Playing the mischief :: :: University of Virginia Library

“Of course,” nodded Bradford; and, before
he knew it, he had returned the pressure,
so quickly could this little witch arouse
the male instinct of courtship. He looked
down into her eyes intently, he was really
loath to leave her. Then he turned, signaled
to Drummond, presented him to Mrs. Murray,
said a word or two to start conversation,
and departed.

Mr. Sykes Drummond was one of those
men whom a woman can not regard with
indifference, but whom she must either like
or dislike fervently, and that almost at once.
There was about him exceptional power,
which of course the feminine soul admires;
but there was also exceptional roughness,
which the feminine soul usually hates. He
was not the iron hand in a velvet glove, but
the iron hand without any glove at all.

Not only in his physical, but likewise in
his intellectual structure he was a notable
example of the brutal sort of vigor. His
gait or action, whether of body or of mind,
was swift, strong, rude, and noisy.

There was not a lazy bone in him; he was
as energetic as the very devil; and by this
comparison we mean that there was something
disagreeable in his energy; that there

was even something which gave you an idea
of the malign and diabolical.

Very different was he from Bradford, although
both were potent organizations. In
Bradford there was a poise, a graceful deliberation
of power, as in the Discobolus of
Praxiteles; while in Drummond there was
a harsh, violent, exaggerated action, like
that of the Fighting Gladiator. He was not
as handsome a man in the face as his rival;
he had nothing of the other's engaging meditativeness
and sensibility of expression;
neither were his features as classic in outline.
Nevertheless, his physiognomy was
very impressive, and, if you once learned to
like it, it fascinated you. It had a sort of
beauté du diable; it was bewitching, because
it was so dauntlessly wicked; besides, it was
really a grand aquiline visage.

People who admired it thought it all the
handsomer because of the massive jaws, the
obstinate, strong chin, the dusky glare of the
black eyes, and the unconcealable gleams of
passion.

Squire Nancy Appleyard, for instance,
could not look at it without palpitating
from beaver to boots, and considered it the
noblest figure-head that she had ever seen on
the shoulders of man or woman.

Josie Murray was soon in a turmoil about
Drummond—in a turmoil, that is, over the
question whether she should like him or detest
him. He strode along with her like a
tug-boat convoying a skiff, apparently not
even thinking whether the pace might be
pleasant to her or not, and shouldering aside
crowded fellow-men without regard to their
glances of indignation. If one of them uttered
a grumble at being thus hustled, he
looked around at him with the stare of a
pugilist spoiling for a fight, while a smile of
derision flickered along his flexible mouth.

Of all the five thousand souls who crammed
the Treasury, he was seemingly, and
very likely was in reality, the most arrogant
and puguacious.

“He is no gentleman,” said Josie to herself,
a little afraid of him, but also a good
deal interested. “But isn't he tremendous!”

Her womanly divination was at work
upon him, investigating his character and
querying how it would serve her. She decided
that, if he should only come to love
her, he would be an incomparable protector,
fraying a way for her through the throng
of life, and lifting her into luxurious security,
where she could dazzle and rule.

If he should come to love her! But could
this bearish egotist ever truly and self-sacrificingly
love any body? She somewhat
doubted it, but she soon wanted to see.

Meantime they were talking mere Washington
commonplaces. Their conversation
was below the level of their possibilities, as
well as below the level of their thoughts—at
least, Josie's thoughts. What a bar the de
corum of society is to dramatic action and
speech in life! Two beings who would like
at first sight to pummel or to embrace each
other are obliged by respect for public opinion
to keep their arms off each other's shoulders.

It is only drunkards, professional bullies,
and perhaps the noble savage, who establish
acquaintance on a sincere basis and come directly
to the veracities of hugging and fisticuffing.

But, after a few minutes of aimless babble,
Josie felt sufficiently at ease with her representative
to commence on subjects personal
to him. She was habitually bold in this
stratagem of talking to men about themselves,
for she had discovered that it ripened
intimacies with them rapidly, and, moreover,
that it flattered their vanity.

“There is a gentleman who seems to be
very anxious to speak to you,” she said,
archly.

“What gentleman?” asked Drummond,
glaring about him in a way which boded
small civility to interlopers.

Josephine waved her fan toward the feminine
figure and manly raiment of Squire
Nancy.

Drummond stared at Miss Appleyard's
pleading face with a quizzical writhing of
his lips, slightly nodded his Plutonian shock
of long black hair in response to her bow,
and then said to Mrs. Murray:

“That gentleman may wait. Haw, haw,
haw!”

“He doesn't care for her a bit,” thought
Josie, much pleased. “But I wish he
wouldn't laugh so like a hyena. It is
enough to make one hate him.”

She was fairly right there. A Southern
Senator, the eccentric Judge Pickens Rigdon,
had observed of Drummond: “By Jove,
sir! if any man in my district laughed like
that, he would get bushwhacked, sir!”

Mr. Drummond now turned his broad back
full upon Squire Appleyard, and marched
Mrs. Murray toward a distant quarter of the
edifice. But here the lady presently laid
eyes on somebody whom she did not care to
come to speech with. Toiling through the
dense crowd, and wearing on their wrinkled
white faces an unmistakable expression of
lassitude, there appeared the venerable Rector
Murray and his still more venerable wife.

Josie judged, from their air of weariness,
that they were more than ready to go home.
Now, she had just begun her evening; she
had not yet spoken about the claim to her
member; she meant to be introduced to at
least a dozen more legislators; and consequently
she was by no means inclined to run
a chance of departure.

“We will turn into one of these small
rooms, if you please,” she said, promptly facing
away from her relatives. “I am tired
of this maelstrom of promenading.”

“The smaller the room the better,” laughed
Drummond, loudly. “I should like to
find one which would only hold us two.”

It was rather audacious, but still it meant
a sort of courtship; and, in Josie's opinion,
saucy courtship was better than none.

“You needn't look for such a room,” she
laughed. “Still, if we could find a place
where I could ask you a serious question or
two, I should like it.”

“Come on, then,” said Drummond, his curiosity
aroused, as she meant it should be.
“But I am dying to know what sort of serious
questions you ask. Couldn't you hint at
the subject as we go along?”

“Too many listeners,” said Mrs. Murray.

“There seems to be a quiet corner over
there, to the left. Won't that do?”

“No, that won't do,” smiled Josie, who
was playing her usual trick of prolonging a
dénouement, and so exciting curiosity as much
as might be.

“The next room, then. It seems to me a
thousand miles off.”

It was jocose exaggeration, of course; and
yet he was really interested. She had already
made herself quite bewitching to him
by her cleverness, by those side-glances of
hers which were so much more sentimental
than she knew of, and by certain seemingly
accidental totterings against his shoulder.
He had said to himself that she was a flirt,
and also that she was deucedly well worth
flirting with.

They toiled on from swarm to swarm;
they passed through one populous room, and
then another; but Josie could still find no
place secluded enough for her catechism.

“I really believe, Mrs. Murray, that you
mean to drive me deranged with curiosity,”
laughed Drummond.

“Don't lose your mind,” she answered.
“It would be a calamity to both of us, as
well as to the country. Well, at last here
is a corner where I can tell you my business.
I don't suppose you want to hear it.”

“I want to hear any thing that you will
say, Mrs. Murray.”

Thereupon, regardless of her pledges of
secrecy to Hollowbread and Bradford, Josie
proceeded to let out, little by little, after her
inciting custom, the story of her claim. It
was certainly ridiculous, this enormous demand
for a ghost of a barn, and she felt it to
be so as she made it. But Mr. Drummond,
notwithstanding his hyena habit of laughter,
and his hard-hearted scorn of most things
human, did not listen with derision. He
saw, even more plainly than Josie did, that
the claim was a sham one. But he also perceived
(and this made the matter respectable
in his practical eyes) that there was a robust
chance of getting the money. This little
claimant before him was a woman, and
that was a point in favor of her winning.
Moreover, she was a very handsome woman,
and, in his opinion, singularly fascinating in
her ways, and obviously neither timid nor
fastidious in using her fascinations. Finally,
she was socially a lady, related to a clergyman
of some note, and to one of the most
honored old officers in the army. It seemed
to him that, with intelligent engineering,
such a claimant as that could easily get a
hundred thousand dollars or so. Should he
devote a portion of his valuable time and labor
to the job? Well, yes! he promptly responded,
for he was a quick man at coming
to a decision, and so capable of multifarious
work that he never feared having too many
irons in the fire.

“You have some dates and facts, I suppose—some
affidavits relating to it—some
record or other?” he queried.

“Oh, I have a lot of papers!” replied Josie,
much pleased with his business-like way
of going at the matter, and trying to be
equally practical. “I have a letter from
an old gentleman who remembers the battle,
and several letters from people whose
fathers have told them about it.”

“I think we shall prove the battle without
trouble,” said Drummond, somewhat
tempted to haw-haw. “But how about the
burning of the building?”

“This old gentleman, Mr. Jeremiah, or
Jedediah Drinkwater, remembers that distinctly,
he says.”

“I hope and pray that the worthy old
hero may not be taken away before we can
get at him. Well, now, Mrs. Murray, if I
am to advise you, you must do me the favor
to show me these papers.”

“Oh, you are so good! I am infinitely
obliged to you. Could you call on me at
my uncle's?”

“I could, if you would let me. I don't
think I should find the least difficulty in doing
it.”

“To-morrow?”

“The best of all days.”

“Shall it be at one o'clock?”

“At one precisely,” smiled Drummond.

The claim was a funny one in itself, and
still funnier as coming from the house of
the Reverend John Murray, brother of that
most honorable old martinet, Colonel Murray.

Josie, too, was a little disposed to laugh;
things were surely going on famously. She
was to see Congressman Hollowbread at
twelve, Congressman Drummond at one,
and Congressman Bradford at three.

“Allow me one word of caution, Mrs.
Murray,” continued Drummond. “Too
many cooks spoil the broth — haw, haw,
haw! It would be well, for the present,
at least, to leave this matter entirely with
me. That is natural, you know. I am the
member — the unworthy member — haw,
haw!—from your district. Of course my
guarantee for your claim would seem to be

better than the guarantee of any other representative.
Don't you think so?”

“Certainly,” nodded Josie. “But you,
too, must be discreet,” she added, not caring
to have him compare notes with Hollowbread
and Bradford.

Drummond promised secrecy, and he
meant it. His brazen clangorousness and
conceit gave him the air of a tattling boaster;
but he was in reality far too able a man
to let even his enormous arrogance beguile
him into unwise confidences; and in political
intrigues, especially such as concerned
money, he could be as close as the cruel
grave.

Just as this agreement had been reached
their colloquy was interrupted. Mrs. Warden
and Belle came up, the former on the
arm of Mr. T. M. C. A. Smyler, and the latter
on the arm of Bradford. Now, Mr. Smyler
was a most exalted personage, for he
held one of the loftiest positions in Congress.
Consequently, Josie Murray was delighted
to be introduced to him, and immediately
began to do her best to enchant him.
It was of no use; the grand dignitary was
not to be mesmerized; his róle in life was to
mesmerize other people.

He bowed and he smiled ever so many
times, and he uttered commonplaces in a
low, sweet, ingratiating tone, which was all
somehow amazingly flattering, at least to
ordinary spirits. This was his forte; this
was the chief secret of his success, this graciousness
of manner. True, he was a man
of fair ability, capable of hard work and
adroit managings, and gifted in stump-speaking;
but, after all, it was the bow, the
smiles, the mellifluous voice, and the amicable
unction of deportment which had mainly
brought him popular favor; he had won
position by the same gifts which enable a
clever salesman to win customers. On the
whole, Josie felt that she was rather out-blandished
by Mr. Smyler, and did not quite
know what to do with him.

Mrs. Warden, who knew that the man
was no gallant, and that there was nothing
to be got out of him, except through political
or pecuniary pipe-laying, looked on at
this conference with sparkling eyes, much
amused at her young friend's eagerness and
perplexity.

“Mrs. Murray, excuse me for interrupting
you,” broke in Belle Warden, at last. “But
we met your uncle and aunt, and they are
very anxious to find you.”

Mrs. Warden made a face at her daughter,
and then whispered, “What did you tell
her for? She doesn't care to know.”

“But she ought to know,” answered Belle,
a right-minded young lady, who wanted to
see people do the right thing.

“Oh, dear, how shall I ever find them in
this crowd!” exclaimed Josie, looking about
her for assistance, and perhaps hoping for
the arm of the great Smyler. “If I lose
them, how shall I get home?”

“Why, go with us, of course,” said Mrs.
Warden, who had the sympathy of a veteran
of fashion for a young lady who wanted
to see a party out.

“Oh, thank you so much, Mrs. Warden!”
cried Josie. “Now, if somebody could look
up my friends and tell them not to wait for
me! The poor old people must be horribly
tired.”

“Do go, Mr. Bradford,” implored Belle,
surrendering her young man at once for the
sake of Mr. and Mrs. Murray.

“I know them by sight,” proffered Drummond.
“Do you skirmish one way, Bradford,
and I'll skirmish the other. We will
make the circuit of the rooms and meet
here.”