Playing the mischief :: :: University of Virginia Library

“Oh, I dare say they are well enough off,”
returned Josie, inclining toward the left.
“I want to talk to you for five minutes, if
you can keep away from Belle Warden so
long.”

“I don't know that I need go back to the
Wardens immediately,” said Bradford, who
was not disposed to joke about Belle, having
a high respect for that young lady.

“Do you sit on Mrs. Warden's door-steps
much?” queried Josie.

She was determined to learn whether he
was in love with Belle, and she knew that
persistent and saucy cross-questioning would
elicit some sparks of confession from an
enamored man, no matter how reticent he
might strive to be.

“I sit on her door-steps as much as I do
on any body's. I propose to sit on yours
very frequently.”

“But Belle is really a very sweet girl.
Don't you think so?”

“She is more than sweet,” affirmed Bradford,
obliged in conscience to eulogize the
young woman, if he must treat of her. “She
is singularly upright and high-minded; one
might almost say chivalrous.”

“Do men fall in love with chivalrous ladies?”
asked Josie, much inclined to believe
the contrary.

“Perhaps they don't, much. I am inclined
to fear that, as a general rule, they don't.”

“Possibly because there are so few ladies
who are chivalrous. Is that what you
mean?”

“Partly that, and partly that men are not
liable to fall in love with their own peculiarities.
You mustn't understand that I am
bragging about my own sex. It is a poor
one enough, but it has its merits.”

“You may brag about your sex, if you care
to. I like it well enough. But are you one
of the exceptions? Do you adore chivalrous
ladies?”

“Heaven help me! How one woman can
bore a man about another woman! I am not
a bit in love with Miss Warden, if that question
interests you.”

Josie judged that he spoke the truth, and
her manner took an immediate turn toward
tenderness.

“I am glad that you are not absorbed
there,” she said. “I want to see as much of
you as you can let me, without boring yourself.
You must know, and you must be good
enough to remember, that, with the exception
of my Murrays and the Wardens, you
are the only old friend I have in Washington.”

Bradford perceived that he was being encouraged
to something more than friendship,
and he was far from feeling displeased at the
discovery. He knew, from experiences of
other days, that Josie Murray was a flirt, but
he also knew that she could make flirting a
very agreeable pastime.

He had coquetted with her before her marriage;
he had likewise coquetted with her,
as the nature of our story obliges us to confess,
after she became a wife; and it seemed
to him that she would be well worth some
of his spare time, now that she was a widow.
He was one of those variable men who become
models of behavior when truly in love,
but who are given to unscrupulous hazards
of flirting when not touched by that purifying
providence.

“You may be entirely sure that I shall not
forget the old friendship,” he declared, smiling
to himself at the platonic name.

“That is a very kind promise. It is so
kind that it would be quite naughty to break
it. I was afraid that the only Congressman
I should see any thing of would be Mr. Hollowbread.”

“He seems to admire you immensely. He
looked at you in a really tragic way when
you deserted him. What a beau he is! How
he has kept the fire agoing on his venerable
altar! Your sex ought to raise a statue to
him.”

“He is an old fool!” said Josie.

“Oh!—for admiring women?”

“No, not for that; but for believing that
they can admire him. I was tempted to
snub him just now, only—”

This was a favorite trick of Josie's—to
half say something, and then wait to be questioned,
thus making it easier for herself to
tell what she wanted to tell.

“Only what?” asked Bradford, of course.

“Only that I may want a favor of him.”

“A favor of Mr. Hollowbread! Why don't
you come to your old friends for favors?
You make me jealous.”

“You see, I am here in Washington on
business.”

“On business! I couldn't have guessed
it. What in the universe have you got to do
with any thing that can be called business?”

“Affairs of state,” laughed Josie, in a little,
mysterious way, which was meant to excite
curiosity.

Then she waited to be catechised, preferring

to have her secret begged for ere she
told it, so that she might in some sort grant
a favor before asking one. But Bradford,
through mere civil forbearance, failed to urge
his query; so she was driven to decide whether
she should frankly open her business to
him. She hesitated; but it was not because
she had pledged secrecy to Mr. Hollowbread;
indeed, it was characteristic of her
that she hardly remembered that circumstance.
Probably, if she had been reproved
for her faithless intent, she would have replied:
“What right had he to ask me to
make such a promise? He might have known
that I wouldn't keep it, and couldn't.”

She hesitated, because she felt obliged to
treat Bradford delicately. He was not a
Hollowbread; he was not an obvious old
turkey-gobbler, whom a woman could entrap
with a few grains of flattery and parings of
flirtation; she could not have won his respectful
good-will by speaking to him in the
cars and making him her confidant within
half an hour thereafter. He was a shrewd,
clear-headed, self-possessed young fellow,
who, furthermore, had very high notions of
his own character, and considered himself
peculiarly bound to be a gentleman. To be
sure, his notions of gentlemanliness did not
include strictness in some particulars which
society speaks highly of, when it has the
courage to speak of them at all. Josie knew
by experience that he could flirt with married
women, and even with the wife of a man
whom he called his friend. But she had an
idea that there were some other wrong things,
she hardly knew what, which he stigmatized
as dishonorable, and which nothing in the
world could make him do.

Perhaps pushing extravagant demands for
the payment of old barns might fall within
this mysterious circle of impropriety. However,
she decided to speak, and see what
would come of it.

“Do you believe in claims?” she asked,
in a light, indifferent way, ready to start
back from the subject if he should make a
face at it.

“Claims! What claims? I believe in
your claims to admiration.”

“And I believe in yours to confidence,”
she replied, which was certainly turning it
adroitly and effectively.

He became graver as he looked down into
her pleading face and asked: “Do you mean
a claim on the Treasury?”

Josie nodded, meanwhile never taking her
eyes off his, partly because she meant to fascinate
him and partly because she was herself
a little fascinated. His eyes were like
hers in being dark and handsome, though
they were only hazel, while hers were nearly
black; and they were meditative, while hers
were mischievous.

Now, when four such orbs look steadily
into each other, the owners thereof are apt
to feel a thrill of agreeable emotion. Each
of these two young persons had a sensation
that he or she was on the point of falling in
love with the other.

“Are you quite in earnest?” he asked,
more tenderly than he had ever before put a
question to a claimant.

Again Josie nodded, still gazing at him
with all the witchery that brooded under
her long lashes, and adding to it the enchantment
of a pleading smile. Her heart was
beating close by his arm, and she almost
hoped that he felt it.

So he did, and his soul was considerably
stirred by the sensation, and he found it difficult
to meditate with statesman-like wisdom.

Was it possible that she really had a respectable
claim on the United States Treasury?
He looked at her wistfully, hoping
that it might be so. She had been very
sweet to him in other days. Her departed
husband, poor Augustus, had been a good
and even an overconfiding friend; and he
could not deny that here was a fair demand
upon his gratitude. Besides, her heart was
thumping, and his own was responding in
that moving fashion!

“I have never yet taken hold of any thing
of that sort,” he said. “It hasn't seemed to
come in my way.”

It had come in his way, enough; in fact,
it had repeatedly and impudently tried to
force itself upon him; but he had unceremoniously
and arrogantly thrust it out of
his way. He was an excessively proud
young man; especially proud of his character
for honor, and very touchy to any imputation
upon it; marked, moreover, by a
high, authoritative temper, which had grown
the higher during his years of military command.
To one lobbyist, who had frankly offered
him a large sum to put a claim through,
he had responded by showing him the door
and thrusting him out.

Josie noted the reluctant fashion in which
he fingered the subject, and was more humbled
in spirit by it than one might have expected,
considering her saucy courage and
her habits of ruling men.

“Isn't it—respectable?” she stammered.
Of a sudden the idea came to her that to
bring a sham claim against the Government
might be low. This suspicion, and the
thought that Bradford might be looking
down upon her as unlady-like, gave her a
painful sense of humiliation. The sting was,
of course, all the keener because once she had
not been obliged to do low things, nor to do
any thing at all, for her support.

Only two or three years ago she had a
husband to care for her, and lived like one
of the great ones of the earth, as American
ladies do live.

It was dreadful to be so fallen into poverty,
and to be driven to do what genteel people

scorn. For a moment she was nearly
overcome by the sense of her degradation.
Even there, with all that elbowing swarm of
strangers about her, tears of mingled shame
and disappointment brimmed her eyelids.

“The respectability depends upon the nature
of the claim,” said Bradford. “If it is
a just one, the urging of it is, of course, perfectly
respectable. What is yours about?”

But Josie would not answer his question
just then. In her present shamefaced state
of soul, and in his obviously unripe state of
sentiment, she did not want to talk to him
about payment for an old barn, at the rate
of ten dollars or so for every shingle.

“I will let you know some time,” she
murmured. “When can you call on me?”

“To-morrow—say at three o'clock—if
that is convenient to you,” he proposed.

“I shall be so glad to see you!” sighed
Josie.

In spite of the weight at her heart, she
was tempted to smile. Congressman Bradford
and Congressman Hollowbread were to
call on her to hear her story. There were
two of them; the business marched.

“Who does take charge of this sort of
thing?” she said next. “Is there any body
in particular?”

“There are members who do almost nothing
else, and who make a great deal of money
by it. They push a claim through for
the half of it, or for what they can get. Of
course they are contemptible scoundrels.
No Congressman has a right to touch a dollar
of the money which is paid on a claim.
I hope that you don't need the services of
such swindlers. They are a disgrace to
themselves and to the body to which they
belong, and to whomsoever employs them.”

Josie would have been angry at him if
she had not been afraid of him. She was
certainly angry at herself for having mentioned
her business to him so hastily. For
once she had miscalculated and overrated
the power of her feminine influences over
the masculine soul. Not a word more must
be said to him about the claim until she could
make him “care for her,” as she put it.

“Generally, people are supposed to go to
their own member for such work,” continued
Bradford. “You must not understand me
as recommending Drummond,” he promptly
added, remembering that that gentleman
was suspected of dealing with unjust claims.

“Perhaps I may never go about it to any
one,” said Josie, who was even then looking
around the room for Drummond. “It was
urged upon me by a good friend of mine;”
and here she referred to that dubious broker
and seller of “points,” Mr. Fred Curbstone;
“but I hate the paltry subject already. Let
us talk of something less mercenary.”

Bradford was full of attentions to her
henceforward. He felt that he had hardly
been kind enough to a woman who had al
ways been kind to him, and sometimes perilously
overkind. Besides, she was such a
pretty creature; and he had been half in
love with her more than once, and was perhaps
falling a little in love with her anew!
He pressed her hand favoringly under his
arm, and walked on with her superbly
through the crowd of promenaders, pointing
out notable persons for her inspection.

“Do you want any of these great people
introduced to you?” he inquired. “I know
them nearly all.”

Josie would have liked to get at the grandees
but for one thing. There was a warmth
in Bradford's manner which suggested courtship,
and for that joy she was always capable
of giving up all others.

“Do I tire you?” she murmured. “If not,
I will take some other opportunity of seeing
the curiosities.”

“Tire me! You gratify and flatter me
very much. I don't suppose that any man
was ever tired of your company.”

It was true enough. Even poor Augustus,
to whom she had not been a superexcellent
wife, was always bewitched with her.

“Tell me honestly one thing,” she said.
“Did you evade coming to me on the cars?
I sent Mr. Hollowbread for you.”

“The old rogue! He lounged up to me
and talked finance, and never mentioned you.
That was so like Hollowbread!”

“Was it?” said Josie, without, however,
being angry with the old deceiver, whose
motive she guessed and appreciated. “Was
Mr. Drummond there?”

“Yes; and Beauman. Did you send for
all of us?” he laughed, remembering what a
universal coquette she was.

“I sent for you. What a shabby thing in
you to say that! Who is that little black-eyed
thing, with long black hair down her
back?”

“That is Jessie Cohen, the painter. She
paints portraits of heroes and sages, and
badgers Uncle Sam into buying them. The
honored notables themselves don't much
care to purchase. Miss Appropriation Cohen
our funny men call her.”

“And does Uncle Sam buy them?” inquired
Josie, wondering in her busy head
whether she too might not learn to portray
the national glories, if the price suited.

“He has had to buy some. You will find
two or three heroes hung up about the Capitol
in terrorem. The art is not high, but
the pay is. Two thousand dollars make a
square yard of daubing sublime.”

“What do you give so much for, if the
work is poor?”

“She smiles and flatters for it. What is
an ass of a legislator to do when Titania
coaxes his long ears?”

Josephine thought of her claim, and of
her own faculty at smiling and cajoling, and
took courage.

“There is that man - woman again,” she
continued, indicating the virile costume and
feminine visage of Squire Nancy Appleyard.
“I hate a man-woman, she is so disappointing!
You see a suit of clothes coming toward
you; and you think that there is
something which will like you, and protect
you, or, at least, hurt you; and then you find
a helpless, useless, harmless man-woman inside
of it. Did you ever see a face at a
window, and think it was a pretty face, and
you would like to flirt with it, and then find
out that it was a boy's face, instead of a
young lady's? And wasn't it disappointing
and enraging? Well, that is about the way
a woman feels toward a Bloomer.”

“I should think it might be so,” replied
Bradford. Meanwhile he surveyed Squire
Nancy with a calm, meditative curiosity,
much as if he were inspecting some very
curious specimen of monkey—some monkey
which stood more than usually upright. It
was such an arrogant stare, and so obviously
though unconsciously contemptuous, that
it was a wonder Appleyard (if one may call
her so) did not turn crimson with confusion
and wrath. But that female attorney liked
amazingly to be stared at, and bore the
Congressman's scornful examination with a
genial smile.

“What does she do?” asked Josie. “Is
she really a lawyer?”

“A lawyer without clients, or position, or
any thing that is legal. She is clamoring
to be admitted to the Washington Bar, and
begging meanwhile for a clerkship. I have
had a chance to refuse to sign her petitions,
and, being a fiend in human shape, I improved
it.”

“You are very hard upon her,” smiled
Mrs. Murray, pleased that he should be so.

“I don't treat her half so badly as does
the member from your district. I may as
well tell you the tale; it is the best-known
joke in Washington; you will be sure to
hear it. Drummond is pretending to court
this Appleyard nondescript, and they say the
poor Squire really hopes to bring him to an
offer, and is sweetly in love with him. Now,
that I call shabby. It would be a good joke
if she should sue him for a breach of promise,
and get her case. I wish she would,
upon my honor.”

Meantime Squire Appleyard strolled by
them, elbowing her way with considerable
manfulness through the crowd, and glancing
impatiently in all directions, probably in
search of Drummond. She was a tall and
vigorous young person, resembling in figure
a man much more than most women do, but
still looking oddly in coat, vest, and pantaloons.
It was impossible not to note, with a
sort of discontented surprise, the slope of
the shoulders, the hollowness of the back,
the breadth of the hips, the fullness of the
haunches, and the pulpy plumpness of the
thighs. To an eye unaccustomed to plain
exhibition of such phenomena the effect was
decidedly grotesque, a little indecorous, and,
one might almost say, revolting. It was a
coarse and unpleasing removal of the veils
and mysteries with which our race has in
the main loved to drape the forms of womanhood.
Ninety-nine persons out of a hundred
would have surveyed it with the same
distaste which appeared in the faces of our
two by no means fastidious spectators, Josephine
Murray and Bradford.

“There is Drummond behind us, and she
is making for him,” whispered the Congressman.

An idea which was both practical and mischievous
flashed through Josie's lively brain.
She would obtain a business interview with
her member, and she would cut out and torment
that caricature of her sex.