Oakley Hall - Ambrose Bierce and the Queen of Spades

Bierce and I were summoned to Captain Pusey’s office to view the painting of Lady Godiva, which detectives had discovered in a warehouse on Sansome Street. It had been concealed by gunny-sacking until Pusey tracked it down. John Daniel was present, dressed in a neat blue suit with a white boiled shirt and four-in-hand necktie. He watched the proceedings from the corner. He didn’t seem much interested.

Bierce would not speak to Captain Pusey, but he was greatly affected by the painting. “What a lovely woman,” he said, mooning over Lady Caroline as a young woman like a tenor in a romantic aria. She was indeed a lovely piece, Virginia City’s own grande horizontale. Her gardenia flesh illuminated Pusey’s office, her hair hung in golden ringlets, parting over her breasts, her expression of pride and modesty was perfectly depicted. The veins on the neck of the white horse had been graven with artistic perfection. Sgt. Nix regarded the painting disapprovingly.

“She is Senator Jennings’s property,” I said.

“He will have hard times getting this beauty back,” Captain Pusey said smugly. It was the writ of I-want-what-you-have-got that Nix had enunciated, and moreover Captain Pusey had the painting in his possession.

“Shake hands with the gentlemen, John Daniel,” Pusey said, when it was time for us to depart, and John Daniel complied.

“How I would be gratified to puncture that gelid old efflation,” Bierce said when we left police headquarters at Old City Hall, meaning Captain Isaiah Pusey.

I was working on the slave-girl piece when the natty little Railroad representative, Smith, called on Bierce again. He had a daisy in his buttonhole.

“We understand you are to be congratulated on the indictment of Senator Jennings,” he said brightly to Bierce. “Congratulations from the very top, if you know what I mean.”

“Tell Mr. Huntington that I could not be more gratified,” Bierce said, leaning back in his chair. “The Girtcrest Corridor Giveaway will have to find a new sponsor.”

“Yes, that will be some trouble.” Smith snapped his fingers to show how much. He took from his pocket a folded sheet of paper, as Lawyer Curtis had done, but this was no list of philanthropies.

“The investigator investigated!” he announced. “These items!” He held up a single finger.

“The real owner of The Hornet was‌—‌until recently!‌—‌C. P. Gaines, who is also one of the owners of the Spring Valley Water Company. The author of Tattle castigated the water works while it was advertised and promoted in other parts of the paper. The author of Tattle‌—‌all unknowing, we are certain‌—‌with his great popularity, thus acted as a shill for the very aqueous corruption he purported to be exposing. Is it not true?”

Bierce looked sour. “That is not news. I forced Charley Gaines to sell out.”

Smith held up a second finger. “Sold out to Robert Macgowan, whose brother Frank owns sugar plantations in the Hawaiian Islands. The funds for the purchase thus came from those very sugar planters whom Tattle has abused for their rape of the Sandwich Islands. The Hawaiian men enslaved on the plantations, the women in Mother Hubbards! Nor can we think the investment is a disinterested one. The Hornet is and will be editorializing and promoting favorable terms for Hawaiian sugar exports in the treaty that is presently being negotiated with King Kalakaua, and denouncing the opponents of the annexation of Hawaii, which Tattle has continually opposed. Is this not true?”

Bierce did not speak.

“Thus again, the author of Tattle is shilling for the very opposite of the righteous‌—‌so righteous!‌—‌opinions he appears to hold.”

Smith smiled brightly, holding up a third finger. Bierce appeared to have sunk into his chair.

“It is reported from St. Helena that Mrs. Mollie Bierce, in her husband’s protracted absences, has been conducting a liaison with an attractive‌—‌and wealthy!‌—‌Danish gentleman there!”

Smith refolded his paper and returned it to his pocket. He beamed at Bierce. “Is it not true?”

“Get out,” Bierce said.

Smith executed a fancy little step as he went out the door.

“Huntington!” Bierce said, staring at his skull. “The swine of the century has beaten me!”

Later he sighed and said, “The bubble reputation!”

He went home to St. Helena that weekend.

On Monday he showed me the first paragraph of his final column. He had resigned his position despite Mr. Macgowan’s protestations and offers.

“We retire with an unweakened conviction of the rascality of the Railroad gang, the Water Company, the Chronicle newspaper, and the whole saints’-calendar of disreputables, detestables, insupportables, and moral canaille . We trust The Hornet will not extend to them a general amnesty.”

I said, “I don’t think you ought to let Huntington badger you into quitting the paper.”

He sat in his chair, hands in his lap, with his cold, composed face gazing at the skull. “I have considered retiring anyway,” he said. “I require the time to write some fiction.”

“A novel?”

“A bastard form,” he sneered. “No, I have a dozen stories in my head, short pieces. They concern ghosts for the most part.”

“ ‘The outward and visible sign of an inward fear,’ ” I said, quoting him.

“They come after me in their squads and companies,” he said, with a twist of his lips. “They fill my rooms. They have weight, they have demands, they pursue me until I must forge them into stories that say—” He laughed, without amusement. “That say what? That say ‘Why did we die?’ Did we Federals die to preserve a Union that was not worth so many lives to preserve? Did we Confederates die to preserve the obscenity of slavery, when not one in a hundred of us owned a slave? What did we die for? So Abe Lincoln wouldn’t go down in history as having lost half the Nation? So Bobby Lee wouldn’t have to admit he’d been defeated months, and so many lives , before he finally surrendered? The ghosts present their demands,” he said.

“I have left Mollie,” he added. “We are separated.”

Hot wings beat in my head. “Because of some rumor—”

“It is in fact only a rumor,” he interrupted. “There is no liaison. However, he has written letters to her.”

“You have separated from Mrs. Bierce because someone wrote her letters? ”

“She must have encouraged it,” Bierce said.

“Does she admit that?”

“There are a thousand ways a clever woman can attract attentions.”

“That is unfair!” I protested, but he turned his cold bitter face away from me.

“I do not engage in competitions,” he said.

He was insisting on fulfilling Lillie Coit’s prophecy.

“Unfair,” I said again.

He turned. His eyes were cold as steel. “If we have come to personal judgments perhaps it is time to end this association,” he said. “Yes, sir,” I said. I had already returned his revolver to him.

I went back to my new room on Bush Street and tore up the letter I had written to Amelia Brittain, likening her marriage to a wealthy man more than twice her age not only to Sarah Althea Hill’s liaison with Senator Sharon, but to the transactions of Morton Street. I had even quoted Bierce on marriage: “On the offer of a woman’s body: a custom as a sacrifice of virginity, to earn dowry, or as a religious service, a religious duty.” I didn’t want to quote Bierce any more, for he had made me ashamed of myself. Amelia had warned me against becoming like him.