Playing the mischief :: :: University of Virginia Library

“They will be back soon,” said Josie,
smiling her thanks to Belle Warden, who
could hardly muster grace to smile back
again. “Meantime I suppose we must be
rooted to this spot. And it is all on my account.
I am so sorry!”

“I can not believe, Mrs. Murray, that any
of the rest of us are sorry,” observed Mr.
Smyler, with that oily geniality which had
made the sovereign people delight to honor
him. “I find it very pleasant to be rooted
to this spot.”

“That is the proper sort of thing to say,”
put in Mrs. Warden, anxious to keep a hold
on the skirts of the puissant functionary's
attention. “But I must warn Mrs. Murray
not to let herself be carried away. You are
good to every body.”

Again the great, sweet man bowed, and
showed his beneficent teeth; there was evidently
no limit to him in that direction.

“Are you very obliging, sir?” asked Josie,
reverently. “Then I would like to ask you
some troublesome questions.”

Mr. Smyler intimated that she might ask,
and he would answer, until they both succumbed
with fatigue.

“I have been reading Trollope lately,” she
continued. “Mr. Palliser is so amusing with
his labors as Chancellor of the Exchequer!
Now, who is your Mr. Palliser in Congress?”

Her object, it must be understood, was to
learn precisely who had charge of the public
moneys, so that she might go to the
proper quarter to obtain payment for her
burned barn.

Mr. Smyler, being no novel-reader, did not
know at all who Mr. Palliser was; but he
got at the gist of her meaning through the
phrase, “Chancellor of the Exchequer.”

“Why, the position is somewhat divided
with us, Mrs. Murray,” he said. “It is shared,

I should be inclined to say, between three or
more persons. The Secretary of the Treasury
is properly our finance minister; but,
then, he has no seat in the legislative body,
as probably you are aware.”

“I am so ignorant!” confessed Josie.

Mr. Smyler showed his teeth again, as
though this were the most delightful information
possible, although, in reality, it
gave him neither satisfaction nor sorrow.
His only reason for showing his teeth, aside
from mere born instinct and life-long habit
of grinning, was a desire to win adherents.

“Then, in Congress,” he continued, “we
have various committees which have to do
with finance, and each of these committees
has its chairman.”

Thereupon he enumerated several honorable
gentlemen, and among them Josie's
friend, Mr. Hollowbread, chief of the Committee
on Circulating Medium.

“Mr. Hollowbread!” exclaimed our heroine,
wondering if he were the person who
held her money, and regretting that she had
manœuvred herself out of his fiscal company.

“Yes, Mr. Hollowbread. You are acquainted
with him? A very excellent,
charming gentleman, and a man of great
ability,” declared Mr. Smyler, who spoke
well of every body, and especially of every
body in the political world. “One of our
leading men in financial questions and debates.”

“So Mr. Hollowbread is our Mr. Palliser?”
inquired, or, rather, inferred, Josie, hoping
that it might be so.

“Yes—I dare say—precisely,” grinned
Mr. Smyler, still unable to attach any precise
idea to the word Palliser.

Josie's most urgent desire now was to find
Mr. Hollowbread, and renew with vigor her
hitherto idly treated duty of captivating
him. But before she could rediscover him,
she had to converse at length with several
gentlemen; not a disagreeable task, by-the-way,
to a truly womanly woman, and especially
not to our heroine.

First appeared Mr. Hamilton Bray, a tremendously
heavy young swell, with a long,
thin, graceful figure, and a girlishly handsome
face. He was surely not more than
twenty-five, and his mustache was but a
mere down of chestnut; but you would have
judged from his air of wisdom and weariness
that he was the oldest inhabitant of the political
world: it seemed nothing less than a
miracle that his brown curls had not turned
to silver.

He was as bumptious in opinion as a
spoiled child, and his tone of superiority was
something either amusing or insufferable.
It was a treat to watch him when he was
presented to Josie Murray. He bowed with
a mien of elegant condescension, and then
threw himself into an attitude which said,
Admire me! Beautiful as she was, he hard
ly looked at her twice, and seemed to expect
that she should look at him.

The present occupation of this wonderful
adolescent was to be the private secretary
of that famous political leader, General
Bangs. Of Bangs he spoke much, indirectly
representing him as an able, though frequently
erring, man, whom he (Bray) was
engineering through the political world, and
of whom he had hopes.

And yet the general was a prodigious
creature, too, as compared with all men less
intelligently guided. His fervent nature
was constantly revolting against the mean
world around him, and striving to evoke a
new and hitherto unsuspected order out of
chaos. He despised from the bottom of his
volcanic soul the point-no-point policy of
the men who now had the ear of the Administration.
With God's help (and Bray's also,
no doubt), he would yet overcome the point-no-point
muddle.

In short, this youth talked very vaguely
and bombastically and sillily. Such was his
conceit, too, that unless Providence should
give him some humbling hard knocks, it did
not seem likely that he would ever talk
much better. His enormous and protuberant
vanity was exasperating, and did him
socially great damage. He so obviously enjoyed
hearing himself discourse, that, no
matter what he said, no listener could enjoy
it.

Even Josephine Murray, who could put
up with as much from a man as any lady,
soon got tired of Mr. Bray. Of course she
did not quarrel with him; she was one of
those wise women who never quarrel, except
with an old friend who is unlikely to
strike back; moreover, to do her justice, she
was one of the most patient, amiable, courteous
creatures that ever wore a bonnet.
But she could not stand this “hifalutin”
young egotist, and she got quit of him as
promptly as might be without incivility.

Then came Mr. Calhoun Clavers, a shoot
of the old landed aristocracy of South Carolina,
but now glad to earn a modest salary
in the office of Mr. Simeon Allchin, one of
the great Washington bankers and railroaders.
A tall, slender, dark young man, with
a pointed profile, and coarse, black hair, he
was far from handsome. But he was so
graceful and self-possessed, so self-respectful
and yet so sweetly considerate to others,
so mature in the proprieties of life and yet
so full of generous sentimentalism, that he
touched Josephine with honest wonder and
admiration.

Notwithstanding that he was no older
than herself, and quite incapable of bringing
her either a marriage settlement or Congressional
appropriation, she talked with
him for more than half an hour. She quite
won the heart of this simple and chivalrous
youngster, and from that time forward he

was ready to fight any one who spoke ill of
her.

Next came Clay Beauman, another Southerner
from farther West, whom she had
caught a glimpse of two days before in the
cars, and of whom she had thought that he
was “too handsome for a man.” He was
an Apollo, with statuesque features, a clear
olive complexion, curling masses of black
hair, a perfect figure, the bearing of a D'Orsay,
and the toilet of a Brummel.

As Josie stared at him, she said to herself,
with a smile, “Actually, he is prettier
than I am!”

Beauman was, of course, well used to feminine
admiration. At that very time there
were probably fifty women in Washington
who were more or less cracked about him,
and who took every decorous chance to let
him know it. But, for all that, Josie was
able to interest him, and to keep him by her
for many minutes. What with her cleverness
in small talk, and her risky audacity
in little airs and signs of preference, and the
half-meant, half-unconscious sentimentality
of her sparkling eyes, she was dangerously
alluring, even to a spoiled favorite.

Before Beauman left her, he had got an
idea that she was in love with him, and that
he was on the verge of falling in love with
her.

“By Jove! that's an alarming little thing,”
he took the opportunity to confide to Bradford,
who had just come up. “She has talent
enough to be a second Catherine of Russia.”

“It isn't exactly a pleasant comparison,”
was Bradford's answer.

“And yet it may be an apt one,” said Beauman,
pensively. “By Jove! there is a great
deal in her, whatever it may be.”

Bradford, it must be understood, had long
since delivered Josie's message to her relatives.
When he found them, Mrs. Murray
was still toiling feebly through the crowd,
supported on one side by her weary and tottering
husband, and on the other by the colonel.

“Yes, yes, we must go, Huldah,” insisted
the rector, pettishly. “You are tired out,
and ought to have gone long since. I am
glad my niece has got word to us at last.
We are very much obliged to you, Mr. Bradford.”

“I am sorry I could not find you earlier,”
observed Bradford, charitably willing to give
the impression that Josie had sent him to
them long since.

“Oh, she has done as well as she could,”
interposed Mrs. Murray, who was a thorough
lady at heart. “How could she help getting
lost in this jam? Mr. Bradford, you are very
kind; but couldn't you bring her to us?”

“I might—in time,” he hesitated. Knowing
Josie pretty well, he judged her capable
of evading the bringing, and then these old
people would have another season of weary
waiting.

“No, Huldah!” declared the rector, who
was ready to cry as he gazed at the lassitude
in his wife's wrinkled face; “I insist
upon your getting home at once. The carriage
can come back for Josephine. Julian
can stay for her. Any body but you.”

“No need, colonel,” said Bradford. “I
promise you that I will see your niece home
in Mrs. Warden's carriage.”

At last he induced them all three to
depart, and made his way back to his own
party.

At last, too, long after the flight of the
Murrays, and quite a while after midnight,
the swarms of the reception began to break
up, and Mrs. Warden hinted of home.

“I am ready,” answered Josie, who had
recovered the chairman of the Circulating
Medium Committee, and was now leaning
on his plump arm. “Mr. Hollowbread says
that we must go if we don't want to get
caught in the crowd and kept here ever so
long; and you wouldn't like to be kept here
with me ever so long, would you, Mr. Hollowbread?”
she asked, with a sort of girlish
sauciness.

The old beau was jaded enough to want
to say that he would like to get home as
quickly as possible; but, being habitually
gallant, and, moreover, anxious not to be
considered elderly, and, furthermore, very
much smitten with this lovely widow, he
strenuously affirmed that he would rejoice
to make a night of it. Meanwhile he kept
sliding on toward the point of egress as rapidly
as the eddying crowd would let him.

At this moment Calhoun Clavers came up
with the information that the press around
the door was frightful.

“It will need a cavalier to every lady,”
he added, wistfully. “I wish I could be of
service.”

“You may oblige me with your arm, Mr.
Clavers,” said cunning Mrs. Warden, who
wanted to leave her daughter as much alone
as possible with Bradford.

And now came a wrestle which was really
tremendous, almost to the endangering
of life. The enormous outer hall was packed
with thousands of people, all pushing or
pushed in various directions, some toward
the ladies' waiting-room, some toward the
masculine ditto, and some toward the great
door.

This multitudinous variety of aim led to
a vast unity of deadlock. It seemed as if
the crowd had so tangled itself in knots that
it would never get unraveled. There was a
huge hum of amusement, or alarm, or anger,
frequent bursts of hysterical laughter, occasional
female shrieks, and some manly swearing.

It cost a struggle of fifteen or twenty minutes
to get the ladies of our party to the

room which held their cloakings, and to
force them into it. Then the three men
slowly fought their way to the male dressing-room,
with the hope of obtaining their
own outward garniture.

They might as well have tried to get the
moon and the seven stars. There were at
least a thousand masculine maniacs there,
yelling out numbers, signaling for surtouts
and hats, pushing and hauling, and actually
climbing on each other's backs.

“We shall have to give it up,” gasped
Hollowbread, whose breadth of beam and
roundness of model put him at a great disadvantage.
Even the two younger men
were soon kneaded and hustled into the
same opinion; and, all three hatless and
cloakless, they scuffled their way back to
their ladies. It was no easy matter to find
them, and it was still harder to escort them
anywhere. Obviously there was no present
possibility of getting women out of the front
door, through that huge drift and pack of
desperate men who were making their suffering
exit.

“They are jumping from the windows,”
called Josie Murray, all alive with the excitement
of the occasion, and her young eyes
lighted up with a gayety which seemed almost
wicked to elderly and timorous people.
“I am cheering up Mrs. Warden and
Belle to jump. Oh, Mr. Hollowbread! if you
will get out and stand under the window, I
will jump down to you. It will be such an
adventure! Do go!”

As a reflective soul might infer, Mr. Hollowbread
was considerably alarmed by this
romantic proposition. Jump out of a window
into his arms, and, of course, square
upon his broad waistcoat! She might lame
him for life; she might knock the breath
out of even his vast body; she might be
the death of him. He would have argued
against the mad proposition; he would have
been more delighted than ever before in his
life to speak against time; but before he
could begin his oration, Josie withdrew from
the door-way, and was seen hastening toward
the Wardens.

“But, Mrs. Murray!” he shouted in a voice
of desperation, which she did not or would
not hear. “My God, what a notion! It's
perfect lunacy. I won't go.”

“Come along,” laughed Bradford, towing
and tugging him by the arm. “I don't see
any other way, unless we wait an hour or
two. Let Clavers stay here and watch
events inside.”

“I'll stay inside myself,” declared Mr. Hollowbread,
who, it will be remembered, had
neither hat nor overcoat.

But Bradford was inexorable with the old
beau, whose mature gallantries he, of course,
laughed at in his soul, as young men always
do laugh at the amative pranks of reverend
seniors.

“I don't see how we can disobey Mrs.
Murray,” he said. “If you are a man, follow
me.”

Very unwillingly the chairman of the Circulating
Medium Committee did follow,
plunging into a prolonged rough-and-tumble
which scarcely left wind enough in him for
a hiccough, and emerging from it so heated
with exercise that he was almost glad he
had no overcoat, although it was a stormy
night, and the cutting wind played remorselessly
with his swallow-tail. The scene outside
was little less bewildering and alarming
than the one inside. There was a monstrous
crowd; people in hundreds were pouring
away; others were vainly trying to force a
re-entry into the building; gentlemen were
yelling for their coachmen, and coachmen
howling for their gentlemen; it was a turmoil
and an uproar as of a conflagration, or
a street revolution. the few policemen
present could do nothing to restore order,
although they bustled and hustled and bawled
manfully. Meantime the wind blew tomahawks;
the air was full of small, rustling,
keen, needle-like arrows of snow; it was uncomfortable
to stand, and also, as Mr. Hollowbread
reflected, dangerous.

“I shall catch rheumatism, consumption,
and—every thing!” he groaned, as he tried
vainly to button his party coat over his
white vest.

“Come along!” shouted Bradford. “There
is Mrs. Murray standing in the window.”

“Oh, it's all very well to say come along,”
grunted Mr. Hollowbread, freeing himself
with a push from a black boy who had just
run into his stomach. “But with so many
blasted people about—”

He was wrathful with the blundering negro,
with the light-footed Bradford, with the
weather, the hurry, and every thing. But
he ran on, nevertheless; slipping wildly in
a small drift of the dry, granulated snow;
then taking a gallant slide across a brief
glade of thin ice; and at last halting out of
breath beneath a window full of crinoline.