Playing the mischief :: :: University of Virginia Library

“My dear, I told you not to trust to him,”
answered Belle's mother, hiding her satisfaction
with difficulty. “Of all my Congressional
friends, he is the most completely unsatisfactory
in matters of business,” she added,
referring to private appropriations.

“I don't care a bit for him personally,”
fibbed Josie, guessing at Mrs. Warden's maternal
jealousy. “He used to be a beau of
mine, but I preferred poor Augustus,” she declared,
pulling a suitable face over the memory
of that departed darling. “But I would
like to have a man of his character and
ability to help me in collecting my money.”

“Nobody can get him to collect money out
of the Government,” snapped the elder lady,
turning quite tart, as she remembered how
vainly she had begged Bradford to forward
her own begging suit. “He has a high and
mighty ambition to deal only with great
questions, and to get the name of being an
unbribable statesman, like Charles Sumner.
I must say again that I don't believe he will
ever do a thing for you. Of course your
claim is a just one — every bit as just as
mine,” she good-naturedly conceded, not believing
it one tittle. “But Mr. Bradford
hates the very name of special appropriations.
Frankly, now, you may as well give
him up. You must do like the Queen of
England. When Mr. Disraeli won't answer,
she sends for Mr. Gladstone.”

Evidently Mrs. Warden's moral constitution
was not of that rare kind which breaks
down under other people's troubles. The
briskness of her dark face and the lively
glitter of her coal-black eyes showed that
she bore her rival claimant's disappointments
without flinching, and indeed with a cheerfulness
approaching to joy, as though capable
of much similar martyrdom.

Josie was sharp enough to see this, and
for a moment she felt justly miffed; but she
formed a less unfavorable opinion of her
confidante than most persons would expect.
Precociously clever in the study of selfishness,
she was not accustomed to expect abundant
and tender sympathy from any one, unless
indeed that one were a man of the love-making
age.

“Yes, I shall have to get another prime
minister,” she laughed, with an agreeable
sense that the task would not be hard.

In response to this burst of gay confidence
—the enviable confidence of youth and beauty
and bellehood—Mrs. Warden's eyes snapped
smartly.

Really liking Josie as one of her own sort,
and finding much amusement, for instance,
in seeing her flirt with twenty men at once,
she still did not want to have her achieve
solid triumphs, whether pecuniary or amorous.
The thought that such a thing might
be made her twitch with jealousy, both on
her own account and on Belle's.

“But don't, for mercy's sake,” she put in—
don't take that Sykes Drummond—coarse,
selfish, horrid monster!”

“Oh, of course not; I can't endure him,”
answered Josie, just about half sincere.

“Because he isn't trustworthy,” continued
Mrs. Warden, not feeling quite sure of
her friend's sincerity. “By-the-way, there
isn't one Congressman in ten who can be
trusted. One has one weakness, and one another.
Some are lazy, and some are cracked
about party politics, or statesmanship, or
whatever they call it; and some are thieves
—absolute thieves, my dear. Why, one impudent
creature had the face to offer to take

charge of my claim for—how much, do you
think? Why, one-half of it! Only think
of the impudence! — one-half of my own
rightful money!”

“Shameful!” commented Josie, right
heartily.

“And Mr. Drummond, I very much fear,
is one of that sort,” declared Mrs. Warden.
“In fact, I know it. He engineered a bill
for a poor old lady whom I know, and took
nearly half of her money for his expenses,
as he called them.”

Josie again said “Shameful!” and meanwhile
pondered. Though not disposed to
credit all of her friend's statements, she did
give considerable faith to this one, for Mr.
Drummond “looked like it.”

“There is Honest John Vane,” suggested
Mrs. Warden, remembering that that esteemed
wire-puller was a married man, and so
of little value to her Belle.

“I will think of him,” murmured Josie,
who had already settled upon Mr. Hollowbread,
the tender, and consequently the true.

Of course it is to be understood that during
the fashionable whirl of the last week
or two she had repeatedly encountered this
love-lorn Lycurgus. Always a society-man,
Hollowbread now went to parties more than
ever, for the sake of seeing Mrs. Augustus
Murray.

He saw her, certainly; he fairly gloated
and gormandized upon her beauty; he was
more and more bewitched with it for every
hearty meal; and by this time he was most
uncommonly in love. Such attentions as
were possible he had paid her, though sadly
elbowed and put out by numerous rivals,
some of them greater men than himself, and
most of them younger. More than once he
had said, with a truly touching anxiety to
utter something agreeable, “Mrs. Murray, I
trust the claim is coming on well!”

On each occasion she smiled delightfully,
and begged him to forgive her for breaking
her promise.

“I am so fearful,” she explained, “of troubling
you with a matter beneath your notice.”

“Nothing which concerns you can be unworthy
of my notice,” answered Hollowbread,
by this time woefully willing to smirch his
really decent reputation for this siren.

And now, at last, judging that she could
not do better by herself, she sent for him,
and placed her valueless documents in his
reverential hands.

“If you could be willing to help me!” she
sighed. “I have been so timorous and so
slow about it that I deserve to fail. Can
any thing be done now? Is it too late?
Oh, even if it is, don't say so!”

“Hope on, hope ever,” said Mr. Hollowbread,
whose experience in public speaking
had furnished him with a few quotations.
“It is never too late to do one's best.”

“Oh, you are such a good friend!” exclaimed
Josie, dimly aware that he was making
a sacrifice of some sort for her, though
not in the least regretting it. “Do sit down
by me, and let us talk it over,” she added,
willing to reward his devotion with a scrap
or two of flirtation.

Mr. Hollowbread seated himself near her
on the sofa, as promptly and gracefully as
the tightness and complications of his costume
permitted. For he was in wondrous
apparel; tailoring had done its adorning best
and its hampering worst by him; never was
a pursy gentleman more elaborately and solidly
bound in broadcloth. We shall surely
be pardoned for dwelling at length upon a
toilet which was the admiration of the greatest
cutters and fitters of Washington.

The most remarkable feature of it was the
system of machinery by which it was held in
place. Coat, vest, and pantaloons were furnished
with pads, straps, and springs; and I
will not undertake to say that there might
not have been a few cog-wheels and pulleys.
It is confounding to think what might have
happened had this marvelous raiment been
buttoned together and dropped on the floor.
It might have buzzed and scrabbled away, of
its own motion and internal force, like a clock-work
locomotive. It might have lounged
into a chair, and sat down on the small of
its hollow back, and put its empty legs on
the mantel-piece. It might have jumped
out of the window, and set ladies a-screaming,
and dogs a-barking. It might have
taken a car to the Capitol, and claimed its
accustomed oaken chair in the Hall of Representatives,
there to play the part of a dignified
and harmless political figure-head.

One is lost in conjecture as to what human
beings would do in any of these cases.

Would a policeman arrest it as a vagrant
without visible means of existence? Would
a sergeant-at-arms admit it to the floor of
the House, or cash a check for it? Experience
and reason are dumb here, and even
the imagination stammers.

All this mechanical apparatus was necessary
to give shapeliness to the great man's
figure, and render it a pleasing object for the
contemplation of the feminine eye. It did,
indeed, accomplish a vast deal for him in the
way of modeling. When he first appeared
to himself in the morning, he was nearly as
dumpy and formless as the sculptor's lump
of clay before work has commenced upon it.
But by the time his drapery was all put on
and screwed up he was a pretty fair, though
fat, old image. One objection to the result
was that the broad spaces of cloth which
he presented looked alarmingly smooth and
tight. It seemed horribly possible that, if
he should cough or sneeze violently, or swell
his molecules by going too near a hot fire, he
might suddenly split open and quadruple in
size, like a popped grain of Indian corn.

But all these things cease to be ludicrous
when we consider Mr. Hollowbread as a potential
statesman, seraphically in love, and
satanically tempted. It is quite tragical for
tax-payers to think that the hocus-pocus called
“special legislation,” enables such a legislator
to juggle the dollars out of their pockets
into the greedy porte-monnaie of such a
useless ornament to society as Josie Murray.
That is the dirty trick that he was about to
set his hand to, just as surely as he took his
seat on that conjuring sofa.

“I have looked into my claim myself, and
I know a great deal more about it than
when we talked it over last,” declared Josie,
proudly.

“More evidence?” inquired Mr. Hollowbread,
cheerfully, for he did want the job to
be nice.

“Oh no! No more evidence. There's
enough, isn't there?”

“Too much,” thought the Congressman,
who had already discovered that the claim
had been paid once; but he only bowed and
smiled.

“I mean that I have been learning how to
get things through Congress,” pursued Josie,
with the diverting simplicity of a greenhorn
undertaking to teach poker to the captain
of a Mississippi steam-boat. “I want you
to put my appropriation into the Omnibus
Bill.”

“You understand it all, I see,” Mr. Hollowbread
grinned. “If ever we let you ladies
vote, you will easily get control of the inside
of politics, and put us on the outside.”

“Ah, now you are laughing at me. Of
course I am aware that there are mysteries in
statesmanship which I never could master.”

“I am not so sure of that,” said Hollowbread,
and quite honestly. He knew that
she was dangerously clever in some things,
and he did not know exactly where her
cleverness terminated, and in his love for
her he overstimated her capacity of expanding.
Necessarily she was green in public
affairs, and that discovery of the Omnibus
Bill stratagem was amusingly stale, but there
was no telling what she might not learn if
she had a chance.

“We are not so monstrously wise at the
Capitol,” he continued. “There was a famous
Swedish minister who sent his son
abroad on diplomatic business, with these
words: `Go, my son, and see with how little
wisdom the world is governed.' Now, a citizen
of this model republic need not travel
for that purpose; he can see it by staying
at home, and perhaps see it best so.”

“Don't spoil my delightful illusions,” said
Josie. “I prefer to have faith in your superhumau
wisdom. Don't you prefer that I
should?”

At the same time she made believe worship
him with her eloquent eyes, and laid
two trustful fingers on his protecting and
beneficent coat-sleeve. It is a solemn fact,
incredible as it may seem to youthful readers
of our history, that this veteran lawgiver
and Lothario trembled in every vein under
the almost imperceptible touch. No one who
has not carefully studied such a phenomenon
can believe how desperately the old can
sometimes fall in love with the new.

“My wisdom shall do its best for you,” he
murmured, in such a husky, choked voice,
that she looked up at him in surprise. Accustomed
as she was to wield an enchanter's
wand over men, and to see them quiver and
change color and become stifled under its
power, she could not realize that she had
completely bewitched this sexagenarian.

“There is one unlucky circumstance,” he
pursued, clearing his throat with a hoarse
ahem. “I am very, very sorry to find that
this claim has been paid once.”

“Oh dear!” exclaimed Josie, opening her
eyes as if she had never heard of it before.

“But it was a very small payment—ridiculously
small, of course—only two thousand
dollars, interest included.”

“Say it was not enough, Mr. Hollowbread.
Of course it was not enough.”

“But it won't do merely to say that.
Somebody must swear to it.”

“Couldn't you swear to it?” she asked,
with sublime faith in the powers and privileges
of a Congressman. Then, seeing that
he appeared to be stumbled by the proposition,
she added, heroically, “I will!”

“But you are not a witness,” he suggested,
with a patient smile, the long-suffering smile
of affection. “This barn was burned forty
years before you ever saw a barn.”

Josie laughed merrily. She took the thing
so lightly. He was almost fretted to see
how gayly she bore it, when to him it was
such a heavy burden, and might be a damaging
one.

But with those lustrous eyes looking into
his and cajoling his love-lorn senses, he could
not show annoyance at her ignorant, child-like,
yet charming, levity.

“We must do something else,” he said,
meditating with all his might.

“Perhaps the claim was paid in paper
dollars, not worth so much as silver dollars,
don't you know?”

“That is exceedingly clever, Mrs. Murray.
But, unluckily, it fails in various ways to
touch our case. The claim was paid in coin
undoubtedly. We shall have to assert an
under-valuation; I see nothing else. But
the trouble will be to prove it.”

“Yes, and the payment was for the barn
alone; and there were the outbuildings and
the cattle, and so on; they never have been
paid for.”

“All that would help,” assented Mr. Hollowbread,
with a sigh, for he was mortally
ashamed of himself. This cooking-up of
sham bills against the Government was unfamiliar

business to him; and he had even
prided himself on having evaded it. “I
must try to get hold of your Jeremiah
Drinkwater, and see if he remembers any
cattle, outhouses, and that sort of thing.”

“Why, he is an old man!” exclaimed Josie,
forgetting that her counselor was far from
young. “He must be in his second childhood.
If I had him here, I could make him
remember any thing, and swear to any
thing.”

This unscrupulous frankness was all the
more dreadful to Mr. Hollowbread because
the devil had already suggested the same
thought to him, and he knew that it was a
very wicked one. He looked at her with an
amazed glance and a perplexed smile, and
then replied, with cautious vagueness:

“I trust that Mr. Drinkwater will somehow
be made useful to us. But it really
does seem necessary to get at him before he
loses too much of his memory — before he
forgets how to breathe and speak, for instance.
How can we reach him?”

“He lives at Murray Hill, Beulah County,
just where the battle was fought. Hasn't
Congress a right to send for persons and
papers?” added Josie, making exhibition of
a term which she had caught from Sykes
Drummond.

“Congress doesn't do it very often in the
case of private claims,” answered Mr. Hollowbread,
smiling over this adorable ignorance.
“We shall probably have to make
a pilgrimage to the venerable Drinkwater
shrine, or pay for getting him here.”

Josie became pensive. She had a woman's
natural chariness about her own money; and
then her income was such a wretchedly small
one—not enough to dress her properly!

Her admirer noted her trouble, divined
the cause of it, and made bold to offer her
his purse. It would be the first step, he
sagely and hopefully thought, toward offering
his hand and heart.

“Mrs. Murray, pardon me one audacity,”
he said. “Until your claim is established,
permit me to be your banker. It is a very
small thing to do; it is constantly done in
such cases. In fact, there are persons who
make it a business to advance money on
claims, taking a share of the proceeds in
repayment, and a scandalously large share,
too, I can assure you. I don't want you to
fall into the hands of those disreputable
harpies. Do, I beg of you, let me be a convenience
to you in this matter—a mere convenience.
I understand perfectly that you
have a handsome fortune of your own, and
don't in the least need what one would call
a loan,” he politely added, although he had
understood to the contrary, having catechised
Mrs. Warden concerning Josie's estate,
and got a very low estimate of it.
“But this is a mere question of convenience.
I push the affair; I make what payments
are needed, keeping an account of them;
then, when the claim is adjusted, you, at
your entire leisure, repay me. What objection
can you possibly have?”

“Oh, Mr. Hollowbread, you are so kind!”
exclaimed Josie, blushing a little, partly
with satisfaction and gratitude, and partly
because she divined a coming demand for
something more than a moneyed settlement.
“But you must charge interest, Mr. Hollowbread.”

“Oh, Mrs. Murray, interest from you!”
And the noble old legislator and gallant
looked the image of tender magnanimity.
“I charge interest!” he continued, laughing
the idea to scorn. “Do consider that I
ought not to do it. I should make myself
thereby a pecuniary sharer in the transaction,
which would be a sort of official misdemeanor.”

“Oh!” giggled Josie. “How very funny!
Well, we can arrange it some way. I must
work you several hundred pairs of slippers.”

“It would be a misspent life for you,”
bowed Hollowbread. “I should be overpaid
with one slipper. And I should prefer
it to be one of your own,” he declared, glancing
at a visible toe of one of her little prunellas.

“You shall have one,” she giggled again,
nestling a little closer to him, and then rustling
a little away. “Do you really want
one?” she asked, stooping and removing a
gossamer chaussure with a black rosette in
it. “Really? really? Then you shall have
that.”

Mr. Hollowbread, blushing like a bottle
of Port-wine in the sun, raised the fragile
gift to his lips in silent adoration, and then
deposited it in the breast-pocket nearest his
heart, at the risk of bursting off a button.

“Oh, Mr. Hollowbread!” the young siren
pretended to gasp, at the same time going
through a form of shrinking coyly away
from him. It was a girlish fashion of flirtation,
such as belles of sixteen are apt to
practice upon beaus of eighteen; and she
could hardly keep from laughing as she drew
its frail shaft to the head against this adorer
of sixty. But there was no need of fear as
to the effect of the little trick, and there had
been no need even of using it. The great
political financier and eloquent extemporaneous
speaker was already moved to that
extent that he could not speak for some seconds.
The feeling of that warm slipper in
his bosom so throttled him that he looked
as if his neck-tie ought to be loosened. He
called to mind also how he had once had the
whole body of that loveliness in his arms,
and he came very near thanking Heaven
aloud for the exquisite pleasure and honor
of having been knocked that by her.

Meantime Josie had no emotions at all,
and did not even consider herself under any
great obligation to him, although she remembered,

and remembered too with keen
satisfaction, that he was to pay out his money
in her cause. Had she not offered him
interest, and had she not given him her slipper?
Moreover, it is so easy to believe that
others are rejoiced to serve us, and are fully
repaid for their sacrifices by that joy, and
by the contemplation of our merits.

“But we must get at Mr. Drinkwater,”
she said presently, reverting to business with
a facility which pained him. “He is such
an old man that perhaps he won't want to
come on here. Ought I to go and see him?”

“But you will want a lawyer,” cunningly
observed Hollowbread, who was a lawyer
himself. “I might find a chance for the
trip during the Christmas recess. Would it
be possible for us to meet there?”

“We could meet there if we went in the
same train,” laughed the audacious Josie,
saying to herself that he was surely a sufficiently
old gentleman to travel with properly,
and that she could bind him to silence
concerning the journey. Besides, it
was clearly necessary that this Drinkwater
business should be attended to, and that
promptly.

“It will be the best way, and I shall be
infinitely obliged to you, Mrs. Murray,” declared
Mr. Hollowbread, in a state of ecstasy,
and floating somewhere between heaven and
earth. It actually seemed to him that Josie
Murray, in making that proposition, had
encouraged him to offer himself as her companion
in life's pilgrimage. How wonderful
that an old Lothario, who had passed a
great part of his life in trifling with women,
should be so easily deluded by one! But,
Lotharios or not, delicate-minded gentlemen
or not, we can all be led blindfold if once
we fall heartily in love.

Thus happened it that, while Josie longed
to place her suit in the hands of Edgar
Bradford, and while she had positively
promised it to Sykes Drummond, she eventually
confided it to Mr. Hollowbread.