” here, Tom got up, brushed his knees, each in succession, with his pocket-handkerchief, and began to count on his fingers, like a lawyer who is summing up an argument—“Yes, Miss Julia, into three parts. First come the pangs of unrequited love; on these I propose to enlarge presently. Next come the legal effects, always supposing that the wronged party can summon heart enough to carry on a suit, with bruised affections—” “hang it,” thought Tom, “why did I not think of that word ‘bruised’ while on my knees; it would tell like a stiletto—” “Yes, Miss Julia, if ‘bruised affections’ would permit the soul to descend to such preliminaries. The last consequence is, the despair of hope deferred.”

  “All this is so extraordinary, Mr. Thurston, that I insist on knowing why you have presumed to address such language to me—yes, sir, insist on knowing your reason.”

  Tom was dumbfounded. Now, that he was up, and looking about him, he had an opportunity of perceiving that his mistress was offended, and that he had somewhat overdone the sublime, poetical and affecting. With a sudden revulsion of
feeling and tactics, he determined to throw himself, at once, into the penitent and candid.

  “Ah, Miss Monson,” he cried, somewhat more naturally—“I see I have offended and alarmed you. But, impute it all to love. The strength of my passion is such, that I became desperate, and was resolved to try any expedient that I thought might lead to success.”

  “That might be pardoned, sir, were it not for the extraordinary character of the expedient. Surely, you have never seen in me any taste for the very extraordinary images and figures of speech you have used, on this occasion.”

  “This handkerchief,”—said Tom, taking me from the sofa—“this handkerchief must bear all the blame. But for this, I should not have dreamt of running so much on the high-pressure principle; but love, you know, Miss Julia, is a calculation, like any other great event of life, and must be carried on consistently.”

  “And, pray, sir, how can that handkerchief have brought about any such result?”

  “Ah! Miss Monson, you ask me to use a most killing frankness! Had we not better remain under the influence of the poetical star?”

  “If you wish to ensure my respect, or esteem, Mr. Thurston, it is necessary to deal with me in perfect sincerity. Nothing but truth will ever be pleasing to me.”

  “Hang it,” thought Tom, again, “who knows? She is whimsical, and may really like to have the truth. It’s quite clear her heart is as insensible to eloquence and poetry, as a Potter’s Field wall, and it might answer to try her with a little truth. Your $80,000 girls get SUCH notions in their heads, that there’s no analogy, as one might say, between them and the rest of the species. Miss Julia,” continuing aloud, “my nature is all plain-dealing, and I am delighted to find a congenial spirit. You must have observed something very peculiar in my language, at the commencement of this exceedingly interesting dialogue?”

  “I will not deny it, Mr. Thurston; your language was, to say the least, very peculiar.”