Playing the mischief :: :: University of Virginia Library

Engaged as she was, and engaged to two
men at that, Josie went to sleep crying about
a third man, and ready to kiss the darkness
whenever she thought of his name.

To lose that dearest one finally and utterly,
and to know that he had given to another
that heart which she had begged for in
vain, made up a trial which was both rack
and pillory, both anguish and shame, even
to this seasoned coquette. It gave her more
suffering than she could bear without wincing
out of her usual character, and shying
into strange behavior.

When she awoke in the morning from a
sleep of turmoils, her head aching, and her
nerves crawling, and her face so pallid that
she hated to look at it, she was not an even-tempered,
genial Josie, and for once she
wanted to wreak a vengeance. Her feeling
was that somebody was always abusing her;
that she was constantly being glowered at,
or flown at, or turned off, or circumvented;
that she had borne her fellow-creatures' evil
usage too long with patience; that sweetness
did no good, and that she must fight.
Yes, she would set to work to hurt somebody,
and in particular she would do a damage to
the Wardens. They had cut her out and
driven her forth; they had been insolent and

166

had tried to be extortionate; they deserved
a hard setting-down, if ever any body did.

When she next saw Drummond, she asked
him where was Mrs. Warden's claim, and
what were its chances.

“The old girl has been making great headway
with it since her daughter got engaged,”
he replied. “By George! I begin to think
that Bradford must be working for her,” he
added, without noticing how Josie's lip quivered.
“There's no telling. He may be helping
her. The stillest cats lap the most
cream. Or else she is using his character
unbeknownst to him. Anyhow, she has got
her swindle before my honorable colleagues
of the Blood and Thunder Committee. I
shouldn't wonder if it went through on a
gun-carriage.”

“In the army bill!” exclaimed Josie.
“That silly, impudent claim in the army
bill! Why, there isn't the smallest chance
of its passing, and it may call attention to
mine. Oh, Sykes, I do wish it could be got
out. It may ruin me. Don't you think you
can get it out?”

“I believe you are right,” judged Drummond.
“Yes, it might hurt you. A stolen
horse will carry one rider easier than two.
Well, I will do my best to assassinate your
friend.”

“What an ugly way of putting it!” laughed
Josie. “I wonder you didn't haw haw
over it. But you have given up that Mephistophelian
habit, and you are very serviceable
and sweet, and here is a kiss for you,
on the tip of that finger. Only you ought
to come and see me oftener. The idea of
winning a lady's hand, and then not calling
on her for two days!”

“If you knew how driven I am!” he said,
while he kissed her. “I am at full speed,
body and mind, from morn till dewy eve;
yes, and into the small hours.”

“And how you bear it!” exclaimed Josie,
gazing with admiration at his stalwart frame
and trooper-like visage. “You could wear
out a dozen ordinary men, and the same
number of extraordinary women. There,
go and work like a tiger. I am proud of
you.”

Off he strode in furious haste, for he was
in reality terribly busy. The end of the
session was approaching, and he had a score
of rascally peas under thimbles, and scores
of fellow-jugglers to guard against. So occupied
was he with his special legislations
that for the next three days he had no leisure
to call upon Josie; and it had been agreed
between them that he should not speak to
her at the Capitol, for fear of rousing Hollowbread's
suspicions. Meantime, that deluded
old gentleman visited his betrothed
regularly, and was received with a cordiality
beyond all praise, and got his stated allowance
of frugal caresses.

At last the postman brought Josie an en
velope, addressed in Drummond's handwriting.
It contained only his card, but on it
was scrawled this cheering sentence:

“The other jockey has lost his seat.”

“Mrs. Warden's rider has had a fall,” she
laughed, as she tore the bit of pasteboard to
pieces.

She was heartily glad of it, not merely
because it seemed to hurt her lucky rival,
Belle, but mainly because it helped herself.
As a rejected one, it was still possible for her
to be malignant, but it was far easier for
her to be simply selfish.

A day or two later, on the awful closing
day of the session, she repaired to the gallery
of the House, there to await her sentence.
The Apollonian Beauman, not having
yet seen his way clear to Portugal,
amused himself by acting as her escort.
In the halls she met the banking and railroading
Allchin, who bowed over her like a
man-mountain, grinned at her as if she were
a bag of specie, and hoarsely murmured a
prophecy of success.

“If you will only invest outside of politics,
Mrs. Murray, as wisely as you have invested
inside of it, you will be a millionaire,”
he smirked. “I shall look to you for lessons
in finance.”

“If ever I get any thing we will take
care of it together,” smiled Josie, as she
rustled away from him.

“He would soon relieve you of all business
cares,” whispered Beauman, who, though
not a suitor, wished her well. “He would
place your money where you would never
spend it.”

Then that sham Aristides, Honest John
Vane, encountered them, and made one of
the happy speeches for which he was famous.
An adroit man inside politics, and
a superficially courteous one in society, he
frequently said things which showed how
vulgar had been his starting-point in life,
and how much more fat than brain there
was in his huge cranium.

“I shall have to pitch into you to-day,
Mrs. Murray,” he bowed, with a buttery
smile, as if he were saying something agreeable.
“I hope sincerely that you won't take
it as an expression of personal hostility. I
only object to your claim for public reasons.”

He must have supposed, judging from the
genial, confiding way in which he beamed
upon her, that he could attack a woman's
swindle and still be on good terms with her.

“I court investigation, Mr. Vane,” replied
Josie, with praise worthy self-command and
good-humor. “You will find my affair in
the Judiciary.”

“Oh, in the Judiciary!” returned Honest
John, marveling at her simplicity, and attributing
it to feminine ignorance of politics.
“I understood that it had got into the General
Appropriations. Then it comes on this
morning.”

167

“What a goose!” muttered Josie, as she
hurried along. “That big head of his reminds
me of those large safes which one sees
exposed for sale, and which never have any
money in them. I suppose his wife has ordered
him to attack my bill, and then he
comes palavering and smiling at me, because
he doesn't want to make enemies.”

“Honest John aspires to be called a watch-dog
of the Treasury,” was Beauman's explanation.
“He stays in the fold and devours
a sheep every night, and then bow-wows at
whoever carries off a bone.”

“I wonder where he has put his own
jobs,” said Josie. “I wish I could smash
every one of them.”

“And keep Mrs. Vane from giving parties
—oh, no!” laughed Beauman. “What
would the wives of some Congressmen do
if the golden stream of special legislation
should run dry? How economical and dull
Washington society would be!”

Presently they were in the seats which
Mr. Hollowbread had managed to reserve
for them. There Josie remained for four
mortal hours without being conscious of fatigue.

She attracted much attention, and received
plenty of visitors. But they were men only:
among all the people who were with her
that day, there was not one lady; she had
not, just now, a single female intimate.

Beauman, handsome enough to defy public
opinion, staid by her throughout. The
Carolinian Clavers, still holding her the noblest
of her sex, dropped in to pay his boyish,
chivalrous, pure-hearted homage, and to
receive a smile of intelligent, appreciative,
honest gratitude for it.

The grand, gloomy, and peculiar Bray
kept at good glaring distance, being that
sort of man who gets a delicious cup of
wrath out of rejected love. Various others,
whom this story has not had occasion to
mention, happened along from time to time
with words of civility or gallantry.

Not a quarter of an hour passed without
bringing its two or three or more of bowing,
smirking, cajoling gentlemen. Pickens Rigdon
came to support her with the stimulus
of his high-flavored breath, and to inform
her, incidentally, that Stubb's old white-wheat
whisky was the best brand in the
market.

Senator Ironman, who had likewise dawdled
into the House and caught sight of her
from the floor, sent up a page with a flattering
message and a bouquet.

This coming and going of callers excited
much staring, notwithstanding the noisy
turmoil of law-making below. People from
the country imagined that our heroine must
be an ambassador's wife, or a duchess, or an
actress. She was the envy of scores of
ladies who did not know her, and, what is
more pity, of scores who did.

Mrs. John Vane, sitting almost unattended
near-by, glared and sneered and pouted
and tossed, and at last sailed angrily out of
the gallery. Had she known that Ironman
had sent Josie that bouquet, and that her
husband had essayed his dull best to be civil
to her, she would have given those gentlemen
a piece of her mind, meaning not her
intellect, but her temper.

Her vacant seat was greedily seized by an
odd-looking man, whom the strangers present
stared at in unspeakable bewilderment,
but who was known to all Washingtonians
as Squire Nancy Appleyard. Squire Nancy
glowered at Josie with hate, and then gazed
down into the cockpit below with love.

Drummond was there, fighting gallantly
on his dunghill of Special Legislation, and
sending forth his brazen cock-a-doodle-doo
defiantly. She was ready to wave applause
at him if he chanced to turn her way, and
then ready to hiss him if he turned in the
direction of Josie Murray. She hoped every
moment that he would look up at her, and
the stony monster never looked up at her
once.

Behind Squire Appleyard, wedged into,
and almost hidden by, the listening crowd,
sat a lady so thickly veiled that it was impossible
to see her face. This domino in tissue
was the prospective mother-in-law of the
Honorable Edgar Bradford.

Yes, there was Mrs. Warden, still hoping
that her claim would survive, and brooding
over it as the mother of Moses watched the
ark of bulrushes. The promise to Bradford
counted for naught with a woman whom
nature had fitted for a claim-hunter by an
abundant dose of extravagance, and whom
four years of lobbying had ripened into a
monomaniac. So completely was she disguised
that Josie only recognized her by a
familiar gesture or movement of fatigue and
impatience. It was an unpleasant recognition;
it put our heroine in mind of her one
sharp disappointment in love; and during
one moment she gasped for breath, and wanted
to get out of the gallery. No doubt, also,
Mrs. Warden saw her, and gnawed her bitter
nail at that surrounding of admirers, and
tried to console herself by remembering
Belle's engagement.

With what emotions must these two women
have listened to Bradford when he obtained
the floor for ten minutes, and made a
violent onslaught upon the whole system of
special legislation! The immediate cause
of his philippic was a “rider” which had
been tacked to the Judiciary bill, awarding
a million or so of damages to a speculator
who had forfeited a mail contract. He denounced
not only this particular roguery,
but all other similar abuses of the enacting
power.

“The treasury is plundered and the general
body of tax-payers is defrauded every session

168

for the benefit of private schemers and
of business corporations,” he declared. “The
sums squandered in this manner every year
range from ten millions up to fifty millions.
A single railroad has taken forty millions at
one swoop, and another is laying its plans for
securing as much more. There are scores, if
one may not say hundreds, of men in Washington
who live by devising and pushing
bills of which the end is theft and the means
bribery. There are members of Congress
whose chief and almost sole labor it is to
earn these bribes and abet these thefts.
There are members whose dishonorable perquisites
amount yearly to fifty thousand and
a hundred thousand dollars each. Congressional
legislation will soon be a synonym for
corruption, not only throughout this country,
but throughout the world. If we do not
wish to see republican institutions discredited;
if we do not wish to see their spread
arrested, and perhaps turned to collapse; if
we do not wish to see the industrial prosperity
of our native land impeded and stumbled,
we must proceed at once to combat this
extravagant, unjust, and dishonest wastefulness;
we must cheek it, we must extirpate
it, we must render it impossible.

“Legislation for the benefit of individuals
or corporations ought to be done away with
and put beyond the power of Congress. A
Court of Claims should adjudicate upon all
claims of damage, all demands for relief because
of losses incurred in the public service,
all financial questions between the citizen
and the Government. The President should
have the right of veto over every separate
section of each bill, while approving of the
remaining sections. There is no possibility
of reform and honesty short of these radical
and sweeping precautions. As long as men
have the power to rob the public treasury,
they can be coaxed or bribed to rob it. I
give gentlemen notice that I do not mean to
cease urging this matter. I have introduced
a bill to put an end to special legislation,
and it has been consigned to the limbo of
waste paper, but not to forgetfulness. So
long as I remain a member of this House, it
will continue to re-appear from its tomb and
to demand attention.”

Amidst a hum of voices—the mere disorderly
hum of miscellaneous conversation — he
resumed his seat. There had been the same
hum all over the House during his whole
speech, and it had decidedly increased in
loudness from the moment that his object
became manifest.

“They don't seem to have heard him at
all,” murmured the palpitating Josie, turning
to Beauman.

“Many of them would rather not hear
him,” was the answer. “He hit too many
birds with his stone.”

“Do you think he spoke well? I didn't
like him as much as I expected to.”

“After that, how can I praise him? Perhaps
he was a little too lofty and solemn.
But I suppose he feels his subject, and then
he had to say much in little. I must insist,
moreover, that he told some abominable
truths.”

Josie struggled to suppress a sigh of
discouragement. Every body whose good
opinion she cared for seemed to be against
her at heart. Every body who was morally
any body looked askance upon claim-hunting.

“He has beaten this job,” resumed Beauman.
“His motion has been seconded and
carried. The mail contractor's swindle is
dead.”

“That is rough on Honest John Vane,”
laughed Senator Pickens Rigdon, who was
breathing his old white-wheat whisky over
Mrs. Murray's shoulder. “It was John's
richest lode for this session.”

“Oh, I am so glad!” exclaimed Josie, really
quite jolly over Vane's defeat, though
frightened all the more for herself.

“There goes Vane on his legs,” added
Beauman. “Can it be that he has cheek
enough to demand a reconsideration?”

“No,” said Rigdon. “The Judiciary Bill
is up now. There, do you hear him? There
is brass! `Sound the loud timbrel o'er
Egypt's dark sea.' He is supporting Bradford;
denouncing special legislation, like Satan
rebuking sin; going for somebody else's
job. By George, Mrs. Murray, he is pitching
into you!”

“He said he should,” gasped Josie, trembling
all over, and forgetting in her terror
that her claim was not in the Judiciary.

Honest John showed as bold and smiling
a front as if he had not just been beaten out
of a villainous swindle; and in his commonplace,
ungrammatical, slangy way he made a
really fair speech, or, as he would have called
it, an effort. He was bombastically severe
on “under-ground legislation,” and dully
facetious on “one-horse bills,” alluding to
Josie's roasted chargers.

When he had finished, General Bangs
made a retort in kind, which brought down
the House. He vindicated the right of the
poor and lowly citizen — the sufferer who
had not the means to sue an unjust government
in court—to appear by his representative
before the bar of his country, and demand,
without expense, his lost property.
As for the bill in question, he declared that
it was “a two-horse bill, with a big dog under
the wagon,” a stroke of humor which
set two hundred Congressmen in a roar.
Finally he stated that this claim was not in
the Judiciary appropriation, and closed with
repeating the ancient history of the potashkettle
which was paid for, which was returned,
and which was never borrowed.

There was renewed legislative hilarity,
and honest John Vane looked up wrathfully

169

at Mrs. Murray, wondering whether she had
played a trick on him, or had simply blundered.
But he was completely squelched
for the time, and had no more to say concerning
her affairs.

Thus law-making went on for hours amidst
a monstrous and confounding hubbub, members
shouting and almost fighting for the
floor, the majority engaged in nearly continuous
conversation, and the Speaker's hammer
whacking through all. Meantime Mr.
Jake Pike was dodging about the legislative
machine, and pulling his rascally wires.

When the Army Bill came up, an unexpected
helper made his task the easier. Mrs.
Warden, supposing her appropriation to be
therein, and fearing the opposition of her
future son-in-law, devised a plan for carrying
him off the scene.

She struggled out of the gallery, crammed
her veils into her pockets, ran down to the
door of the hall, dispatched a page for Bradford,
dragged him aside to talk of feigned
business, and kept him as long as babble
could do it.

Just then, too, Mr. Jake Pike so managed
matters as to bring John Vane into the lobby
and involve him in a long discussion with
his disappointed mail contractor.

During this interval the Army Bill was
gabbled over in the House. There was a
great confusion, or rather it seemed to be a
great confusion to Josie, who was in something
like a nightmare. At last Beauman
turned to her with a smile, shook her by the
hand, and said,

“Remember me in your will!”