Playing the mischief :: :: University of Virginia Library

As Josie and her Congressman entered the
rotunda of the Capitol, they beheld the great
Bangs standing (alas! not yet in memorial
marble) near the centre of the floor, and holding
converse with that artistic mendicant,
Jessie Cohen.

“There he is,” said Hollowbread. “And
there she is,” he added, with even plainer disgust.
“The indefatigable little beggar!
If she painted only half as ably as she passes
around the hat, she would make a great
name for herself.”

“People must do what they can,” responded
our good-natured heroine, remembering
that she also was a persistent beggar, but
showing no anger. “I suppose she was created
to pass around the hat, and not to
paint.”

“Yes, and of course she wants a living,”

103

conceded Hollowbread. “It is a sad fact,
and especially burdensome to Congressmen,
that every body does. Perhaps we had better
wait here, and speak to Bangs as soon as
she gets through with him, if she ever does
get through.”

“It is a poor place for her suit,” thought
Josie, glancing around upon the horrible
wastes of “Plymouth Rocks” and “De Sotos.”
“How can any body look at these
things and then vote money for paintings?”

“There, he has slipped away!” exulted
Hollowbread. “No, she has got him again.
We shall have to possess our souls in patience.”

So they quietly watched the siege which
was progressing, and, in spite of the distance,
overheard somewhat of its clamor. Miss
Cohen, to be sure, was plaintively low in
speech, and, as they thought, tearful in countenance.
But the general was as brassily
sonorous as if he were on a platform, sounding
forth his own praises or reviling a political
opponent. They could catch a few of
his noble phrases: “Sacred trusts, Miss Cohen”—“money
wrung from the people”—
“patriotism before art”—“use before beauty.”
Obviously he was giving the supplicant
no hopes that she would obtain her five-thousand-dollar
job through his resonant
mediation. Obviously, too, he wanted to be
heard by the sight-seers around; wanted
them to know that he was bluffing the exorbitant
Miss Cohen; wanted them to hear
him bow-wow at the gate of the Treasury.
Presently the little artist lost heart, put her
handkerchief to her eyes, and fell away from
him. As she passed our waiting couple they
could see that her Oriental countenance was
really stained with tears.

“Poor little Jewess,” said Josie, with contemptuous
pity. “They ought to give her
something. Can she paint at all?”

“She has had something,” sniffed Hollowbread.
“And she can't paint. She couldn't
make a recognizable portrait of one of Jacob's
ring-streaked rams. Shall we go on?”

“Had we better? It seems to be a bad
day for claimants. I don't want to be rebuffed
and sent off crying.”

“You will not be,” smiled Hollowbread.
“Bangs has merely been making a show of
cheap virtue. He has nothing to do, by
rights, with people who want appropriations.
I don't see why the paintress should go to
him; she ought to have known the ropes
better.”

Meantime he had signaled to Bangs, and
that survivor of many a campaign on paper
was approaching them, bowing and smiling
with a graciousness which made one wonder
how he could have been so hard to Miss Cohen.
But the general knew whom to kick
and when to kick them. There was at that
time a reaction in the country against Jessie,
the editors having attacked her as a
humbug in art and a brazen beggar, and
Congress having bowed to the levin of the
press. Meantime Josie Murray was a lady
by blood, an acknowledged belle in fine society,
and possessed of potent political adherents.
So the knowing Bangs was ready
to despise the one and equally ready to
cleave unto the other.

When the introduction took place, our heroine
had the wisdom to look her meekest
and to make her most humble obeisance.
She had divined, the singularly precocious
young woman, that this exceptional man did
not want to be flirted with, but only to be
bowed down to.

“I am delighted to meet you, madam,”
said the general, in his penetrating, snaredrum
voice. “I have seen you—and much
oftener heard of you—leading our Washington
society.”

“I wish the spectacle were worthier, sir,”
answered Josie, really blushing a little, so
agitated was she — about her claim. “I
should like to do something worthy of your
notice.”

And so she went on; she did her cunningest.
The war was the main subject of her
remarks; she had watched his deeds of derring-do
with breathless interest; she had
been, oh! enthusiastically appreciative of his
matchless services. The general was even
more gratified than she had hoped that he
would be. His martial career was exactly
the point in his history on which he most
needed eulogy. Many persons had criticised
a leadership which consisted in staying behind,
and a skill which showed itself in keeping
behind the range of musketry. He
beamed and strutted; one might say that
his face was on the top of his head; he seemed
to be looking for his place among the
geniuses of the frescoed cupola.

“You bring back old times to me, Mrs.
Murray,” he declared. “Great times they
were, too, though terrible ones. I often feel
that, if it were not for the wounds and the
carnage and the misery, I should like to put
on the armor again. But war, although magnificent,
is shocking. I say, with our glorious
chief magistrate, and doubtless with all
who took a personal part in the struggle, let
us have peace.”

“Yes, let us have peace, and let us devote
ourselves to healing the wounds of the war,”
said Hollowbread.

“Certainly,” replied Bangs, comprehending
perfectly that he was being led up to the
claim, and simply anxious to facilitate the
operation.

He was so ready-witted in catching the
suggestion, and so prompt in assuming a
business air, that it seemed as if his late expression
of gratified vanity must have been
mere cajolery. It may, indeed, have been
so, for the man was not easily fathomed, and
not easily deceived.

104

“Mrs. Murray is one of the sufferers, I believe,”
he bowed, helping on his brother Congressman,
who, as we are aware, was rather
slow.

“And she has begged me,” continued Hollowbread,
“to present her to you as the person
who, of all others, is the most likely and
the most able to see that she receives justice.”

Josie was a good deal dismayed, but her
fright did not prevent her from doing what
was wise. She made a good little girl's bow,
and uplifted a glance which acknowledged
Bangs as an arbiter of her fate.

“I remember your claim perfectly,” bowed
the hero. He spoke with his finest graciousness,
and very gracious indeed he knew how
to be, though fonder of being insolent. “We
have your claim under consideration, and
think well of it. I have no doubt that it
will get into a bill in course of time.”

“Thank you, general,” said Josie, ever so
meekly and gratefully.

“Would you like to hear Mrs. Murray state
the case?” asked Hollowbread. “Or do you
require her presence before the committee?”

“Not in the least,” trumpeted Bangs.
“We have the papers. Mrs. Murray need give
herself no trouble. I say that the claim is
a good one, and a just one, and a holy one,
and must be paid. I have no doubt that
Hornblower and the others will take my
word that it is all right.”

He was perfectly satisfied. Due acknowledgment
of his greatness and authority had
been made, and the ostentatious tyrant wanted
nothing more, not even a flirtation. Besides,
he was a terribly busy creature, entangled
in a hundred intrigues and plots, giving
no little time also to real public measures,
ever on the watch to hurt an enemy or even
a non-adherent, bent furiously upon making
himself a leader among men, and so having
no leisure to toy with women.

“General, you are very good!” exclaimed
Josie, quite overjoyed. “Do, I beg of you,
remember me, and bear in mind that my family
property was really, really destroyed,
burned in actual battle with the enemy.”

“Battle!” returned Bangs, with a start—
“in battle! I really had not noticed that.
Why, Hollowbread, you know, I suppose, that
the Government is not responsible for property
destroyed in actual conflict.”

“Good heavens!” gasped Mr. Hollowbread,
his jaw dropping, as if it would fall off. “Is
that so! I suppose I knew it, but I had forgotten
it.”

“But that makes no difference, and it can't
be so,” put in Josie, trembling from head to
foot. “Why, it has been paid for once, only
nothing like enough.”

“It was a blunder,” said Bangs. “However—”

“Does Congress make blunders?” interrupted
Josie, with excitement, or, one might
say, with anger.

General Bangs burst out laughing, and
even the anxious Hollowbread smiled.

“Every body, and every combination of
bodies, makes blunders,” sighed the latter.

“The Creator makes them,” added the
general. “But Congress had no right to order
that claim paid. However—”

“Exactly,” said Hollowbread, eagerly.

“What were you going to say?” grinned
Bangs.

“I may as well say it. If the actual conflict
status did not impede payment in 1820,
why should it now?”

“Precisely so. Why should it? Of course
it shouldn't. The first payment legalized
the second. Or possibly the property was
destroyed after the battle. It can be made
all right, Hollowbread.”

“Oh—can it?” faltered Josie, ready to go
on her knees to him. “I should be so grateful!—oh,
so grateful!”

“Certainly, Mrs. Murray. Leave it all to
me. If any help is needed, I will let our
friend here know.”

Then there was a short silence, during
which Bangs looked in twenty directions, as
if he wanted to go twenty ways at once.

“We will not detain you, general,” said
Hollowbread. “I know, and Mrs. Murray
also knows, that your time is precious. A
thousand thanks for this interview.”

“Good-day, good-day!” rattled the great
partisan, and was off with the speed of a
traveler who sees his train starting, waving
a hand vehemently to some one on the other
side of the rotunda.

“I don't like him at all,” said Josie, who
never fully liked such men as were not women's
men. “He thinks of nothing but himself,
and does every thing for the sake of
himself.”

“That is why he is one of the leaders of
the House, no doubt. No pleasure and no
emotion ever takes him off his work. And
he works—amazingly! Such energy and
such toughness!—such adroitness and such
impudence, too! One of the meanest of men,
and one of the greatest of demagogues. But
I must beg of you not to repeat what I think
of him, nor what you think of him. He is
quite capable of taking vengeance for a word,
and his good-will is essential to us.”

“Then we needn't go before the committee
at all?” said Josie, disposed to fret over
that disappointment.

“Not for the present. Bangs is nearly supreme
there. By-and-by, in case some colleague
should rebel in favor of his own pet
measures, he may want to use your powers
of persuasion, and then he will send for you.
I sincerely hope that there will be no occasion.”

“So it goes. I am continually told that
something is to be done, and then nothing is
done.”

Mr. Hollowbread might have retorted that

105

it was not he who had proposed a visit to
the Spoliations Committee. But of course he
was in no mood to increase her obvious annoyance,
and he preferred to introduce some
placating generalities.

“Yes,” he sighed, as if he regretted very
much the way things had gone. “Such is
Washington, such is Congressional life — a
perpetual bubbling of hot water, with almost
nothing else in the pot. Of the five
hundred bills which were introduced at the
beginning of this session, probably not fifty,
and perhaps not ten, will pass. I believe
that if the governors of the States should
meet once a year for a fortnight, they and the
Supreme Court and the departments could
transact all the real business of the country.
Congress used to be a law-making body.
Now it is mainly an axe-grinding body.”

“And I have an axe to grind,” said Josie,
not a bit ashamed of the fact.

“Yes,” returned Mr. Hollowbread, smiling
down upon her, as one smiles upon a naughty,
pretty child, though secretly he wished
that she would let her axe alone. “Well, we
must do what others do, or we shall go without
what others get.”

“You don't like my claim a bit,” pouted
Josie.

“I must like your claim—all your claims,
of every sort,” replied the infatuated old lover,
putting down the frail ghost of honesty
in his soul. “I do like it, and will support
it. You must know, Mrs Murray, that I am
devoted—”

“Oh, I believe in you, Mr. Hollowbread,”
interrupted Josie, fearful lest he should recommence
“popping.” “I am sure that you
are a true friend. But this talk about the
amount of business, with the confusion in it
and the failures, is discouraging. I want all
the while to be doing something and to see
some result. Isn't there some wire which I
can pull? Can't I lay pipe, as people say,
in the Senate? Suppose, now, my bill should
go through the House, and then be defeated
in the Senate for lack of a word said before-hand?
Why not interview some high and
mighty conscript father? There is the immense
and sublime Mr. Ledyard, for instance.
I know his daughter.”

Hollowbread smiled at the idea of influencing
Mr. Ledyard through his female connections;
it was such a truly womanlike
notion, as he thought, that he could not help
being amused by it.

“Senator Ledyard is always occupied with
national questions,” he stated. “I don't believe
he ever touched a private bill in the
whole course of his Congressional experience.”

“What a selfish wretch!” laughed Josie,
intellectually in jest, but emotionally in earnest.
“Well, there is Senator Ironman. I
have met him several times, and I know Mrs.
Ironman well.”

“It would be more to the purpose to know
Mrs. John Vane,” objected Hollowbread.

“I despise her,” declared Josie.

And despise her she did, not merely because
of the scandal which had been alluded
to, but chiefly because Olympia Vane pretended
to rival her as a queen of Washington
society, and seemed to her coarsely and
stupidly unworthy of the pretension.

“I am glad you do,” bowed Hollowbread,
not guessing the chief motive of her contempt,
and regarding it as a sign of soul purity:
a delightful thing for love-lorn man to
find in the object of his affections, no matter
how evil that man may have been before he
was love-lorn.

“But I think I had better go after Senator
Ironman,” was Mrs. Murray's very next
observation.

And go after him she did; for it was in
her character to be persevering and masterful,
as well as amiable; and bewitched Mr.
Hollowbread was, of course, a mere tool in
her puissant little fingers. But first, and
while they were on their way to the Senate
wing, they had another adventure.

Passing an open door, this feminine Don
Quixote inquired what lovely apartment that
might be, and poor Sancho Panza Hollowbread
could not help admitting that it was
the committee-room of the honorable gentlemen
on Spoliations.

“And there is General Hornblower,” she
whispered, gently forcing her victim to enter.
“Do present me.”

So Hollowbread had to pronounce a form
of introduction over that suave chieftain,
when he would have found a truer joy in devoting
him to the infernal gods.

General F. G. Hornblower was another of
those martial civilians who leaped from the
platform of the popular orator into the stirrups
of the general, and whose strategy and
tactics lent to the solemn tragedy of our civil
war a few scenes of farce, alas! dearly paid
for.

Yet little beyond military ignorance and
incapacity can be alleged against him. Probably
he had his staff of newspaper correspondents,
and saw to it that they sounded his
praises through their organs. But at least
he did not snuff the battle afar off, after the
fashion of the discreetly valorous Bangs.

These eyes have seen him on the battle-field,
sitting up grandly in his saddle among
screaming, cracking shot, and speaking in
magniloquent bass such orders as he knew.

He would have made a good soldier, a
good captain, or a good colonel; but when
more was demanded of him, the material
thereof was lacking. Doubtless it was not
his fault that he was not a Cromwell, able
to know war after slight experience and by
the light of nature.

But it was our misfortune. Alas! we had
many such calamities. How often were we

106

beaten by commanders commissioned to beat
our enemies! It was too much for troops
when both their own leaders and those of
the foe combined to outmanœuvre them.

There was a long conversation between
General Hornblower and Josephine Murray;
but it ran chiefly, indeed almost entirely,
upon matters which she had not come there
to talk about.

He was mellifluous in voice, bland in discourse,
suave in manner, and, on the whole,
agreeable. But he would not discuss the
claim; he bowed it away, and waved it
away, and smiled it away; however often it
was brought before him, he gently got rid
of it. General Bangs had taken charge of
it, he was understood to suggest, and in
Bangs's potent hands it would be advisable
to leave it. Once, indeed, he so far committed
himself as to hint that it was a very old
claim; but he immediately added, with a
smile, that “auld lang syne and the glorious
deeds of eld must not be forgot.” In short,
it was a diplomatic, evasive, inconclusive,
unsatisfactory interview. When Josie at
last left the room, trembling with the fatigue
of anxious labor, and flushed with a
suspicion that she had made no progress,
she tried to cheer herself by whispering to
Hollowbread:

“Did you see? He had not noticed that
the barn was burned in actual conflict. I
am so glad!”

“I don't suppose he had looked at the
papers yet,” returned the Congressman, who
hated this whole business, and could not entirely
conceal his hate.

“Oh, how discouraging you are!” fretted
Josie. “Why can't you say something nice?”

“My dear friend, it is events and circumstances
which are discouraging, and not I.
We had surely better not deceive ourselves.”

“I would rather be deceived,” she half
sighed, half laughed. “What I want is to
hope and be happy.”

“And now do you care to look up Ironman?”
he asked, seeing that she was somewhat
dismayed and wearied, and trusting
that she would desire no more interviews.

Josie drew a long breath to repress a slight
tendency toward a sob; then she rallied all
the strength and courage that were left in
her soul, and answered, “Yes.”