University of Virginia Library

49. CHAPTER XLIX.
MISERERÉ.

Great had been the amazement and consternation
of Mr. Hollowbread when he
found that Josie's swindle was not among
the appropriations for carrying on the justice
of his country.

He hastened over to Bangs as soon as he
thought he could do so without attracting
notice, and asked in an excited whisper and
with an unaccustomed oath where his section
had gone to.

“Ah, precisely,” answered the general,
when he could be brought to pretend to
remember what his friend was talking of.
“Mrs. Murray's little joker? Well, Jake
Pike is taking care of it. You had better
stand by the army.”

Excessively angry and humiliated; angry
at Bangs and at Jake Pike, and at whomsoever
had inspired them to this impertinence;
humiliated by the fact that the claim should
be taken out of his hands without even consulting
him or warning him; in such a turmoil
of emotion that his very springs and
surcingles throbbed with it, Mr. Hollowbread
returned to his seat and stood by the
army.

Meanwhile he dared not call on his client
and explain matters to her, or, rather, beseech
an explanation. He simply sat confounded,
heard the Murray appropriation
enumerated among the defenses of the republic,
and speechlessly voted for it.

Not until the business was settled and
the House had taken up its next bill did he
dare to steal into the gallery and congratulate
Josie. He had supposed that she would
not be grateful to him, and had feared that
she might be fault-finding and scornful. On
the contrary, she was all sunshine, smiles,
thanks, compliments, content, and joy. She
had never looked prettier or more loving
than when she leaned forward with flushed
face and sparkling eyes, pressed his hand,
and whispered,

“Isn't it nice?”

He decided that he would ask no questions
then, and he went back a relieved,
happy man to his arm-chair, hoping to vote
honestly for the rest of the session.

In the halls he passed Mrs. Warden, rustling
hastily to and fro, flurried and eager.
Was her appropriation in the Army Bill?
she bluntly and excitedly asked him. When
he replied courteously that he regretted not
to have noticed it there, she turned away
from him abruptly and ran after some other
legislator.

We can imagine the poor woman pursuing
her inquiries, tremulously fearing lest all
had gone wrong, yet wildly hoping that all
had gone right. One godsend had befallen
during the day, which at any other time
would have made her happy. She had received
a check for one thousand dollars from
Colonel Murray, with a note begging her to
use the money for Belle's wedding outfit.
The check she had deposited as she came to
the House, and there it was in bank to her
credit, dispelling many anxieties.

But what was a check for a thousand, if
the Army Bill did not contain her section,
and she had lost—yes, lost—a fortune? Her
calamity was too monstrous to be believed,
although many people assured her of it.
She would hope on until morning, and then
read her opulence in the printed record.

The night passed over her, but not on
wings of balm. With that uneasy heart of
hers beating so strangely, and that flighty
head fluttering through so many reverics, it
was not easy to sleep. For hours no rest,
but only a perpetual tossing, feverish and
full of pain. Hour after hour she counted
the strokes of the church clocks, first one
and then another—counted them fretfully,
forebodingly, and gloomily, as if they were
tollings for the dead. She would have sought
unconsciousness in chloroform or in opiates,
but she had a sombre reason for dreading

them—a reason of which she never spoke.
That ugly heart-beat, which more than any
thing else kept her awake, was the well-known
symptom of an old disease.

At last a sweet, warm delusion, a waking
agitation which was like a delightful dream,
stole to her pityingly and soothed her. It
was a feverish delirium, but it was as cheering
as wine. She had a feeling of success
and triumph, like one intoxicated with
Champagne. She had won; she was rich,
very rich; she was happy, perfectly happy.
Trusting that so it would be in the morning,
she slipped with many starts into slumber.

On waking she found herself unusually
jaded and pallid, while her mind was so
confused and numbed that she could hardly
apply it to the most common purposes, such
as the task of dressing. The events of the
previous day came back to her with such
difficulty, and so dimly, that it seemed as if
they had not happened.

Once it struck her that she was like a
dead person, trying almost in vain to remember
the by-gone life. She half trusted
that there had been no day before; that she
had only dreamed its futile hopes and disappointments;
that her final struggle for
wealth was yet to come. She recollected
the cheerfulness with which she had fallen
asleep; but it had vanished now, and could
not be made to return. Languid, aching
from head to foot, unable to think consecutively,
unable even to handle things aright,
and utterly depressed in spirit, she slowly
finished her attiring.

Then she sat down to rest, breathing rapidly
and laboriously, like one who has been
pursued.

After a time she took a check from her
table, and filled it out for the one thousand
dollars in bank, making it payable to her
daughter. Three checks were used before
this could be done; she spoiled the first two
by errors in writing or signing. Then,
picking up the paper with a trembling hand,
she carried it down stairs and gave it to
Belle.

“What is this for, mamma?” asked the
girl, with disquietude. “I don't like to take
it. I want you to spend the money for me.
Of course the colonel expected that. Mamma,
I will not take it.”

“Don't be so silly!” said Mrs. Warden,
pettishly. “I would rather have the money
lie in your name. I insist upon it.”

“Mamma—are you unwell?”

“Do stop, Belle! I hate such foolish
questions,” responded the ailing woman, with
downright asperity. “I never can do any
thing my own way but you go to supposing
that I am sick.”

To quiet her, the daughter gave way, and
silently put the check in her pocket.

“Has the Newsmonger come?” demanded
Mrs. Warden.

“No. Somebody must have stolen it.
But do sit down and take some breakfast.”

“Jane!” called Mrs. Warden, in loud irritation.
“Where is that lazy blackamoor?
Jane, what did you let the Newsmonger get
stolen for? Why don't you get up earlier?
There, take that money and run out and buy
one.”

She was sipping her coffee in silence, and
had not yet tasted a mouthful of food, when
the servant returned with her favorite journal.

“Mamma, let me read it to you,” implored
Belle. “I want you to eat.”

“Oh, Belle, you worry my life out of me!”
said Mrs. Warden, snatching eagerly at the
Newsmonger. “If there is any good news,
I want to find it myself.”

“Good news! What good news?” asked
the daughter, suspecting at once that the
claim was meant, and flushing deeply.

Mrs. Warden replied not, but read on
greedily, her face likewise deeply flushed,
and her eyes angry. Of a sudden she found
what she sought; there was a look of agonizing
anxiety and longing; then she turned
as pale as a corpse, and dropped the paper.
She had read her sentence of disappointment—her
sentence of death!

“Mamma! mamma!” shrieked Belle, springing
up and running to her; but before she
could reach the stricken woman the tragedy
was over. Mrs. Warden had clutched her
hands to her heart, and rolled out of her
chair upon the floor, perfectly dead!

We will pass over the remainder of this
scene; the nature of it is only too easily
imagined.

Some hours later Bradford found in the
Newsmonger the following passage, deeply
marked by finger-nails, as if in anger or in
agony:

“Among the notorious jobs which received
their quietus during the closing bombardment
of the session was the so-called
Commodore John Saul Hooker claim, a venerable
seventy-four, rated at eighty thousand
dollars, and not carrying a cent. Report
says that it was warped into the Army Bill,
a week since, by the personal exertions of
the proprietor, and sent adrift again, only
two days later, to make room for a newer
and prettier rover of the seas of legislation.
What is certain is that it failed to put in an
appearance, and so has once more gone to
the bow-wows, let us hope, forever.”

“That reads like Shorthand's work,” judged
Bradford. “And yet it probably tells the
truth. How could she break that promise?
—poor woman!”

He could hardly regret her, and but for
Belle he would not have pitied her, so severe
is a soul of a single virtue. It was substantially
this young man's moral code, that people
who tell lies, and people who try to get

money dishonestly, are the great sinners, and
almost the only sinners, of earth.

But he was building just now better than
he knew. He was gathering some fresh
sweetness and nobleness into his heart by
dint of using it; he was filling much empty
comb of his nature with the honey of sympathy.

It astonished him, certainly, to find that
Belle grieved passionately over the loss of
her false and frivolous mother; to find that
a girl who was upright and truthful and
wise could love a woman who was a sharper,
a fibber, and practically a fool; to find
that a noble nature could, like a kittenish
one, respond with affection to the affection
of the unworthy.

But he adored Belle all the more for her
sorrow, and did his love-lorn best to comfort
her, and so enlarged his limited moral boundaries
and sweetened his spirit. There was
possibility of a far better and more beautiful
life in him than he had lived yet. There was
a chance of his existing for others, in heart
as well as in mind, for their sake as well as
for his own.

We can grant but a brief and desultory
hearing to the conversations of Belle and
Bradford. Every one can imagine how consolation
is given by a man full of affection
to a woman who craves that affection and
returns it.

A head laid on a shoulder, a kiss falling
upon a forehead, a tear wiped gently away,
murmurs of pity and constancy, answering
murmurs of gratitude, all these things are
easily imagined.

In such interviews broken sentences and
detached words suffice. The heart fills up
the intervals, and says more than lips could
utter, and hears tendernesses unspoken.

“I must beg your forgiveness for my poor
mother,” said Belle, in one of her calmer moments.
“She broke her promise to you.
But the claim was a monomania with her;
she was almost irresponsible on the subject.
You must pardon her memory.”

“I do. For your sake, and for hers also.
It was for you, much more than for herself,
that she was fighting. So I believe now,
although there was a time when I did not
think of that, and judged her hardly.”

“She thought it all so necessary! From
her point of view it was the case of a mother
seizing a loaf for her starving child.”

“One is tempted to be angry at those who
stand in the way of such a loving theft.”

“I suppose some one stood in the way of
this,” murmured Belle. She suspected her
betrothed of being that one, for the scoffing
passage in the Newsmonger, with its hint at
Josie Murray, had been kept from her. “I
do not condemn him, whoever he was,” she
added. “No doubt I ought to praise him.”

“It was a woman—at least report says
so,” answered Bradford, who did not care to
shield Josie from blame, and who, indeed,
had come to abhor her. “It is supposed to
have been your late lodger.”

“Josie Murray! You astonish me. I
would not have thought her to be malicious.
I did consider her—ought I to say it?—unprincipled.
But this looks like revenge,
and I never judged her bad-tempered. You
must know that there had been causes of
quarrel. She and mamma had some words,
and I think she was vexed at going away,
and, in short, it was an unpleasant parting.
But even yet—well, it is hard to talk about
it—I don't know what to say.”

Belle was stammering by this time. A
recollection and a sudden suspicion made
the subject a delicate and daunting one to
her. She remembered that Josie had been
in love with her love, and she guessed, from a
change in his face, that he, too, might know
of it.

Of course he did call the now displeasing
fact to mind; and, as he wanted to hide his
consciousness, he turned cool and analytic.

“I doubt her malignity,” he said. “I
don't believe her capable of any deep or
long-winded passion. A monkey who sees
another monkey about to seize a cocoa-nut
might push him off the branch and break
his neck, all without the least hard feeling
as well as without compunction, and thinking
of nothing but the cocoa-nut. That, I
take it, is just Josie Murray. Well, she has
got her cocoa-nut,” he added, willing to
change the topic. “She is worth one hundred
thousand dollars, deducting her commissions
to the lobby.”

“I don't envy her,” answered Belle, for
whom this subject of her rival—the woman
who might have stood in her place—had a
fascination. “I don't know but that I pity
her. Yes, I do pity her, and sincerely. With
all her beauty and cleverness, it seems to me
that nobody really loves her—at least, not
long. She throws away her chances—as fine
chances as a woman could easily have—and
all for the sake of novelties. It is the bird
in the bush that ruins her.”

“She is frivolous and selfish,” pronounced
Bradford. “She has a great power, and she
abuses it. She is an egotistic tyrant, and
gets a tyrant's measure of loyalty. If she
should win a man,” he added, thinking of his
own escape, “and if she should even love
him, she would soon tire of him. I take it
that a beautiful woman's greatest temptation
is inconstancy. Josie Murray does not
even try to resist it.”

“She is engaged to Mr. Hollowbread, and
he is infatuated with her.”

“Well, she will break his heart, if he has
one that is breakable.”

“Oh, my dear, what a wicked world it
is!” sighed Belle, to whom the breaking of
loving hearts seemed the greatest of crimes.

“And how much too good you are for it!”

he replied, doing her reverence with all his
soul.

“You must not think me so good. You
will be disappointed. You frighten me.”

“You know what I mean. I worship
you!”