Playing the mischief :: :: University of Virginia Library

Chivalrous young Clavers turned ashier
than the Spanish moss of his native lowlands
when he heard the tale, and subsequently
declared to a bosom-friend that never since
the hoary ages began their sorrowful course
down the fading track of time — never had
there been such another sacrifice of a beauteous,
noble woman to an unholy, selfish,
shameless dotard.

The grand, gloomy, and peculiar Bray
walked thrice around the room in which he
received the stunning information, halted
suddenly, rolled his eyes at the ceiling, and
exclaimed: “Infatuation! `Whom the gods
mean to destroy, they first make mad.' As
for him, I shall belong to that House some
day, and I solemnly swear that I will vote
against every measure he proposes.”

The Apollonian Beauman saluted the news
of the betrothal with a bland drawl of “Oh
—ah—indeed!” but nevertheless felt a nettlesome
little pang at his heart the while—
such a pang as is apt to sting a woman-killer
on such occasions, and make him conscious
of his own vanity. “Well, I must bear it
the best I may,” he added, with a smile. “I
will not try to hide the fact that I shall lay
awake over it for five minutes to-night. But
poor old Hollowbread! how will he bear it?”

Probably the person most tenderly and
gratefully moved by the tidings was Squire
Nancy Appleyard. She made no public remark
upon it, but she turned such a lovely
rose-color as lawyers seldom exhibit, and
straightway sought the rarely disturbed seclusion
of her office, there to have “a good
cry” of joy, and to hope for the return of her
beloved Drummond, alas! evermore a volage.

“Hollowbread going to marry the pretty
widow!” grinned General Bangs. “By Jove!
what will he do about the claim now? By
Jove! what a fool he was to let out his engagement
before he got that job through
Congress! I'll be hanged if I would trust
such a dunderhead as that to manage a ward
caucus. Either he is playing a deeper game
than I can understand, or he is the biggest
ass that ever blundered inside politics.”

“Hollowbread now has an opportunity to
do a very taking thing,” was the opinion
which rolled from the mellifluous tube of
Hornblower. “He is opulent enough to say,
I accept the woman, and I resign the claim.
If he should cover that money back into the
Treasury, it would send him to the Senate.
I doubt whether Hollowbread has the originality
to hit upon that course of action, or
the force of character to carry it out. But
that is precisely and emphatically what I
should do.”

Mrs. John Vane, when the engagement was
told her by Senator Ironman, leaped from
her sofa in rowdy delight, took a polka up
and down the room, slapped her informant
smartly on the shoulder, and laughed out,
“Oh, that old man! Good enough for her!
I am so glad!”

“Yes; but, by Jove! he an't so very old,”
answered the senator, repressing a spasmodic
impulse to cover with his hand the bald spot
of his own cranium. “And he's pooty rich,
too, Hollowbread is, and he'll spend his money
for her like blazes.”

“But he won't spend it for her here,”
hoped Mrs. Vane, spitefully. “That claim
of hers will sink him like a millstone, and he
won't be re-elected. Oh, she is done for in
Washington.”

Well, our friend Hollowbread was hefting
this millstone, and wondering how he should
get his political neck free of it. He had not
thought of its density and thickness when
Josie gave her consent to a public engagement.
He had thought of it previously, and
failed to see a hole through it, and put aside
the troublesome meditation, as was his indolent,
procrastinating manner.

But in that blessed moment of full and
overt acceptance he could not, of course, remember
any thing besides his goddess, and
the cornucopia of happiness which she was
showering upon his dizzy head. Ere long,
however, the claim arose before him again,
reminding him that he would soon be called
upon to espouse it at the altar, and asking
him if he would dare thus to acknowledge it.
He decided that he dared not; that it would
probably drive him from political life; that
it would certainly dishonor him in his own
estimation; and that he could not make such
sacrifices for it.

Let me repeat emphatically that he did
not consider himself a dishonest man, but
rather an eminent instance of unselfishness
and scrupulousness, for a Congressman.
There were members, and personages of great
popular note, too, who bragged much of being

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the champions of the sons of toil, who introduced
eight-hour laws and all that sort
of buncombe, but who yet burdened the
Treasury and increased the taxes of the poor
by their lobbyings and stealings. One such
brawler, as he knew, had taken twenty thousand
dollars in bribes before the holidays,
and would bag at least a hundred thousand
by the end of the session.

As for himself, the only stain upon him, at
least during his last two terms, was the smut
of this Murray barn. That had vexed and
shamed him considerably, even while he bore
it for love alone. But now it would be imputed
unto him that he had pushed the nasty
claim with the intent of marrying it. He
thought that he could not stand such an accusation,
and he mustered up courage to hint
as much to his darling Josie.

“We ought to have kept the engagement
a secret,” was her stunning answer. “I told
you so all along,” she added, with a look of
reproach. “But you would have your way.”

Mr. Hollowbread had the air of a dog
whose master stands over him with an uplifted
cowhide.

“Why didn't you think of this before?”
she continued. “How did I know? How
could I know all about Congressional rules,
and decorums, and prunes and prisms? It
would be very hard in you to make me suffer
for your mistakes.”

“I would cheerfully settle a similar amount
upon you,” said Mr. Hollowbread, imploringly.

“But it would still be only two hundred
thousand between us,” she sighed, partly
touched by his self-abnegation and generosity,
and partly vexed by what she considered
his lack of foresight. “I must say, my dear
good man, that I prefer three hundred thousand.
Besides, I don't want to plunder you.
I prefer my own money.”

Her own money! What a phrase to apply
to the proceeds of a theft! But even if Hollowbread
could have brought himself to despise
her for any cause whatever, he had to
recollect that there were plenty of claimants
far more greedy and dishonest than she was,
and that the more they asked, the more civility
they got from Congressmen.

“Could I not persuade you somehow to
give this up, my dear child?” he begged,
meanwhile trying gently to take her hand.

“When you urge me to give it up, you
urge me to give you up,” returned Josie, with
a spasmodic setting of her lips.

“That would kill me,” he said. “Well,
since your heart is set upon it, you must have
it—and you shall!”

“Oh, George! I knew I could trust you,”
murmured Josie, laying her hand gently on
his shoulder and filling him with comfort.

But she did not trust him, at least not entirely.
From this day she began to see more
than ever of Sykes Drummond, and to talk to
him confidentially about her claim. Drummond
had, of course, his motives for calling
punctually in answer to her little notes, and
for at least pretending to give her his best
advice. He wanted to make trouble for the
man who had cut him out of his fat job, and
had also carried off the belle; and very likely
he was at times disposed to do an ill turn
by Josie in order to punish her for neglecting
her own member. But his actual business
intent was to get the claim out of Hollowbread's
hands, put it under the care of
his own special lobbyist, Mr. Jacob Pike, and
so win for himself a portion of what money
and honor there were in it. Afterward, if
fortune continued to bless, he might espouse
the wealthy young widow, who would doubtless
prefer him to a dyed and strapped sexagenarian.
It had scarcely occurred to the
insolent creature that, if Mrs. Murray should
get her hundred thousand dollars, she might
pay him with a mitten.

The visits from Drummond soon became
so frequent, and so very confidential, that
Mrs. Warden took note of them.

“Mr. Hollowbread is exceedingly good-natured,”
she roguishly remarked one day
to the betrothed.

“It is his greatest charm,” replied Josie,
perhaps making a cut at Mrs. Warden's uncertain
temper. “I perfectly adore good-natured
people.”

“Of course you do. We all do when we
don't laugh at them.”

“I won't have you laughing at my dear
man. It is the one thing that would kill him
—to be laughed at.”

“We shall have to kill him, then.”

“The idea of taking a man's life because
he is good-natured!” said Josie, who guessed
what Mrs. Warden was driving at, and preferred
to evade the topic.

“It will be all Mr. Drummond's fault,”
continued that clever lady — very clever,
though wanting in good sense.

“Do you think I see too much of Mr.
Drummond?” asked Josie, giving up a useless
tactic of dodging, and assuming the róle
of an ingénue.

“Well, no—not that precisely,” answered
Mrs. Warden, shrugging her shoulders, a frequent
gesture with this nervous creature.
“You don't see a bit too much of him, if that
were all. But there is the betrothed. And
there is Mrs. Grundy.”

Mrs. Warden was sweet and low, like the
wind of the western sea. Her contralto
voice, which could on occasion blow like a
storm, was attuned to the mellowest reedy
breathing of a clarionet. But she was at
heart very much in earnest. She was, one
might almost say, disgusted with her lodger.
She had hoped that, now Josie had got a
man all to herself, she would stop flirting,
and give other young women a chance.

True, Edgar Bradford was, of late, quite attentive

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to Belle; and if he could be brought
to propose, no one else was wanted. But
that result was not yet certain, and meantime
it might be well to keep Drummond on hand,
in the way of a sober second choice. It was
disagreeable, therefore, to have Josie coquetting
with Sykes in this absorbing fashion.

“I just allude to it out of friendship, and
out of regard to your peculiar position,” continued
Mrs. Warden. “You know, of course,
that I am not so absurd as to object to sweet-hearting
in itself.”

“And of course I am obliged to you,” answered
Josie, not wishing to quarrel with
her hostess, and be driven to a boarding-house.
“But the positive, solemn truth is
that I am not sweethearting one bit with
Mr. Drummond. He comes to see me entirely
on business.”

“I thought Mr. Hollowbread was attending
to that.”

“One can't have too many helpers. You
know it as well as I do, Mrs. Warden.”

“Oh, certainly,” assented the elder lady,
conscious that her own sociable manners and
customs were alluded to, and deciding that
she must for the present suspend her monitions.

Let us now see what sort of business calls
Sykes Drummond made upon Josie Murray.
To save time, we will commence our report
at the moment when the gentleman rises to
take his long-deferred departure.

“I believe an Italian lady allows a visitor
to kiss her hand at parting,” he remarked,
after having essayed that form of salute and
failed to accomplish it.

“I never heard any thing to the contrary,”
said Josie. “It is an interesting piece of information.
I believe a Chinese gentleman wears
his hair down his back in a long cue.”

“But that doesn't help my case at all,”
answered Drummond, trying to hide his
disappointment and discomposure under a
horse-laugh.

“And neither does the other story, for I
am not an Italian lady.”

Now it must not be supposed that Josie
had not allowed Drummond to kiss her hand
since the engagement. She had accorded
him that favor once; but the rough creature
had haw-hawed triumphantly over it, and
blurted out something about “what would
the old man say?” and, in short, he had disgusted
her by his noisy, unmannerly, conceited
gratulation. So, on the present occasion,
he got no fingers to mumble at.

“I wish you were an Italian lady!” pleaded
Drummond.

“Perhaps I will make believe that I am
one, some day. Only you must help more
and demand less.”

“I demand very little compared with our
friend Hollowbread, who is the greatest extortioner
upon earth, in my opinion.”

“But Mr. Hollowbread gives all that he
has. He is a model of devotion. He is the
one bright spot of unselfish loyalty in the
whole world.”

“Only grant me a chance, and I will outshine
him. But, really, as to this matter of
the claim, I can do nothing unless I have the
whole business in my hands, and am allowed
to manage it in my way—the only effective
way.”

“People do talk so about those lobbyists!
Mr. Pullwool, and Mr. Jack Hunt, and your
friend, Mr. Pike, have the most dreadful
reputations that I know of!”

“Professionals always have their own
code of honor, and that code is rarely admired
by other people. But you can not do
any thing in any line of action without professionals.
You have to put up with their
fashions of work, if you want their results.
The world talks against the lobbyists, does
it? Why, Mrs. Murray, I tell you, for the
hundredth time, that Congress itself is a
nest of lobbyists,” declared Drummond, exaggerating
the facts of wickedness, as wicked
men are wont to do. “I tell you that
the position of senator is well known to be
worth one hundred thousand dollars a year.
I tell you that there are leading members of
the House, heads of important committees,
who make quite as much. Half our real
work is special legislation, or, in other words,
private thieving. You think, perhaps, that
because these men gather in such harvests,
they ought to let you glean willingly. But
great part of their income, their stealings,
their plunder, comes from dividing with
claimants. It is a game of tickle me and
I'll tickle you. You can not get your claim
through without feeing somebody. If Mr.
Hollowbread thinks he can do it, he is simply
a dunce. You had better drop him, before
he brings your bill to a vote and gets
it defeated. Put it into Pike's hands, and
pay him his percentage. It will cost you
less in the end. He must charge you something,
of course; but, for my sake, he won't
charge you much.”

“How much?”

“I think I can get him to do it for twenty
thousand dollars.”

“Twenty thousand dollars!—all to himself!”

“No,” laughed Drummond; “the greatest
part to others—to the trusted and chosen
ones of the people—to the men whom Columbia
delighteth to honor.”

“But that will leave me only eighty thousand—only
fifty-six hundred a year.”

“I will drop in at the Lobbitt House as I
go along, and see if he will undertake it for
less. I will insist upon ten thousand.”

“Do,” begged Josie. Then, after a moment
of pondering, she added, “But Mr. Hollowbread
must not know.”

“The idea of telling him—haw, haw! Do

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you think I am his intimate? Not under
existing circumstances—haw, haw!”

“But don't go to Mr. Pike to-day,” urged
Josie, still meditating. “It is too sudden.
Come and see me to-morrow about it, and I
will decide.”

“Very well,” assented Drummond, smiling
with manly superiority over this womanly
vacillation. “And now?” he asked, taking
her hand again, and slowly bending his head
over it.

She surveyed him thoughtfully while he
pressed his lips to her fingers, and then said,
with a smile:

“Are the Italians as long about it as that?
There, that is enough; the rest some other
time; good-bye.”