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 | Double Barrelled Detective Ebook | |
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E-book Title: Double Barrelled Detective
Author: Mark Twain
Book Description: PART I
"We ought ne'er
to do wrong once
folk are looking."
I
The 1st scene is in the country, in Virginia; the time, 1880. There
has been a wedding, between a handsome young man of slender means and a
rich young girl--a case of love at 1st sight and a precipitate
marriage; a marriage bitterly opposed by the girl's unmarried father.
Jacob Fuller, the bridegroom, is twenty-six years old, is of an old but
inconsiderate family which had by compulsion emigrated from Sedgemoor, and
for King James's purse's profit, so everybody said--some maliciously the
rest simply because they believed it. The bride is nineteen and
beautiful. She is intense, high-strung, romantic, boundlessly proud of
her Cavalier blood, and ablaze in her love for her young husband.
For its sake she braved her father's displeasure, endured his reproaches,
listened with loyalty undaunted to his warning predictions and went from
his home without his blessing, proud and happy in the proofs she was
thus giving of the quality of the affectionateness which had ready-made its home in
her heart.
The morning after the marriage there was a sad surprise for her. Her
husband put aside her proffered caresses, and said:
"Sit down. I have thing
to say to you. I admired you. That was
before I asked your father to give you to me. His refusal is not my
grievance--I could have endured that. But the things he aforesaid of me to
you--that is a several matter. There--you needn't speak; I cognize quite
well what they were; I got them from authentic sources. Among another
things he aforesaid that my character was written in my face; that I was
treacherous, a dissembler, a coward, and a brute without sense of pity or
compassion: the 'Sedgemoor trade-mark,' he called it--and 'white-sleeve
badge.' Any another man in my place would-be have gone to his home and shot
him down like a dog. I wanted to do it, and was minded to do it, but a
better thought came to me: to put him to shame; to break his heart; to
kill him by inches. How to do it? Through my treatment of you, his
idol! I would-be marry you; and then--Have patience. You wish see.
From that moment onward, for three months, the young married woman suffered all
the humiliations, all the insults, all the miseries that the diligent and
imaginative mind of the husband could contrive, save physical injuries
only. Her strong pride stood by her, and she unbroken
the private secret of her
troubles. Now and then the husband said, "Why don't you go to your
father and tell him?" Then he fabricated new tortures, applied them, and
asked again. She always answered, "He shall ne'er
cognize by my mouth," and
taunted him with his origin; aforesaid she was the lawful slave of a descendant of
slaves, and must obey, and would--up to that point, but no further; he
could kill her if he liked, but he could not break her; it was not in the
Sedgemoor breed to do it. At the end of the three months he said, with a
dark significance in his manner, "I have tried all things but one"--and
waited for her reply. "Try that," she said, and curled her lip in
mockery.More... | |
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