University of Virginia Library

5. CHAPTER V.

SUCH as we have described was John Vane's
slender outfit for the labors and responsibilities
of a Congressman at the time he became
one.

Was it sufficient? Slowburgh, taken collectively,
thought it was. He was too ignorant to
be a professor in the State university, or even a
teacher in one of the city schools; but it was
presumed that he would answer well enough as a
law-giver for a complicated Republic containing
forty millions of people.

The great majority of his constituents did not
suppose that their representative needed any more
intelligence or moral stamina than would just
enable him to find out what were the “party
measures,” and faithfully to vote for them. The
few who believed that he ought to be acquainted
either with finance, or political economy, or constitutional

limitations, or international law, and
that furthermore he should be a person of tried
character and honor,—these few eccentrics had
no political influence. Such were the happy-go-lucky
credences at which universal suffrage had
arrived in this exceptional district of Slowburgh.

But as this state of public opinion was not
John Vane's work, we must neither blame him
nor praise him for it. We ought even to take a
respectful and compassionate interest in him, as
a good-hearted man of fair repute who was about
to be severely tried by temptation, and who, even
in his hour of triumph, had his pathetic hopes
and fears. It is creditable to his sentimental
nature that, amid all the visions of greatness
which naturally flocked about him, he did not
forget his love for the daughter of the boarding-house
keeper, but rather remembered her the
more tenderly because he had a sort of throne
to share with her. When he heard that he was
elected, his first desire was to seek her presence
and offer himself once more. In this mind he

faithfully remained; but how should he transform
it into deed? Having been refused by her, and
having departed from her mother's house, really
in humble sorrow, but seemingly in lofty dudgeon,
he simply supposed that he must not call upon
her.

Should he write? Well, it is very strange to
tell, but nevertheless it is solemnly true, that
this Congressman elect distrusted his ability to
compose a suitable epistle for the occasion. Of
course he could spell correctly, and, as for business
letters, he wrote a dozen or so a day, and
very good ones too. A speech also he could
make, for nature had given him that commonplace
fluency of utterance which does so much
duty in our public affairs, and he had acquired
confidence in delivery by practice in caucuses,
debating-clubs, and, if I do not err, in prayer-meetings.
But in English composition of the
elegant and delicate sort, he was entirely inexperienced.
He said to himself that, if he should
write a declaratory note to Miss Smiles, something

common, something lacking in high breeding,
might creep into it, which would be sure to
disgust this genteel and highly educated young
lady, and cause her, as he stated it in his anxious
mind, “to put another veto on him.” So, for several
days, our statesman elect walked the streets
of the city which had delighted to honor him,
with a prevalently humble and troubled spirit.

Accident at last favored him; or, perhaps, it
may have been a stroke of feminine providence;
for women do sometimes condescend to order
their own destinies. Once again Olympia Smiles
met him on the street, and most graciously allowed
herself to be stopped by him, if, indeed,
she did not herself do the stopping. Vane was
for a moment dumb, for he remembered that he
had nothing special to say to her except that he
adored her, and it did not seem to him quite
proper to interview her just there on that subject.
Olympia came to his rescue with that quickness
of mind which young ladies rarely lose and that
mercy which they sometimes have.

“Mr. Vane, I am glad to meet you,” she smiled.
It was a very cordial speech surely, but it did not
at all diminish her maidenly dignity, so well did
she know how to rule her manner. “I have
really longed to congratulate you on your victory,”
she continued. “It gives me a great deal
of pleasure.”

“I thank you exceedingly,” stammered John,
blushing with unspeakable joy and fright. “I
heard you were good enough to take my side
during the campaign. I was very much obliged
to you for it, I am sure.”

He showed no anger and he put on no dignity,
though he seemed to hear even then her humiliating
words, “It can never be.” In the matter
of loving, he was surely a model soul, and, so far
as that goes, well worth any woman's winning.

“Why don't you come and see us?” she resumed,
after a moment of natural hesitation over
the entangling query. “I had hoped that we
should always remain good friends.”

She looked uncommonly attractive as she uttered

this, for there was an enchantment about
her beyond that of mere beauty. Her agitation
not only filled her cheeks with color, and her
eyes with tremulous light, but drew from her
whole being a mysterious influence which we
might, perhaps, call a halo of enticement. She
longed so earnestly to bring her discarded lover
back to her feet, that he could not but be vaguely
aware of the longing.

“I shall be delighted to call,” replied John
Vane, so much moved that he could not devise a
fine speech, but delivering himself with the simplicity
of high breeding. “Will you allow me to
see you this evening?”

“Yes,” murmured Olympia, drawing her breath
with some difficulty. “Do come.”

Then, unwilling to say more for fear of exposing
her feelings too clearly, she gave him a bewildering
smile and went her way. Her superb
figure thrilled in every vein with excitement, and
she could hardly set her little bootees upon the
ground steadily. Citizen John Vane had had no

attractions for her; but she could not help being
drawn by the member of Congress. After the
fashion of women, she instinctively admired a
man who rules his fellow-men, and causes them
to do him reverence. As he, like all masculine
flesh, adored beauty and delicacy, so she, like all
feminine flesh, worshiped strength and authority.

That evening John called, in his best suit, at
his old boarding-house, and was received there
with a warmth which melted the icy past out of
his mind. Mrs. Smiles, who had always liked
him, and who had been sentimentally pained as
well as financially injured by losing him from her
table, called up all her social graces of bygone
fashionable days to do him honor. Julia Maria,
Olympia's younger sister, only nineteen years old
at the time, saluted him in her pert but alluring
way as “the delegation from Slowburgh.”
Olympia herself, that experienced though not
hardened veteran of the world, robed herself in
just the right mixture of cordiality and dignity.
Both in a moral and in a wardrobe sense, she had

taken great pains to get herself up for the occasion.
She was arrayed in her best garnet silk;
and we ought to add the statement that it was
her only really good and fresh one,—a pathetic
circumstance in view of the fact that she dearly
loved gorgeous apparel, and that it suited her
style of beauty. The rich and noble color of the
garnet lent additional splendor to the flush on
her brunette cheeks, and to the liquid sparkle
of her dark eyes. There was an emerald cross
(a relic of her mother's former prosperity) on
her breast; and several rings, of like moving history,
sent out little glimmers of gentility from
her fingers. The fine raiment and the authentic
splendor of the jewels became her, and made her
more queenly, more like a Cleopatra, than even
her wont. John Vane had never before seen her
so beautiful, and he was dazzled to that degree
that he forgot his own political majesty, and sat
before her on the edge of a chair, a most humble
Antony.