University of Virginia Library

3. CHAPTER III.
COMING TO BUSINESS.

Josephine was disappointed about missing
Bradford and Drummond; she did not
believe that Mr. Hollowbread had searched
for them as vigorously as he ought to have
done; but being that sort of lady who, missing
one man, will catch at the next, she
good-naturedly resumed her semi-flirtation.

The dialogue went on until the old public
functionary got hoarse and tired, and
consequently became a little less ardent.
So he produced an illustrated weekly, and
let Josephine amuse herself with that while
he chewed some troches.

But meantime he gazed at her without
winking, studying the many delicate particulars
of her beauty, the finish of her
Grecian features, the faint, soft damask tint
in her brunette cheek, the liquid splendor
of her dark eyes, and the trimness of her
lithe figure.

The freshness of youth is certainly a wonderful
enchantment: probably we are only
fully conscious of it after we ourselves have
lost it. It is likely enough that Josephine
had never before been so gloated over as she
was while perusing that periodical. She
was aware of the gloating, too, and showed
herself suitably grateful for it, looking up
occasionally with a friendly glimpse of a
smile, or uttering some companionable remark
concerning the small events of the
journey. That she should think to do this
proved great social ability, for she was reading
a number of one of Charles Reade's serials,
and the love matters therein interested
her deeply. By the time that she had
finished her luncheon of light literature it
was dark, and raining torrents.

“Are we near Washington?” she asked.

“I am sorry to say that we are entering
the outskirts,” replied Hollowbread. “We
are near the end of what has been to me a
most delightful journey.”

She smiled and nodded, as she had smiled
and nodded to all his previous fine speeches.
But then there came over her a spasm
of that pathetic lonesomeness which women
often feel when they are among strangers,
and homeless.

“I wish I were there!” she sighed. “I
hate these dreary drives about strange
cities.”

Mr. Hollowbread suggested (hoping the
while to the contrary) that her uncle would
be at the station.

“No,” said Josephine. “I started unexpectedly
to myself, and I forgot to telegraph.
They look for me this week, but not to-day.”

The truth is that she had shopped generously
in New York by way of preparing for
her campaign in Congress, and, coming unawares
upon the bottom of her purse, she
had been forced to set out at once for Washington,
or go hungry.

“I trust that you will permit me to see
you safe to your uncle's house,” begged Mr.
Hollowbread, thinking what nice things he
would dare to murmur in the enchanted solitude
of a hack.

Arranging her draperies, and putting on
otherwise a gracious pretense of not hearing,
Josephine made no reply.

Her head was full of a plot for catching
her old friend Bradford in the station, or, at
least, for stumbling upon an accidental acquaintance
with Mr. Drummond, and so getting
herself escorted home by one of those
young honorables. If she could speak with
either one of them for only a single instant,
she would know how to lasso him and take
him along with her.

Presently the train halted, and Mr. Hollowbread
cumbrously helped Josephine out of
the car, or, rather, he considerably impeded
her attempt to make a hasty escape from it.
In her eagerness she fell into his arms, and
almost capsized him; but hurry as she might
she could not intercept Messrs. Drummond
and Bradford. She could only catch sight
of them as they sped away, sachel in hand.

It was clear enough that they had not
jumped off the cars twenty miles back;
and for the moment she was somewhat disposed
to pick a bone with the gallant old
gentleman who held her arm; but she did
not show her miff. In the first place, it
would not have been worth while; in the
second place, it would have been out of character.
In dealing with men, at least, Josephine
was amazingly good-tempered, and under
no circumstances did she ever quarrel
with a beau, unless as a means for getting a
preferable one.

Thus Mr. Hollowbread had his sweet will,
and was able to escort her to her home, no
man putting asunder. He would have been
glad to get a vehicle suitable to the happiness
and honor which had befallen him.
But this proved impossible, for the tremendous
rain had driven nearly all the passengers
to take wheels, and there was a scarcity
of hacks. The only disengaged charioteer
whom he lighted upon was a ragged, giggling,
skipping young negro, as full of grins,
jumps, and whistles as if he were a mixture
of monkey, parrot, and grasshopper.

“Hack, sah?” yelped this disquieting mongrel,
capering up to our statesman with an
apparent intention of leaping upon his head
and standing there on tiptoe, with one foot
in the air.

“Yes,” responded Mr. Hollowbread, with
all possible grimness, desiring to impress
the nondescript with a sense of the gravity
and responsibility of his business. “Do you
know where 200 Izzard Street is? Be sure
you tell the truth, now!”

“Sho—yes, sah; knows it puffecly, sah.

B'longs up that way myself, sah,” chippered
this colored grasshopper, delivering himself
with a capriole, a grimace, and a snigger,
which showed persistent light-mindedness,
and lying, we will add, like the great adversary
of mankind.

“Do you know me?” insisted Mr. Hollowbread,
intending to terrify the jackanapes
into sobriety of mind by Congressional
grandeur.

“Sho—yes, sah; knows you ezzackly, sah.
Seen you up to the Capitol, sah,” asserted
coachee, balancing from one foot to the other
like a dancing bear. “You's one of the
membahs, sah—wah! wah! wah!” he laughed,
or, rather, te-he'd, as though there was no
standing the joke, whatever it was.

“I've seen you before,” continued Mr. Hollowbread,
staring at the youngster with an
air of having seen him in jail. “Who are
you?”

“I'm Jehu—Jehu Beaumont, of Souf Carliny,”
was the answer, supported by unrestrained
merriment.

“Oh, Jehu!” repeated Hollowbread, who
had no more met the creature before than he
wanted to meet him again. “Well, Jehu, a
fellow with such a name as that ought to get
us to 200 Izzard Street in no time. There,
take these checks and put the baggage on,
and cover it up well, and then call me in the
ladies' room.”

Five minutes later the two travelers were
in their hack, with Jehu Beaumont whooping
on the box, and Josephine's Saratoga
trunks towering behind him, each one as big
as Mr. Hollowbread.

“What fun!” said Josephine, drumming
her wet bootees on the straw in the bottom
of the conveyance. “Well, it will soon be
over, and that's a comfort.”

“Good heavens! I forgot to ask him if he
could read!” exclaimed our thoughtful Congressman.
“Jehu, you rascal!” he shouted,
already in a state of wrath and recrimination,
so sure was he of being miscarried.

No response coming back, he stuck his
head out of the window, getting it soaked
to the scalp immediately, and demanded:

“Jehu, did you ever go to a Bureau
school?”

Incomprehensible yelps and guffaws responded,
and Mr. Hollow bread pulled in and
wiped his disheveled top-knot, hoping for the
best.

Josephine, not knowing of her escort's
dripping scalp, and probably not fit to care
much about it, uttered one of those pretty
giggles of amusement which we like to hear
from women, especially when we ourselves
are comfortably circumstanced. Then, with
another whoop from Jehu, a dull and damp
cracking of the whip, and a scrabbling of
horseshoes over the deluged paving-stones,
the hack rumbled forward through the chaotic
darkness and the tempestuous rain.

Mr. Hollowbread drew his handkerchief,
mopped up as well as he could his trickling
locks, wiped out the shuddering nape of his
neck, and enjoyed the drive in silence. The
conditions of the moment were hard upon his
spirits, and almost too much for his affectionate
temperament. He felt sure that he
should catch a cold in his head, and he
thought it likely that he would have a week
of lumbago.

But presently he remembered that here
was a precious opportunity slipping by; and
vanity, combined with sterling old habits of
courting, enabled him to rouse himself to his
duty. But what should he say?

An elderly gentleman's mind does not
work to advantage when his cravat and
neckband are dripping wet; and Mr. Hollowbread
could not for the moment hit upon
any remark more pungently emotional than
the following:

“Would not this be a proper time, Miss
Murray, to make that little confession?” he
murmured, smiling from pure habit in the
darkness, although his smile could not be
seen.

“Some other day I will tell you whether
it was a proper time or not,” laughed Josephine.

“That is very cruel!” sighed Hollowbread,
meanwhile combing his hair into shape with
his fingers, and rubbing his back against the
knobby padding of the carriage to dry up a
drop which was stealing down his spine.

Josephine thought a sober second thought,
and decided that she might as well commence
business. Here was an experienced
Congressman, who was clearly bewitched
with her, and who, therefore, would probably
give her the best advice that he could concerning
her project. Why should she lose
an opportunity of securing an adequate
opinion as to her chances, and perhaps also
a promise of help?

It might not be dignified to accord a confidence
to a stranger; but had this elder of
the people himself been perfectly dignified?
Had he not made eyes at her, and paid her
compliments only proper in a young beau,
and even tried to touch her hand in the
darkness?

She drew away from him the least trifle,
but she began to tell him what he desired.

“I have the greatest mind to confess a
little bit,” she said, cooing an encouraging
laugh.

“Only half a word would be an immense
favor,” answered our coquettish old sage,
edging an inch or two nearer to her.

“The Government—owes me a great deal
of money,” faltered Josephine, her heart the
while beating tremendously.

Mr. Hollowbread was not pleased with the
information. We may almost go so far as to
say that he was scared and disgusted by it.
So she was a claimant—wanted to screw a

lot of money out of the Treasury—wanted
him to help her do it! He never had done
that sort of thing—much; and he did not
want to do any more of it on any terms
whatever; and his first sentiment was one
of vexation, recoil, and aversion.

“Ah! a great deal!” he repeated, mechanically,
and with a vague feeling that women
always cost more than they come to.

“Yes,” gasped Josephine, terribly frightened
by her own audacity, and afraid of receiving
a discouraging answer. “Twenty
thousand dollars.”

Mr. Hollowbread drew a deep breath of relief.
He was glad to hear that it was not a
million or two. Then he reflected that this
claim, being so moderate in amount, might
really be a just one, and not like a demand
which he had been inveigled into countenancing
some ten years before, the very remembrance
of which now made him sick at
his conscience. For a sort of conscience he
had, and rather a tender and honorable one,
too, as men inside of politics average.

“It seems reasonable,” he replied, hopefully,
as if claims were a matter of logic or taste,
and rational people never asked for much.
“I suppose that Uncle Sam could not possibly
refuse you such a moderate sum.”

“Oh, but you must treat this matter seriously,”
she at once pleaded. “I shouldn't
have told you about it, if I hadn't expected
that you would treat it seriously.”

Her tone informed him that she was quite
in earnest, and he dropped his purposes of
joking and complimenting.

“Property destroyed during the late war?”
he ventured to inquire.

“No,” said Josephine; “during the Revolutionary
war.”

Mr. Hollowbread nearly whistled at the
thought of a claim of such antiquity; but
he checked the impulse just in time; he
merely puckered.

“It was in 1812,” continued Josephine,
collecting her mind sufficiently to remember
particulars.

“Oh,” broke in Hollowbread, pleased to
find himself in the present century.

The claim might not be so absurd, after
all; something of that date had got through
in Buchanan's time; or was it in Polk's?

“I beg pardon, Miss Murray,” he went
on; “you must mean our last war with England.
That was in 1812?”

“Yes, of course,” said Josephine. “I am
sure of the date.”

There was a brief silence. The story of
destruction was such a meagre one as to be
awkward to tell; and our heroine had a
vague hope that she would not be obliged
to rehearse it at all—merely to mention the
sum which she had fixed upon as suitable
reparation.

“Was it a ba-rn?” hesitated Mr. Hollowbread.
He did not mean to be malicious,
nor witty; he rather thought it might be a
barn; it frequently was a barn.

“Ye-s,” confessed Josephine, with a sinking
at the heart. “But a very valuable one,”
she eagerly added, laying as heavy an accent
on the very as it could well stagger under.
“Barns sometimes cost twenty thousand
dollars, I believe, even now.”

“Oh, frequently,” smiled Mr. Hollowbread,
remembering the cheap prices of old times
and amused by that “even now.” I have
known the Government to pay much more
than that for a burned barn,” he added, alluding
to some scandalous Augean affairs
which he had seen pushed through Congress.

Josephine started; perhaps she had not
put her demand high enough; and seeing
how easily her legislator took it, she decided
to raise it.

“But there were other things destroyed
at the same time,” she continued. “More
than I can think of.”

“Horses and cows,” insinuated Mr. Hollowbread,
who could not help seeing the
matter more or less in a jocular light, and
who remembered that he might grin over it
in the darkness.

“Certainly,” responded Josephine, very
glad of the suggestion, and jotting it down
in her memory.

“Hayricks, farming-tools, carts, harrows,
sheds and other outhouses,” pursued the
Congressman.

“Oh, yes; all those. It would make a
great deal more, you see.”

“I see,” said Hollowbread; but so did
Josephine see. At that moment a flash of
lightning revealed his face to her, and upon
that face a smile of lazy amusement. In a
second all was dark again, but our heroine
had discovered that her confidant was laughing
at her, and she was both soundly frightened
and roundly miffed.

“This is all in confidence, sir,” she said,
in a tone so changed that he noticed it, and
feared lest she had discovered his merriment.

“Oh, certainly—upon honor!” he protested.
“Well, I will endeavor to advise you
to the best of my ability,” he added, seriously.
“But I must have the particulars—exact
date, place, circumstances, and so forth
—every thing, you understand, that can be
learned. Was it during a battle that this
occurred? Please go on, Miss Murray.”

But Josephine was quite hurt, had become
cautious, and would tell him no more.

“At some more suitable time,” she answered,
almost curtly. “Just now I wish I knew
where we are. Does Washington reach to
the Pacific Ocean?”

“We certainly seem to have come a great
way,” admitted Mr. Hollowbread, who had
already noted that the hack had passed his
dwelling-place, and had half wished that he
was in it.

Then, while they talked of commonplace
matters, there passed several minutes, or, as
it appeared to them, a quarter of an hour,
of monotonous, mysterious journeying. It
was a Tam o' Shanter night, the wind roaring
and the rain rattling and splashing, and
nobody abroad but the deil.

They had got away from the ruddy shop-windows
of the lower city, and were traversing
some region which even Hollowbread
could not recognize, and which most
of the time he could not see. He began to
fear that the driver belonged to some gang
of murderers, and that the country might
lose a Congressman.

“This coachman is crawling!” exclaimed
Josie, at last, becoming alarmed.

So he was. He had driven very rapidly
while in Pennsylvania Avenue, but since
leaving that lighted thoroughfare he had
dawdled strangely. It was really very odd,
for the rain kept on pouring at a wonderful
rate, and it could not have been nice sitting
out in it.

“I wonder if that rascal has lost himself!”
exclaimed Mr. Hollowbread, trembling
with sudden rage.

Then the hack stopped, and Josie cried:
“We are there!”

They looked out; but there was no house
visible; there was absolutely nothing visible;
the whole space around them was darkness.

“Why don't you go on?” howled Mr.
Hollowbread, flattening his bulbous Roman
nose against the front window.

The only response was the hissing, seething,
spattering, and splashing of the absolutely
maniacal rain.