The $30,000 Bequest, and Other Stories Read online

  CHAPTER VII

  One Sunday afternoon some time after this they were sailing the summerseas in their dream yacht, and reclining in lazy luxury under the awningof the after-deck. There was silence, for each was busy with his ownthoughts. These seasons of silence had insensibly been growing moreand more frequent of late; the old nearness and cordiality were waning.Sally's terrible revelation had done its work; Aleck had tried hard todrive the memory of it out of her mind, but it would not go, and theshame and bitterness of it were poisoning her gracious dream life. Shecould see now (on Sundays) that her husband was becoming a bloated andrepulsive Thing. She could not close her eyes to this, and in these daysshe 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 towardhim, and many a pang it was costing her. _She was breaking the compact,and concealing it from him_. Under strong temptation she had gone intobusiness again; she had risked their whole fortune in a purchase of allthe railway systems and coal and steel companies in the country on amargin, and she was now trembling, every Sabbath hour, lest through somechance word of hers he find it out. In her misery and remorse for thistreachery she could not keep her heart from going out to him in pity;she was filled with compunctions to see him lying there, drunk andcontented, and never suspecting. Never suspecting--trusting her witha perfect and pathetic trust, and she holding over him by a thread apossible calamity of so devastating a--

  "_Say_--Aleck?"

  The interrupting words brought her suddenly to herself. She was gratefulto 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, youare. I mean about the marriage business." He sat up, fat and froggy andbenevolent, like a bronze Buddha, and grew earnest. "Consider--it's morethan five years. You've continued the same policy from the start: withevery rise, always holding on for five points higher. Always when Ithink we are going to have some weddings, you see a bigger thing ahead,and I undergo another disappointment. _I_ think you are too hard toplease. Some day we'll get left. First, we turned down the dentist andthe lawyer. That was all right--it was sound. Next, we turned down thebanker'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 asa trivet, I confess it. Next the Senator's son and the son of theVice-President of the United States--perfectly right, there's nopermanency about those little distinctions. Then you went for thearistocracy; and I thought we had struck oil at last--yes. We wouldmake a plunge at the Four Hundred, and pull in some ancient lineage,venerable, holy, ineffable, mellow with the antiquity of a hundred andfifty years, disinfected of the ancestral odors of salt-cod and peltsall 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 of realaristocrats 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 thebarons 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 lotof four dukes under the hammer; of four nationalities; all sound in thewind 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 anylonger, don't keep up the suspense: take the whole lay-out, and leavethe girls to choose!"

  Aleck had been smiling blandly and contentedly all through thisarraignment of her marriage policy, a pleasant light, as of triumph withperhaps a nice surprise peeping out through it, rose in her eyes, andshe said, as calmly as she could:

  "Sally, what would you say to--_royalty_?"

  Prodigious! Poor man, it knocked him silly, and he fell over thegarboard-strake and barked his shin on the cat-heads. He was dizzy for amoment, then he gathered himself up and limped over and sat down byhis wife and beamed his old-time admiration and affection upon her infloods, out of his bleary eyes.

  "By George!" he said, fervently, "Aleck, you _are _great--the greatestwoman 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 beenconsidering myself qualified to criticize your game. _I!_ Why, if I hadstopped 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 whispereda princely name. It made him catch his breath, it lit his face withexultation.

  "Land!" he said, "it's a stunning catch! He's got a gambling-hall, anda graveyard, and a bishop, and a cathedral--all his very own. And allgilt-edged five-hundred-per-cent. stock, every detail of it; the tidiestlittle property in Europe; and that graveyard--it's the selectest inthe world: none but suicides admitted; _yes_, sir, and the free-listsuspended, too, _all _the time. There isn't much land in theprincipality, but there's enough: eight hundred acres in the graveyardand 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 theRoyal and Imperial Houses of Europe: our grandchildren will sit uponthrones!"

  "True as you live, Aleck--and bear scepters, too; and handle them asnaturally 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 amargin?"

  "No. Trust me for that. He's not a liability, he's an asset. So is theother one."

  "Who is it, Aleck?"

  "His Royal HighnessSigismund-Siegfried-Lauenfeld-Dinkelspiel-Schwartzenberg Blutwurst,Hereditary Grand 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 theoldest and noblest of the three hundred and sixty-four ancient Germanprincipalities, and one of the few that was allowed to retain its royalestate when Bismarck got done trimming them. I know that farm, I've beenthere. It's got a rope-walk and a candle-factory and an army. Standingarmy. Infantry and cavalry. Three soldier and a horse. Aleck, it's beena long wait, and full of heartbreak and hope deferred, but God knows Iam 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 stylethat's going. It's properly due to the royal quality of the partiesof the first part. Now as I understand it, there is only one kind ofmarriage that is sacred to royalty, exclusive to royalty: it's themorganatic."

  "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 morganaticmarriage or none."

  "That settles it!" said Sally, rubbing his hands with delight. "And itwill be the very first in America. Aleck, it will make Newport sick."

  Then they fell silent, and drifted away upon their dream wings to thefar regions of the earth to invite all the crowned heads and theirfamilies and provide gratis transportation to them.