Playing the mischief :: :: University of Virginia Library

Before Bradford received Josie's note he
had been able, by dint of reflecting on the
sinfulness of lobbying, and on the beauty of
virtue in official business, to harden his heart
against her in quite a meritorious fashion.

So he treated her cruelly, and, at the same
time, one is grieved to add, slyly, after the
manner of statesmen, perhaps. He wrote a
reply, saying kind things and promising to
call promptly; then he willfully broke his
agreement and staid away for some days;
then he dropped in at the Murray's when he
knew she was out. Thus a fortnight or so
elapsed before she got another chance at him
alone.

Meantime she plunged all over in Washington
society, and made a really notable
splash and uproar in it. During one special
week, surely remarkable enough to deserve
mention, she attended twelve parties, made
at least thirty calls, and received more than
I dare state. The rector and his wife never
went out with her by night after their martyrdom
at the President's, having learned
sufficient wisdom there to last a thoughtful
old couple for one winter, if not longer.
The colonel escorted her to three parties, and
then retired on his hard-won laurels, remarking
that he hoped his next scrimmage would
be with Indians, and that he would rather
lose his scalp than his wits. After that Josie
campaigned it chiefly with Mrs. Warden and
Belle; sometimes, however, with Mrs. Senator
Ironman, who took an uncommon fancy
to her, and used her to eclipse and huff her
own private rival, Mrs. John Vane; also, on
two or three occasions, she went with gentlemen
of known staidness and respectability,
such as Mr. Hollowbread and Mr. Smyler.

Thanks to her beauty, her amusing conversation,
and the repute of her Murray relatives,
she sprung at once into currency, and
even into request. Furthermore, she was
greatly helped by exaggerated reports of her
wealth, which, as it were, blew trumpets before
her, and prepared the way for her coming.
She was commonly spoken of as the
rich young widow, and her poor six thousand
of dollars was promptly magnified into
sixty thousand, and even into sums far vaster.
The world loves to believe in money,
and stamps a great deal of it out of the
waste paper of its imagination; indeed, if
we could examine thoroughly into the solvency
of our fellow-beings, we should stare
to see how many purely fabulous fortunes
there are. No doubt the fictions concerning
Josie's opulence arose, in part, from the rumors
concerning her claim.

Of this she spoke to many persons, always
in confidence; and they naturally
mentioned it to many others, more or less
confidentially, and therefore more or less
vaguely; and thus the tale of it both spread
widely and got enormously misreported.
People said that she would be richer than
Mrs. Gaines; that by rights she owned more
than half of Beulah County; that the Government
owed her “simply millions.”

Mrs. John Vane, who was a lovely woman
of the greedy, extravagant, envious, spiteful
sort, loudly declared that it was perfectly
wicked in Mrs. Murray to bleed the Treasury
in this frightful fashion, when she already
had more money than she could spend.
Mrs. Warden, anxious about her own claim,
almost feared lest there should be no legal
tenders left after Josie's exorbitant demands
had been satisfied.

In short, the belief in our heroine's affluence,
present and to come, was general, and,
one may say, enthusiastic. Yet she was a
social favorite, as, indeed, very wealthy people
are apt to be, especially when they are

beautiful and good. A call from her, or even
a simple card, sufficed to bring her any invitation
she wanted; and ere long the printed
billets on satin paper looked her up in such
numbers that she could not possibly attend
to them all; for the most energetic and ablebodied
of young women can hardly manage
three parties of an evening.

Meanwhile she picked up acquaintances
everywhere and in every fashion. She got
herself introduced to notabilities, and talked
to them so brightly that they could hardly
help being interested in her; or, if talking
did not seem to impress their great natures
sufficiently, she made her wonderful
eyes at them. Moreover, if some demigod
seemed to have forgotten her, she had no
diffidence about speaking first, repeating her
name with a sweet smile, and saying, “So
delighted to meet you again!”

However, very few new-comers in Washington
have the luck to be so easily recollected
and so generally welcomed as Josie.
Within a fortnight of her arrival she was acquainted
with two or three great generals,
two or three members of the Cabinet, quite
a number of leading wire-pullers and railroaders,
and nobody knows how many Congressmen.

We can not possibly follow her closely
through all this turmoil of combat and glory.
We must imagine her plume and pennon
as waving in the forefront of fashionable
battle, beyond the boldest rivalry of our
ambition, and almost indistinguishable to
our sight. It would take volumes to recount
her sayings and doings, yea, and her
mere sufferings, during that memorable season.
It was noble, tough, wearing work, and
it was performed magnificently.

But we must not fail to state that amidst
all her flirtings and flauntings she did not
forget her claim. She urged it upon many
lawgivers, and gained not a few supporters
for it. To be sure, Mr. Hollowbread had the
papers; yes, she had finally given them to
the loving Hollowbread. But she had contrived
to propitiate Mr. Drummond for this
slight, and to keep him interested in her welfare,
as well as scores of others.

Meantime she had troubles at home. It
did seem hard that, when she was laboring
so terribly and succeeding so splendidly, the
elder Murrays should exhibit dissatisfaction.
But they could not help feeling discontent,
nor keep it from showing in those worn faces
of theirs, the exponents of fragile health and
sensitive nerves.

Accustomed for many years to a humdrum
tranquillity, the advent of excitement
made them unwell, and consequently unhappy.
It was truly dreadful for them to see a
member of their household rolling off every
evening in the chariots of fashion, to return
only in the revered small-hours of the morning.
It was equally awful for them to note
the swarms of visitors, nearly all unknown
to them, worldly ladies and still worldlier
gentlemen, who invaded the hitherto privileged
sanctity of their home, and stirred
with loud conversation the drowsy heat of
their parlor.

Old Mrs. Murray jerked and twitched at
every ring of the door-bell, as if the wire
thereof had been affixed to her own gossamer
anatomy. Meantime the rector groaned
and fretted by her side, and could not proceed
with the jog-trot composition of his sermons.
As for himself, he could endure hardness,
he nobly declared; but how was his beloved
Huldah to survive such an everlasting
racket? Now and then he hurried rheumatically
to the door, and, with a horror which
is pitiable when one considers the feebleness
which caused it, exclaimed in a hoarse
whisper,

“My dear, there is another caller!”

“I know it,” Mrs. Murray would reply,
with a convulsed smile, at the same time
throwing up both her hands, so thin and
veined that they reminded one of cobwebs.
“I don't see how she can bear it.”

“I don't see how you can bear it. I must
speak to her. I must and will stop this
abominable rioting,” insisted the hyperbolical
rector.

“Oh, let her go on — do, Mr. Murray, let
her go on,” begged the old lady, still retaining
some womanly reverence for the toils and
triumphs of society. “The season will soon
be over. Then I hope she will settle down.”

“I don't believe Miss Topsyturvy ever
can settle down,” asserted the rector, who
was much given, by-the-way, to clapping
nicknames on to people. “She will never
settle until the sexton has taken charge of
her,” he added, with the humor of a man to
whom funerals are, in a manner, business.

“Well, we'll see, Mr. Murray—we'll see,”
says madam, her gray head and wilted body
bobbing about nervously.

She was just a little like a jack-in-the-box,
after one of his leaps for freedom, so
alarming to small youngsters.

It will be perceived that Mrs. Murray was
agitated by conflicting emotions and desires.
This tintinnabulating run on her door-bell,
and this almost scandalous swarming of
strangers to her parlor, and these nocturnal
absences of the pet lamb of her little fold,
were all circumstances very trying to her
nerves, but also savory to her curiosity.

Who was who, and which was the other,
and what they said, and did, and related,
were questions which held her mind awake
all day, and kept her diary running a full
stream. After every visit or party, Josie
had a history to pour into her ears, so fresh,
so fluent, so abundant, so sparkling with
humorous description and observation, that
the venerable dame would sit for an hour to
listen and laugh till she cried.

Then came the delightful task—the imposed
duty of youth, which had been rendered
a pleasure through long performance
—the truly conscientious though trivial labor—of
setting down at least a summary of
these marvels in her note-books.

She had pretty sharp writing to keep up
with the incessant overflow of matter; perhaps
no reporter in either house of Congress
was driven so hardly. Eyes, too, were dim,
even with the best of gold eyeglasses; fingers
were tremulous and easily fatigued;
the handwriting laboriously neat. Her history
of those times amounted to little more
than a catalogue of names—a directory, so
to speak, of Josie's visiting-places, and entertainers,
and callers. The rest—what was
said and done—also who said it and did it
—she strove and hoped—vainly hoped—to
remember.

Well, worrying as all this was to the old
lady, it was correspondingly occupying and
amusing. She could not decide that she
wanted the parties and calls to stop, or even
to diminish — at least, not yet; and so she
let them go on, having all the “particulars”
narrated to her, and committing what she
could to the custody of paper.

But before long her watchful and tender
husband believed that he had cause to interfere.
His wife, as it seemed to him, was in
danger of simply gossiping and diarying
herself out of the world. Now, she was all
in all to him; he loved her tenderly, devotedly,
beautifully; strange as this may
seem, it is solemnly true. To this wife,
who was fifteen years his senior, this coddling
man clung with a brooding, petting
affection such as few young husbands grant
to blooming brides of twenty.

Josie Murray, in her happiest days, never
won such a treasure of love as the nature of
the rector obliged him to lavish on his venerable
partner. He could not see her grow
weary and shaky from any cause without
rushing to the rescue. At the same time
he had not the heart to say to his Huldah,
“You are breaking down, and I must stop
it.”

That would be a hint that she was aging;
it would hurt her feelings, and might alarm
her, and might kill her; and, consequently,
such an idea must not be so much as suggested.

What he did was to commence fretting at
Josie's dissipations as being irritating and
harmful to himself. He could not bear it;
he was suffering for want of sleep and tranquillity
of mind; he was the weak one who
needed peace, and must have it.

“I shall go stark mad, Huldah, if this sort
of thing continues,” he stated, in great excitement.

“Why, Mr. Murray!” giggled the old lady,
quite pleased that he should make such a
confession of feebleness, while she had not
uttered a plaint. “How can you be so sensitive?
Well, if that is the case,” she sagaciously
added, “perhaps you had better
drop her a hint.”

“I shall certainly give Miss Topsyturvy
a piece of my mind,” declared the rector,
ruffling up with chicken-hearted ferocity.

“Now, do be gentle with her, Mr. Murray.
You are so harsh with people when you go
at them! Do consider that she is young
and must have society, and can't help going
to parties, they are all so crazy after her.
Why, I never saw any body take people so,”
she added, with no little pride in the fact.
“Now you must not be severe with her.
Just tell her it's better for her health not to
go out so often and stay so late. As for
gentlemen coming to see her, why, we can't
shut the door in their faces.”

“I think I shall speak to her of her card-playing,”
said the clergyman, quailing before
his duty as he approached it, and looking
for some little and easily-handled tipend
to it. “She played cards the other
night in my parlor! I never heard of such
an outrage in my life. Played whist in my
parlor, and asked me to take a hand?”

Mrs. Murray threw up her arms and dropped
them in a curiously quick, jerking way,
reminding one of the gesture of a dancing-jack
when his string is pulled slightly.

The rector, we must explain, honestly
hated card-playing, and often indulged in
old-fashioned denunciation of it. He burst
forth into one of those hyperboles now, as if
to strengthen his tottering determination to
scold Josie.

“A man who plays cards will gamble,
and a man who gambles will steal, and a
man who steals will commit murder, and all
such shall have their part in the lake of fire
and brimstone.”

“Lake of fire and brimstone,” mechanically
repeated Mrs. Murray, after her manner
of saying ditto to her husband, particularly
when he sermonized.

Then the rector laughed a little, as if to
say that he had somewhat overstated himself,
and did not mean very strong brimstone.

He was naturally given to exaggeration,
and it often took on a humorous character.
Apparently he was aware of his propensity
to extravagance of statement, and sought to
give it a rational air by cloaking it with
jocoseness. Under strong excitement, however,
he sometimes became seriously and violently
hyperbolical, and uttered declarations
which would rouse denial in a lunatic
asylum.

Well, the result was that something, a
very gentle and roundabout something, was
said to Josie in reference to whist. Did she
flare up in rebellion, or even argue for her
fire-and-brimstone diversion? Those who
could suppose such a thing of her would

thereby show themselves little acquainted
with her.

“It shall not be done again, my dear uncle,”
she said, with the sweetness of a good
little child. “It never occurred to me that
you would consider it wrong.”

“Oh, I don't think that there is any thing
wicked in the cards themselves—mere bits
of pasteboard!” returned the rector, looking
a little foolish over his easy victory. “It is
just the—well, the name of the thing—that's
about it, you know. And yet I must say
that I don't quite like them,” he concluded,
remembering that he really did not like them.

So, the scandal of whist-playing in the
Reverend John Murray's house came to an
end. But the party-going, and the staying-out
nearly all of nearly every night, and the
influx of numberless uncertified gentlemen,
continued as vigorously as ever. The rector
resolved each day that he would reprove
Josie concerning these matters, also, seeing
that they were worldly, if not downright ungodly,
in themselves, and injurious to Huldah.
But, although he was much given to
putting on airs of grimness, for instance, often
boasting how he would govern and whip
children, if he were so unlucky as to have
any, he was at bottom such a soft-hearted
and likewise rather timorous man, that he
could not for a long time bring himself up
to the scratch of his present duty.

Thus Josie did not lack for recreations,
and those of a very occupying nature. She
was engaged at once in twanging the bow
of love and in driving the chariot of politics;
and meanwhile she was followed by a whole
herd of “wheel-horses” and “war-horses,”
all more or less eager to pull in her harness.

And now we must relate how she came to
put her claim into the unwilling but unrefusing
hand of Mr. Hollowbread.