The Three Brides, Love in a Cottage, and Other Tales Part 6

"Perhaps you will think it strange, young man, that, after all, the wretched survivor stood again at the altar. But he was a mysterious being, whose ways were inscrutable, who, thirsting for domestic bliss, was doomed ever to seek and never to find it. His third bride was Madeleine. I well remember her. She was a beauty, in the true sense of the word. It may seem strange to you to hear the praise of beauty from such lips as mine; but I cannot help expatiating upon hers. She might have sat upon a throne, and the most loyal subject, the proudest peer, would have sworn the blood within her veins had descended from a hundred kings. She was a proud creature, with a tall, commanding form, and raven tresses, that floated, dark and cloud-like, over her shoulders. She was a singularly-gifted woman, and possessed of rare inspiration. She loved the widower for his power and his fame, and she wedded him. They were married in that church. It was on a summer afternoon--I recollect it well. During the ceremony, the blackest cloud I ever saw overspread the heavens like a pall, and, at the moment when the _third bride_ p.r.o.nounced her vow, a clap of thunder shook the building to the centre. All the females shrieked, but the bride herself made the response with a steady voice, and her eyes glittered with wild fire as she gazed upon her bridegroom. He remarked a kind of incoherence in her expressions as they rode home-ward, which surprised him at the time. Arrived at his house, she shrunk upon the threshold: but this was the timidity of a maiden. When they were alone he clasped her hand--it was as cold as ice! He looked into her face.

"Madeleine," said he, "what means this? your cheeks are as pale as your wedding gown!" The bride uttered a frantic shriek.

"My wedding gown!" exclaimed she; "no, no--this--this is my sister's shroud! The hour for confession has arrived. It is G.o.d that impels me to speak. To win you I have lost my soul! Yes--yes--I am a murderess!

She smiled upon me in the joyous affection of her young heart--but I gave her the fatal drug! Adelaide twined her white arms about my neck, but I administered the poison! Take me to your arms: I have lost my soul for you, and mine must you be!"

"She spread her long, white arms, and stood like a maniac before him,"

said the s.e.xton, rising, in the excitement of the moment, and a.s.suming the att.i.tude he described; "and then," continued he, in a hollow voice, "at that moment came the thunder and the flash, and the guilty woman fell dead upon the floor!" The countenance of the narrator expressed all the horror that he felt.

"And the bridegroom," asked I; "the husband of the destroyer and the victims--what became of him?"

"_He stands before you_!" was the thrilling answer.

CALIFORNIA SPECULATION.

Mose Jenkins did not take the California fever when it first broke out; for he was, as he acknowledged himself, "slow-motioned," and his skull was of such formidable thickness, that it required a good many months for an idea to penetrate into his brain. In the interim, he delved and digged away on a corner of his father's farm, having leased the land of the old gentleman, and purchased his time of the same respectable individual for the purpose of working it. But to work a farm where the rocks are so near together, that the sheep's noses have to be sharpened before they can graze between them, is not a very profitable business; and Mose, by dint of hard thinking, arrived at the conclusion that there might possibly be some other occupation less laborious and quite as lucrative.

"Confound these granite rocks!" he exclaimed, one day, as he was ploughing, after he had broken his trace chains for a second time; "they hev another kind er rocks in Calliforny. Jehosaphat! If I was only _thar_. There a fellur hez to dig; but he gets pretty good wages--five thousand dollars a month is middlin', not to say fair."

In short, Mose Jenkins made up his mind to go to San Francisco, having got the wherewithal to carry him in a packet to the land of promise.

Fearful of opposition, he communicated his project neither to the author of his days, the venerable Zephaniah Jenkins, nor to the beloved of his heart, Miss Prudence Salter, a cherry-cheeked damsel in a state of orphanage; but wrote down to a friend in Boston to secure a pa.s.sage. He reserved his communications to the very last moment, when he was all ready for starting. His father gave him his blessing; Prudence was more difficult to manage.

"It's a breach of promise case," said she, "I don't believe you mean to marry me arter all."

"Yes, I do, ye silly critter," said Mose. "I'll come and make you Mrs.

Jenkins; but I want to get the rocks first."

"Ain't there rocks enough here?" asked Prudence, simply.

"Pooh! I mean the rocks what folks carries in their pockets, an'

treats every body with--all sollid gold."

"I don't believe half them stories," said Prudence, contemptuously.

"They're as true as gospil," said Mose, "'cause I see it in a paper.

And there's Curnil Hateful s...o...b..y, that went from here last year--you'd ort to know him, Prudence, coz he was one of your old beaux--wall, now, they say he's one of the richest men in Calliforny.

I tell you I'm bound to make my fortin' there."

"And so am I," said Prudence, resolutely.

"You!" exclaimed Mose.

"Yes. I'm bound to go, too; and I'll follow you in the next s.h.i.+p, else you'll be green enough to marry one of them 'ere Ingine gals."

"Prudence, you're s.p.u.n.k!" exclaimed Mose, in terms of the warmest admiration. "Good by! And I swow I'll marry you jest as soon as you set foot in Calliforny."

Not to amplify on details, our adventurer landed there safely, and was, of course, like all verdant voyagers, much surprised at the tariff of prices subjected to his notice. The porter who carried his trunk to the hotel charged him ten dollars; and though that same hotel was a leaky tent, a plate of tough beef was charged seventy-five cents, and a watery potato fifty. Business was very dull, too, at the moment of his arrival; the accounts from the mines were disastrous, and every thing announced an approaching crisis. Moses confided his griefs to Colonel Hateful s...o...b..y, his fellow-townsman, who was really one of the richest men in California, winding up with lamentations over the expected arrival of Prudence, whom he had promised to marry.

"What kin I do with a wife," said he, "when I can't support myself, even?"

"Very true," said the colonel. "Now, if it were me, the case would be very different."

"Prudence done all the courtin' herself, curnil," said our hero, sulkily. "I never should have offered if it hadn't been for her. I kinder like 'er pretty well, though: she's a sort of pretty nice gal."

"Well, Mose," said the colonel, "what do you say to giving up your claim?"

"Eh?" said Mose, p.r.i.c.king up his ears.

"What'll you take for your right and t.i.tle--cash down--no questions asked?"

"Wall, I dunnow," said Mose, opening his jackknife and picking up a chip. "Prudence is a pretty nice gal, as you said, curnil."

"As _you_ said, Mr. Jenkins."

"Wall, it's all the same. The critter's very fond of me and so be I of her. I had plaguy hard work, I tell you, to get her consent."

"Come, come," said the colonel, "you want to drive a hard bargain with me. I'm willing to give you a fair price, say twenty thousand; but I don't want to be swindled."

"Say twenty-five thousand and take her, curnil."

"No--twenty."

"Cash down?"

"Cash down."

"Done."

"The money's ready whenever Prudence is."

In a few days another s.h.i.+p from Boston came in, and Prudence was among the first to land. Mose met her with very little ardor, the colonel remaining in the background. After some little conversation, the young lady reminded her lover of their agreement.

"I can't do it, Prudence; I've swore off--I've jined the old bachelor society."

"But you promised me," screamed Prudence.

"Can't help that; you can't get a verdict here for breaches of promise; there ain't no law here; every body goes on his own individual hook."

"You cruel monster, why can't you marry me?"

"'Cause."

"'Cause what?"

"'Cause," said Mose, retreating to a safe distance, "_I've traded you away_!"