University of Virginia Library

17. CHAPTER XVII.
A FRIGHT AND A DISAPPOINTMENT.

Josie soon had occasion to know that one
of her Congressmen had begun work in furtherance
of her suit.

During the evening of the day in which
she held her palavers with those three honorables,
Colonel Murray dropped in at the
rector's, and, after some talk about the adventures
of the reception, propounded the
following query:

“John,” said he, in his easy, drawling tone,
meanwhile stretching his long, lean legs
over a chair or two, “do you know any
thing about the ownership of a Murray barn
in Beulah County which was burned by
troops in 1812?”

Josie's heart set up a frightful thumping,
and she felt that her cheeks were turning
scarlet; but she covered her emotion by
dropping a skein of embroidery-silk and
making believe search for it.

“Barn?” marveled the reverend Murray.
“No, I don't remember the ownership, nor
the burning, nor the barn. What of it?”

“Why, a gentleman whose name I can't
recall now—but he is an old wheel-horse and
war-horse and high-cockolorum in Congress
—a stout, red-faced Turveydrop of a fellow
—stopped me in the street this afternoon,
and wanted the newest, or, rather, the oldest,
intelligence about it.”

Yes, Mr. Hollowbread, supposing that the
claim was to be put into his hands, and
knowing that Colonel Murray belonged to
the family which was connected with the
barn, but knowing nothing of the old soldier's
punctilious respect for the public moneys,
had made the mistake of applying to
him for guidance in pushing a swindle.

“It was shamefully stupid of him,” said
Josie to herself; and for the moment she
was angry with the sharp anger of fright
against her thoughtless advocate; but of
course her cleverness and self-possession enabled
her to hold her tongue.

“What did he want to know? and what
did he want to do about it?” eagerly queried
the rector, interested himself, and hoping to
interest his wife. Indeed, he looked at her
and signaled to her at this moment, as was
his custom when he desired to engage her
wandering attention.

“He asked, was it actually burned, and
whose property it was. I questioned him,
of course, as to his object, but he hummed
and hawed as those political fellows do when
you try to pump them; and, in fact, he got
off without telling me any thing. By-the-way,
I couldn't give him any information,
further than that some barn or other was
burned. I was only five years old then.”

“Let me see; I was three years old; I
recollect nothing,” said the rector. “And
Henry was a baby. I should like to know
something about the affair. Huldah!” he
called, with a sharp, distinct utterance, as
we speak to one who is dozing.

Mrs. Murray, notwithstanding her seventy-eight
years, and her decadence of mind as
well as of body, had a wonderful memory for
the transactions of long ago, and knew the
family history pretty nearly by heart.

At the sound of her name from those lips
which never spoke without awakening her
interest, she started out of a reverie (one
of the slumber-like reveries of age) with a
tremulous, eager air.

“Do wake up, Huldah,” said the husband,
who sometimes reproved her playfully for
her absences and torpors. “You are getting
awfully dreamy and romantic of late. You
mustn't read so much poetry.”

“Why, Mr. Murray!” remonstrated the
old lady, giggling nervously. “I don't read
any more poetry than you do. What are
you scolding about?”

“Here is Julian talking for the last fifteen
minutes, or half an hour, or two hours, about
a barn. An old Murray barn, which lies on
his mind like a load of lead. It was burned
by the British, or the Indians, or the Yankees,
or the Salem witches, in 1812. A barn
on the family estate in Beulah County—you
understand?”

“Yes, yes, I understand. Well, what of
it?”

“Why, we have got to come to you about it.
Julian and I have lost our memories, like a
couple of decayed old gentlemen. We want
to know who burned the barn, and whether it
was burned at all, and who owned it before it
was burned, if it was burned.”

Meantime Mrs. Murray went through a
succession of starts and quivers, as though
each of these repetitions gave her an electric
shock, or as though memory were coming
back to her in throbs and pulsations.

“Why, what nonsense! Oh! a burned
barn!—in 1812, you say? Oh! in Beulah
County!” she answered, by jerks, repeating
the ideas after him. “Yes, yes, I understand.
I was thinking— Oh, yes;” and
here an expression of pleasure flickered
over her puzzled face; she had caught a
thread of recollection. “Why, yes, dear me,
yes, it was burned. I remember all about it.
Why, I remember it distinctly. How strange
you should have forgotten it! Who burned
it? Oh, that's what you wanted to know!
Why, our troops — the American troops —
burned it to drive out the British. The British
were in it, and our troops set fire to it to
drive them out. Why, old Jeremiah Drinkwater—you've
heard of him, colonel?—he

was in the fight, and he told me all about it
when I was a girl; and I believe he's living
yet.”

“Yes, he is a pensioner,” said the colonel.
“So there really was a Murray barn burned,”
he added, not in the least questioning the
ancient dame's recollection, so sure was it
known to be concerning the times of eld.
“But, Mrs. Murray, whose old affair was it?
Was it our mother's, or Henry's, or John's, or
mine? You know that our mother moved
us all East not long after the war. About
that time my recollection begins.”

“Whose was it? I don't know. I think
I never heard whose lot it was in.”

“I should like to learn,” observed the rector.
“Then we might guess what this Congressman
is at.”

There was one person present who could
have solved that doubt, but who was not one
jot disposed to do it.

“It is possible that he has some pension
case on hand,” surmised the colonel.

“More probably some rascality,” declared
the clergyman, who was orthodoxically hard
upon our fallen humanity, and apt to impute
to it much unrighteousness. “You
may depend that the devil is somewhere at
the bottom of it.”

Josephine quivered; she felt all the guiltier
with regard to the claim because of her sly
reticence; and just then it seemed to her
very likely that the whole thing was indeed
a piece of roguery.

“Do you believe in a real devil, uncle?”
she asked, remembering that the two men
were accustomed to quarrel over supernatural
matters, and hoping to divert them
from their present subject by the help of
Apollyon.

“I do,” affirmed the rector, positively.
“This whole world, and especially the political
part of it, is worm-eaten with deviltry.
If you can't see distinctly what your neighbor
is doing, you may report boldly that he
is at Satan's business. I'll guarantee that
in nineteen cases out of twenty you won't
have slandered him. I don't mean out in the
country, among our good, plain, old-fashioned
American people—the simple, moral, godly
people who make the strength of this nation,
and who are the salt which, I trust, will
eventually save it. I mean in our great cities—for
instance, New York and Philadelphia,
with their rings and their bosses—and
especially this Satan's kingdom of Washington.
How a man can live in Washington as
long as you have, Julian, and doubt the existence
of a real and most enormous devil, I
can not see.”

This was an old field of battle for the two
brothers, and the rationalistic colonel drew
out his forces promptly.

“Oh, pshaw! Don't talk to me about a
devil. Where did he come from? Who
created him? Answer me that question.”

“Yes; because you can't account for him
by your doctrine of evolution—because you
can't tell what monkey or what monad he
was developed from—you deny his existence.
That is what your science leads to. On the
same principle you ought to deny the existence
of man. Man's father-monkey and
grandfather-monad can't be found; therefore
there is no man.”

“I ask you, who created the devil?” persisted
the old soldier, not to be diverted from
his point of attack. “Of course God created
every thing, or there is some other creator,
and consequently some other God. You
won't deny that inference, I suppose. But
if God created the Satan you believe in, then
he created rebellion against himself, and he
is responsible for it. But of course you
won't admit that. Now, how are you going
to get out of the dilemma? You had better
abjure your devil.”

“I don't see any dilemma at all,” hotly
answered the clergyman. “The simple
Scriptures tell us how the thing came about.
Lucifer was created heavenly, and fell from
heaven.”

“Oh, that's Milton,” sniffed the colonel.
“I have driven you clear through the Bible,
and you rally behind the `Paradise Lost.”'

“Don't, Mr. Murray!” put in old Mrs. Murray
at this point, seeing that her husband
was about to make some fiery response.
“You do get so excited on these matters!”

“Well, well,” said the rector, subsiding
into a smile, and loosening his white neck-choker,
for he perceived that he was becoming
agitated, and knew that it was not good
for him. “Julian must go his own ways,
like his namesake in Roman history. But
I do want to keep up a saving faith in the
devil among this godless generation. As it
is, men have grown so wicked that we can
hardly get up the church-aisles without having
our pockets picked; and if they should
come to disbelieve generally in a solid, roaring,
tormenting Satan our very lives wouldn't
be safe overnight. We should wake up to-morrow
morning with our heads rolling about
on the floor.”

“Oh, it's a good enough bugaboo to help
control the vulgar,” admitted the colonel.
“I dare say the fetich and the obi are useful
as restraining influences on the coast of
Guinea.”

And here, each holding firmly his original
line of battle, these veteran antagonists
sheathed their doctrinal swords, and the
combat came to a close. But it had served
the purpose of that adroit Josie; it had
blown the burned barn clean out of the conversation.

As she did on this occasion, hiding her
claim from her respectable elders and protectors,
so she continued to do as long as possible;
and that, too, although she received a
letter from Bradford the next day, begging

her to lay the business before the colonel ere
she pushed it further.

“If you should consult him on it,” wrote
the young Congressman, “I think you would
find him disposed to disapprove of it, and
perhaps very energetically.”

“All the more reason for not consulting
him!” exclaimed Josie, throwing the letter
down in a pet. But she immediately picked
it up, and read on as follows: “I am afraid
that I can not bring myself to push the claim
any further than it has already gone. I discover
by the records of the Claim-office that
it was paid once, and in full of all demands,
namely, two thousand dollars.”

“Oh, he has found it out, has he?” burst
out Josie. “What did he go and look up
that for?”

“To ask for further payment, after having
been paid in full would be what is called
a lobby job,” continued that strange compound
of moralities and immoralities, Mr.
Congressman Bradford. “I would do almost
any thing for you, my dear friend, but
I can not bring myself to do this. I am a
poor, crooked stick, but I must draw my line
of proprieties somewhere, and I draw it on
the confines of my official business. Let me
humbly beg of you not to be offended with
what may naturally seem to you absurd
punctiliousness. I have it greatly at heart
to obtain and maintain the character of a
scrupulously honorable legislator, the exact
opposite of so many rascally jobbers who
disgrace our legislative halls.”

“Oh yes!” grasped Josie, her eyes full of
tears, and her cheeks hot with vexation, perhaps
mingled with shame. “He can make
love to a married woman, and his friend's
wife, and expect her to let him make love
to her; but when she wants him to get her
own money for her he must have conscientious
scruples, and look out for his character.
Oh, Mr. Edgar Bradford, that is a gentleman's
honor, is it?”

It must be confessed that our Congressman
does not appear very admirable from
Josie's point of view, or from that of more
severe and less selfish moralists. Still it is
better that a man should draw his line somewhere,
though it be on the confines of official
business, rather than have no line of honor
at all. Doubtless there are many men like
Bradford, who are sadly weak under temptations
arising from temperament, but absolutely
unimpeachable in all matters of public
trust.

“I inclose your papers for you to act upon
them as you see fit,” the letter went on.
“But let me beg of you once more to lay
the affair before your noble old relative and
natural protector, Colonel Murray. He is
one of the soundest-headed and purest-hearted
men alive, the perfect model of an old soldier,
an officer, and a gentleman. He can
give you a reliable judgment upon your
claim, not so much as to whether it could
be prosecuted with success, but as to whether
it should be prosecuted at all!”

“The hateful, horrid man!” sobbed Josie,
while tears dropped from her long eyelashes.
“How mean of him to lecture me and scold
me, instead of helping me! I won't consult
the colonel about it; he is just the man I
don't want to consult. Oh, Mr. Edgar Bradford,
to think that you should treat me so!
The man that a woman wants to like best
is always the man to make her cry.”

Yes, she was actually sobbing and crying,
and meanwhile her cheeks were hot
enough with mortification to dry her tears,
and, on the whole, she was an object to move
almost any man's pity. Could she have gone
just as she was to every Congressman, she
might have had her claim voted through by
acclamation. Had Bradford seen her, he
would surely have been moved to compunction
at making such return for a kiss which
he had no right to take, and which, therefore,
from his loose point of view, was the
greater gift.

Josie crumpled the letter into a lump, and
threw it across the room. Then she ran after
it, picked it up almost tenderly, rubbed
out its creases carefully, and read it through
again. She tried to find some sweetness in
it, but there was none; there were apology
and pleading enough, but no real sweetness.
It scolded her, it told her that she was trying
to swindle the Government, and it positively
refused to aid her in the swindle.
Rummage through it as eagerly as she
might, she only found disappointment and
humiliation. She had hoped that Bradford
liked her, and was on the point of seriously
beginning to love her; but, if that were the
case, he certainly would not fail to aid her
when she so much needed aid. Such was
her womanly inference.

“I don't believe he ever cared for me,” she
whimpered. “Oh, I was such a fool to let
him talk and whisper to me!” she added,
fairly grinding her teeth in remorse and
shame. “And what have I got by it? Now
he really doesn't respect me, and he never
will really, really care for me, and I never
shall have the first chance to—to— I don't
know whether I would refuse him or take
him.”

Then she threw herself on her bed, and
sobbed over her troubles, poor, pretty little
sufferer, for several minutes. After a while
the wrath in her heart was all sobbed out,
and her instinctive desire to be liked resumed
its full dominion.

Once more she read the note, no longer
vindictive about it, but more full of yearning
than ever. Was Mr. Bradford—was Edgar,
she phrased it to herself—was he angry?
Why did he address her through the cold
medium of pen and paper, instead of coming
to her? It looked as though he proposed to

keep at a distance from her forever after. It
was dreadful. She had lost a dear friend,
and perhaps a lover; and even the claim
was hardly worth that. She pictured to
herself at length how differently she would
have taken his refusal if he had only communicated
it to her in person, meanwhile looking
kindly into her face with his handsome,
meditative hazel eyes, and, it might be, holding
her hand in his. She could have borne
it then, and even liked him the better for
such a sweet interview, and, perhaps—
though not certainly—might have given up
the claim. But he had not come in that angelic
fashion, and it was woefully possible
that he never would come at all. At last
she sprung up, hurried to her writing-table,
and scrawled him a darling note. It will be
perceived from all this, that, although Bradford
is not a praiseworthy person in our eyes,
he was very admirable and attractive in
the eyes of Josie, partly because she was less
fastidious as to character than she ought to
have been, and partly because she had long
been more or less in love with him.

“There!” she said, breathing forth a last
little faint seraph of a sob as she sealed the
envelope with her rosy lips. “And now that
horrid Mr. Drummond must have the papers,
or that horrid old Hollowbread.”