Playing the mischief :: :: University of Virginia Library

The poor rector traveled far—farther than
the colonel could accompany him—farther
than any man has yet voyaged and returned.
A week after his body had been laid in the
family vault under an old gray church of
ante-Revolutionary date, the surviving Murray
of that generation re-appeared in Washington
with a weed around his tall white
hat, and a new furrow or two athwart his
long white face.

Bradford met him on the broad sidewalk
in front of the War Department, and spoke
to him twice ere he could call him out of a
reverie.

“My dear colonel, I am glad to see you,”
he said, joyfully. Then, noticing the saddened
countenance and the mourning, he
added, “I hope that all is well.”

“All is well that survives,” replied the old
gentleman, struggling to control a spasm
which twitched his thin lips.

“What!” exclaimed Bradford.

“Yes—my brother failed under it,” continued
the colonel, his gray eyes fixed on vacancy
with a strangely mournful stoniness,
reminding one of sepulchral granite. “He
was bound up in his wife. Well, let us hope
that they are together again.”

“It is very sad—and surprising,” sighed
Bradford. “Many people hoped and believed
that the result would be different.”

This was true enough. Many of the rector's
acquaintances had predicted that, once
he was fairly rid of his sickly burden of a
wife, he would proceed to “have a good
time.” Mrs. Warden, for instance, had insisted
that he would marry again, and had
perhaps contemplated the possibility of an
offer coming her way.

“He was too heavenly-hearted to live after
he had ceased loving,” said the colonel,
clearing his throat. “It seemed to him that
his work in life, his responsibilities and uses,
were gone. Probably it was a mercy to him
that his physical nature was so weak.”

“People will blame Mrs. Augustus Murray
for this result.”

“They will be but partly just,” replied
the rational old soldier. “She hurt him;
hurt them both. But I don't know that I
can condemn her for this ending. Life is a
battle. You get your ball, and it does for
you. But the man who fired it did not aim
at you; was acting blindly and to save himself;
he bore no malice. Josie's faults are
selfishness, dishonesty, and lying. She is
not malignant. But let this pass,” he added,
shaking himself, or, perhaps, shivering.
“What is the news with you, Bradford?”

Then there ensued some talk concerning
Congressional schemes, hopes, and labors.

“Have you any further report concerning
that barn - burning swindle?” the colonel
eventually asked.

“Bangs assures me that the bill has been
thrown out by his committee. I don't feel
obliged to believe any statement of his, but
I think it likely that the thing should be so.
It was an audacious job. Mrs. Murray is
still staying with the Wardens, but I never
see her.”

“You haven't felt obliged to cut Belle, I
hope?”

“No,” said the young man, coloring in a
becoming manner, and looking very handsome,
and very good, too. Then, after a
moment of hesitation, he continued, “Colonel,
I should like to make a confidence to
you. I think I can give you a pleasure.
If Miss Warden will accept me, I shall marry
her.”

For the first time in a month an honest,
hearty smile broke out on the old man's face.
With an almost parental air of petting and
blessing, he placed one of his gaunt, wasted
hands on Bradford's shoulder, and said,

“I am glad to hear this. You are two
young people whom I like and respect. I

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think it would be the best thing either of
you could do to fall into the great column
which is charging on the unknown alongside
of each other.”

“She is my superior,” declared Bradford,
who was in a tender and worshiping temper.
“She is fit to be my officer. She will uphold
me. This is a place of horrible temptations,
colonel. She will be just such a wife
as a Congressman needs. She will not let
me do an unworthy action. I may not love
her as much as she deserves—it is not easy
to be noble enough to do that; but I know
that I shall reverence her.”

“I know that you will,” replied the colonel,
wonderfully touched for an old soldier
and an old bachelor. “I feel assured, Bradford,
that there is good enough in you for
that.”

“I thank you, colonel; you give me great
pleasure,” declared our new lover, all alight
and aflame with fine emotions. “Well,
good-bye.”

“Good-bye, and success to you!” called
the old man, divining why the young one
strode away so rapidly.

In the heat aroused by this confession,
and by the satisfaction with which the colonel
had received it, Bradford went straight
in search of Belle to tell her his love. He
was in that agreeable state of excitement
which often follows upon a fine decision,
and accompanies the first eager steps of resultant
action.

There was a delicious warmth in him,
like the warmth of summer mornings, full
of balminess and of warblings. His emotions,
his intellectual forces, and the very
currents in his veins, down to the tiniest
throbbing rivulet, were all tropical.

It seemed to him, and it undoubtedly was,
the happiest and most splendid moment of
his life. Never before had he laid down every
ounce of nature's egotism, and completely
preferred another being to himself.

Thus lightened of all selfishness, he rose
somewhat above the normal level of humanity,
attaining to the altitude of spirits capable
of sacrifice, and coming within vision of
angels.

At first thought it seems a grand pity
that this lofty self-forgetfulness of the lover
can not last throughout his existence, and
can not become a universal characteristic
of our race. But there is sad chance that
so heavenly a state of mind would be ill-suited
in the long run to a brood which
must struggle with the physical difficulties
of this planet. In some such a state poor
old Rector Murray had lived, with the result
that he did no worthy work beyond
comforting one woman.

If we were all divested of self-preserving
egotism, and robed for life in the innocent
swaddlings of unmixed love, we should probably
lose our civilization, dress in fig-leaves,
and become extinct. We should meet the
fate of that famous tribe of monkeys who
sat in each other's laps until they all starved
to death.

Bradford was soon at the Warden house,
and alone with Mrs. Warden. He had no
fear of being discouraged by her, and not
much fear of being rejected by her daughter.
On the contrary, he felt able to make
self-respectful terms with the elder lady,
and to offer himself to the younger with almost
as much confidence as willingness.

“Mrs. Warden, I wish to speak to you of
Belle,” he began. “And if what I am about
to say is agreeable to you, I shall then wish
to speak to her.”

The lady's large, dusky, and, one might
almost say, smoky-black eyes sparkled and
danced with intense satisfaction.

“I don't think, Mr. Bradford,” she replied,
“that you could say any thing of Belle, or
to Belle, which would not give me pleasure.”

It was uttered with an impulsive promptness
which revealed vividly her liking for
him and her adoration of her child.

The answer and the manner nearly bewildered
him; nearly made him forget the
terms which he meant to impose. But they
were tremendously important; they were
essential, as he thought, to his honor as a
bridgroom and a statesman; and, after wavering
for a moment, he swung back to them
with a firm grip.

“I think Belle is worthy, and much better
than worthy, of being my wife,” he continued.
“I desire, above all things in the
world, to win her for a wife.”

In her joy Mrs. Warden smiled, bowed,
fairly leaned toward him, and colored deeply.
There could be no doubt that she
thought him the finest of young men; and
once more he nearly flinched from his task
of imposing conditions upon such a welcome.

“But I must ask two favors before I ask
this greatest of all favors,” he managed to
proceed. “I must beg of you to let Mrs.
Murray look for another home.”

“It would be quite proper,” murmured
Mrs. Warden.

Of course; it was her business as a mother
to rid Belle of a companion who might
prove a dangerous rival; and, furthermore,
it was natural that a freshly engaged man
should hate to meet daily an old flame with
whom he had perhaps been very, very intimate.

It was characteristic of the lady, by-the-way,
and shows how deeply her moral sense
had been seared by worldliness, that she
should make this last reflection with the utmost
composure of mind, and without passing
severe sentence upon either Bradford or
Josie. She did not sit in judgment on them;
she did not find them either guilty or not
guilty of improper demeanor; she did not

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care one straw whether they had been guilty
or not. In all such matters she was as indifferent
as Gallio, and as immorally unprejudiced
as Machiavelli.

It seems impossible at first glance that
such a woman could have a daughter like
Belle, whose chief spiritual trait was strenuous
and almost uncharitable uprightness.

But here we come again to the miracle, or,
rather, to the law, of hereditary character.
James Channing Warden had been a man
of fastidious truthfulness and purity.

“I thank you for your very great kindness,
Mrs. Warden,” pursued Bradford. “But
I feel bound to ask one thing more, and, I
suppose, a much harder thing.”

He hesitated, and she trembled. Could
it be that he would wish her to give up her
claim? An old gambler, who is urged by
puissant circumstances to forswear gaming,
can imagine her emotions. Her voice was
weak, and her swarthy cheek faded, as she
asked, “What is it?”

“It is this, that you will withdraw your
claim from before Congress, with the understanding
that it is never to be renewed.”

Mrs. Warden had to summon all her fortitude
to suppress a groan, and to keep herself
from turning faint. But, infatuated as she
was with claim-hunting, she still had a few
scattered atoms of common sense left, and
she knew that it would be madness to reject
this demand. Her small fortune was
nearly gone; her longed-for appropriation
seemed as far beyond her grasp as ever; and
here, if she would resign that shadow, was a
brilliant and wealthy son-in-law.

“I will withdraw it, Mr. Bradford,” she
whispered, with a sensation of having been
bled deeply, and lying helpless in the surgeon's
hands. “It has worn my life out,”
she added, venting her petulance on the ungrateful
delusion which was now escaping
her. “I shall be glad—glad to stop it,” she
gasped on, almost weeping. “Of course, I
pledge myself not to renew it—oh, willingly!
willingly!”

“This gives you pain,” he said, walking
up to her, and taking both her hands. “I
will see that you never regret it.”

She jumped to her feet, drew him close to
her with characteristic animation, and kissed
his forehead fervently, almost passionately.

“You are the noblest young man in the
world!” she exclaimed. “I shall be unspeakably
proud of you. There! Now I
will send Belle to you.”

Running hastily up stairs with the glee
of a child who has lost one plaything and
found another, she dashed into her daughter's
room, contemplated the girl with sparkling
eyes and a triumphant smile, and at
last burst out laughing, being a trifle hysterical
with conflicting emotions.

“What has happened, mamma?” asked
our Juno, not even raising her head from her
work, and only lifting her long lashes from
her calm, lucid blue eyes.

“Belle, go down stairs and entertain Mr.
Bradford,” was the reply, uttered in the most
nonchalant contralto tone possible, for Mrs.
Warden had suddenly conceived the delightful
idea of giving her daughter a surprise.
“He has come to make a call.”

“I don't see the joke of it, mamma,” said
Belle, rising at once, with a heightened color
in her blonde cheeks.

“He wants you to go on a picnic with
him—to the Happy Isles, or somewhere. He
will tell you all about it. I don't object, if
you don't.”

“A picnic at this season!” marveled Belle,
and rustled innocently down to meet her
fate, though prepared in heart to bow to it,
yes, and to do it reverence.

When she entered the parlor, she saw
Bradford coming slowly to receive her, with
a peculiarly grave, tender expression in his
meditative hazel eyes, and with both hands
cordially extended.

“What does this mean? A picnic?” she
smiled, while suffering her fingers to become
entangled with his.

“Your mother told you that?” he replied,
with a low laugh, a laugh which struck her as
deliciously musical. “She wanted me to surprise
you,” and for a moment he adored Mrs.
Warden. “I hope, my dear beautiful girl,
that it will be a pleasant surprise.”

“Oh! what do you mean, Mr. Bradford?”
gasped Belle, her heart suddenly beginning
such a thumping that she could scarcely
breathe.

“My dear, it means—” And here he lifted
her hands to his lips. “My very dear one, it
means—”

And then he told her the old, beautiful
story, the fairy tale which has given a thousand-fold
more delight than all others, the
tale of worshiping and loving which ends
with asking in marriage.

“Yes,” was Belle's answer, not spoken so
much as whispered, or, rather, breathed.
“Could you have feared that I would say
any thing else?”

“Yes. I could.”

“You need not have feared: not for months
back. You are good and honorable. I love
you for it.”

“Not very good. But I will be better;
for your sake.”

“I am satisfied with you. Perfectly.”

“No. I will better—gentler, and purer.
Heaven help me!”

“You frighten me. I shall never be worthy
of you.”

“Oh, my noble one! How sweet of you
to say so!”

They misjudged and exaggerated each
other, no doubt; but they were the holier in
feeling and purpose because of this hyperbole
of appreciation; they were in that possession

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of enthusiasm, faith, hope, and expectation
which inspires so many great and
beautiful deeds: that superhuman extravagance
of the heart which always deludes,
but which always uplifts.