Playing the mischief :: :: University of Virginia Library

But swimmingly as Josie seemed to get
on, she had made herself an earnest and potent
enemy, who was capable of driving her
to measures which she detested.

“She is a bad little woman,” pronounced
Colonel Murray, in talking of her to Bradford.
“I don't mean to assert that she intended
to damage the feeble chances of my
poor sister-in-law for longer life, or to plunge
my brother into his present condition of
wretchedness and semi-insanity. I don't
feel quite positive as to her knowing distinctly
that it is wicked to tell lies and break
promises and cheat the Government. She
doesn't seem to have had any moral discipline
at all, or any ethical base to start from.”

“It is such a pity!” said Bradford, who
still at times hankered after Josie's diverting
and inflaming society. “She is amazingly
bright, able, and agreeable. If you could
believe a word she says, or have the least confidence
as to what she would do, she would
be perfectly delightful.”

“You have to treat her as you would an
Injun,” declared the colonel, a contemner of
the Quaker commission. “Be always on
your guard, and fire at the first movement.
Well, whether she means to do wrong or not,
whether she knows what wrong is or not,
she has worked a great deal of mischief.
But I want to stop her from working more.
I must leave here for a while, and take my
poor brother on a journey; but before I go,
I desire to have a shot at this little Comanche
of civilized society. I want to punish her,
and I ought to punish her. It is every honest
man's duty to trounce people who do
wickedness and work mischief. Honest men
are the commissioned officers of society. If
they fail to punish evil-doing, the criminals
soon come to believe that their conduct is
proper enough, and the whole community
loses in some measure its sense of right and
wrong. Besides, this barn swindle is a disgrace
to our family name, and a personal disgrace
to me, an old officer!” emphasized the
colonel, straightening himself superbly.

“I am sorry you take it so much to heart,”
Bradford said. “It will not be easy, I fear,
to stop it. These jobs of special legislation
are a veteran and prosperous abuse. A fat
job, with a clever and pretty woman to push
it—or, indeed, with only an impudent swindler
to push it — is a hard thing to beat.
Jobs are generally beaten, not by Congressional
virtue, but by rival jobs.”

“I must beat this one if I can,” affirmed
the colonel, with a stamp of the foot. “And
I want you to help me. You are a Congressman;
you are a man under oath to see that
the country's faith in its legislators is not
abused; you are capable of doing duty without
fear, as I know—without favor, as I hope.
I want you to go with me before Bangs's
committee, and aid me in protesting against
this dishonoring swindle.”

“Oh, Lord!” groaned Bradford, wishing
with all his heart that he had never taken
a kiss from Josie. “She is an old, old friend
of mine, and I hate abominably to fight her.
But, by Jove, I shall have to give her up.
She is doing too much harm to let one keep
patience with her. Well, let us go before
the committee.”

They set off for the Capitol, and on the
way encountered Josie. She was a block
and a half distant when they first saw her;
but the trimness of her figure, the grace and
taste of her costume, and the pretty litheness
of her walk, were perfectly distinguishable;
and Bradford's naughty heart gave a
jump of longing and of dismay at the spectacle.

“I shall tell her my opinion of her, and
then cut her forever,” said the colonel, as
calmly and sternly as if he were sitting in
general court-martial.

“Gracious!—I can't do that—I can't listen
to it,” returned Bradford. “I will meet
you in the Rotunda,” he added, hastily, and
skulked shame-facedly down a cross-street
to hurry around the block.

Josie recognized him; guessed, of course,
that he was dodging her, and felt like sinking
into the earth. She walked on in a
dazed, tingling state, her cheeks spotted with
a flush of disappointment and humiliation,
and her muscles trembling so that it seemed
to her as if she had no feet. But she was
one of those women who spring up from
downfalls quickly, and who, losing one man,
instinctively jump for another.

Before she reached the colonel she had recovered
hope, and she had formed a plan.
Her lover had avoided her; that was lamentably
clear. But it was also clear that
her uncle had refused to follow the lead;
and therefore she inferred that he meant to
recognize her, and perhaps to speak to her
kindly. She would greet him with a smile,
and inquire plaintively after poor Uncle
John, and so renew the broken chain of affection.

But in Colonel Murray's present state of
mind it was of no use to try to gammon him,
gammoned she never so wisely.

“My brother is very ill,” he replied, coldly.
“Mrs. Murray, I have a question to put
to you. Will you give me your positive and
solemn promise to drop your claim?”

It was too much. Josie had just been
badly hurt by one man, and here was another
flying at her. Partly to see if a show of
grief and resentment would not help her, and
partly because of that natural impulse which
leads most people to recoil from an unexpected
attack, she started aside, drew down
her veil, and passed slowly by him, all in silence.

146

No doubt she hoped that he would follow
her and apologize for his abruptness, thus
giving her a chance to recommence the interview
on more genial terms. But the colonel's
patience was even more completely
exhausted than hers, and he let her know it
at once.

“Very well, madame,” he said, loudly.
“But this ends our acquaintance.”

She turned promptly, but he was making
off with long strides toward a horse-car; and,
before she could decide to call to him, he had
plunged into it and was beyond hearing.

In the Capitol the colonel found Bradford,
and they repaired at once to the den of the
Committee on Spoliations, where they made
such an onset upon the Murray swindle as
confounded even the brazen Bangs.

“Am I to understand,” stared that renowned
wire-puller, “that you do not want
this hundred thousand dollars to fall into
your family?”

“I certainly do not,” replied the colonel,
with something like sparks coming out of
his flint-gray eyes. “I told you a while ago
that the claim was a humbug.”

“I remember,” grinned the general, amused
as well as puzzled. “But people sometimes
change their opinions under such convincing
circumstances. However, never mind about
that; you are not like most people. You
have your army ways of thinking, no doubt.
The war and navy departments are the last
refuges of chivalry. When the dove of honesty
flies forth to seek a resting-place on
earth, he will take his flight from one of their
windows. But what we have to consider in
this case is not your chivalrous sensitiveness,
but the evidence.”

“The evidence shows that the property
was destroyed in actual conflict, and every
one knows that in such cases the Government
is not responsible,” argued the colonel.

“Ah, indeed!” nodded the general, who
had already seen to it that Josie's bill should
reveal nothing of the sort. “Your law is
indisputable.”

“And I believe I can prove that this last
affidavit of old Drinkwater's is a piece of
pure perjury. Give me time to prove it;
let the claim wait till then.”

“Certainly—very good,” bowed and smiled
Bangs; but as soon as the two men left him
he sent for Hollowbread.

“This is a bothering job of yours,” he
grumbled, at Josie's advocate. “Here is
this old Don Quixote of a Colonel Murray
fighting his niece's cause in complete armor.
Your little lady certainly ought to take care
of her own relatives. We can't expect to
get on with her work when we are ridden
down by the very people who ought to back
us. Why doesn't she poison the excellent
old blockhead?”

“Of course she can't poison him,” sighed
Hollowbread; “and I suppose it is equally
certain that she can't convert him. An old
officer of the regular army can no more be
deluded than an old maid.”

The general roared with laughter.

“You shouldn't hate old maids, Hollowbread,”
he said. “They have all been flirts
in their younger days. But to return to
our business; you must head off the colonel
somehow.”

“But what am I to do?” groaned the lately
honest statesman, who already found the
paths of corruption so devious and perplexing.

He breathed louder than usual, and had a
more than ordinarily apoplectic splendor in
his face, and was obviously sad, wearied, and
discouraged. It was a dreadful thing to
this timorous man and would-be honorable
legislator to have the guardianship of one
of the most thoroughbred swindles (though
by no means one of the greatest) that had
ever been pushed in Congress. And to be
threatened with exposure, to be menaced by
the protests of such an Aristides as Colonel
Murray and the denunciation of that young
Demosthenes, Bradford, made the matter all
but insupportable.

“Do? — why, dodge!” answered Bangs.
“Get the thing ready to slip it into another
committee, if the opposition grows too heavy
here. A juggler must have more than one
thimble to keep his pea under. While they
are looking for you in the Spoliations, you
must be going through in the Navy, or the
Ways and Means, or the Appropriations. It
would be the best of all jokes,” he guffawed,
“to slip your affair into the Army Bill, and
carry it under the old colonel's nose.”

“Yes, I must devise something of the sort,”
sighed Mr. Hollowbread, who could not laugh
over the matter. “I am obliged to you, general,”
he added, though he felt particularly
ungrateful, as men often feel toward their
mentors in wickedness. “Well, good-morning.”

Meanwhile Josie was at home, unaware
of the perils which lowered over her claim,
but musing sadly concerning troubles which
she did know of. She had been cut in the
street by the man she most heartily liked,
and by the man whom she most sincerely
respected.

Some of her most desirable acquaintances
had become obviously less cordial since her
exit from the Murray house. Miss Ledyard
(daughter of the great senator), that shy,
blushing, and yet lofty patrician, the only
girl in Washington who ruled alongside of
married ladies, a queen of society who seemed
to consider good people alone as truly
“good style”—this young noble had absolutely
ceased bowing to Josie.

Moreover, our heroine's boarding-place
was not all that a heroine's home should
be. Mrs. Warden, it turned out, was a little
wearying when one lived with her. She

147

fretted about her own disappointments,
showed a snappish jealousy of her lodger's
popularity, and wanted her, as well as every
body else, to worship Belle. As for that
young lady herself, she disapproved openly
of claim-hunting, and, what was far more
provoking, took long walks with Edgar
Bradford. Belle, also, as Josie asserted, had
a temper; and doubtless there was some
lamentable fraction of truth in the allegation:
so many women have one, or, what is
worse, half a dozen a day! Josie, by-the-way,
herself gifted with a singularly even
disposition, is responsible for the above remark
concerning her gentle sex.

“I hate women,” she often said. “They
are as fretful as tired children. It is partly
because they are feeble, and partly because
they are fools. The only friend you can get
on with smoothly is a man past thirty, and
all the better if he is some other woman's
husband. He has found out that his wife
is a failure, and so he doesn't expect too
much of us.”

Well, she was reflecting gloomily on her
situation, and perhaps shedding a precious
tear or two over its asperities, when her betrothed
arrived to tell her how Colonel Murray
and Bradford had been assailing her barn.

Josie stared with horror. Her uncle had
indeed taken a terrible revenge. He might
succeed in beating her out of her claim; he
might drive her to a step which she still recoiled
from. Her gaze of dismay was not
fixed upon vacnity, but upon the gross form
and inflamed face of her affianced.

“It is an ugly business,” groaned Hollowbread,
breathing noisily, somewhat like a
pumped-out horse, as he always did when
worried. “I really begin to fear that I may
not be able to carry the bill through for you.”

He actually seemed to be disgusted with
the enterprise, and to be minded to wash his
hands of it. Josie's heart almost stopped
beating as she thought, What if he too should
desert me? And then, immediately on this
consciousness of his importance, there came
a sentiment of gratitude and of favor. He
had surely worked bravely for her, and it
did seem that he ought to have some reward,
or at least some cheering hope of one.
Besides, would it not be well to make quite
sure of this man and his money, in view of
the chance that her bill might fail? An
open betrothal would nail him, while it
would not positively nail her. If woman
has no political rights, she has en revanche
many social and sentimental ones, including
the right of breaking an engagement.

“But I shall always keep you as a friend?”
she asked, with an imploring, piteous smile.
“My relatives have turned against me. Shall
you?”

“Mrs. Murray — never!” exclaimed this
venerable Antony, stretching out his hand
toward the hand of his Cleopatra.

She returned his grasp, and gave him a
look—such a look!—one of those indescribable
ones — a look worthy the heroine of
a melodrama. It was a prodigious feat of
humbugging, and she knew it to be so while
she performed it. But it was just as effective
as if it had come straight from the heart;
indeed, it struck fairer than similar glances
of hers which had really come from the
heart: I mean the glances which had fallen
harmless from the armor of Bradford.

“I am bound to you for life, Josie!” continued
Hollowbread, lifting her hand to his
lips. “I wish to Heaven that all men knew
of it!”

Is it possible that a man of sixty could
talk in this style, or, talking thus, could
mean it? We must allow that it would be
impossible with many, but this particular
sexagenarian was an exceptional one, and
almost a prodigy. From the grayish matter
of his brain to the dye of his carefully
curled hair, and from the pulsings of his
battered but fervent heart to the polish of
his boots, he was fearfully and wonderfully
made. He was an amazing complication of
shams and sincerities. His costume, as we
already know, was an unwrinkled deception,
meant not so much to clothe his figure as to
disguise it. His coat was worthy of exhibition
in a sartorial museum; it ought to have
been hung up in the Patent Office by the
side of the finest models of machinery; and
had it been made the subject of a report in
quarto, that volume alone would have justified
the franking privilege.

In politics, also, he was at least as much
of an unveracity as in the matter of wardrobe.
He stood ready at all times to propose
any measure which he thought the
public desired. He was capable of arguing
for contraction on Monday and for inflation
on Tuesday. He was one of those fierce protectionists,
who are liable to turn free-traders
at a week's notice.

But inside of all this variability and duplicity
there was one flaming centre of constancy.
In the business of getting bewitched
about a woman, he might almost be said
to lead his generation. Amativeness had
long been his ruling passion, and now, if no
longer a passion, it was a monomania. Like
all other monomaniacs, his possession was
both comic and pathetic. From the ridiculous
to the sublime, there was but a single
step in the love-making of the Honorable G.
W. Hollowbread.

“Yes, I wish that the whole world knew
of my affection for you,” repeated this made-up
old dandy, this weather-cock politician,
this infatuated lover. “It is my greatest
honor. I feel that there is nothing else in
my life which so ennobles me. If I never
gain another distinction, I ought with this
one to be content.”

“Do you mean it? Do you mean all of

148

it?” whispered Josie, touched by this humility
of whole-souled adoration. “Would
you really like people to know that you are
so silly as to care for me like that?”

“Mrs. Murray! my dear, dear Josie!” burst
out Hollowbread. “If you wish to do me
one immense favor—if you wish to make me
your grateful slave for life — accept me at
once openly. I should go out of this house
little less than mad with pride and happiness.”

“Ah, George! you are irresistible,” sighed
Josie, dropping her shapely head on his
wheezing breast. “You may say that we
are engaged. I will say so myself.”