IV
The ugly monosyllables struck her like a blow between the eyes. Alexis Triona!—John Briggs! Briggs! How had she labored, erecting her scaling ladders against the wall of exclusion, to enter the fortified city of the upper-classes, the county families! With what daring had she climbed the heights, bearing the banner with a strange device, “Triona”! And now—flat on her back outside the pale, she lay—her cartes de visite scattered confusedly on the ground, each inscribed “Mrs. John Briggs.”
The sound of the word, its assonance, its consonance, its dissonance, rang in her ears. What had she fled from? The supreme horror crashed in upon her consciousness. Briggs!—pigs! Now forever inescapable, her tragic heritage! No one would ever forget it—no one would ever try to forget it.
“Mrs. John Briggs’s father sold pigs!” She could hear the war cry of the aristocracy.
“Briggs—Briggs—pigs, pigs, pigs,” the drumbeat of her conquering enemies.
“Oh, pigs is pigs and Briggs is Briggs,
And never the twain we’ll meet”——
the chant of embattled dowagers.
“One little pig went to market—so two little Briggs stay home!” the warning, the command of the elect, the desired.
It was impossible. It was unthinkable. It was unendurable. All night she sat and kept a ghastly vigil, to confront him in his first awakening with proofs of his Briggishness.