Playing the mischief :: :: University of Virginia Library

It is a terrible thing to be an invalid: it
is to have a double who is always giving
one a vast amount of causeless trouble: a
double who pulls his original two ways at
once, and cuffs him whichever way he goes.

Scarcely had the colonel stalked out of
the presence of the rector ere the latter was
assaulted by one of those irrational terrors
which vex the souls and perplex the wills
of valetudinarians. It occurred to him that
Josie might take deep offense at the effort
to get her out of Washington, and might, in
revenge, perpetrate some deed of desperate
ferocity, such, for instance, as ringing the
door-bell with violence, and so killing Mrs.
Murray out of hand.

Strange as it may seem to the healthy
mind which dwells in a sound body, this
whim-wham struck him as a real and imminent
peril, and completely daunted him. He
actually ran to the street-door with the purpose
of calling back his brother, and begging
him not to risk an interview with the
family Messalina until they could discuss
the enterprise more fully, and decide that no
harm would come of it. But the colonel,
knowing all about the rector's timorousness
and vacillation, and bent upon doing
promptly what he believed must be done,
had made a forced march of it, and was out
of sight.

He found Josie at home. She came down
briskly and cheerfully into the little Warden
parlor to receive her visitor. He was a pet
with her, as we remember; she liked his
genial, kindly disposition, and his simple,
child-like manners; and she was intellectually
capable of respecting his solid sense, his
manliness, and his uprightness. Moreover,
in her present state of abandonment and of
depression, she felt that she more than ever
needed the good-will of a reputable and
honest and stalwart soul.

“The dear old man!” she said to herself,
as she smilingly descended the stairway.
“If he were twenty years younger I would
fall in love with him.”

And at the moment she meant it, although
she did not invariably mean all that she
said, nor, indeed, all that she thought.

Meanwhile she was a bit afraid of him;
he might have come to give her a scolding.
But she was used to scoldings, and, in general,
could take them with disarming sweetness,
and had often turned them into loving
reconciliations, so that she dreaded them less
than most people. Besides, the colonel was
not a womanish monomaniac like his brother;
he had that excellent common sense
which belongs to uncommon people; and
she felt sure that he would at least hearken
to her defense of herself.

“Good-morning, Uncle Julian. I am de
lighted to see you,” she said, and kissed him
at once, a very endearing criminal.

The kiss softened him somewhat, as womanly
kisses are apt to soften mankind, especially
when they drop from such a shapely
mouth as Josie's. The change of feeling
was sufficient to surprise him, only that we
are never surprised at our own changes of
feeling, at least not until we meditate upon
them afterward.

Ever since the last revelation concerning
her naughtiness, her breaking of weighty
promises and her persistence in scandalous
lobbying, there had been in his heart a continuous
and, as he supposed, an unalterable
anger against her. He had said to himself
that she was an unprincipled adventuress, a
beguiler of souls into the ways of fraud and
perjury, and a disgrace to the Murray name.
Had any man done what Josie had done, he
would have desired to slap that man's face.

But the moment he heard her cordial
greeting, and felt her youthful kiss on his
withered cheek, it seemed to him there was
one code of honor for men, and another, far
less exacting, for women. Moreover, there
she stood, smiling at him; the prettiest little
tremulous humming-bird that could be;
perfectly lady-like in her bearing, and sparkling
with intelligence. How could it be that
one so agreeable to look upon would persist
in wrong-doing knowingly and against wise
remonstrance? He began to think that she
had not been dealt with aright, and to hope
that she might yet be made all that a Murray
could be.

“How is Aunt Huldah?” she went on.
“No better? I am so sorry! Have you
come to tell me that I may see her?”

“Not to-day,” he smiled, quite amiably
and almost apologetically. “John received
your little note; but Mrs. Murray is not
strong enough to talk, and he — you know
him—he is in a worry about her.”

“You know, of course, that they have
quarreled with me,” continued Josie, eager
to state her side of the matter, and hoping
to make the colonel her ally. “You can be
frank with me. I don't want to evade the
subject; I want to talk about it.”

“Yes, Josie; I know all about it,” he said,
with that smile which people put on when
they mean to utter a petting remonstrance.
“I dropped in on purpose to give you a
scolding.”

“You shall scold me all you want to, Uncle
Julian,” Josie smiled back. “I consider
a scolding from you more of a compliment
than praise from most people. It shows
that you take an interest in me, and wish
me well.”

She meant to disarm him, make him captive,
and enroll him under her banner, if the
thing were possible. Moreover, there came
into her head an odd notion, which, amazing
as it may seem to normal humanity, we must

136

positively and frankly report, because it illustrates
her strange character.

It struck her, then, that she might so far
bewitch Colonel Murray as to make him fall
in love with her, and that it might not be a
bad thing to take him for a husband. He
was sixty-five years old, to be sure; but her
betrothed, Mr. Hollowbread, was sixty. He
was, at least, half as rich as Mr. Hollowbread,
and quite as high in the respect of men, and
five times as worthy of their respect. As
for his being the uncle of her “poor Augustus,”
that would, of course, make a queer
business of it; but somehow she had a fancy
for queer doings. She actually smiled as
the whim passed through her head, and said
to herself, “I wonder how it would seem to
be my own aunt?”

To this singular young woman there was
an especial attraction in the novel, in the
unheard-of, in the forbidden.

“You are right, Josie,” said the colonel.
“I do wish you well. I take an interest in
you because you are a Murray, and I take
an interest in you personally.”

“I thank you with all my heart,” declared
Josie, so honestly pleased and grateful that
she looked as good as an angel. “But you
must not forget your scolding. Just what
is it about? Is it because I left Uncle
John's? I was turned away, you must
know.”

“I know it,” he actually stammered, quite
sorry for her, as he noted a flush of spiritual
pain in her cheek, and half disposed to concede
that she had been treated overharshly.

“And he scolded me, and I didn't answer
him back until the very last,” continued Josie.

“I don't suppose, my poor child, that you
did. You are amazingly good-tempered.”

“Because I am very wicked, probably,”
she smiled.

The colonel was bothered. It seemed to
him that he should never be able to begin
his reproof; and he actually had to cast
about him for reasons to push himself to it.
Presently he recollected that he was there
to wrestle for the life of his sister-in-law,
perhaps also for the life or reason of his
brother, and certainly for the honor of the
Murray name.

“It is this foraging business of yours, Josie,”
he resumed; “this raid on the United
States Treasury. You are prosecuting it
still. I have called to remonstrate against
that.”

Now that the assault had come, Josie quivered
under it; but she rallied her forces, and
said what she had planned to say.

“Uncle Julian, suppose you were a poor
man, with no trade or profession, and saw a
chance to get a competency out of the Government,
would you take it?”

“If it was a dishonest chance, I would
starve first. At least, I pray God that I
might starve first.”

“But suppose you were a poor woman
without a trade or profession, would you
take it?”

“The temptation would be far greater, I
must admit.”

“Yes, it would be very far greater. If
you were a woman, you would find it a really
prodigious temptation. And now, suppose
you did not think this chance to be a
wicked one?”

“Do you mean to say that you consider
your claim a just one, Josie?”

“Several Congressmen tell me that it is
respectable enough. A good many people
(and some of them are considered good people
— pious people) are pushing just such
claims. Any number of such claims have
been passed by Congress. They have come
to be an admitted thing, a respectable thing.
And it is not strange, either, that it should
be so. There is something of the sort in almost
every trade and profession. Bankers
sell doubtful stocks to their customers,
and don't hold their heads any lower for
it. Officers draw pay for servants when
they employ soldiers for servants. The
heads of departments — some of them, at
least — keep carriages at the cost of the
Treasury. Does their Uncle Sam scold them
and turn them out of house? Why, our
American life is full of these things. There
are ever so many men who are drawing irregular
allowances, and who have come to
consider them regular. Are women to have
no such chances?”

“The country is fearfully rotten, Josie.
But, so help me Heaven! I will not countenance
its rottenness, especially when it invades
my own family. Your claim is a rotten
one. It is a demand for a hundred thousand
dollars where not a cent is owing.”

“Old Mr. Drinkwater has sworn to a great
deal as being burned besides the barn, and
the barn is the only thing that was ever
paid for. Now, that was paid for; that was
a just claim, therefore; so why not the rest?”

“The barn should not have been paid for.
The Government is not responsible for property
destroyed in actual conflict. There was
some mistake or some swindle in the claim.
I am glad it was a trustee, and not a Murray,
who presented it. As for old Mr. Drinkwater,
I do not believe him. He is either an
old dotard who has lost his memory, or an
old scoundrel who does not stick at perjury.
Until he made his last affidavit, there never
was any such property heard of as all these
wagons and flocks and herds, enough to fit
out a train of emigrants, or the Israelites in
the desert, and all crowded into one barn.
Nobody in our family ever heard of it. There
isn't a trace of it in any of the family letters
and papers. Brother John's wife, who was
eighteen years old at the time, and whose
memory for the days of her youth is extraordinary,
never heard of any such property.

137

Josie, the whole claim, with its interests and
its compound interests, is an enormous fabrication.
I will use the proper word and
call it a swindle. It is a new outrage upon
a fearfully fleeced and tax-ridden people.”

“It is only a quarter of a cent a head.
The Crédit Mobilier took a dollar a head.
There are Senators and Representatives who
take as much every session as I ask only
once in my life.”

“They are simply abominable villains. I
despise them with all my heart and mind
and strength.”

It must be admitted that it was pretty
hard upon Josie to denounce her job and her
abettors in it with such uncompromising
abhorrence and scorn. But she bore it with
her temperamental sweetness, merely flinching
a little now and then, as a lady might
under an unmeant indecorum, and showing
not the first sign of resentment.

“There is another view of the case to be
considered,” added the colonel. “This business
is absolutely worrying to death my
poor old sister-in-law; and you may be sure
that if she dies her husband will not survive
her long.”

Josie quivered again, and her young forehead
puckered into wrinkles of pain; the
blow was such a severe one.

But she could not, of course, look upon the
decease of Mrs. Murray and her husband as
the colonel looked upon it. To her they
seemed to be very old people, who were
approaching or had overpassed the natural
term of life, and who were somewhat in the
way of younger folk.

“Uncle Julian, they are invalids,” she
said. “Every grasshopper is a burden to
them. Your Darwinism is a burden. They
should not care so much about my doings.”

“They can't help it, Josie. You should
consider that.”

“I can not afford to consider it,” Josie
confessed, in a low voice and after long hesitation.

“I have been too slow in coming to that
point,” nodded the colonel, glad that he had
at last reached it. “We propose—my brother
and I—to make you an allowance.”

Our heroine crimsoned with joyful hope;
perhaps here was a hundred thousand coming
to her without further labor; perhaps
she could secure it, and still at some future
time push her claim. At all events, there
seemed to be a way of escape opened to her
from the marriage-ring of that old Hollowbread.
No wonder that the conscienceless
little beauty glowed with gladness.

“We propose to set aside for you twenty
thousand dollars,” continued the colonel,
without noting how Josie's countenance fell
as he mentioned the modest sum. “That,
with what you have now, will give you an
income of eighteen hundred a year, which is
a respectable support. It is about the pay
of a lieutenant. A lady can surely live on
it.”

“A milliner might!” thought Josie; but
she did not speak, and continued to watch
him graciously. It might be that behind
this skinflint proffer there was coming a
hint of legacies and of a share in that undivided
Murray estate.

“Necessarily there would be a consideration
and some sort of a guarantee,” the colonel
went on, stretching out his long lean
legs in a way which merely indicated embarrassment,
but which seemed to her just
now rather offensive. “I will be completely
frank with you. This sum will be trusteed
for you during life; you will have only
the income. But that makes it all the safer
for you; you will never lose the income.
By-the-way, you shall have something more
than that. It is only fair that you should
have the right to will this property, and
I will see that the trust is so arranged.
Well, in return, we want an agreement from
you that you will give up your claim forever,
and also that you will reside other-wheres
than in Washington. If that agreement
is violated, then, by the terms of the
trusteeship, the income will cease, and the
principal revert to us.”

Josie made no answer. She had hoped that
she was winning the colonel over to her side,
and here he was as unchangeable as destiny,
severe and cruel and insolent. Disappointment,
humiliation, and anger caused
her mouth to twitch like that of a grieved
child, and rendered her incapable of speech.

“I am sorry if I have pained you,” said
the old gentleman. “The conditions seem
unkind to you, doubtless. But they are
aimed at a result which we believe to be
for the good of all; for your good as well
as ours. We want to get you away from
this lobbying temptation. It brings ugly
company.”

“So hard! so insulting!” whimpered Josie.

The colonel might fairly have told her
that unscrupulous people ought not to esteem
themselves insulted because they do
not get such treatment as is accorded to
persons of high honor and truthful utterance.
But being as yet in full possession of
his temper, the courteous and sagacious old
man did not say all that he thought.

“As if you could not believe my promise!”
continued Josie, really and honestly
hurt, just as if she were not a fibber. “You
have no right to make such insinuations—
no right to abuse me in that way.”

“But, my dear, you forget!” protested the
old soldier, rather too bluntly. “You forget
that we have had your promise, and that
it amounted to—very little. The thing slipped
your memory, I suppose,” he concluded,
in a simple way, which might have been satirical.

138

Now, while Josie did not object a bit to
lying, she did object decidedly to being told
that she was a liar.

“I promised nothing,” she asserted, tartly.
“It is all nonsense about my promising
and breaking my promise.”

“Let us pass that by,” said the colonel,
suppressing an indignation which turned
his white face to a deep pink. “Will you
accept our offer as it is?”

“I can not—I must not—I will not,” answered
Josie, stammering through her refusal,
and a good deal frightened by it.

“Then I must warn you, Mrs. Murray,”
broke out the honorable man in honorable
wrath—“I must warn you that, if you persist
in pushing your claim, we can have
nothing more to do with you, and shall cast
you off as a disgrace to the family.”

For once, at least, Josie lost her self-command,
and answered back in open spite and
retaliation.

“Colonel,” she said, “please to remember
that, if I am a connection of yours, I am also
a woman.”

“I beg your pardon, madam,” responded
the old gentleman, rising. “I will remember
that you are a woman, and forget that
you are a connection.”

And off he strode, daunting her considerably
even in his retreat, so grandly scornful
was his manner, and so much money did he
carry away with him.

Did Josie at the moment perceive and admire
his moral loftiness? Well, she could
hardly appreciate it when he was not an
obstacle; but divinity itself, as an obstacle,
would not have seemed worshipful to her.
Does it to any of us?

Presently she ran up stairs to Mrs. Warden,
and gave her a garbled account of the
interview, magnifying her own nobility in
refusing the Murray greenbacks, to all which
her auditor listened, for the most part in silence.
Only at the last this impoverished,
wearied, and ofttimes hopeless claim-hunter
sighed out, “I wish somebody would try
to buy me off.”

“I will,” laughed Josie, with make-believe
gayety; “that is, when my ship comes
in. Whichever of us wins shall help the
loser. We will bank together.”

And Mrs. Warden, feeling that her young
friend's luck was better than her own, decided
to stand by her for the present, even
at the risk of a quarrel with the Murrays.